Joe Kneale is the COO of ChoiceLocal. Franchisors come to ChoiceLocal when they want superior new customer marketing for their franchisees, superior talent recruitment for their franchisees or superior franchise development to grow their number of franchise system units. Under Joe Kneale’s leadership ChoiceLocal has created product offerings that are second to none in the franchise industry.
As Joe Soltis, ChoiceLocal’s CEO put it, “Joe is one of those guys that can be given any problem and he will figure out an amazing solution for it. He has a knack for just figuring out big and complex problems and then having the emotional intelligence on top of an uncanny intellect to bring people together to solve the solution.” This is one of the reasons that Joe Kneale has been given a nickname of “MacGyver” as he just finds a way to do amazing things and get amazing things done no matter the situation. In addition, “ChoiceLocal’s leadership team from Joe Kneale to Amanda Jerele, Ashley Harasyn, Greg Soltes, and Isaac Kebe have made one incredible team that is bringing ChoiceLocal to the point where in every metric that matters ChoiceLocal is #1, and now ChoiceLocal is well on its way to being #1 by market share as well,” says Soltis.
“I am so grateful for every teammate at ChoiceLocal,” says Soltis, “they are just incredible people, with incredible talents.” On top of having an amazing leadership team the ChoiceLocal team across the board is hugely respected in franchising as well as in the marketing world. ChoiceLocal is the first and only franchise marketing agency to offer a money back guarantee, they are one of the fastest growing companies in the United States, and they have been rated as a top work-place 5 years running. It’s gotten to the point where for ChoiceLocal for every open position, they have hundreds of people apply for one single job opening at ChoiceLocal. It allows ChoiceLocal to be very selective in who they let into the team, in a very competitive hiring environment.
We sat down with Soltis and asked him how to go about building such an incredible team and here are some of the pearls of wisdom he shared with us:
#1. Treat people the way you want to be treated.
No one wants to work for a jerk. They want a quality life, they want to be valued and appreciated and they want to know that when they may go through a difficult life situation you will have their back. If you do this, say Soltis, 95% of the time you will get a very similar loyalty back in return. Leading a company it’s your job to take care of the welfare and well-being of all families that reply on your company. Any business leader should take that seriously and YES, there are always times when profits will be effected, at least in the short term for the worse, by doing the right thing for your people, but it’s the right thing to do and in the long-run you will win in the market place and in the recruiting wars by doing just that.
#2. Be mission-driven.
At ChoiceLocal our mission is to “Help Others.” Our mission is not “make money” or “maximize shareholder wealth,” or even “be the world’s best marketer for franchise systems.” Our mission is rooted in a believe that we are put here on earth to make the world a better place and make people’s lives fundamentally better. For the franchisee that means, we make their dreams come true of being a business owner and everything that matters to them. For the franchisor that means growing their footprint, making their franchisees happy, and help everyone within home office get promoted and get big bonuses that help them fund their families dreams. For our teammates, it means giving them a way to make their dreams a reality, to be treated well and fairly, to give them good work/life balance and a happy lifestyle and world-class training and development that will move their career forward. For those in need, it means giving 10% of our profits to help kids in need. ChoiceLocal is a faith-driven business and that is important to us. For EVERY decision we make at ChoiceLocal it must be weighed against our mission. By doing this, are we Helping Others? Are we taking care of all stakeholders and doing it in the best possible way? Only if the answer is yes, can we move forward. That is the standard for being mission driven.
#3. Hire for core values first and foremost, but also for competency.
To be blunt, says Soltis, you can hire one of the most smart people in the world, but if that person is a major league jerk, that person can single handily destroy a winning-team dynamic. As a company you must know who you are, know what you believe and hire, fire give raises and promotions based on core values and performance. Everyone needs to be 5 out 5 for core values as well as performance. If you hire someone who is a 5 out of 5 on performance and a 3 out of 5 on core values, in time, they will find a time to do major damage to your team and your company. Don’t let core value mis-matches into your company. Hire people who believe what you believe.
#4. Have high standards and measure to them and manage to them.
You can’t grow and scale an organization without everyone doing something meaningful, measurable, and very, very productive. Everyone should have Key Performance Indicators and the training and support necessary for people with the right core values and competency to thrive in hitting those KPI’s.
#5. Have a culture of appreciation.
If you aren’t saying “Thank you” and “Great job” at least 10X per day you are not doing your job as a leader Winning leaders create winning results and for great efforts and winning results you must be grateful to your team. Most people are motivated by appreciation first and foremost. Show it! They deserve it!
#6. Have world-class training that everyone knows will greatly expand their career by going through.
The goal of the training at ChoiceLocal is for it to be so amazing that people say “I want to work there because I know that if I do I will learn an absolute ton and it will be super helpful for my career development.” This is something we have always focused on by are even making a top companywide priority as we want to get better and better at this. If you are not training and developing your team to be LEADERS in their industry you are failing. Just being up to date with the latest happenings in your industry is not good enough, you need to be ahead of it and so does your entire team.
About ChoiceLocal
ChoiceLocal is a purpose-driven and results-focused franchise marketing agency that only serves franchisors and franchisees. Today ChoiceLocal works with over 50 franchise systems. They are the 1st and only franchise marketing agency to offer a money-back guarantee. They offer new customer marketing, sales enablement, franchise development and talent recruitment. They are a member of IFA (International Franchise Association), named on the Inc. 5000 list, and rated as a Top Workplace for the last five years. To find out more about their franchise growth engine, please visit https://choicelocal.com/
