Hosted by Jeff Walter, Founder and CEO of LatitudeLearning
The learning and development industry has spent decades helping people acquire knowledge, build skills, and improve performance. Organizations invest millions of dollars every year in onboarding programs, leadership development initiatives, coaching, certifications, and training technologies designed to help employees succeed. Yet despite those investments, one question continues to frustrate business leaders.
Why do some people thrive while others struggle?
Two employees can receive the same training, possess similar qualifications, and work under identical conditions. One becomes a top performer. The other delivers average results. The difference is often difficult to explain, and even more difficult to predict.
That challenge sits at the center of this fascinating Training Impact Podcast conversation between Jeff Walter and Jim Hunter, founder of PeopleBest. What begins as a discussion about assessments quickly evolves into a broader exploration of human potential, organizational culture, workforce development, and the science of performance prediction.
Throughout the conversation, Hunter shares how PeopleBest helps organizations move beyond intuition and assumptions by using predictive analytics to understand the behaviors, motivations, and competencies that drive success. The result is a compelling look at how organizations can make better hiring decisions, improve employee development, strengthen leadership pipelines, and ultimately build higher-performing teams.
One of the most engaging aspects of the episode is Hunter’s own professional journey.
If someone had met him early in his career, they likely would not have predicted that he would eventually build a company focused on behavioral analytics and performance prediction. Unlike many founders in the assessment industry, Hunter did not emerge from academia or spend years studying organizational psychology.
Instead, his path developed through business leadership, executive search, and a growing curiosity about human performance.
That curiosity intensified when he began working with executive recruiters who were trying to identify better ways to evaluate leadership candidates. Like many organizations, they had access to resumes, interviews, references, and personality assessments. Yet despite all of those tools, hiring mistakes still occurred. Talented candidates would interview well but fail to perform. Others who appeared less impressive initially would become top performers.
The inconsistency sparked a question that would eventually become the foundation of PeopleBest.
Could performance be predicted more accurately?
The answer began to take shape when Hunter read Michael Lewis’s bestselling book Moneyball.
The story of the Oakland Athletics revolutionized the way many industries thought about performance. Instead of relying on traditional scouting methods and gut instincts, the organization used analytics to uncover hidden predictors of success. By focusing on measurable indicators that others ignored, the team was able to compete against organizations with significantly larger budgets.
For Hunter, the implications extended far beyond baseball.
If data could identify the characteristics that predicted athletic performance, perhaps it could also identify the characteristics that predicted workplace performance.
The concept was simple but powerful.
Rather than relying solely on interviews, resumes, and subjective impressions, organizations could use data to identify the behaviors and competencies most closely associated with success. Those insights could then be applied to hiring, development, coaching, succession planning, and leadership selection.
That realization became the starting point for PeopleBest.
Nearly twenty years later, the company has grown into a global organization that helps clients understand the human factors that influence performance across a wide variety of industries and roles.
One of the strongest themes throughout the conversation is the distinction between qualifications and fit.
Most organizations evaluate candidates based on their education, experience, certifications, and technical expertise. These factors are important. A salesperson needs product knowledge. A manager needs leadership capabilities. A software developer needs technical proficiency.
However, Hunter argues that these qualifications represent only part of the equation.
Walter illustrates this point through an example that resonates with many leaders. A highly talented software developer may thrive in one organization while struggling in another. The difference often has little to do with technical ability. Instead, it reflects differences in culture, communication styles, motivations, expectations, and behavioral preferences.
In other words, success is not determined solely by what people know.
It is also influenced by how they naturally operate.
This perspective challenges one of the most common assumptions in talent management. Organizations often focus on finding the best people when they should be focused on finding the right people for a particular environment.
The distinction may seem subtle, but it has enormous implications.
Hunter explains that PeopleBest approaches hiring and development through what he describes as a three-legged stool.
The first leg consists of traditional qualifications. Does the individual possess the knowledge, skills, and experience required for the role?
The second leg involves interpersonal and cultural fit. Does the individual align with the organization’s values, expectations, and working environment?
The third leg focuses on the behavioral drivers and competencies that are often invisible during interviews.
These include characteristics such as accountability, goal orientation, persistence, structure, collaboration, coachability, influence, and motivation.
According to Hunter, this third dimension is where many organizations encounter problems.
Candidates frequently interview exceptionally well. They communicate effectively, establish rapport, and create positive first impressions. Yet once they enter the role, they may struggle with execution, follow-through, adaptability, or accountability.
Those challenges often stem from behavioral tendencies that are difficult to identify through traditional hiring methods.
This is where predictive analytics becomes valuable.
By understanding which behaviors consistently appear among top performers, organizations gain a more objective framework for evaluating future candidates and employees.
One of the most practical insights from the episode involves how PeopleBest works with clients.
When organizations approach Hunter seeking help, he does not begin by administering assessments or reviewing employee data.
Instead, he asks a deceptively simple question.
Where do you want to go?
That question becomes the foundation for everything that follows.
Some organizations want to increase revenue. Others want to improve retention, develop stronger leaders, strengthen customer relationships, or accelerate growth. Every organization has a destination, and that destination determines which competencies matter most.
Once those objectives are established, PeopleBest uses analytics to identify the characteristics that consistently correlate with success in that specific environment.
Rather than relying on generic leadership models or broad assumptions, the process allows the organization’s own data to reveal what drives performance.
The result is a more precise understanding of what success actually looks like.
This outcome-focused approach mirrors many of the themes discussed throughout the Training Impact Podcast.
Effective training programs begin with business objectives and work backward to identify the knowledge, skills, and behaviors required to achieve those objectives. PeopleBest applies the same philosophy to workforce development.
Organizations often collect enormous amounts of employee data, yet relatively few know how to convert that information into actionable insights.
PeopleBest helps bridge that gap.
By studying top performers and identifying shared characteristics, organizations gain visibility into the behaviors that produce measurable results. Those insights can then be incorporated into hiring processes, onboarding programs, leadership development initiatives, coaching strategies, and succession planning efforts.
What emerges is a more strategic approach to talent management that aligns workforce decisions with business outcomes.
One of the most interesting moments in the conversation occurs when Walter raises a question that every learning professional eventually confronts.
Can people change?
More specifically, can training influence the behaviors and competencies associated with success?
Hunter’s answer highlights an important distinction.
While some traits are more difficult to change than others, an individual’s willingness to learn plays a major role in determining developmental outcomes.
This insight led PeopleBest to develop a metric called the Trainability Quotient.
Rather than measuring intelligence or knowledge, the Trainability Quotient evaluates factors such as self-awareness, coachability, openness to feedback, adaptability, and willingness to improve.
These characteristics help determine how effectively an individual is likely to respond to coaching, training, and development opportunities.
For learning leaders, this concept is particularly important.
Training effectiveness is not determined solely by content quality. Learner readiness matters. Motivation matters. Openness to change matters.
Understanding those variables allows organizations to create more personalized and effective development strategies.
As the discussion progresses, it becomes increasingly clear that Hunter views performance through the lens of fit rather than simple capability.
A high performer in one organization may struggle in another. That does not mean the individual lacks talent. It simply means that different environments reward different behaviors.
This perspective fundamentally changes how organizations should think about hiring and development.
The goal is not to identify universally superior employees.
The goal is to identify the individuals whose strengths, motivations, and behavioral tendencies align most closely with the environment in which they will operate.
When that alignment exists, performance improves naturally.
When it does not, even highly talented individuals can struggle.
At its core, this episode is not really about assessments or analytics.
It is about understanding people.
PeopleBest uses predictive analytics as a tool, but the ultimate objective is helping organizations unlock human potential. By identifying the behavioral drivers that influence performance, organizations gain a clearer understanding of who is likely to succeed, how individuals can be developed more effectively, and what conditions allow employees to perform at their best.
For learning and development leaders, talent professionals, and business executives, the conversation offers an important reminder. The future of workforce performance will not be driven solely by technology or content. It will be driven by a deeper understanding of human behavior and the factors that enable people to thrive.
Organizations that successfully combine predictive analytics, behavioral insight, and strategic talent development will gain a significant competitive advantage.
As Jim Hunter demonstrates throughout this conversation, understanding people may be one of the most valuable investments an organization can make.
Learn more about PeopleBest: https://peoplebest.com/
For more from the Training Impact Podcast:
https://t-sml.mtrbio.com/public/smartlink/trainingimpactpodcast
Jeff Walter (00:00)
Hi, I’m Jeff Walter and welcome back to the Training Impact Podcast, where we explore scaling performance through channel infrastructure.
My guest today is Jim Hunter. Jim is the founder of People Best. He’s also a leadership consultant, executive coach, and an author dedicated to helping organizations unlock their full potential of their people. Through his work in leadership development and cultural transformation and talent strategy, Jim has helped countless leaders build high-performing teams, create lasting organizational impact. Jim, welcome to the program.
Jim Hunter (00:31)
Thanks,
Jeff. It’s great to have you have me on. This is an honor.
Jeff Walter (00:36)
Well I’m I’m I’m really looking forward to this ’cause I think you guys are doing some really interesting things. as a as the listeners know, I I’m all about training impact.
hence the name of the podcast, right? ⁓ and and one of the things that’s always frustrated me with the the industry is I think we’ve done a we’ve done a lot of things really, really well as an industry, but focusing on moving the needle, using training to move the needle, is, you know, we we we’ve got a mixed record on. and ⁓ and so I I love what you guys are doing. But let’s start with why don’t you tell the audience, you know, what is people best and and and
Jim Hunter (00:48)
Yeah.
Jeff Walter (01:11)
Why on God screen earth did you decide to found a company? As a as a founder myself, you know, sometimes I I wonder that. I mean I know why, but but I did. So
Jim Hunter (01:17)
I know it.
Well, that’s very true. No, no, that’s true. Yeah,
I think, you know, it’s it’s fun when people say, you know, what do you do? And I say, you know, I run a company and they say, Well, w what is your what does your company do? I say we we predict success inside of people, teams, and companies and they and then they kinda turn you know, they they kind of tilt their head and they’re like, Well, what is that what does that mean? And we’re really about
⁓ bringing together the best of psychology and what I say analytics or moneyball actually. And so that kind of you know, when you actually ⁓ when you ask about how people best started, I kind of I my mind rewinds the clock all the way back to the days of
growing up in ⁓ as a sales guy in the streets of Los Angeles selling office products of all things and learning how to sell and always being around technology. And so I was, you know, I started in word processing systems and word processing systems had a short life and next came computers and I knew that was gonna be those would be around for a while and
Computers led to wide area networks and then, you know, trying to have connectivity and around the ⁓ around the world and so I ran sales teams and divisions and then that led to data centers and and running ⁓ web one dot ⁓ days and so did a couple of startups before I did
People Best here and ⁓ learned all about the web one dot days and was just fascinated with the internet by itself. And so funny enough, so getting to the you know why People Best or where People Best came hanging where it came to fruition is I just sec I finished the s my second startup in back in the web one dot days. It was a precursor to actually WeWorks.
But well before its time and so the bottom fell out. We were heavily funded and it was just a a wonderful ride for a time. But a friend of mine ⁓ gave me a call and he was running an executive search practice in Columbus, Ohio. Real super great friend and he said, Do you have some time on your hands? I said, Yeah and he says, Well, I’m looking to build my practice out and I need a tool that can look at executives and understand who they are and there’s a
a whole world of assessments out there and I need you and your help to go, you know, find one that
really works. And so I thought, hmm, well this is kind of an interesting project. Love my friend and, you know, thought I would do some really fun things. So I searched and scoured Jeff for everything out there. And Lord knows there’s a ton. And everybody that’s probably listening to this podcast has heard of Disc and Caliper and Omnia and Hogan and all kind Myers Briggs, there’s another one. There’s only about three or four hundred of out there. And so I found one out of ⁓
Jeff Walter (04:23)
Uh-huh.
Jim Hunter (04:29)
⁓ little ⁓ out of Cincinnati, Ohio that was really good and so I recommended it to him and I thought, you know, this is pretty cool and so he started using it for in his executive search practice. But it was right at that time, Jeff, that the book Moneyball came out. Yeah.
Jeff Walter (04:47)
Yeah.
Jim Hunter (04:48)
Michael Lewis, 2003, 2004. Now I’m starting to date myself here a little bit. But when that book came out, the light went on. And the reason that the light went on in my head, and it was more like a thunderbolt, was if the Oakland A’s can predict who’s gonna be a really good baseball player by looking at
analytics which are completely different from the way baseball was operated back in the day. My thought was if we could use harness that amazing talent of using statistics with these profiles that look at who somebody is, if I could put those two together and be able to predict the performance of people inside of people teams and companies, voila. And there’s the start of People Vest.
in two thousand six. And so funny enough, we are having this podcast on our twentieth anniversary. thank you. Thank you. So yeah, and we’ve been growing and ⁓ growing and growing since then and we’re global and we’ve got ⁓ a great team and we just help clients in all kinds of different applications. We help clients
Jeff Walter (05:47)
⁓ congratulations. Congratulations.
Jim Hunter (06:07)
higher we can predict how well they’re gonna do before they even start. We know how long many days they’re gonna stay on a job. And when it comes to training, you know, as I always say, it’s like the Google Maps, if you will. Sorry I’m rambling a little bit, but this is the last one and I’m sure you have a couple more questions. But are they so the whole thing with Google Maps is, you know, Google Maps is great. You tell it
Jeff Walter (06:23)
No, no, this is really interesting. ⁓ they’re piling up there. Don’t worry about that. ⁓
Jim Hunter (06:36)
where you want to go and it builds you a roadmap. But guess what? It’s it’s useless if it doesn’t know where you are to begin with, right? It’s like where do you want to, you know, and so that’s the whole idea of what we do is really grab hold of who somebody is. Where they want to go is up to our clients. You know, that where where do you want to go, Mr. Customer? That’s the my number one question that I ask people. It’s like, well do you want we want to sell more?
Jeff Walter (06:40)
Right.
Huh.
Jim Hunter (07:06)
Well, how much more? You know, and just be specific and then do you measure, you know, ⁓ do you know the measurements to get you there? And so once we have that equation in place, our software just runs the algorithm and says, Okay, this is who you where they’re at, and this is gonna be the journey. This is how where you’re gonna how you’re gonna get it from point A to point B. And so for some people it’s a very short distance, other people it’s gonna take longer. But in essence, that’s exactly what we do.
predict success inside of people and help ⁓ be amazingly successful.
Jeff Walter (07:40)
Well, so if if we could just dial back a little, if if I find I I I th I find this really interesting is i it sounded like professionally it was a a sales career, classic kind of sales career van advancing through different companies. And then a friend asked you to look into an evaluative tool for executive search, which there was a little disconnect when you said that ’cause I was like
Hold it, nothing in what he said would lead me to believe that he would know what he’s doing there, other than he’s a smart guy. It’s a f it’s a it’s a c you know a friend of his who trusts him, and as a smart guy he’ll go figure it out. And and and I’m like, okay, that makes sense. And and then you and money ball, and then all of a sudden the the lightning bolt, I’m like, holy hold, let me back up. You’re in a sales career.
Jim Hunter (08:17)
Yep.
Jeff Walter (08:27)
From out of left field this friend this you go check something out, it just happens to happen at the same time as Moneyball. And having no not not been a psychologist or or any of that, you just go Th there’s something here. There’s a there’s a pony in there, and I’m gonna go find it. That is incredible. That is incredible.
Jim Hunter (08:39)
Are we gonna do it? Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah.
Well thanks. Yeah.
You know, it’s funny. Th thank you. It th there’s a little more to that story. So i I had a lot of time and I knows, you know, and I was enamored with startups because they’re really good and I’m and I’m kind of unemployable in the fortune world, even though I work for a fortune three company, you know, because I just didn’t believe in the in all the rules and rig and rule. Anyway, so what I did was
Jeff Walter (09:11)
Talking
like a s true entrepreneur.
Jim Hunter (09:15)
I know, it I twel
well, and there you go. And and so I’m like, shoot, I and I had s I had more than enough time on my hands. And and so I so I bootstrapped it. So I grabbed the grabbed a hold of that software from the profile company that I found because I liked it. And then I found a COG Psy professor at the University UCI, University of California at Irvine, and he was a guy that worked on projects with
Jeff Walter (09:37)
Uh-huh.
Jim Hunter (09:40)
When Amazon was only selling books. Again, I’m I’m dating myself. And he would be able to predict, you know, if you were interested in this book, you might be interested in something else. So and so he was brilliant. He was my brilli you know, and back in the day there’s a Russell Crowe movie called Brilliant Mind, and that’s two thousand three as well. So all this stuff goes way back. But it at the time yeah, r remember?
Jeff Walter (09:42)
Okay. Yeah, yeah.
⁓
No yeah, I I remember that movie. Yeah.
Jim Hunter (10:05)
It was all
Jeff Walter (10:05)
Yeah, yeah.
Jim Hunter (10:06)
so fresh. And I’m like, well shoot, we could do this. And so I asked this you know, doctor Mark Stivers is the guy’s name, and I said, Doctor Stivers, you said, Call me Mark. And I said, Can you do this? And he said, Yeah, I can do it. Like, well, that’s it. And so back to your point, I’m a sales guy. And so I just went out and sold it. So I went to this great big hospital chain and I said, somebody that I knew was he was the chief operating officer and I said, I think I can do this.
You know, do you mind if I do it with your company? And he’s like, Yeah, ’cause we need better doctors and better better medical receptionists and medical assistants. So we cracked the code of what makes great doctors and it was off. And then it was just off to the races. And I just sold and started building my team and then we built all of our own software and ⁓ our own ⁓ profile software and our own money ball engine and that’s how we grew.
Jeff Walter (11:00)
Yeah, so now get getting into th the the I mean what I found interesting is that the mech the mechanics of how it works is is how do you end up doing the prediction? Like so so it’s it it it seems like predictive analytics, but predictive analytics based on human psychological traits and and and and competencies or like
Like ha like let’s take that example you just rolled out, right? Okay, so you went to a hospital, you said, okay, I’m gonna help you understand and predict what makes for a great great doctor’s. Well well what does make for a great doctor? ⁓ Like how do you how did you do how do you put how do you put together those predictive analytics?
Jim Hunter (11:34)
Well.
There you
go. So so you have to have the best of you have to have the best of both worlds. You have to have a you have to start with a profile where again that’s a very noisy crowded world, but where we had to I had to make sure that the profile was very deep and very accurate in who somebody is. And so it couldn’t be just four boxes or certain colors. I need it.
whole lot of depth. And so what we did back then and what we do now is really look at the behaviors that make all of us who we are and extremely unique. And so we have what we call traits. And so we have 29 traits on a one to ten scale. So there’s a million different ways that we are all built and and can be measured.
Now, so you have that, so you have to have the accuracy. It’s like ⁓ like a 3D MRI machine where you’ve got to have the ability to really look inside somebody. So if you have that, then what do you do with it? Which is the second part of your question. So that’s where the client, in this particular case, the hospital group, said, We measure our doctors by performance satisfaction score.
And so we get all of their all of the patients that comes directly from the patients and they rate on a you know on a simple scale. And today’s day and age we get, you know, can you stay on the line and give me a good score, you know, in these customer service worlds? Same kind of thing. Yeah, everybody has different measurements, but the this client was very specific and unique. So what we did was it statistically speaking,
Jeff Walter (12:56)
Okay.
Right.
Jim Hunter (13:22)
What we’re doing is we’re looking at the millions of combinations of who somebody is and the doctors that have the most the highest scores in patient satisfaction. And the software breaks that down and gives back which traits are the most important, and not just you know, ranking them in stack order, but also the degree
inside of each trait. And this is kind of getting into the weeds, but the degree like for example, creativity is on a one to two scale. Well, you don’t want a lot of well, you don’t really know what the scale where that bullseye’s gonna be on the creativity. So for example, you know, in for brain surgeons, you don’t want to be creative at all. You want them to pr you know you don’t want them to experiment on your brain.
Jeff Walter (13:54)
Okay.
Jim Hunter (14:14)
So we’re actually looking for that perfect bullseye is more like a four to six. So just enough, but not super high. And so that’s where the software, the the money ball component gives us that roadmap of exactly what success needs to look like for that job.
Jeff Walter (14:19)
Hmm.
Well and okay, so I get I so you t talk but was it that or was it that original tool that you found? Like how did you end up with twenty nine traits and then measured one to ten? Like like that’s the secret sauce, right? That’s
Jim Hunter (14:42)
Yeah. Yep. Well and they’re that’s the
secret sauce. Yeah. And that’s what makes it you know, that’s the that’s one of our claim to fame is we spent countless dollars and you know, I had an entire group and we used Xavier University out of Cincinnati, their industrial organizational. We hired their entire masters program to do all kinds of studies and
really build a tool that was extremely accurate and and non discriminatory. There’s all kinds of other hurdles, but you have to really have the best tool because you know it’s it’s the old adage, garbage in, garbage out. If you don’t have a tool that’s accurate, then you can’t predict accuracy. No.
Jeff Walter (15:23)
Right.
Well, so so so you built your own tool is is what I hear. Yeah, y you know or your you know, like you looked at the disk and and and all these other evaluative tools and went close but not exactly if you wanna do predict employee ⁓ performance. Right. Huh.
Jim Hunter (15:33)
Yeah, we built our own tool. Yeah, and we built our own unique
Yep. Yeah. Yeah. Well, if you just pr understand
what’s what’s going on inside somebody. Yeah. Yeah. And and so technically speaking, we were, you know, found you know, we were using AI back in two th two thousand six. It was called machine learning. And that’s the same kind of shoot, Las Vegas is known for their level of statistics and that goes back even further. So yeah.
Jeff Walter (15:55)
Yeah. Wow. Huh.
Right.
Right.
So okay, so so I I I’m just I I this story is really just as as an entrepreneur, just really fascinating ’cause you you s see this need and you’re like, I can fill this need, although you personally
Jim Hunter (16:19)
Yeah.
Jeff Walter (16:30)
You know, one would have expected you to be a PhD in psychology, and and ha and and this is like, you know, a pet project that you had built out this model, t and and now you’re commercializing the model, right? And and but it’s really interesting and and it’s so fascinating. I’m so talking to so many folks, especially in the AI realm here where you know you have all these startups and it’s so cool because they’re they they’re not from where they’re at.
Jim Hunter (16:42)
Sure.
Jeff Walter (16:55)
And while like you you like while you were on your career path, one would never have predicted. This guy’s gonna open up a a a diagnostic tool, a company that focuses on a diagnostic tool that pr that predicts performance based on a proprietary diagnostic tool that they built. Like a and it’s really that’s wild.
Jim Hunter (16:56)
Yes.
Jeff Walter (17:17)
That’s r that’s really just very cool. So congratulations. So now let’s get so now let’s get into the money ball aspect. So you’ve you you’ve got this tool. How how does it get applied? Like how how do I if if I well well let’s back that up so now a client like the the hospital or somebody comes and says, Hey, hey hey Jim, ⁓ help. You know, I you know, I I need some help. I have this category of employee or all of my employees that I want to
Jim Hunter (17:17)
Well thank
Well thanks.
Jeff Walter (17:41)
You know, I’m I’m here and I wanna go there, whether that’s sales, whether that’s retention, whether that’s you know productivity, what whatever the metric i i I assume there’s gotta be some type of measurable outcome.
Jim Hunter (17:54)
Yeah. Well no, you’re spot on. And that’s what y you know, ⁓ you totally spot on. ⁓ I’m hesitating because that’s what goes on with a lot of conversations with clients is they said, How can we help how can you help us? And my immediate response is is where do you want to go? You know, Microsoft used to have a a a slogan, where do you want to go today? And I’ve kidnapped that over the years. Where do you want to go, Mr. Customer? What
Jeff Walter (18:18)
Right.
Jim Hunter (18:23)
In a perfect world, where would you like to be? You know, what what are the top three things that you’re totally focused on? You know, and it could be in exactly as you what you were saying, Jeff, is we want to increase revenues. Okay, great. Or sometimes it gets a leave of a little bit more granular. We have a whole lot of farmers in our sales team and we need to get more hunters, we need to be more ⁓ driven to get net new
Jeff Walter (18:49)
Right.
Jim Hunter (18:49)
companies
new logos sell more or do something like that. And so once we have that destination, we call that you know where they want to go, that’s the destination. And then what we have, we have over 700 competencies. And so we have all kinds of different things that are the we let our software generate, you know, the cream rises to the top. So if we know
that they want to drive new business, then we look at, okay, so who are your clients? You know, is it a tangible or intangible product? And so we’re able to put all of the, you know, ⁓ look at all of those types of intangibles with our software. And then we just and it’s not a it’s not a big deal. We look at all of the people that are doing the job and we focus on the ones, you know, they give us a a list of
who’s doing it extremely well, we load that into our software, push a button, and it tells us exactly why those people are operating at a higher level than everybody else.
Jeff Walter (19:59)
So y you mentioned seven hundred something competencies. What what what is a com like we talked about traits what and what is the like give us a couple of examples of traits and and then how does that relate to competency?
Jim Hunter (20:05)
Yeah. Yep.
Sure,
sure. So ⁓ one of the traits that I mentioned before is creativity. We have you know, worry, emotion, schedule ⁓ pe how structured people are, how fast they recover, you know, recovery time, things like that. Those are all unique individual traits. As I call ⁓ as I say they’re kind of the ingredients of who we are. When we put those traits in different combinations, that’s what we call
Jeff Walter (20:32)
Okay.
Jim Hunter (20:36)
That’s what we call competencies. So things like reliability and and dependability, strategic agility, sales prospecting, sales closing, effective questioning and qualifying, presentation, things like that. So those are all aspects unique to ⁓ a job.
Jeff Walter (20:38)
Okay.
Sit.
Okay, so so from the twenty nine traits at with the with the scale, you y you then g got into seven hundred and fifty competencies, which are a combination of traits and and and and that’s okay, very interesting. And then when when somebody brings you when a client so if a client let’s what would the typical client be looking to improve? Is it sales or is it you know?
Jim Hunter (21:20)
Yeah.
Yeah, and that’s what that’s what’s interesting. So over the twenty years we’ve we’ve covered so much ground. So you know when people say what kind of companies do you work with?
We’re we we go you know, we go vertical and but we also go horizontal. So the c the because of that question, so sometimes we you know, we’ll fix sales and then retention is an issue for certain clients. ⁓ they have high turnover jobs and and then we have franchises that have you know, we have food service, you know, franchises, a lot of them are very well known names where we always eat
Jeff Walter (21:37)
Yeah.
Jim Hunter (21:59)
⁓ and then we also have leadership types of franchises. We have service types of franchises where HVAC,
Plumbing is another one. All those different kinds of things where they’re always looking for a new technician or something like that, or a new general manager, you know, vice president, somebody to drive we have hotel chains that so they’re looking for general managers. So a lot of it is in that hiring space. But but but that hiring space also then opens up the door to well, if we hire
Jeff Walter (22:26)
Uh-huh.
Jim Hunter (22:33)
and you’ve looked at all of our people, which ones need training? And we’re like, ⁓ well here’s the map and here’s how how they’re built. Here’s where they need specific training. And then we’re then immediately comes the question of, well, we’re looking at which one of our employees would be the next best manager. And so we can do that. Or conversely, Jeff, we go from the top down and we have clients that say, we’ve got a leadership team.
We need to grow the company, we’re not quite confident that we have the right leaders in place. So then we can look at how the leadership team is built. So and we get into culture. And we also of late have been working with professional sports teams. And we also work with authors where we can take their book and break it down into you know where somebody is very strong. So we have a lot of authors, business authors that do a lot of ⁓ training.
Jeff Walter (23:06)
huh.
Jim Hunter (23:30)
on the back end so we customize a lot of ⁓ work as well. Kind of all over.
Jeff Walter (23:36)
So so a client comes in and they have a particular dimension that they want to improve on, whether it’s sales, retention, or maybe it’s productivity or and and and they s and then and and you go, okay, we want let and so let’s let’s take the sales one. We were using that earlier. I I I’d like to you know, I’ve got a sales force of, you know, a hundred salespeople. I’d like to I’d like them to I wanna sell more.
Jim Hunter (23:43)
There it is.
Jeff Walter (24:00)
And you know and you know, I’ve got mid level turnovers so I’m always hiring new people. So okay, so so how do we figure out what traits apply to this to the my my company, right? Like to t like how does that how does that work?
Jim Hunter (24:15)
Yeah,
it’s even easier than that. There’s only one question. Give give well, maybe two questions. One, do you know who do you know your who your best salespeople are? And they always say, Yeah. Second question, can you give us a list?
Jeff Walter (24:27)
Yes.
Jim Hunter (24:32)
That’s it. That’s it. That’s it. And then and then what we do is and then we just have their sales team do a twenty three minute profile. That’s what how long our profile takes. And the rest is up to us. And and we just go go to town and takes us our software pull pulls together no matter y so here’s the interesting thing, no matter who who they are, it’s
Jeff Walter (24:32)
⁓ okay.
Jim Hunter (24:57)
We believe every job is unique because every company is unique. And so if you give us a list of their best people, it answers all these other questions if you think about it. It’s answers the end we we’re done with the industry, we’re done with how they sell, we’re done with everything because their s best salespeople are already doing it. So they’re the perfect model.
Jeff Walter (25:19)
Yeah, well and that’s what I found so fascinating when we first start talking about this is yeah, I’ve I’ve interviewed a I’ve talked to lot of coaches or other firms and and it’s usually predicated on I’ve got a framework. The framework has been proven. You know, you know, it’s a method, it’s a framework, it’s a it’s a way of doing things. And so follow my cookbook. Hire people that can
Jim Hunter (25:33)
Yes.
Jeff Walter (25:42)
Can cook like my cookbook says and ⁓ and and and train your people to do what my cookbook says, and then good things will happen. Right? You’ll have higher sales, you have better retention, you you’ll you know, you’ll you’ll increase your batting average, you know, to money ball it. and and there’s a lot of va validity to that. There’s a lot of great ideas that are disseminated through industry that way. But what I find really fascinating about what you guys do is it’s the
Jim Hunter (25:55)
Yes.
Jeff Walter (26:07)
It’s you kinda let the data do the talking and going, my little hundred salesperson example’s like, Well I’ve got a hundred salespeople and it’s like, here are my top ten. Now, maybe I put that list together because they’re the top salespeople last year.
Jim Hunter (26:09)
Yes.
Jeff Walter (26:21)
Maybe they’re consistently my top salespeople, but they’re the people that I feel best represent my company. and so th it might be five of the top ten in absolute sales, but they’re all in the top twenty. but it it’s I guess the subjective of what I mean by best. When you say, Give me your best people. Is that okay. And and
Jim Hunter (26:38)
Yeah, right. Yeah, it needs
to be a yeah, it does it needs to be a little more tangible, you know. Yeah. You know, g
Jeff Walter (26:45)
Well well I’m
bringing in like and here’s the car here’s like here’s their sales numbers, here’s their customer stat numbers, here’s you know, I I’m bringing in multiple metrics about them, but I’m not necessarily saying, Well, I want I I I determined they were best by doing sixty percent where they were on volume of sales, thirty percent on margins, twenty percent on customer sal like I I I’m not I’m not giving you a
Jim Hunter (26:50)
Yeah, exactly. That’s the one.
Jeff Walter (27:10)
operational definition of best. I’m saying they’re my best and here’s why I th here’s the here’s the things I look at to determine best, but I haven’t crunched it into a a formula for you. Right? Is that am I Okay.
Jim Hunter (27:23)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We d yeah,
we’re the we’re the formula. Yeah.
Jeff Walter (27:27)
Yeah. And then
you guys sit there and go and then and then we evaluate everybody, right? Because that and then and then including those those those ten best. And then basically what happens next?
Jim Hunter (27:32)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah. Well then we come back we we come back with the results and say th this is why this is what’s great about using the client’s data because it has to work for them. And so we come back to them and say, This is what makes your ten best people unique. And we’re not cloning people. That’s we’re there everybody is so unique and and that’s
know, that’s the heart of what we do is we believe people are extremely unique. And so there’s a multiple ways people can be successful. And so what we’re what we’re presenting are the findings, the DNA of success, of where people how what makes those top performers different from everybody else? And and the everybody else, then it becomes
You know, it it some people just need more training in certain areas. And so what’s really cool is now you have a roadmap, you know, back to the Google maps, you know exactly where to help them be successful.
Jeff Walter (28:33)
No.
Yeah, well which w goes to so but so so I’ve I’ve given you my data, we’ve we’ve crunched numbers, and it’s like here’s what a ⁓ along those twenty-nine traits, here’s what a six a a high performer looks like in your organization versus somebody else’s organization.
Jim Hunter (28:57)
Yep. Yep.
Jeff Walter (29:00)
⁓ and it and it gets down into those traits. And like you said before, it’s like, hey, we’re looking at brain surgeons, you know, in creativity. You you you actually your best brain surgeons are not highly creative. They’re more low to moderate. I think you said like four four to six or something. So they’re so they’re like right in the middle. Creative of enough to do problem solving, but they’re not d you know. But but all but also they’re not just going by road. So they need a little bit of creativity, but not too much.
Jim Hunter (29:14)
Yep, yep. Yep. Yeah, four to six.
Jeff Walter (29:28)
Again, your best performers, right? And so I’m getting these pro I so I get all the these profiles, the 29 profiles, which bubble up into certain competencies that are very important. So now I’ve got the other 90% of my folks. So what do I do with them and how teachable are these how how teachable are the traits? And what I mean by that is
Jim Hunter (29:31)
Yep.
Yes.
Jeff Walter (29:50)
If I had a brain surgeon that w was a two or an eight in creativity and the ideal range is four to six, you know, is that something that I that’s I’m capable of moving? You know, training is capable of moving the person? Or like or is it just hey, that’s that’s who they are and you know what I’m saying?
Jim Hunter (30:02)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yep, yeah, a little of both. Yeah. Creativity
is a harder a harder one to to move, ⁓ to be honest. And but yeah, you you ask actually ask a really good question. because for you know for the rest of the people, let me give you an example. So one of our clients is one of the biggest sales training organizations in the world. They’re top top five global.
Jeff Walter (30:30)
Okay.
Jim Hunter (30:32)
They use our software to look inside of the salespeople. Think of us the analogy I use even with them is we’re that radiologist. We’re we can see inside of people and do that prediction capability, but we’re not the surgeons, we’re not the trainers, we’re not the coaches. We provide that information. So one of the things that we actually provide to them is a competency called trainability quotient.
Jeff Walter (30:43)
Mm-hmm.
Right.
Jim Hunter (30:59)
And so this what an overall score called trainability quotient and which is a which is a byproduct of you know four or five competencies all rolled up into one. So there there’s self awareness, their ability to be coached. You know, we have coachability and we also have coaching effectiveness. And so can they be coached? Do they want to be coached? All of these kinds of things. So we can even look at people’s likelihood
Jeff Walter (31:10)
Okay.
Uh-huh.
Jim Hunter (31:27)
to be able to move those needles. If somebody’s really dead set in their ways and you know, intractable, they’re not gonna be a very good training candidate. So it so d the question is, you know, everybody’s gonna be unique in how we can move that, you know, move their traits in a certain sort of way. Real quick, you know, into the psychology, you’re you’re really touching on an interesting area. We believe true
Jeff Walter (31:32)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Jim Hunter (31:53)
The reason that we use behaviors, and this goes back to our research and why we built what we built, is we believe people can change and move. And there’s a lot of who we are that we’re born with, but a lot of it can also move over time. That’s the beauty of training. Tools like Disk and Myers Briggs are based on personality, and personality doesn’t typically move. And that’s why we have twenty nine traits, because
Jeff Walter (32:17)
Right.
Jim Hunter (32:22)
We believe that you know, you you gotta have that depth and breadth in order to really look at somebody.
Jeff Walter (32:29)
that’s that’s really interesting ’cause yeah, ’cause like if if when I when you look at Myers Brewster, you look at the big five, it’s it’s kind of that’s who you are and there are very few things that can move you a standard deviation in in in any of those you know, move the needle on those traits.
Jim Hunter (32:31)
That’s why there’s only
Well the
big f the yeah, the big five is what we’re based on and th that is the behaviors and traits. And so yeah, those those will move personality wise.
Jeff Walter (32:47)
Yeah.
Yeah, and and then
I mean yeah, ⁓ but then but then if you boil it down to if you take it and you drill it down into behaviors or maybe I got that backwards, I’m sorry. Yeah, the personality it’s really hard to move personality. But it it can happen and it requires a lot of dedication and time and energy on the individual’s part. And it but
Jim Hunter (33:01)
Yeah, yeah.
Yes. Yeah.
Jeff Walter (33:12)
But the behaviors but my wife was a beh s was a psychologist, she was a behavioralist. And and b and and she was a behavioralist because that’s something you can move.
Jim Hunter (33:17)
There you go.
Yes.
Jeff Walter (33:22)
Yeah,
it’s it’s it’s you know, it’s still not easy, but it’s like anybody that’s tried to go to the gym regularly knows that’s a b that’s a behavior. You know, that that’s not your personality, that’s not your disposition, that’s a behavior of getting up and going to the gym. and you know, and like the book Atomic Habits, like saying, you know, it’s that’s that’s all behavioral. And so so the interesting thing is is is your twenty nine traits are really behavioural, or twenty nine different behaviors, which which can be
Jim Hunter (33:41)
Yes. Spot on.
Jeff Walter (33:51)
moved. And then you’ve you’ve kind of super s you then you kinda have to superset of well, how trainable is the individual? There’s a set of behavioral traits that are predictive of trainability. I th and therefore th that’s really interest that’s well, that’s cool. That’s I mean I that so then
Jim Hunter (33:52)
Sure.
Yeah.
Jeff Walter (34:09)
Okay, so to money ball this whole thing, if I understand it, it’s like here here’s my performance, here are my top performers, here’s what everybody looks like, therefore here are the traits that my top performers have in common, here’s where everybody else you talked about predictive performance. So I can I then take everybody else’s traits and predict whatever that performance dimension
Jim Hunter (34:31)
Yep. Yeah.
Jeff Walter (34:32)
is
sales retention, you know, sat customer satisfac whatever the the the the mark whatever the the metric is, right?
Jim Hunter (34:40)
Yep.
Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And there could be a lot of metrics all in play at the same time. You know, call yeah, there’s an adage in sales, calls plus appointments equal sales. Well, so y in other words, you have prospecting to get and then you have to close them to get an appointment and then the appointment needs to be able to qualify ⁓ and then you gotta present to and then you gotta close them and all these different kinds of things. Those are all individual steps.
all very valid and so we can even look at those, you know, somebody could be great at opening doors, ⁓ but terrible at presenting. And so we can look at all of those individually. But each of those what you’re talking about, Jeff, is each of those questions is could be a unique journey. You know, they might be too strong
Jeff Walter (35:15)
But
Good.
Jim Hunter (35:30)
⁓ they might be a r a very strong salesperson that is it’s easy for them to get appointments, but they may be too strong or assertive where they’re not listening effectively. And so that’s where they’re that’s where they need help. So we can pinpoint we can pinpoint the training
Jeff Walter (35:40)
Right.
Jim Hunter (35:50)
Which we do and that’s why in internal to companies that have training departments, they love us as well because we’re giving them again the radiologist, we’re giving them the exact blueprint and roadmap of what’s where somebody needs support.
Jeff Walter (36:06)
Hm. That’s w I mean it’s it’s
It’s it’s really I mean it’s like com it’s like a nice closed loop. It’s like a positive reinforcement loop to to for for continuous improvement. You know, it’s like you know, like ⁓ on on the human performance. Like I’m I’m I’m listening to what you’re saying and I’m like
Jim Hunter (36:18)
It is, it is.
Jeff Walter (36:25)
I’m also having things of like to you know, we’re up here in Michigan and yeah, where yeah, where it’s all you know, continuous improvement on the manufacturing side. And it’s but it’s it’s it’s it’s it’s taking your metrics and and and looking at your inputs and and and and then constantly improving, constantly improving, constantly improving. And it’s
Jim Hunter (36:42)
Constantly improving. That’s it. You can’t
diet, you know, you’re not gonna lose forty pounds overnight. But if you do that slow, consistent work
and you know, follow a you know, follow a process, you’re gonna you’ll be able to do it. Same thing with anything. You know, you we can you know, in sports or you know, i anywhere in a company, if there’s a consistency and you gotta make sure, you know, you have the the right setup, you gotta make sure you know where you’re going, you gotta make sure that your boss is also supportive of that and, you know, all those other kinds of things. But
Yeah. And that’s exactly what motivates truthfully, Jeff, that’s the motivation right there is to make people amazingly successful. And that’s what drives us.
Jeff Walter (37:25)
Well it
well and it’s it’s one of the things that really attracts me to this industry ’cause I I I was a way back in the day I was a software program building accounting systems. And you know, this is way different than that. Right? You know, trying to un and I’ve always been a big believer in education and untapping that human potential. ‘Cause I always felt we all had gifts to give. And and and allowing you to be the
Jim Hunter (37:32)
Yeah, that’s
Yes, it is.
Jeff Walter (37:50)
to untap your potential also allows you to give the gif your gifts to society and then we all benefit from that. Right? And then and then it ri it’s a virtuous cycle up.
Jim Hunter (37:58)
Now we’re all
Jeff Walter (38:03)
And and not everybody is suited for every role. it doesn’t and it doesn’t necessarily match their gifts. So it’s it’s very interesting and I think the the thing I like most about what you’re doing is you’re using the the client’s data to s to to identify the people that are most likely likely to succeed within their environment.
Right. And therefore you can help people that are already within that environment change their behaviors so that they have higher excess success within that environment. But also, and I was talking to this you know the gentleman on on the franchise side, and it’s all you know, but you also it’s recruiting, right? So recruiting franchisees or recruiting employees, it’s really all about fit.
Jim Hunter (38:35)
Yes.
Jeff Walter (38:51)
You know, it’s not it’s it’s like, yes, the ante into the game is whether or not you have the knowledge and skills to do the job. Right? It’s kinda like that’s the ante. But but it’s really do you are do you have the right fit in terms of cultural, behavioral, this is this type environment. These are the behaviors that or the traits that thrive in this environment.
Jim Hunter (39:07)
Yes.
Jeff Walter (39:16)
Yeah, ⁓ just just because you can, you know, code, let’s say, you may not be a good programmer in at latitude because we have certain you know, we we have a certain culture and people with certain behaviors thrive in that culture. You know, certain with you know, certain traits. Other people will not thrive in that in in that environment, will not thrive in that culture.
Jim Hunter (39:27)
Yes.
Jeff Walter (39:37)
But they’re great programmers. They’re great I mean they’re they’re solid programmers. There’s nothing wrong with them. They’re not it’s just it’s not a good place for them. Down the block, there’s another, you know, software shop down the block. Not a good place for the people that succeed here. Great place for the folks that don’t suc like, you know, and it’s and it’s it’s it’s that it you know, but but where I was going with that is the knowledge and skills is the ante and and really you’re looking for fit on
Jim Hunter (39:46)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yep.
Jeff Walter (40:03)
recruiting side and and
Jim Hunter (40:04)
Yeah. Well it’s it’s funny you should say that ’cause I came up with this analogy. I call it the three legged stool of hiring success. So the three legged stool. So the first leg is exactly as you’re talking about, the background. If you need a programmer, you gotta have somebody that probably knows a little bit about programming. You know, so have they done it before? That’s one. The second one is what are they like in person, right? You know, because you’re talking about culture and
Jeff Walter (40:11)
Okay. ⁓
Right, right.
Yeah.
Jim Hunter (40:33)
Would you you know, would you would you wanna hang out with this person, even you know, past the interview? Are they, you know, appealing? Do they get the culture? Do they fit in? That’s the second one. And and we’re the third one. We’re the part that you cannot see inside of people. I can’t tell you how many clients say, I this person interviewed spectacularly. And I and so I look at their scores and I say, They were probably the nicest person in the entire world, weren’t they? And they’re like, Yeah.
And I said, Did they ask you about this? And they’re like, Yeah, they were really inquisitive, huh? Yeah. And I said, Guess what? They won’t do what you want to do. Because I can see everything that so they have no motivation, they’re they lack all kinds of structure, they have no goal orientation, they have no follow-through, their influence is mid to low. They their collaboration is terrible, but they really interview well because they have high
Jeff Walter (41:07)
Mm.
Jim Hunter (41:30)
⁓ sociability and high ⁓ friendliness. And I’m like so there you go. So there’s a three legged stool. There I hope I hope everybody listening to that. Three legged stool.
Jeff Walter (41:37)
Yeah. That’s ⁓ say that s okay.
What so say just say it again. What what are the three legs? Experience?
Jim Hunter (41:43)
Experience experience,
how they show up. Are they nice to people? You know, are they nice to you? You know, are they presentable? Do you like And us, the third the the the hidden. The hidden, the un Yeah the trade RI. You can’t, you know.
Jeff Walter (41:56)
It’s it’s it’s the it’s the trait MRI. Right.
They have the the requisite skills and knowledges. They seem to be a good fit from a cultural s social spit and then but but do they have the behavioral traits ⁓ that that that that are gonna thrive here? Which is really interesting. You know I’m sorry, I just it’s w when I when I interview folks
Jim Hunter (42:09)
Super nice, yeah, yeah. Well
Can they do the job?
Jeff Walter (42:24)
for our our firm. I’ve I’d I’ve I’ve I’ve said this for decades now. I always say you actually have the advantage. And and you know sam you know without a tool like yours, I always say you have the advantage because you’re gonna talk to like half a dozen dozen of us and you’re gonna get a true sense of what this place is like. Right? So you’ll know if this is a good fit for you. But there’s only one of you
Jim Hunter (42:41)
There you go. Yes.
Jeff Walter (42:46)
And you could coordinate your behavior towards us. And yeah, we’re doing our best to figure out whether you’re a good fit for us. But you know, you could you know, you you could you could fake it. Right?
Jim Hunter (42:54)
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah.
Jeff Walter (42:58)
But but you’re but we can’t. You’re gonna you’re gonna talk to a bunch of us and you’re gonna know whether this is a good place for you. And it’s and it’s really interesting ’cause that that that that b behavioral MRI, it’s like, okay, well now I get to see a little bit more into you and see you know, I can I you know, it’s that’s very interesting.
Jim Hunter (43:05)
yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah. Well and
it’s it’s funny, ⁓ because they’ll they’ll they’ll take our profile and they’ll and they’ll w fake it. They’ll they’ll try to fake it. It’s like, yeah, this person is totally trying to game it. I mean we’ve got we are my team is wickedly smart. We’ve got all kinds of things that we can see inside of people and see if you know, so yeah.
Jeff Walter (43:32)
Yeah.
That’s wild.
That’s absolutely
Jim Hunter (43:38)
We’ve learned
it w we know a thing or two ’cause we’ve s you know, been around for a little bit. So Twenty years, I know.
Jeff Walter (43:42)
Yeah. Well twenty years. Cong again, congratulations. That’s
I are you d are you doing anything to celebrate the twenty year?
Jim Hunter (43:48)
no, w we’re ⁓ taking care of our clients. We we’re running a few specials here and there, but ⁓ no we’re just celebrating with our clients and
Jeff Walter (43:53)
⁓
Jim Hunter (43:58)
Doing all we can to make them even more successful.
Jeff Walter (44:01)
Yeah. So so what kind of challenges do you do do do you face with your clients when you w what’s the biggest challenge in terms of mak making this ⁓ w when somebody engages you? Do you do you find
Jim Hunter (44:14)
back to what makes them successful. I tell you I I kid you not, it’s defining their what getting from them what how they define success. It’s just you would think in today’s day and age it would be crystal clear. It’s not always that crystal clear. And so we that’s what we we work with. It’s not
Jeff Walter (44:24)
Interesting.
Jim Hunter (44:35)
It’s not competition. There’s nobody that y you know, we feel is as strong and effective as we are. but even if they were there’d still be differentiations. But really it’s it’s from the client perspective. It’s how do you define success? How can how can we help you? ⁓
Jeff Walter (44:52)
And then how do you how do you help them o ⁓ ad address that issue or that challenge?
Jim Hunter (44:57)
Sure. Yeah,
well, we’ve got some I’ve got some great team members that can work with them. and we also have a whole litany of our ⁓ people that use our software that are experts at, you know, we’ve got some very senior business business coaches and leadership coaches that can come in and and help them ⁓ decipher and define those kinds of ⁓ issues as well.
Jeff Walter (45:14)
Uh-huh.
Jim Hunter (45:24)
So be i if we can’t do it we’ll we’ll lean into somebody else that can help out. Yeah.
Jeff Walter (45:32)
And ⁓
and and and we we talked about the twenty years. what’s in store for the next twenty years? What where where’s the future taking you? Yeah, and we’re none of us are static. We’re so we’re
Jim Hunter (45:38)
⁓ yes, yes. Yeah. W
we twenty years ago we started down the AI trail and the for the next twenty it’ll just be even more interesting. what we really see is, you know, all of the and I is so AI is so split as we well know. You know, it’s it’s we have people that love it and people that are very ⁓
You know.
fearful of what it can do and you know displacement of jobs. we see personally on we see jobs shifting. We don’t see them going away. We actually see more jobs being created. But that’s landscape is going to change. But to your question, we really think that if we can become if we are that source of truth about who somebody is and where they need to go, then for us AI can be very added
And help fill in the blanks even more so in terms of helping people with the just like ways improves their software to get from point A to point B and telling you where the cops are, right? You know, along the way. And is you know, and now it’ll allow you to take a break and you know go through a drive-thru and recalculate all of your times in order to get to your destination.
Jeff Walter (46:49)
Ha ha ha.
Jim Hunter (47:02)
That’s what we’re really thinking that AI is gonna do in our world to help people become even more successful, give them a little bit more tangibility. so we’re playing ⁓ with some new ideas and products and helping individuals just become even greater than they can be already.
Jeff Walter (47:22)
Huh, very cool. And ⁓ we’re we’re we’re coming up on time. I just y was there anything else we covered a lot of ground. Is there anything else we w we want to cover before we
Jim Hunter (47:31)
No, I would just I anybody that listens to this podcast, I hope, hope, hope that they can reach out to you
⁓ and reach out to us. We would love to have conversations, make it real, do any type of you know analysis, have people take a profile if they’re interested in taking a profile just to get to know what we’re all about. All of those invitations are I’d like to extend out to anybody and everybody that’s ⁓ will ever listen to this podcast. And you are absolutely amazing and hats off to you for even putting
Jeff Walter (48:06)
thank you.
Jim Hunter (48:07)
all of this together and when we first met I didn’t had no idea how much how talented you are and what you’re doing with your company and your LMS is just absolutely brilliant. In fact, so that everybody knows we’re trying to find you and I are having more and more conversations about how we can work together ever you know ⁓ even even more. So very excited.
Jeff Walter (48:30)
Yeah. Well th th
th thank you for those those very kind words and and yeah I it’s you know to me it’s just I just I just have this very deep seated belief that we can unlap untap all that human potential. And and and and that’s sa it sounds
Not well it’s it w sometimes you can say that and people hear it as though it’s well just to get more work out of people. But when when I s when I say that I I I I mean for people to live their best lives, right? It’s not necessarily increase their their hitting percentage or
Or sell twice as much of whatever or like that stuff’s all important, but it’s really to me about it’s like like I say to my kids, when when when they got out of college, it was like that was all to give you options. What you do with that is you living your best life. So if you wanna go down path A and make a million dollars by the time you’re 30, because that brings you joy.
Jim Hunter (49:22)
Yes.
Jeff Walter (49:33)
You now have the tools and the talent to do that. If you want to go down path B and make a more modest income and live in a more modest house, and but it fills your heart with joy, that’s fine by me and your mom. Like like but but what we did is we want to give you op we gave you the education, we wanted to give you options. Because so many people and so when I say unleash unleash the potential.
Jim Hunter (49:43)
Right. Right. Yeah.
Jeff Walter (49:58)
That’s what I mean. It’s like you open up those options and then you can live your best life. And only you know what your best life is, right? And and and then but I also believe if you do that, you are going to share your gifts with the world that are that are unique to you. And and even if you go down that less financially lucrative role, you’re going to impact the world in so many ways because of the beautiful gifts that you have.
Jim Hunter (50:04)
Truly. Truly.
Jeff Walter (50:24)
that we are all going to be better for it. And and so I I I I I I I pre I really do appreciate those kind words because you know one can look at what we do, it’s like, it’s a learning platform, it’s software, it’s you know, it’s very ⁓ mechan yeah. And it’s like, yes, but this yes, and and and a car is just a car.
Jim Hunter (50:39)
Yeah. You’re missing the point.
Jeff Walter (50:45)
And and ⁓
And so I I I just I this has been we started this podcast a year ago. It’s been the most fun. I get to talk to folks like you. I learned so much and there’s so many people doing so many interesting things to try and elevate the the the the human ⁓ experience and and and I think if we can if folks can if if this is just one little drop in a bucket of people learning on how to do things a little bit better then I I I feel just great and I’m great. Thank thank you for
your your kind words. I’m some some ⁓ now you got me babbling. I’m just like, ⁓ no, it’s complimenting me. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So so so Jim, ⁓ you you mentioned ⁓ you know folks reaching out what would be the best way to reach out to you or the folks at ⁓ People Best?
Jim Hunter (51:16)
⁓ thank you.
⁓ no, it’s wonderful. What what a joy. Thanks for having me on, my brother.
Sure. ⁓ we’ve got a great email is hello at peoplebest dot com. Yeah, hello at and that’ll that that covers a lot of people in our company, so it’s a lot of people see that, myself included. my email is J Hunter you know, first initial last name at peoplebest dot com.
Jeff Walter (51:40)
I love that.
Jim Hunter (51:58)
And so ⁓ both of those are available. Peoplebest dot com is our URL, so ⁓ no big magic there. And there we have ⁓ forms on online that people can reach out to us on through the web as well. So some somehow.
Jeff Walter (52:12)
Well we’ll we’ll make sure we get
the the URL in the in the notes so people can have And ⁓ Jim, thank you so much for sharing your time with me. ⁓ I really appreci I really appreciate it and I enjoyed it. Thank you.
Jim Hunter (52:19)
⁓ Thanks a lot, Chat.
thank you.
And thanks to all your listeners and yeah, reach out. I can’t wait for more conversations.
Jeff Walter (52:30)
Hey and to everybody out there, thank you for thank you for your time and your attention. We we greatly appreciate it. We hope you enjoyed the episode. Have a great day.