June 23, 2026 – Book Promotions Kae Wagner and Built Wright Mason Duchatschek

Intro 1 0:04
Broadcasting from AM and FM stations around the country. Welcome to the Small Business Administration Award-winning School for Startups Radio, where we talk all things small business and entrepreneurship. Now here is your host, the guy that believes anyone can be a successful entrepreneur, because entrepreneurship is not about creativity, risk, or passion. Jim Beach.

Jim Beach 0:25
Hello, everyone. Welcome to another exciting edition of School for Startups Radio. We have a banger of a show for you today. Two amazing guests. First up, Kay Wagner is with us. She is a book promotion branding specialist. What she has done in that space, and getting books out there that find recognition and awards and all sorts of things is a must listen, because you’re all going to have to write a book. Remember, that’s part of the deal. And then we have Mason Dukaschek with us, he has a book called Built Right with a W in front of the word “right” as in the name, you’ll have to find out it’s about HR, and also the this interview is just one of my favorites. It’s a double whammy episode where both interviews are a pluses, so I’m excited for you, because it’s still free, and you get to enjoy and learn. I hope to keep you entertained enough, so that you’ll pay attention to actually learn something. And yesterday I threw it out very rudely, without explaining my book, The Real Environmentalist, and I’ll run the ad in just a second, so you can hear what the book is about. Is a finalist for the Indy National Indy Book awards or National Indie Excellence Awards, or something. It’s the top independent publisher award in the top three in its category. So, I’m very, very excited about that, and honored that it was selected. All right, great show. We’ll be back in just a second by the real environmentalist, please. I time

The Real Environmentalists 2:04
for talk and no action on climate change. Introducing the real environmentalists, the bold new book by Jim Beach. It’s not about activists, politicians, or professors. It’s about the entrepreneurs, real risk takers building cleaner, smarter solutions, not for applause but for profit. The entrepreneurs in the book, aren’t giving speeches, they’re in labs, factories, and offices, cleaning the past and building clean products for the future. The real environmentalists is available now, because the people saving the planet aren’t the ones you think. Go to Amazon and search for real environmentalists. Thank you. We

Jim Beach 2:36
are back, and again, thank you so very much for being with us. You know, I want every single one of you to write a book. I think it’s such an important part of being an entrepreneur to share your wisdom and experiences. We all have something to offer the other entrepreneurs in our space, and so I think it’s just absolutely critical. I’m very excited today to welcome someone to the show who’s going to help you sell more books and develop a better brand for yourself. Please welcome Kay Wagner. She’s the president of North Star Marketing and author of a book called The Bold Authors Playbook: Three Simple Steps to Turn Unknown Books into Perennial Sellers. She had an interesting life. She grew up on a dairy farm, and there you’re going to learn the values of hard work, per survey, creativity, and resilience. She’s just been amazingly successful and has had several best sellers herself. She writes both fiction and nonfiction. And North Star Marketing is a full-service creative brand and marketing agency based in Pennsylvania. Hey, welcome to the show. How you doing?

Kae Wagner 3:40
Good, thank you, Jim. Happy to be here. Do

Jim Beach 3:43
you agree that everyone should write a book, all of us successful entrepreneurs?

Kae Wagner 3:48
I do. I strongly believe that, Jim. I think if you don’t do that, you are leaving a huge opportunity on the table.

Jim Beach 3:57
Why? What are you leaving on the table? I’m not going to make money from

Kae Wagner 4:01
it. No, that that’s not true, my friend, but the money is going to come in a way that you are not looking at it right now, right? If you are a business owner, a startup, or into your business, the point of writing a book is not to sell books, point of writing a book is to capture all of your expertise, your story, your solution to a problem, your perspective, package it in a book, and then give away as many books as possible to your prospects, to your influencers, to your audience, to your world, that’s where the money is.

Jim Beach 4:43
Five or $6 a copy off the printer. You’ve given away, I’ve given away probably 20 copies of my latest book. How many?

Kae Wagner 4:56
I give away hundreds. I’ve given away pal. So let me. Tell you a story, Jim. Yes, so the first book that I wrote was The Power Principles of Marketing. Second book I wrote was The CEO’s Little Black Book on Brandy. I had 10,000 of The CEO’s Little Black Book on Branding printed. I had 20,000 of The 10 Power Principles of marketing printed we sent out books to CEOs and leaders and influencers and I was then asked because of those books I was then asked to get on stages around the country and I was speaking to CEO groups, I was speaking to VPs of sales and marketing, and inevitably, after a speech, I would get a call from someone who said VP of marketing, maybe, who said my CEO heard you speak last week, and he said we should work with you, so I made millions on those books, not through book sales, but because those books open doors that otherwise would not have opened for me.

Jim Beach 6:12
All right, very cool.

Kae Wagner 6:13
That’s that’s the power of the book.

Jim Beach 6:16
How do you know who to, and it’s not what their address is?

Kae Wagner 6:21
Oh, so we are in the world of technology, right? And Amazon has this really, really.. so you need to publish on KDP on Amazon, that’s number one. And then what you can do is you can send a digital book to your prospects, and there’s this beautiful thing that happens. You pay for the book, you send them the book, they get the book, they read it. After they read it, Amazon knows that, and then you actually get paid for the book. So, to your point of paying $5 for a lead, no, no. This all is a circle, and it all comes back to you in many, many ways.

Jim Beach 7:07
So, you’re only going to email them a digital download.

Kae Wagner 7:10
Yes.

Jim Beach 7:11
Okay,

Kae Wagner 7:12
it is a digital download. Now, the books that I published originally were all physical books, and I still advocate giving away physical books. Give away as many physical books as you can, and if you buy author copies from KDP from Amazon, you’re going to pay probably anywhere from three to $5 Now, let me ask you this: Jim, is three to $5 a high cost for a good lead?

Jim Beach 7:40
No, that’s a ridiculously low cost for a good lead.

Kae Wagner 7:44
Yes, so why wouldn’t you give away as many as possible to your target market,

Jim Beach 7:50
because they’re supposed to buy them?

Kae Wagner 7:52
That’s not the premise. You’ve got the wrong premise, Jim. And that’s not the premise. The premise is to get the book in the right hands, because it will pay off.

Jim Beach 8:04
Okay, so there’s really no cost to that, other than research time, right?

Kae Wagner 8:09
You mean to build your list?

Jim Beach 8:10
Yeah, to build, you spend time building a list, and then email free copies. It should only cost the time to produce and do the emailing, right?

Kae Wagner 8:20
Yes, yes, to

Jim Beach 8:23
my VA. Can’t I?

Kae Wagner 8:25
You should be able to, that’s for sure.

Jim Beach 8:27
Okay,

Kae Wagner 8:28
yeah. So that is another aspect that I love for your school for startups, and that is list building. I am obsessed with list building, and I am just publishing a new book called Own the Inbox, and Own the Inbox is the concept of own the inbox is about being a consistent, continual list builder, because your email list is a business asset if you are going to do social media, you are actually posting and giving away your content, your information on rented land. You do not own what happens on Facebook or LinkedIn, however, your business asset is yours, no better, no matter what happens to the algorithm, the platform, or, you know, the AI world. Your business asset is your list, and not only that, it is the best way to sell to your prospects. Email marketing is still the strongest way, the best way, the most effective and efficient way that B2B sales are made, but you, so speaking of your BA, your VA can help. There are many ways. Actually, I just put together a lead magnet. Yesterday earlier in the week, 25 ways to grow your list, and these are all ways that won’t cost you a dime, but will help you to build a robust list, and your list, please remember this, please, Jim, and all the people listening, your list is not just data, right, your list is made up of people, people. If you find the right people for your list, people who are interested in what you offer, and so this is not just random list stuffing. This is being intentional about getting the right people on your list, because this is going to be the mode of communication. This is how people will get to know you. This is how you will make offers. This is how you will continue to be in front of them. It is a critical piece of starting up and growing and scaling your business.

Jim Beach 10:57
How do you physically build your list? Do you do research to wait for people to come into your network before you add them to the list. What do you do?

Kae Wagner 11:06
So, like I said, there are 25 ways to

Jim Beach 11:12
25 way cheat sheet, or is that the next book

Kae Wagner 11:17
that’s in the next book?

Jim Beach 11:18
Oh, okay,

Kae Wagner 11:18
yeah. So I’ll send you the link for that, and the information for that. You can put that in the show notes. Great, but I’ll tell you, I’ll tell you, Jim, one of the easiest ways to do it, and a lot of people really miss this every day. You and I, and all of the people who are listening to this show, email from our personal business email platform. Right.

Jim Beach 11:44
Yes,

Kae Wagner 11:44
I, you, and I have been communicating on email to get this whole thing set up. In the bottom of that email, there’s an email signature. Put your information at the bottom, so that people can go to your list. Now, people aren’t just going to say, “Hey, Jim, put me on your list. Right, you have to have a trade off for them to give you their name and email, email address, that is what we call a lead magnet, that is what we call some kind of gift, or some kind of like this thing that I developed, 25 ways to grow your list. You can create that, and people will exchange their contact information for that piece of value. Now, this is not flush stuff, this is like real value, right? When people get this 25 ways to grow your list, they are going to be able to grow their list as soon as they get this, because the first three things are things they can do immediately, and they can do them for free, like putting your link for your newsletter, or for your lead magnet, or your download, or your ebook in your email, okay, that way people are like, oh, look, I see the title, I want that, click on it takes them to a form, they give you your email, their email address and contact info, and then you send them the download, it’s a valuable exchange on both sides, once they’re on your list, then you begin to communicate with them in a consistent and congruent manner, so it’s as simple as that. But there are also things that you need to get set up, obviously, right? Like, you need an email platform, so

Jim Beach 13:38
you like the best,

Kae Wagner 13:40
hands down,

Jim Beach 13:42
which one

Kae Wagner 13:43
kit K I T kit hands down people that I work with, I require that they have kit because it is incredibly robust, and yesterday in their annual conference they announced some amazing, amazing upgrades to the platform, it is by far the most robust, the most sustainable, and not only that, one of my criteria when I pick up a piece of technology or decide on a platform is, does that platform have built within it marketing, and that’s why I chose Kit, because Kit has marketing elements built inside of the platform to help anyone who is on that platform to market themselves. It is, it’s really phenomenal what they’re doing.

Jim Beach 14:37
Hey, what are your thoughts on traditional publishers, the McGraw Hills, penguins, all those people versus self-publishing.

Kae Wagner 14:45
Well, I think the publishing model is broken when you look at the stats. The number of books that are self-published on Amazon far outpace the tradition. Publishing books, the traditionally published published books, and the reason for that is that Amazon and KDP broke the model. They allowed authors, independent authors, to maintain control over their books, over their payment, over their marketing. That puts you really the control in our hands to make our book successful. I have been published with the traditional publisher. I’ve gone through the process. It is a long, lengthy process with KDP. You can put a book together and get it up on KDP, start to get author copies, and be well on your way to not only growing your list but growing your business. I

Jim Beach 15:50
want to tell you a quick story about my very first book, 15 years ago, was called School for Startups, just like this podcast, and it was published by McGraw Hill, and it did very well. It got to number nine on not its category, K, number nine on all of Amazon, you know, it was number on the entire damn platform. Congratulations, yeah, you know, it was number one in all of its categories and all that kind of stuff, and ended up with 150 reviews, which is pretty high for a non-fiction, I think, but I called McGraw Hill, and I said, ‘Will you send me a digital copy that I can send to reporters and stuff like that? And they said, ‘No, you may not do that. I was like, ‘Wow, boy, are you helpful? And then I spoke at SCORE, you know, the SCORE organization or of retired executives at one of their events in New York with Joe Abraham, one of the top entrepreneurial thought leaders, and I arranged Score was so happy with it that I arranged for a 30 city tour that Score was going to pay for for Joe and I to go all over the country and talk about our two books, and I called McGraw Hill so happy, and they said, well, you’re not allowed to do it unless we organize it, and I was like, well, it’s gone, and they’re like, no, no, no, we need to get involved, and guess what happened next? Score canceled the entire thing, because, because the people at McGraw Hill were so difficult to work with, score was like, we don’t want to do it anymore, and so

Kae Wagner 17:19
I know, so they shoot those songs in the foot.

Jim Beach 17:22
Yes, you remember the movies, Kay, where your publisher is your best friend. Remember Romancing the Stone with Michael Douglas and Kathryn Kathleen Turner, and she’s a famous writer, and her publishers are best friends. I thought my publisher at McGraw Hill was going to at least be my associate, a friend or something. Maybe we got to dinner. She gave me, I want to say, 90 seconds. I flew, oh my god, she gave me 90 seconds.

Kae Wagner 17:54
Yeah, that’s crazy, that’s ridiculous. The book that I, that yeah, the book that I published with the traditional publisher and was able to get back without litigation took two years. I gave them a completed manuscript. It had already been through editing process and everything. It took them two years from that date to publish it. We had a contract that stated that they would be doing x amount of promotions and marketing, that never happened. There was in the contract stated that I would get 25 free copies, whoop the doo, right, 25 free copies after two years, and it being published, and me pushing and pushing and pushing. They said, “No, you have to pay for those copies. I said, “It’s right here in the contract, and they’re so they’re like, “Sorry. So, rather than litigate, I waited, and finally I was able, through discussion and conversation, and some difficulties on their side was able to get my book back, so I am not a fan of traditional publishing. I know that authors want to be able to say that McGraw Hill published them, that you know they were on the Times bestseller list, etc. etc. But in my world, that’s not my goal. I

Jim Beach 19:20
agree very well said. Do you want to tell what company you were screwed around with, or do you want to leave that anonymous? How about this case? Let’s group all of the hatred toward McGraw Hill, including whoever you were talking about. Let’s just dump it all on MC.

Kae Wagner 19:36
Yeah, dump it all on them, because I’m going anonymous.

Jim Beach 19:40
Okay, that’s fine. What about awards and that kind of stuff? For example, I just found out yesterday that my book is a finalist for the Indie Publishing Premier Book Awards.

Kae Wagner 19:51
Congratulations.

Jim Beach 19:52
Do we care? Is that going to sell any books, or do you recommend taking the time to go and get. Try to apply for awards,

Kae Wagner 20:03
so here’s, here’s my perspective on that. Awards are great. I love awards. I love being a best seller, but you only need one award to be an award-winning author.

Jim Beach 20:14
Yes, that’s right. But I haven’t won a book award yet. I have a radio, oh yeah, I have a speaking award. Now I have a book award.

Kae Wagner 20:21
Yes, so now you were an award-winning author.

Jim Beach 20:25
I’m a McGraw Hill multi-best selling award winning author.

Kae Wagner 20:31
Yes, that too sounds

Jim Beach 20:35
like verbal masturbation to me.

Kae Wagner 20:38
Well, you know, pile it on, pile it on. I mean, what really, what really counts in the business world, and for your audiences? Did you have a good book, and do your readers read it, and do they call you, and want to engage with you, and all the rest of the stuff is fabulous to be a seller, to be an award winner, even to sell books is fabulous, but that is not the point in the business world. The point in the business world is to get your book into as many hands, as many clients as possible. If you get stingy with giving out, giving out books, you will be, you will hurt yourself in terms of growing your business.

Jim Beach 21:20
Do you know the joke about the man who died right after, or not right after, he published a book 20 years ago and died? Have you heard this joke?

Kae Wagner 21:28
No, I haven’t.

Jim Beach 21:30
Yeah, so his son was speaking at the funeral, giving the eulogy, and talking about how dad loved his book, and you know, being an author, and how he, you know, would go around giving out copies, and just let all of you know, he had 9000 copies left when he died, and they’re all at the back of the church here, so please take five or six copies when you leave, because, damn it, I don’t know what else to do with them. Not a funny joke, but it captures our essence of this.

Kae Wagner 21:58
Yes, yes, it does. It does, and you know the thing is, when you take on the mindset of getting as many books in as many hands as possible, you will see opportunities that you never saw before. For example, I’ll give your readers a tip: I fly a lot when I go through a hotel with my little pool bag, I have a book sitting on that bag facing up, and it’s like a billboard. It’s like a little mini billboard. As I walk through the airport, you would not believe how many conversations that start. So I carry four or five books with me, because I know by the time I leave and come back home, I will have met five people who say, “Hey, what’s that about? And I will give them each a copy.

Jim Beach 22:46
I went to lunch a month ago to give one of my father’s friends a copy, and the guy next to us said, “What’s that book? And I ended up giving it to the guy next to me, who I had never met, and had to drive back and give my dad’s friend another copy. So that’s

Kae Wagner 23:00
perfect.

Jim Beach 23:01
People ask you about it, so

Kae Wagner 23:03
yeah, so keep, keep a box of books in your car.

Jim Beach 23:07
What about non-fiction versus fiction? I mean, fiction sells so much better. Am I better off if you know I have an idea for both? Should I start with fiction just because it’ll sell more?

Kae Wagner 23:21
Um, well, you know, it really depends on what your goals are. I write both. I started with nonfiction, and nonfiction, you know, like I said, made millions for me because I had a plan for what happened after the book. My fiction is fabulous, it’s selling really well. I love it, and I love writing both of them, but I write them for different purposes. So, fiction is not about solving a problem. Fiction is about entertainment, about, you know, a relief from the hardship of the real world and escape, although I somehow seem to manage to thread in there some themes and some ideas about business as well, off and on. Right now, I’m writing a romance series, and all of the characters, the main

Jim Beach 24:15
series,

Kae Wagner 24:16
the Saturday Night Series. I don’t know, I think it’s going to be in Netflix

Jim Beach 24:22
series called Saturday Night In,

Kae Wagner 24:24
oh, Saturday Night at the Trailer Park,

Jim Beach 24:26
yeah, in Paris and Philadelphia,

Kae Wagner 24:29
right? That is, that is the Frankie Girl series, and that is modern fiction. The series that I’ve just released last week is a romance series, that’s a different series, and in that series the main characters in each book, so it’s standalone, each a story on its own, are all women in their late 20s who have been consumed with growing their businesses, they’re all startups in about their fourth or fifth year. Hmm, and so, as women, independent women who are running businesses, they have no time for love, they have no time for men, until one day that guy walks in. Oh,

Jim Beach 25:12
I hate that guy,

Kae Wagner 25:13
steals all the damn girls, man. She, she hates him too, at the beginning, but

Jim Beach 25:23
Meals in love, and they kiss, and then the flower goes away and turns into a beast. I mean, the beast turns into a flower.

Kae Wagner 25:28
Yeah, you know the story, right? Yes,

Jim Beach 25:32
yes.

Kae Wagner 25:32
But I love, you know, I love writing. Period. So I can’t not write nonfiction, and I can’t not write fiction, so I’m multi-genre, as they say, and I find that one influences or affects the other, and in the same back, and so it’s really for me. Gosh, I can’t tell you, I really can’t tell you how much I am in the best position possible right now. I work with authors in the Bold Authors Network. I just about to release Own the Inbox, which is going to bring all kinds of authors into a community that’s focused on building lists and getting new clients and and I’m writing nonfiction and fiction, so I am one happy camper these days.

Jim Beach 26:30
Yes. Well, just to let all the listeners know, I have lists that I give out. We build a list of other podcasts that you should be on as a guest, and we have several 100 names and contact information on that list, so we do give that away. We, I spent 200 hours building that, and so it is a great, great list, and we do give that away if people want to email in asking for it. So it’s only published, it’s only podcast in the business space, so that’s the list that I can give you.

Kae Wagner 27:06
Great, yeah, that’s a great giveaway.

Jim Beach 27:09
We want to help the listeners as much as we can. Okay, you are amazing, and I love what you have done. How do we find out more and get into your universe?

Kae Wagner 27:19
The best way to get into my universe is to go to Bold Authors network.com We have weekly a session every Monday from four to 5pm Eastern. It’s a free session focused on book marketing, fiction, and nonfiction. And going to Bold Authors Network com and filling out the sign up will give you a notification for promo hour. Promo Hour is an is a community of authors supporting authors focused on promotion, sales promotion, and book marketing. It is free, and it is a very, very supportive community. So, Bold authors.net Bold Author authors network.com is where your people should go to get into my world, and we’ll take it from there.

Jim Beach 28:08
I think I would like to join that network too. And it’s Monday evenings, please

Kae Wagner 28:11
do Monday from four to 5pm I’d like to have you come and speak to our people, and then give them your podcast list.

Jim Beach 28:19
I’d love to. Also, I started a publishing company. We have a company called Startup Publishers, who publishes my stuff now. And if anyone wants us to work with you, we’re very willing to do that, all the way from just throwing it up on our platform to helping with editing and writing, and all that. So, we’ll do anything you want, and I’m not trying to make money from that, people. If you have a completed transcript, it will throw it up there for you and charge you nothing.

Kae Wagner 28:46
So, Jim, you’re not going to become one of those hated McGraw Hill people, are you?

Jim Beach 28:50
No, I just can’t. You know, I have other stories too. It was just mind-boggling. What happened? Kay, is the guy who bought our book and signed the deal with McGraw Hill. Quit a month later, and then went to Penguin, and so our love moved, you know. And so we were stuck, a publisher who was assigned to the book, not someone who had personally made the decision themselves. And so,

Kae Wagner 29:17
yeah,

Jim Beach 29:17
we were sol there. But anyway,

Kae Wagner 29:22
yeah,

Jim Beach 29:23
life goes

Kae Wagner 29:23
on, yeah, that’s that’s unfortunate.

Jim Beach 29:26
Hey, you’re amazing. Thank you so much for being with us, and we’d love to have you back. Thanks a lot.

Kae Wagner 29:30
Thanks. I’ll be back, you. We

Jim Beach 29:46
are back, and again, thank you so very much for being with us. You know, HR retention, hiring, or some of the hard parts of being an entrepreneur. I didn’t really expect that. I didn’t like it, and I’m glad that there are some people who can help, please. Welcome, Mason Dukashek, to the show. He is a specialist in this space. He is the CEO of Workforce alchemy.com and he has created the Hiring Suite Assessment System, which will help hire people, I guess. He is the number one bestselling author of 11 books, and has a show of his own called the Mason Dukasheck Show. He is a six time Iron Man finisher, which just blows my mind away. I couldn’t do that with a car. Mason, welcome to the show. How are you doing,

Mason Duchatschek 30:33
Jim? I’m doing great. It’s a pleasure to be here, and I appreciate the invitation. Thank you.

Jim Beach 30:37
And also, thank you for your service. I see that you were in the forces for a while. Thank you very much for for that. Why Iron Man, what do you, what, why do you have love for that? You know, for the rest of us, it just seems crazy. Why are you loving that?

Mason Duchatschek 30:56
I saw it on TV, and I saw people who looked like they were older than me and looked like they were in worse shape than me, and I saw them crossing the finish line, and I thought, if those people can do it, I can do it, and I decided to eliminate the excuses and find out if it were, if it was possible for me, and I signed up and surrounded myself with smart, experienced people, and went after it, and have been doing it ever since. It’s been an amazing culture of amazing people with big goals and extreme capacity, and it’s great to be physically, it’s nice, but to have the mindset of those people around you all the time transfers into other areas of your life. It’s the decision to sign up for my first Ironman triathlon was one I never regretted.

Jim Beach 31:44
Is that the one where there’s the swim, then the marathon, then the bike?

Mason Duchatschek 31:48
It’s a 2.4 mile swim, and then it’s 112 mile bike ride, and then it is a full marathon, and you have 17 hours to complete it.

Jim Beach 31:57
And what’s your best time?

Mason Duchatschek 31:59
My best time is 12 hours and 50 minutes, I’m usually middle of the pack, guy, front end of the middle, but I’m not a spring chicken anymore, so I’m just glad to finish and look good enough to smile for the pictures.

Jim Beach 32:09
Well, it blows the rest of us away, how impressive that is. So, thank you. Believable, unbelievable, and just Godspeed to all of you. I can’t do that. I used to live in Hawaii, and would watch the race every year from my one eye. Nice.

Mason Duchatschek 32:28
Well, I assure you, the people participating appreciated the encouragement and support. You never know when you hit a low spot, and just some random person send you some encouragement really can shift things in a very positive way. So, I assure you that if you were out and about, and the athletes saw you, that they were appreciative to have your vibe and your energy feeding energy back to them.

Jim Beach 32:49
All right. Tell us about the hiring suite assessment system.

Mason Duchatschek 32:54
Well, you know, I’ve always believed that people either solve business problems or they create new ones, and Jim Collins, in his book “Good to Great, talked about the most important thing any business could do is get the right people on the bus and into the right seats, but he didn’t tell them how to do it, and if you don’t mind, I’ll tell you a quick story. We

Jim Beach 33:13
love stories, stories are the essence of radio. Go,

Mason Duchatschek 33:16
so I’m not a gambler by any stretch, I like to think of myself as a calculated risk taker, but the first time I went to Las Vegas, I was with one of my buddies from high school, his name was David, and we rolled in, and there’s a beautiful casino, and the lights were flashing, and we were overwhelmed, and he’s like, “Come on, let’s gamble, and I just looked at him, I said, “Dave, is this a nice place? He’s like, “Yeah, it’s beautiful. I said, “How do you think it got that way? It didn’t get this way by guys like me and you coming off the street and cleaning them out. The odds are against us, and I’ve always felt that hiring is like that, that the house always wins. It’s stacked against the employer. There’s questions the government limits. The government limits what you can ask. Applicants lie on applications and resumes all the time, and it’s very, very difficult. And when you ask employers using your traditional selection methods, you hired good employees, they’ll say, “Sure. Using those exact same methods, you’ve hired people you wish you hadn’t. Sure. Well, what have you learned? Well, what I’ve learned is that what we’re doing can’t effectively help us predict with any reasonable degree of certainty, the likelihood that someone’s going to succeed, and I don’t, and a lot of organizations literally look at hiring like gambling, like hire and hope, and it doesn’t need to be that way, and it’s not a surprise when you think about it. I mean, background checks only show you that someone’s been caught and successfully prosecuted, but what about people who did things they weren’t supposed to, but weren’t caught, or weren’t prosecuted or weren’t prosecuted successfully, even though they did it. Applicants typically don’t give out references of people who are going to say negative things about them. Companies say they do drug tests, which tells the applicants, hey, you need to stay clean for 30 days, and interviews are only sound effects in which they’re based, and, like I said, applicants. Embellish and applications and resumes all the time, so the deck really is stacked against them. But smart employers are learning how to reverse the odds, and they’re utilizing everything in their power to gather as much job-related information as they can, so they can make informed decisions instead of decisions based on gut feel. And when they get it right, they save a fortune. When they get it wrong, it costs them a fortune. And they’re in the hiring suite. You asked about those are specific skill, attitude, and personality-based assessment tools that help companies find out ahead of time what they’re going to get, so they can evaluate risk and reward and make better decisions.

Jim Beach 35:39
What percent do you think are lying on their resume,

Mason Duchatschek 35:42
the result, the things that I’ve seen say about 1/3 I’ve seen articles that say 70% of applications are embellished. I’ve seen some that say a third will will stretch it in an interview. So let’s just say right down the middle you got 50% accurate information from applicants. The bigger issue is you don’t know which half of the truth, yet you’re still expected to make a valid hiring decision, an informed hiring decision, and you don’t know what you can’t separate fact from fiction. And the best assessment tools actually have what they refer, what industrial psychologists refer to as lie scales, built-in questions that are likely to trip up an applicant who’s trying to fake good or tell you what they think you want to hear. Imagine if you had that in an interview.

Jim Beach 36:31
Give me an example of one of those. I don’t know about that.

Mason Duchatschek 36:33
I’ll give you a perfect example. One example might be I’ve never argued with my parents.

Jim Beach 36:39
Well, that’s the dumbest. So 100% of people have, so

Mason Duchatschek 36:43
no, so here’s what we’re getting, that someone who’s going through the assessment and answering it honestly would say, “Yes, I’ve argued with my parents. Next question, but someone who’s trying to fake good or tell the employer what they think the employer wants to hear, they will overthink a question like that, they’ll say, “Gee, if I admit that I argue with my parents, this employer might think I would argue with coworkers or supervisors or customers, and I don’t want them to think I’m argumentative, so I’m going to say no. I’ve never argued with my parents.

Jim Beach 37:11
Very interesting. I’ve heard that the CIA, when they’re hiring people, and I actually was recruited by some secret or government organization. I tell that story later, if we need to, but I was, I’ve heard that they ask about drugs and stuff when you go, and if you deny ever having tried any drugs, that that’s a negative, because they think that most people have tried, you know, like 80% of the population has tried pot, you know, and if you say no, I’ve never done any, that actually increases the amount of back checking they’re going to do into you.

Mason Duchatschek 37:47
Well, I will let me, let me share another story with you. This one was the one Tony Robbins talked about in his book, Awaken Giant Within. He talked about the story of a man standing on the shores of a river, and he looks up and he sees this person getting washed down the stream in the current, calling for help, so he dives in, he makes a daring rescue, pulls a drowning victim to safety, and tends to his wounds. No sooner as he lifts his head, he sees two more people coming down the stream, howling for help. So he dives in, he makes two more rescues, pulls both of them to shore, lies on the beach, exhausted. No sooner as he lifts his head, he sees four more people howling for help. The moral of the story is, had he just taken the time to walk a short distance upriver, he couldn’t find out who the one person was throwing all these people in the river in the first place, and saved all his time and energy dealing with a single cause up river, as opposed to many effects down river. And when you start talking about things like employment testing and honesty and drug use, you want to reduce employee theft, hire honest people. You want to do fraudulent workers comp, hire people who lie about being hurt, and you have, you there are employment tests that measure things like integrity and attitudes towards substance abuse. I mean, if you have people coming to work under the influence of drugs, and guess what, you might see increases in injury. You might see if you don’t, don’t hire people, you don’t measure for things like reliability, you might not have people showing up, which means you’re paying other people overtime, or you may, you don’t measure work ethic, you’re hiring people who are given half at half effort, and I had a.. and the odd thing about this is on some of the questions, like we talked about the questions to find out if someone was distorting or life scale questions, but a lot of cases parents don’t teach selected values, some

Jim Beach 39:19
selective values, what is that? What a parent value. A

Mason Duchatschek 39:22
parent who takes the time to teach their child that honesty is best policy probably taught them things like a job is a privilege and an honest day’s work for an honest day’s pay. So, what smart employers are figuring out is they can assess the presence or absence of a whole core set of values or absence of them easily. And the sad thing is, like some of these questions, like, have you ever done drugs, or is it okay to be.. let me think of a different one. The it’s okay to steal, take something that doesn’t belong to you from the employer, because the employer expects so much and pays so little. There might be people will say yes to that, and they don’t feel, or taking something from work isn’t bad. Sometimes I intend to bring it back, and the reality of it is, is that those high-risk attitudes, there are people like, for example, I asked the industrial psychologist who built this tool, I said, why would people admit to stealing or doing drugs, or or not showing up for work when they’re applying for a job, wouldn’t they be on their best behavior, and he smiled at me. He goes, well, the ones that are trying to fake good, we pick up with the distortion and y scale score. He goes, but the other ones, they really don’t know any better. I go, what do you mean? He goes, Mason, have you ever broken the speed limit? And like, sure, of course I have. He goes, why would you admit to that? You’re admitting to breaking the law. And I just innocently replied, well, everybody speeds. And then the little light bulb went off above my head, and he was trying to teach me something that people that haven’t been taught values that haven’t been, not work ethic hasn’t been instilled in them, they don’t feel any more guilt or remorse admitting to stealing or doing drugs or not showing up for work than you or I would feel about breaking the speed limit, and they admit it readily, and the whole purpose is to be able to ask those questions and to get that information, so you, as an employer, can make informed decisions about what you’re dealing with. People look at cost of turnover. Cost experts say that the cost of turnover is about 16% of someone’s annual salary for an hourly worker, 21% of their annual salary for a professional level employee, and when you start talking executives, you’re talking 150 to 213% of their annual salary. So, if a 40k a year hourly employee, you make a mistake, that’s a $6,400 mistake. If it’s a $65,000 a year professional, that’s a $13,000 mistake, and I’m not convinced the cost of turnover, even the biggest issue I think the bigger issue is what happens when you get the wrong people and they stay. I had a had a client who had a payroll of 10 million, and I asked him, I said, what’s the discretionary effort of your average employee? He said, because he’d seen the Gallup survey results. He said, yeah, probably 50% like we got 10 million in payroll, and you’re getting 50% effort out of your employees, so that sounds like about a $5 million a year profit leak. I said, if someone was embezzling $5 million a year from you, how long would you wait to fix it? He goes, I’d fix it right away. Why haven’t you? And it was silence, and the answer was, he didn’t know how, and that’s kind of work I do with companies.

Jim Beach 42:21
Very interesting, absolutely fascinating. Let’s talk about the book a second. Built,

Mason Duchatschek 42:26
sure,

Jim Beach 42:26
right, and it’s W R I G H T, but the W is a different color than the rest of the letters there on the cover. Very good cover. Built right, what it takes to build something that lasts. Tell us about the book and what you’re hoping to achieve with it.

Mason Duchatschek 42:41
Sure, that book is a brand new one, and it just came out just a couple months ago. And I interviewed a guy by the name of Bryant Wright, W R I G H T, on my podcast, The Nation Duga Check Show, and he is a Hall of Fame coach in the state of Missouri, and in the last 17 years the worst finish that his boys cross country team has had at the state championship cross country meet in the last 17 years. The worst finish was second place. He won eight of them in a row, and no one’s ever done it before. And I had him on the show and said, How did you do it? And he started dropping wisdom on me that every business owner, manager, team leader, nonprofit leader could benefit from because he understood that building winning now and winning later are not mutually exclusive choices, and he built a culture where kids voluntarily put out effort to suffer, i.e. long distance running, and they repeated success year after year. And I told him, I said, Brian, I said, it’s not like you got lucky and you just had a couple great athletes. He goes, “Well, he goes, ‘We did a couple years, but not for 17. I go, ‘Fair enough. And I go, ‘Well, maybe your training programs are better than everyone else’s. He goes, ‘Well, you’d think, but he goes, ‘I spoke at a coach’s clinic, and I gave all the coaches there my exact training program from June all the way through November. So I gave every one of my competitors my exact training programs. I held nothing back, so it’s not that I said, “Well, what’s the difference? I said, “Maybe you’re just a better motivator. He’s like, “Well, I like to think so. He goes, “But I knew I was going to retire, and I had my assistant coach, Wes Armbruster, take over the girls’ team the last three years. And I go, “How’d they do? He goes, “Well, they got third his first year coaching, and they’ve done back-to-back state champs ever since. I said, “Bryant, you’re doing something amazing, I want to know what it is, and he started dropping wisdom on me, things that I’d never thought of that really apply to employee engagement. One of the things that he really.. there are two ideas I’ll share with you quickly that I think will benefit your audience. Number one was he believed, he said, Mason, I want.. he goes, I want discipline in my absence, not compliance in my presence, and I built a culture where accountability went sideways first, before top down. He said, ‘Not I couldn’t step in and tell the guys train harder, get more effort. He goes, ‘But I built a culture where those guys knew if they had to win, they all had to work and give out effort every day. And I said, ‘Well, what does that look like? He said, ‘Well, the. Old way is the coach stands at the corner of the track, yelling, splits, and tells him to hurry up if he thinks they’re loafing. He goes, ‘My guys, if they’re out on a road run where I’m not present, if they see one of the guys slacking or not doing well, and they’ve got a group of guys, a couple of them will drop back and say, ‘Come on, hang with us, you can do it, let’s reel those guys in, and it’s purposeful. No one feels alone. That was huge to me. And I said, I mean, how many times you see it work where the new guy just gets left to figure things out on his own versus someone saying we don’t leave new guys, that’s not who we are, that’s not what we do. We have a different and a better culture than that. And that was a big takeaway for me. And the other big takeaway for me was he talked about belonging was first, he said. Mason, he goes, I might have a freshman, chubby freshman, that’s never run before, that might be the best runner in the history of our program, but we’ll never know it if he never comes out or he quits because he doesn’t feel belonging. He goes, I want every member of our team to feel like they belong before they contribute or produce a single result.

Mason Duchatschek 45:58
He goes, because if we don’t, then it sends a message that some people matter more than others, and the people who are seniors, and they’re the ones winning races. He goes, they lean in, and everyone else plays it safe and leans back, and they don’t give their best effort. He said, I want everyone to feel that they belong, and he goes, and then what happens is, when it.. yeah, he just.. I mean, I’m just scratching surface, but he literally told story after story that really gave an idea of what a winning culture looks like, not only for now but in the future, and he’s been able to figure it out, and I think every business owner and manager can benefit from stuff like that. So, that’s so we downloaded the transcript from my interview with him, and we turned it into a book, and that book is called Built Right, W R I G H T, what it takes to build something that lasts. The

Jim Beach 46:47
accountability traveling sideways is a huge premise of Japanese culture, and in Japan, at a business, if there’s a Slack employee, the other employees are punished, not the Slack employee, and you know you’re supposed to go and help embrace the guy who’s not doing it, and if you don’t, you get punished. So it’s interesting that it’s an American, but we don’t have a word for it. We have to use four words, whereas Japanese have one word for

Mason Duchatschek 47:17
it. I’ll give you a classic example. This happened to me Saturday and Friday night, Friday night, I went to a very nice Mexican restaurant, and my server was excellent. She was polite, she was friendly, the food was spectacular. But I pulled the manager aside afterwards, and I told him, I said, I had your server was excellent, your food was fantastic. I said, but you guys have a missed opportunity, and if the roles were reversed, I would want to know this. So, if you, if you’re open to it, I’m happy to share my feedback in hopes that you can do it. He goes, ‘Yours, Mason, I’ve been here since nine this morning, I get out at midnight. I said, ‘I understand you’re working hard, and I know you care. That’s why I want to tell you. He said, ‘I said, what’s that? I said, ‘You had missed opportunity. I said, ‘I was out in the sun all day, I was super thirsty, I went through waters like crazy, and your server checked on me on a regular basis, but I went through water faster than she did. Then she could get back to me. I said I had it empty, and twice it was empty, where more than five people came by, not one of them helped her out and noticed that it was that way. Not one. I said some of them came by multiple times, so that happened twice, because I two empty waters, and I actually went up to the bartender, because I was dying. The bartender filled it, and I drank it, came back, bartender filled it again. Bartender didn’t tell the server, “Hey, one of your guys has been up here twice asking for water. I said each one of them was focused on doing their job, but someone with a built right culture, where everyone looks out like this is not who we are, this is not our identity. We don’t leave any, none of us will allow any guests’ table to sit empty with water. We will all pitch in and make sure that, because that is a reflection on all of us. And I told him, I said, every one of your individual performers did what they were supposed to do to perfection. Your server checked on me regularly. Your bar bartender did a great job. He took care of me right away, gave me the water, but he didn’t take the extra step of saying, ‘Gee, why is this guy empty? Who’s serving? Like, no one went out of their way to check anything other than what they were doing, and it’s just like that’s that’s the difference of a culture where you got the silos versus a team, and Bryant Wright figured out how to build a team with that kind of culture where everyone, everyone looks out for everyone, and it’s, it’s, it’s amazing. I mean, just Google Bryant Wright, Festus in Missouri, and what this guy’s accomplished is legendary, and he’s in the cool thing about talking to him, and full disclosure, I’ve known him since high school, actually middle school, we were teammates, he was a year younger than me, and he’s, he has had wisdom, has had, and does continue to have wisdom beyond his years, but I. And very, very glad to catch that, catch his wisdom, get it into print.

Jim Beach 50:05
There’s also a chapter in the book called Winning Is the Dangerous Part. How is winning dangerous? Do you get complacent? Is that what that’s talking about? That’s exactly

Mason Duchatschek 50:14
what that is. That’s exactly where that goes. It’s, it’s when, when people, oh, we don’t have to do this, oh, we don’t have to do that, and it’s in. I’ll give you a real-life example. In a lot of cultures, work, I remember when I was an athlete, we grew up, and it’s all freshmen grab the coolers, freshmen set up the tents, not in Bryant’s organization. It’s the state champions and the seniors that lead by example, they set the standard, like we carry the, we carry the coolers, we carry the tents, we’ll show you how to set this up, everybody, they lead by example, and they expect nothing of anyone else that they won’t do themselves, and they protect those standards, like this is how we do things, this is how we operate, because they know that if, if, oh, we’re state champs, we don’t have to do this, or we don’t have to work hard on this, or we’re already running faster than everyone else, like that’s where stuff goes south, and those guys guard their standards like their life depends on it, and I was there the year I actually witnessed the year they scored, they won their eighth state championship in a row, and I will tell you, and I know I know the kids on that team, I know parents whose kids are on that team, and through those kids that won the eighth straight championship, those kids were in like third or fourth grade the last time the fastest guy didn’t win the state championship and cross country,

Jim Beach 51:41
amazing,

Mason Duchatschek 51:42
and they did not want to be the ones that let that streak drop. The culture

Jim Beach 51:48
must outlive you. How do I make the culture survive after I’m gone?

Mason Duchatschek 51:52
Well, that, that I would talk about how he has instilled those principles with his assistant coach, so that he can actually step away, and the assistant coach walks in, and last two years won back to back state championships with the girls. It’s like it’s, it’s, it’s a system. It was not dependent upon Bryant Wright. Now he helped engineer it and nurtured it, but it’s like one of my old mentors, when I was a young salesman, I worked for National Sales Trainer right out of college, and John Houser was my sales manager, and he told me something I’ve never forgotten. He said, said, How would you treat a garden that was your only source of food? Would you plant healthy crops, keep the weed that’s out, fertilize it, water it regularly, care for it, build fence around, because how would you tend to a garden that was normally sourced food? That’s how you treat your people. And Bryant Wright figured out how to do that with his team.

Jim Beach 52:50
Excellent. I can’t wait to read this one. It looks like a great one. Mason, how do we get in touch? Find out more, get a copy of the book. Boy, we burn through 22 minutes and a half second listening to you. How do we all touch?

Mason Duchatschek 53:01
My pleasure. Workforce alchemy.com is our company website. I’m available. I’m very active on LinkedIn, and Mason Duca check, D U C H A T S C H E K, and Mason, just like the jar. I’ve also, I also host the Mason Duca Check Show podcast, which is on all the major channels, the Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, all of those, and my book is on my books. All of my books are on amazon.com

Jim Beach 53:31
Fantastic, Mason. Great, great stuff. Thank you for being with us. And we’d love to have you back. You were great. Thanks a lot. It

Mason Duchatschek 53:38
was a pleasure. Thank you, Jim.

Jim Beach 53:40
We are out of time, but you know what we do. That’s right, we come back tomorrow. Be safe, take care, and go make a million dollars.