Episode 234 - The Secret to Staffing with David Dunkel
There’s a lot of chatter out there about the challenges around recruiting and retaining employees. Dave Dunkel is an expert on these issues. The recently retired CEO has been leading an employment agency for over 40 years and has been on the front lines of major changes. In 1995, he played a pivotal role in taking the company–Kforce–public, a dream of his father’s who founded the organization decades earlier. Dave helped the team adapt to the staffing changes that came with the rise of the internet. He’s adapted to cultural and generational changes, and he’s stayed faithfully dedicated to excellence throughout. He joins us today to talk about how companies can attract and retain the right people, why community is so critical for Christian entrepreneurs, and what his favorite songs to play when he was in a cover band.
All opinions expressed on this podcast, including the team and guests, are solely their opinions. Host and guests may maintain positions in the companies and securities discussed. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon as specific advice for any individual or organization.
Episode Transcript
Transcription is done by an AI software. While technology is an incredible tool to automate this process, there will be misspellings and typos that might accompany it. Please keep that in mind as you work through it.
Rusty Rueff: Welcome back, everyone, to the Faith Driven Entrepreneur podcast. I'm Rusty. You know, there's a lot of chatter out there today about the challenges around recruiting and retaining employees. Dave Dunkel is an expert on these issues. The recently retired CEO has been leading an employment agency for over 40 years and has been on the front lines of major changes. In 1995, he played a pivotal role in taking the company K Force public, a dream of his father's, who founded the organization decades earlier. Dave helped the team adapt to the staffing changes that came with the rise of the Internet. He's also adapted to cultural and generational changes, and he's stayed faithfully dedicated to excellence throughout. He joins us today to talk about how companies can attract and retain the right people, why community is so critical for Faith driven entrepreneurs, and what his favorite songs to play were when he was in a cover band. Lots to cover. Let's listen in.
Henry Kaestner: Welcome back to the Faith Driven Entrepreneur podcast. We are finding ourselves in New Hampshire. We haven't been in New Hampshire Rusty in a long, long time. This is our summer break. And you're in Rhode Island, so you're closer than I am.
Rusty Rueff: Yeah, it's not far, but I can't remember the last time we actually took the podcast virtually to New Hampshire. Have we?
Henry Kaestner: We have once with a guy named Jason Syverson. Really neat guy. Entrepreneur
Rusty Rueff: Oh that's right
Henry Kaestner: Long time ago. But God is doing amazing things all around the world. And yes, absolutely in New Hampshire. And we're talking before we went live with our special guests today about just the role that New Hampshire has played over the years. And if you're a big geopolitical buff, Bretton Woods on top of Mount Washington, played an amazing role in world history. And if you don't know what I'm talking about and you're interested, look it up and you'll see how that agreement at the end of World War Two, set for 75 years of peace and prosperity globally. And it all started in the state of New Hampshire, where Dave Dunkel is in Rusty. This is a really special guest because I don't know that there's more beyond discipleship and endeavoring to know God. I don't know that there's any more meaningful thing for an entrepreneur to wrestle with than attracting and retaining great talent. And it's your background and it most assuredly is the background of our guest today. So I am pretty fired up about today's guest.
Rusty Rueff: Yeah, I think it's going to be great. Yeah. If you're not wrestling with how to attract talent, how to retain talent, how to motivate talent, then you're probably not in business. Yeah. You know, that's you know, that's what it is, you know, and so that we can tackle that today with Dave is just going to be exciting. So why don't we jump into it?
Henry Kaestner: Indeed, indeed. Dave, welcome to the program. It's good to have you on the podcast. Thank you for joining.
David Dunkel: Thanks for having me. It's exciting to be here and excited to talk about talent.
Henry Kaestner: Cool. So let's start with the big news. As of the start of this year, you stepped down from your role as CEO of K Force, where you work since 1994, the year that I met my wife, May 12th, 1994. As a quick aside, do you still serve as a chairman there? But we want to hear about the transition as every day Saturday, What are you doing? Our audience now knows that you're in New Hampshire, at least for this season. What does retirement look like? Big vacation, sleeping until noon. Tell us.
David Dunkel: I will tell you this, that I don't know what retirement looks like because I'm not really retired. It's a little bit of a misnomer. I actually went part time and it was a part of the agreement that I had with our board in the transition and with our current CEO. So my life hasn't really changed a whole lot. My time's freed up some, but I'm still doing calls with our CEO and with some of our executives and I actually facilitate. We have a Bible study that we do online with Microsoft teams, so I'll be involved with that. I just took a whole group of people through a teaching called Abiding in the Word. And so I still get to be involved in a lot of the things that are going on. But the best part is that I'm not responsible every day for all of the CEO level duties, so my time is freed up quite a bit. But I would also say, you know, that God is had a plan for what he wanted to do through me during this time, and that's becoming more clear. I follow a fundamental rule don't commit to anything for the first six months, take some time, relax and see where God's leading. And my wife got a revelation the day that they announced it, and God said to her that I have arranged things to work out perfectly for Dave because what he's about to enter into is far more significant. And so she came in and she got this before her cup of coffee, which is kind of unusual. But she came in and share that with me. And it was really cool because I've sensed that God was actually preparing me for something new and more significant in my post CEO career. And so starting to get a glimpse for that now and the impact that we can have on the lives of people.
Henry Kaestner: So love that number of different angles. I want to get to what that might be in a second. A lot of people talk about the fact that retirement is not a concept that's in the Bible and that you're really leaning into new season and you're encouraged by the fact that you're sensing, as you process this with your bride is that it might be more significant. Tell us, as you're in that process, what are you glimpsing?
David Dunkel: Well, one of the things that I've seen is the multiplication impact of being able to help people learn how to walk with God, discern God's will, and then applying that in ministry. So I'm actively involved with C 12. I'm actually chairman of C 12 Board as well. And I know that you're familiar with C 12 the principles that we're applying with the mission and the vision of bringing the gospel to the marketplace and teaching leaders in how to literally lead their businesses that God has given them as stewards has been just a great blessing. So we spend several days a week on calls with disciple and calls and helping people work through ministry kinds of issues and business kinds of issues from a faith based perspective. So my week is still largely tied up with calls that are dealing with multiple folks or one on one calls with people and helping them to apply biblical concepts in their business.
Henry Kaestner: So for those of our listeners who do not yet know about C 12 and the odds are that you do because we talk about it quite frequently, C12 is a phenomenal ministry of getting together with your peers, men and women running businesses of the same type of size in local community over a long time doing life together and really an iron sharpening iron type of format, they're expanding to Malaysia, to Brazil, and really just have an incredible base here in the States. You probably hear us talk a lot about content and community and we have Faith Driven Entrepreneur groups. As you go through a foundations group, we then encourage those that have gone through these marks of faith driven entrepreneur to go into a permanent local community and C 12 is such a great service provider for that. So thank you for your leadership there and your service there. Incredibly valuable and something that I'd encourage all of our listeners to check out as to whether that's a fit for them. And I don't want to be presumptuous and say this fit for everybody and yet maybe it is. So thank you for that.
David Dunkel: For sure.
Rusty Rueff: I want to I want to jump in here because I don't want to lose one quick thought that you had before we get too far along this idea that and I do want to talk about community and how important it's been in your own professional career, but this idea of stopping for a moment, you know, when you're in a point of transition in your professional career and allowing God to speak, you know, I give this advice to people all the time. And what I find is that they they hurry through that time. Right. And the fact that you decided six months was your mark. And that doesn't have to be everybody's mark. Could be three months. It could be sometimes it could be a month or two weeks. But stopping and not jumping to the next thing until you hear God talk to you, I think is the nugget of wisdom that I'm taking from you in my capturing that correctly.
David Dunkel: Yeah, I think the thing for me was that I've been doing what I have been doing for 42 years. I actually was the founder of the company that actually acquired the predecessor, which my dad had been a part of founding, and this is back in 1980, and we went all the way through the 94 when we bought out the franchisor and they've taken the company public and then went through basically going from $40 million up to 1.7 billion. So I really had never had a break. I had never not been in the position where I had been the leader, the CEO, and carrying every day the burden of the organization, the people, the responsibility. So I wanted to get a sense for what that felt like and then give God the space so that I could hear the small still voice and in my quiet time, not be rushed, not be hurried, and just let him speak to me what it was that he wanted for me. And the cool thing is that one of the things he wanted was just for me to spend time with my wife. So we've had a fantastic first six months. We've just experienced time with the kids and grandkids and travel and doing ministry together and it's just been a real thrill. So God's next season also included my wife and I doing things in ministry together, which is cool.
Rusty Rueff: And it's very cool. Yeah, Sometimes I think that when I read that verse, be still and know that I'm God, you can read it and it can be very soft, right? Be still and know that I'm God. That's not how I read it. I have to hear it. Be still Rusty, just be still and know that I'm God. And sometimes I think that's you know what entrepreneurs, you know, we just we go so fast and so hard that, you know, we need somebody just to grab us and shake us and say, be still. So you talked about the importance of community and what you're now doing with C 12 and, you know, this great career that you've had. Being a CEO in the predecessor, as you said, at a company before that. Can you take a second, though, and tell us your own experiences of having other like minded leaders that helped you along the way? And are there any great stories and examples of, you know, had you not had that along on your journey, that you might have made the left hand turn when you should have made the right hand turn?
David Dunkel: Sure. Well, I could say, first of all, that I probably would have been voted least likely to succeed in my high school class if they had such a category back then. Because, you know, my career, I believe, was entirely the work of God. I believe that he knew from the beginning that there would be a come a time when he would wholly have my heart and that he began working and purpose in my life well before I even recognized it. So as my career unfolded and evolved, I developed a greater and greater thirst for knowledge of the word and fellowship and community. And it really started back in the mid-nineties, right after we had gone public, when I felt that I had a real need to go deeper in my walk and also to be around like minded believers. And that's where actually when I joined C12 and actually became a member of Bob Jacobs' Group, which was the founder of C12, and just being in the group with like minded people who had a biblical approach and a knowledge of the word and the level of accountability and the comfort to be able to share openly and transparently was absolutely critical to my own career. I didn't realize at the time what I didn't know, but what I did know was that I could go to them for wisdom and would receive that wisdom from them in lots of different ways. But I can think of one really cool example. One time we were getting ready to add corporate chaplains, and I really believe that corporate chaplains can make a huge difference in our firm in ministering to our people. It happened to be at a time when our industry was down, our stock had fallen, and I went to our general counsel and I told them, I said, Listen, I think now is the time for us to bring in corporate chaplains. I'd be a great employee system program. And he said, Dave, if you looked at the stock price, this is probably isn't the time for you to take this risk. And one of my C12 guys called me, gave me encouragement right at the time that I was having this conversation happen to be in the parking lot and gave me encouragement and wisdom. Buck Jacobs gave me encouragement. A wisdom pointed out that each branch of the government and the military all had their own chaplains. It carried the day. We ended up going and bringing in chaplains. We've now had a chaplain within K force now for, geez, I guess almost 30 years. We've seen multiple salvation as we've seen people who were at death's door be saved through supernatural means. We've seen all kinds of things happen. And I can trace it back to those times when I had the encouragement and the wisdom from the guys in our group.
Henry Kaestner: I love that corporate chaplains that were hitting on all the great partners here, C 12 and then just the concept of chaplains to include corporate chaplains of America and marketplace chaplains. Great impact on my company at Bandwidth, and I love hearing the same over a 30 year period. Chaplaincy is a just a powerful force and a lot of people give push back on something like that. At bandWith, we had a benefit for families who were adopting kids and it was $10,000. If you're going adopt a child, we'll give you $10,000 really believing that that's a way to really invest in the sanctity of life in a positive frame. And when we talked about corporate chaplaincy, we did that before chaplaincy. But as we started getting some pushback on chaplaincy, we said, look, you should feel no pressure to ever call the chaplain, just as hopefully you don't feel any pressure that you have to adopt a child. But should you ever need this benefit, it's here for you. So I love the fact that you've got that, and I love the fact that we get a chance to talk about on the program. I want to bring the conversation back to something in your subject matter expert. And we have found ourselves in a time in the marketplace called the Great Resignation. And lots of business leaders are having a hard time recruiting and retaining their employees in the season. And so as an experienced leader in this space and Talent Solutions, what can you tell us about this moment in history? You've seen a bunch of different business cycles. Have you ever seen anything like this? And then just riff on that a bit, you know, how does a Faith Driven Entrepreneur in this type of environment through this great resignation? How do we lead?
David Dunkel: Yeah, it's interesting you bring that up because that's been really, I think since the COVID rebound has been the story about the great resignation talent attracting and retaining talent. And so we have the same experience internally in attracting and retaining employees and talent for K force, but also for our customers. So we get a chance firsthand to be at the forefront of this. I would say, first of all, that that is starting to change right now. The market shift as a result of the recent market downturn is taking some of the heat, if you will, of the talent market. But at the same time, I would say to you that talent is still the biggest differentiator between one firm and another. And from my own experience, I would say that the single biggest factor in attracting and retaining talent is the culture. And culture is probably the hardest thing to build, and it's the most difficult thing to replicate. And so culture really is a reflection of the heart of the leader and the values of the firm. And so talent tends to gravitate towards the culture that it most closely identifies with and those that feel as though they're being recognized, that they're being loved, that they're being rewarded. All of those things are factors in people's making, decisions about where they want to go and spend their careers. And I think you see that now. And because you see a pretty diverse culture across the landscape of American companies, I can't speak to international, but you've got progressive organizations, you've got conservative organizations, you've got lots of different cultures that are going on. So people as a whole are going to generally tend to go towards organizations that they feel most comfortable with the culture. So the real question is how well do we present that culture and how effective are we in helping people to see what our culture is and allowing them to choose that this is a place that they want to be? Because for us as a firm, I can look at our executive team and so forth. I mean, we have so little turnover. Our executive team is 30 years, 25 years, and it's because of the fact that we've spent so much time on cultural alignment and making sure that our people recognize that they're loved, they're respected, they're rewarded, and that they align with the culture and the values. And in the end, they think that really is the most important job of the leader.
Rusty Rueff: And I hear you speaking, Dave. We're not talking about ping pong tables and extra food. And while all of those things are part of culture and how we work from home or not work from home, you're talking about culture at its core, right, At the values and principles level.
David Dunkel: Exactly. And living it out, you know, simple examples. We created a foundation internally back in the early 2000. I was praying and I asked God, I said, Father, why have you blessed me? And he said to me, he said, I have blessed you that you would be a blessing to others. I didn't recognize it at the time, but that was his covenant. And the covenant was that we have indeed been blessed to be a blessing. And so we created a foundation to help provide for people, single moms that were struggling financially, to help provide education, to work with ministries and so forth. So we put feet to the value of stewardship and living out a faith in the marketplace so that they could see what that meant. And it wasn't just fuzzy stuff, it was real. There's an orphanage that we work with very closely in Tampa called Hope Children's Home, entirely supported by donations. And our folks just rallied around this place. And to see where it is today, I mean, we've built cottages for families to be reunited, playgrounds, I mean, just are all these things. And our people got involved. And so it was an awakening for me to recognize that it was so critical for everyone to experience, everyone to touch it. It wasn't ping pong tables. It wasn't bringing golden retrievers to work. It was actually living out, loving your people and letting them experience it firsthand and then sharing that love in the communities and with the ministries and the charities that were on their hearts to serve.
Rusty Rueff: So recently I was talking to someone who's a millennial, and she was complaining about how hard it is to manage a Gen Z. And I was laughing out loud because I was like, Well, wait a minute, just that just a second ago, a hot second ago, you were the problem, you know, to the baby boomers. So we've got this multi-generational thing and it seems like we define these generations much shorter than we used to. I felt like in the old days, it was a big sign wave and now it's more like an EKG, right? Ops a new generation up, ops a new generation. They've got their different characteristics. So can you shed any light on, you know, your insights on how about hiring and retaining this multigenerational talent? Is it that different between the generations and if there are differences. You know, how do we address those differences?
David Dunkel: Yeah, I would say that, yeah, we've got categories that they come up with every few years. But I would say there are very definitely differences. Probably the most significant in the millennial population has been the breakdown of the family. When you consider that 50 to 60% of the kids that are coming out now into the workforce came out of broken families, single parent households. A lot of what we do is actually to give them some fundamental discipline and accountability and love and fundamental teaching and how to conduct themselves because they didn't grow up in a place where they had a father and a mother. They may have had one or the other. They might have had neither. So the millennial population, I think, to a large degree, has struggled with understanding their place and just having some of the fundamental values that have been taught to them, fundamental skills such as balancing a checkbook, managing money, learning how to do those things. So we actually end up parenting a lot of millennials and helping them to learn how to function as productive people in society. And at the same time, I see with the millennials that they really want to be a part of something significant. It isn't just money, and they want to be a part of a movement. They want to be a part of something where they feel like they're doing something of significance. And that's where that ties in very well with the stewardship idea, because they can see that they're doing something that's outside of themselves and they're making the difference for society and for other people. So indirectly, what they're learning is really God's design, which was to love one another as I have loved you. And they're starting to experience that and they get to witness that in practice as different ministries that we support, different organizations, that the millennial population actually gets to experience some of the things that they probably never saw at home, never experienced because they grew up in a broken home. For sure. A very different type of leadership style is required. They also want more free time, which is interesting. They want the ability to be able to have flexibility. We actually just rolled out a whole new program. That's what we call office occasional, which gives flexibility and choice to our people. That lets them decide whether they want to be mobile, whether they want to come into the office for meetings, whether they want to work from home. So it gives them much greater control over their life and where they spend their time. And so instead of measuring effort, we're measuring results and we're doing so much more effectively.
Henry Kaestner: So I love that. In a conversation on culture, you brought it to surface one of the marks of a Faith driven entrepreneurs is ministry in deed. And you hit on something that we found to be true too, and that is that a younger generation is looking for more mission, meaning and purpose. What has been your experience? You talked about this ministry that you're working with in Tampa. How do you make it so that it is the younger generation, maybe the frontline workers entry level workers idea rather than something that comes from your favorite charity? Right. So presumably you and your wife have a favorite charity and a ministry you get involved in, and yet that may not resonate as much with all the employees. How do you let them find the ministries where they feel like they've really kind of bought in rather than just working at your ministry?
David Dunkel: Yeah, it's interesting because years ago what I found is that people would come to us and say, Hey, we'd really like for K force to make a contribution to this ministry or to this charity or whatever. And so my response and our response was, rather than us giving money to something, why don't we come alongside? So show me first where you're spending your time and your talent and we'll come alongside you and what you're doing and your treasure, because it's very easy to give away the firm's money or other people's money. Where is your heart and where are you spending your time and where are you applying your talents and what are you doing with your treasure? So we actually, through our stewardship program, allow people to bring their ministries, their charities to us and what it is that they would like to do. And then we have what we call firm sponsored charities that are voted on by the people. And so groups like Best Buddies and, you know, Hope Children's Home and a bunch of different organizations which are bottom up organizations where the people themselves are the ones that actually chose them, and they are the ones who are putting their time and talent to work there. And then we come alongside them and bring some treasure to it, too.
Henry Kaestner: So I want to shift just a little bit. So that's great. That's very helpful. And I think it's very actionable. I want to shift to one other thing before we bring it back to kind of the talent solutions, because I'm just very conscious of the fact that we've got with [....], with Rusty, who has so much experience in the very trade and the practice you are. But there's one thing that I know that a lot of entrepreneurs are thinking about, and that is that you're the CEO of a publicly traded company, and going public is what is thought of as the Holy Grail for so many entrepreneurs that are out there. Right? We will know that we've really accomplished our mission. When a banker looks at us and says we're worthy of going public and then we go public and having taken bandwidth public, I know this the craziness of all of that, what that means, and yet everybody's experience is different. One of the things that comes clear is you didn't abandon your faith through that. You had chaplaincy through that. But just talk a little bit about that experience, if you can, about going public to a faith driven entrepreneurs this, listening to this and thinks that that's when they know they will have arrived. What kind of perspective can you give that younger version of you or a younger entrepreneur that thinks that that is the destination? Just riff on that.
David Dunkel: Yeah, it's is a great question. It's probably surprising to most that we never really set our heart on going about going public. It was actually a vehicle by which we could accomplish our business strategy, so it was necessary for us. It was also opportunistic timing wise for us to be able to raise the capital and do the things that we needed to do in order to accomplish our strategic plan. So going public quote on quote was always seen back in the nineties as being the Holy Grail and probably the 2000s. But today I would say that if you were to ask a lot of people about it, I don't think it has quite the same allure, if you will, that it may have in the past. And that's largely because of the regulatory environment and the things that are required of a public company anymore. Looking back after 20 something years as a public executive, I can say that early on was a lot more fun. It was simpler. The focus was on attracting and retaining talent, serving customers, driving revenue, making earnings, deploying capital. And today it's so much more than that. I'm sure that you guys are well versed in all of the things about DNA and ESG and all the things that are agendas. I think of a lot of the large capital purveyors, the fund managers and so forth. And so these have become distractions, I think, to a lot of public companies, because frankly, they're draining time and resources. But looking back on my own public company experience, it was driven entirely by the need to gain liquidity for founding shareholders to raise capital for growth. It wasn't so that we could be quote unquote public as some validation of who we were. It was just to facilitate a business model. And so for those that might be listening to this, I would just caution you to be careful and understand what your underlying motivation is for going public. If it fits the business plan and it's necessary, great. If it's really looking for validation of your model or looking at an opportunity to quote unquote get rich quick, I would say examine your heart.
Henry Kaestner: Yeah, I concur. Okay. So other question for you. So if you look back at like 1998, K force stock is around 29 bucks. Then another year or two later it's three, four or $5 and then it's gone way back up and well beyond where it had been. Bandwidth came out at 20 bucks, went 298 back down to 20. What does it look like as you watch the stock price go up and then go down? How do you divorce your identity from the stock price and what the market place values you as a leader and as this company was that process like?
David Dunkel: That's a fantastic question. It's a great question, and it's a funny one for me. Back in 98, research analysts report Dunkel is one of the best CEOs in the staffing industry. 2001 stock goes from 32 to 1.78 or two bucks. Dunkel is one of the worst CEOs in the staffing industry. And I laughed and just said, Oh man, how quickly we have fallen. And God use that time for me to purge pride out of my heart. Because, you know, I was starting to feel pretty good about myself, you know? Hey, man, look at what I did. Look at that. Wow. I took the company public, we got $2 billion market cap. You know, we're all billion in revenue. We're growing, you know, And everybody wanted to talk to me and have me speak and all this other stuff. And then poof, it was like I never existed. And I just sat there. I remember and I started laughing. I was doing my quiet time with God. And I pushed everything to the center of the table. I said, Lord, naked, I came into the world and naked. I'm going to leave it. It's all yours. What is it that you want me to do now? And I remember him saying distinctly. He says, Good, now I can use you. So it was a golden opportunity for me to examine what my true motivations were. And there was a time that I saw people as a way to gain wealth. And then I recognized that the people themselves were the wealth and that in the kingdom of God, the real treasures, the people. And so it reoriented my values back towards the people again. And I can say that from that point forward, that God's the wisdom and the blessing that followed was ultimately what led us to where we are now.
Henry Kaestner: Great word. Thank you.
Rusty Rueff: Dave. We're going to get to the Lightning Round here in a moment, but I'm not going to let you get out of here without getting a little more of your wisdom on the recruiting side. So if you can think back through the different stages of your time as a CEO to the early stage of the company, the medium stage of the company, maybe to the more advanced or more mature stage, all the way to the late stage before you retired, can you impart some wisdom on the role of the CEO, in particular in recruiting for their own organization in those different stages? Because we've got entrepreneurs who in the early days, it's just a couple of us. You know, we're all very intimately involved. And then the company grows and it gets bigger and bigger and bigger and they struggle with, well, how involved and what is my role? You know, I can't interview everybody anymore. I'd love to, but I can't. So what am I supposed to do to make this, you know, come out positively? So if you can stratify that for us, I think that'd be really helpful for our listeners.
David Dunkel: Yeah, I would say that it started originally with the people that were my direct reports, so actively involved throughout the process in the identification selection. And just as important, the development of the people that were direct reports. And then what we also called the skip level, where I would actually be involved in the identification selection and meeting with one level below the level that was directly reporting to me. I believe the culture is built from the top down. And so if I'm doing my job in the way that I'm identifying, selecting, training, developing, the people are reporting to me that they in turn will be doing the same with the people that are ultimately reporting to them. And that ripples through and becomes a part of the culture. Tenure is really important to that. I mentioned earlier that our team has largely been together for we're talking 15, 20, 25, 30 years. So we complete each other's sentences. We're bound together by the common values and culture. So the ability to replicate that and in the identification and selection of people, because the culture is so entrenched, actually tends to become self-fulfilling. So one thing I had to learn personally was I had to remake myself through the different levels that we grew as an organization because I started as employee, number one had to go all the way through serving customers, letting go of customers, developing people. Hard to do because there were certain aspects of each of those jobs that I loved and didn't want to give up. But at the same time, I recognized that for the organization to grow, it was necessary for me to grow. And then I didn't want to be the bottleneck. So releasing roles and responsibilities, giving up those things, trusting people and realizing I couldn't be in every meeting and didn't have to be in every meeting. I didn't have to be involved with every interview and didn't have to be involved with every interview. And it became pretty clear pretty quickly who were the people who were capable of identifying and selecting the talent and doing a good job of perpetuating the culture and who couldn't. And so if we look at our history, there's been a period of time of pruning where we would prune back and remove people who were not going to be a part of the culture. We're not going to be part of long term, which gave us what we called back then muscle building opportunities to grow and develop those folks who were ready to go to the next level and attract the next team.
Rusty Rueff: And did you have some kind of quality measurement? Could you look at your organization and say, okay, it's beyond me now. I'm not involved in all of the hiring intimately, but I can tell or I can tell it's not the quality of the organization that I want.
David Dunkel: Yeah, we would measure things. Turnover is a big indication. You know, bad leaders don't retain people. So we would look at things like turnover, 360 evals. We use 360. We used testing we had evaluations and performance metrics. So all of the traditional tools or tools that we use, but probably the most effective one is just the intimate knowledge of the people. So the people that reported directly to me, I knew them quite well. And it wasn't just business. It was personal. So when I would sit down with them, I talked to them about how their life is going, what's happening in their families, how are they doing health wise, in addition to the business challenges? And I still do that today. I still have script levels with people that I both disciple and also teach business principles and so forth. So I get a real good glimpse into seeing how that culture has been replicated and is being affected today and their ability to perpetuate those values.
Rusty Rueff: That's great. Okay, so we're going to move to our lightning round. We love to do this. We've got four questions for you. Feel free to say them back to us if you want to, because I'm going to give them to you quickly and then in 90 seconds or less. You know, first thing it comes to might sound like a fun game to play. You're okay with it.
David Dunkel: Love it.
Rusty Rueff: All right.
David Dunkel: Go for it.
Rusty Rueff: All right. Sounds good. So the first one is, what's one thing every business leader and entrepreneur can do to better care for their employees?
David Dunkel: The best thing that I think an entrepreneur can do to care for their employees or any business leader, is to tell them they love them. And it's got to be sincere. It's got to be genuine. It's got to be real. So check your own heart, because I think most people today are looking for love in all the wrong places. And when they see that someone sincerely cares for them, loves them, has their best interests at heart. That's the most effective thing they could do.
Rusty Rueff: And you couldn't give me a better Segway quoting another song because this one is about music. You ready? What was your favorite song to play when you were in Allman Brothers? Led Zeppelin cover band member.
David Dunkel: That's really a great question. I got to play all kinds of great seventies music and a cover band. I had a guitar teacher who was just unbelievable. He's passed away now. He's with the Lord. He's a great guy. This guy could play anything. And so when I first started learning how to play guitar, I went to him and he said to me, he goes, Well, what do you want to learn? I said, Well, I want to learn how to play Allman Brothers, Led Zeppelin [...]. And so one day he came to me. He said, You are the most relentless person I have ever seen. He goes, You've never quit because you just keep going until you get it. I am not gifted. I have not given a musical gift. I just wanted to learn and I applied myself. So the song that I always wanted to play was Stairway to Heaven. And I can't tell you how long it took me to learn it and how long it took me to actually be able to play it, especially the lead. So Jimmy Page is one of the best guitar players ever. So trying to figure out the lead on Stairway to Heaven is really hard. Best song I ever got to play live was playing Jessica the live version of the Allman Brothers, and I got to play with my guitar teacher with the dual leads, and that was just a thrill. I miss him. So we'll be playing in eternity.
Henry Kaestner: That's awesome. Have you heard the heart rendition, by the way?
David Dunkel: Yeah.
Henry Kaestner: We talked about that. So one of the great things that Rusty's had a chance to do is he is on the board of the Kennedy Center. And I think about the heart rendition of Led Zeppelin's Stairway to Heaven at the Kennedy Center. And so how cool would it be if you played the lead and and the Wilson sisters did the vocals?
David Dunkel: Well, when I was a little bit younger, I always thought Nancy was a little cute. So she's also a heck of
Henry Kaestner: A little?
David Dunkel: guitar Player. Yeah, she can also smoke that guitar. I watched them play. They did a great job on Stairway to Heaven, you know, And I wanted to do Barracuda and all the other stuff that they did, but they did a fantastic job with that. So yeah, I'm getting.
Henry Kaestner: YouTube video.
David Dunkel: Yeah. By the way, I have the double neck guitar that Jimmy had and dropping down from the 12 string down to the six string and all that stuff. I mean, I spent six months trying to figure out how to do all that stuff.
Henry Kaestner: That's super cool. Okay, we're going to stick to the Lightning Round concept here. We're going to answer two last ones real quickly. I know very little German. I'm German. My last name is German. But one of the things I know how to say is fire beer, dunkel bitte. And so I know that dunkel your last name means dark beer. I also know enough about your background to know that you like beer and that beer and the Law and Brawl logo even has something to do with your corporate history. What is your favorite beer? Do you have one beer? Because I can't have more than one beer tonight. But what's your one beer going to be? And where is it going to be?
David Dunkel: Well, I actually stopped drinking a number of years ago, and I did it as a covenant for a part of C 12. And I haven't had a drink in probably 12 years. There will be a day that I will pick up another beer. And when I do, I don't even think long grass sold anymore. But when I do, it will probably, you know, with all these American beers and stuff, I'll probably just go back to the one that I started drinking when I was 18, and that was just a regular Coors beer. I just enjoyed Coors because you.
Henry Kaestner: Oh my goodness, you can get different types of beers.
Henry Kaestner: You go.
David Dunkel: You couldn't get it on like.
Henry Kaestner: That. Smokey and the Bandit stuff.
David Dunkel: Yeah, they had a I mean, we used to have guys drive cases of it back from Colorado, so it was really good because you couldn't have it. So of course it was the best.
Henry Kaestner: If your child is 17, this is the podcast episode for you, a little Smokey and the Bandit, a little bit of Led Zeppelin, the Allman Brothers.
David Dunkel: Coors beer.
Rusty Rueff: West of the Rockies. That's if you only get it was the record.
Henry Kaestner: Okay, last question we have for you and this is the most important one, of course, is what are you feeling that God is speaking to you about through his word?
David Dunkel: Well, I'm a student of the word. I love spending time in the word, and I actually refer to it as abiding in the word. It took me a long time to understand what it meant to abide and to actually go into the presence of God and let God speak to me. We're getting ready to do a ministry event where we're teaching young adults and we're going to teaching them abiding, discerning God's will and effective prayer. And so I was in my office up here, and God showed me a book that was on my shelf and always meant to read and I had not read, and it was written by Andrew Murray's Scottish guy back in the 1800s called With Christ in the School of Prayer. And so I just finished it and completed the outline of it. And probably one of the most powerful books I read in a long time in understanding what prayer actually is, how to pray, praying in the name of Christ, and what God is actually looking for in prayer. And one of the big things that jumped out at me was that we spend an awful lot of time telling God all these things that he doesn't know while we're praying, because certainly, you know, God's misinformed and he needs to know all the things that we need him to do and all the problems that we want him to solve and all of these things. Well, we never stop long enough to say, Father, what is it that you have to say to me? And then listening and journaling and writing out what the father has to say. And so one of his final comments was Prayer is not a monologue, it's a dialog. Stop and listen and let the father speak to you.
Henry Kaestner: Great word. Great word to end on. Dave, thank you very much for your story for being with us today. And may God bless you.
David Dunkel: I appreciate what you guys are doing.