The ZIZO Effect

The Power of Accountability in Workplace Culture with Greg Stenzel

• ZIZO Technologies Inc. • Season 2 • Episode 6

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Welcome to Season 2 of The ZIZO Effect! 

This season, we’re exploring the unique insights and experiences of agents, managers, and executives in the call center industry to provide practical strategies for improving team culture and performance. 

Episode Overview: 

In this episode, we talk with Greg Stenzel, Vice President of Operations at AARS, about building accountability and engagement in teams. With over a decade of leadership experience, Greg shares his approach to creating an accountable and supportive workplace culture. Discover how accountability can enhance team success, reduce turnover, and improve productivity. Greg’s practical advice will help you bring more structure, motivation, and clear expectations to your team. 

If you're focused on team dynamics and improving workplace engagement, this episode is filled with strategies you can apply right away. 

Timestamps: 

 

Guest Information: 

Greg Stenzel - Vice President of Operations at AARS. Connect with Greg on LinkedIn. 

Engage with Us: 

Don’t forget to subscribe, like, and comment to join the conversation. Check out our other episodes and follow us on social media for updates: 


Don’t miss this episode packed with practical strategies and insights to strengthen team accountability and workplace culture. Tune in now to The ZIZO Effect; Get Ready - It's Game Time! 

Jimmy Chebat:

Welcome back to he Zizzo Effect podcast. I'm your host, jimmy Shabat, and this season we're exploring the diverse perspectives of agents, managers and executives from call centers, uncovering the valuable insights and lessons they've gained. Today we're joined by Greg Stenzel, vice President of Operations at AARS. With over a decade of experience leading high performance teams, greg discusses how fostering accountability and engagement transforms your team's performance, whether you're focused on strengthening workplace culture, reducing turnover or improving team productivity. This episode is packed with practical strategies you can implement right away. Get ready, it's game time.

Jimmy Chebat:

Welcome back, everybody, to another great episode of he Zizzo Effect podcast. My name is Jimmy Shabbat, I'm your host today, and today we have a wonderful guest joining us Greg Stenzel, the VP of Operations at AARS. Greg, thank you for joining us today. You're welcome, jimmy. Now you told me to introduce you as handsome, and what was the other term? Brilliant, brilliant, brilliant and handsome, greg. And today, greg, before we get started, why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself personally, give us a high-level view of who you are, and then a little bit about your career? All right?

Greg Stenzel:

I'm a family guy. Family is the most important thing to me out of anything else, more than my career, more than anything you could think of. So when you think of me, it's all family. I have two small boys at home, loving wife. We've been together for almost 20 years now, since high school. I have an eight-year-old boy, gregory III, who is left-handed. Fun fact I have a six-year-old who is just a crazy wild bowling ball. Love him to death. We do hockey, we hunt, just all family things. We camp all the time and do stuff like that just constant family-oriented activities and whatnot.

Greg Stenzel:

My career did a lot of things at an early young age Got a lot of firings and whatnot out of my system, calling into works, things like that, as we all probably did. I started working at NCO for American Express doing collections my first collections job. I did really well there. I was the first person to do over 2 million collections for American Express in a month in cash. I left there, 2010, 11-ish.

Greg Stenzel:

I went to work for AARS as a collector, slowly, team lead, then supervisor, division manager, general manager and then just worked my way up to vice president of all operations from there. Luckily I had a wonderful team to support me the entire time. Obviously, without your team, you know, same as your family, you're nothing right and just been going since you know, building a wonderful environment, culture, place people like to come to work. Work is not fun. Everyone has to go to work because we have to pay taxes, right? So we have to come to work and you might as well make it enjoyable as you can while you're here, because there's very few people that enjoy work. Obviously you're the exclusion, jimmy, but other than that, that's really it. That's me, just family, and I work when I can and just try to use all the free time I can for the family.

Jimmy Chebat:

So a couple of things on that. Number one I think that's what aligned us, greg. You and I are also friends away from this podcast here, and I think that core value of family first is one of the things that's kept us tight, our families, together, and it's great to hear about your background here, which is really important. And this season, on the Zitto Effect podcast, we really want trying to get different perspectives with respect to a whole host of questions that I'll go through with you today. You know, relating to culture, to engagement, to leadership. We've spoken to executives like yourself. We've spoken to agents who you used to be, you know, on the floor. We've spoken to managers who you've also been a part of in your career track. You know you've been in every level of, you know, the call center industry, and so getting your perspective is going to be great because you've seen it from every angle.

Jimmy Chebat:

I do, and I think most people try to go to work to pay for their livelihood, not necessarily just to pay taxes, but that is a byproduct of going to work, so, unfortunately. All right, let's jump right into it. Greg, I want to start. Our first topic today is going to be about culture. You mentioned it here in the intro and you say you try to create a culture because work isn't fun. It's something that people have to do to make a living. So what is your workplace culture and what does it mean to you, and how do you help instill that or build that culture?

Greg Stenzel:

So, jimmy, I think that what we do here is we have a culture of accountability and what we do is we just hold each other accountable for your job, for your actions, for the things you say, the things you do and your performance. And if everybody understands what's expected of them and find detail from the beginning. There's no, oh, I didn't know, or you know. Everybody knows what they need to do and what they're responsible for. So, as far as collectors, they're responsible for their monthly goal. Right, they have to be compliant. There's a lot of different things that they're responsible for. And if you, as long as you meet with them on a daily, weekly, monthly basis and let them know when they're steering off or they're making mistakes and correct that, they enjoy that.

Greg Stenzel:

Nobody likes being on an island not knowing if they're ever going to be saved or if they're ever going to live, and so on and so forth. So the accountability is huge. And the same thing with management, and even myself, right, we each hold each other accountable on the management level. If you're doing something wrong, we talk about it, we discuss it and we work through it as a team. That's the biggest thing is team. The culture is working together to reach one common goal. We're all here to make money.

Greg Stenzel:

Like you said, the tax joke aside, we're all here to make money to provide for the lifestyle, and if there's no accountability at any level, you're hurting everybody else. If the collectors don't make the phone calls, then the supervisors aren't getting a bonus. If the supervisors aren't getting a bonus, then return the managers or not. And same thing with compliance, all the way around. So I think here accountability is really the culture that we push for and we have here and it works wonderful. We have people that will leave and they come back and they leave and they always come back, whether it's collectors or so on and so forth, that they always end up trying to come back. And because we just try to make it as easy as possible and if everybody knows the rules, nobody can say they didn't right.

Jimmy Chebat:

Yeah, when you talk about accountability, I think you mentioned a couple of things. And there's everybody knows what's expected of them and everybody knows where they are relative to those expectations. I think that's a critical part of building a culture of accountability. Is that communication. How frequently do you provide that communication to your team so that way they do know how they're doing relative to the expectations that you set on them?

Greg Stenzel:

So on the highest level. We do meetings Mondays, Wednesdays and Friday mornings with the executive team, with the top admins, the compliance and the top management across the board, and in return, they're meeting with their supervisors daily, Every single morning they have meetings, you know, half an hour. What's the game plan for the day, what does it look like, what are our expectations? And then, in return, the supervisors and the team leads are meeting with the collectors on a daily basis, almost hourly basis, because things change right, Client requirements change, regulations change, laws change, and if they're not educated on that or just being told that right Accountability can't be there so often often, and a lot.

Jimmy Chebat:

Okay, man, that's great. I think it's really important that that communication layer is happening. It sounds like the message is cascading down from the top all the way down to the floor. Engagement is a big part of that right. It's keeping people engaged with their work. There's a statistic out there Gallup's 2023 State of the Global Workplace Report found that only 23% of employees are engaged at work, while 18% are actively disengaged. Now where that other percentage lies somewhere in the middle there, what do you do to keep your team engaged on a daily basis, outside of that daily reporting in terms of statistics or metrics or expectations?

Greg Stenzel:

So we keep engaged. We have the supervisor. So for every collector every six collectors is a supervisor, for every 12 collectors, one supervisor there's a division manager and then for every 24, there's a general manager. So we have engagement on the management level just frequently, and often we try to get people up. We do brain breaks where every 45 minutes everyone stands up and does a stretcher or silly things like that.

Greg Stenzel:

We try to get people outside. In the summertime, every time you get a payment or something like that, go outside and walk around the building. We try to make it so. That way there's value on the seat itself and they know the value is there and they want to be in that seat. They don't want to lose their seat because of the value of being in that seat. So they know that and for the most part, people really don't drift away during the day while they're working. Obviously there are people that do right and they don't want a bonus check. They're just here for their hourly wage and that's not what this industry is. This industry is for making bonus checks and stuff like that and if you're distracted throughout the day, you shouldn't be in the seat.

Jimmy Chebat:

It's a good question, real quick. Is your team all in-house, are they working remote, or is it a hybrid, a combination of the two? It's a little hybrid.

Greg Stenzel:

There's very few people that work remote, that have been here for a very long time, that are those individuals that we're talking about, those eagles or unicorns per se that are able to work from home, that you know they're self-motivated because they need the money.

Jimmy Chebat:

Yeah, I think you know a lot of top performers are intrinsically motivated and don't necessarily need a lot of push. Yeah, but, as you said, they're unicorns. They're not, they're far few between. What do you do? What strategies do you use to identify and minimize distraction? You mentioned distractions. Obviously, people have cell phones now Everybody has a cell phone. It's been around for a while, but in the past they used to be strictly enforced in terms of you can't have it on your desk. Now, with remote work, it's in their pockets and you can't really enforce it that much, and so therefore, a lot of people offices don't actually reinforce it at work and it's a big distraction. So what are you doing to identify those distractions and how do you minimize those?

Greg Stenzel:

So the cell phones we do have a cell phone policy. No cell phones on the floor. If you hit goal, if you're a goal hitter, you're doing your job. You can have your cell phone on your pocket. It's not allowed to be out because regulations and client restrictions and whatnot. So it's not like they're at their desk texting, but they can have it in their pocket.

Greg Stenzel:

We actually have a pouch where, when you walk right in the door, labeled and numbered, everybody has their own individual number and they know they got to put their phone in there right away. We limit that. We also have restrictions as far as websites, certain keywords that they're unable to look up. People can't go on Zillow and Facebook and all that other stuff just to waste random time. No one's downloading cat pictures for their profile or whatever you want to do and virusing up computers. So there's restrictions as far as that goes. And the cell phones we just it's zero tolerance if you're not performing right. If you have a child at school, you can give them HR's number, you can give them the direct line and we understand things like that. It's not like we're cruel or unusable, but there's regulations that everybody has to follow, except for the top performers, Of course.

Jimmy Chebat:

So it's a great incentive. I mean no-transcript actually part of people's culture where you get that mental break right, when you can go and kind of reward yourself with maybe five minutes on your social feed or playing a game on your phone or just going outside having a smoke. Is that built into your culture at all to just kind of give people that mental break?

Greg Stenzel:

It is so. We established something a while back called the Platinum Club and it's based for goal hitters, right. It's based for people that do well and they perform. If you come to work every day not even every day if you come to work and you hit your budget, you hit your numbers you're allowed to take a cigarette break every 45 minutes. You can go outside, have your ciggy come back in, whatever right. I used to smoke cigarettes. I know what it was like. I don't anymore. Since my son was born. It was great going outside every 45 minutes to have that smoke right minutes to have that smoke right. People love that. Go outside, check your cell phone real quick, whatever game you're playing, whatever you want to do. So we try to promote that for people that are doing well as far as being able to have that luxury or freedom to go have a smoke whenever you want, let's shift gears and talk a little bit about leadership.

Jimmy Chebat:

There's a report on LinkedIn for LinkedIn Learning that says that 94% of employees said they would stay at a company longer if it invested in their learning and development. How much do you guys invest in the ongoing development of your team?

Greg Stenzel:

So right now we do daily, weekly, monthly training as far as regulations, fdcpa, things like that. Where we have to, we do do up training and development as far as collection skills for skip tracing, location information, finding things like that, as far as being able to dial the phones and how to use your time management per se. Like you know, while you're skip tracing, your phone should be ringing and basic time management is huge for entry-level collectors, I believe, because they get lost in the sauce right when they're looking at people's houses and pictures and they want to sit there and look at their backyards and things like that. And it's basically just educating them on time management that we do a lot of here to try to make sure that they're getting the biggest bang for their buck, for their time, because the time is the most valuable thing that you have right. So to answer, I would say that we do that.

Greg Stenzel:

We tried to do a tuition reimbursement program. A couple people were interested. We ran down the route. A couple people actually qualified for it and received it, but in the years there was only about two people that ever really were interested and did that, so it kind of faded away.

Jimmy Chebat:

You've never heard of the saying people don't quit companies, they quit leaders. You've never heard of the saying people don't quit companies, they quit leaders. Yep, how much do you invest in your leadership training and what sort of leadership styles do you guys implement and do you look for in an individual who's going to be leading, whether it's a supervisor or a manager or somebody who's being promoted throughout the ranks?

Greg Stenzel:

Luckily we haven't had to look. Our leadership has been pretty solid for a very long time. Like I said, I've been with the company for 14 years, rose my way up. The director of operations has been here for about seven, eight years now. Supervisors and managers we promote from within. They've all been collectors, they've all went through the ranks. So they've all been here during the development stages of their careers. They've all bought their first houses with us, their first cars. They got married with us. They've had children with us.

Greg Stenzel:

So we have an intimate relationship with the leadership and, in return, the collectors and so on and so forth beneath them, because they grew their relationship, having that experience and having us be intimate with them as far as helping with houses and children and so on and so forth. So in return now they're using those same experiences that they had with the people coming up from them. So you know, you're very right, it's definitely a hundred percent leadership. And back to the culture thing. You know we go heavy on that. We want people to be here. Our average collector has been here for about four and a half five years. That's average, right. I've had people that have collectors that have been here longer than me, collectors that have been here with me that I brought from NCO and whatnot. So we do very well retaining individuals.

Jimmy Chebat:

I want to come back to that in a minute, but I want to stay on the leadership for a second and I want to ask you a question what do you believe are the key qualities of a good leader?

Greg Stenzel:

Empathy, being able to relate with the individuals that they are leading. If you have a fifth generation rich kid coming into our area trying to teach people how to be and what they should do, no one's going to respect that individual just because of the world, as you say now. Today, I believe it's being able to relate to the individuals that you're leading, being able to be a leader in the trenches, with them doing the job. Don't expect people to do it without you doing it as well. Show them how to do the job, don't just tell them that's huge for us here.

Jimmy Chebat:

How do you strive personally to embody these qualities in your role?

Greg Stenzel:

daily, I mean every day I self-educate as far as reading books. When we meet with the staff on the Mondays, wednesdays and Fridays, how we do it is it's never Greg said or Greg wants this. We vote on everything. If we want to make a change or if we want to implement something and I think it's great, and seven other people say no, this is dumb, we don't do it. You know what I mean. There's no iron fist here whatsoever. Everybody has a say. Everybody's allowed to have a say. People can tell me that I'm wrong and I go. I might be wrong. I don't get upset. I don't have ego. There's nothing like that involved with my leadership qualities and skills. So it works and it works well.

Jimmy Chebat:

Yeah, the democratic process. Yeah, I've always kind of been. That's debatable, right. I think it's great when you can get consensus, but at some point from a leadership this is my personal opinion that to me it's okay to debate things and not agree, but when you come to a consensus, it's the commitment that you have to have from everybody to move forward. You mentioned books. You read a lot of books. Give us a recommendation for a book to our audience. What book are you reading now, or what was the last book that you read?

Greg Stenzel:

The Four Disciplines of Execution is my all-time favorite business book. I might read it at least once a year. I actually listen to it while I'm driving. Good to Great is Wonderful Surrounded by Idiots is actually a book that I just recently read that is surprisingly good and it's not what you think it is. It was recommended to a good friend of mine, dave Dave Bordieri. You know him. He recommended the book and it's fantastic. I do recommend that to everybody. But 4DX is a great book for business as long as you can implement the things that it's talking about and not just go oh yeah, that's a great idea and then forget about it?

Jimmy Chebat:

Yeah, no, I think it's important to obviously continue to grow. We have one of our core values here is grow or die, because the world around you is changing If you're not evolving with it, you know, and not just with the world, but with the people around you. Right, I think you all have to grow together. That's what makes great partnerships, whether it's a personal relationship or a business relationship. You have to be growing in the same direction.

Jimmy Chebat:

Going back to your tenured employees, you say, on average and this is something that I hear a lot it's when we're talking to prospects in selling Zizzo, and we say, hey, we've got a great culture here, we have a lot of tenure and you've got people here on average four to five years. And then when you dig a little bit deeper, they say, well, it's the people who we just hired that are quitting within the first 90 days. So I always ask the question are you including those people in the average and do you have that? And I'm not suggesting that you have that issue, but we've seen a lot of people it's like, hey, yeah, the people who have been here for a while, they stay, they love the culture, they get in, they fit, but the new hires. It's those new hires. They come out of training and they're quitting within the first week or two weeks or whatever. Is that an issue within your organization?

Greg Stenzel:

I wouldn't say an issue, but it's definitely there. I mean collections is not for everybody. Sitting at a desk all day long pounding the phones and having people emotionally abuse you is is not for everybody it's. It's not. Some people just can't handle it. But I explained it to people. Like I have air in the summer, I have heat in the winter, I don't have to shovel elephant poop, but you know what I mean. Like there's worse jobs, right. Like and you either get it or you don't kind of like a lot of different jobs.

Greg Stenzel:

Some people don't have the ability to communicate effectively with other individuals to reach a common goal. Some people just don't understand, don't understand that it's all about educating the consumers and it's about working with them to help them. And some collectors, just newer people, you know they don't understand that and we try our best to teach them, educate them as far as empathy and videos and hammering home and all that stuff, and you and some people truly just don't get it. So, to answer it directly yeah, I mean new hires. It is a revolving door, but once somebody comes in and they stick and they get it and they understand the job, they never leave because somebody else can go.

Greg Stenzel:

I'll give you a dollar more, $2 more. Everybody that's watching this knows the industry is a dollar or two more right. That's what everybody always says and people don't leave that here because they're not micromanaged, they're not docked when they go to their bathroom breaks, they're not yelled in the parking lot, they don't get their files open and post-date storm when they call in on sick or something like that. So we do a lot of different things here that most people don't to keep those people once they're in the door. But new people, there is a lot of turnaround there?

Jimmy Chebat:

Yeah, and you're not alone. It is a ubiquitous problem or challenge in the modern age. You can get people in the door with more money, but it's not going to keep them there. And you've got to build a strong culture that's going to keep them there. And the people who have done that, bouncing around, realize that and say the dollar more doesn't, it doesn't interest me, it's not attracting me, Correct? There's usually two reasons in this space. You know whether it's just not the job for you and they quit pretty early. Or you know, over a period of time they experience burnout, right, and it's just like I can't do this anymore. It's just weighing too much on me. There's been a recent study in the American Psychological Association that found that 76% of workers said that workplace stress affects their mental health, leading to anxiety or depression. So it was kind of part of the burnout. What do you do to kind of recognize and address mental health issues within your team? What do you?

Greg Stenzel:

do to kind of recognize and address mental health issues within your team. So a big thing we will. First off, we do 37 and a half hour work weeks and if you're a goal hitter we pay you for the 40. So we try to give those people, you know, a little bit additional help there too as well, because they take care of us, so we take care of them. Every month you hit your goal, you get two free hours of BTO or PTO, however Joanne words it, she'll yell at me for using the wrong word. So they get that too as well.

Greg Stenzel:

We also understand that the people that have been here very long, they need breaks, right. So we promote vacations. Most collection agencies they're very against people taking time off because if you're not on the phone you're not making money. We promote it. Our best hitters we try to take them out golfing. We try to give them vacations. We try to give them time off. We raffle off a lot of vacations, weekend stays, concert tickets you know Gray Wolf Lodge, things like that where we give it away all the time so they can spend that family time. And when they win, we try to make them go during the week too, not use their weekend right, because their weekend's a time with the family to you know. So we try to promote them going during the week and we just work with people.

Greg Stenzel:

If I have a woman I won't say her name, but but she works here and she does suffer from a lot of mental health issues and we give her as much time as she needs. Like you know, you want to take one day off a week. Take that day off a week like. Don't have work become an additional stress, like life is hard. Right, life is really hard with, especially nowadays, I mean the loaf of bread, milk, you know whatever housing has doubled in the past two years. Life is tough.

Greg Stenzel:

So here we try to make it as easy as we can. You need time off. Don't stress about work. You know you do a very. You hit a 17 fee every month. I'm gonna pay you for that day. You know we're not gonna dock you, we're not gonna do you need to go outside for two hours and cry in your car. Go, go ahead. You know what I mean. It's okay, like we support you and I'm not saying that to be funny or but it's the truth. You know, sometimes people need to let stuff out and that's a good way to let it out. So we just work with the individual to figure out their needs and to keep going back. People feel comfortable. Collectors feel comfortable coming into my office and saying, hey, greg, this is what's going on in my life, I need your help. They feel comfortable going to the directors and the and the supervisors and HR and even compliance. People confide in them for you know personal things and mental health issues. So we just were open and we worked with people.

Jimmy Chebat:

That's got it. I got to say you know it's a recent shift, right, and you know, growing up, when you know we were coming up and you know we're on that lower end, we would never go to our bosses and talk anything personal. They'd laugh at us and say, get the hell out of my office and go back to work. But it is something I've been hearing a lot more and a lot of people that we've interviewed on this podcast have said similar things creating that safe space, right, Getting personal with people, getting to know them on a personal level and being empathetic to their needs.

Jimmy Chebat:

Back in the days, people were known by what they did for a living. You were known by your job, your career. So you were a doctor, you were a lawyer, you were a mailman, whatever it is. That's who defined what you are. And then I think, coming up through our generation, there's a lot more of that work-life balance. I'm not going to be defined by what I do, but you know that is I work to live, not live to work.

Jimmy Chebat:

But this new shift is the work-life integration I believe, where you know part of who you are is what you do, but not necessarily the job or the task, the culture, right being a family and I think that seems to be a trending thing is making sure that people feel like you know.

Jimmy Chebat:

If they need that day, you know they can talk to you about it, they can tell you and you're going to be empathetic and you're going to understand, and you know you don't want work to be a stress, you want it to be a benefit and so I think it's great what you guys are doing. Quick question on burnout. One more question you guys seem to have a lot in place, which I love giving away things, activities to get away from work, and then having them do those activities during the work week and then paying them while they're doing those activities. I think those are three critical things that you guys put together that I think are really important for people to understand and maybe a takeaway that our audience could bring back to their organizations how do you recognize, what do you do to recognize burnout or where you're seeing somebody does need that break. Do they just come to you? Is it all the time they come to you, or some people are just maybe like you have to go to them?

Greg Stenzel:

There's many different scenarios. It's kind of just like a spidey sense. You know what I mean. You can see somebody that you see every single day of your life. They're coming in, their hair's not done or their collars popped up like this. There's little indications that'll tell you whether or not somebody's having a bad day, a bad time, or they're just stressed out.

Greg Stenzel:

When you're with somebody or see somebody every single day, you know, you know when something's wrong and you know we'll pull people in or HR will pull them in and go hey, what's going on? We'll help you talk to us, because sometimes people do try to get through you know, their personal stuff on their own. They do try to just keep it all inside, like Ned Flanders, until it just blows up one day. And we try to prevent that. Because what happens when they blow up? Then they're not coming to work, then they're not paying their bills, then their life is just bad. And we've spent tons of time and money training and developing these individuals and the organization has lost that too. So we look for things we definitely do, especially with the daily and weekly meetings that the team leads and supervisors have with the individual.

Jimmy Chebat:

You I want to shift gears. One last topic, and I don't know if our producers told you, but we have a game at the end here that we're going to play. It's me versus you. I know you're a competitive dude, we played golf together, so this is going to be a trivia one. So we're going to test your, your wiliness and your brain for trivia. But before we get into that, well, it's actually somewhat related compensation versus incentives, right, and actually there's three parts to this. Right, there's compensation I mean you're hourly right Then you have bonuses and then you have incentives, which are? Incentives are like that gravy on top where you're doing those contests, those giveaways. Where do you see the importance? If you were to distribute 100% across those three categories in terms of level of importance, how would you distribute that?

Greg Stenzel:

For me, from an executive standpoint, it's going to be a lot different than an entry-level collector or even a management standpoint or director. I want all three.

Jimmy Chebat:

So that's a great point. Give it to me first from your perspective right now, and then take us back to when you were an agent, and then from a manager.

Greg Stenzel:

So, from my perspective, I think that 25 should be your hourly rate as far as being a collector right, especially in this day and age with minimum wage being so high and whatnot. 50% should be your compensation as far as bonus structure and whatnot. If you're doing well, you need to be heavily compensated, right? Maybe even a little more than 50%, maybe even 55, 60%, right, because that's where everybody makes their money. You know what I mean Collectors who are hitting higher goals and collecting more money. Everybody wins, the clients wins, they win, we win, the state and government win because they get more tax money, right, everybody wins. And then the additional for incentives, because you need that to keep people going throughout the day.

Greg Stenzel:

A collector level they're going to say you know 75% of their hourly rate. Then you know, trickle in the rest between compensation and incentives. They don't really care, right. But not every collector, your average collector, your best collectors, are going to want the compensation, the bonus, because they know that's where the real money is. If you do the math and you break down the amount you get paid per dollar and then you get paid what your goal increases for that dollar. If you hit numbers, you make more money in the bonus. Everybody knows that we can all do simple math and then the in my opinion, the directors and whatnot. They want more money for incentives because they enjoy motivating the staff, they enjoy engaging with the staff, they enjoy, um, you know, getting them riled up and it's a tool for them. Incentives is a tool for for management and directors to be able to motivate and stimulate the staff so executive level 25, 50, 25.

Jimmy Chebat:

Agent 75. And then you can cut it up however you want between bonus and incentives, and then manager, I'd say 25, 25, 50. So most of it in the incentives. They want to be able to play with that money.

Greg Stenzel:

Awesome, and they want the freedom to be able to do what they want with that money. They don't want to be micromanaged, they don't want to be given you know here. This is how you're allowed to spend this money. That's their budget. They need to be able to spend how they want.

Jimmy Chebat:

Give them some autonomy, got it. So how do you guys currently do it? Is it individualized? Is it just same policy for everybody? What are you guys doing now?

Greg Stenzel:

As far as.

Jimmy Chebat:

Yeah, in terms of where where you allocate your funds. In terms of where you're paying, maybe it's not allocation. Sometimes you don't have a choice.

Greg Stenzel:

If people are earning big bonuses, a lot more money to bonuses I would say based upon like EBITDA or keep or whatever the incentives is lower, right, because you know you're not paying. You know 50, $60,000 a month in incentives. You're paying like two or three, so that would be lower in the real aspect of it. Bonus is probably about 35%, 40% and then the rest would be payroll. Any questions for me? No, not really. I mean you've answered pretty much everything we've had. Questions that I may have for you is why should I start using ZIZO today?

Jimmy Chebat:

Yeah, that's right, you guys are not a ZIZO user and so one that we're eager to get out of our platform. So, like your managers and your directors, I don't think it should be weighed 50% importance. But I do feel that ZIZO taps into natural human behavior right, and nobody's exempt from it. It's where you get that extrinsic motivation and you build that engagement tool and you create an opportunity for people to constantly be earning micro rewards, so that they're not looking at this job as tedious, as repeated tasks, but more of an opportunity to win and to have healthy competition. And where it's inclusive, where 100% participation between you know. So your incentive budget is not just going to your top performers, it's going to everybody and everybody has a chance to earn. So that fairness and inclusivity.

Jimmy Chebat:

And also I would say one more thing you had said it earlier is that importance of that feedback loop, that real time feedback loop getting people understanding what is expected of them, where they are relative to their expectations, where they are relative to their peers, doing that in as close to real time as possible, having to go and pull reports and analyze those reports and sit down with each individual to be able to communicate it. That's happening directly with the end user. So again, greg, we'd love to sit down with you and show you the platform, all the latest changes, but it's nice to hear somebody's perspective who's not on our platform and doing things their own way, which aligns with our goals as an organization here at ZIZO. So, all right, without further ado, I think we're going to have Jill. So we've got Jill and Emma as our producers of the show. Does Jimmy already know the answers?

Jill Fecher:

No.

Jimmy Chebat:

I'm just really good and smart.

Greg Stenzel:

So, I'm going to know them all, but I don't know them ahead of time. Just remember, I'm a potential customer.

Jimmy Chebat:

All right, we're going to let him win. So if you do win, it's because I let you. If you don't, it's because, I All right, Jill take us away.

Jill Fecher:

What are elephant tusks made of?

Jimmy Chebat:

Ivy. I said Ivy, we'll give it to Greg.

Greg Stenzel:

That's the first time that's ever happened. Just so anybody knows you have a putt that's this big, you have to putt that putt. Just so we're on the same page.

Jimmy Chebat:

Who is the main character in the musical Wicked Wicked Dorothy? I don't remember her name. I have seen it. It was good.

Jill Fecher:

Who sings the song Bad Romance?

Greg Stenzel:

Lady Gaga.

Jill Fecher:

Who is the author behind the?

Jimmy Chebat:

children's book Cat in the Hat, dr Seuss. Good job, greg.

Jill Fecher:

Which two primary colors can be mixed to make purple?

Jimmy Chebat:

Red and blue. I was going to give you that one Red and blue.

Jill Fecher:

Was Alexander Hamilton, ever president of the United States.

Jimmy Chebat:

Yes, no, I won't take that one by default.

Jill Fecher:

So fill in the blank. Roses are red, pilots are blue. What is the chemical symbol for oxygen? Oh, oh two how many laws of motion did sir isaac newton count?

Jimmy Chebat:

one, three oh oh, bonnet, but I will let him win this game right now if he, isaac Newton, count One, three Boom Hold on, hold on, bone, it Hold on. I will let him win this game right now if he can name all three. Jimmy, if you promise to.

Greg Stenzel:

Venmo me $5,000 right now. I will name all three.

Jimmy Chebat:

No, you're looking him up while we're talking. Can you name them?

Greg Stenzel:

No, yeah, I can no no.

Jill Fecher:

How many months of the year have 31 days?

Greg Stenzel:

All of them. Oh, that's 28. Yeah. I'm going to say six 30 days has November, April, June and September. So I said six.

Jill Fecher:

No, it's more than six, it's eight, who is the longest reigning monarch of England, ruling from 1952 until their death in 2022?.

Jimmy Chebat:

Queen Elizabeth II.

Jill Fecher:

How many countries are in Africa. And I will say let's do closest to the number.

Jimmy Chebat:

I say 40. 23.

Jill Fecher:

It was 54, so Jimmy got that one. How many colors are there in the rainbow?

Jimmy Chebat:

Four, five, seven. I tried to give it to you, greg. I tried really hard to give it to you. According to my telly, jimmy has four. We're going to give the victory to Greg. We're going to send him a prize here. You'll see it in the mail here shortly. But we're going to give the victory to Greg. We're going to send him a prize here. You'll see it in the mail here shortly. But we're going to wrap up here.

Jimmy Chebat:

I want to thank you, greg, for being a guest on the ZIZO Effect podcast. I want to thank our audience for joining us today and tune in next time. As you know, on the ZIZO Effect podcast it's always game time. That's a wrap on today's episode of the ZIZO Effect podcast. A big thank you to Greg Stenzel for sharing his expertise on how accountability and engagement can lead to better team performance and stronger workplace culture. Today's conversation emphasized the importance of regular feedback, clear expectations and fostering a supportive, results-driven environment. These strategies are key to reducing turnover and boosting productivity. And think about your own team. Consider how you can apply these actionable insights to drive results. Be sure to subscribe so you don't miss future episodes featuring leaders from across the industry. Get ready, it's game time.

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Andrew Reimers

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Jimmy Chebat

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