Daniel McDonald

▶0:00IntroBut when, when somewhere along the way it got changed to people operations, listen, I worked in operations for most of my career. It was people operations is an oxymoron

▶0:16HostAll right. Welcome to the Built by People podcast, Dan. Uh, we're excited to have you on. Uh, so Dan spent years in franchise operations, including a stretch as regional vice president of corporate and franchise operations at Pearl Vision. He's now chief of staff and head of HR at Spartan, supporting over 450 employees globally. And last year he published a book called Remember Your Why. Achieve. So yeah, Dan, tell me a little bit more about what prompted you to write a book and what's the— yeah, explain a little more about Remember Your Why.

▶0:56GuestSo, you know, thanks, Kimball. You know, it, it started out as I just wanted to put down thoughts and memories and, and kind of like the path of how I got to where I am today and, and what built me into the person I've become. It was meant to be just something I was going to share with my wife and my son. That's all it was meant to be. I gave my wife the first draft of it and she gave it back to me and she goes, well, we have some work to do because you're not naturally a writer. So, you know, and she used to be an educator, so she's, you know, I take that really with a grain of salt because she, She's read enough stuff in her time. Uh, but she goes, more people need to hear this and see this. She goes, this isn't just you talking about you. This people can relate to this. She goes, I know people can relate to this. Uh, so then we went back and started writing it in a way that it not only talked about what I've, what my life has been like growing up, you know, things that, things I've done in my life. but also what did I learn from that or what caused it type of a thing. And that's why as we go through it, you know, every chapter is a little bit different and, you know, go back to the very beginning of it and how it's like, well, you know what, you know, people always talk about their, people talk about their why all the time. I hear it all the time and they act as if it's one thing. Like I only have one why in my life and it's like, But do you really? Because I have a why for my, my family. I have a why for my job. I have a why for the stuff I do outside of my job. And sometimes I, one of them is missing. Like one of them has gone sideways a little bit, but the other ones have kept me on track. And not very often have I met somebody that every part of their life is just in sync. Something is usually off. And depending upon how big, how much, how far it's off, it throws them sideways too. And so, so that, that's, that's where it came out. I mean, it literally was never, it was never meant to be a book. It was never meant to be put in front of anybody except for my immediate family. And I've, I have no intentions of it ever being a, you know, something that people have on their bookshelves all over the world. That's, that's never been the thing. Most of the people who have bought it know me personally. And then they've read it and they've come back and said, yeah, I've read this thing 3 times now because every time I read it, I highlight something different or a different part of it means something to me. and that The first time somebody said that to me, it caught me completely off guard because my wife was right, which she usually is. And she's like, people can relate to this. And that's, and again, that's what, that's what it's turned into be is, you know, if somebody can take something away from it and it just helps them focus a little bit on whether it can, whether it's, you know, I I know people who, you know, when they lose their job, it's really easy to get down really quickly. Um, most people I talk to 6 months later, they look back and go, man, I could still be there. And they don't mean it in a good way. They mean it like, I'm so glad I'm no longer there. Like they did me a favor. I did not see it at the time. But they did me a favor because look what I found. Look, look at this career. This, I want to open my own business, you know, being in the franchise world, that's how we got a lot of our franchisees was something happened, massive layoff, 50,000 employees at a major company. And that's where we get franchisees from. And now they own 3, 4, whatever it is, whether it's a restaurant or you know, repair company, whatever it is. And their life is so much better and they never would've even considered doing that had they not lost their job.

▶5:05HostYeah. Wow. No, I, I'm like, I have so many follow-up questions to that. And one of the ones I, I had thought of was In writing this book, most times whenever I'm like giving a lesson at church or preparing a training here at work, I tend to get more out of that preparation than what I could ever relate to the people I'm trying to teach. How has writing this book helped you specifically?

▶5:34GuestSo what it does for me, and it, and it's, and I'm, I'm one of those people who have, I've read the book now probably 5 or 6 times just since last year. Um, but not the entire book. Like if I've got something going on in my life and like health-wise, probably a year ago, well, it was a little about a year ago, I went with a group of people and we summited Kilimanjaro. When I came down off the mountain, I'm like, yes, I summited Kilimanjaro, but I am so unhealthy. I'm not fit. something has to change. I lost I lost my sight of that why. I lost focus on that. And I knew I was going to go back up there this September. So that helped me focus on that. But by focusing on that, it also helped me focus on my family because while focusing on my health, it also focused on the health of my family. And it just, that, that's what I, again, that's why when I say they're not, they're not individual, they really do work together. You know, so this year when we came off of Kilimanjaro, yes, I was tired. Yes, I was sore, but I was ready to go right back and do it again. I mean, it was a whole different way of looking at things. I didn't have to, you know, all but crawl to the bus to go back to the hotel like I did last year. So, you know, that kind of thing, and it helps with work. Quite often. we work in a very, it's a very intense business working at Spartan Race. Uh, we have a lot going on during the season. There's a lot of balls up in the air. You know, we've got 3 events going on on a weekend. You know, you can imagine being in, in HR when you've got employees on site and employees traveling and all kinds of craziness going on all over the world. And every now and then, I need to go do an actual race with friends and, and some of the charities I work with to stop and reset. And then I remember why I do this. When I see an adaptive athlete in a wheelchair get stood up out of their wheelchair to do the fire jump with two people who have their arm, you know, their arms around their shoulders and they get to the fire jump and they, they step over the fire jump together and then get back in the wheelchair and cross the finish line. It's like, That's why we do this. Every now and then you forget in the day-to-day grind. And I, and I don't think that's any different in almost any other company. you know, I, I looked when I worked for Sport Clips and, you know, the person who, you know, came in for their haircut and, you know, and, and just, you know, felt down about themselves and one of the stylists caught onto that and it's like, Well, let's do something wild. Like, what have you always wanted to do that you didn't dare do? Because right now you're, you're, you're, you're so down in your— I was like, you're so down anyways, let's go crazy. And then they leave with this huge smile on their face and confidence that they didn't have when they walked in the door. That stylist all of a sudden remembers exactly why they do a job that sometimes is 10 hours on your feet. And not a whole lot of thank yous and not a whole lot of appreciation, but then that one person changes everything.

▶8:44HostYeah, I love that. So how, uh, in managing people At the size of company you guys are at, how do you maintain such a good culture of like-minded people?

▶8:58GuestIt starts with the interview and who we look at too, right? So when we when we look to hire somebody for onsite, so not so much in our support teams that are scattered all over the United States. We do have an office in Boston and an office in Florida, but most of our support works remote. But those people onsite, we have a pretty set program that, you know, when I, when I took over HR 3 years ago, the person who did the hiring for the onsite teams, wasn't part of the onsite teams. It was a supervisor who never ever worked onsite. They were just overall of the team that we call them the build crew. So it's people who put our obstacles together and that person hired and then put them on a team. Now the actual construction manager for that team, the actual foreman for that team, do all the interviewing. And they decide who they're going to bring on to their team of 7 people. That's a small team. That's a small family that have to travel the country together for 12 to 14 events a year. They're on the road or they're on site for 10, up to 10 to 12 days at a time. You know, they're usually sharing a room. So, you know, you got two, the two queen-size beds in a hotel room for 10 days, and then you work with the person all day. There's long days on event weekends. They have to, they got to fit. Um, so we do, we truly use what's kind of the unwritten rule in a lot of jobs, the probationary period, but we truly use it and we tell the person up front, like, listen, you will be assigned to this team for 3 events. If during those 3 events, anywhere in those 3 events, you're like, I know you guys told me this was going to be hard physical work and long days. I did not think you were this serious about it. No hard feelings. This isn't for everybody. We have people who last one event. We have people who have been here for 10 years on the onsite teams year in and year out. So, and there's everybody in between. Um, our average tenure of our team on the ground is right around 4 years. And I believe this year here, and we started during last year, but this year it's, it's all we've done is they're the ones that do the hiring. They're the ones who, who fill those roles in, you know, our festival manager for a team hires the festival support and the festival lead person. Why? Because they're going to have to work with them. And if they don't find the right person, they're the ones doing all of the work running around while they're trying to be a leader too. they don't have time to do that. So I believe that's made the big, biggest difference to the fact that we get teams that truly get along. Now, the other great part about it is, is all of our event directors that overlook all these teams, they all know each other. They all came up through the company together at different, different levels and different times, but here they are as event directors. So all of a sudden, you know, Kimball, you go, hey, we hired this build crew person, hard worker, does a great job. The personality does not fit our team. Does anybody, by the way, this is the, this is the personality of this person. You know, they're a little type, whatever, type A, they're a little bit this or a little bit that. Have a conversation with them though, because I think they'll fit on your team. And we have saved 4 employees this year that in the past we just would've let 'em go. It's like, listen, they're not all still with us at the end of the year and they'll be brought back next year. It's just, we, we found the right team and, and that wasn't, that wasn't my team that came up with That was one of, one of the event directors went, Spartan needs this person. This person just can't work on our team. Our team has a very unique personality that gets the job done, but he doesn't fit the personality. Yeah. So, so that, that, that's probably the best way we do it. And then when it comes to the, the service people like myself that, you know, that we provide support for the, for the teams out there, the interview process, we're pretty clear on that very first interview. This job is not for everybody. This, our founder and CEO is still in the office every single day. And if he's not, he's somewhere in the world doing something with the company to promote the company, to do, to add one more thing to what we do today. So super involved. That is not for everybody. It is not for everybody to have that intensity. And if you've never worked with an entrepreneurial person or a founder, and the fact that there's going to be at least 20 new ideas today that come out of his head, knowing that we can't do all 20, probably can't do any of them today, but he's going to give you all 20 and you have to filter those out really quickly and figure out which ones are usable and feasible. It's not for everybody, you know, it's, you know, it can drive a marketing person crazy because He's got 20 ideas for marketing and a new person wanting to make sure that the CEO or the person who pursues the CEO is happy, tries to do all 20. You can't do, you know, if everything is a priority, then nothing's a priority. So if everything's super, super important and has to get done, none of them are going to get done at the level you normally would have given 2 things. Right. so we try to make that really clear during the interview process. It's like, We're okay if after this interview you send us an email back that says, I'm, thank you for your time, but I'm, I'm not looking to go any further in the interview process because that saves us a lot of time. And I, you know, I truly wish more companies would do that. I think more companies would have lower turnover. I think more companies would have people who understand what they may have got themselves into. Uh, that it's going to, you know, we're an event company that we're, All of our events are on the weekend. If you come here as a support person and think you're not going to work hours on the weekend, you joined the wrong company. And I'd like you not to join our company if that's how you, if you come in. I don't know how many finance teams at other companies answer phones on the weekend. Ours do.

▶15:21HostProbably not very many.

▶15:23GuestRight? Ours do. If something comes up and they need, hey, we need approval for a $4,000 check to write a check to to the, the whatever person, because we need this to be done. And it is Friday night at 10 o'clock, and our event is tomorrow morning. And we can't do it without this check written. Somebody has to approve it. So, and I've seen our chief financial officer on a chat on a Saturday morning, given approval for something so we can make sure that the show goes on. She knew that coming into it. She knew coming into it, this is not a Monday through Friday, 9 to 5 job.

▶15:57HostYeah, man, it seems like too, managing that many moving parts and that many people and high expectation, a lot of discipline. how, what advice would you give someone, another HR person, to maintain the machine, to maintain the machine as is and keep that going? What advice would you give someone in a similar position as yours? Yeah.

▶16:24GuestSo this is going to seem really simplified when I say it, but it's in, it's in the title. It's human resources. This department is the resource for our humans. Period. That's it. If, if every human resource department and team in any company would go back to the days of realizing that your reason for being there is to be a resource for your humans, figure out what they need, how you can help them, how you can make their time with the company better. That doesn't mean give in to them all the time. It doesn't mean they're always right and you're always wrong. None of that kind of stuff. But when somewhere along the way it got changed to people operations, listen, I worked in operations for most of my career. It was people operations is an oxymoron because operations is getting stuff done. It's very, it's, it's KPIs. It's, it's efficiency. It's, you know, it's all these things, right? Human resources Human resources is, you gotta have empathy. You've got, while you still have to hold them accountable, they still have to follow the rules. They still gotta follow the policies, but you've gotta have the empathy that comes with it. You've gotta have, you know, you can't like, you and I were just talking to, um, the person who I'm working with and I know I can say this on here that will eventually take over my lead, my role as the head of HR for the company here at Spartan. And she had to send the email out today and it was something that the employees should have done and they didn't do. And it, and now it's, they need to, we need to fix it. And in her email, it doesn't say you messed up. You were supposed to do this. You didn't do it. So now you have to go fix it. That's not the email she sent. Now, is it policy? Is it their responsibility? All that stuff? Sure it is. Instead, the email says, hey, Kimball, you know, we saw that you did this, updated this. However, you didn't update this in the system. Um, here are the steps to do it to make sure it gets done. If you have any questions, we are more than happy to jump on a quick call. And we will walk through it with you and make sure it gets done correct. It does need to get done as soon as possible so that we can ensure that all your information is accurate for the end of the year. That's two different emails. One is people operations in my mind, and that is the black and white, da da da da da policy. The other one is being a resource for the humans. And if, if, if they would just, if, if, if they would all do that, I I think you see a difference. I think you see people wanting to reach out to HR instead of dreading reaching out to HR. The email from HR isn't one like, ah, I really don't want to open this one. It's going to be another policy book I have to read, another something I have to sign. Don't make that all of your emails. Kimball, we celebrate birthdays and anniversaries. not automated through our payroll system. Somebody on my team puts together in our GChat and makes a cute little, like, birthday card and posts it every day for the birthdays for the day. Does she, does she have to do that? Nope. She asked if she could do that at the beginning of this year.

▶19:54HostWow. I love that. One of the, and you kind of led perfectly into it. One of my favorite questions I ask on this, these podcasts are how can employees partner better with HR teams? Like you mentioned, a lot of times it's like, oh, you're the police, but really you guys have so much more insight into the day-to-day operations of a company than anyone else in the entire company. So how can regular everyday employees, no matter the position, partner with you better?

▶20:26GuestSo it needs, but it's gotta come from the HR team though. It really does. The HR team has to lead the way. Now we lead the way for all new employees, right from the moment they start applying through the interview process to the onboarding. Our team is super involved with them. We have a person who's, they're dedicated for, you know, acquisition. This one's dedicated for onboarding. This one's dedicated for benefits. Now they all have other jobs they do, but they have a person that's dedicated so that after you've been with us for 6 months and you have a question about benefits, they know who the person that's going to reply to them is, but they still email the entire HR at Spartan team. But they know they're going to hear from Nick because Nick is over the benefit operations of our company. And so we had to lead that though. We had to lead it. And again, it starts with every— we reach out with information, almost more information than we need to reach out with. But it's not, again, it's not policies. It's not, it's not the next You know, whatever. Again, it's not all the stuff that people just don't want to see and hear, not the requirements and not the this and not the that. and then you've got to get a few people within your team. and I'm the kind of person, I did this when I was a franchise consultant, when some, when somebody above me, when I came into a company, came in and said, here's your franchisees that are really easy to get along with. da da da da da. These are the ones we, they just drive us crazy. They drive, they ask all these questions. They're always challenging our operations to that. Yeah. And like, so just figure out how to work with them. I went right to them and spent most of my time with them because if I could turn them around and get them to say one nice thing about the brand, one nice thing about the operations or the support team, and they're usually the ones that complain at every annual convention. More people are going to listen to them than the other one that is always the one that gets brought up as far as you should follow their operations, you should follow what they say. Well, they, people have been hearing that for 5 years. Why would it's the same, this new guy saying the same thing. So we did the same thing with the employees. I went and found a couple employees and said, what don't you like about human resources? What about I hear you complaining all the time that we never, we never reply. We never do this. We never do that. So I took those things. So now the team that's on right now, we cover, because since we have Europe and Western Europe and UK all the way to California, so that is an 8-hour time zone difference. We are on at 5:00 AM Eastern. Until 8 PM Eastern, 6 days a week. So the 5 of us covered all that time and nobody on the team is allowed to sign off with an unread email in their inbox. So we, we, we just solved that problem. Now, now, if somebody emails us at 10 o'clock at night Eastern, They're not going to get a response within an hour, but they will get a response at 5 o'clock in the morning. So, you know, if they're in California, they're seeing it at 2 AM, but they will get a response. And again, our response might be, hey, Kimball, got your email. I don't have an answer for you today. Dan, who is in tomorrow, I'll connect with him, get you an answer. But at least you have an answer, you know, it wasn't ignored. and so that's what we did. We took those, the people who are really upset, thought that HR was just the police, like you said, um, and didn't bring anything to the table. And we found out what, what their biggest issues were and we listened to it. Now, there are some things that we weren't able to do. There, there were some things that you just, you say that, that we can't do. We'd love to be able to do that, but that we can't do. The same people when we started doing birthday wishes, like, oh my God, this is great. Because now there's all the comments that come in the GChat below. Happy birthday. Wait, you know, can't wait to, can't wait to see you this weekend. Well, you'll have to go out and grab a bite to eat, you know, for your birthday, things like that. And it became more than just a birthday wish. So that, that, that's my suggestion. I, again, I think it starts with HR. To get that relationship, but go find those employees that can help you with it. And it's, again, I find it's the employees that you think are the hardest ones to deal with. Um,

▶24:56HostYeah, I, I couldn't agree more with that. Um, just thinking about to like my hardest employees were the ones that helped me change the direction in a positive way more frequent, frequently than not. So I, I couldn't agree more with that. all right. I, I know we're kind of a little over time of what we typically are, but I've thoroughly enjoy this conversation. I did want to leave with one more question though. You are planning a podcast in 2027 built around what you learned by writing your book. What— yeah, tell us a little bit more about that. What are your thoughts and plans with that? And then also, I'm sure down the road I'll have to kind of repost it here, but how are we going to be able to find it and listen to it?

▶25:41GuestSo, the Find It and Listen to It is still in the works. Just because I've got, I'm still, I'm the person, I don't tend to release things until it's pretty well baked. You know, but I wanted to get the word out there because I've already had people say, hey, can I be on there when you do it? And that's what I want. I want to have my first 12 or so guests completely lined up. And the idea behind it is I have been on a couple podcasts that we did no prep. We didn't talk. There was no questions ahead of time. You and I met and talked about kind of what we were going to do here today. But I've been on a couple of them where I reached out to a guy and said, hey, we have something coming up. We're going to do the Para World Championships for Spartan in Orlando in 2025 in November. I want to get the word out. He's like, great. I'm available in half an hour. Oh, all right. I guess this is, this is going to be natural. Like just whatever we say, we say. That's what I want to do. And what I want to bring on is people who either have overcome incredible odds themselves, or they've helped people overcome those incredible odds, or they just, you know, when I say I like to be prepared for something like a podcast or the book, I'm also the person that When I, when I talked to somebody, I just talked to Special Olympics today out of Tennessee. I said, when you try to figure out what it is our goal is for '27 between you guys and Spartan, the answer is already yes. Whatever it is you're going to ask me, I'm going to get the answer I'm going to give you is yes. We'll draw the roadmap later, but the answer is yes. That I want some of those people. I want some people who when they wake up in the morning, their mentality, kind of like the Jim Carrey movie, right? Where they're just going to say yes to everything. And they're going to figure it out because I don't know about you, Kimball, but when I say yes to things, I actually, it's almost a step up. Like, I can feel myself feel better today. You'd ask me 3 years ago if I would ever climb Kilimanjaro, the answer would have been not a chance in your life. Get less twice. It just wouldn't happen. changed my life. It's changed my outlook on things. And so, that's what I'm looking to do. I'm looking, again, I've got some really amazing adaptive athletes I've gotten to know over the years. I have got just some people who have started charities by— I got a friend of mine who did, who bear crawled, like fully bear crawled a Spartan 5K and then a 10K race. we now have a foundation called the Teddy Bear Crawl Foundation that is founded, and we bear crawl the kids' half-mile course at Spartan races and buy teddy bears for local children's hospitals from the money we raise. Why? Because he said yes to doing this crazy thing and it grew into— we've done over 10,000 teddy bears around the United States for children's hospitals. I want to get those people out there. Because there's somebody who would listen to it. I'm hoping that is on the fence. Should I, shouldn't I? Can I do an obstacle course? I'm in a wheelchair today. Can I do an obstacle course race? And I want to get them over the other side of that fence. And I'm hoping just a natural conversation with somebody that at the end of it just goes, of course you can. You just got to say yes. So that, that's the goal of it. You know, I'm not, I'm not going to be real creative on the name of the podcast. It's going to be Remember Your Why. Because again, that, that is how I try to live my life and how I try to do things is just when I forget, sometimes I stop and just take a moment and go, all right, that's why I do this. That's, that's, that's the only reason I do this. So yeah, so that, that is the plan. And right now we, you know, we're doing the whole thing that You know, that happens every now and then you see it on Facebook and it's, it's the, you know, the contest where you got like the fitness, you know, Fitness USA thing going on. Well, this is a podcast one, which got me thinking harder about it. I tell people who are voting for me, it's like, thank you so much for voting, but I'm realistic. There are some people out there who are pretty famous who are also in the same contest. And only one person wins. But what it's getting me doing is it's connecting me with people. Who are then, like I said, now they're reaching out to me and saying, can I be on your, can I be on your show? It's like, absolutely. I need you on my show. so that's the plan.

▶30:25HostNo, that's great. Well, I can only wish you the best of luck. I know you're gonna be successful no matter what you do. So, I've really enjoyed our conversation. I can't wait to get this out and have people listen to it. Um, and yeah, hopefully they can follow you past this, this podcast as well. So thank you so much for being on.

▶30:45GuestI appreciate it. It was, it was, and again, it was, it's been an honor talking to you this week. It's been great just, just visiting with you off air and, and just some of our conversations. So.

▶30:53HostYeah, likewise.