This episode is brought to you by Warren Coughlin, CEO Coach and founder of JumpStart Coaching. Warren focuses exclusively on coaching CEOs running SMBs, and has been doing so for over 20 years. One of my biggest regrets across my 7 years as a CEO was not hiring a coach, and I want to prevent others from making the same mistake. For listeners of In The Trenches, working with Warren is effectively risk-free: If at the end of the first three months you're not happy with the direction of your business, he will give you your money back. On top of that, Warren is offering $3,000 off of his coaching program for listeners of In The Trenches. Just go to warrencoughlin.com/trenches to learn more.

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This episode is brought to you by Cayne Crossing. Cayne Crossing helps prospective SMB purchasers with all aspects of financial due diligence, including producing the Quality of Earnings report.  Unlike any other QofE provider that I’m aware of, Cayne Crossing also co-invests alongside their buyers, aligning their interests with yours in a way that I simply haven’t seen anywhere else. Cayne Crossing is offering a special discount to listeners of In The Trenches: Just go to caynecrossing.com, and scroll down to the “contact form” on their homepage. Enter the offer code “trenches”, and you will get a full $2,000 off of your QofE engagement with them.

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My guest today is Mike Zani, CEO of The Predictive Index. The Predictive Index serves more than 9,000 clients across 142 countries, helping businesses optimize their hiring and team composition decisions through behavioral science, software, and professional consulting from the world's top workplace behavioral specialists. Mike has been CEO of The Predictive Index for approximately 8 years, after having purchased the business from its original founders. Prior to leading The Predictive Index, Mike successfully purchased, operated, and sold two other companies in the employee wellness and manufacturing industries.

The Predictive Index is one of the most widely-used personality profiling tools utilized by SMB CEOs when making hiring decisions, and in today's discussion we discuss these types of tools at length: When they're most useful (and when they're not), the most frequent sources of hiring mistakes, how transferable they are to blue collar industries, how we might utilize them in our personal relationships, and how he would utilize similar tools if looking to buy another business, to name just a few.

Please enjoy!