Revolutionizing Staffing Through Purpose: Maria O’Connell’s Vision

Intro  

Welcome to another edition of inspired stories where leaders share their experiences so we can learn from their successes, how they’ve overcome adversity, and explore current challenges they’re facing.

Anthony Codispoti (12:54.764)
Welcome to another edition of the inspired stories podcast where leaders share their experiences so we can learn from their successes and be inspired by how they’ve overcome adversity. My name is Anthony Codaspote and today’s guest is Maria O’Connell, owner of Express Employment Professionals in Chester County, Pennsylvania. She and her team partner with a variety of businesses of all sizes across many industries, providing a full range of staffing services.

to help ensure clients maximum flexibility and cost savings. Maria helps leaders transform employees into raving fans by designing and delivering an employee experience built on culture, learning, community, and communication. She has a track record of bringing teams together and ideas to life across multiple countries. She has been with the Express Employment Professionals family for nine years, where they leverage technology to ensure optimal matches between employees and employers.

Additionally, they offer onboarding services and coaching to enhance the readiness of job seekers. And Maria has started another business called People Excel Solutions, where she works with people on training and communication skills to help drive their own X-Factor to differentiate themselves to employers. It also helps companies to plan and develop their strategy for the workforce of the future. Maria has a bachelor’s degree in accounting from the Kutztown University of Pennsylvania.

a master’s in education from Penn State University, and an MBA from the New York Institute of Technology. Now, before we get into all that good stuff, today’s episode is brought to you by my company, Ad Back Benefits Agency, where we offer very specific and unique employee benefits that are both great for your team and fiscally optimized for your bottom line. One recent client was able to add over $900 per employee per year in extra cash flow by implementing one of our proprietary programs.

Results vary for each company and some organizations may not be eligible. To find out if your company qualifies, contact us today at addbackbenefitsagency.com. Now back to our guest today, Maria O’Connell. Thanks for making the time to share your story today.

Maria O’Connell (15:05.612)
Thanks for having me.

Anthony Codispoti (15:07.372)
So Maria, let’s go back a little bit and tell us how you first got started in the staffing space to begin.

Maria O’Connell (15:15.815)
So I had an opportunity about nine years ago to make a change for something that I really wanted to do as a business owner. And well, I had never really done staffing in this capacity before. When you’re leading teams and you’re hiring and recruiting and all the things, you know that the people side of the business is really critical. And so…

I was looking for an opportunity. met a franchise rep with Express Employment. And the mission with Express was really aligned with what I was trying to accomplish. I wanted to launch into something that absolutely had a community impact that we could drive a mission to really make a difference. And I’ll go on record saying that I think workforce development is economic development. And if people can have

a good job and they can feel supported and get into a place where they can grow and learn, then I think people are different in the way they think about themselves and the way that they are able to take care of themselves and their families. And so it was important to me to have that as part of what I was going to launch into. And then I really do think one of the areas that my team and I bring is we help people

really understand where they are and help them transition their skills into what they want to become. And you’ll hear me say that a lot when I’m coaching people is, you your resume tells me what you did and what your experience is, but it doesn’t tell me what you want to become. And so I think our team really spends a lot of time helping people really just understand where their strengths are and what it is that they would like to do. So,

I said yes to Express and Express is a franchise, a very large franchise when it comes to staffing across the United States and Canada. And I really have been very supported by the system and I appreciated that. I didn’t have to start from scratch. being part of a staffing company is definitely with its challenges. It’s also got its rewards, but we can talk about that later.

Anthony Codispoti (17:36.866)
Well, let’s go ahead. What are some of the big challenges that you run into with a staffing agency?

Maria O’Connell (17:40.808)
Yeah. So, I mean, really when you are working with people, you can guarantee your system, but there is absolutely no way you’re guaranteeing people. And you know what you think you’re going to get? You might not always get. And I think that’s probably for me been one of the most challenging things because your work ethic and the way that you show up is definitely not the way that everybody else shows up.

And so you really have to become very comfortable with differences. you know, patience is not my strong suit. I’ll go, I’ll go as far as to say that, but I have grown and, you know, instead of getting like, give my second, I give myself five seconds to be mad and, and the rest of my team, by the way, we have kind of that golden rule after five seconds, we’ve got to figure out like, okay, we’re here. Where are going next? so.

I think that’s one of the big challenges is you really can’t guarantee people. don’t know if they’re going to go. They don’t know if you’re to show up. You just don’t know. And then on the client side, I think it’s really tricky because clients call us typically when they have a gap and they’ve tried other things that haven’t worked and now they’re kind of into their timeline. And so the pressure is on us to really be able to turn things around quicker. Then, you know, we might be able to do that. So it’s

It’s really balancing everything in a way that, you know, we can interview people, we can build benches, we can do all those things. But I always really need to say to myself, and I really kind of ask my team to really consider, is it an expense or is it an investment? Because we can do a lot of activities and never place the person or help the company. And so those become expenses that we never recoup. So

Anthony Codispoti (19:22.701)
Hmm.

Maria O’Connell (19:31.289)
It’s a challenging business because there’s a lot that’s impacting it, not only on the individual side, but on the company side, and then wrap around the labor market, the economy, the uncertainties, you know, whenever there’s risk, whenever there’s a big storm, you know what I mean? There’s a lot of uncertainties that play into it. So that, you know, that is really the challenge and it is something that, you know, you have to learn to discern.

how to make your way through it, but also like how bad is it really? Like, know, not everything can be catastrophic and you really get to, you know, do that discernment at a different level when you’re working in staffing.

Anthony Codispoti (20:18.38)
So you mentioned a couple of things there I want to unpack a little bit. Yeah, I imagine it has to be incredibly frustrating that you have found the employee, you have developed a relationship with the employer, you’ve matched them together, you’ve done your job really well. And then, right, you can’t, you can’t make that person go to work, you can’t put a gun to their head and make sure that they show up every day on time and, you know, do what it is that they agreed to do and what they were hired to do. But it reflects

Maria O’Connell (20:45.563)
Right.

Anthony Codispoti (20:47.0)
badly on you, right? It’s like, hey, you know, Maria, you sent us this employee, they’re not working out. It puts you in a rough spot, I have to imagine.

Maria O’Connell (20:54.055)
Yeah. Yeah. It does. But at the same time, it doesn’t because I always set up a partnership with clients with pretty much the same discussion. Like I can guarantee my service, but I cannot guarantee people. You know, we do our due diligence. We go through a very extensive interviewing process. We do our credentialing. We do all the things that we say we’re going to do. And, and, know,

Anthony Codispoti (21:09.837)
Yeah.

Maria O’Connell (21:20.717)
really, sometimes the person gets there and they’re not really excited about being at the job that they’re on. For some reason, the connection isn’t there. We try and set things up ahead of time so that people can meet, they get a tour, they really kind of say yes to something they have a lot of information about. We are very transparent. Like, I don’t think it helps anybody to keep secrets when it comes to what’s the environment like, hey, it’s cold and wet here. How do you feel about that?

You know, it’s really hot in here or, you know, this client’s really under a lot of pressure. How do you feel about that? Or this is a pretty laid back environment. You know, it’s not as action packed as some other positions might be. Like we really try and help out. And I always tell our clients, we become your best marketeer. Like I need to know why someone would say yes to coming to help drive your mission and join your community of

you know, your other employees. And sometimes that’s not easy for clients to articulate. So we do have to work on that with them too, because, you know, I will tell you things have changed in the nine years that I have been doing staffing. When I sit down with an associate who is a potential candidate, they don’t necessarily start with, you know, what are the hours? What are the pay? All the logistics, all that transactional stuff.

Anthony Codispoti (22:49.058)
That’s what I would think would come up first.

Maria O’Connell (22:49.499)
Yeah, no, mean, certainly we get to that, but they’re like, okay, tell me about this company. Have you placed anyone else there? How do they like working there? Why would I want to work there? What’s in the position? How can I learn in that position? What are the managers really interested that are part of the organization? So much so that they want to even know, you know, where are their social commitments? Where do they volunteer? Where do they donate?

People want to be connected to something bigger than themselves. The days of trading time for money, let’s face it, nobody really wants to work. you know, that’s now that we’ve had gone through the whole thing in 2020 and all that stuff, that’s really become, you know, pretty status quo. Like nobody’s trading time for money anymore. And even if you are desperate and need a job,

I still got to tell you people don’t just stick it out just because they can make money. And so that’s really kind of been enlightening for me over the past three or four years because talking about challenges, our best year was 2019 and we were positioned to really kind of take it to the next level. And since 2020 and all the events that happened there,

We’ve been really kind of trying to get back to where we left 2019. And not for lack of trying, that’s for sure. It’s just been one thing after another when it comes to, you know, being able to find the clients, being able to find the people, really looking at a labor market that doesn’t have enough people in it. There’s just simply not enough people. If we have, for example, if we have 5 million jobs,

Anthony Codispoti (24:37.356)
Mm-hmm.

Maria O’Connell (24:43.231)
there’s never going to be five million people to fill those jobs. Even if we had three million people to fill those jobs, they wouldn’t be the right people. So it’s like you literally have to have people change seats because there’s just not enough people in the talent and the skill that you need. So that really drives a real creative strategy. And then if you look at the way that the job boards have become so inundated, some clients could post a job and get

Anthony Codispoti (24:58.307)
Yeah.

Maria O’Connell (25:11.835)
thousands and thousands of responses to that job. It’s like getting none because what are going to do with that? Right? You know, you really can’t do much with that. the, I, I, when I, was just working with a client and, this week and I said, you know, it’s really not for the lighthearted. You used to be able to have managers that had recruiting and interviewing and all those responsibilities as an and, but this is really like a 24 by seven operation because it’s not a

Let me post a job. Let me get all these resumes and let me go through it and pick one. You have to build relationships with people now and get them to be even interested in your company, especially for skills that are in high demand. So I think it’s easier for us as a staffing partner to go talk to competitors, people, than it is for you to be able to do that on your own. I mean, there’s just some kind of a…

play on integrity there about, you cause you don’t want somebody coaching your team as much as, you know, that’s the way things are happening these days. But I think that, you know, realistically the challenges usually are outweighed. And I say usually, but I really lean towards that they are when I have an associate that comes into my office that’s in a bad way.

Anthony Codispoti (26:11.702)
Mm-hmm.

Maria O’Connell (26:39.687)
you know, chin down, just not knowing where to go next. Kind of get them reoriented because it can’t put somebody to work who’s that way. That just doesn’t usually ever work out. So you kind of get, get to know them, give them a little more confidence, get them on the job. Most of our jobs are contract to hire or direct hire. So, get them on a job, help them on the job, get, know, kind of started and keep them going and

They get hired on by the client and then you see them six months, a year later, and they walk in the office, shoulders back, chin up, you know, just looking well and taking care of their family. And, you know, I always say to my husband, if I, we’ve done that for just one person, then it’s been worth the journey. And, but, you know, it’s been many, many cases of that. We put millions and millions of dollars of paychecks into hands of Chester County residents and work with.

well over 500 clients. it’s a neat way to really become an advocate, run a for-profit business, be part of a bigger mission. But more importantly, when you see the impact of workforce and the impact of someone having a job and having the confidence to be able to do that, that’s a game changer right there. That’s a game changer.

Anthony Codispoti (28:01.378)
That’s a good feeling, huh? So you mentioned, you know, there’s a tight labor market, you know, and you’ve got a two-sided sales process, right? You’ve got to sell, you’ve got to, you know, find the employer that’s looking for workers, and then you’ve got to find the workers to match up with them. And with a tight labor market, it’s even harder to make all of that work. What have you found to be the most effective strategies to recruit somebody in?

And then when you’ve got somebody good to retain them.

Maria O’Connell (28:34.321)
Yeah. So I think there’s a lot that goes with the partnership with the clients that you’re working with. And the reason I say that is there’s going to be times where you have to have conversations about, know, here’s what you desire in a candidate. Here’s what is really available in the candidate pool. What is it that you feel you could

grow someone into or that really isn’t necessarily something that you need to have today. And if you don’t have relationship with clients to be able to do that, then you’re kind of stuck. we really on the client side, trying to act to behave as an extension of their team. And it takes a little bit more effort on our part, but we’re not just like, I need six people. That’s not what my team does.

So we really try and kind of get to know the client. And then on the associate side for the job seeker, you one of my favorite questions after you get to know somebody is, know, you kind of say, you know, tell me about your current situation, but then I really love to know like, what are you running from and what are you running to? And that really gives me a great way to see what they’re motivated in.

in doing and what their appetite for change is. I prefer not to work with people who are completely desperate, hate where they’re working and have all these bad things going on because you can only fake so much sincerity. So they bring that with them into these other conversations. But I think the thing about the tight labor market is really being clear about what your needs are and when they are.

And the best clients for us are the ones that work with us strategically. So we know where they’re going to need people and what people they’re going to need gives us a little more time to be able to start to ramp that up for them. You know, even more so if the positions that they’re looking for are in, you know, rare, like people that have certain licenses in healthcare, even in customer service.

Maria O’Connell (30:56.679)
people who have high machining skills or CNC skills, welding, know, those kinds of technical skilled trades. So the more technical and the more you need to be able to hit the ground running, the more time we’re gonna need to be able to track that person down.

Anthony Codispoti (31:16.054)
You’ve mentioned a couple of times, you know, that you really enjoy being able to help and steer people towards what it is that they want to do. Your resume shows me what you’ve done. Where do you want to go? How do you help people with that process?

Maria O’Connell (31:23.387)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Maria O’Connell (31:30.277)
Yeah. So I think one of the things that’s magical about working with someone is really asking them, where do they find joy in their work? Now, we all have to do things that frustrate us in our work, but where do you find joy in your work? Where’s the thing that really lights you up with, and you do it with ease. And, he’s kind of, he kind of started talking about that. And

you know, give me a story about why you think that. And then you could start to feel their energy and kind of see that. Well, just because someone’s done something in one industry, they don’t really know what’s happening in other industries like we do that their skills could transfer into. So for example, a big one is customer service. Everyone who’s ever interacted with any kind of a buyer, you know, in sales or any kind of way.

has some level of customer service. But their levels of customer service are different based on the amount of stress they like to have in their work. Like someone who does receiving calls on a customer service line may not be really great or comfortable doing outbound sales calls. So it’s really just a matter of listening to their stories and really trying to hone in on what lights them up, what brings them joy.

And I think that’s really one of the ways to crosswalk it. But we are fortunate because we have lots of jobs and we could see what the requirements of those jobs are and we could stack them against each other. And so when you work with us as a staffing partner, you’re not doing this blindly because we already know the client and we already know what they’re looking for. So if you’ve got a great personality and are just, you know, new in something, but you have this

very big desire to learn, but we know what clients are looking for people they can train and want to be part of a team for a long time. You know what mean? So we can kind of stack the deck in that way. Yeah.

Anthony Codispoti (33:29.166)
Mmm.

Anthony Codispoti (33:32.81)
I was wondering where that training would come from. sounds like a lot of times it comes right from the, employer itself.

Maria O’Connell (33:38.019)
it definitely does. Yeah, yeah, for sure. So that’s pretty much how we do it. I mean, it’s a conversation.

Anthony Codispoti (33:45.066)
You mentioned before that people can put up a job post and maybe get hundreds or even thousands of responses back, which is just incredible, almost incredulous. How could somebody even begin to parse through so much information to figure out who they even want to talk to?

Maria O’Connell (34:05.991)
Yeah. So there are some of the, some of the job boards do have questions that you can prompt before someone is actually sent over to you. But I think you really get, you know, you kind of get a chance to say to yourself, got to start to really differentiate my job posting and really make it clear. Like,

A lot of times people apply for positions that they’re really not qualified for. And so you don’t have time to look through hundreds of resumes. You simply don’t. And I think the job boards are not really as effective as they used to be. And most times associates and job seekers don’t even know where their resume has gone. They may put it somewhere, but then it gets posted in a whole other way and other job boards get picked up.

because there’s some aggregation that’s happening behind the scenes. So, I might call someone and say, hey, I saw your resume on CareerBuilder. It looks like the skills you have are something one of my clients is interested in. And they’re like, I didn’t put my resume on CareerBuilder. And so then you have to kind of make sure they don’t think you’re scamming them or something. But the other thing

Anthony Codispoti (35:24.238)
because they’ll post it to one site and then there are bots that go around and scrape them and post them at other sites.

Maria O’Connell (35:27.695)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So to answer your question though, it’s not easy. And I think a lot of times you start down that path and you realize how much effort is going to take you and how much time. So that’s one of the things that we do is like, if you have a hundred resumes and you want us to go through them for you, send them over to us or let us know how to get them for you. Because, you know, let us kind of put them in a way that you can at least get a few good candidates out of that.

Because the investment to post these jobs is not cheap. So yeah, so.

Anthony Codispoti (35:59.854)
And so are you able to leverage some kind of technology to help look through those and prioritize them or filter through them?

Maria O’Connell (36:07.819)
it depends on what kind of role it is and, it depends how, how many there are really. So, the tools that we use, I think we don’t, we don’t necessarily get hundreds and hundreds against one job because we’re constantly changing it and tweaking the job when it’s out there. So like, if I post a job and I don’t get what I’m looking for,

then I’m tweaking that to see what I can do to get different interest. So we manage them regularly. Like we manage those posts regularly. If you’re doing one of the jobs that you’ve got to come into the office or you’ve got to come into the building, then you’re only going to take people that are within a certain driving distance, right? But if you do a work at home position, that could be anywhere in the world, yeah, you’re going to go.

Anthony Codispoti (37:04.334)
You’re gonna get a lot more applicants then. Yeah. Especially with a lot of people still enjoying the work from home thing and a lot of companies going back to return to office policies. So those positions be very desirable. Maria, what kinds of industries do you specialize in?

Maria O’Connell (37:05.189)
You’re gonna get clobbered.

Maria O’Connell (37:14.704)
Yeah.

Maria O’Connell (37:23.217)
So I’d like to say that we really are full circle and we really kind of work with a lot of different industries. I have found that the manufacturing and skilled trade area, we spent quite a few years building a lot of relationships with those clients. And that’s just so fascinating to me because working in software for most of my life.

actually seeing like tangible products and how things work and all that kind of stuff. that’s, been really, really a lot of fun. So, we do, we do work in industry and you know, there’s a lot of staffing companies that won’t work in industry. it’s probably one of the most frustrating parts of staffing is in industry, but I will say, you can put people in jobs that

wouldn’t necessarily be able to get them on their own. And I think that that’s important to me. So, you know, we kind of manage the frustrating parts of that. But that’s really a lot of fun because we can get everything from general labor up to skilled trade to supply chain management to, you know, all the supervisor roles and really just helping that whole production. And that’s really a lot of fun. We do work also in, you know, human resources. We’ve worked with it in the accounting space.

the one area, oddly enough that I don’t do a lot of work in is technology. And that’s where my background is. I don’t know why that happened that way, but I just haven’t really. Yeah. I just really didn’t come in into play. I do, have some work in healthcare, which I’m, growing and I’m interested in that because it’s a, it’s a tough labor market on the healthcare side. And there’s a lot of clients that really don’t just need people. need strategy and they need.

Anthony Codispoti (38:55.938)
That’s just kinda how it’s played out.

Yeah.

Maria O’Connell (39:16.121)
a way to keep the people in their organization once they found them and they’re up and running. And so I really would love to be able to see what I can do in helping that space.

Anthony Codispoti (39:25.812)
Is that where part of the motivation to start people Excel solutions came from?

Maria O’Connell (39:30.619)
Definitely. I think, you know, we can get a candidate that meets all of the description, all of the job description, and then put them in an organization that isn’t ready to receive them or the leadership isn’t really able to manage the change. Whether or not it’s good change or challenging, change is change. It always becomes a disruptor. And so you have to manage to that.

And then also, you know, I think there’s an expectation if a person sometimes, if they come from a staffing partner, that they don’t have, that they don’t need to be coached up or integrated or whatever. mean, that they’re hitting the ground running in a different way. And while we try and set people up for success, there’s still an integration and still an onboarding process that’s needed. And so, you know, I’ve been seeing that

trying to convince people to move into a different organization. So my best candidates are those passive job seekers. It’s the people that are, they’re okay. They could stay, but if something else came up, they would really be interested. And that is like the perfect job seeker for me. That’s that passive candidate, you know, but that takes a conversation and a relationship.

That’s not a, okay, they’re not applying for jobs. They’re not going to job fairs. mean, they’re, you know, the cat’s out of the bag when you do that. So that’s not happening. So it takes that relationship. And, I think, yeah, we work really hard at that. We do in-person networking events. We’re always out on LinkedIn. We use sales navigator. you know, we look at resumes, just trying to get relationships. We,

Anthony Codispoti (41:05.026)
So how are you first getting connected with somebody like that?

Maria O’Connell (41:19.899)
We talk to people and ask them if they know anybody else. It takes a lot of effort to have those conversations. So it’s kind of the way to find success though, because if you find someone who’s working and you have them married to another company that gives them a different opportunity, and that may not even be money, and they say yes,

they’re likely to move and be successful. And so, you you really, you really have to look at that. The sad part about it is, know, north of 60 % of people leave companies because of the culture. And so that makes me really, you know, motivated to help companies with topics like leadership readiness for change, you know, really strengthening their employee value proposition.

Anthony Codispoti (42:05.966)
Mm.

Maria O’Connell (42:17.927)
there are talent attraction strategies and then motivation and retention strategies. And what that really means to a company today is pretty important. once you find somebody, you want to keep them in your organization because the cost of finding someone new and all the lost intellectual property and all that, if you could keep good people in your organization, that’s really the game.

Anthony Codispoti (42:45.422)
So with the ExpressPros business, your fee is coming from the employer, correct? Yes. Now with PeopleExcel Solutions, is it the same or do the employees also pay for the training and guidance that they’re receiving?

Maria O’Connell (42:52.283)
Yes.

Maria O’Connell (43:01.775)
Yeah. So, so clients will still pay consulting fees to do workshops and really do strategy sessions and do all that. And then master your differentiators is a program that is for individuals. it can be used as a leadership program within an organization, but I also would love to be able to work with individuals who want to raise their level of consciousness and really kind of hone into their own X factor.

so that they can just find more joy in their life. And so that would be a program that includes the book, it’s the coaching program, there’s a group coaching, there’s online modules that go along with that, and so that would be a paid program.

Anthony Codispoti (43:47.512)
Where can people find this? Master your differentiators.

Maria O’Connell (43:50.841)
Yeah, so this program is launching now. This book is in final edit, so you’ll be able to get the book online. And I would say by the end of the year, this whole program will be available. And one of the other very exciting components to this is, I mean, some conversations to be able to do a version of Master Year Differentiators for students.

Anthony Codispoti (44:17.838)
Mm-hmm.

Maria O’Connell (44:18.105)
And Master your differentiators focuses on five key areas, which I find are the game changing areas if you really want to level up. And there’s so much about each of these in, you can find so much content on each of these topics, building trust to succeed, ensuring professionalism, communicating effectively, asking great questions and knowing your body language. This is a starter set.

If you can really start to hone in and make a difference and level up in those areas, you will find that your interactions are better in the way that you’re perceived. Just asking questions in a way that sets people up to be on the offense and not the defense, know, just really kind of that. And so the conversations I’m having are with schools to see if we can’t start to integrate some of this content.

for co-op students because it would really give them such a leg up to be able to even begin to think about these kinds of things. A lot of times we focus on what we do, but this program, really kind of focuses on how we do it and not necessarily only on what we do. And so that’s pretty exciting for me to be able to see. I think that would be a more of a 2025 thing for us, but I think that

You know, when I think about how I even care about this or why this is important to me or what makes a difference in my life for this is early on. I mean, like when I was, you know, three to 13, I worked with a teacher and I took elocution lessons and it was. I mean, I didn’t know what I didn’t know, but when I look back and I start to think about.

what that really meant to me in my life, just really understanding how to public speak, really understanding how to manage your body language, really things that I didn’t even know why they were important at that time. And then I have an executive coach, Phil Johnson, who runs a program called Master of Business Leadership, and it’s all grounded in emotional intelligence.

Maria O’Connell (46:42.887)
And he had a post out on LinkedIn and I didn’t know him before this that said 95 % of people are walking around unconscious and acting and behaving unconsciously. And I was like, no, that’s not me. I can’t be that. Well, I was like, so I phoned him and we got to talking and I was like, no, I can’t live my life unconsciously. That’s just.

Not it. So what is so cool about master your differentiators is it’s not about your past. I’m not a therapist. So we’re not going back there. Whatever it is all about in the present and what we own and what we control today and how we’re going to use what we have right here right now to make a difference to make an impact to find more joy in our life. And that is why I’m highly motivated to bring this next business.

and these programs out there because I think with the rate of change that we’re experiencing, with the rate of technology, with the integration of AI, with all the things that, you know, we’ve lived through a lot of technology, but these are different. These are really different technologies. I challenge myself to use them all the time because I’m a live it and learn it kind of girl, but I think people are going to be really challenged by some of these things. And the more emotionally aware we can become,

the better we are to manage relationships, to manage the risk and the conflict or whatever that comes ahead of us. And I had read a statistic, I don’t know where I read it or who said it, but so it said that we don’t come into becoming our best emotionally intelligent self till after age 60. And I was reading that and I’m sorry, I don’t remember I read that, but I was like, no.

We’ve got to get better at this. This can’t be 60. This has got to be 20, 20, 25, something like that. Because you really do find more joy in your life if you can not be a certain way. And so that’s what Master Your Differentiator is all about.

Anthony Codispoti (48:50.638)
Yeah.

Anthony Codispoti (48:54.349)
Yeah.

Anthony Codispoti (48:58.1)
So how do you intend to promote this and get the word out about it? You’ve been working on the content for a while. It sounds like 18 months or more, a couple more months maybe until it launches. So it’s gotta be some really good stuff. How do you generate interest?

Maria O’Connell (49:04.295)
Mm-hmm.

Maria O’Connell (49:13.339)
Yeah, so I have a couple opportunities to speak and kind of get out there and introduce it. There are a lot of people that are waiting to kind of get in on it. And I’ve been building this content for probably the past four months. The business consulting piece has been going on going for longer than that. But

I’m going to do, definitely do some master classes. I want to offer it to certain cohorts, kind of get some groups together. One of the things that is different about this is these skills are not academic skills. They have to be practiced. You have to interact with somebody else. This is not going to work if you just read the book, right? So in the book, I actually created, this is more like a playbook.

Anthony Codispoti (49:56.718)
Hmm.

Maria O’Connell (50:07.525)
So there are very actionable things that you can try in your very next conversation that will help you bring more emotional intelligence into your life. sure. Yeah. So let me just. So one of the things that communicating effectively that I really wanted to bring into everyone’s wheelhouse was everybody talks about developing your

Anthony Codispoti (50:17.912)
Can you give us a sneak peek? What would one of those be?

Maria O’Connell (50:36.355)
elevator speech. And a lot of times people are really put off by that because they think, I’m going to have to stand in front of a room and talk about myself and that’s going to be my elevator speech. Rarely does that happen. But what an elevator speech does and the way that I’ve set it up that you can actually write one, it’s very simple, is to answer the question, tell me about yourself. And it’s just, you’re not going to sit there and go,

and do everything about yourself in the elevator speech. But you can learn from this exercise how to integrate it into a conversation. examples like that. you know, you I help you get one on paper and then show you how to practice it and then take it into like a real life scenario.

The other part of my business in People Excel Solutions is a segment called People.Connected. And that is a way for me to really help reimagine the way that we build community and connection. And as part of this master year differentiators, we will do People.Connected sessions so that people have a chance to practice and interact in a safe way and be able to kind of try some of these new things out. So that’s one example.

Asking great questions is an amazing topic, actually. There’s so much written about it. But if you can ask really good questions, wow, like you can learn a lot. You could set up for really great relationship. I talk about in the book, closed-ended questions versus open-ended. Everybody’s already heard about that. But really, what’s the impact of that? not just saying open and closed,

What I do is I give you the closed-ended question and then I turn it into an open-ended question and tell you how it feels different. And in the exercise for this, why I don’t call it out as triangulating, I show you how to take simple questions and turn them into questions at a relationship building instead of relationship trashing.

Maria O’Connell (52:57.167)
just by triangulating away from a thing that is simple. Like for example, you’ve been missing deadlines and your work quality has dropped. What is happening? Changing that to, hey, let’s review the project timeline and feedback together. I noticed some challenges in meeting deadlines, external factors might be impacting your performance. How can we address these challenges together? Huge,

Anthony Codispoti (53:20.982)
Wow, very different tone, right?

Maria O’Connell (53:24.889)
Why can’t you have good relationships with your team members? Hey, I’ve noticed within the team, and I’m sure multiple perspectives exist. What do you think is contributing to these challenges? Like, just, that’s called triangulating. People don’t need to know that. But this is really important. Like, what a difference. Take out the you, replace it with the subject.

Now you have relationship building instead of relationship trashing.

Anthony Codispoti (53:55.98)
I need something like this for my kids. I’ve got an eight year old who’s very sensitive. If I try to correct him, I’ve to be really careful about the word choice. Otherwise it really escalates. I think I kind of laugh and make a joke about that, but I think, you know, deep down inside in our cores, we’re all little kids, right? There’s a little kid inside of all of us and we don’t like to be poked and, you know, accused and you’re the problem and there’s something wrong with you.

Maria O’Connell (53:58.927)
And that’s what everybody tells me.

Maria O’Connell (54:21.188)
No.

Anthony Codispoti (54:25.654)
And I think that’s the beauty of what you’re sharing here is there’s a different way to approach this.

Maria O’Connell (54:28.06)
Yeah.

Maria O’Connell (54:31.441)
That’s it. And the more that you become aware and become more emotionally intelligent about this, it’s really not about you. It’s really about how you impact and what you do to make it, you know, the people that you’re working with are impacting feel better and be more productive and have more joy. The ideas in this playbook, which is about 90 pages,

Maria O’Connell (55:01.931)
I really took a lot of time to net it out. Like I said before, there’s scads and scads of information about each of these topics. But if you were able to implement and try some of these ideas in here.

you would level up and really start to understand what brings you joy and what your X-Factors are.

Anthony Codispoti (55:24.854)
Is there a way for people to get on a wait list to know when this is out?

Maria O’Connell (55:28.039)
Yes. Yes. So if you go to info at people, Excel solutions.com, you could put that in there and I would definitely be able to connect with you and make sure that you’re, you know, you’re really in the game.

Anthony Codispoti (55:40.75)
So anybody who’s interested in this, can send you an email, info at peopleexcellsolutions.com. And just to make sure we’ve got the correct pronunciation of Excel, is it E-X-C-E-L? great. Okay. I’ve been thinking about it incorrectly in my head. I hear Excel, I think of the spreadsheet. So send an email to info at peopleexcellsolutions.com. A-C-C-E-L is the way you spell Excel. Okay. All right.

Maria O’Connell (55:44.199)
Mm-hmm.

Maria O’Connell (55:50.959)
Google A-C-C-E-L. Yeah.

Yes.

Maria O’Connell (56:05.627)
Right, exactly. Yeah. The other thing I’ll say is in the book, they’re conversation starters. And to me, that is one of the things that I really am excited to bring. I love mentoring early career, people who are still in college, still early career. I love that age group and seniors in high school. think that’s, you know, I feel like we have a responsibility to help

people in that age group because somebody helped us to be able to do what we do, right? And it frustrates me because I see a lot of people that don’t really do a good job with that. then, and you have one bad experience with a leader and you know, it really changes kind of your trajectory in a lot of ways. But for example, these conversation starters, because building trust is really, I think, challenging for young people because we’ve gotten away from the conversation.

Anthony Codispoti (56:38.766)
Mm.

Maria O’Connell (57:05.991)
And everybody says, we have the technology, we have all the things, but really building trust happens in a conversation. a conversation, you read a lot of, there’s a, Fierce Conversations is one of my favorite books. If you read that, Susan, who’s the author of that book, will tell you the conversation is the relationship. So if you never have a conversation with someone,

you don’t have a relationship and if you don’t have relationship, you can’t build trust. And so it’s kind of this way of me bringing that forward of how do you build trust and how do you become aware to that? So these conversations starters, like let’s say you just meet someone and you have an opportunity to talk to them and they are potentially a decision maker in a company and

you ask them the question, so what qualities do you think are essential for someone to excel in your company? Like what’s important? And if there’s a particular role that you’re interested in, you would maybe ask about that. But that question demonstrates your interest in understanding their expectations and standards. And that’s a really emotionally intelligent question. It’s a really emotionally intelligent situation to put yourself in. And so,

throughout this playbook are things that are very implementable, very action oriented. So it’s not an academic exercise. And I had someone who was writing a testimonial for me for the book, who’s been in my workshops and stuff. And she’s like, I need this for my kids. Like this would help our relationships. And if we all were doing this together, it would be really good. So I’m excited to be able to kind of get this out. It’s in final edit.

So we should be done in the next couple of weeks with the book. And the Master of Differentiators for Students is a different version because I felt compelled to change the pictures and the exercises and make them more student appropriate. This is really for someone who’s in college, early grad, through executive.

Maria O’Connell (59:26.707)
I actually had some executives look at this and they’re like, yeah, because you can always get a little better in all of those things. anyway, exciting times.

Anthony Codispoti (59:34.958)
So it’s real exciting that this is coming very soon. What, not to put the cart in front of the horse, but what would be your five year vision for where this gets to?

Maria O’Connell (59:45.735)
So I have a vision. I’m creating as part of this PeopleExcel Center of Learning. So there will be a learning center, which it’ll be online. But I want to be able to introduce additional topics to master your differentiators. So in this program, when you join this community, you’ll get all the things that I already told you about. other things that we’ll be adding on, health and mindfulness, resilience and grit.

Financial literacy, entrepreneurship’s got to be in there, and public speaking. So those other five topics. So what I’m envisioning is that, you know, we kind of grow together and we start here, we kind of get leveled in to, you know, I really, I really want to be able to say, you’re growing in your emotional intelligence, but you don’t even know it. And I think the reason I say that is because I’ve been trying to do this my whole life.

and I didn’t even know it. But if I didn’t have someone kind of guiding me early on and then, you know, meeting up with Phil Johnson when as an executive and going, man, I have gotten, you know, kind of off my game on that. You just don’t know. Like you just don’t see it, you know, because you kind of go unconsciously in your own way. So I’m trying to do this in a way that elevates and levels up people. And I feel like the better we can do this across a community, you know,

Anthony Codispoti (01:00:47.032)
Yeah.

Maria O’Connell (01:01:15.195)
we’ll have more joy and more relationships that are more meaningful. that’s, know, my goal is to just kind of really get out there and meet as many people as possible when it comes to a five-year goal.

Anthony Codispoti (01:01:27.008)
Yeah, that’s terrific concepts in that book that I think we could all get behind. Marie, I want to shift gears on you for a moment and like to hear about a serious challenge that you went through either personally or professionally and some of the lessons that you learned coming out the other side of that.

Maria O’Connell (01:01:45.359)
Yeah, that’s a great question. So I’m going to go with this one. So I think being a business owner and actually saying yes to owning a business sets you up for challenges that you can’t even pretend that you know are coming. And I think it also gives you a chance to

figure out how to manage risk and also more importantly, how to manage a reaction. So I think when I think about the biggest challenges for me, you know, you never know. Like this was a starting from zero, right? And I would say ramping up the first two years of the business, I really underestimated and didn’t give myself the grace to be honest with you.

Anthony Codispoti (01:02:43.769)
Yeah.

Maria O’Connell (01:02:44.901)
that the amount of effort it takes to build relationships in a community, to do that, what I was just describing to you, to have the opportunity to build trust amongst a group of people. Like I, when I worked for the companies I worked for, it was hundreds of thousands of people, but they were not the right people that I needed in this new venture that I was on. So now I have like,

You know, you go from the top of your game and now you’re like starting at zero, right? I was very humbling. And so by the grace of God, I was able to meet with some people in the community who just trusted that, you know, I was going to be able to do some good things. I joined the chambers and got to meet a lot of great people that were really already in business. And, you know, it was a tough

Anthony Codispoti (01:03:16.013)
Mm.

Maria O’Connell (01:03:41.041)
first couple of years. Like I thought I had made the most grave error in my career. And I think it really challenges not only what you’re trying to do, but also, you know, your faith. And I had really a strong faith and belief that God wanted me to be doing what I was about to do. Because if you’d have asked me,

I would, you’re going to own a staffing home now. would been like, yeah, no, I don’t think so. That wasn’t going to be it. And so, you know, I began to put my trust in him in a way that was a little different than I had before. And it all worked out. And so we were really doing well and had a great team in place and everybody was humming, know, businesses were growing the whole nine yards. And I think the biggest challenge for me now comes in 2020 because

You know, the doors were shut. Essentially the revenue that you lost, it was lost forever. know, teams, teams were changed forever, but also people were exhausted and our business is people. so whether you’re on the client side or the job seeker side, it was exhausting and it became financially challenging at that point then to really start to keep everything the same. And so the challenge for me was as

you know, as a person, you know, you know, as an owner, as a, you know, just someone who, you know, was trying to drive in a different way. Like, what do you do? Do you shut the door? Do you try and pick up the pieces and move forward? Like, what do you do? And nobody was ready for that. So it’s not like, you know,

Anthony Codispoti (01:05:31.437)
Yeah.

Maria O’Connell (01:05:33.507)
everyone was like, okay, we’re going to have this catastrophic event and things are going to shut down and blah, blah, blah. People get a lot like, you know, who’s planning for that? Like, so to me that that that’s really been my biggest challenge and the challenge remains. So that was game changer for us in our business. And I know it was a game changer in a lot of businesses because a lot of businesses have closed. And so,

Anthony Codispoti (01:05:56.675)
Yeah.

Maria O’Connell (01:05:59.205)
I think that that challenge brought an opportunity as well as, you know, difficulty. And the opportunity is for me to say, okay, like, what are you going to do? Like you have to decide, you know, at the end of the day, it’s my decision. I own it. I have to, I have to decide what we’re going to do. But it, but I also have to be able to say, okay, how are we going to do this? Because it’s not going to be the same. So I’ve had to let go of, okay, let’s get back to 2019 because that

ship has sailed. That’s not happening. But now how do we recreate, you know, and I feel like the combination of mass of, of people that Excel solutions in combination with express pros is a much more, stronger resource for businesses because whenever you’re doing organist, yeah. And, and really now staffing is a yes, no conversation. People Excel brings a different level of conversation.

Anthony Codispoti (01:06:46.188)
a more holistic approach.

Maria O’Connell (01:06:56.975)
and strategy to a company. And whenever you’re doing organizational development and change, people are always involved. So then, you know, we can really kind of help on both sides. So the challenge really has been like, how do you, how do you manage through something like that? And I will say that going through 20 and 21, there were resources, but I think it was really underestimated once

those resources were gone, what was going to be left to be able to, and that’s when a lot of businesses had to close because you didn’t have enough ramp up and know, cash is king in any business. So, you know, if you’re paying payroll, it’s not, it’s different if you’re by yourself or, you know, you don’t have a team, but if you’re paying payroll, I mean, you’re to have the cash to be able to pay that. that, that opens up a whole new thing. But I think the challenge is that

what I just described, but the opportunity is for me to grow as a leader. Like how do I react to this? You know, how do I manage through it financially? You know, what are the decisions that have to be made? And I have learned not to measure my value and my self-worth based on my net worth or my success in business. That, that to me is a separate thing.

I know that we are a force for good, whether or not this business succeeds, we’re doing really good work. So I think it has helped me grow. And also I have to breathe through this. If I’m in a bad way or panicking, then you can imagine what everybody else is doing. So I’ve got to figure out how to manage through it personally so that I can lead a team of people and an organization in a way that

they feel confident that we’re moving in the right direction.

Anthony Codispoti (01:08:56.142)
What are some coping mechanisms that you have leaned on in the past? the stories that you’re telling Maria are, you know, they’re very common amongst business owners. And for folks who don’t own a business, they’re probably unaware of this. You know, those first couple of years when you started the business, you had big visions of what was going to happen and things are slow to get started, right? It’s a long sales cycle. You’re getting your feet wet. You’re learning what you didn’t even know coming in.

Maria O’Connell (01:09:17.723)
Yeah. Yeah.

Anthony Codispoti (01:09:25.23)
And you thought, man, I made a grave error. Should I back out of this? OK. And somehow you find strength, you move through, then you hit COVID, which brought everything to a screeching halt. And you’re kind of having those same conversations and those thoughts in your head again. Now, here we are, you know, at the end of 2024, still in business, you know, offering a new solution. So clearly you’ve made the decision to move forward. But I’m curious to hear in those dark moments.

What was it that kept you moving forward?

Maria O’Connell (01:10:00.385)
So I really have to say that it’s been my faith. It really has been my faith. And every time I think it’s game over, something comes. Like, let me give you an example. Not too long ago, within the last six months, I was like, okay, great. How am I going to make payroll? And, you know, we did reduce the size of our team significantly because we just did not have

the sales to support that. And I really didn’t have the financial cash investment to make to support that at the moment. So I was like, okay, great. How am going to do this? And we had one ticket in this competition that we had increased our number of client client count by five. So we had one ticket in this competition and

They pulled our ticket out of hundreds and we got $10,000 and it was just about the amount I needed to make payroll. So it was like, I mean, just at every turn of the crank, like there’s usually something there that, you know, shows up. And I think that people also, I mean, we just got, although I can’t officially announce this, I’m gonna just say it here.

We just won best of staffing in a competition across the county, which we’ve won for, I don’t know, the past five, six years. And I’m really humbled by that because it’s unsolicited. And in the way that they do this kind of competition, if you will, is that other people in the community have to write your business name in there. It’s not like a checklist or anything. They actually have to write your business name in there. And I often say,

Anthony Codispoti (01:11:48.29)
Yeah.

Maria O’Connell (01:11:55.131)
you know, why and why us? And they say that we’re different and they say that, you know, we try and really be a force for good. And I have that on my wall. I mean, in our office, we have, you know, our guiding principles and a big part of it is to be a force for good. So, you know, to answer your question, I just keep trying to be a force for good and breathe. you know, do as much exercise as I can fit in.

Try and have fun. I will say about five years ago six years ago now I started a fun calendar for myself and my husband and it’s a literal calendar and and I I look in this book and Like I write things in here that are only fun and then I’ll look in here and I’ll be like, okay Well that that doesn’t look like we’re having enough fun

And so, you know, really trying to stay true to that. My husband and I own a sailboat, so we go sailing. I do gratitude, I do gratitude journaling. I’ve probably done that for the past 15 years. So it’s, it’s that whole mental preparedness or just a way to focus and center that I think has helped me through all of it because I could get myself worked up to a lather.

Anthony Codispoti (01:13:10.007)
Well.

Maria O’Connell (01:13:25.261)
no problem. And I really, I just don’t feel like I’ve tried that approach, but then I see everybody else around me and just really isn’t. It’s just great way.

Anthony Codispoti (01:13:25.325)
Yeah.

Anthony Codispoti (01:13:34.902)
Yeah, those are a lot of great tools that you shared. Thank you for that. I think people can get some good pointers from those for their own personal use. Maria, I just have one more question for you. But before I ask it, I want to do two things for those listening. If you like today’s content, please hit the like share subscribe button on your favorite podcast app. I always like to tell people the best way to get in touch with you. we shared that email address.

Maria O’Connell (01:13:38.364)
Hahaha!

Maria O’Connell (01:13:45.606)
Right.

Anthony Codispoti (01:14:01.206)
info at peopleexcellsolutions.com. Is that the best way? Whatever it is that they have that they want to talk to you about?

Maria O’Connell (01:14:05.883)
Yes, anything that’ll come directly to me and I’ll make sure that whatever comes through there gets attention.

Anthony Codispoti (01:14:15.052)
Okay, last question for you, What do you think is the single biggest change likely to come to the staffing industry in the next few years?

Maria O’Connell (01:14:27.207)
The single biggest change.

Anthony Codispoti (01:14:29.676)
Maybe it’s something that’s already in process.

Maria O’Connell (01:14:38.087)
think the single biggest change is maybe not to the staffing industry as much as it is to staffing in general. In that, think people have evolved in their thinking about how they’re going to make money. And, you know, the days of coming into a company and staying for 25 years,

isn’t as common as it used to be. And I think people are looking for ways to mitigate their own risks and are looking for ways to do multiple pathways of revenue generating for themselves. And I think that the way that we work with people is also gonna change. think the ways of, if you look at the generations and across the generations, the up and coming alpha generation not even in work yet,

Anthony Codispoti (01:15:19.438)
you

Maria O’Connell (01:15:36.485)
really, I think are focused on different things. Social impact, really understanding the mission, really being part of the technology in a way that is integrated into their work. There’s a difference between, I think, looking at people as talent and looking at people as humans. And I think that the change is really going to come when

businesses really kind of take that on differently. And in one part of this book, in Master Your Differentiators, I really call that out. You’re one person with one life to live. traditionally we said, I need this work-life balance. Well, that’s really kind of hard to accomplish with one person, one life. And I think that as we move forward here, you’re gonna see

Businesses becoming a lot more people focused and a lot less talent focused because you have to bring people into your community. You have to bring them into wanting to be part of what you’re trying to accomplish. It’s, it’s, I do believe that trading time for money is, is, you know, kind of going out with the baby boomer era.

Anthony Codispoti (01:16:42.69)
Mmm.

Maria O’Connell (01:17:05.919)
and the accountability of, you know, loyalty and being able to do that. think people want to create and craft a journey. And one of the things that I really say all the time is, you know, enjoy the journey. I had a chance to be part of 10,000 Small Businesses, which is a program that’s a scholarship from Goldman Sachs and highly recommend that program. It’s like,

No other program you’ll ever, ever be in. I have an MBA and that was like an MBA, but all about your business. And it was a very intense 16 weeks, but we had a chance to be on a call with Warren Buffett. And, I was in my kitchen at the Island and we’re, we’re, there was the cohort that I was in, had 20 of us in there and he was talking to us and,

First of all, I was just like, well, now that is very cool. you know, and, we were all kind of lists like leaning and listening. And he said something that I, I really, really do appreciate. He, he, him saying, and he said, you know, you can go through your journey. You can go through your whole life. You can be worried about what the next thing is or what the outcomes are, or, you know,

Are you making it? Are you not making it? How much do you have? And all those things he said, but I’m going to tell you from where I sit right now that the joys in my journey have been the people that I’ve met along the way, the relationships that I have really grown to love and trust. And also that, you know, I really want you to focus on the journey.

And if you focus on the outcome, once you get there, it’s over. It’s done. And just the way that he was kind of positioning that really gave me the motivation to really want to focus on that, for example, being, you know, kind of what people Excel solutions is really grounded in. And, you know, I say it this way. We have one life to live. So.

Maria O’Connell (01:19:26.363)
Let’s enjoy the journey. And it’s a big part of how I’m positioning this. And I think that that’s going to be the biggest change in the staffing and it’s how people are connecting in and how companies and businesses are going to need to really create raving fans for their employees to be a big part of what they’re trying to accomplish in the world.

Anthony Codispoti (01:19:55.554)
Maria, I think that Warren Buffett story is a perfect place for us to wrap up this interview. I want to be the first to thank you for sharing both your time and your story with us today. I really appreciate it.

Maria O’Connell (01:20:06.246)
You’re welcome.

Anthony Codispoti (01:20:07.928)
Folks, that’s a wrap on another episode of the Inspired Stories Podcast. Thanks for learning with us today.