Stop Hiring Blind: How The Bureaus, Inc. Uses Assessments to Build Stronger Teams

Adam Parks (00:00)
Hello everybody, Adam Parks here with a receivables webinar live here on LinkedIn. Today I'm here with an industry legend who generally hides behind the scenes but does drive a lot of how we look at technology and thought leadership across the deck collection space, Mr. Aristotle Sanglang, who is the president of The Bureaus Incorporated and also joining us as Katalina Dawson, Executive VP with Branding Arc.

⁓ You know, we wanted to talk about assessments today and what that ultimately means. And I had the privilege of working with The Bureaus Incorporated for roughly the last 20 years. And 12 years ago, they asked me to take a personality assessment and I thought it was absolutely amazing when I looked at the results. I mean, it was a hard look at myself and we're going to take a hard look at myself here today as well. And it's never easy, but I was really impressed with how it

broke down the understanding or the fit of an individual for an organization. And then to take that to the next level, I took that assessment again last year and went through that same kind of process and had an opportunity to compare and contrast. And as I went through that process, Aristotle was nice enough to include most of our executive team at Branding Arc, allowing us to all really look at ourselves, look at the team around us and try to

better understand the fit. So I really do appreciate both of you coming on and having this chat with me here today. ⁓ I appreciate your insights.

Aristotle Sangalang (01:35)
Thanks for having

me.

Katalina Dawson (01:38)
Slash angry.

Adam Parks (01:39)
Of course. So before we get kicked off here, Aristotle, could you tell everyone a little about yourself and how you got to the seat that you're in today?

Aristotle Sangalang (01:46)
So that's a very interesting story. I started in collections in 1990, end of 94, and I was working as a skip tracer for the state of Illinois, Student Loans, Illinois Student Assistance Commission. I stayed there for a little over a year, went to a third party agency in my area locally, and I stayed there for about another year, and then that put me into The Bureaus. I started at The Bureaus as a collector, a...

really, really entry level collector really. And then work my way up, saw opportunities in improving the process in the job that I had there as a collector. Then when I got promoted as a manager a couple of years later, I implemented another set of different strategies that were very much

different from what the typical strategies were in the late 90s. And then in the mid-2000s, became the president of The Bureaus.

after 10 years at The Bureaus. And I've been in this role ever since. So since 2007, I've been in this role. And we've developed tons of analytical tools for the business, ways to work smarter, not harder, ways to ⁓ be able to create strategies that stand the test of time, regardless of how the environment changes.

⁓ which as we all know who have been in this industry now, I'm almost 30 years in this industry, seen a lot of changes. This is not even the same business that I started in. ⁓ you know, thankfully some of the strategies that we've implemented have stood the test of time. And this being one of them, ⁓ we took on a consultant back in 2009.

because I was very frustrated. We live in a very competitive collection market here in Chicago. And, you know, it used to be a joke that every agency had a revolving door and the same people will go in and out. And I was, I was thought to be naive thinking,

that I could find other kinds of collectors or the same quality collector without the collector for lack of better term baggage, bad habits, etc. Because let's face it, people that usually end up as a collector, it's not the first job they pick. It's not the job they wanted. It's not the job they ⁓ went to. ⁓

the career day for, you know, in high school or college. So, you know, the people we had, these were just people trying to make ends meet. So I was trying to find a way to get a skill collector's ⁓ skills ⁓ with a different kind of employee, just like to be able to pull someone off the street, really, and put them behind a desk and have them work.

And I knew that was going to be a challenge and I knew I didn't know everything there was to know about behavior. So we took on this consultant for that very purpose because I want again, I wanted to open up our employment pool.

to make available people that otherwise wouldn't have collection jobs, find the right people that had the right ⁓ profile that we could mold. I always felt that collections, just like any skill, is trainable. You could teach people how to do it. ⁓ Sure, there's some natural tendencies you look for, like people skills, but by and large, if you either have the right behaviors or the right motivators, ⁓ you could turn a right-

average Joe into a skilled bill collector. So that's what we did. And we've been using it ever since and you've used we used you in 2000 I believe 2012 we ⁓ let you try the assessment and then again in 24 so that's a 12 year difference and it's very interesting how yours looks you know

Adam Parks (06:10)
What a difference it showed, It was not, I'm not in the same role. I'm not with the same organization, right? It was the very beginning of me starting to put together Branding Arc and what became Receivables Info ⁓ and...

in comparison to then into now and what my leadership style looked like working for somebody else or having just stopped working for somebody else versus having been running my own organization for many years. For me, it was really interesting to see how

how these assessments are not about right and wrong. It's not about did I do it correctly, am I the right person or am I the wrong person? It's really about understanding where you fall on the spectrum. And I know we're gonna look at my assessments today and kind of.

what motivates and drives me. So I also want to invite everybody ⁓ who's watching us live here as well that if you have any questions, comments or want to participate in the discussion, I do have the chat open so that I can respond to those and ask those questions of Aristotle and Katalina as well. ⁓ But for me, was one of the diagrams that we're going to look at looks at the personality in terms of a circle. There's no right like and if it was a straight line, I probably would have felt right and wrong and

my brain, right? Like I would have been trying to assess it to right and wrong, but because I looked at it in terms of a circle, and we're going to dig into that in more detail here, it

Aristotle Sangalang (07:30)
Yes.

Adam Parks (07:40)
really helped me to understand where people fit. And then a lot of the people that I took the assessment with in 2012 fell into the same brackets as me. So my brain started thinking like, this is where people are supposed to fall onto the assessment. But then when we did our whole leadership team, I realized that, you know, myself and my partner were on opposite ends of the spectrum. And maybe that's exactly where we should be looking at those different perspectives and trying to incorporate

those into the discussion. Katalina, you took the assessment for the first time in 2024. What were your expectations going into it and what did you experience?

Aristotle Sangalang (08:12)
Yes.

Katalina Dawson (08:17)
Yes.

Well, being a girl I've taken many a personality test throughout the years. Of course they like the Seventeen magazine or ⁓ they always have personality tests. I've taken a ton. And then of course you have the ones like the Enneagram tests and there's so many different types that you can take. And this one did stand out as very unique. It is by far the most in depth I've ever seen, partially because it never...

put you in a specific category. It never said, you're a number seven on this or you're, you know, an ENFJ or whatever it is.

It broke you down personally in so many different ways, looking at how you're motivated, how you perceive things, what drives you. was very unique. And even the way the questions were asked, it wasn't like many tests that I have taken before. And then to your point on that diagram when we're looking at the circle, and I'm so excited when we get to that slide eventually.

It was so interesting because that imagery shows that there's no should be. It doesn't matter. You can be anywhere on there and in fact, like you were saying, you and Bharath were on opposite sides.

Katalina Dawson (09:41)
But Leah was also in a different area than I was. And so was Katie. Like we were all spread out in different areas that actually really reflected our roles. And the more we looked at it, the more we're like, well, of course the super analytical person is, you know, in operations or in like a technological role. Whereas you and I, Adam, we were the closest ones.

Katalina Dawson (10:05)
in that

pie and it's like, okay, that makes sense. We're the ones who do the presenting and do the selling and go to... Exactly. So it was so amazing to visualize it, but then also there's all of these other aspects that weigh into it and it dives so deep into who you are personally.

Aristotle Sangalang (10:09)
Right. You deal with people. Yeah.

Yes, I agree. And I think, you know, what I found in this experience was it gave us more than what I anticipated. So one of the things, you know, in this process we learned was if you look at successful people around the world, Steve Jobs, know, ⁓ Bill Gates, all those people, you know, they have certain personality types and they succeed at where they're at.

Adam Parks (10:25)
The f- the f-

Aristotle Sangalang (10:54)
But one key factor with most, almost everyone who's ever experienced ⁓ much success, one critical piece is they have to love what they do. You you can't succeed at anything if you don't love what you do. And you know, that's always hard to figure out. How do I know I love what I do? Well, you don't.

Most people don't they get jobs and they work them as a means to an end as opposed to what their passion is I mean most people are not their jobs are not their passion their means to an end That's why you have a lot of people who are unhappy, you know Or they have a lot of regret or they you know, wish they could have done other things What this gave us in addition to what I was looking for was a way to find

Aristotle Sangalang (11:45)
benchmark jobs to fit people behaviorally and motivationally into roles that they can succeed. That fits their persona. You know, I'm going to take extremes for a second. You take a salesperson and you take ⁓ an accountant. Accounting has very strict rules. Salespeople kind of live in the gray area sometimes when they're trying to close a deal. they're very, one's very rigid with rules. One is

Aristotle Sangalang (12:14)
kind of a little bit more relaxed. You can't put an accountant behavior style in the sales style because if you don't like their product, they'll say, well, if you don't like it, you can find another one. Well, that doesn't make for a good salesman. And on the contrary, you can't have a salesperson necessarily doing accounting things because then, you know, let's get even more out there. You get creative accounting.

Adam Parks (12:26)
you creative.

It's too creative.

Aristotle Sangalang (12:39)
And we know like the end

rounds of our history, what happens when you have creative accounting. ⁓ So this was a way for us to say, okay, we're gonna put you in a job that fits you. And if it fits you, that means you're gonna be less stressed out, which means that you're gonna be happier, which means your work won't feel like work. And so I never thought of getting that type of ⁓ information out of this assessment, but it opened up a whole...

other way to use it and eventually and we'll go through that as the presentation goes along. But what's key here and we'll get to this first slide. There are three things that are going to be important in this discussion. One is behaviors and the behaviors are this is how you're hardwired. You know this doesn't necessarily change. You are who you are. ⁓ This can change your behavior can change if you have a life altering event.

⁓ But again, unless something changes in your life that dramatically, your behavior is always going to be the same. ⁓ So you might say, if I have a certain type of behavior, does that mean I can only have a certain type of job? Well, no. And we'll get into the next piece later. Not yet, but values are motivators. So you can motivate people if they have certain things that motivate them, you could offset that. So

I look at it this way, behaviors are, you ever see people confuse the distinction between motivation and discipline? Behaviors are discipline.

Adam Parks (14:17)
Yeah, okay.

Aristotle Sangalang (14:21)
You know, motivators, you know, something has to happen for it to work, right? Behaviors, you know, just have it. Yes. Yes. That, you know, it's almost like a nature nurture, you know, kinda. but that's how you are, you know? And so the way, ⁓ we look at behaviors is we look at it through what's commonly known as a disc graph. And that's the wheel you're speaking of.

Adam Parks (14:26)
It's a driving force versus a natural force? that-

Katalina Dawson (14:32)
I think that's good way to say it, yeah.

Adam Parks (14:36)
okay. Okay.

Aristotle Sangalang (14:50)
that you spoke of earlier. And the disc graph is an acronym. It's DISC. So the D ⁓ describes how a person handles problems and challenges. The I describes how a person handles people and contacts. The S describes how a person handles pace and consistency. And the C describes how a person handles procedures. Just to give you a little bit background,

If you are a high D person, you're extroverted. You talk fast. You need, you have to be direct. You like to win. You like challenge. You may be argumentative, impatient. You know, that's the, the, the that's the characteristic of a high D person. A high I person is a people person. This is an extroverted person who's people oriented. So the D is task oriented. The I is people oriented. ⁓

talks enthusiastically, the I person does. ⁓ Usually very wordy, smiles a lot. ⁓ Their common emotion is optimism. ⁓ Let's see, the next one is the S. A high S person ⁓ is introverted. That's an introverted person who's people oriented and indirect. ⁓ Talks slow in a low tone, walks slow or deliberately.

⁓ This person is a great person who follows through. They follow through a lot. ⁓ Their emotion is they're non-emotional. ⁓ The high C person is task oriented, introverted, ⁓ walks fast and looks around when they're walking constantly. Their common emotion is fear. You know, these are the people that follow the rules and you know, a high C person

doesn't break rules. So, you know, that's their thing. A high S person, when we talk about pace and consistency, you know, are they a multitasker or are they, you know, ⁓ you know, a one and done type person? Can they only work on one project at a time? These people like slower lifestyle, you know, the lower S person likes things to be slower. So think of it in a call center environment. Would you call a call center?

a slow paced environment or a fast paced environment. You you put a slow paced environment person in there, they're going to have problems, you know, exactly. So I see we put up your descriptors here. So this is your disk.

Adam Parks (17:25)
Yeah, they're going to panic.

Yeah, nothing like exposing

yourself on, you know, live broadcast.

Aristotle Sangalang (17:37)
So this is interesting because for the most part, you're kind of in the center. ⁓ You're not too extreme one way or the other, which is good. ⁓ So it says here for your D that you're calculating. That means that you think before you look before you leap. You don't just go. I'm a high D person myself, so I'm always running towards the fire. I'm never running away from it. I'm always running at it.

And I'm not thinking I'm always just my my mindset is there's a fire needs to be stopped. Yours is there's a fire that needs to be stopped. But wait a second, there might be other things that have an impact if I just go ahead and smother it. Something else might happen. You're a little bit more methodical. ⁓ Your influence. Obviously, you're a people oriented person. ⁓ So therefore. No, no surprises there. So, you know, that's how.

Katalina Dawson (18:31)
No surprise there.

Adam Parks (18:33)
you

Aristotle Sangalang (18:36)
Yours is pretty much pretty high up there. So in this case, you could tell you're a high eye person. So again, we'll go by the high eye people, extroverted, people oriented, indirect, talks enthusiastically, needs to interact, usually wordy and smiles a lot. I mean, look, you're smiling right now.

Adam Parks (18:52)
Sounds like me. It sounds like me. Little bit.

Katalina Dawson (18:54)
Yeah, it does. And

Adam Parks (18:56)
Little bit.

Katalina Dawson (18:56)
this is one of the areas where Adam and I overlapped quite a bit. My eye actually, I pulled up my test here too so I can follow along. Mine actually goes up to enthusiastic for eye. So I'm up there as well.

Adam Parks (18:59)
Thank

Aristotle Sangalang (19:07)
Yes. Yes.

Here your study is you're active. So you're not again, you're not overdoing it all the way at the top. If you were way up there, that would be somebody who literally has one project and can only focus on one project. No other noise can be around. The impulsive person hat is the guy that's running around all over the place with their head cut off, always getting interrupted, always got a million things going on.

you know, compliance, you're pretty even handed, diplomatic. ⁓ So you're not necessarily hardcore rule follower and you're not hardcore rule breaker. You're, you're again, again, think about it. If you had a high D and a very low compliant, you'd be running into a fire ill-equipped.

Adam Parks (19:52)
I feel like the middle is a good place for me on.

Aristotle Sangalang (20:03)
You know, if you are the other way, you you're so in my case, I'm a high D high C. So I'm running to the fire with all the appropriate equipment. You know, that's the way I look at that. As our consultant would would say to me, he described me as a person who has one foot on the gas and one foot on the brake ⁓ constantly. I'm always, you know, speeding up, slowing down, speeding up, slowing down again to see.

Adam Parks (20:15)
Okay.

Aristotle Sangalang (20:34)
The high C makes me slow down. So once we've established that, we figure out, what jobs fit these types of behavioral styles.

So this is essentially the same look as the other thing, except it boxes up. The red is the D, the yellow is the I, ⁓ the green is the pace is S and C is the blue. So this is Adam specifically. So there are two pieces under each one. One is natural and what one is adaptive. Adapted. Adapted is how you are at work.

⁓ And natural is just how you are when you're by yourself and it's just you or you're at home and you're not working. ⁓ In the ideal situation Your I and your natural and adapted would be in the same place on the behavioral wheel ⁓ When it's not then you have to find out by what degree

You know, so if you want, believe the next one is the graph you're speaking of.

Katalina Dawson (21:44)
There we go.

Aristotle Sangalang (21:45)
Yes. So we'll look, we'll start. Yeah. Well, this is.

Adam Parks (21:47)
The wheel. This to me is everything. This is the best

description of how people fit into an organization but visualized.

Katalina Dawson (21:50)
That's the part.

Aristotle Sangalang (21:55)
Exactly. Is there a way we can make that a little bigger?

There we go. Just so we could see the words. Yeah, there we go. There we go. So let's look at the 2024 so ⁓ so that it's more current. As you can see, Adam's star and his circle are in the exact same spot and pretty close to the center, which makes him very flexible. ⁓ But because his star and his circle are in the same spot, that means he doesn't feel there's a need to change his behavior when he's at home.

Adam Parks (21:59)
You can zoom a little, yeah.

Katalina Dawson (22:01)
Oops, there we go.

Aristotle Sangalang (22:29)
and he doesn't feel like he needs to change his behavior when he's at work. It's the same behavior. Adam at work is Adam at home. Now, contrast that with his 2012, which again is very different to the degree that his ⁓ natural was way out on the outside where his star is where it is now. So his star hasn't moved, but his natural has. Now,

Like I said before, behaviors don't change. But obviously something happened to you between 12 and 24 that changed. That would be a meaningful change.

Adam Parks (23:06)
I went from being a salesperson,

right? Like I was a partner at Stirling Capital Management. I was actively selling all day every day. And my world changed to being able to provide a service and to become part of other organizations. Because 2012 when I took that was I was running Branding Arc and we had just started ComplyARM. So this kind of started at the beginning of that world of starting really my whole world shifted upside down to go from

being a salesperson to really shifting gears quite hard and focusing on the compliance, the policies and procedures, the software development and all of that required a different person. Like those two personalities don't accomplish the same thing, but I find joy. One of the questions that I always ask people in our one-on-ones internally is what's bringing you joy in the role?

Like what about what you're doing right now is bringing joy. And although I may be very good at being a salesperson, I'm not sure that's where I find my joy. I think my joy is more towards leading a team, bringing people together, and finding that balance amongst multiple points of view.

Aristotle Sangalang (24:23)
Right. But here's the importance of what we're seeing the differences here on the two circles. So let's assume that the star in 2012 is literally ⁓ all the way at the far left under coordinator. Let's say, that your natural is where it is right there on the 2012. So that would be an example of literally being on opposite ends of the wheel.

Aristotle Sangalang (24:51)
And if you think about that in terms of a person who has, that's Jekyll and Hyde. I mean, that's how I would describe it, Jekyll and Hyde. You have two completely different people when they're at home versus when they're at work. And so let me ask you this, if that was a thing that you had to constantly manage, changing roles back and forth, how stressed do you think that would make you?

Adam Parks (24:58)
Yeah. Good analogy.

The amount of stress that comes with having to be somebody other than who you naturally are is incredibly high and I think it also creates a lot of dissatisfaction in the role that you're faking. You can never really enjoy it if you're faking it. If you don't love what you're doing, you're doing the wrong thing. I mean, that's thing we talk about a lot.

Aristotle Sangalang (25:39)
Exactly.

Right. And when I say people should be doing what they love, it's not a specific job per se, like I want to work for a certain company or whatever. It's what that role requires of it needs from you. And if what it needs from you is what you have naturally, then you're going to enjoy it. You don't know. Like, for example, I didn't know I was going to love the job I had until I had it, you know, until I was doing it and found that it was ⁓

rewarding for me. That's the only way I knew. If I was miserable, I would have left. But unfortunately, a lot of people kind of stick to the job they have because, you know, it's the devil they know. And they're afraid that if they go somewhere else to something that's vastly different than what they're currently doing, that they're going to start at the bottom and they're going to be miserable. That's not true. If you find something you like, you won't mind starting at the bottom.

Adam Parks (26:25)
I can tell you that my job satisfaction in 2024 and my job satisfaction in 2012 were very different. And I may have been a partner or owned both companies, but that didn't really change it. The role that I was playing within those organizations was very different. And you know, now I wouldn't trade for anything. And I definitely can't be a different person at work and at home because I work from home. ⁓

Aristotle Sangalang (27:03)
You know,

oddly enough, ironically, everybody does, most people do. So, you know, think about it. If you have the extremes and your Jekyll and Hyde and you have to be remote, boy, that's miserable. You know, that's miserable. So it, know.

Adam Parks (27:09)
Yeah, fair.

Now gotta be somewhere

else, someone else in the place where you live.

Aristotle Sangalang (27:24)
Exactly. you know, I can't imagine that being fun. You know, it's like it's turning yourself turning. It's like you're a character, right? I'm going to be Aristotle. You know, I'm Aristotle at TBI, but I'm Aris at home. You know, I'm turning on Aristotle now, you know, I'm Aristotle at home. I'm Aristotle at work. So I mean.

Adam Parks (27:39)
Yeah

It's hard to shift gears like that within yourself and to be somebody that you're not naturally and sometimes we try to fill a role because we got us, you we got an education that tells us that we're supposed to do this particular task and we've done all of our training and all of the things around that particular task. We get out into the real world, we realize I don't really like that task. Like that's not where I'm finding joy and

I've seen it within our own organization in terms of asking that question, where do you find the joy? And I probably need to run these assessments with more folks and get a better third party view of it versus just trying to extract it through conversation. ⁓ But

Adam Parks (28:27)
We've modified a lot of roles in the organization and a lot of different people's jobs based on where they were finding joy within the tasks that they were completing on a daily basis and trying to customize those roles in a way that made sense. from a debt collection perspective, not so easy to go customize in them roles, Like it's 85 % of the organization's activities are compliance driven and all the same. And it's that other 15 % where we get to find ourselves being a little special.

Aristotle Sangalang (28:57)
All So that's how.

Katalina Dawson (28:58)
But something that you

can customize that this test also goes into is communication. So a step further is not just what role they would go into. And this is actually our next slide too. it's, oops, I way too far. Right here? I thought this, ⁓

Aristotle Sangalang (29:04)
Yes.

It's actually, it's at the end.

No, no, at the very end.

Katalina Dawson (29:18)
Don't hear you mean?

Aristotle Sangalang (29:20)
I it was.

Adam Parks (29:20)
No, the communication tips was the next one.

Katalina Dawson (29:21)
Yeah,

it was this one. Yeah. So it tells you in the test it breaks it down even more than just this, but great ways overall of how to communicate with people like on mine, for example, ways not to communicate with me include being curt, cold, or tight lipped, ⁓ rambling, or my favorite one is dream with her or you'll lose time. And that makes so much sense with me because I can get off on crazy tangents.

Aristotle Sangalang (29:23)
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm sorry.

Adam Parks (29:47)
You

Aristotle Sangalang (29:47)
Ha!

You can go down the rabbit hole.

Katalina Dawson (29:52)
yeah, so it's very interesting

that this goes into not just the role itself, but different ways that they can be trained or communicated with within that role.

Aristotle Sangalang (30:02)
And this is, that's what I've found very valuable with this ⁓ process was, you know, for people who are hiring, you know, this, how does a manager talk to a subordinate? How does a subordinate talk to a manager? You know, ⁓ my communication skills are very simple. You know, if you write an email that has a lot of words in it that, you know, you could have done in four sentences.

⁓ I'm probably going to lose interest in it pretty quickly. My emails that I write out, they're one, two, maybe three lines max. You know, ⁓ I'm very to the point. don't, I sometimes have to go back and put in the pleasantries at the beginning, like good morning or good afternoon. Cause you know, I open the email, I start writing, you know, that stuff doesn't pop into my head. Not because I'm not interested. It's just not how I'm wired.

Aristotle Sangalang (30:59)
You know, we're talking about the way you are hardwired. It's not that I don't care about people. It's just it's not the first thing that comes to my head when I'm writing an email is the salutation. You know, I don't think about it. And, you know, this helps people who are trying to either pitch me or, you know, talk to me a way that they're going to get my the most of my attention is to communicate with me the way I like to be communicated with. And conversely, I have to look at this

Same thing when I'm dealing with people that are more people oriented than I am. again, I'm a high D, so I'm a task oriented person where, you know, Marian Sangalang is a people, you know, person, you know, and so she's going to write emails very differently than I am. You know, she's going to have more emojis in her messages. I won't have any, you know. That's very helpful.

Adam Parks (31:55)
Look, I'll tell you this,

when we look at the compliance aspect here, the compliance block, I feel like this is something I should probably give to all new hires at my organization because this is quite literally the definition.

even internally, preparing your case in advance, really come prepared to the discussion or don't come to the discussion at all is generally my take on it. And I know that it maybe it's lack of time or whatever, but I don't need people preparing their case while we're in the middle of that, you know, discussion, sticking to the business at hand being accurate and realistic. But on the flip side of that, you know, don't be giddy, casual, informal and loud.

Adam Parks (32:35)
I'm trying to get straight to the point and get out. There's a lot of things to do in a day Pushing too hard or being unrealistic with deadlines. That is like my all-time pet peeve Look, don't tell me it's gonna be ready next Friday That's okay But if you tell me it's gonna be ready on Monday, my expectation will be Monday and if it arrives on Tuesday I'm not happy now that

Katalina Dawson (32:43)
Mmm, that's a big one.

Aristotle Sangalang (32:46)
You

Right.

Adam Parks (32:59)
right, wrong, or indifferent, it is definitely the way that I am. And that was not like a specific question in this assessment. It was just, It's the evaluation of it. And don't be disorganized and messy. So, you know, don't show up to a meeting without your materials in order. Have your case prepared in advance. Don't be trying to grab it all once you've got my time and attention. You gotta get straight to it, which I think is important.

So we did have a question come through here, Aristotle, that I wanted to ask. How does TBI use the Rainmaker Assessment when considering new service providers and why? What is the benefit it provides to those communication tips in driving that type of discussion with a new partner?

Aristotle Sangalang (33:43)
That's a good question. ⁓ So this originally was implemented for employees. But again, you know, my thinking is, you know, tools are usually not just for one purpose. Sometimes you can use tools to do other things. And since we're dealing with people, you know, it was a matter of who at a service provider would I assess and

You know, what I found was we do things very differently at TBI. Some of the audience may know this, ⁓ some may not, but we're not conventional in any sense. We were, you know, taking, you know, payments over time as a standard for years before it became a thing. You know, the consumer experience was important to us in 2005. You know, ⁓ we weren't, you know, we were already doing all those things.

Adam Parks (34:35)
statement.

Aristotle Sangalang (34:39)
before Dodd-Frank. So being a client for a servicer who's more conventional, like a running gun or very, ⁓ I don't wanna say, yes, yes.

Adam Parks (34:54)
settlement oriented, right? It's a faster

pace and it's a more about the now than it is about investing in the future.

Aristotle Sangalang (35:01)
Exactly. We would have trouble, you know, maintaining those relationships because on the one hand, the people we were dealing with, either the COO or the salesperson or whoever we were interacting with on a daily basis, understood our needs, believed in our needs. But when it got time to pass that information down to the collection floor, there was a huge disconnect. So, for example, I'll give you an example.

We had a servicer who worked.

a product that they were also getting from someone else. And we had very different collection philosophies. We accepted payments at post-dated and no problem. The other client was you either settle it, paid in full, or will recall it after the period. Well, you know, if you're a collector, one's working that client and another one's working this client, you know,

the one that's running and gunning is probably hitting commissions, you know, much sooner, whereas the guy that's working our stuff doesn't hit commissions for five months. But once our guy hits commission, he never comes off commission. Whereas the guy who's running and gunning has ebbs and flows of collections because they're running guns hit or miss, you know, where ours before they even pick up the phone at a given month, if they have established a paying file, they could be at their goal before they even pick up the phone.

you know, and

Adam Parks (36:27)
different strategy

altogether, right? It's a totally different approach to it, but it does require a shift in mind frame.

Aristotle Sangalang (36:34)
Right. And you have to have someone who implements that that can sell that. And so the way we we tried it at first with the higher ups of the organization didn't work. There was too much disconnect. So we decided to use this assessment for the floor managers, the ones that are actually interacting with the collectors, the people on the front line. These are the people that we that need to talk like Bill Sorgatz's our agents and Lorenzo Alcantar our agency

Aristotle Sangalang (37:04)
directors and you know they have to be like minded all of them. Our guys and their guys so when our guys talk they can sell it in the same with the same enthusiasm as our guys and I think that's key and our relationships because of that have been very very solid. You know nothing we said you know they understood all of the strategies we have implemented and understand the why.

we do it. So it makes it easier for them to make the line of communication consistent all the way through.

Adam Parks (37:40)
Well, you have to play the game of telephone when it comes to managing collectors. You've got the executives, you've got those that management or operations and you've got a management level, then you've got those collectors that are actively on the phone and engaging with your consumers, which is kind of the most important point of the entire operation.

So I think as we start looking at how do you communicate that game of telephone and you guys have gone past the game of telephone, shortened the wire as much as possible and are very focused on those individuals that are going to add the most value to your organization, which is those individual collectors. And can you get them doing the activity that you're ultimately looking for, which is not.

take settlements, churn and burn. It's about establishing that long-term relationship and getting ultimately the maximum value out of that relationship and portfolio.

Aristotle Sangalang (38:35)
Right. So now, you know, that's that's behaviors. And so that's how we look at the behaviors. The next the next key thing is the values. What motivates people? What gets people's blood going? You know, what makes them alive? ⁓ For you, it looks like you have here you're a. So the red is ⁓ knowledge, so the so knowledge knowledge motivates you. Learning new things motivates you.

Aristotle Sangalang (39:04)
So people who are theoretical, who have a high theoretical are good at problem solving. ⁓ objectively in all areas they learn. They're indiscriminate in what they learn. So anything new comes out, you're all over it. You're looking at it. Your second highest is your utility. So this is...

Utility so money ⁓ time ⁓ These people are Well, yeah you did ⁓ Practicality in all areas of life ⁓ creative appreciation of resources and and you're a capitalist You know, so these are people that have ⁓ You know, like I'm always thinking about time as a cost

Adam Parks (39:33)
Mm-hmm. Time is money. You might hear me say that a few times.

Aristotle Sangalang (39:58)
always thinking of time as a cost. And so, you know, that's why my emails are short. That's why, you know, my conversations aren't necessarily long because time is of essence. And I don't need to waste it on things that I don't think move the ball forward or move the needle forward. So, you know, I have a high value in that. ⁓ The purple.

Katalina Dawson (40:23)
I'm looking at the

deeper ⁓ assessment for Adam. And in that resourcefulness, it says, efficiency, practical results, and return on investment specifically.

Aristotle Sangalang (40:33)
Yes.

So I mean, whether he vocalizes it or not, it's in his head, everything, all the decisions he makes that that's always a factor in his hiring, in his selling, in his customer service, in everything he does. He's thinking of that. That's at the forefront of his mind. ⁓ The aesthetic, so surroundings, that's the purple. This is appreciation of harmony and beauty, creative expression, understanding of self and others.

Aristotle Sangalang (41:03)
⁓ So you're more objective than harmonious. Okay, which is fine. There's nothing again. This is ⁓ an assessment. It's not necessary. There's no pass fail. ⁓ The next one is social. That's others. That's that like teal green and that is selflessness, generosity of time, talents and resources. A quote for that person would be, will invest myself.

Aristotle Sangalang (41:31)
I invest myself time and resources in helping others achieve their potential. So this is, you know, someone who wants to help others. I mean, this is what drives them. Helping others drives them. You know, the black, their power. This is someone who wants to be in control of their destiny or not. Quite the opposite. So ⁓ you're more collaborative. So you're not necessarily

your desire is not necessarily to control your destiny and the destiny of others. Yours is more of a collaborative effort. Mine is towards the other side. So I'm always the person that wants to be in control of what happens to us. know, so, ⁓ but for my role, that's appropriate. You know, I'm, I'm the conductor of the business, so I have to, you know, make sure I'm looking out for everyone's, you know,

own good in a large part. Methodologies, so that's the gray, that used to be called traditional and that is, you know, people that have a high traditional or structured in this graph. These are people that live by a code. They live by a set of rules. You usually find these people ⁓ very religious ⁓ or they grew up in military background, ⁓ very regimented, very

Aristotle Sangalang (43:01)
⁓ Again, they live by their own set of rules and values. You see this type of behavior, ⁓ again, I don't use this in a negative way, but to illustrate a point, fanatics can be like this. ⁓ Substance abusers can be like this, or recovering substance abusers can be like this. You know, or born-again could be like this.

Aristotle Sangalang (43:31)
You know, where they're everything and every anything and everything is, you know, tied to their religion or their belief and everything they do. Tremendous, tremendous, but it also is very rigid. You know what I mean? It not if you are very.

Adam Parks (43:39)
requires significant structure.

If you're all the way

unstructured, then you have no flexibility to the way in which you're going to behave, operate, or think, right? It has to be a certain way. And I would think that that type of person would have a very right and wrong, right, like black and white kind of mind frame.

Aristotle Sangalang (44:03)
Yes.

Yes. Yes.

Katalina Dawson (44:06)
So

it's interesting, I'm looking again at my report. Mine's completely the opposite. I'm towards receptive with a score of 93, which to me makes sense. It's saying a lot of possibilities. love options, I love new methods, and I'm also very ADHD. So that makes sense to me that I'm like open to everything.

Aristotle Sangalang (44:15)
Mm-hmm. That's high.

Well, and that's a good word, open. So you think one extreme is open and one's closed. You know, you won't do a certain thing when you're way to the other way. So I mean, you're very adaptable. know, you know, change in the world doesn't deter you. Can you imagine what change is like to someone who's highly structured? Wow, that could be difficult. That could be a challenge. But for someone who's highly receptive, I don't want to say go with the flow that makes it sound flaky.

Katalina Dawson (44:29)
Yeah.

Yes.

Aristotle Sangalang (44:57)
But.

Katalina Dawson (44:57)
No,

totally, I would say even roll with the punches.

Aristotle Sangalang (44:59)
Yes, yes,

yes. ⁓ Your personality says things can change. They don't always have to stay the way they are forever, you know, and so you're adaptable. So that's good. So this is what motivates people. And just because remember, I said there's there's a correlation, not necessarily, but you use the behaviors and the values together. So just because you don't have the behaviors of something, you may have the motivators.

Aristotle Sangalang (45:29)
that can get you there. So for example, if you don't have the behaviors that make you a persuader to be a bill collector, right? Bill collector in the wheel would probably be a persuader. So if we're looking at a clock, probably three to five o'clock on the wheel, you know, those people make good collectors. They're. Yeah, they're the persuaders. They're the ones that sell or the promoters. ⁓ OK, you know, that's a behavioral style that works best for that type of job.

Katalina Dawson (45:45)
I'll go back to that so people can take a peek. There we go.

Aristotle Sangalang (45:59)
You don't have to have that, though. You you could have be a high utilitarian and a high individualistic, the black, being meaning you want to be in control of your own destiny and you're a high utilitarian. So your value is practicality and or, you know, monetary reward. Well, guess what? Collections is commissions and bonuses. You know, you could end up being a good collector without the behavior.

Now, here's the downside. The downside is behavior discipline. Discipline runs whether you feel like it or not. Motivation is, you know, you have to feel like it. You know, you have to be in the mood to do it or something has to push you to do it. So they're not equal, but it does one doesn't mean you can't be another. You could be adaptable. It's not ideal, but it can still work. So that's that's the importance of those two.

Adam Parks (46:36)
Thank

Aristotle Sangalang (46:57)
The third aspect is where they're developed. Where are these individuals developed in these certain attributes? Like in this situation, know, employee development and coaching is your most developed attribute. You know, which is good, and I'm sure, you know, Katalina's glad to hear that. You know, it makes, you know, it makes her job easier if she can interact with you freely without feeling like they're bothering you or that you're being inconvenienced.

Adam Parks (47:16)
Ha ha ha!

Aristotle Sangalang (47:27)
Continuous learning, again, that is the high theoretical. The planning and organizing, that's the high ⁓ utilitarian. That's also very much the middle of the road, see guy. You remember on the disk, the rules, you like things to be organized. ⁓ And then at the lesser developed ones doesn't mean

Adam Parks (47:44)
That is a true statement.

Aristotle Sangalang (47:57)
that you're bad at them. a lot of times people see this and they think the dark blue is good, the light blue is bad. It's not good or bad. It's where you need to develop more. That's all. You know, maybe your job or your life doesn't allow you to do some of the things that you're underdeveloped on or not as developed on. Well, that's not your fault. You had no opportunity to have any of that experience. So

You know, this is just a way to say, OK, for example, if I was looking at a bill collector who wasn't a persuader or promoter, but had a utilitarian and high individualistic, I'd look for someone who was also goal oriented.

Adam Parks (48:39)
Okay, that makes sense.

Aristotle Sangalang (48:40)
You know,

that's some, you know, someone who's good at negotiation, conflict management. You know, if they had high skills in that, those people could be good collectors. Again, you look at it as one is naturally a collector and one is nurtured as a collector. You know what mean? Nurtured to be a

Adam Parks (48:44)
Well, think if you look at like, as I look at this, you know, obviously about myself, and it's probably a little bit more difficult to look inward at some of these things. But conflict management to me is not always the best use of time. Right? Like trying to trying to manage a conflict because it's to me everything like it's either yes, or it's a no, right? Like we're moving forward. And this is something that I need to work through plan and organize around. Or it's not.

Adam Parks (49:26)
And that might not be right. Again, we talk about it's not right, wrong or indifferent here. It's more about where do you fit into that wheel? Now I've got other folks in our organization that are far better at the conflict management portion of it, right, and are a little bit more, let's say balanced in that regard. But it's interesting even as being the one being evaluated to look at it and say, okay, here's the areas that I know I'm, you know, some of the things that it says that I'm good at, I know.

pretty well that I'm good at. But some of the things where it says that I need development are things that I probably would have thought I was better at. It's interesting to look at it through this perspective and to be able to take an honest look at yourself and the people around you and say, is that, is my view of myself correct? And is the view of myself the same view as the external world? And I feel like there's a balance to be struck there. So I think as people go through the process of

of trying an assessment like this and going through the experience themselves, that you do have to take kind of a hard look at yourself and say, where do I really fit into all of this? And I think for me, it becomes a lot more comfortable on the wheel because it's circular and there's like, it's truly and visually, there is no right or wrong.

Aristotle Sangalang (50:40)
It's even. Right.

Right. Exactly. But I mean, again, this is all again, if you're really developed at something, you know, you probably don't even think about it, you know what I mean, as opposed to stuff that you're seeing now that says, oh, you know, developed, moderately developed or development and opportunity. Again, these are also good coaching tools. So what we find what we have found in using this assessment is it's not only good.

Adam Parks (51:03)
Yes.

Aristotle Sangalang (51:08)
For the hiring, it's also good for the employees. We like to evaluate our employees probably every 24 months because things change.

Adam Parks (51:18)
Clearly. mine changed

pretty dramatic. It was 12 years, but that change didn't happen overnight. Those were incremental changes in me over time.

Aristotle Sangalang (51:27)
Exactly. And let's face it, the world has changed again. That was, ⁓ you talked to someone the other day and I said, you know, the world is even so different pre COVID post COVID. mean, it's just different. You know, everything is different. The way people talk, the way that people see each other, the way people interact with each other. It's all different. We just, it's, it's a different world. I look back and I, I see clips of, of stuff that happened in the 2010s. And I'm like, wow, that would never happen today. You know, ⁓

Adam Parks (51:38)
Well, let me ask you

this, how do you feel about the difference between the scores here and then we look at it again as means. How do you view that differentiation between those two data sets?

Aristotle Sangalang (52:07)
Well, the means are everybody who's taken the assessment, right? And where they fall and where you're compared to the average, the mean of everybody that's ever taken it. you know, if you think about it in that context, it's not all that bad. It doesn't mean that the stuff that's in red is bad. It just means compared to everybody else, you know, this is where you fall. Again, you know, it's really hard because we live

in a society where it's pass fail, good, bad, rich, poor. mean, everything is degrees of something. It's always. So you can't help but by default look at these things like that. But I can tell you for certain, and I have plenty of reds myself. And I don't feel that as a disadvantage for me. again.

Adam Parks (52:43)
So binary. Yeah.

Aristotle Sangalang (53:01)
This is all about where the area is opportunity and where can we best use your person, your profile. Where is it best suited and where is it gonna be the most successful for all of us? This is the third aspect of everything. Fourth is really dimensional balance. You can split these into two sections. As you can see, the left side is the worldview and the right side is the self.

This is you understand the world outside of you. So you're not living in La La Land. You understand the rules. You understand your practical. ⁓ So you're not like living in a cave all by yourself, not knowing what's going on outside. ⁓ The self-awareness is really all about how you see yourself. And this is the one that typically looks bad.

when you first take it, if you're taking it as an applicant. If you're trying to get a job, let's face it, ⁓ sense of self, depending on why you are looking for a job, your sense of self might be pretty low. You know, your self-awareness might be pretty low. Your direction, your sense of direction, like which way are you going could be down. Because again, you're looking for a job. that, when I see that, it seems natural to me if they're...

Aristotle Sangalang (54:25)
you know, depending on what their circumstances are in applying. But over time, you don't want to see that you want to see it where yours is pretty much, you know, where it is, you you're you understand yourself. That's important. And a lot of people think they know themselves, but they don't, you know, they or they they have a distorted view of themselves. And I think this really, really helps you see that. And it's important to know

the mindset that someone's in when you're talking to them. Like knowing this, if I interview this person and I know that their sense of self is very low, I'm not going to interview them and say, what was your biggest failure? I might say, what was your greatest success? You know what mean? I might go the other way, but that's stuff that I would need to know. again, makes, look, everything is about communication.

in the end, right? And if we understand the other person and they understand us, that just makes the playing field great for communication. And, you know, that's where the disconnect is most of the time is people misunderstand each other.

Adam Parks (55:44)
If you've never met somebody before, this is a great way to get an assessment of where they fit into an organization, whether you're bringing in a new staff member or you're trying to find a partner or vendor to be working with long term. I think in business, we're all looking for long term. Very rarely are we looking for someone to fill the stop gap.

Aristotle Sangalang (55:56)
Yes.

Adam Parks (56:03)
We're always looking for, I always tell people when we're hiring, look, I'm looking for someone to sit in your seat for the next 10 years. Is this the kind of role that you feel like you could do for the next 10 years and that you would enjoy? It's not always an easy question and I'm sure it throws some people off, especially when we're hiring internationally, because it's not a question they get quite often. But for me, I think it's important that we understand, you know, what is the motivation behind this? Where are we trying to go with people and how can we

How can we get to an understanding of the people around us as quickly as possible? Otherwise, hiring, onboarding, recruiting, training, all of those things are very, very expensive. So we spend all of this money

Aristotle Sangalang (56:36)
Yes. Yes. And I look at it like this.

Adam Parks (56:47)
right to try and get somebody to become part of our organization. If they only last a couple of weeks, we have wasted a lot of money. And with 88 % of companies have trouble having trouble hiring and 81 % having trouble retaining the people that they do hire. This has become infinitely more important over the last three or four years.

Aristotle Sangalang (57:05)
Well, I look at it this way. In our business, we buy all sorts of data for accounts. We score them, we get attributes, we do this, we order credit bureaus. If we find the value in doing that and understanding a person that will never necessarily interact with other than in a collection capacity, why wouldn't something like that be important for your employees or your service providers? can't see investing. If you think it makes sense to order credit for a consumer, why wouldn't you?

put an employee through this. Turnover is extremely expensive. ⁓ And it's like what people don't notice is because they don't see the money pouring out from turnover. It's not like you're opening your wallet and the money's pouring out of it. You know, it's one of those kind of hidden costs that people say, if I don't see it, it's not there, you know, but they realize it when they're constantly trying to fill seats. We've been fortunate, our tenure

Adam Parks (57:45)
It's not a line item. Yeah.

Aristotle Sangalang (57:58)
average tenure for employees is probably eight years. Most of the management, I've been doing this process since 2009, so 16. You know, it's a long time. And it's the one product that I'm not going to stop using. Because especially in an environment that's constantly changing, you better have people that can change. Otherwise, it's

Adam Parks (58:02)
But you've been doing this for 10 plus years now, right? So it's

Aristotle Sangalang (58:24)
You know, you have a big ship with a tiny rudder. know, you're the Titanic. You're going to crash into the iceberg. Exactly. But if you have the right people, then no matter what the changes are, you guys can roll with it. And that's kind of how I've looked at the hiring is most people hire just for today. I'm hiring for today and tomorrow. Like what could happen tomorrow? You know, one of my favorite books is this

Adam Parks (58:31)
Real hard to steer.

Katalina Dawson (58:33)
Yeah.

Aristotle Sangalang (58:53)
book called QBQ and there's a section in it called Beating the Ref. When I'm hiring people, I'm beating the ref. What I mean by that is if the environment changes and I have enough people who are adaptive, it's not gonna affect me like it will affect everybody else. in that regard, I'm taking the ref out of the equation.

Adam Parks (59:13)
I think it's an interesting approach and I've seen a couple of comments start to come through as well that I'll start responding to as we wrap up here. But it sounds like a lot of organizations are really either looking for a tool like this or are...

using similar tools to try and drive that type of assessment and a better understanding of the people around them. But as we hit the top of the hour here, guys, I really do appreciate you joining us today. I appreciate your insights. Aristotle, I really appreciate you enabling me to participate in this because this program and this assessment has provided me with some interesting opportunities, especially over an extended period of time.

to look at myself a little bit deeper and try to identify where I have those opportunities to improve myself and to better kind of identify those areas in which I probably a little bit more developed and can spend less time trying to grow myself. So this has been a great experience for me.

Aristotle Sangalang (1:00:10)
But you may not need to. You may have people that can do that for you. Again, just because it's something that's not developed doesn't mean it's something that you need to develop. You know, you have to look at the whole picture, you know?

Adam Parks (1:00:18)
Fair point. Yeah.

Fair point. Anything, any final words, Katalina?

Katalina Dawson (1:00:27)
Nothing on my end. I thought this was a great walkthrough of the assessment. I think it represented everything very well.

Adam Parks (1:00:34)
Excellent. Well, I want to thank everybody for your time and attention today. We really do appreciate you coming on, hanging out with us here on LinkedIn live. We're going to be publishing this to YouTube next week as well. So if you want to share this with people inside of your organization or other organizations that you're looking to partner with, that may be an interesting way for you to further engage with this content and find some additional value. But thank you guys so much for your time and attention today. I really do appreciate it. Aristotle Katalina, I appreciate you participating today and we'll see you.

all again soon. Bye.

Aristotle Sangalang (1:01:04)
Thank you.

Katalina Dawson (1:01:05)
Thank you. Bye.