In this episode of The Huge Insider Podcast, Michael Kaplan breaks down how team meetings, when done right, can drive culture, mission alignment, communication, and motivation across an entire organization. Instead of boring status updates, great meetings reinforce your company’s purpose, deliver key information, cascade leadership messages, and celebrate success. You'll walk away with actionable tips on how to plan your meetings with purpose, inject energy into the room (think "Black Betty" as a hype song), and engage your team so they leave energized and informed. If you want your team rowing in the same direction—toward growth and excellence—this episode gives you the blueprint. Show Notes Guest Michael Kaplan Home service entrepreneur since 2006 Scaled a carpet cleaning business to over 150 employees and eight figures in revenue Resources Mentioned Downloadable Action Guide The Huge Insider Newsletter Signup Foundations Platform Free Trial The Huge Mastermind Info Page Facebook Group Huge Convention Tickets August 20–22, 2025, in Nashville, TN Transcript Sid Graef: Welcome back to the Huge Insider Podcast. Hey, my friend, it's Sid Graef here, and the Huge Insider is the show for home service professionals that are striving to break the million-dollar revenue mark. And if that's you, you're in the right place. If you're already over a million dollars in revenue, you will get even more out of this show. So we want to help you skip the BS and get real wisdom from experienced business builders. We've gathered wisdom and insight directly from seven- and eight-figure business owners, people who are running companies that do anywhere from 2 million a year to 40 million a year, and we're bringing you their best insights, all focused on one single topic each month. And these are real owners. They're not armchair philosophers or fake gurus. These are the ones that are quietly building empires behind the scenes. They're not on social media looking for attention. They're in business actually making things happen. So last month we focused on hiring A-players, and this month we answered the question, what do you do once you hire the right person? You've got onboarding, pay structure, training, safety, and much more. And today's topic is team meetings and the value of team meetings. So you're about to hear from Michael Kaplan. Michael Kaplan built a strong eight-figure carpet cleaning business in the Midwest, and he knows about team meetings because they had over 150 employees and they had to get everyone on the same page week after week after week. So he goes into a lot of detail about what a good team meeting needs to be successful and why it's important. You know, most businesses treat team meetings as an afterthought or skip them altogether and just assume that everybody knows what to do and where they need to be. Last thing before we dive in, we've got a downloadable action guide for you for this episode, and it's available at thehugeinsider.com. So with that, let's dive into it. Michael Kaplan: Hello, podcasters. My name's Michael Kaplan. I've been a home service entrepreneur since 2006, and I drew the short straw. So I get to talk to you about team meetings, and actually, I'm a bit of a team meeting nerd, so maybe it's not a super short straw. But most people groan and hate the prospect of having a team meeting because most meetings suck. And no offense, your meetings probably suck. Mine have too, and I've got a couple of tips here to help you think through how to make your meetings suck less or maybe even accomplish a couple of goals. So think about the tone of the meeting as much as the content of the meeting. How you deliver the message matters almost as much as the message. And similarly important, think really hard about how much you're trying to accomplish. Less is more, and the risk of overextending is real, and you'll dilute the message if you do overextend. So you've got the full team there. How are you going to set the tone? I always think upbeat. Get people kind of rocking going into the meeting. Think, you know, Ram Jam, "Black Betty" — that's always been my go-to. Have a clear agenda and don't stuff it too full, but for me, a successful meeting's going to tick all these boxes: It's going to reinforce culture. It's going to cascade a message from the leadership team. It's going to reinforce the mission. It's going to transfer information. And it's going to celebrate success. So let me unpack those real quick. On reinforcing culture: you are not in front of your whole team every day, at least not in this manner. So fill their buckets, remind them their why, why they show up, why they love each other, what's great about the company, what's special. Like it might be feedback from a customer that you're relaying. There are any number of ways to do it, but really think about what you guys stand for and how you can transfer that throughout the meeting. You want to ...