Episode Summary
In this episode of The Flywheel Effect, host Brent Sonnek-Schmelz sits down with Patrick Martinez, Founder and CEO at Fivestones Solutions. They explore how behavioral and cognitive assessments can reduce hiring guesswork and prevent role fit problems that drain teams.
Patrick breaks down what his survey package measures: drive, expressiveness, patience, and rule-following, plus raw cognitive horsepower. He explains why the report matters less than the coaching session, where leaders put friction points on the table and practice new responses. That work builds learned behaviors without forcing long-term, energy-burning adaptation.
From there, Patrick connects the data to execution. Map your sales process into distinct roles, then staff to strengths instead of trying to clone the owner. Match salespeople to customer styles to avoid “oil and water” meetings. Set decision lanes so fast movers own direction and timing, while process minds own standards, risk, and the definition of done every week.
Featured Guest
Guest: Patrick Martinez
What he does: Founder & CEO
Company: Fivestones Solutions
Noteworthy: He helps luxury home service teams hire and place talent using assessments, coaching, and role design so sales and leadership teams communicate better and execute faster.
Guest Company Website: https://www.linkedin.com/in/5stone/
Key Insights
Assessments don’t fix teams. Coaching does.
A personality assessment works like a mirror, not a solution. The value shows up when the team uses the results to change daily behavior. Start by putting friction points on the table, using real scenarios from the last week, and agreeing on what each person needs in order to work well. Then build shared language around styles so feedback stays specific. “High drive” and “high analytic” become useful labels when they guide how you run meetings, how you deliver critique, and how you pace decisions. Watch for the difference between learned behaviors and forced adaptation. Small tweaks stick. Full personality rewrites drain energy and create burnout. Use cognitive testing the same way: not to crown the smartest person, but to predict training speed and reduce ramp time.
Staff the sales process, not the person you wish you had
Most owners try to “hire a salesperson” when they should design a sales lineup. Break sales into clear roles, then assign talent to the parts they can execute without fighting their wiring. A practical model uses five roles: influence, hunting, subject matter expert, closing, and farming. Owners often cover all five early on, which means they do some of them poorly and feel constant drag. Role clarity fixes that. It also prevents the classic mismatch where a consultative, detail-driven seller gets forced into daily cold outreach, or a hunter gets stuck managing paperwork and follow-up. Team selling scales faster than solo selling because handoffs let each person stay in their strength zone. That lifts output without adding stress.
Decision lanes prevent chaos as you move faster
Fast teams don’t avoid conflict. They manage it with clear decision rights. Define “decision lanes” so urgency and risk sit with the right person. Let high-velocity leaders own direction, timing, and external stakes. Let process-minded leaders own standards, risk thresholds, operating process, and the definition of done. Then sort decisions by reversibility. If the decision is low risk and reversible, move fast and review after. If it’s high risk, require input and slow down to protect the business. This approach cuts the back-and-forth that kills momentum, especially on remote teams. It also helps managers stop confusing delegation with abdication. You still need cadence, check-ins, and observation to spot when roles start breaking people down.
Episode Highlights
The performance sweet spot: tight enough, not tense
00:02:39-00:03:45
High performance often looks calm from the outside, but it runs on control. The key is not “more adrenaline.” It’s the right amount. Too much energy leads to rushed mistakes. Too little creates slow starts and missed cues. This framing matters for leadership, too. Teams need routines that keep urgency high without turning every decision into a panic sprint. That balance gets harder when stakes rise, timelines compress, and everyone feels watched. The fix starts with naming the feeling, then building a repeatable pre-game routine that steadies execution.
“You go back and forth where you’re super wound up and nervous and tightly dialed in. You make a mistake. The other end is you’re super relaxed and late. It’s this balance of trying to be wound tight enough, but not too wound up or too loose.”
“Raw horsepower” predicts how fast someone learns
00:12:02-00:13:45
Hiring mistakes get expensive when training takes longer than expected. A cognitive screen can help set that expectation. It doesn’t replace skills training, but it can predict how quickly someone absorbs new concepts. That matters most in roles with constant change: new tools, new processes, and new customer problems. A useful benchmark is whether someone can learn in “one-and-a-half times” — they grasp it once, then lock it in after one follow-up. Leaders can then plan onboarding around reality instead of hope. It also prevents blaming people for slow ramp when the job simply demands a different learning speed.
“We score people because we want to find out how quickly they’ll pick up completely new ideas. Are they a one-and-a-half-times person? The first time I show them something, we come back to it, and then they’ve got it.”
The “island map” explains why certain pairs clash
00:29:47-00:31:20
Team conflict often comes from distance, not intent. When two people sit on opposite ends of a behavioral map, their defaults collide. One pushes for speed and action. The other pushes for precision and guardrails. Without a shared model, each side labels the other as difficult. With a model, leaders can predict friction, plan communication, and avoid unforced errors in meetings. This becomes even more important in remote teams, where you lose informal context and small repairs. A simple map creates a common reference point and helps teams separate style from capability.
“Brent is really far into the persuader bucket. A lot of your team lives exactly across the island from Brent. That’s where we’ll have the most conflict and inadvertently offend the most people.”</Exact Quote>
Stress shows up in the body before it hits the calendar
00:45:55-00:49:40
Role fit problems don’t always show up as missed KPIs. They show up as physical signals. Weight gain, low energy, mood shifts, and chronic lateness often appear before someone quits or crashes. Leaders miss those signs when they move too fast and treat delegation like a handoff with no follow-up. A healthier approach uses a set cadence: real check-ins, honest observation, and a willingness to adjust tasks before the situation breaks. When a leader can’t make time for the “offense” of care, the “defense” still matters. Plan for what happens if that person disappears tomorrow.
“My observation is the body doesn’t lie. The physical manifestations show up — weight, struggling to make meetings, feeling down. Slowing down to pay attention to your team in that way is really important.”
