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37 Hires.
35 Still on the Team.
This is What That Process Looks Like.

Brady McDonald built a near-perfect retention rate — fully remote, 30+ employees — not by being a great judge of character. By building a filter that doesn’t bend under pressure.
35/37
Hires Still Retained
~95%
Retention Rate
60
TA-12 Minimum Score — Non-Negotiable
Client
Brady McDonald
Industry
Real Estate Development
Team Size
~30 Employees (Fully Remote)
Tool Used
TA-12 Candidate Assessment
The Problem

He Didn't Have a Candidate Problem. He Had a Standards Problem.

Brady McDonald runs a growing real estate development operation with about 30 people — all remote, all working at a pace most companies can’t match.

He knew exactly what kind of person thrives in his environment. Growth mindset. High ownership. Gets things done without being managed. The kind of person who puts the grocery cart back not because someone told them to — because that’s just who they are.

What he didn’t have was a reliable way to find them before making an offer.

You get a lot of people that will just sell you in the interview. They tell you everything you want to hear. And then you're six weeks in wondering why nothing's getting done.

BRADY MCDONALD
He’d watched other operators hire on resume. Hire on instinct. Hire on desperation. And he’d seen those hires unravel. Brady wanted something different. A filter that couldn’t be gamed.
The Process

Every Stage Is a Filter. That's the Point.

Brady doesn’t use the TA-12 as a courtesy. He uses it as a gate. The candidates who make it through every stage have already proven they do the work before they get the offer.
The Results

What the Numbers Look Like.

Brady has made approximately 37 hires. He’s retained approximately 35 of them. That’s a retention rate that sits far above what Harvard Business School cites as the industry benchmark.
~95%
Employee retention across all hires made
Brady’s Actual Rate
40–45%
Retention rate Harvard Business School cites as a healthy benchmark
Industry Average
This isn’t luck. It isn’t a great culture pitch or a generous compensation package doing the heavy lifting. It’s a repeatable process that filters for the right people before the offer goes out — and then sets them up to succeed once they’re in.
The Foundation

Core Values That Are Actually Enforceable.

Brady’s values are deliberately unglamorous. No “integrity.” No “synergy.” No corporate language that means nothing.

If you have to ask what it means, it's not clear enough.

BRADY MCDONALD
01  We do the work.
02  We don’t make excuses.
03  We go above and beyond.
04  We do what we said we would do, when we said we would do it.
05  We work to get a little bit better every day.
Every interview question is designed to surface whether a candidate actually lives these values — or just knows how to describe them. The TA-12 is the first filter. The core value questions are the second. The assignment is the third.

“If one or two of those core value examples don’t align, we don’t even question it. We don’t hire them.”
After the Offer

The Process Doesn't Stop at the Hire.

New hires go into a structured onboarding board. SOPs. Platform logins. A 30-60-90 plan reviewed in the second interview so expectations are set before the start date. And for the first two to three weeks, Brady runs daily huddles with every new hire.

I haven't hired one person that just automatically started the right meeting cadence. Nobody walks in knowing how to do this. So you teach them.

BRADY MCDONALD
The agenda is always the same: wins, commitments from yesterday, stuck points, commitments for today. Daily for two to three weeks. Then three times a week. Then the standard cadence. By that point, the hire knows how the company operates and how to report without being chased.

Every new employee is also on a 90-day probationary period. At day 90, they either earn additional benefits — or the conversation happens. There’s no ambiguity built into the system.

The Takeaway for Real Estate Operators

Brady’s setup is proof that the TA-12 doesn’t require a full recruiting engagement to deliver results. Used consistently as a non-negotiable filter, it changes what gets into the funnel — and that changes everything downstream.

Most founders aren’t losing great people. They’re letting the wrong people in.

A score threshold. A filter. A process that doesn’t bend when you’re in a hurry. That’s what Brady built. That’s what the numbers reflect.
SEE HOW THE TA-12 WORKS →
Brady McDonald is a member of the Boardroom Mastermind community. Team Architects provides the TA-12 behavioral assessment platform used throughout his hiring process.