EntreLeadership - Hiring and Retaining Team Members During the Great Resignation with Jack Galloway

Episode Date: December 6, 2021

The Great Resignation has made hiring more difficult than ever before. In order to hire someone, you have to attract the right talent and vet them through a hiring process. Then, once they're hired, you have to keep them on your team. That’s the formula—but how can you apply it successfully? In this episode of The EntreLeadership Podcast, we sit down with Ramsey Solutions Chief People Officer Jack Galloway. He walks you through how we attract and retain great talent and how you can too. Later in the episode, Jack takes listener questions about retaining talent and whether hiring slow and firing fast is still a good way to operate in this talent climate.   The EntreLeadership Podcast Download the The EntreLeader's Guide to Hiring. Schedule a call with Tim, our producer.   Learn more about EntreLeadership Events: EntreLeadership Summit | EntreLeadership Master Series   Learn more about EntreLeadership Coaching: Elite | Advisory Groups | Executive Coaching | Workshops | Weekly Report Tool   Learn more about the offers from our EntreLeadership Partners: BELAY | Gravy | Hite Digital | NetSuite Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

As Dave Ramsey likes to say, business is easy until people get involved. And thanks to the great resignation, attracting, hiring, and retaining team members is harder than ever. So how do you get the right people in the door, despite the chaotic job climate? From the Ramsey Network, this is the Entree Leadership podcast, where we help business leaders grow themselves, their teams, and their profits. I'm your host, George Camel, and today's episode is all about attracting and retaining team members, which connects to our business driver of people. Today's guest is Jack Galloway. He's an operating board member and the chief people officer here at Ramsey Solutions where he leads the human resources team.

Jack cares deeply about the people that work at Ramsey, and we talk about the right way to do job postings, recruiting, hiring, along with strategies to retain team members. After the interview, Jack is going to coach two small business owners as they call in with their questions around attracting and retaining team members, so you don't want to miss that. Up first, my conversation with Jack Galloway. Jack, welcome back to the Entree Leadership Podcast.

Thanks, George. It's great to be with you today. We are talking about something that you live and breathe every day, attracting and retaining team members. And we are in this kind of great resignation. We've all heard this in the media. So this topic is more important than ever as people really dial in and get more competitive with how they're bringing on people, how they're recruiting, all these things. So I wanted to pick your brain about these topics. You ready? I'm ready. Okay, so it starts with attracting. This is where we kind of have to create. create this awareness. What are some ways businesses typically get applications? You know, we've,

we've dealt with this question when we were a team of 50 people and we deal with it when we're a team of a thousand people. And so the good news is we've had experience with this at different levels. The bad news is it doesn't get any easier as you get larger. But my first answer to that question is be a great company to work for. A lot of times I will meet with a business owner that's got a business that I'm not sure I would get excited about, not because of the industry they're in, but because they're not excited, because they're not growing. They're not waking up every morning enthusiastic to get to work. If that's the case, if you've got a leader or a business, it's not a great place to be, the bad news is there aren't magical ways to attract people to that,

company. And so I'm going to say that more than half of this problem is solved by being a fantastic place to work for because people tell their friends and word gets out and customers want to work for places where they've had a fantastic experience with enthusiastic team members. Yeah, especially in a competitive market, like we're saying, you've got to really stand out from the crowd. That's right. And so you can't really brush past that and go, well, we're not the best place. to work. We're not real fun, but hey, it's a job. That's just not enough anymore. The second thing that I would want to do is start spreading the word. And I'm not talking about going to LinkedIn and Facebook and Indeed. I'm talking about with your own team,

letting your team know that you're growing and that we're going to be hiring 10 new people next year. And these are probably what those 10 positions are going to look like. And then also with your own tribe or your own customers. If you're an HVAT, company and you don't have a tribe per se like we might where we're reaching out through media, you still have a customer base. It's okay to let those customers know that you're looking for fantastic people to come serve them better. And there's nothing they'd rather do than refer their friends to a place where they've had fantastic quality and you've treated them like their VIP customers. And then the third thing that I would say is referrals from the team.

And this one is a little bit tricky because sometimes I think we overestimate the volume of people that are going to come as referrals from the team. But the quality of the people that are going to come as referrals from our own team. If you've got a strong team and a good company, they're the best people to interview and filter out the people you don't want to work with your company and to help you find some friends of theirs who might do the third. things you need to come and join your company. And before you ever have your first interview, they've already done some pre-work for you. Yeah, that makes sense. And some of our best team members are referrals just from word of mouth over the years. I've done that a few times, brought on people who I thought, these are people of character who share the same values,

who would be great, you know, thoroughbreds, we call them. That's right. And that can be such a great tool that doesn't involve spending, you know, thousands of dollars on recruiting and ads on all these kinds of things. We also ask our team members to help us keep crazy people out. Yes. We all have those crazy friends that need a job, right? And we're counting on our team to care enough about our company that when their crazy friend needs a job, that they'll let us know, hey, they're not really a fit. They're really not a hard worker. They're really not into what it is we do here. They just need a paycheck. And so your team can help you find great people and can help you avoid crazy people. That's great. Both sides. It's wonderful. That's right. So describe what a job posting

should include so that it's clear for the candidate and set your company apart as a great place to work. Well, you really nailed it when you said clear. The most important thing to me as we're going through this is clear. We've got to know that this marketplace right now is I'm 50 and I've never seen an employment marketplace like we're in today, the environment we're in today. You can go to Indeed right this minute. You can type in your name, what you do, your location or remote, and I'm not exaggerating see hundreds of positions that match that description. It is an employee's marketplace like never before. Companies are hiring faster than they ever have before. They're offering more money than they ever have before. And so when that's the case, you've got to be clear about what it is you need

and what it is your company does and why they should out of that list of a hundred job descriptions, if they're scanning and they come across yours, why is it that yours should grab their attention? And did you do a good job in that one to three second period of time? You've got to make that first impression of at least being clear about what it is your company does, what you stand for, and what it is you need in that position. And so clarity is really the most important thing to me. Yeah. And with job postings, it's pretty passive.

You're kind of hoping people find you, stumble upon this. But for some small business owners out there, maybe they're not getting a pile of applications from people landing on their website. At what point do you go, all right, we need to consider recruiting in addition to these job postings? Well, every business, whether you're a single entrepreneur or whether you're a larger team, every company has sort of what I would call a natural organic flow of people that are interested in working in your company. And you may not know what that organic flow is, but you do know whether or not it's more people than you need or fewer people than you need. So if you're a small tech company and you've got 10 team members, you may say, well, we only add about one person a year.

And right now we're getting enough applications without doing a lot of work to find that one person a year. As long as that is working, it's working. Don't change it. Unless you decide you need more people. If you're finding quality people through friends of your team members and being a great company and talking to your tribe or your customers, that's a good place to be. When it's time to start talking about other methods including recruitment is when you start to dial up the volume of people that you need beyond that natural organic, flow of people interested in working for your company. So in our example, we said we're hiring about

one a year and we have 10 people, but we just got a big contract and now we need 10 people and we need them all now. Well, at our current pace, that's about a 10 year period of time to just let it happen naturally. So we start needing to look at things like recruitment. And so when the volume starts to tick up past that natural organic flow, that's when we want to start learning. about things like social media recruiters and other methods of getting the right people in faster. Yeah. So once we've got these applications in, we have people that are interested there in the pipeline. What does this hiring process look like? What should a successful hiring process include? Well, earlier we said that it needed to be clear in the job description. It also needs to be clear as what your hiring process is.

First, you as the business have to be clear. What is our hiring process and are we following it? Is it three steps or 23 steps? We need to know the steps of our own hiring process and we need to be proud of it. We need to be deliberate and intentional about it. And over time, it's easy to let that get complicated and long. And so you as the owner need to keep your finger on the pulse of what your candidates are experiencing when they're coming to interview for your company. You start needing to look at things like culture fit, team fit, skill fit. skill fit and all of these things need to be clearly a part of your interview process so that you can

rate a person you can go well they have the skill we need but we need a senior level person and they're clearly a junior level person or hey culture is really a big deal here we're working with troubled youth in our business and we need people that care about troubled youth and this person has all the right skills but they have no package for helping troubled youth that they're not a culture fit. And so you've got to really put some weight and some value to the different things that are what I would call no matter what's when it comes to hiring the right people. Yeah, what are those necessary pieces that we need to check the boxes for, and then the rest might be nice to have. That's right. And how long is too long for this hiring

process? Because our process here, Ramsey, people would say this is a fairly long process. We're pretty intense here. But is there a point in time where you go, all right, we're losing people because It's been three months, six months. There is a point in time when that happens. It depends on the role, and it depends on the role for your company. If you're hiring your next CFO, you need to stop and take your time. And if you lose someone during the interview process, because you were going through a deliberate interview process that was too long for them, they probably weren't the right person. And for the CFO, that's okay.

Like, you need to wait until you find the right person. if you are hiring hourly people, you're hiring teenagers to work and serve fast food, we don't need to take months in order to make these decisions. We need to know that our competitors are probably meeting them one time and making an offer. It doesn't mean we have to do what they're doing, but in being aware of what they're doing, if we were to take weeks or months to hire that type of person, we're going to lose nearly all of them. So it depends on the role. And the answer is it needs to be as short as possible to not be rushed and make bad decisions.

We don't need to let this drag on for an unnecessary amount of time. Because remember that candidate is experiencing us through this interview process. They're interviewing us too. And if we're disorganized and we don't show up on time and we don't know what it is we want to talk about when we're with them, they're probably going to wander off and join somebody else's company. Yeah. So it depends on the industry, the level of the role, the candidate. Those are all important factors.

There's no, hey, it's six months no matter what. That's right. Okay. So it's a candidate's market right now. So how can business owners be competitive in that hiring process when they may be going up against much bigger companies with much more impressive benefits and compensation plans? You know, when we read about other companies, and I spend a lot of time, reading about why people are leaving and what they're looking for and what Amazon's doing and what

Netflix is doing. And I tell small business owners, let's don't compete with Amazon. They're just in a different place than we are. And our job is not to compete against Amazon. Our job is, however, to up our own game way beyond where it is, compete with other people that are about our size in our marketplace, in our industry to be the best. And so what we need to do is not worry so much. I read about Amazon. They're paying so much more than other people, and people are attracted to that. But they have their own culture.

And trust me, Amazon has its own troubles at their size that we don't want at our size. So we're not necessarily trying to be Amazon and Tesla and Netflix. But in our world, we need to be really proud of what we're doing, and we need to up our game so that we would be really proud for the son of or daughter of somebody that we know really well that wants to interview with us to come through our interview process. Yeah. So it's kind of this, be yourself and be the best version of yourself. That's right.

Don't try to be something you're not. Push yourself. Don't set unrealistic expectations because then that almost sort of let you off the hook to go, well, we can never be Amazon. But we can be the best version of Ramsey's solutions. and that's a different bar, and it can actually put more pressure on us to shoot sacred cows, make decisions faster, and give that candidate a much better experience. That's huge. So once we've attracted them, we've got them in the pipeline, we're through the hiring process,

and we go, all right, we're going to make this hire. We've got to talk about retaining. That's one of the most difficult things, especially for, you know, millennials and Gen Z. They're not here for 20-year careers. They're going, what's my next thing? I can leap frog into another opportunity or a leadership position. So with all these people leaving their jobs through this great resignation going, do I want to do this? Should I work remote?

Should I move across the country? What does it mean to be that great company where people enjoy coming to work every day where they're here for the long haul? You know, our grandparents and our parents, George, their idea of a career was to choose a company that would hire them and stay with them for 25 or 30 years and retire. and that's just not the marketplace we're in today. It is a different market. We have different people going through college and trade schools and experiences to come get different jobs. And we need to take some time and learn what is it that employees are looking for in a company to have a career. We need to stop and say, who are we as a company? We're not trying to compete with Amazon. we're also not trying to compete with the hopes and dreams of every person out there that may want to work with us.

We're not for everyone. We should not want to be for everyone. Who are we as a company? And what are we not only willing to walk away from, but happy to walk away from when a potential employee doesn't line up with who we are as a company and how we get work done and what we value and those types of things? We need to just up our entire game on the interview process. We need to know that when they get here and we're trying to retain them over time, we need to have a culture that they buy into. We need to be really clear about what it is.

We want them to do while they're here. And we need to reward them and pay them competitively while they're here. The marketplace is more competitive than ever on compensation right now. Yeah. So there's a lot of factors in there, but you're saying in the interview process, the more clear we are and the more we can get them to buy in and get excited, and then we actually match that experience when they're in the door, they go, oh, this place is really what they said it was going to be.

It sounds like our theme today is clarity, setting the expectations, and then meeting or exceeding those expectations with our team. Yeah. So in the retaining process, as soon as a team member comes on board here, there is an onboarding process. And that process is pretty crucial, and we have gotten a lot better at that over the years. Tell us about what a successful onboarding process looks like for a new team member.

You know, 21 years ago, my onboarding process was here's a phone, a computer, a legal pad, and go get them. Get to work. Good luck out there. And today we have learned so many better ways to do that. Today we have the first part of our onboarding process is a two-day sort of immersion into our culture, our core values. we meet board members, we meet senior leaders, we talk about what success looks like for that team member, what they should expect in their first 90 days and first year, and they're getting to meet all these people that started our company and run our company, and it also lets that group of people make friends with that immediate group that's coming in, onboarding with them. They also get to spend time with their new team.

They get introduced to our company. We do something that I know is very strange here, but we do something that I know is very strange here, We actually, we bring new team members up in front of everybody and we give it, we're make a big deal out of them. We're screaming and yelling for these people. They're the few that made it through our difficult interview process and they're coming on board. And then we actually pray for our new team members here because we know that working here is not easy. And it's one of the things we tell them from step one all the way through a job offer is this is a polarizing place. We make a lot of people mad.

and we're in the business of helping people. It's really not about us. And so we want to pray for that person and their family that they're going to have a fantastic new experience in their new job. Yeah. It's a beautiful thing that I get to experience. As we see new team members come up, we get to pray for them.

And some of my greatest friends here are the ones I started with in the onboarding group. And so it is kind of a special thing. So let's talk about professional growth. That seems to be one of the things that people are looking for when it comes to staying at the same company. Is there a path for growth here? What part of does professional growth play in retaining team members?

It's huge. You know, we also talk to people that leave Ramsey Solutions, and we ask them, you know, what led to your decision to leave? And one of the top things that I hear, and we're just being vulnerable here and transparent is I didn't have a clear growth track to the next step in my career. And that's very convicting to us when that happens. And so we are right now aggressively making sure that our team members have a growth track. And what is a growth track? This doesn't have to be a sophisticated tool. But it needs to be something that says, hey, there's three levels of what you do.

There's a junior, a mid, and a senior. Here's what they look like. Here's how they're different from each other. Here's some responsibilities that you'd be able to do in each one of those. Here's how you get from junior to mid to senior. here's where you are in that process. You're right here and with three more steps and this certification and this experience, you can move to the next one. People want to know where they are, candidly and honestly, and they want to know how do I get to the next level? How do I level up?

What's the clear guided path for my career? And what I've seen is when you give a person a clear guided path. It can be a three-year clear-guided path or it can be a 20-year clear guided path. But when you give them a clear path on what it will take about how long it probably takes and where they are in the process, you've got a person who's going to give everything they've got to get to that next level. Yeah. And Dave always says, to be unclear is to be unkind. And so the more clarity that team member has, the more they feel like you care, you care about their growth as a person. as a team member, they know where they stand. That's so important to go, I'm in this gray area.

I don't know if there's any room for growth at this company. I'm going to go jump ship to go be a director somewhere else. The worst thing you can say to a person during an annual check-in or review is, hey, you've done a great job without telling them what that is. Just keep doing what you've been doing. I'm happy, you're happy. Let's get back to work. That person is going to be looking for a new position within 24 hours if you do that.

because what you've just said is, I don't really know what you did this year. I'm not 100% sure what you do all day, but I'm generally happy enough with it, and I'm very busy right now. So if you'll just get back to what you're doing, I can get back to what I'm doing, and maybe we can deal with this some other time. That's what your team member hears. And so when you do the things we talked about, what you're saying is, I know who you are, I know what you do. I know some specific things you've done well, and I know some things you've done that you haven't done well. People want honest, candid feedback, including the critical feedback of what to do better. Sometimes they want that the most. How can I improve?

They don't mind that it's difficult and that they're not there yet, but they do want to know, how will I know when I do get there and how far away am I now. Yeah, that's good. And the final piece of this, you talked about compensation plans. And we know we don't work for a paycheck, but money isn't important. factor in your role, in your growth. How can you make sure as an employer that your pay is competitive? You know, if you're a really small company, let's say there are 20 of you or fewer and you're not hiring very quickly, you might can do this on your own. You can do some studies of what people that do

that role get paid. But you need to know that you're going to have a hard time getting an accurate understanding of that because this is a complicated thing. This is not easy. There are free tools out there. Salary.com, all the recruiter sites have a tool that will give you a broad brush range on what to pay these different people. We use more sophisticated paid tools here where we're actually looking at the skill levels and the activities that the person will do. And it still gives us a fairly broad range. But we have a person whose full-time job is to be doing compensation studies on all the different things we do here so that we know what the marketplace is paying people who have not those titles, but those skills. Your titles don't often line up

with the titles of the rest of the world. You call them a director, they call them an associate director, but you can line up the skills and the expertise. So then you at least learn what you should be paying them. Then you've got to decide where in that range do I want to fall. Do I want to set the new bar? Am I that company that used to hire one a year and now I need 10? And it's such a profitable contract. I can go pay way above that range and hire those people faster. Or I'm in the bottom end of that range and I know it's going to be slower for me.

But you need to know because trust me, your team members do know what their marketplace value is. And they're probably rounding up a little bit. So you need to know, they want to know if you know what they're worth. And long term, if you're not paying them competitively, you will eventually lose them to someone who will. Yeah, important reminders there. So as we wrap, we talked about attracting and the hiring process and retaining. There's so much good stuff in there. But in this environment, the candidate really has the upper hand in a lot of ways.

So for the small business owner, the leaders out there listening that maybe can't spend a ton more on hiring and recruiting, how can they still attract the talent they need to have the impact they want to have? my best advice would be consider all the things we've just talked about but even though it is what we would call an employee's marketplace today don't make bad decisions because you feel like you can't win don't hire people that aren't a fit for your culture on fire for your mission don't play the benefits game and offer to cut people's grass and let them bring their pet to work when that's not your thing. Don't lose the soul of who your company is trying to keep up with what everyone else out there is doing. Use the things we've talked about today to really get to know who your company is and

who your company aspires to be and hire the right people to come and advance that cause to the next level. If you hire the wrong people, even if you hire them quickly, even if they get results, short term, if you hire the wrong people, it will set your company back so much more than hiring the right people, just not fast enough. And so the things we've talked about today is look at your company and ask, why would an outsider want to come work here? Am I paying competitively? If I'm a for-profit company, am I paying competitively? What is our culture? What really matters? And what types of culture things am I looking for for a person who's going to come and get excited about what it is that we're doing here. And be clear on what your needs are from the time you post the position

all the way until they've been there 10 years. You need to put a lot of energy into this is what we need. This is where you are. This is what I need you to do more of. This is what I need you to do less of. Clarity, clarity, clarity. Be the company that you'd want to work for if you were that. that person. Don't lose your soul trying to chase a new graduate that has unrealistic expectations of what the workplace ought to be. And at the end of your career, you will have made yourself and your customers proud of the work that you've done, and you'll look back and you'll say, it was good. Well, a lot of homework for the listeners out there. They're going, wow, this has been a great mirror, a barometer of where I'm at with my process. I've got to change some things,

whether that's in the recruiting phase, the hiring process, onboarding, retaining. There's a lot of work to be done here, but it is so worth it to have the team that you need to have in place, to have the impact that you want to have. Jack, thank you so much for leading our team so well as our chief people officer, getting the right people on the bus so that we can do the work that we need to do. Thank you, George. Thanks, Jack, for a great conversation. As he talked about, there are several strategies you can put into place to attract, hire, and retain team members.

But what does that look like in the real? world. Well, coming up, Jack helps a couple small business owners as they call in with their questions. We'll get to that right after this. All right. Like I mentioned, Jack Galloway took some calls from a couple of our listeners. Check it out. All right, we've got David from L.A. David, this is Jack Galloway. How can it help you today? Well, thanks, Jack. I run a small business that has screen printing and embroidery, and I'm looking for some advice on sort of advanced techniques for improving retention and company loyalty. We've got a lot of the basics in place. We've had a mission statement for years. We've got core values. We do one-on-ones every week with our team to make

sure we've got good communication. So we have a lot of those sort of living fruit items taking care of, and we've got a good culture. But I want to figure out how to develop a deeper sense of loyalty and retention. Right now, two or three years, tenure with us is considered pretty darn good. and I want to figure out how do we build a company where people stick around for five years, 10 years, given that most of our workforce right now is mostly in their 20s. Okay, all right. Well, that is a tough age group. And while two to three years in the age group of 20s might be something a lot of our audience out there is struggling with,

let's see if we can do a little bit better. What is the retention like in your industry? Are there people that stay in the... the embroidery and screen printing business for 10 to 15 years that are not owners in the business? Additionally, yes, especially on the production side. There are folks who have done the same job for 10, 15, even 20 years. Okay, all right. Well, let's review a little bit some of the things that we do know about what it is that makes people want to stay with a company. People stay because they're working in their sweet spot, first of all. That means that their skills and talents

and passions line up with what they're going to be doing every day. Not 100%, but that a good 20% of what they're doing each day are activities that they just love to do. Marcus Buckingham calls them red thread activities. They also stay when they're connected to the company. So if they're connected to what the company does, how it serves its customers, if they're connected to the leaders of the company. And then they also stay when they have good relationships. If they're friends with the people that they are working with and they're friends with the leaders, then it also makes them want to stay with that company. And we've learned that if those things are off, it's hard to compensate for them in doing more advanced things. Those are sort of some of the fundamental things. We've also

talked about compensation. We've got to be paying above average or competitive marketplace rates when it comes to compensation. And I'm guessing in your industry, if they've got the skills to do screen printing and embroidery in your business, they probably can find another job doing that somewhere in your town. Is that correct? That's probably true. We're a cottage industry, so there's not a lot of standardization in terms of how folks pay, but some rough research tells me that we're above average, maybe not a lot above average, but I think we are above average in terms of compensation.

That connectedness point is, I think, interesting to me. How do we create a greater sense of connectedness with the company? Tell me a little bit more about what you're wanting to do when it comes to connectedness. Connectedness to each other? Well, I think our team feels really well bonded. There's good communication. They're mostly friends. They do a lot of outside work socializing. I think they've got a good sense of interpersonal connection. But you mentioned a minute ago the idea of connectedness to what we're doing and to the company. And I'm just trying to figure out how to deepen that sense of maybe said another way. I think that some of our employees feel, because this is maybe their first or second job, they feel like this work environment is actually the norm. And they could find it. anywhere else in terms of the community we've built and helping them understand that they're in actually a unique place, that this is a special company. This is a unique place to work and, and, you know, to not take that for granted. One of the things that's come to my mind is when

we talk about this age group and this industry is career growth. We know that this age group, they're not quite sure what they want to do for the rest of their life. We know that because as you said, that's their first or second job. Their age tells us they haven't had a lot of different experiences up until now, and they're trying some different things. So I want to first say that some of the turnover that you're experiencing may actually be what we might would call good turnover, and that is that they are not a lifetime fit for the business that you're in.

And as painful as that is, if they're leaving the embroidery and screen printing business to go be a mechanic, or go to law school, it may be because they have found what their calling is, and that may actually be okay. But career growth for that group, if it is their calling, if it is the industry they want to advance in, that team member's really got to see, where am I now? Let's say I'm a junior person. I'm in an apprentice level. What does it take to go from junior to mid to senior? What does that look like? Where am I now? What are the steps to get there? What would my life look like then, what might pay look like then. We call them growth tracks, but it's really just a simple,

progressive, clear, guided path on their career. And what I have found is any age group, if they feel stuck at all, they're prone to bail or prone to at least feel that way. And so it's very important that for that right group of people that you begin to talk to them about more responsibility and what career growth might look like over the next two, three, five years. Okay. We struggle with that on one perspective, which is that we're a relatively small company. We've got 14 people here right now. We don't anticipate significant growth.

We're not intending to grow a lot. We'll grow some. And so realistically, there aren't a lot of positions higher up on the ladder. And trying to figure out how do we help people grow within a small company that itself isn't going to get much bigger? How do we continue to give people new challenges in a sense of growth when you mentioned junior versus senior? You know, if you're a senior printer, you know, there isn't anywhere to go from there other than maybe being the production manager, but we already have one. What do you think about how we can, how can we foster growth in an organization that itself isn't growing? much. I think with my leaders, I would want to sit down and challenge myself as the owner and the

leaders on the future of the business. When you tell me as the owner, it's not going to grow much and we already have one. If I'm a 20-something looking to grow, I'm probably going to be out of alignment with where you're headed. We're just going in two different directions. I might would spend some time strategically talking about the future of our business and talking about what would growth look like for our business. How can we grow profits to pay more than market, to need more people to have advancement in those types of things? If that simply is not the road you're headed down, at some point I think you're probably looking for people who line up more clearly on the front end with they want to work for a small business that stays small and they're happy

where they are in the position that you hire them for for an indefinite period of time. I think that's going to be the tougher road. I would love to see you guys get together and come up with some new ways to generate new ideas, new revenue, new customers that needs new fantastic people to come on. It seems like it would be a real shot of energy into what you guys are doing. But it sounds like you guys have a fantastic business and that your customers love what you do. And I hope to hear back from you and hear bright and wonderful things about your business. Appreciate hearing from you today, David in LA.

Thank you. George from Allentown, Pennsylvania. How are you today? I'm good, good. Thanks for having me on. It's good to hear you. I've been enjoying listening to you. Oh, you're fantastic.

This is Jack Galloway. How can I help you today? So I had a question, Jack, about the world that we live in now with this labor shortage. I run a gas station and convenience store, a single site right now, but I aspire to have many more sites. the limiting factor, I think, is not capital, but people. And as I was trained by mentors in business as a corporate banker, and then on up through a couple of entrepreneurial gigs, my mentor's always said, and I've heard other gurus say,

you know, the old adage, you know, hire slow and fire fast. That is to say, be extremely careful who you pick to be on your team. And the first time to let go somebody is the first time you ever thought you should. But with this labor shortage, I find myself being so patient with things that I would have never put up with five years ago. And I'm just wondering if this paradigm has changed permanently and what things would you recommend to be done to adjust hiring systems for small businesses and overall staffing systems to adjust if the paradigm is new? That's a great question, George. And probably one that most of our audience is dealing with in some ways. So I appreciate you asking that today.

We could start a little bit with what probably is sort of behind the adage of hire slow and fire fast. What does this mean? When I talk about hiring slow, what I mean is a good interview process, hiring the right people that the company can afford to pay competitively. You mentioned right now this is a competitive marketplace, and you're dealing with probably hourly workers in a high transition industry. around gas stations and convenience stores. And so we want to find a person who that's what they're looking for. And when they get into that seat, their expectations and yours meet. So I want to hire the right people.

That's what I mean by hiring slow, is hiring the right people. Then I want to give them great onboarding and training and a clear KRA of what success looks like, even if it's running a cash register or restocking shelves. like, I want them to know what winning looks like. So if we start with hiring the right people, the second part of that is firing fast. And sometimes when we say that, there's an assumption that I don't always agree with, and that is that I am being a good leader, and they're simply not a good worker or team member. And so as soon as there's a problem, it must be them. So let me cut bait and get on to the next person. And the first thing that I want to do is ask my

myself, am I really being a good leader? Did I hire the right person? Do they have a clear description of what winning looks like? And am I doing a good job of casting the vision of what they ought to be doing? If that's the case, and I've been clear about the expectations, then when I say fire fast, what I really mean is I want to address problems quickly. So if you've got a team member that's showing up late, they're not doing things the way that you want, I'm not going to start by firing them. I am going to start by having that difficult conversation very, very quickly. A lot of our audience actually has the opposite problem and is that we're so afraid of conflict that we don't have that difficult conversation at all. And we allow that behavior to go on

for a period of time. And so I do like the action part of that statement to actually sit down and have that difficult conversation very, very quickly. Yeah, I've always approached it. The first conversation about not meeting expectations, I call that first one a coaching conversation. This is a coaching conversation, Joe, because I believe that I hired the right person, and I believe you know what the expectation is, and I believe you can meet it, but for some reason or another, you're not.

So we look at that one as a coaching conversation, and we finish that conversation with, if we have this conversation, again, it won't be a coaching conversation. It'll be a disciplined conversation. But, you know, for example, real recently, I lost a really good guy who wrote to me after his last day, gave two weeks notice, you know, a 32-year-old. I like hiring people who it's their first or second job, but it's hard to find them now. But this guy left, and he's, you know, he's going to be, you know, in this industry, in the restaurant industry, and he left for a $4 an hour increase. And I just couldn't see to match that. He was a good worker.

He was reliable, but I couldn't see $4 more, which is about 40%. And 35%. So I'm just trying to figure out how to compete, you know, with the bigger chains, the likes of Wawa and Schenck and this market. And I think being a good place to work is going to have to be the answer. It sounds like a good part of the answer. I think making sure that you're paying, competitively compared to not necessarily what he's going to make in the restaurant business.

I don't know that you can compete there, but you can compete with what other people like you in the gas station and convenience store industry are paying and make sure that you are paying them competitively because, unfortunately, like you, I have seen people make big decisions like a job change over small amounts of money because the grass is greener and they perceive it to be more than it is. And unfortunately, a lot of times that person's going to get there and not realize it until they've already left you. So it sounds like you're doing a lot of things right. It sounds like you're serving your community there. And I know that they appreciate you there in Allentown. And so I'm going to encourage you to keep looking for the right people,

making sure they know what the expectations are. You've got some vision for opening some other stores. And if I'm a 20 or 30 something, that really is appealing to me. because I want to know if I do a good job at this entry-level position that I'm in, are there some opportunities down the road for me to have more responsibility and more pay and to become a not an partner in an ownership sense, but to have sort of an ownership mentality with you and become more than just the guy running the cash register to actually start helping you grow the business. So, hey, I appreciate your time today, and I look forward hearing good things about you there in Pennsylvania.

Keep up the good work. Thank you. Big thanks to David and George for calling in with their questions. As Jack talked about in today's episode, you've got to get hiring right if you want the right people in the right seats. So to make this a little bit easier for you, we've got a 12-step process that we use here at Ramsey to grow and scale our team. It's a free resource called the Entree Leaders Guide to Hiring, and you can download it by just clicking the link, in the show notes. Hope you enjoyed today's episode of the show. If you did, leave us a review and subscribe so you don't miss the next one. And we want to hear what you think of the show,

what you like, what you don't like, and what we could do better. You can give us your feedback by clicking the link in the show notes to schedule a call with Tim, our producer. If you want to keep up with us on social media, you can follow us at Entree Leadership. This episode was produced by Tim Hull, edited by Jacob Harrison and Bob Borquez, and mixed and mastered by Will Rudder. I'm your host, George Camel, and on behalf of the entire Entree leadership team, thanks for listening. Until next time, keep learning and keep leading. If you enjoy this podcast, you should check out other great podcasts from the Ramsey Network, like the Ken Coleman Show. Are you doing what you were born to do?

I'm Ken Coleman, host of the Ken Coleman Show, where I give you practical advice to help you discover your purpose and then map out a plan to get you there. From accounting to advertising, from plumbing to production, you were creating. created to fill a unique role, and the world needs what you have to offer. Join me on the Ken Coleman Show wherever you listen to podcasts.