Noob School - Experience Speaks: Lessons from Capers Easterby

Episode Date: November 7, 2025

Capers Easterby has spent his career building teams, businesses, and relationships that actually last — the kind that aren’t driven by hype, but by doing the right things the right way, over time. He’s one of those people who naturally blends sales sense with leadership instincts, and that combination has made him successful across every chapter of his career. More than that, he’s a longtime friend who understands what Noob School is all about — learning the business of sales from people who’ve lived it. This episode is packed with perspective from someone who’s seen both sides of growth: winning new business and leading it once it scales. If you’re serious about building a career or company that lasts, you’ll want to hear this one. Get your sales in rhythm with The Sterling Method: https://SterlingSales.co I'm going to be sharing my secrets on all my social channels, but if you want them all at your fingertips, start with my book, Sales for Noobs: https://amzn.to/3tiaxsL Subscribe to our newsletter today: https://bit.ly/3Ned5kL #SalesTraining #B2BSales #SalesExcellence #SalesStrategy #BusinessGrowth #SalesLeadership #SalesSuccess #SalesCoaching #SalesSkills #SalesInnovation #SalesTips #SalesPerformance #SalesTransformation #SalesTeamDevelopment #SalesMotivation #SalesEnablement #SalesGoals #SalesExpertise #SalesInsights #SalesTrends#salestrends

New School Welcome back. Welcome back. Welcome back to the New School. We got some pretty jamming music today. A little Hollywood swinging. Trying to get music incorporated into the podcast, Capers, just for you. Well, I appreciate that.

Yeah. Makes me feel special. Well, you should be. So Capers, this is episode 155. Wow. That's pretty good. Yeah. Pretty good.

And I've been asking you to come for a while. This is not like I waited until. Maybe episode 145. So, yeah, Capers is, we've had a lot of old friends on this show, a lot of them. And other than my brother, Dan, who I have known longer than Capers, I think you're my oldest friend that's been on the show, because we've known each other for, do you want to say it? Seventh grade. Yeah. You came to Beck for, for, do you?

Did you stay the whole year? I don't think you did. You said I got kicked out of the school. No, no, no. I think you moved on to greener pastures. No, I moved here from Hartsville in seventh grade. My parents were trying to get me into Christchurch, of course, and we couldn't get in. They put me in back.

And I'd been in a place easier or, let's say, more private than Christ's church. It was like nuns taught the schools. It was a Catholic school, you know, uniform. In Hartsful? Yeah, yeah. I didn't know there were any Catholics in Hartsville. Well, there were some where I went to school, St. Mary's, and they said, we'll just go to this little school for a while. And I went there, and it was a damn jungle man.

It was crazy. It was people fighting. Yeah. It was public school. Yeah. Well, I didn't know what that was. Well, you learned. You found out quickly.

I learned quick. Well, I did. I tell you what I always tell people, again, who cares about me, but, you know, coming there and being like, you know, the baby in the woods, so many people like you. you know, reached out and kind of recognized, here's this new kid, didn't know what he's doing, and he became friends. I remember, you know, Colin, John Collins that way, and Jimmy Gullidge and Andy Patrick. Yeah, Andy. There were some really good people there that I met, and it was a huge advantage for me

because I got to meet all you guys. Right. And then they went to jail, man, away to Hampton, Greenville. We stayed the public track. Yeah, you did. You did. And I went to the private school, so now I know people from all those schools. That's right.

So it's kind of cool. That's right. But we somehow became friends, I guess, through basketball. Basketball. Yeah. Basketball. Yeah. Yeah.

That's right. Before we get to the meet of the call, there's some great stories. So we were, I guess, 13 or 12 or something, and there was just really pretty girl. I won't use her full name, but I think it was Cindy. Cindy something. Okay. Cindy T. Maybe Cindy T

And we both were just in love with this girl And we're such good friends We finally told each other That you know, I think I'm going to get her something for Christmas or whatever Next thing I know, Capers is on the way to her house with a present You beat me there, yeah I don't remember the snaking you You snake me because I told you what I was thinking

And you just went right on over Well, I like the boldness stuff Well, it was young love. It was young love. Young love, young romance. You just don't know how to react. Well, you went on, I know you went on, and you had a good basketball life.

Did you keep playing all the way through high school? Played through high school. Yeah. Played it man. Lucky enough to be on a state championship team. And, you know, that means more to me today than it did at the time. Right. At the time, it was just, hey, cool, look what we did.

I know. And, you know, all these years back, you look at that, and it really is probably the high point of my high school career. Yeah. Because that's one thing that, as they say, they can never take away from you, right? You were part of the state championship team. You had great friends and players. You mentioned John Collins.

He was on that team. And Dexter Kleinskills. Dexter? Excuse me, Brent Kleinskiske. Brett. Yeah, Brett Kleinskills. I apologize. There were several Clint's kids.

But Brent was on my team. Big Bird, Curtis Hartness. Yeah, great guys. Pucci Floyd. Pucci. The famous Pucci Floyd. James Floyd. James Poochie Floyd.

He's still, I think, you know, I think all those guys are in town. Oh, John is, Poochie is. Unfortunately, Curtis Hartness passed away at a younger age. But yeah, you know, we had a great run. Yeah. Would have loved to play college. college ball, but nobody seemed to want to give a, you know, five, nine point guard that opportunity. So, but yeah, great memories.

Yeah, yeah, we all had a, you had a loaded team and all good people, too. I stayed in touch with you, of course, and then John Collins. We stole one from you guys. You did, but that's all right. And then Brent, Brent also has, you know, someone said, how's Brent doing? I'm like, he's doing okay. He's like he's on the board at Duke. I mean, I'd say his career is pretty good.

Wow. That's pretty prestigious. Yeah, so he's done incredibly well in his law profession. Trying to get him on the pod. He didn't need to do that. Yeah. You know, jail man just named the school gym after Ronnie Moore. Really?

Yeah, they just announced that. So, and Coach Moore, I think, just had his 80th or 85th birthday. They had a birthday party for him at the drive. stadium and unfortunately I was out of town and wasn't able to attend but I had some of those guys had gotten in touch with me to let me know that that was going on. Yeah. It is funny though, you know, particularly for, you know, most of our users, viewers are younger, you know, business people, salespeople, and when you're young and things are going well and something happens like you win a state championship, I think we think, well, you know,

we'll get this, we'll do something just like this next year too. Right. Or, you know, if you sell a business or something, you know, something, you said, well, we'll get a bigger business next year. You can't predict it. Now, you don't really understand what the seminal moments are in your life at that time. Right. You kind of appreciate them as you get older. Yeah.

Because they don't come around. Yeah. You don't win state championships or start or sell businesses every year. No. It's something you have to work for a long time. That's right. That's right. But, those things are overnight success, except maybe in Silicon Valley.

But the rest of us, you know, you work for 20 years to become an overnight success. Yeah. I tell people, but the formula I see a lot of times, this is under ideal circumstances, is someone gets exposed to and or educated in a certain area. And in your case, finance, I suppose. and then they get out in the world, they start to get experience in that area while they're working for somebody else

and they've got their antenna out for that opportunity that they can jump on. And so let's say now you're 32 or 30 or whatever and you see it, well, not only do you see a good opportunity, but now you know how to do something with it, right? Because you've earned it. Or you think you do anyway.

Well, at least you're not like just out of college. have some skills. You've raised some skills and some knowledge. Network. And now you have an opportunity to apply. Yeah. So I think a lot of people think, I'm just going to think of something really clever and make a million dollars. And, you know, I've had some great ideas when I was younger. It's just wonderful ideas, but no idea what to do with them. Right. You know, you've got to learn your craft. No reference. No, no idea, no idea what to do. So anyway, Capers, a little ahead of ourselves as usual, but Capers has a remarkable business. called Med First Staffing. That's correct. Had it since 2003, golly, 22 years. Yeah. And he owns the

business, runs it, and you do, I think it's remote nursing, remote nurses? No, we're really in the contract labor business. So most, well, there's, there, I'm sure if you read anything about the health care marketplace, one of the very first things that is always mentioned is the lack of clinical labor. Okay. If you look at almost any labor category, there is an estimated 15 to 25 percent gap in the number of those clinicians needed and the number of those clinicians available in the market place.

Okay. And I'm sure I don't have those numbers, you know, exactly correct, but it's a double-digit gap. So our company is, you know, pretty simple. It has a very simple business model. We contract with a variety of health care facilities. So hospitals, nursing homes. correctional facilities, behavioral health facilities, you know, just a broad range of health care facilities to help them supplement their internal nurse staff.

Okay. So what we do is we work with our customers to identify their needs. then we go into the marketplace and we find a nurse that has the skills and experience to, you know, meet the needs of that customer. Because ultimately, this nurse is providing the patient care that they're responsible to provide. So I like to say that we're beyond, we don't have a close working relationship with our customers. We're intimate with our customers because we're we talked to them several times a day to understand, you know, their needs, you know, how our nurses are performing. Do we need to, you know, make any adjustments to their schedules or their contracts? What additional needs do they have?

Do we have any candidates? And so we've literally built this company, you know, customer by customer, nurse by nurse. And as you said, we've been doing it for 20 years. And we kind of started off locally and now we've expanded and we service facilities from Virginia through Mississippi. And we have other customers outside that geographic footprint. but our primary customer base is from, you know, from Washington through Mississippi. Okay. So you're doing contract nurses and your customer are hospitals, nursing homes, whatever.

Those are the ones you call on. And so you're matching, okay, that's cool. And so when you started it in 2003, did you start it from scratch or did you buy something? I bought something. Okay. So I was in the private equity business. And we sold that to Transamerica. And the concept that was that we were going to use their capital, our expertise,

and we were going to grow this private equity business under the Transamerica umbrella. And that lasted about six months, and then Transamerica was sold. So the corporate was sold. And the purchaser was a Dutch insurance company. and they wanted nothing to do with commercial finance. They wanted the insurance assets. So they basically, they didn't shut us down, but they basically said, you know,

we're going to sit on what we got. And we're really not investing anymore in this business. So, you know, at that point, writing was on the wall. And, you know, our group kind of slowly, slow at first and then everybody just kind of there, you know, exited for other opportunities. And I didn't want to leave Greenville. It was kind of an interesting time in the financial services business because the internet bubble had burst and people found out.

I remember. People found out at Pets.com one worth a billion dollars and Furnisher.com. Or a dollar. Yeah. So, yeah, I started talking to people and really took the skills, talking about skills and experience that I'd learned in the private equity business and really applied those to my search. You know, if I wanted to be in, if I wanted to acquire a business,

what did I want that business look like? Well, first thing I wanted is something I could understand because I'm not technical. I don't want to start, I didn't want to develop anything, invent anything, you know, something that didn't have significant capital requirements. Right. Something that wasn't going to be offshoreed. So, you know, kind of got attracted to health care, you know, what was the, what opportunities existed. And, you know, labor became pretty obvious.

This is a, you know, this is a need. this is a mark. It's actually a multi-billion dollar market in health care staffing services, and I found a little company here in Greenville that was doing it, and the lady who started the business had kind of taken it as far as she really wanted to take it, and it was really kind of a one-person operation. But they had a customer base, had some nurses. I didn't like the fundamentals of the, of the,

the way she, her business model, but by buying her, it gave me the credibility of being in business. Sure. So I could go to customers and say, how long have you been in business? Oh, I've been in business since 1995. Yeah. So, okay. So we use that platform. I like to tell people I bought a startup.

I didn't know it at the time, but that's what, you know, because we had to build all the processes. We had to really rebuild the whole employee pool. We had to kind of replace the customers, but it gave us a platform. So we have over time developed a pretty significant number of employees and customers and facility locations that we service. But one thing I quickly learned is I didn't want to be selling this an hour at a time, day at a time, shift at a time. We wanted to sell it for as long as we could.

We wanted to put that person in and have that individual as part of that facility for as long as the facility was willing to allow that person to be in there. Do you have a buyout if they want to hire your person? We do. We do in some. It's typically driven by the number of hours worked. So it's kind of a sliding scale. So if you buy them out day one, it costs you a lot. If you buy them out after six months, it costs you a little or nothing.

So, yeah, I mean, that's a win-win. But I love the idea. We talk about this someone on this podcast, is so many people think, you know, what you've done is a startup. They think even what we did at Datastream is a startup. The Stapestream wasn't a startup either. We bought a little software company. And it was doing like three or four hundred thousand a year going nowhere.

And we bought it and then had to change everything. But we had customers. Right. Renewal money coming in. We had code. We had a few employees. I mean, that's a lot easier than me and you in a room with a whiteboard. Sure.

You know, and trying to go from there. So I always encourage people if they find something that they like, an industry, an area. Maybe it's smart to buy something small. start small and bring your idea to it. Yeah. If you can identify it. You know, that's the challenge is trying to identify something that appeals to you. Yeah.

And I think, again, I have not had a perfect career by any means, and neither have you. I mean perfect. In my mind, a perfect career is you've always loved medical staffing since you were child. You know? And you helped your mother. run the medical staffing business that she owned. And you went to a school that's the medical staffing school.

And you intern for those people. And so everything is kind of going in that direction. And then your whole wife, you've been doing that. There was no emergent. There was no other things. It was like this one direction. Wouldn't that be boring? Well, I don't know.

I mean, it would be if you did the same thing. But if you think about, let's say, the nursing business, you know, It evolves over time. So if you're on the forefront, let's say you're in the television business. You know, it's changing all the time. Sure. Or run on Facebook. I mean, every day's different.

So I think as long as your business is growing, I don't think it's boring. And I used to think that a data stream was, you know, I can't believe I've been here this long. But like, well, hell, last year, you know, we were buying companies in China. And this year's we're, you know, we're on the Internet. You know, it's always different. So, but I do like that you started with, you really, what you learned during your PE time was not nursing. It was how to buy and run those kind of businesses. Yeah, and also how to distinguish between a good business and a bad business.

Right? You know, I quickly learned that I didn't want to be in. in a business where I walked in the door with no revenue. Right. Right. And that was the old model I bought. So it was a very short term. You started over at zero every month.

You started, I told somebody it was like being in the produce business, right? You didn't know what you had. Right. And if you didn't sell it that day, it didn't get, you know, it went bad. So, you know, I quickly learned that I wanted to be in a business. where I could create a recurring revenue. And so that's why we determined that, you know, long-term contract or open-ended placement was much more appealing to us. And frankly, it solved our customers' problems better because they weren't having to schedule somebody every day to try to fill that shift.

or staff that unit. That individual was trained. They knew the patients. They knew their fellow clinicians. And it also gave them steady paycheck. So it really was a win-win. But, you know, so, yeah, the experience I had with PE kind of figuring out what was good business, what was a bad business, what was some of the things I like, just didn't like, help. me apply that thought process to my own acquisition of a company.

Now then when you got into it, all that kind of went out the window because now you're having, okay, now I'm actually having to run this thing. Yeah, real numbers. Real people, real numbers. Yeah. And the things they don't teach in business school, you know, is that, you know, all the personal issues that you've got to deal with. You don't count on the car breaking down.

Yeah, and we didn't mention, but after Clemson, you did go to business school at Emory, right? I did. I worked for Sonoco products in Hartsville. Did you get your business degree while you were doing that? No. No, I had worked for Sonoco for several years and had a great experience. Had worked in a couple of their divisions in Atlanta, and then I was actually part of the marketing group that helped them introduce the plastic grocery bag.

Okay. So Sonoka got into the plastic grocery bag business. I don't think they're in it any longer. And I had a great experience traveling the West Coast up into Alaska, introducing these plastic grocery bags. Yeah. Going into stores and teaching the checkout staff on how to use one of these grocery bags. And of course they didn't want to use it.

They didn't like it. Customers, you know, were very reluctant. But anyway, they eventually, you know, adopted those things. And then came back to the Carolinas and had a sales territory. Snoco's a great company, but, you know, I just want to do something entrepreneurial. And figured that the best way to do that was probably go back and get some skills that I did. have. I would, you know, my thought was, okay, I'll acquire these over time, but the more efficient way to do it is go back and learn those in a business school setting and then get out

and hopefully, you know, ahead of the pack. Yeah. And so how did you pick Emory? Well, I want to stay in South. And so I looked at what I thought were the five best business schools. I looked at UVA, Duke, Chapel Hill, Vandy, and Emory. And they were all nationally ranked. And I think Emory now is actually top 15 because they got a bunch of money. And applied, got waitlisted at Darden, got in Vandy, got in Emory. And I can't remember if, you know, I probably didn't get in Duke. and Emory pitched me on the fact that

that they were going to create a great business school that they were in the premier city in the south Yeah, I mean they're in the epicenter of business, that's for sure. And they had all kind of resources and they were going to build a world-class business school and so I bought it and ended up going down there and it had a great experience. Yeah, well that's great.

Probably all those would have been a great experience. Yeah, I think so. Yeah, it's good to have five choices where all of them are correct. Yeah, well, yeah. I mean, I couldn't go wrong with any of them because they were great schools, great brands. And so. So Clipson, then Sonoco, which, I mean, they're probably the packaging leader in the world. I mean.

One of them. Yeah. Great company, great people. Great company down, down Hartsville. Never moved. They've talked about it, but. Did they really talk about it? They talked about it?

They talked about it, you know, moving to Charlotte for, and I think they looked at probably Charlotte, Atlanta, for recruitment purposes. Right. Executive recruitment purposes. Right. But for some, you know, but they've always elected to stay. Yeah. I think it has to, you know, there's a lot of, they got a lot of roots in that community. Oh, yeah.

And I think that would be a very difficult thing for them to do. And it would hurt South Carolina. Yeah. Did you run into Gerald Tony? You met Gerald tell me? I heard the name. I certainly heard the name. He would be right in your same age.

Okay. I know his name. Gerald was, uh, when he was a Citadel grad, he was my basketball teammate. Okay. And also the quarterback on the football team. Oh, wow. And one of my best friends, but the funny thing is every year, you know, he'd be, he'd be the star quarterback on the team.

And this, and a basketball season would start. Mm-hmm. The football season was winding down. And so I would start. I'd be one of the starters on the team. Yeah. And then football went in and he would slowly get his kind of get back. Work himself in a basketball show.

The coach would inevitably call me in. He's like, so, you're doing great, John. You really are doing well, but we're going to start Gerald from now on. I said, why? We think we have a better chance to win with Gerald. I'm like, well, I really learned from that coach, Les Robinson, because at least he told me the truth. Yeah.

What if he just kind of was mealy-mouthed about it? Because we got a better chance to win with Gerald. Right. Well, I mean, you do get to make the decision. Yeah, they're paying you to that. Yeah. Well, he should, yeah, he's retired now. From Sonoco?

From Sonoco. He stayed the whole time. Good for him. Yeah, he ended up running a bunch of plants and just a super guy. Is he staying harmful or did he go? You know, he moved to Memphis. Really? I don't know why, but he moved to Memphis a long time ago.

He's been operating out of there. so yeah he's in Memphis I've never been so so after coming back here getting a sales territory decided you wanted to get your MBA

you got your MBA and that's when you went to work in finance and emerging in those groups yep okay okay what is what's one of the things that you learned about this whole process

of going from I want to be successful, have my own business, to you're actually here now. What's one of the great lessons you could pass on to our listeners? Well, it doesn't happen overnight. I mean, that's the first thing that you better understand. That it's a long, hard road. You have to be committed to it. you're going to make mistakes.

You need to learn from those mistakes and adjust. Because I thought that what I would do, my original business plan was to consolidate a bunch of medical staffing companies and in five years sell them and go do something else. This is something else, right? This is it. Yeah, but what I learned as I got into the business was I enjoyed it. Mm-hmm.

And it was never the right time to take on capital. Mm-hmm. Because originally I was too small. It was going to take too much dilution. Mm-hmm. So if I can grow, then the cost of capital would be less. And over time, we became more successful. And then the appeal of taking dilution to go by businesses left.

I no longer had any interest in that. So I think you have to be committed. You have to be flexible. You have to understand that your plans are not going to work as you envision them. You need to be ready to change that. Hire the best people you can afford. Because what I have learned is that every business, comes down to two things, capital and people.

You can have the greatest product, but if you don't have the people to execute it, you're going to fail. If you don't have the capital, you're going to fail. So higher slow, fire fast, hoard your cash, because you never know when the market's going to change. Yeah. It does change. And when you have opportunities, make sure you take full advantage of those opportunities.

Yeah. So that's a lot of stuff. No, it's all good stuff. But it's, you know, kind of the things that, kind of the lessons I've learned over time. Yeah. And so to get that first business, did you just work out some deal with the owner, did you just buy it outright yourself? Or how did you do that?

How did you structure that? Actually, I had a partner. Uh-huh. It was an industrial staffing company that wanted to get into the medical space. So they helped me finance the purchase. And a year later, we kind of came to the mutual understanding that they needed to invest in my business. I needed their business, rather, I needed to invest in my business. And so I ended up, you know, buying their interest out.

but that's how I did it. I had a third party that helped me with the original acquisition, and then after that I used the cash flow of the company to finance everything. Everything. I think that's another misconception people have, and it kind of drives me crazy, but someone will ask me, say, I want to have my own business or whatever. And I'm like, well, if you buy a business, it's doing this and so on and so on the other.

Well, I don't have a million dollars. I'm like, well, you might not need it. Right. You know, there's clever ways to do things. Sure, yeah, absolutely. I get an investor. I mean, who knows. But, yeah, I think that, again, I love what our startup community is doing here in Greenville.

But, you know, I like to see a community around buying businesses. Right. Because, you know, my dad, you know, he, I don't know how many venture capital things he did or stuff that you even helped him with. But he's told me that the bulk of their, you know, their success was companies that they bought, Motor office machines. Sure. Well, they have proven businesses.

Right. You know, one of the things that when I talk to startup businesses, and I'm not as involved in that as I know you are and some others are. But, you know, the first thing I ask him is, do you got any revenue? Do you have any customers? Who are you going to sell this to? Not yet, capers. Yeah, not yet.

Or, you know, and how close are you to break even? You win when will you get to break even? And so hard. I don't get a lot of good answers. I know, it's just so hard. It is hard. I mean, golly. I don't think we could do it.

Well, you got to, you know, the other thing, other lesson that I've learned is you better figure out what your competitive advantage is. Right. Why you? Why you? Yeah. Or what's important to your customer. Yeah.

And you better make sure that. that you're delivering whatever products or service it is that they want. Yeah. You know, in my case, it's pretty simple. I need a clinician that can help me care for these patients. Because at the end of the day, my job is to care for these individuals, to provide the health care services expected from these individuals. And if I don't have enough staff to do that, I'm not going to be in this job very long.

Right. So ours is pretty clear cut. So would you say yours is, like if I have a nursing home in Knoxville, that you have the qualified nurses signed up with you that you can deliver, that I could never go find and sort and go through all that stuff? Well, you could, but if you've got 25 patients that you're supposed to be taken care of, you need them now. You need them now.

You don't need them next week. You need them. now. Okay. So instead of like letting HR go through their process and... HR might be going through the process, but HR, you know, hadn't been able to source the nurses they need or maybe HR needs approval from somebody.

Yeah. You just give them. I just give it to them. I give it to them. That's my competitive advantage. My competitive advantage is I can deliver you a nurse today or tomorrow. to help you solve your clinical staffing shortage. Do you do anything with the nurses that move around a lot?

We do some, but we don't do the pure travel. I mean, pure travel is I pick you up in Greenville and I send you to California. And I pay for your housing and everything else. And I don't do that. I much prefer to find local, nurses for contract positions because then I'll have to deal with their housing or any of other relocation issues. So what would a nurse deal with you to do this versus just saying

I'm a contractor available for hire and letting everyone know or trying to get a job there? Well, there are nurses that do try to do the contract for hire but then you've got to be, you've got to market yourself. You've got to have in theory attendant your 1099 you have your own corporation you know there's just a lot more you're salesman now a marketing person you're right yeah you're right um and um when that job is up you're starting over right you're starting over versus back in the pool versus in the you know in you know being offered consistently offered a variety of of job options you got to go find your job and then you've got to make sure you've got your professional insurance and your workers comp

and you're paying your taxes and you're doing everything you're supposed to do as a corporation. Right. Right. A lot of people get in trouble because they don't do that. So that's the short answer of why they would choose to work for me as opposed to doing it independently. Why they don't go to work for the facility is a lot of times it takes the facility longer to hire a permanent employee than it does to bring in a contract employee because they know they can terminate the contract employee and have no liability. Right. They've got it from me. It's my employee. And if they don't work out, they can terminate them. If it does work out, they can negotiate rolling

them to their own staff. And we have a lot of people that were hired by us, put in facilities, and now they're in a position of management. which obviously helps us from a relationship. They're not going to hire me because of that, but they're certainly going to... It's not going to hurt. It's not going to hurt me. It's going to help with at least my ability to have a conversation.

That's good. So you're helping both sides of the equation. I mean, I've used recruiters before, but it's usually when I'm like in a hurry. I really need some programmers to do this thing, and the guy gets my... what I want, and he looks in his database, and he says, I can have him here tomorrow. Right.

And if you don't like them, send them home to the day. Right. Right. Okay. That's better than three months of looking and interviewing. What's your skill set? Yeah. You know, everybody, what's our skill set?

Well, where our skill set is being able to source, screen, credential, and staff clinical labor. That's all we do. Mm-hmm. You know, you are a developer and marketer of software products. Is your skill set, you know, sourcing, screening, and hiring programmers? Well, no. It's what you have to do in order to build your – technical capabilities, but it's not what you do on a day-to-day basis.

Right, right. It's what we do on a day-to-day basis. That's perfect because we like to build our team and hire our people, but when we're in a pinch, you're in a hurry, we'll contract, and we'll contract a hire. You know, if it's just how our way to test them? So what about AI? How is that affecting your business at this point?

Well, it's affecting our business from a recruiting perspective. The good news is AI is not going to replace what we do. Or if it does, it's a long time before that happens. But where it's affecting us is it's a tool that we can use to better source potential employees. Okay. You know, we can go instead of going in and going through LinkedIn or going through Indeed or going through various resume databases trying to find people with the experience and skills

we're looking for, we can go, AI will do that for us. And then it'll consolidate it, and then we can go through, and they'll actually rank the candidates for you, and then we can go through and find people for various opportunities. What's your favorite tool? Well, we're kind of in the process of determining which one we want to employ.

There's several in the recruiting space. We've always been a big user of Indeed, and Indeed has got some AI capabilities, and we're trying to better understand those. But the most immediate impact that we see AI having on our business is in the recruiting. the locating, identifying, and qualifying of candidates. Okay. Yeah, well, it's going to be a fun ride the next couple of years. Well, it's certainly interesting.

Luckily for us, we don't see any job losses. That's good. Yeah. That's the main thing. Yeah. Hopefully it just helps you, you know, grow your business faster, do it for less money, you know, it can be real. to be a real advantage.

Well, I don't know. I'm not a technologist. Again, I'm a user. Yeah. Can it make us more efficient? Can it help us respond better to our customers' needs? And if we can, we'll use it. And if it doesn't, we're not.

Right. Yeah. Well, it's an amazing technology. You know, I've been in this business since school, really, and this is one of those things that comes around, you know, every so often, like the home computer or the Internet or the phone. This is one of those four things. So I would keep, I recommend everyone, spend a little time on it every day.

You can ask it to do anything. Oh, wow. It's amazing what it'll do for you. So I like rock GROK, that's the one I use Which is the Elon Musk version And what does it do for you? What do you use it for? If I'm going to put together a presentation

Okay Takes about three seconds If I'm going to do write an article It'll help me with the first draft Okay If I want to do a quick business plan on an idea Ten seconds I mean it's just unbelievable

Yeah I'll show you when it goes out and locate sources that have done these things, and it will, aggregates not the right word, but it collects that data for you and puts it in a form that you ask it to put it. Yeah, so the easiest way to explain, like if I was going to do, let's say, a presentation, and I said, I'm going to do a presentation on how we can coach your sales team to grow revenue, 50% this year and I put that information into it and said give me a 10-page or 10-point PowerPoint. It would immediately go search, you know, YouTube and Google and all these different

internet sources to try to find people building those kinds of things. And then it would put together, you know, seconds later this thing. And I could look at it and I could say, make it. make it 75% longer, make the bullet points more descriptive, and make sure to double-check this or that or whatever, and then new version, new version. You just edit it, edit it on and on. So it's like we had, like you and I have some big business, and we say, get some of the staff in here. Capers and I have an idea about this thing. Go look it up, do some homework, build it, bring it back to us in a week. Right. Well, it takes a minute to be finished. That's amazing. So it's definitely worth playing with it.

It's just going to improve and get better over time. What's it called? Which one do you use? I use the one called Grok GROK. GROK. It's a submenu of the X.com platform. Okay. But most people use ChatGPT.

Yeah, Chad GPT. That's one I'm familiar with. I think they're probably very similar. Okay. But is there anything else you want to say to the, To the fans out there? No. You're talking about your damn beating Christchurch and basketball.

Well, we did steal one. Well, you won, you won. But congratulations. You've had a great career so far. Thank you. You seem to still like it a lot. I do like it. I enjoy it, you know.

It gives me a purpose. Yes, yes, it does. And you want to keep building it. I do want to keep building it. Yeah. So. You don't want to just. go to the club at like 10 o'clock on Tuesday.

No, I don't want to hang out in the card room. I tried that once. It's no good. I don't even know who's in the card room. I don't even know if there is a card room anymore. I don't know if there is either or not. They might turn it into the... I was scared to go in there when I was good. Yeah, well, probably for good reason.

Yeah, what's going on in there? Yeah, no kidding. Well, again, thanks for coming. Thank you for including me. I appreciate it. Of course. We'll get you back once a year. We'll do an update on what you're up to. Okay. Okay. Well, I hope I'm still in business. That's the first goal is to make sure you can go back tomorrow.

That's true. You do want to make sure that happens. But I think you will be. I think you'll just keep steadily improving the business and can't wait to hear more about it. Well, thanks for including me. I appreciate it. Thank you, man. Yeah, man. All right. All right.