The Home Service Expert Podcast - Attracting and Hiring A-Players Through Next-Gen Recruitment Strategies

Episode Date: December 29, 2023

Jody Underhill is a Senior Partner at RapidHirePro.com, a leading Recruiting Agency that solely focuses on the Home Service Industry. He is also the current Director of Green Elephant Agency and the Director of Operations for Appointment Nerds. On top of working with various business experts, Jody has successfully helped over 150 businesses in terms of developing better marketing strategies. In this episode, we talked about advertisements, core values, hiring strategies…  

So no matter who you want to hire, whether they're experienced or whether they're inexperienced, whether they're in your industry or not in your industry, if they have a great attitude and aptitude and it's somebody that you want to have come work for your company, they're already working for someone else. Your job is to get your information in front of them so they can see that you have a better opportunity than when they're currently at. Because otherwise, you're never going to get the quality player, the top talent that you deserve for your company. So you've got to do something to get your message in front of them. Welcome to the Home Service Expert, where each week, Tommy chats with world

class entrepreneurs and experts in various fields like marketing, sales, hiring, and leadership to find out what's really behind their success in business. Now, your host, the home service millionaire, Tommy Mello. Before we get started, I wanted to share two important things with you. First, I want you to implement what you learned today. To do that, you'll have to take a lot of notes, but I also want you to fully concentrate on the interview. So I asked the team to take notes for you. Just text NOTES to 888-526-1299. That's 888-526-1299. And you'll receive a link to download the notes from today's episode. Also, if you haven't got your copy of my newest book, Elevate,

please go check it out. I'll share with you how I attracted and developed a winning team that helped me build a $200 million company in 22 states. Just go to elevateandwin.com forward slash podcast to get your copy. Now let's go back into the interview. All right, guys, welcome back to Home Service Expert. I got a good buddy of mine that taught me a lot about business and really came into time that I needed him the most, Jody Underhill.

He's an expert in digital marketing, advertising, lead generation, business consulting, and training. He was based out of South Carolina in Greensville. Now he's in Florida. He's a senior partner at Rapid hire uh director at green elephant agency director of operations at appointment nerds director of business development while back when i used to really know him at upside down iceberg director of consulting services at digital marketer worked with roland frazier for a while. Really knows everybody. He worked with Russell Brunson, Frank Kern, Perry Belcher, Ryan Dice.

You name someone in the digital space, Jody knows them and has done business with them and probably ran the back end of their program. Currently, Green Elephant and employment nerds and does a lot with hiring throughout the blue collar industry, rapid hire. He's also an accomplished social media strategist, worked with various marketing. Josh Nelson, he's part of a seven-figure agency. I mean, the list goes on and on. He's

developed and helped over 150 businesses and helped with their marketing strategy. Jody, always a pleasure to spend time with you. Same here. Glad to be here. Looking forward to it. it took a little bit to get it scheduled but here we go we got this event coming up next week the freedom event and can't wait it's been a years in the making and after all the vertical tracks we've had it's like everybody would show up cleaning people and pest control and and concrete and hvac plumbing electrical and roofing and solar and a lot of gutter people. So it's been, I'm finally able to build a very big team to help out everybody. And that's what I'm most excited about is getting the reporting right, getting the right employees started,

going and implementing all these things. And it's just really exciting times because now we get to help people build their dream. It's going to be's exciting to be that we're going to be there in full force i'm excited to be on one of the panels there on one of the days to share some more of the stuff about recruiting we're going to talk about it today but you're there at the event it's just there's nothing like being at a live event and having the making the connections and getting that information firsthand i mean it's just it's going to be a great week we're really looking forward to it yeah hopefully this podcast gets out this week. We're really looking forward to it. Yeah, hopefully this podcast gets out this week,

but maybe people will be listening to it right after events. So hopefully they took a lot from it. So you've been on the podcast. What's been going on here the last year? I know you've been busy. The company's growing. You've learned a lot from what to expect from clients. And if they're not bought in, the chance of success for you

are zilch. Yeah, we've done, we've changed a lot over the course of the last year. Some of it due to working with A1, doing recruiting there, doing some extra things that we offer now that we didn't used to, like for instance, doing background checks and motor vehicle reporting and drug screening and offering that as a service that we didn't do a year ago. But the other thing that we built in is we've made our filtering process a lot more robust. As most people know, we recruit on Facebook and Instagram and then run it by running ads through your business manager account. We also post out to Indeed and pull leads in from there. But then that's what you have as a lead. That's all you have, right? Just some information about a person. You don't really know if it's somebody that you

want to take the time to actually bring in an interview. And so what we do is we have account managers in place that walk the people, the candidates through a filtering process. We start off with an application, which is very specific to what the position that you're hiring for, asking questions that most applications don't about their criminal history, their driving record, if they have certain licensing. From there, we have implemented the next step, which are assessments. And we actually have assessments for field personnel. We have assessments for office personnel and management that we've actually developed ourselves internally because we've worked with over 250 home service companies across the U.S. and Canada now. So we've

learned a few things along the way. So we go through that filtering and the assessment isn't, do you know how to sweat a fitting or wind a spring? It's their soft skills. Do you know if you run into a situation you've never seen before, do you call your supervisor, call a friend, watch a YouTube video, or just do the best you can? So we're looking at their communication style because that's very important, especially with technicians today. They got to be able to not only diagnose and repair, they got to be able to sell the homeowner the best solution based on what they're looking for. If they pass that, then we take them to the next step, which is a disk personality profile. And their installers and

service techs are different types of people. And so we look at, from that standpoint, we can go deeper into that in just a little bit. And then from there, we have them do the automated video interview. So now you don't just have a lead in an application. You've got a soft skills assessment, a disk personality profile, and the video interview to make the determination if it's somebody you actually want to bring in and have an interview with. So you have a lot of pieces in place, and our job is to filter those and only show you the people that look like the best fit for the avatar you're looking for. So that's some of the changes that we've made over the course of the last year, and it's really elevated the caliber

candidate that we are able to put in front of our clients and also help them with their success rate as far as keeping those candidates once they get them in the door. That was kind of a long-winded answer, but that's the Reader's Digest version of what we put together over the course of the last year. Yeah, no, that stuff is great. We just recently, Luke had a one-on-one with Deidre. Since I saw, we were kind of failing on our end as a company to communicate with you guys properly.

And Luke takes it very seriously. We've got a lot of problems. We're a big company, but everybody thinks everything's all hunky-dory all the time, but we're always working on things. And Luke said, hey, our applicants have gone from $700 to $2,300 to hire. And he said, Deidre kind of figured out it was, we were losing them in the training for two months. You're going to make seven or $800. And I said, Luke, it's funny. He said this to me last Friday, because I talked to him, I go, we got to go to a thousand. And then I talked to him again. And I said, if we got to go to 1200 and last week on Friday, I said, if we got to go to 1500, he goes, man, every time I talk to you, you go higher. And I said, if we got to go to 1,200. And last week on Friday, I said, if we got to go to 1,500, he goes, man, every time I talk to you, you go higher.

And I'm like, we're a world-class company. I pride ourselves on being the best home service company in the world. And what does a great home service company do? They put their best foot forward and they pay people to come on and train. And he said, well, you know, I definitely think we need to increase the pay, but only in certain areas. And I said, well, you know, I definitely think we need to increase the pay, but only in certain areas. And I said, well, let's rethink that. I said, because we're spending over $1,500.

We're losing them in that spot. Let's just say we give them that $1,500 plus we give them a few more grand. We're not really losing a whole lot because the caliber, higher conversion rate, better people. They could take care of their family for that two months. You know, they're traveling as well for three weeks. So we're going to come back to you guys. And this is one of the things that I don't think people understand is you guys give us constructive criticism. And if we don't do anything with it and we sit there and say, well, it's on you, then we're not doing our job. We're not taking any accountability. So same thing with CSRs, dispatchers, and installers. If we don't put the right bait out there and work throughout the process, find out where we're losing them and do something about it, how are you supposed to do your job?

Yeah. Even when we first started, I mean, I think the CSR pay was like starting at $1,350 an hour. And it was like there's plenty of applicants, but the quality wasn't very high. And it's like, well, it's because there's not enough money there for most people, the higher quality applicant to come through. And then we raised it to like 1650, the quality went up. And I think now we're up around 18 or 19 and the quality is even better coming through, coming in the door. So it has to do with that. And that's one of the things that most people don't realize that we're not just take the information from our client. Okay, this is what we're going with. We give feedback as to exactly what we're seeing in

the industry. I had a call with someone the other day, they were in the LA area and they said that they pay around $65,000 a year. I'm like, if that's fine, that's what you pay. I'm not going to say that you shouldn't pay that. I'm going to let you know that in the LA market at $65,000 a year for an experienced HVAC tech, I really can't do much for you. Because our job is to get an opportunity in front of someone when they're just scrolling through Facebook or Instagram. It's got to be something that catches their eye and makes it more attractive than where they're currently working. So if it's the same pay that they're making or less pay than they're making, you're not going

to get people to move and take a chance on going to a different company. You have to have something that basically have to have the right bait, like you said, the right offer. And also, it also comes down to a lot of different, your branding, your culture, all of those pieces can come into the pie. And what I've been looking at is you, instead of targeting people, you have to make your company become the target that people want to search at, to seek out. But whenever your ad pops up there, it's like, what is this? I'm so excited about it. And that's tough to do whenever you have limited benefits and your pay isn't in the end of stuff to the industry average. That doesn't mean that people in LA aren't making 65 grand a year as an HVAC tech, but it's not enough to get somebody to take a step and move usually.

In other areas, it might be, but we're seeing across the board, you know, that going up on the upper end. And the thing is, put what they're going to make today and then future pace it, right? Just like if you get paid $750 a week during training, but they have a clear path to 100K plus, then that just shows them what they can make and it becomes a career. The other thing is most people are posting jobs. We don't want to post jobs. We want to post career opportunities. That's the difference in when it comes to marketing versus just a job ad and putting it out there and doing it that way. We give ideas on how to redo the job descriptions. We have copywriters on staff that rewrite those for the majority of our clients. We have some that do a great job, but others we have to go

through and embellish them a little bit and draw attention to the things that make the most difference. Yeah. Well, if you're going to make it stand out on social media, what did you say the average person is on social media versus going to Indeed or Glassdoor as a recruiter? Yeah, they're on there about two and a half hours a day. take somebody with an existing job and make them want to switch careers or switch to your company versus going to the unemployment line and hoping and praying you'll find somebody good that might have moved here. Why don't they have a job? Why are they in the unemployment line? And what I've noticed is just the caliber of people since we advertise on social media. But tell me about some horror stories. Don't go specific in the who, what companies, but what are some of the things that people

were just, there's no way you could ever be successful with them? A lot of time comes down to if there's a limited population and they're wanting people with five years experience. If you have a hundred thousand people in the entire county that you live in, there's probably only three or four other companies that do what you do. And finding people with five years experience is going to be a long-term thing. It's not going to happen overnight. That is, and the other part of it is,

is people that don't give it enough time. Now we have a minimum, you have a typically of a four-month agreement, and then it goes month to month. We have people after 30 days, they're like, this just isn't working. It's like, no, it's working. It just takes time for it to build up.

People have to see it. I mean, think about yourself when you, how many times do you see something on social media on ad before you ever click it and actually go look at whether you want to buy it or not. It has to go retargeting when somebody clicks on it. I see it 10 times. It's like anything else.

There are things that I've seen a dozen times and finally, I'm just going to buy it. And I do it. And I think when they invented retargeting, it changed the game. And that's what you need to have is the people need to see the ad over and over and say, man, it's like, it's almost like this job is supposed to apply here. And you have to put it everywhere they look. It's not just about running it. Okay. We're

on Facebook or Instagram. There's different aspects of both of those as well. There's reels, there's the video, there's video ads, there's marketplace. You got to make sure that they show up everywhere you can. There's Instagram explore, making sure that they show up no matter where people go. Some people only go on Facebook to look at marketplace. Well, you want your ad to show up there while they're looking in that spot. Some of the other horror stories are, looking at it as, like I said, it's really just not giving the time or not doing their part. We can do a lot and we do a lot. But, hey, when we send somebody over to you and say, hey, here's somebody who looks like the Mitra avatar, the testing went well.

Here's the video interview. They look like an A player, looks like a top candidate. And then you take a week to respond back to us or you interview them and you don't tell us how it went or if you hired them or not. There's not much we can do as far as being able to gauge who you want to see next. And we've had that happen a couple of times. And the thing is, these are exceptions. The majority of the clients we work with, there's very clear expectations that we go through and they know it's going to take time because the last thing I'm going to do is set them up for an expectation that's not going to meet the reality. They just hear what they want to sometimes and they get impatient.

I had one person that said, this whole thing didn't work. So we have a four-month agreement. The ads have been running for three weeks. What's not working? You've hired a person already in three weeks' time. What isn't working? That's working. So it all depends on the area, the job description, the pay. Then the other

horror stories are having someone on your team that is doing the interviews that is not doing a great job doing interviews, that is having a bad day and doesn't do a great job of presenting your company in the right way. And come on, as a company, you have core values. I know you have them. It's right there on the rug when you walk in the front door of your office. And then you're having your core values and your culture statement and making it so that the employees that are whoever you have interviewing the person embodies those core values of your company. Because if they don't, it makes it tough for people to want to get excited about coming

to work for you. How much does the HR team at most companies get in the way? Because I know I've gone through a lot of issues in HR. It seems like it's always a roadblock to hiring, and it's just a constant battle. It depends on if they're on the decision up front or if they're brought in after someone makes the decision, and it's just hand to say, this is what we're going to do now, and they didn't have buy-in. Because, I mean, we do things a certain way, and we don't change what we do. And that's all the way back to, I mean, two years ago, we were in Orlando and had

a conversation about these things. It's like, no, we do things the way we do. And we don't change that because we know the human psychology aspect of what we do works. So the HR department, if they're bought in up front, it's never a problem. If the owner makes the decision and then just hands it to the HR department, that's whenever it, because the friction starts because they think we're coming in to replace something. And we don't, we don't replace anybody. We give people their time back is what we do. But I've had HR managers that basically sit there with their nose all pinched up. They just smelled a fart the whole time we're on the call. And it's hard to be positive and keep going that whenever they don't want it

to work. They put stumbling blocks in front of you. So we make it a policy now that the HR department has to be on the onboarding call and our clarity call so that they see exactly what we're doing. Sometimes when referrals come through, we expedite that and sometimes miss the mark. But for the most part, we make sure they have the buy-in so we don't run into that obstacle. You know, if I was an A-plus player and someone didn't meet with me when they said they would, and I was looking for a job or looking to make a move, and you don't respect my time and celebrate me coming,

and I've got a family, I've got things I'm trying, I'm important. You know, I'm ready to put all my time and effort and change my whole destiny by coming to work for you. And you don't think showing up on time and interviewing me the day that I come in is important. I think including A1 Garage or Service, everyone needs to do a better job of making sure you make people feel important. We just got a red carpet for when the guys start. I ordered a bunch of champagne. We put apple juice in there, but we really celebrate when they start.

I've got a lot of work to do overall, personally and for the company. But isn't it important to really, you get this A player and you guys recognize this is an ace in the hole. It's almost like this could be a million, 2 million, $3 million producer. You should drop everything.

Or a CSR does a lot more than a million if you think about their call booking rate and how many calls are booking. We're at 37 calls per Or a CSR does a lot more than a million. If you think about their call booking rate and how many calls are booking, they can book, we're at 37 calls per day per CSR, 37 opportunities with an average job opportunity of $1,400. You do the math, they're doing a lot more than a million. You should be taking them pretty seriously. Sometimes they're answering phone calls that you're spending $100 to make the phone ring. So you want to make sure that they're there. But back to the part about being there and showing up on time to do the

interview. One of the things that we do to try to make that happen is we schedule an interview with a hiring manager or an area manager or the HR manager, whoever's doing the interview. We put both the candidate who's being interviewed and the person doing the interview into the reminder sequence because it's not always the candidate that gets busy or forgets. Having the reminder increases the show up rate as well for the people you cut down on the no shows, but you also cut down on the missed appointments that the managers have not showing up for the interview at the time they're supposed to. And it's not like that. It's not because they don't think it's important. It's because they're busy doing stuff. And so they may need that reminder.

They need that little nudge of, okay, hey, we're going to get something coming up in an hour, make sure you're there. And then about 10 minutes beforehand. So you show up on time and treat them, treat them like the goal that they are, that are sitting there because they can come in. And if they're an A player, if they've got the experience that you're looking for, the attitude, because the majority of the, I do probably seven to 10 calls a week with companies thinking about utilizing our services. And the majority of them now, fortunately, say that they're more interested in hiring

for attitude and aptitude rather than for experience level. And they can bring them in and they have the attitude and they can mold them the way that they want to. But when you have somebody that has experience and a great attitude and aptitude, that's the unicorn that you got to treat immediately like the gold nugget that it is. So you're keeping those in place, keep making it so that you do that all the way through the process because they're taking a chance. I mean, think about yourself. Those of you listening, if you're not an owner, if you're working at the company as a job, as a career, how much would it

take for you to leave to go somewhere else? What are those things that you would be concerned and nervous about whenever you left and took to take that step to go work somewhere else? And because there's some real deliberation that they have to do to make sure that they're taking the right step, because if they take the wrong step, they basically put themselves back a couple of years, usually. When you're thinking about like the way your team presents themselves on the calls, they're such high energy. They're selling the company. They're empathetic. They show a lot of empathy. And then you might turn it over to somebody that doesn't share the same excitement. And they're just, how much does the interviewer

make a difference in converting these great applicants? I mean, if you're filtering them down, I mean, another question is how many applicants does it take to get a great one? And it's all different depending on the industry and the market. But it's just typically four to five people who have made it through the filtering process to get to the point of saying, yes, this looks like somebody I want to interview. So if you look at four to five of them to make a hire, that's about the average. Some are higher, some are lower. I mean, we just went through the whole process ourselves, hiring a couple of account managers, and we had 300 people register for a hiring event that we did, registered to get on a call with us. And so from that, we interviewed 11, and from that 11, we hired three. So usually, you know, it's about four or five quality candidates that have come through the filtering process to the point of you actually

making an offer to them. And it seems like those are really big numbers, but most companies aren't filtering that way. Most companies are looking at a resume and going, okay, let's bring them in for an interview. And then they come, they show up in their vehicle, walking across the parking lot, and their shirt tail is not tucked in. And they look like, you know, they're up in their vehicle walking across the parking lot and their shirt tail is not tucked in and they look like they're walking in the door and they look like they've been on a bender. You know, you didn't want to interview them. You could have taken care of a lot of that by having a filtering process in place so

that you have a better quality applicant. I wish I could say it was one-to-one, but it's just not going to be. A lot of times it's not the company that doesn't hire the employee. It's the employee that doesn't hire the company. They look at your reviews. We had one company that had like 3.5 stars on their Google reviews. And we had like five amazing candidates for them. They made all five of them offers and only two people took the offer.

The other three said they just couldn't come to work with a company that had some of the reviews that they saw online about their company. So it's not always that you aren't making the choice from the four or five people. It's that a lot of times they're not going to actually take the step once they have the interview. So having that person that's engaging and embodying those core values of your company is immensely important. What are some of the questions, since you guys have worked in so many industries across the United States and Canada, what do you think is the most important things for candidates looking at such a large scope of candidates? I mean, you told me a lot

of people ask about, do you get a new truck or do you got to provide your own leads? And it was astonishing the questions that you guys get compared to what we thought we were getting. So they want to know about work-life balance. I mean, these days, almost every company, well, not all. I have calls with companies that pay like $23 an hour and have no benefits and want us to help them, which is kind of tough. But everybody has usually decent pay and they have basic benefits. That's usually a given. So you've got to have something else that gets their attention. Like you mentioned, company truck. Company truck and gas card basic benefits. That's usually a given. So you've got to have something else

that gets their attention. Like you mentioned, company truck. Company truck and gas card is important. But what's more important is if they can take that company truck home and if they can dispatch from home. That's work-life balance now. They get to start their day in their driveway

and end their day in their driveway. They have more time with their family. And then also no on-call. If you have on-call, then don't list it on your ads. But if you have it arranged also no on-call. If you have on-call, then don't list it on your ads. But if you have it arranged where they work shifts and they don't have on-call, then that is a work-life balance that is a big deal and gets a lot of attention on the ads of not having on-call because a lot of companies haven't figured out how to do it. And then, so from that standpoint, ongoing training and also performance-based advancement.

They don't want to come to work for somebody that you get advanced because of the length of time you've been there. They want an opportunity where they can come and perform and advance based on their performance, not based on how long they've been there. Those are big deals for them. PTA, personal time off, the regular things, but the no--call, the personal, the truck, the company truck you can take home and dispatch from home are some of the biggies. Dan Antonelli and I did a podcast

that hasn't aired yet, but when I rebranded and I started doing billboards, TV and radio, and people saw us everywhere and they noticed our vehicles and then they drove by our shop. They were like,

they'd show up to the door being like, we see you guys everywhere. We want to work for a growing company. It was amazing. How important do you think the brand, and you've worked with a lot. You've worked with the white trucks that don't have a brand. And you've worked with companies that are just, they've got their core values, their mission, their vision.

It clearly shows what they do. They're proud of their brand. It sticks out like Bueller. I mean, what a brand. I mean, what would you say branding plays to make your job successful? You get a 50% higher take rate on your ads with a good brand than with the white truck syndrome. Because what we do is we want images of people with logo shirts on your employees, logo shirts on happy employees, logo shirts on doing work and your vehicles in order for that to be in the ads. One of the things that we do, you mentioned Dan Antonelli, is if they do a

rebranding, we don't charge to change the ads out. We don't charge to redo the graphics because it's going to make that much better of an impact. It's worthwhile for us to do that change free of charge than it is to charge for that, to charge for it, because we know it's going to get about a 50% higher take rate on the ads. The branding is huge. And you can tell the difference. And we've had companies that had the old branding and they moved to the new branding, and it's a night and day difference. Broad Shore Doctor is an example. When you have the old branding, we started running with it. When we put the new branding out there, boom, the leads started coming in. They basically double what they were getting before the branding happened. We've done that with a number of them. But yeah, the branding, the culture,

people want to know, how do I express my culture? Well, if you want to know about your culture, you want to know how to express it, ask some of your best employees why they work for you. Their answers will give you the ammo of what you need to have in order to put on the ads because if that makes them come stay working for you, that's going to help you tell the story of your company. Also, shoot a couple of videos of them answering those questions. That goes a long way. Yeah. I was just going to say, what I'm going to do is send you a Deidre i interview my two top technicians not top performance but to make the mental breakthrough and their mindset i'm going to send you guys i

probably have a hundred interviews and i was just literally in my i did four interviews because next week's freedom and these guys are just like it's such a brotherhood we've got people to lean on we just believe in we're the best home service company. And they're saying this in the interviews. And the one guy's like, I'm going to make 200 grand next year. And it's coming from the horse's mouth. And I've got so many of these. I think you guys could take these and I'll pay you guys to do it for your time to go through and chop these things up. Cause I think it's gold and it's different. You're not seeing the same thing over and over. I'll give you guys more ammunition to do your jobs. And it's something since we started this that I'm like, man, I'm sitting here with an arsenal of stuff that I haven't sent to you guys. We have a few that we got that came over.

And that's one of the themes that I heard in like three different ones that I listened to because they're shorter clips. But brotherhood was a common word that was used. And these weren't people all in one location. It's not like they were all just in Phoenix. They were in different locations, but that word came up again and again, making it so that it's, and it's, everybody says, you know, family feel,

but it's having the things. The other thing is corporate company, a company of team events, right? I mean, you talk about that all the time. Put that in the ad. Like you said, well, we don't have the budget to do team events. It doesn't cost a lot to buy a couple of pounds of bacon in a box of Bisquick and get a flat top grill and cook breakfast for everybody. Rent out a cheap theater for, I think we're going

to try to watch Home Alone at a theater this Christmas. Listen, I have people at my house. I love doing that stuff. I love doing it because it's so much fun to meet the families. And I think when you could get the family involved in the hiring process to buy in and you could bring the wife and kids on for some of these interviews and say, we know this is a big, big change in an investment into us. And when you get them believing and them accountable, and then I ask everybody to dream a little bit bigger, set a bigger goal, have a bigger bucket list, want more than one house. And then we'll help you figure out a way to get there. I mean, it's KPI driven and we're going to have a lot of one-on-ones and we're going to work with you on becoming the best version of yourself. And now I'm on this health kick like you are and telling people, listen, I want to see you. What good is making a lot of money if you can't

move and you don't feel good and your back is in pain and you have no energy and no focus. So now I see my guys, they're not drinking as much they're so focused and they're winning and it's so much fun and the reason i'm saying this because i want to share this with the world and hopefully it wants them to come work for a1 and this that's what you do i mean social media i put out a lot of content personally we're getting ready to do a lot more with a1 how important is that oh it's it's because like's, like I said, the more that it's there, right? It's just, it's the omnipresence. And like I said, I'm a coach with seven figure agency. One of the things that we teach people is omnipresence. You got to have a presence everywhere they look, they should see you.

And one of the things that happens is like when you're running ads on Facebook and Instagram for employment, you're looking to hire HVAC technicians or installers or garage door apprentices or plumbers or electricians, whatever it is, it actually, because you can't target people, it's discriminating if you target people for employment ads, it increases your calls for service, especially if you see the phone number on the side of the vehicle, people will call that number. And we know that because people have never run an ad on Facebook, didn't even have a Facebook page. We had to create one for them, start getting calls because never run an ad on Facebook, didn't even have a Facebook page. We had to create one for them, start getting calls because they saw their ads on Facebook. And they don't run ads for service.

We only run ads for employment. So that in itself speaks to the power of the more content you have about your business that's out there, the more places you put it. It doesn't take a lot to make a reel. You can shoot that with your phone and without even any editing and just put it there. So anything you can do to increase that has amazing impact. We're at a time now where people are consuming content faster and on more platforms than they ever have. So having an omnipresence, having it where you're on the Facebook reels, you're posting your Facebook page, you're putting it on your personal stuff. I mean, your case in point, whenever you post stuff, sometimes on your personal, sometimes on A1, home service expert, it goes everywhere in order for

everybody to give a chance to see it because you don't know where they're going to be. So put it everywhere you possibly can for them to see it and consume it. I mean, there's people that have one guy that's well in septic, it's on TikTok, he's up that have well, one guy, it's well in septic, it's on TikTok. He's up in Asheville, North Carolina. He has a million followers. And all he does is talk about wells and septic tanks that he's putting in and different lessons and different things that happens with his employees. And he's got a million followers on TikTok. So put it everywhere you possibly can. Everything you can do for branding, everything you can do for awareness is just going to help you whenever it comes to getting people's attention. People are going to want to come work for you.

You know, I'm a big performance pay. I think you get to eat what you kill. And I don't have any limits of how much somebody can make as a technician or an installer. You've worked with companies that just do hourly and you work with a lot that do performance. What are the difference in candidates and what do you think works better and why? What I've been seeing is there's the pure hourly and then there's a pure performance. What I've been seeing is a hybrid. It's the companies that are kind of scared to go to the full performance pay or they have employees that are scared to go to it. So they offer a mixture. But the employees that only want to work hourly or want to get paid an hourly rate,

they typically are not as, they're probably going to be better on the installation side of the equation than they're going to be on the service side of the equation. Because if they're getting paid hourly, they're going to do usually what they have to do in order just to fix the issue for the homeowner and not in which they think sometimes is, you know, the least expensive way they can do it is the best. And we both know that's not always the case. It needs to be the best solution. So the people that are more geared towards performance pay, they not only diagnose and repair, but they sell the homeowner the best solution. I want to say sell, I don't mean like sell them something they don't need. Everything we do is a sales,

we do sales, right? Everything we do, we have to share the options with them of the choices that to basically have the best solution for their situation. So the performance pay people you see are more go-getters. They're the ones that don't hesitate to do the assessments and go all the way through the process and do the video interview. The ones that are more on the hourly side, you'll get them saying, I just want to show up for the interview. I don't want to do these things. You want to have somebody, I had this conversation, we had the conversation with a client yesterday. They said, well, I asked everybody at our company if they would do the assessments. And they said they wouldn't do it if they would do the video interview and they wouldn't do it. I was like, well, that's the

people that are already there. We do this with our 250 companies across the US and Canada. We want to bring you people that are excited to come to work for you that will take a few extra steps in order to get the opportunity to work for you. And that's why we put things in place that we do. And you see that with, you know, and some companies are strictly hourly and we do a great job recruiting for them as well. But the performance-based people tend to move through things quicker and have a higher attitude and aptitude typically than the ones that just are looking for an hourly

job. I had a great question and I brain farted just out of it. And then I thought about what you were talking about. So I feel like CSRs, dispatchers, technicians, and installers are easier for you to find, especially when you've got a training program because you hire for attitude. I feel like, how often do you look for a VP or general manager or stuff like that? I mean, is RabbitHire set up for that? Not really. If you're going to find those people, typically you're going to find them on LinkedIn and we don't do anything on LinkedIn. We'd rather be specific with what we do. Now, that being said, I mean, like production managers, call-to-call managers, comfort advisors, those are still in that realm of what we do. VPs or C-level, that's just literally not what we do.

We're not going to do a great job at it and we don't profess to do it. We'll give you some ideas of things you can do, but our focus is the home service, the core of the home service industry of the installers, CSRs, dispatchers, technicians, operations managers. We do great getting hiring salespeople. But once it gets above that, we're not really the right fit for that. How many people do you think you guys have hired in the last 12 months? In the last 12 months, it's over the last two years, it's over 2,300. In the last 12 months, it's over 1,500 in the last 12 months.

Who's the best company that you've ever worked with? I mean, A1 is everywhere. Hopefully it was A1, but other than A1 that you've worked with that you're like, can you think of one offhand or one of the top five? Yeah, so it's Den Defenders. They're out of Mike's Mobile, out of California and California and Texas. The way that, I mean, we've helped them hire probably,

I would say well over a dozen people. Actually, he was there at Vertical Track. He said that our service we provide them is the most amazing thing that they've ever had. It's the best value that they've ever had from someone providing service. And it's easy because they pay well, they have great branding, and they move quickly because it's Mike and his fiancee who she's responsible for that role. And as soon as something comes in that looks like it's a good candidate, they're on it immediately and they move.

That's what I was going to ask you, all the things that they do well that really make them successful. It's the branding, it's the way that the ads are positioned, the benefits that they have, and also the speed of implementation. Another great one that we work with

is Fitzpatrick Painting. I know you know them, they've come to Vertical Track, they were at Pantheon. I mean, this is results not typical, but they embraced this instantly as soon as we came through and started running ads.

And they hired over a dozen people in the first couple of weeks of working with us because they were calling people as soon as the leads came in. Now we do all the filtering and things, but our clients can be as involved up front in the process

or they can wait till we bring them a candidate and say, look, this looks like it fits your avatar. But it's the same thing with Fitzpatrick. I mean, they're just on it. And I feel remiss not mentioning like everybody, but when you've worked with 250 companies across the U.S. and Canada, and then there's the clients that we just absolutely love, like CNC Chimney or Cody at Garage Door Doctor, those guys that pose, they embrace it as well. And they're happy that we're there. They're excited that we're helping them. And that's the other thing. Once we're working with somebody that's not excited to work with us after we've gotten started,

then we'll be the first one to say, it's probably not going to be a fit now that we started working together. We try to make that not happen, but sometimes it does. One of the things I've realized the last couple of years is a lot of times what got you here won't get you to the next level. And sometimes we just, we stick with the guys that have been loyal to us, which we should, but also their mindset is kind of stuck. And I think now more than ever, we're going into a soft economy. I mean, that's for certain. I mean, I'm in a text message with Ishmael and Cristiano and Chad Peterman and Aaron Gaynor and a lot of other guys. And we talk all

the time, you know, it's hard to hit budget. There's things going on. And I think right now is the best time to be top grading and looking out there for talent and figuring out how do you either move them up or move them out quickly. Because if you're not making these decisions and you're not actively looking for great people, I mean, I had a meeting in Flagstaff a month ago and that's all I talked about is bring me five out of five. And I said, don't just depend on Jody and his team. I said, you guys need to be networking, going to events, going at restaurants.

You guys need to be going to B&I groups. We're getting everybody in the B&I groups. And I said, you know, they're going to bring you great candidates, but our speed, the best people come through relationships and they're still going to go on Indeed and Glassdoor. They're going to look at how we're rated, but you know, you guys do a fantastic job, but our job is not just to rely on you only. It should be managers making a deep impact in that community and bring me, bring me somebody you'd bet your whole bonus on and

you'd bet that they're gonna win and you're like don't bring me hey man after a year of training this guy a little more self-belief i think they could potentially be a really good candidate if we work with them for a while you know right now they don't have any money they're living with their parents they're really just had a down on luck i'm like bring me somebody that's gonna be an a-plus player from day one we don't have time to fix self-. I'm like, bring me somebody that's going to be an A-plus player from day one. We don't have time to fix self-belief. Like, don't bring me somebody that can barely, they're stuttering all over the place. I'm like, you know, well, but bring me somebody you'd buy from today that you'd be like, I

could leave that guy in front of my wife and my two daughters, my two young daughters at home, and you'd feel secure leaving him there with them. And I mean, referrals are always going to be a great source, whether it's the area managers going out and finding people or the people that are already the technicians that are out there working on a daily basis because they want to bring people on that are going to be good team members that are going to help elevate, word for your book, elevate the whole team into doing a better job. It's going to help them be a better person. When you structure it that way and you help them understand the core values that that person needs to meet, then that kind of gives them the framework of who to bring to the table. So yeah, referrals

are always going to be great, but eventually you'll have to come back to widening it up and letting people know about the opportunity. Because the really thing is that if you have a great company and you're a great place to work and people love working for you, the people that you want to have work for you are out there. You just have to give the opportunity in front of them in a way that's going to be appealing to them, that's going to cause them to take that step. And it's, you know, you have to be proactive. I've seen you at restaurants give the waiter your card and your cell phone number and say, if you ever want to look at a way to have a career that you're doing more than you're doing here, you're doing a great job at this restaurant. I'm sure you're making a lot

of money, but I have something that I think you might want to take a look at. Give me a call and let's see what we can do for you. I've watched you do that. Yeah, the follow-up and the follow-up again and the follow-up again with them. Make them feel important. Make them think that you want them, not just, hey, listen, you seem like a nice guy. Come work for us. Get their name, get their story, really. and then send a personalized video to them. When you see, like, you come across a candidate and you're like, man, this person is like gold. Well, let me give you a little backstory. Keegan came into my office one time and he said, this is not the material. This place, you don't have a coffee machine like a real one. This place,

there's no graphics on the walls. The lighting sucks. You barely have a sign up front at my last office. He said, you got to make a place that people feel honored to go into. It's organized. It's clean. There's a lot of amenities. And don't meet people at Starbucks. Have a nice office. Like, what do you see that you must hear some stories of great candidates that fell through? What are some of the reasons other than bad reviews? It's how the company is portrayed to them. One of the things that we can't really do really well is, and there's no fault, everybody has to start somewhere. But if you're running your company out of your garage, a lot of times you're not going to get

a players are going to want to come to an interview in your garage, right? If you're running the business out of the garage, that's, or if you have, I mean, I always talk, I always talk about with the video interview that if you're talking to the person, it looks like it's like they're on the set of orders, probably not going to be a good fit for you because that's how they're going to treat your equipment. I get on calls all the time with business owners that look like they're on the set of, not all the time, every now and then, but then I can't use that example because they look like they're sitting on the set of orders. And I think to myself, how am I going to bring someone out here to interview and help portray you as a top company whenever this is, I know this is what they're going to walk into. It looks like chaos or they're working out of a shed or those kind of things.

Everybody has to start somewhere. I mean, you mentioned my office now. I mean, my last office was in a shed, but you couldn't tell because it was, it was all, it looked like basically up my background now, which isn't a background. It's a real, but anyway, so you have to set professional appearance in order to be able to, you know, meeting in a Starbucks are going to, everybody's looking for something to be a scam or not live up to the hype. People always say to me, I thought this was a Ponzi scheme or something. It sounded too good to be true. Right. I mean, look at Jeff Gillsborough with Jolly Goat. I mean, they just rebranded, right?

They had this Jolly Goat garage doors and they're redoing their office. Chad over there working with them has done a great job doing interviews and just helping schedule interviews and bring people in. But now with their new office and their new branding, it's like night and day, the difference that they even, and you can tell the difference and how they feel about themselves with that newer office and with that, you know, the branding and everything they present differently than they did whenever it was garage door 405 or garage door solutions before. So yeah, all of those things are immensely important. Now that being said, it doesn't mean you can't, it doesn't mean we don't help people that have average branding and that we don't do a good job. It just makes it so much easier whenever they do have all those

things in place. You know, one of the problems I have with my own company was I felt like everybody interviewed differently. There was no really standard operating procedures. There was no checklist to make sure. How do you compare five people when you're asking all different questions? What do you think is important things when it goes through you guys and you say, this is a great person and you guys have more interviewing experience than probably anybody that I know. But I wonder what we could do as business leaders and evolve our people to ask the right questions. One of the questions I ask is, what's something you did when you were younger in school? Did you play the piano, do karate? Did you have a passion for anything? And if people say, nah, yeah, I didn't really wasn't involved with anything.

Did you get excited about anything? Did you have to go to like practice every day at something to become better at it? And I don't know, I'm not the best interviewer. I got to tell you, I'm not as involved as I used to be because I used to sit there and try to sell people on us. When I was doing the interviewing, I'd be like, oh, you should see, and I'd talk most of the interview, and this is 10 years ago, but I was not good. And I'd be like trying to sell them versus you gotta sell me on you.

So what's some of the questions and some of the things that we should be thinking about when we're doing that type of thing? You want to have them, you have to ask questions in a way that's going to get them to not have a standard answer for you. You got to get like a situational answer.

So one of the things that, because everybody, you know, they would tell me about three of your strengths and three of your weaknesses. And everybody knows to take the weakness and turn it into a strength. Some people say- I work too hard.

Yeah, I work too hard. And I just, I'm always- I'm a bit compulsive about getting things done and neat yeah so one of the ways around that is when we call your last employer and we ask them what your weakness it was what do you think they're going to tell us right that gets them to stop and think about it and put what it's going to be and the other thing that we've found to be very effective is what do you feel is your greatest accomplishment right today? And if they say graduating from high school and they're 35 years old, not a lot of ambition there, right? You want

to know, or one of the things that we ask and it's, you know, what's the last book you read? And if they, do you read, yeah, what's the last book you read? And if they can't think about it, that tells you, I mean, it doesn't matter. It could be Harry Potter. But if they read a book, they're actually doing something with their mind other than just vegetating. But what do you think your supervisors are going to say your weakness is? And what's your greatest accomplishment so far?

I just had Dan Martell in town. And I'll back your time. And I've learned so much from that dude just in the last month. And he was at Joe Polish's event. And we talk a lot about the same things, but he's pretty remarkable. One of the things that was really impactful to me that he said, and it should be already out on the podcast.

I'm not sure if it made it out yet. But he said, you know, Tommy, I buy exactly how I want to be bought from. He goes, I never try to negotiate. He goes, if somebody tells me 10 grand to join something or be part of it, or I get a VIP ticket, I just pay. He's like, but then when I ask a price, I just expect people to pay. And I was thinking about it.

Like some people I asked $30,000 to replace their garage doors. And then I get people that come to me all the time and they're like, I can never get that kind of money. Like people don't spend that money with our company. It's not, and a lot of the times they'll say, I'm not in the right area or that mindset. They can't, but they literally, but then you go to tell them, like, I'm sure you give them the price of what you charge, regardless if it's a lot or if it's a little, and they're like, oh no. And like, I thought about this earlier. I got a double espresso shot and I used to reuse

my cups. I used to beat, like I used to turn every thermostat up, you know, to make sure it's not cold, but it's not warm. But now I keep it nice and chilly in here. And sometimes people wear sweatshirts in the summer because I think it's comfortable for a lot of people and they can put on a sweatshirt, but you can't, there's only so much clothes you could take off. So I'm like, man, I would never buy like I used to want to be bought from. And now I'm like, I think people have some really nice dinners and I know money's been good to me, but I'm just saying like, people want to invest a thousand dollars in a ticket to get them the right help. They won't listen to a podcast. They won't invest in themselves, but yet they wonder why people will not do the things that they want them to do.

And if you're not with the mindset of, yes, I invest into myself, I invest into my home, I buy the best when people offer me the best. Like I just replaced all my hot water heaters with the best tankless hot water heaters money could buy. And I thought about that and I'm like, man, I'm really buying how I want to be bought from now. And you have to look at the value that you're getting, right? Because you've got those high-end tankless water heaters. And I had one at my other house and it's amazing because you'd never run out of hot water. It's always there. It's on demand. It's immediate. But one of the things that whenever I start talking before I ever get to the point of telling people what our services cost, which is very reasonable. I say I'm training a new salesperson

that's been on our team for about a year. And they're like, I didn't realize how reasonable our prices were because they didn't know. They're just fulfilling the services, right? And not that it was a secret, but just they never had a cause to ever look at it. Is I ask, what is your UMR for having an empty truck sitting out in the yard? Because most of the people that are talking to me have empty, they're looking to hire people, they have empty trucks sitting there. And the UMR, their unrealized monthly revenue from an empty truck sitting there,

if they're any good, should be between $30,000 to $50,000 a month. Again, I know that's not profit. You got to put your profit margin in there, but it doesn't take hiring one person to pay for our services for an entire year, yet people still see it as too expensive. And it's not that it's too expensive.

It's that you don't want to invest that much in getting the top talent for your company. You're looking to, like I said, there's no such thing as good and cheap, right? So we're not expensive, but you have to look at what is the value. And just like you are buying now based on value, people have to do the same thing. And I've always been that way. I've always, when we go to dinner, I don't look at the price on the menu, I order what I want. I have a 17-year-old daughter who I think that she only looks at the price on the menu and then orders the most expensive thing, even if she doesn't know what it is. So you have to look at it, think that what is the value that you're getting from it,

not just how much does it cost? Because price is a one-time thing, cost is a lifetime thing. You have to look at it. You buy something on price, you buy a bicycle for 50 bucks and it lasts for a year. You can buy one for $200 that lasts for 10 years, which was the better deal. Yeah. You know, I think a lot of these companies out there, they read a lot, they do their research and they start, they start getting the benefits and they think that's going to attract people. But me recently partnering or basically buying a lot of companies and interviewing, I just interviewed two techs from authentic that switched over to a one and they're like, whether

it's, I can go through company after company after company where they're like, it seemed like a fairy tale. Like we came here and we've got more people to support us. We've got better meetings. We appreciate the camaraderie. Because they came from a place they didn't have it. Their trucks broke down a lot. And what the guys just said, I was forced to drive sometimes an hour and a half between jobs. He said, the biggest thing I like is you'll leave me on the job as long as you want the dispatchers. They'll readjust the schedule so I

could spend the time with the client and fix it right the first time. And it was just amazing to listen to the different things that were important to people. And they're like, one of the guys said, I was number one at the company. I was number one at A-Authentic every week, every month, every quarter, every year. And I've been there 14 years. And he goes, now I'm coming in and I'm like number 25.

And he's like, it's crazy. He's like, now I'm excited. He goes, I'd be going to Pinnacle except I used to have to install all my own doors and I had pride. I'd say, if I sell it, I'm going to install it. He goes, now I'm like, I don't want to install my own doors

because I know we're going to get them installed correctly but now I'm going to do what I do best. I'm a specialist. And I just got to, I'm going to send you all these recordings so you guys can look at them and just chop them up and do what you want to attract.

I think it was amazing. The video you have is Seth at Don's Garage. We went in there and did the rebranding and got him new vehicles. And they said, you know, he used to run 11 calls a day, and now he runs four and makes more money. And now he's the manager of that whole market. Yeah, I know. He was there at your house whenever I was there a few weeks ago. He's the manager there.

So it's just that. I mean, he looks different. He looks younger now than he did in the video. I didn't realize that was him when I saw him because he looks so much livelier and younger than he did in the video because he looked like he was just like rode hard and put away wet kind of.

And that's not a bad, he was just a different work environment. Your whole content changes when you work somewhere that you really love. And that's the whole thing about it is making it so that you have a place that you can do that. But it takes you investing in the business in order to treat them as your employees or your internal customers. And you have to look at it that way.

And I think that now that I've seen what can happen if we really believe in people and really, really, really want them to dream bigger and help them figure out ways. You know, I had, I interviewed Seth out of Boise. He's one of my dearest pinnacle club, great techs, great leader, bought in and it broke my heart. I was just interviewing. I went and talked to Robert in marketing. He said, I'm going to go to Reno because I really want to make pinnacle this year, but I just don't have enough jobs. And it made me feel like shit because I'm doing the best I could, but we could do better. I never want somebody to say I wasn't able to make my numbers because I didn't have enough calls, like one call a day or two calls. Like I like to get three, maybe four tops as a leader. I feel like I'm failing if I can't give them an opportunity to make bonuses and hit this big trip we go on and have a stake in the outcome. And it just, it's so important that I have this

feedback loop when I do these interviews. I can't interview every single technician, but I really thought to myself, man, I need to do a better job. They're counting on me. We gave them this job that we said we'd have clients knocking the door. And so we're very careful of who we're hiring now because we used to have so many people on a minimum and we'd always talk to marketing and say, we need more leads. We need more leads. We need more leads. And there were some leads we were paying $7 a phone call just to get a lead. We just, and we weren't paying attention to the small things. So now we're hiring when we need people and we're starting to build more of a formula and getting someone in the marketing department. I mean, Robert's next level.

I mean, Jim did a great job. Chase was amazing. But Robert came from this. He's like, I'll be able to double the leads by summer. That's what I tasked them with. And I said, Robert, I don't want you to think about marketing only for clients. 50% of what we do is marketing for great people because we send the wrong person in that home. We give them a one-star experience. I don't care if it ends up a one-star on Google Yelp or Nextdoor or Facebook. I care about how they felt. up a one-star on Google, Yelp, or Nextdoor, or Facebook. I care about how they felt. And they're going to use us again and tell everybody. They're going to become a raving fan.

The net promoter score is going to be top, top tier. And we got to think, if we get the best of the best candidates, and we get the jobs to go along with it, I don't necessarily need more calls right now, but not in every market. What I need to do is sell service agreements in every job and give them an opportunity to sell a new door at every job and within these four walls and book every opportunity and make sure those convert, make sure we're getting reviews.

And I think so many people are calling their marketing companies saying, I need more leads. Like when you got into this, everybody needed people. And I'm sure you're seeing as the marketing's turning a little bit. I mean, it's people, it's slowing down because people aren't, because it's, I mean, if you look at it, I think it was when you posted it and somebody posted underneath there, there's been a million less air conditioning units sold in the U.S. in the last 12 months than there were the

previous 12 months. So it doesn't need, you don't need to slow down on your recruiting. What you need to do is shift your recruiting to where you're looking to bring people in so that you can talk great, so that you can make sure that you have the right people that are in there. So while it is slowing down as far as how many people are needing to recruit, it's not slowing down as far as being able to identify and bring in more quality people. It gives people a chance to be more selective in what they're doing today. And so it helps them by doing that, but that's putting the DISC profile

and putting the skills assessments in place. It's helping them make a better quality decision rather than having to jump in just looking at a resume and say, yeah, let's bring them in. So those are some of the things that we're seeing. Really, when I brought you guys in to help A1, I needed as many and like, I was like, get these classes filled.

And I would say, I wouldn't say necessarily fog a mirror, but I mean, I was like, bring them in, bring them in, bring them in, bring them in. Because we had, you know, we were spoiled during COVID. It was like, you got this money. We were essential. People were spending more time at home than a man was through the roof. I always tell people, if you didn't make money during COVID, like a lot of money, you probably don't deserve to be in business.

And now you're seeing kind of a shift, but this is the most important time to be hiring because now you need to get the right people running those calls. Because if you're not having the right person run every single call, that's optimizing every single piece of that opportunity and leaving a wow, creating a raving fan, then you're not going to make it very much longer. And keeping the people that are five out of five is the biggest mistake I've seen. And either you need to train more, have better one-on-ones and motivate them, or you need to up or out. Yeah.

And managing it the right way, keeping track of exactly what they're doing. So yeah, it's the prime opportunity for doing that. And the other thing is that it's slowing down. The slowdown is coming. Therefore, you have to have technicians now that are taking the time with the homeowner and helping them make the decision because it's going to take more of a process, more of a sales process today than it did a year ago in order to help them make the right decision based on the situation. So it even becomes more critical

now that you may not have the need for as many people, but you have the need for a higher level of people typically than what you did before. I'm going to read you a quote I saw online, and it really hit home. There's nothing that demotivates a high performer like a low performer who's still on a team. A players want to work with A players across the board. They want A players taking the calls,

A players dispatching, and the dispatchers want A players that are willing to take the call. They're going to leave the customer fully equipped to make the decision and make sure all the information's within the CRM and the payment was taken. They got all their T's crossed and I's dotted for the financing promotions. And I think that's 100% true. And so many people, they keep top performers, but they might be C players.

They might get a lot of warranty calls. They might treat the dispatchers and CSRs like shit. And they allow this to happen because they're paying the bills, but they're not managing those people. I can't tell you enough, Jody. I've seen top performers fired at companies and all of a sudden everybody starts rising. They say, man, this guy actually did the right thing by firing this guy and they all do better. And the owners call me up and they say, I should have done that a year ago. Yeah. I mean, it's like, it's almost like an exorcism, right? That person's gone and the whole, the culture elevates because the pressure's not there. And I've had it in my own company where we've had somebody that was basically was,

wasn't a team player. I mean, we've recently changed our core values to ones that you can embody and nobody will forget. We just have four, but they're very simple. They're very easy. And you can tell immediately and your core values should be something that you will fire for. If they don't meet that core value, that you will fire for the person not meeting that core value. But the other thing is, it needs to be simple enough that everybody on the team knows if they're embodying the core values or not. You know, ours are pretty simple.

Ours is show up, be kind, lead without title. And the main one is gives a shit. Those are my core values. Because you can tell real quick, you know, if they're doing that. And if they're not, they got to go. Well, everybody wears the bracelet, aspire to be number one now at this company, or they should be wearing it. And people ask what that means. And I'm like, no matter what I do, I want to become the best version of myself. I want to better my best. I want to do better than I did last week.

And I aspire to be number one. It means be number one when I show up. It means I like to win. I don't play to participate. I play to win. And it means I look at the leaderboard and I say, I want to call the guy at the number one spot and I want to find out what he's doing.

That doesn't mean sales. It means he's not getting any warranties. He's getting five out of five stars from every customer. He's getting high service to sales. He's selling service agreements. And so we set up scorecards for the whole team. And we're going to talk about that at different podcasts, the scorecard tracking and making sure that people are, that they understand how to win the game and KPIs and how to move the needle. And how to see it at a moment's notice. Yeah, we're working on something I think everybody will be excited about. But it's kind of like Saturday Night Live, not yet ready for primetime players, but we're pretty close.

So I really buy back your time and Come Up for Air was a great book recently. And, you know, I buy a lot of books and I devour books. But I'll tell you this. There's some of them that just couldn i'll tell you this there's some of them that just couldn't even tell you that i've read so many books i couldn't even tell you the title of them and some of them i just fly through and i love some of them i just fly through the first chapter i'm like i'm done and i've got so many books people bring me books they know i like to read and i'm like and i buy a lot of them and it's just easy for me to devour books but is

there anything that really has... I talked about Dan Martell. I have his book right here. But one of them that I have that I'm going through right now that I think is amazing is... I've got a lot of books that are by Ben Hardy and Dan Sullivan. And the one that right now is 10X. It's not transactional. It's transformational when you think about 10x, because it has to be something different. You've done it yourself. You've done it. You've 100x. You've 10x 10 times. And you have to look when you look back at it and see it. We all have. And we've had to in order to get where we're at. But we got to start looking at what is the

next 10x that's going to get you there. And I would recommend everybody take that, buy the book and listen to it. I know you listen to a lot of stuff on Audible as well. And so I would recommend everybody take that, buy the book and listen to it. I know you listen to a lot of stuff on Audible as well. And so I would recommend that. And then that and not only buy back your time, but who not how. That's another great one. Very good. I like to close, give you an opportunity. First of all, Jody, if somebody wants to reach out to you personally or get a hold of RapidHire,

what's the best way to do that? The easiest thing is just, I mean, it's real simple, rapidhirepro.com. There's a big button in the upper right-hand corner, just hit schedule. Whenever you schedule a call, it's a 30-minute call, it's with me. I want to understand a little bit about your company, what you're looking to hire, and I'm going to share with you everything about how we operate, what we do, show you examples of ads, and show that you have information that you're going to be able to utilize to make a decision. And even if we're not the right fit, there's information you're going to get from that. But you can take and implement yourself.

We show you, I pull back the curtains to show you everything that we do. Because I want everybody, we're in business, you got to make money, but we're in business to help people. And so I encourage everybody to take advantage of that. And I don't know how much longer I'm going to only be the guy that's going to be doing the calls. So go ahead and get it done sooner rather than later, because then you might be talking to the next guy that's going to be doing those calls. And I'll give you a chance to close this out, whatever you want to, something that'll hit home for people.

So no matter who you want to hire, whether they're experienced or whether they're inexperienced, whether they're in your industry or not in your industry, if they have a great attitude and aptitude, and it's somebody that you want to have come work for your company, they're already your industry or not in your industry. If they have a great attitude and aptitude and it's somebody that you want to have come work for your company, they're already working for someone else. Your job is to get your information in front of them so they can see that you have a better opportunity

than when they're currently at. Because otherwise, you're never going to get the quality player, the top talent that you deserve for your company. So you've got to do something to get your message in front of them. I love it. Well, Jody, it's always a pleasure.

I'll be seeing you next week. I appreciate your time today. Thanks, Don. Got a lot of notes here. I'm going to be sending you some info. Thank you. You got it. Hey there.

Thanks for tuning into the podcast today. Before I let you go, I want to let everybody know that Elevate is out and ready to buy. I can share with you how I attracted a winning team of over 700 employees in over 20 states. The insights in this book are powerful and can be applied to any business or organization. It's a real game changer for anyone looking to build and develop a high-performing team like over here at A1 Garage Door Service. So if you want to learn the secrets that helped me transfer my team

from stealing the toilet paper to a group of 700 plus employees rowing in the same direction, head over to elevateandwin.com forward slash podcast and grab a copy of the book. Thanks again for listening and we'll catch up with you next time on the podcast. you