The Home Service Expert Podcast - Hiring Employees You Won't Want to Fire through the Core Fit Hiring™ Process

Episode Date: September 30, 2022

Ryan Englin is the CEO of Core Matters and an Advisor of Fathom. Core Matters helps out blue-collar companies in the hiring and retention process of their employees. Ryan shares his expertise in a podcast entitled “Blue Collar Culture Podcast” where he highlights success stories and shares secrets to winning with blue-collar culture. He also published a book titled “How to Hire the Ones You Won't Want to Fire: The Art of Pulling Back Their Mask to Really Know the Person You're About to Hire.” In this episode, we talked about hiring, recruiting, employee retention, training… 

Like what if you brought every new person in and part of your onboarding says hey, what are your personal goals? You talked about it. I want to buy a house. I want to buy a car I want to get my credit score up all of those things What if we had that conversation and said we're going to develop a three-year plan with you Walk alongside you over the next three years to help you buy a house What would that do to retention? You know, you got them for at least three years because nobody else is going to do that for them They're not going to leave for a dollar more an hour and the prospect of not being able to buy

a house because someone's not taking care of them and pouring into them. I think somewhere along the lines, we forgot that the people that we hire are employees. They're human beings with hopes and goals and dreams and things that they want to accomplish in their lives. 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. Welcome back to the Home Service Experts. I got Ryan England in the house. He's an expert of management consulting, team building, change management, employee training, and hiring. So he's a CEO of Core Matters, a company that helps home service

companies attract and hire long-term employees using the CoreFit hiring process. The CoreFit hiring process system is designed around an easy-to-follow six-step structure that brings hiring in-house to save businesses both time and money. In June 2021, he released his book, How to Hire the Ones You Won't Want to Fire, the art of pulling back their mask to really know the person you're about to hire. Ryan is also known for his podcast called the Blue Collar Culture Podcast, a show that highlights stories of success and share secrets and winning the blue collar business. Ryan, it's a pleasure to have you today. Oh, I'm excited to be here. So you just got it done with a trip to payson and uh got to unplug for a little while

that's always nice yeah disconnect i have to go to a place where there's no cell phone service no wi-fi nothing you know those aren't going to exist here in about two years i don't think but uh i like to get out on the lake we do some deep sea fishing right down the coast of mexico and san diego area and when i don't have reception, I can just plow through books, man. And it's fun fishing. We play some cribbage, play some poker.

It's a blast. Yeah. And, uh, it's always good to do that. It's kind of a good reset. The reason I give minimum of two weeks, a lot of people,

four weeks PTO is because they come back refreshed and it seems like they're just re-energized. They get so much more done. Yeah. I was just telling someone earlier today, usually I go on these vacations and my brain just works on work stuff. And then I come back and I have all these new ideas and all these things that I want to create and do.

And it didn't happen this time. Not having this time. So I came back and just picked up where I left off and things are good. You got to understand this is crazy. I asked Gianni who sets up my podcast. I said, look, I'm writing a book on recruiting and hiring culture. Everybody needs to win. I think recruiting, hiring and training and retaining happen to be the most important thing in a business that's growing. And we just got done. I was telling you how quick we're growing. And I had a great podcast last week, or actually this week earlier with Barbara Bruno. She's really good at recruiting. And she said, for my job recruiting, she said, I'll put three candidates

when I'm hiring and I'll put them in a four hour kind of stress test. They'll actually watch for an hour. And then I get them on the phone for three hours. And one out of the three people that I was going to hire that passed everything after three or four interviews done, she said they passed, that they were good to go. It was beautiful. Only one third of them make it through this stress test. And our retention rates through the roof, and that just lit a bulb to me. And I'm like, we don't run these stress tests. We don't run a lot of these tough scenarios and just put them in the right, really, stress test anxiety. And it sounds like to me, and I'm hoping you're going to break down this whole process, this whole six steps. I've got as much time as we need today.

But tell us more about Core Matters, about you, about the amazing work you've done, and where have you gone? You've been doing this now for a little over 10 years. Let's just start from the beginning. Yeah. So in the beginning, I was a digital agency. Websites, emails, ads for home service contractors. And 2015, I just had a whole bunch of clients tell me, I can't take on any more leads, shut the marketing marketing down We can't do this anymore And I remember talking to an hvac contractor in july in phoenix And they're like we don't need any leads and I was like your phone should be Going off the hook. So like yeah, but we can't get to these calls. We're booking three weeks out

I said what's the problem? There are four trucks sitting empty in the yard. We don't have techs I said well recruiting is a marketing issue. I'm a marketing guy. Let's go get you some techs. And they're like, you can do that. And three weeks later, they call me back. They're like, turn all the leads back on. We got four trucks filled. We got two more trucks on order. I don't know what you did, but we got techs now. I was like, well, that's kind of fun. So I started calling my other clients and telling them the same thing and started doing it for other clients. And I was like, this is fun. But then what ended up happening

was we found out that they would hire these techs and only be there for four weeks or three weeks and they'd lose them. I was like, well, we got to really solve this retention problem. And I took my background in corporate, love for process design and everything else. And I said, let's go build a process where we can help home service contractors

attract, hire, and retain frontline talent. Technicians, CSRs, laborers, even construction craft workers. And so we've been doing that for the last seven years. And a couple of years ago, right before the pandemic hit, I actually turned it into an online coaching and training program. So we can take more people through it. We can get them results faster. We can have them basically copy and paste what we've done many times before, get them the results. And so many of our clients are just hiring beyond what they thought was possible. I think when COVID happened

for me, I realized how important the people are. Because there was a day and age where you put out an ad on Indeed or Craigslist or ZipRecruiter or CareerBuilder or Monster or LinkedIn, and now they got all these other little ones. And you could just get them flooding in. But you're right. You got a real turnover problem. There was a real retention problem. And these stress tests, ride-along forms, background checks. But then what happens is you get a great candidate and they're like, I'm not going to wait four weeks to do three interviews. I need a job. And then I realized the best people aren't necessarily on the unemployment line.

You get them to go from one industry. And so I've started hiring for Attitude, great people in a different industry that just are always smiling. They're excited. They want more out of life. They want to make money. They're excited about performance pay. One of my favorite questions is if I could give you a base of 60 for a possibility of

a bonus for 100,000 or give you a base of 40 with a possibility of 200,000, which one would you take? Yeah. And if someone says, oh, you know, I'm married, you know, 100 grand would be great. I like the 60 base. I'm like, okay, you're a loser. You're not the go-getter. Yeah.

I'm like, you're going to pass up for $20,000. You're going to pass up an extra 100,000 because you're insecure with yourself. Yeah. So let's talk about this because this is gold for everybody listening. And you guys should be listening to this, taking notes, and more importantly, implementing some of these ideas. So you were in marketing, and then you figured out how to get great people. And then you broke the biggest problem that everybody has is retention. So let's just start talking about the core fit hiring process a little

bit. Can you want to run us through like the basics? Yeah. So it all starts at your core. And that's, you know, we start there. You're writing a book on company culture, right? Yep. That culture is so important. It's the core. It's the center of who you are. It's foundation of your organization. It's why people show up and come work for you. You've heard the phrase before, people don't leave jobs. They leave people. They leave managers. They leave bosses.

They leave toxic cultures. And so people don't leave for a paycheck. They don't leave because they can't get more out of their current job. They leave because the people are misleading them, not meeting their expectations, not keeping promises, treating them like garbage. And so they go look somewhere else. And the only way that we're going to be able to attract good people to us is if we're really clear on our core. What are our value systems? How do we believe? How do we behave? What's our purpose? Why do we get out of bed in the morning? Where are we going? We've all

heard about vision and getting the right people in the right seats on the bus. Where are we going? If they don't want to go where we're going, that's a problem. And I can't tell you how many home service contractors have no idea where they're going. So it starts at your core. I was in a podcast about six months ago, and the guy said, out of the 2,000 companies he's worked with, he said three things. And the most important one he said, he started with this. He said, if you don't have a plan, if you don't have a budget, if you don't have exact steps of how you're going to get there, if you work out and you just say, my goal is to lose weight, but you don't have a diet, you're not counting calories, you don't have a routine,

you're not writing down your weights. You get somebody serious, they walk in and they're like, I can do 180 pounds seven times. Here's my fat percentage. Here's what I'm trying to get down to. Here's my water, what I drink in a day. I know I need to work on this stuff. I'm trying to build better habits. Help me get there. Help me hold me accountable.

Those are the guys that are going to see badass results. Oh, yeah. That's what you're trying to say is, where's your plan? Here's what I hear from most people. They say, I want to make more money. I want to have people. They say, I want to make more money. I want to have more free time and I want to make more profit and I just want to grow. And I'm like, yeah, I just want to live a good life too. That's just so generic. How do you plan on getting there? Well, you know, we've tried the Google thing and I can't find employees and

I do a four hour orientation with every new group. And I was like, guys, you're in the best spot of your lives today. And you have the best opportunity you've ever had. This is going to be the best experience ever. But if you start saying, well, that guy got lucky, you know, I'll start tomorrow. It's easy for you to say say it's easy in that market the dispatchers don't like me if you've got excuses and you're a victim to what you're going to be this is not the right position for you if any of you guys get in a car accident guess whose

fault it is it's mine because i didn't train you enough i didn't do the dmv checks properly i left you guys to go out there and learn on on your own. And I said, so once you learn to take complete accountability for your actions, it's when you succeed. I had Darius Livers yesterday say to me, every time the wife's not there, every time the guy's got to go check what's in the bank and he'll call you back tomorrow. Every time the guy says he needs to think about and talk to the HOA, if you don't take complete ownership that you didn't close that job and you could have done something better, then you don't take complete ownership that you didn't close that job and you could

have done something better, then you're failing yourself. Because if you just get a quarter of a percent better every time you get one of those, you'll literally triple your production level every year. That's where it starts, I think. And how does somebody go about starting, figuring out their core values? I mean, it's like figuring out your why, like Simon Sinek, what's the starting point? Yeah. So one of the things we tell people all the time is don't go out there and survey your team. You probably didn't make the right hires anyways. Like really think deep. Why did you do what you do? Why did you show up and get into this line of work every single day? I tell people all the time, there are a lot easier ways to make money that are a lot

less stressful, that will let you sleep better at night in the United States than to go start a home service contracting business. So why did you pick this? And I joke, there's two ways that people get into this business. One, they decided not to go to college and everybody told them, you're a loser, you're a dropout, go work with your hands. That's one way. Or the other way is mom and dad said, you're going into the family business. And I think the big mistake we make here, especially in the trades is we don't realize that these are some of the hardest working people in the country. And if they just had a little bit of direction, they could figure it out. And so one of the

things we do is we say, what's your direction? What's your true North? Where are you going? Why do you wake up every single morning and do this? And it's amazing the stories we hear about, I grew up in a family that didn't have a lot. And so we want to serve the underserved right now, people that don't have a lot. And that's who we want to serve. And that's our target market.

And that's why we get up every day and do what we do. Has nothing to do with garage doors or HVAC or plumbing or any of that stuff. It's, I want to serve people. And when they get really clear on that, then we can start saying, okay, now what is your belief system behind that? And that's where we find your values. And some people, I'll tell you, the day I got into the garage door, an opportunity was

presented to me. I thought it was a great opportunity. I never knew when I was on stage that I was going to be like, the garage door is the smile of your home. I'm absolutely in love. Garage door has changed my life. And I don't necessarily know if it's the widget of the garage door, but it's the opportunity to be able to change people's lives. My goal is to make a million millionaires, a thousand millionaires. A million millionaires would be great too, but I don't think that's plausible here in the next decade. But I hear this thing all the time. There's no good people out there. If you want it done right, you got to do it yourself. And there's these owners that are just professional firefighters, man. These guys are the chief

firefighters. They know how to fix everything. They're everything to everybody. You need inventory. Let me make a phone call. Let me call that client up. Let me deal with the vendor. You need this. And what do you say to somebody that says there's no good people? There's a shortage of great people out there. Because that's what I hear every day. Well, if you want to attract good people, you have to become attractive to good people. That simple. If the people that are coming up and showing up aren't good,

and you think they're not good people, maybe you need to look in the mirror and say, hey, it's time for a haircut. Maybe I should shave, get some decent clothes. I talk about dating profile. If people get online and they look up your company and they look up your social media and you look like an ax murderer, maybe it's time to change your profile pic. Yeah. You got to put it out there. And one of the the things i see this is the old school way of doing it is look go on indeed right now go on any hvac search roofing search graduates must be only app like it's got all these things background check drug test mandatory must be willing to

work weekends and it's all black and white there's no videos and it's like good company but what i want to read is we're going to work on changing your credit score and getting you into a house. We're going to really build a family here with you. We're doing things that are fun every day. We're building a family. But it can't be that cliche bullshit like we're not a fairy tale land either. So I think there's got to be some truth and just see what some of our guys are saying. Come to a ride-along.

Come meet some of the staff. We'd love to have you. We'd love to take you to lunch. And here's what I found. Now, the gal that I talked to that does a ton of recruiting said 45%. I think it's more about 60. The best employees come from employee referrals. You're eight players attracting and getting other eight players. Yep. It's part of our process. It's actually under the automate section of our process is employee referral programs. So it's 70% of people that are currently employed are looking for work.

Yes. 70%, which means if you've got 10 people working for you, seven of them are open to looking for another opportunity. So if you want to solve your hiring problem, focus on those and keep them. But 70% are out there passively looking for work. The truth is looking for a job is one of life's most stressful events. It's on that same list as divorce,

death of a loved one, health diagnosis. It's on that same list looking for work. Think about it. If you have to take care of your family and you financially provide for them and you're jumping out of the frying pan into the fryer, you have no idea what you're getting into. So the more that we as employers can say,

hey, you know what? They're going through a tough time right now. They're going home upset every day. Their stomach's in knots every morning because they got to go work for this Yahoo. And now I'm going to sit here and I got to take care of them. I got to make sure that they know

that I'm here for them and made to be different. You talk about all that black and white stuff that's on the job boards. Only three to 5% of people are on the job boards. And who are they? They're unemployed or they're looking for a career shift. And if you don't have a solid training program, mentoring program, you can't take care of those people. You're going to be getting unemployed.

And when you got 3.6% unemployment, it's not a good thing. You're not going to find very great people you know you get lucky every now and then a guy moving and then that but our training program i'm obsessed i said ryan listen i'm gonna send you the perfect freaking video man i'm gonna show you how to hit a drive 300 yards you keep your left arm straight you crack your wrist at the back your knees are bent eyes on the ball you better be able to watch that video and hit 300 how to hit a drive 300 yards. You keep your left arm straight. You crack your wrist at the back. Your knees are bent. Eyes on the ball. You better be able to watch that video and hit it 300 yards.

No, that's not possible. I can see you at a driving range and work with you for months. And the thing is, all of a sudden we say, listen, I'm going to show you how I do it for a couple of weeks. And you better be able to drive that ball straight 300 yards.

But imagine if we worked with them. we watched them do it over and over to where it's just part of their DNA. It's a habit now. They're so good. They could do it with their eyes closed. You've reinforced it. You've role-played it. You got good. You gave them the fundamentals. You gave them a system that they follow every single time to get an expected result. And you trained on that. You went through scenario training. You recorded it for them. They got to watch themselves. They circled little issues, their stance or tonality,

their body language, 96, four 96% is everything else other than the words we use. 4% of the words, which are important. And that's what we do here. We look for winners with winning attitudes. And I just think it's funny because you go,

what the hell's wrong with these people? Don't they get that? And you got to think about when you started that you didn't know a lot of these things. You've got all this experience. And sometimes we forget, we say, it makes common sense. Don't loosen that bolt. It's a red bolt. You could die if you loosen that. It means there's tension. They never knew that. it's easier to play the victim card. Woe is me, there's no good people than it is to say, hey, wait a minute. I have a responsibility to fix this. And I can engage these people and I can get them excited

and I can develop amazing training programs and I can pour into them. I was just on a call yesterday with a client and we were talking about how do we engage people long-term? And I'm like, what's long-term? They're like, well, if they'd stay 90 days, I'd be happy. I'm like, well, let's talk about three years. Like, what if you brought every new person in and part of your onboarding says, hey, what are your personal goals? You talked about it. I want

to buy a house. I want to buy a car. I want to get my credit score up, all of those things. What if we had that conversation and said, we're going to develop a three-year plan with you, walk alongside you over the next three years to help you buy a house? What would that do to retention? You know you got them for at least three years because nobody else is going to do that for them. They're not going to leave for a dollar more an hour and the prospect of not being able to buy a house because someone's not taking care of them and pouring into them. I think somewhere along the lines, we forgot that the people that we hire are employees. They're human beings with hopes and goals and dreams

and things that they want to accomplish in their lives. And we forgot that. And we said, no, they're a widget in our machine. And their sole purpose is to generate revenue. And if it's not around them generating revenue or generating me a profit, then I'm going to disregard it. You know, there's got to be stay interviews.

There's got to be open lines of communication. I was just talking to my dream manager earlier and she said, you know what I'm teaching most of our guys how to do? How to have a conversation with their superior. Just be able to have a chat if they're unhappy, if there's a mistake, if the inventory is not right. A lot of them don't even know how to approach that. So they let it fester until the day they just, boom,

they break and they quit. And I couldn't imagine. We spent over three months training. I couldn't imagine saying I'm happy with somebody the last three months. And the more time you put into them, the more TLC, it's like the longer they want to stay. And they're like, the day they start accomplishing their goals and their dreams.

But here's what I found out, Ryan. A lot of these guys haven't dreamt in a long time. They don't know exactly who they want to hang out with. They're like, I'd just be happy to take my kids to Disneyland. But the fact is, if they sat down and thought about it and they said, wait a minute, I want to be healthy. I want to hang out with my dad. I want to take him on a golf trip or a fishing trip. I want to see my cousins that I haven't seen in a decade. I want to own a home.

I remember one day we went to the Mississippi River and my life was changed. Go back there. But you got to kind of get them in an environment where they could do those things because it's really interesting when they start fighting, they want more out of their job, which helps the company because they're accomplishing their dreams. You know, it's one of those things though. It's, it's a vicious cycle. You do that and it starts generating results for you. You don't, and it starts taking away from your business. I was talking to someone the other day and they had, they were like, no, we have a hiring problem. We don't have a retention problem. Trust me. It's all hiring. I can't find good people. I said, how many people did you have on December 31st, 2021? He said, 10. How many W-2s did you issue? 43. I go, you don't have a hiring issue.

You have a retention issue. Oh yeah. That's, that's a good point. You know what? W-2s at the end of the year versus, I didn't even think about that one. One of the questions we had is, so what are good people attracted to? And I think it's just some of the common things, but also they just want to be heard. A millennial just says, teach me. I want to know that I'm part of the process. I want to know that I'm involved and I have a voice. And I want to have fun because I spent over half my life at this place. If I could enjoy it now, listen, my guys are out there in the garage at 120 degrees.

And I don't think they're just like yippee. I get to go into 120, but they get this camaraderie, this brotherhood, these goals, they get these communications. And listen, Tiger Woods has did a thousand golf balls a day. That's not very fun. It's not like walking, winning the green jacket at the masters. There is hard work in everything you do. The golfers work their ass off to be where they're at. And no matter what you think, every job turns into a job. You've got to work, but they could be fun at the same time. Can it? Absolutely. You know, I tell people your employees are leaving

their family, their friends, and the things they do for fun to come work for you. And if you think $20 an hour and maybe some commission is enough for them to put a price tag on time with their friends, their family, and the things they do for fun, you're kidding yourself. You have to replicate some of that at the workplace. Now, I'm not saying it's all ping pong tables and foosball and beanbag chairs, but Gallup, I don't know if you've heard of Gallup. They're one of the big think tanks. They have a 12 question survey and they have said that the one of the 12 questions is a better indicator of engagement than any of the others. And it's, do you have a best friend at work? There's almost an 80% correlation between people that say yes to that question and whether

or not they're engaged. And I think, you know, programs work so well. Well, you know, it's getting them outside of work and just having a picnic or running out of videos, going to see a movie. And another thing is what I found is getting this significant other and the kids involved to where they're like, they come home from a hard day at work. They're like, man, I don't know if I could do this. And they go, man, you love this place. You know, you're going to be able to move up in a year. You got to put your time in and there's a career path for you. But if the significant other is not bought in and the

kids don't really care, there's never involvement. When you get the buy-in from the family and the family becomes part of the big family,, it just becomes so much more sticky. Absolutely. We had a client that did on-call service a lot. And they were losing techs because of the on-call. They were taking the phone home. And they were short-staffed like all. And I said, you know what?

Why don't you do this? The next time you hire a tech, take the tech and their spouse out to dinner. Have a conversation with the spouse at dinner. Hey, your husband's going to come home with a phone a couple nights a week. Here's why. Because we do this and this is who we take care of and this is why we do it. And all of a sudden, now, did she like the phone coming home? No.

But it was a lot easier for him to have that conversation because now they knew the why behind it. President of the company took every new tech out to dinner, took their spouse and started creating that connection with the family like you're talking about. I love it. One of the things I get here is like you're here every day. When I'm not traveling, I go into work. Like we see you. And I just think that little bit, the fact that I'm here. Yeah, I'm on my scooter.

I'm always on the phone. But they're like, he's here. These guys come up to me. They're like, we worked at a company that's 10th of the size of this, and we never saw the R. We never say hi to him. And I think just showing up is half the battle. Like just going to the gym, just showing up. I think one of the separators for us is we really use software to the next level. We use scorecards. We've got these great KPIs. We're able to know where to train somebody. We're able to get these

fundamentals down. Is there any tools or platforms that you've been using to provide services to your clients? Yeah. One of the best tools that we teach clients to use right away is the applicant tracking system. Yeah. The ATS. The ATS. Which one do you recommend? It really depends on a specific situation. We actually have a process we take people through, a little checklist that says, hey, what are you looking for?

What's important to you? We have a lot of people that look at Applicant Pro as a good all-around system. We've got some clients that have used Jazz HR. Career Plug is a great one, but they really cater a lot towards franchises and associations. What's your favorite one? If you were in the pick one for them, I'm just going to be selfish here. We're looking at 60 to 80 people a month. We use a lot of text messaging to communicate. We do a lot of social media. We do a lot of big hiring events. And we

also do a lot of Indeed sponsor stuff too. And if you wanted to be all out the biggest, best, and money wasn't an issue, exactly what I'm looking for right now. I will tell you that there isn't one that's the best, but I will tell you if you do a lot of text messaging, Workstream is the best out there. They do text messaging unlike any other. Hey, I hope you're enjoying this conversation. I just want to take a five second break to let you know that the tickets for my next Vertical Track event are now on sale. Just go to verticaltrack.com to learn more and get a guaranteed seat before the prices go up. Now back to our interview. Quick question, as I get ready to hire my first tech, should I hire an apprentice and train him or someone with a little more experience?

Oh, Tommy, I'm sure you have an opinion on that one, as do I. tech? Should I hire an apprentice and train him or someone with a little more experience? Oh, Tommy, I'm sure you have an opinion on that one, as do I. Well, it just depends. I don't love installing doors. I think an installer I love with experience, but if I'm going to train somebody, I'm going to use this first one to build a manual. And as I make mistakes, and one of the things that I'd love to do, my apprentice program is everything. But when you're really small, the thing is you can't afford to pay people very good. I would have never been better if I didn't hire somebody better in my industry than me. There's a lot of advantages of getting experienced people in the beginning. But the problem is once you get 10 of these guys and you go ride with them, they all do 10 different ways.

Therefore, if you're doing ride-alongs, one guy's training this way, that was the hardest thing to untangle. So I'd love to hear your answer on this. I would say, you know what? To me, the most important thing is trust. This person is going to be representing the company as though they're you, because I'm guessing the plan is to put them in their own truck eventually, if not right away. So they're going to be representing the company as you. You've got to be able to trust them. And I'm not just talking about trust them with the money side of the business, but you got to trust they're going to do it your way. You got to trust they're going to show up on time.

You got to trust they're going to take care of the customer. I would put all of your effort focused on behavior. That person is going to show up, sighted, smile every single day, take care of your customer. And odds are that person is going to be a little less experienced. And then you can train them to do it your way. You know, the hardest part of training an experienced guy, I had a guy walk up to me and this guy is like bold. He's like, hi, D.I. And he walks up and he goes, hey, Tommy, my name's Eric. He goes, explain to me your whole sales process. I've been doing this 14 years. Why is your way better? And I go, do me a favor, Eric. I'm going to tell you a few stories here.

Let's sit down for a minute. But I said, here's the deal. You try my way for one month and you go all in. You put your heart and soul into this. And if your way is better, I'll start trying your way. But I said, this is the way I designed and it works every time. And there's a whole science behind it. Robert R. Choudhury wrote the book Influence. It has a lot to do with sales mastery. It has a lot to do with getting the job started, these different things.

I said, you might not love it, but people can't swallow a big pill at once. When I get my car fixed, if they give me every single thing it needs, but if they say, hey, let's start on your brakes, we noticed you need calipers. By the way, they come back for a third time. They say the muffler also has a few issues. I can handle those in increments. But if you go all out and say, hey, listen, you need to do these eight things. I'm like, let me get a second bid and let me save up for that. And so we went through this process and he actually, you know, he's a genius. He helped me a lot too. So many people undermine the onboarding process and just getting the orientation. I'll leave. He's taught me a lot about this stuff, but they show up to work. They're kind of hanging out up front their first

day of work. And you're like, oh, yeah, I forgot you started today. Hey, listen, just go sit with them. Do some of your paperwork. And then I'm going to get you. You just be shadowing a couple of people for the next two months. Yeah. What the hell? I'm just like you said, I'm another number.

What if we had flowers waiting for him? And you said, this is the lunch plans. I'm setting you up with a big tour of the facility. Listen, I wanted to give you and your wife movie tickets because I just saw this new movie that just came out. I thought you'd love it. Like, what if you actually gave a shit and they weren't just a number? And I got to tell you this. I'm not the god of all these things.

I just do care. But I got to do a better job. And I love doing podcasting because I'm like taking notes and I'm like. You know, the number one thing we're dealing with right now, I don't know if you deal with it, is ghosting. People say they're going to come and they never show up. Yeah. Or you make them an offer and they don't show up on the first day of work.

We're troubleshooting this all the time. But I'll tell you what, you talked about caring. Think about this. If you're hiring people that already have a job, you've got a good tech coming in. He's got to turn in his notice. He's got to quit his job. How hard would it be for you at the end of the interview to say, hey, you know what?

I can't wait for you to start. So you got to turn in notice. How are you feeling about that? He's like, man, I'm nervous as heck. My boss might walk me out. He might curse at me. He might yell at me. Well, why don't we role play this a little bit?

Why don't we get you comfortable with having this conversation with your boss? What's it going to look like when you go tell him your notice? And then you play it. Hey, I'll give you a dollar more an hour, right? Because you know that's what the boss is going to do. I'll give you $2 more an hour. We want to keep them clear. Like, why are you leaving?

But then you say, hey, when are you going to turn your notice? He goes, tomorrow morning, 7 a.m., right when my shift starts. How hard would it be for you to send him a quick little text message, 645? Says, good luck with the conversation. I'm rooting for you. Can him a quick little text message? Six 45 says, good luck with the conversation. I'm rooting for you. Can't wait to have you on the team. That's genius.

These little things I told my guys today, did you know the average pilot when they actually get in an accident? It's their low forties. And I'm sitting with this billionaire and he says, the reason why Tommy's men come into money in their late 30s. They buy a plane. They got this checklist, like 20 things they need to do. And what happens when you're young, 40 is still young.

I'm about to be 40, is they get kind of cocky. They start skipping steps. And what happens is they can't see over the horizon. The meters aren't working right. The tire pressure, that landing, usually it's the landing or the takeoff and the fact is these little things that you're talking about the the devil's in the details if you actually systematize it and you've got a checklist and you put it into a system a standard operating procedure manual and it's followed because systems three reasons things fail is there's no system the system is not not being followed, or it's the wrong system.

If you put it in there and you say, make sure you've got a plan with each candidate that's leaving their job. Make sure you text them the day of and use your Google Calendar and there's a checklist. And this might be a little overboard, but you've got a data integrity team that's just making sure these things are getting done, keeping accountability. Imagine what your life would be like if you systematized it and it got done every time. I think we're talking about some really cool, amazing things. Do you have a lot of standard operating procedures for some of this stuff that you kind of the details? It's all part of our process. Yeah. So every stage in our process, we've got these tools, we've got these things help implement. In fact, a lot of our clients, we help them automate this. Guy walks out of there, you put in the time, you put in the quick little message and you hit schedule. Sends a text for you. You don't even have to do anything.

Yeah. That sounds like maybe something Workstream does. There are systems that do it. I mean, Workstream definitely has a lot of cool stuff around text messaging and how that works. The reason I like Workstream is they'll actually continue to text and email the person until they schedule an appointment with you. Whether it's a phone call or interview, all automatically. It's just part of their system. It's one of the reasons I really like it. But we use the right tool for the job. Like you said, I'd rather have the three that do the best than the one that has everything built in, but it's not great. Yeah, it's absolutely right. I mean, look, I love service time,

but I got five things built on top. We still use HubSpot. We've got, you know, people are like, man, you spend a fortune in advertising or my software. And I'm like, it's still under a couple of percent. You look at how much I pay for my labor in comparison to technology. Technology is in the low, low, low single digits.

My labor rates, sometimes 30 some odd percent. So why wouldn't I want to invest more in software and to create more efficient human beings? Because 1A equals 3B. So if I can make somebody triple effective, that 30% by spending a 2%, I basically, I'm saving a fortune by adopting technology. I mean, that's my mindset. What do you think the best platforms are? If I was to say this, Ryan, I need a hundred people. I need 30 CSRs, 20 dispatchers, and 50 technicians. I want to know exactly how those marketing dollars would go to use. And one of the things I would say in there is I want a training program, an LMS, to train the employees on how to recruit and how they get awarded and how

attribution works. That's my biggest thing I'm working on is they want to know where their candidates are. Did they get hired? Did they not? They're always like, yeah, I did some recruiting for you guys, but I don't think I ever get paid. So I don't really know. It's not a clear picture for me. They kind of lose interest because affiliate marketing, if the person that's an affiliate says, yeah, don't worry, we'll pay you, but you'll never know when and you don't know how much you did.

It's kind of like, yeah, I don't really trust you guys. So there's that piece. But where's the best platforms? Well, I would say if you want to track what your team's results are, get everybody in your ATS, teach everybody how to use it. So that's simple. A lot of these ATSs actually have referral tracking for you. So anybody that's doing the work, they can actually track who it's coming with. But I would say, if you need to hire

100 people and you need the best, I would say, tell me about your employee referral program. That's the first thing I would do. And I would want to know how effective it is, how many referrals you're getting. Are you paying rewards? Are you not? How does that whole process work? Because one of the best ways to hire great people is to get the great people you have working for you already, refer them in. You know, what is it about a players that just, I've seen this over and over. They can't stand BNC players. They despise them.

And here's my little take is if i go golfing and i'm golfing with somebody really not as good as me i tend to play worse i tend not to give a shit i'm going out there to drink yeah but if i'm with somebody good i'm like okay gotta stay serious i'm drinking water i'm focusing on every shot and i'm getting better yeah and i like to be around an environment which makes me be the best I could be. What is it, would you say, about A players that just can't stand being around, I don't want to say losers, but B and C players?

Well, I tell people, get rid of your C players right away. And you'll find that probably a lot of your B players were A players that cared about the C players way too much. And because they were constantly chasing them, they were constantly fixing things, they were constantly dealing with their drama, it brought their performance down. We've all been on a team before we had to carry the weight. We've all been on a team where we had

to do more just to get the same grade. And if I'm an A player and I've been in that situation before, I don't want to play with B and C players anymore because they're going to pull me down. They're going to impact my performance. And I'm going to go home at the end of the day, not happy. And that's one of the worst things we can do to our people is put them in a situation where they go home at the end of the day, not happy. They yell at their wife, they yell at their kids. They're just leave me alone, go home and have a beer because they just had such a rough day because nobody at the office cared about them. There comes this point that I got to

ask with an employee, is it a will problem or is it a training problem? If it's a will problem, we need to have a serious, tough conversation. If it's a training program. So I look at a dispatcher, for example, Hey, I'm picking up all the weight, but you're an asshole teacher. You're like, you should just figure it out. A players just don't bother me. I'll do it. Just get away. So the problem is this A player is amazing. But what I've noticed about a lot of these badasses, they're like Han Solo. They're so good. They could run circles, but they don't have the time to teach. They're like, if you can't figure it out, then shame on you. Cause they're very good at what they do. And if they just took the time to coach, cause I do believe certainty players, if they got the right willpower, they want to do better. They can be coached up to an A. And these A

players, they're very good close to the owner and they're the right hand. But all of a sudden, they're like, this person just doesn't get it. And I'm like, you know, a lot of times you're like, well, sometimes we need to hand feed them. They're really smart. They're willing to try, but they're not at your level yet. Have you ever noticed that? Absolutely. And I think you were talking about process and everything else. So maybe that's part of your process. You're an A player. Guess what? Part of your job is coaching other people. And here's the process for how you're going to coach people. And that's one of the things we do is, and that's where the Peter principle comes from. You've heard of that before, right? It's when you promote someone just outside their level of competence, you take your top sales guy and you make him a sales manager. Yeah. He's going to be awesome.

We take our top tech and we say, Hey, you're going to be a mentor now. You're going to train people now. And he's like, wait a minute. I just want to be a tech. And we take these people and we throw them into a role that they're not qualified to do. They don't have the competency to do. And we do nothing to support them. Where's that SOP on how you coach your C players? You know, it's interesting. I was with a couple of buddies two weeks ago. It was like Saturday night

and I was bullshitting with them about work. And I was like, you know, a lot of my market managers and different people, I asked one of my regional managers, I said, show me what you do from nine to five, Monday through Friday. I'm not worried about you, but what does that nine to five look like for success? To be amazing, to build an amazing market. How much has it been on interviews? How much is saying, pump up the guys? How much is coaching? How much is organizing? I want to

understand, is it vendor relationships? And he said, it's always different. And I said, man, I said, that's really hard to replicate. And I said, I know I'm so much of a drill sergeant. Like I want step one through five and I just want success. My, I got an eight step sales process. Like I'm, I'm step-by-step for everything. And my buddies go, you know, Tommy, everybody has their own style. And I go, I understand that each one of my guys has, they might talk about motorcycles. They might talk about tools. They don't need to talk about the same things I might talk about. You know, I don't have any kids, so I'm probably not going to talk about infants, but they still follow my set same process. And I said, every interview is exactly, that should be the same questions, but it doesn't always go the same exact. oh, really? Tell me about that camping trip. You know, you might go down a different

alley with it. But I said, to just say, listen, I've got eight managers that are nothing alike. They got their own styles. It's like Barry Sanders and Wayne Gretzky. They're playing a different game. I'm like, that's not very conducive. I said, we need to give them a path of success because they want to know. They really do. They're thirsty for knowledge. They want to know what you want. And just to say, guys, it's always different.

You guys will figure it out. And then shit on them when they don't succeed. Yeah. And I don't know. I think they had a great point that everybody's their own person and give them some creativity. Let them have fun with their job. Give them some ability. But really put them down some guidelines. What are your thoughts on that?

Absolutely. I agree with you a hundred percent. I see it too often where we get mad at people for doing something that we didn't give them permission to do, but we didn't ask them to do either. We just kind of like go figure it out. And then they figured out in a way that we don't like. They went and did it in a way we don't like we use behavioral assessments i mean you've talked about disc already dni and all that we use behavioral assessments in all the hiring that we do we recommend everybody use that plus integrity assessments those are two of the big profilers that we use and there is a certain type of behavior a certain type of personality that aligns to every single role in your organization. They're all similar. Yeah. The high C's you want them and they actually enjoy data tables. They enjoy banking. And then I'm like, you know, you have to have to pull my arm to fricking look at some stuff. And that, like you talk about inventory and I'm like,

yeah, I don't care. Just make sure it's on on but at the end of the day there's people that are like they like problem solving they like figuring out a puzzle dispatching to me is not very fun what's crazy about dispatching is me and you could dispatch the same exact board and both be right but it could be way different and the hard part about that is you got to systematize it but you need to understand what your fundamental kpis are are you going for windshield time are you going to try to get the best technician to the best job and lose a little bit of windshield time? And if you don't put the fundamentals down, then you say you wonder why you have scattered results. You know, what's interesting is look at dispatcher per average ticket and see if there's any high correlations in the facts that they do it. But somebody's like,

I can't even get my people to show up to work. I'm booked out two months. Tommy's telling me to look at my dispatch, you know, so it's going to be a different sizes of your business to where you start looking at the smaller things. And obviously hiring is one of them. I would say if you can't get people to show up for work, put yourself in their shoes and would you want to come to work for you? Yeah.

And I would say this, if you're hiring people that need to make $40,000 a year to live and that's their goal in life and you see how they dress, you see what they drive, you see how they take care of themselves and their vehicles and whatever else, you start to get an idea of that person's max capacity.

So when I hire people that want more out of life because I could attract them and they go, listen, my goal is to become one of the top dogs here. I made every single new guy in my orientation, text messages, the top guy in the company and said, I'm effing coming for the number one spot lookout. And the guy, he texted me, he's like, thanks a nothing lot, but we had a blast. We have a lot of fun, but I said, you're going for the number one spot because you want it. You want to win. You know what I feel like when I come in second place?

I'm the first loser. And I said, there's two types of people in this world, those who need to be number one and those who hate to be last. I'm the first category. Well, at least I didn't come in last. What kind of attitude is that? And I know I'm a little bit... What we realized is when you hire athletes, when you hire people that work at farms, when you hire hard workers, military people, you tend to get a really good output because they need to win. They understand what practice means. They understand what hard work and discipline and focus does. But when you get somebody that's like, you know, I don't really pay attention to sports. The reason I play games is just to have fun. I always ask, listen, when's the last time you played something competitive?

Tell me about how it was. Was it a team environment? Did you win the team win? Are you a team player? And I'm looking for those things. I'm just looking about, I don't really play a lot of sports. I like to watch them, but I'm a kind of a cigar guy. I'm like, okay. But you know what the problem with that is though? And I agree with everything you're saying, but I will tell you, I would say the majority of people in this space, they don't give them a scorecard or a scoreboard. So these people don't know how to win. This is what I say. The manual is how to play the game. The scoreboard is the KPIs. Yeah. And you know what? I gave all my old guys a scorecard that were their installation. And I'd say one third of them quit. They said,

you're trying to micromanage me. Now you're scoring me. And I said, listen, we're just looking at what the average is, the mean amongst the peers. And we think that should be the level of expectation just in the middle. And if you're not, we're just asking you to buy in because we feel like if your peers could do it and I'm not just putting a number on you, but we want people that know how to win. And then one of the things I used to do is I used to call two people up that weren't hitting their goals and say, listen, guys, let's not pick on these people. Let's find out what's going on and find out what we can do to help them. But man, I realized that people started dreading the meetings because they go, I don't even want to show up today because Tommy's going to call me up there and ask what's wrong and why am I doing good? But here's what happened. A lot of

them would quit. A lot of them would get better really quick. You know, I tell people, go watch professional athletes, right? When they're out there scrimmaging and they're hanging out and they're practicing, you see them play, but they're playing at like 30% of what they can play at. When the game starts and the stands are filled and the scoreboard's on, they play at 100%. You want your people to play at 100%, you got to tell them what winning is. They got to know what winning is. The only way they're going to know if they're winning is if you're scoring their performance. Absolutely. You look at a guy like Jack Welch or Steve Jobs, I think both of them used to take a percentage of workers.

And I think it was the bottom 10%. One of them was 15%. And they say, listen, at the end of the year, here's how you score from January 1st. If you come in, this is how we're scoring you. If December 31st, you're at the bottom 10, you're packing your bags. Yeah. Have you ever heard of a teacher? I'm sure you're familiar with this.

They grade on a curve. Yep. They take the top score. And I hated these teachers because they make the test impossible. So those who got a 60% actually got 100. Yeah. And I'm like, you're giving 40 points. That's a shitty test.

Yeah. Those who got literally if a passing point was 70%, if you got less than the 30, you fail because it was a curve. One of the things that I do always look at the mean, but if somebody hits above a certain level, I'm not saying I tend with this, with several hundred technicians, I tend to say, if you're on the bottom 10%, we need to do some work because your peers, let's figure out what we're missing. But there are times where everybody's succeeding and we're still profitable. But when you look at the difference of our top and bottom, I couldn't even look my mom in the eyes if I was down here, you know? Yeah. It's crazy. But some of my good guys are just that

good too. I mean, it's like, holy crap, what is this guy doing? And at some point you got to say, I got to make sure it's ethical. That's true. That's true. But yeah, I mean, it's like, holy crap, what is this guy doing? And at some point you got to say, I got to make sure it's ethical. That's true. That's true. But yeah, I mean, that's a good point though, especially for these smaller companies. Cause I saw a couple of questions about small shops. Small shops can do all the stuff you and I are talking about.

It's just at a different speed. Like you're talking about, you know, you're going to hire a hundred guys. What this year? No, this month. This month, you're going to hire a hundred guys. Well, the deal is, is if you hire 50 technicians, you need 10 dispatchers, you need 20 CSRs. You also need trainers. You need virtual product specialists. You need all the infrastructure to

hire those. So I don't like to be at a one-to-one. I like to be at a two-to-one ratio. So if you needed 50, you get 25 people to help out. But that's not always the case, especially when you're growing. I'm not going to hire 100 guys this month month but i'll tell you this there's 42 guys upstairs we hired the infrastructure this month so maybe it was 65 and maybe next month we're 50 maybe it's 90 and i gotta talk i love looking at the board and seeing who there is and we're always gonna have a little fallout right when it comes because i'm like do not send these guys to phoenix unless they're badasses i said i put them in their own market i'm like you're not send these guys to Phoenix unless they're badasses. I said, I put them in their own market. I'm like, you're part of the SEAL. You're part of the Navy.

You go to Phoenix, you're Navy SEALs. We're going to put you through SEAL Team 6 training. When you walk out, you're a badass. The best of the best. When I gave you your certificate at A1 Browser Service, you could walk into any home service country in the world. That's what this certificate means. This is not paper. This is the best of the best.

This is the highest honor in the home service industry. And you guys deserve it. Look at each other right now and smile and say, I made it. I'm a badass. And that's what I love to do. That's awesome. That's awesome. Yeah. What I was going to say though, is that for these small shops, they can do the exact same things we're talking about. They just do it a smaller scale. Maybe they don't do it as fast. And we were contractors. You got to get started somewhere. I mean, listen, nail it and scale it. That's the rule. Nail it and scale it. You wrote a book, how to hire the ones you won't want to fire. The art of pulling back their mask to really know the person you're about to hire and why. So my question is, why did you decide to write it?

And what are some of the key highlights that I could take away for the listeners in the book? You know, I wrote the book. It's a short book. It's an easy read because I think the number one place that employers are failing themselves, these owners are failing themselves. They don't interview well. They think an interview is a, hey, the guy shows up. He can fog a mirror.

He says he's got tools. I'm going to hire him. And there really needs to be some support there. And so that's what we wrote the book about. So the book is all about interviewing. That's all it is. We're not talking about how to get guys. We're not talking about how to get applications.

We're not talking about onboard. It's just interviewing. And how do you get someone to show up authentically? Because these people that are job hopping, they know how to answer your questions. Everybody knows how to answer, where do you want to be in five years? What do you think you're good at? Tell me about your experience. They know what you want to hear. So how do you get them to show up authentically?

How do you ask the right questions? How do you build a process around interviewing? I get this a lot. People tell me, oh, I need guys to go up on ladders. Probably not in your space, but I need guys to go up on ladders. And they tell me they're not scared of heights. And the first time I sent them out with a ladder, they're scared of heights. So we had a roofing company we work with. We said, start doing the interview on the roof, give them the ladder, have them carry the ladder around back, climb up, do the interview. You don't even need to ask if they're scared of heights now. No, that's awesome. Yeah. Get them out of their comfort zone. There's no better spot to get them than have a stress test. That's

what I'm learning. And I'm telling you guys what, implementing these things, getting to know the wife, getting to know the kids, but you got to fall in love. Listen, I think sometimes we take, we say, listen, this guy will do, this guy will do for now. This CRM will do. This'll get us by, like you said, if it could fog a mirror, I'll take you. But now you just say this. There's one of two things donald trump said this

and i don't care if it's someone else i know some people hate him some people love him but he said the worst employee is a good employee bad employees get fired great employees take you to new places you've never been but good employees they just kind of they're there they're just kind of they don't bring attention but they don't do, they don't bring attention, but they don't do well. They don't get written up, but they don't get promoted. And the worst employee is a good employee. So your goal is to get the good employees great or get them gone. And the bad employees get them out quickly because a bad fruit ruins other fruit. Bad apple ruins other apples. So get those out quickly. So your dad used to work 12 hour days. Yeah. What are your

thoughts on business owners having no choice, but to always have to give overtime? I mean, a lot of these guys in the summer and HVAC, they got their guys working 70 hours because they can't keep them busy in the winter. So they say you got to get away with it. It's good. What are your thoughts on some of this stuff? Well, I think if you're in a business that is usually impacted by seasonality like HVAC, I really think that one of the best things you can do for your team is figure out how to keep them busy. What other services can you provide in the off season? What are the things that you can do to keep them busy in the off season? But I would say that you got to be really careful with burning your people out. And this is one of the reasons that I think wages have gotten so out of control in this

space is because it is the easiest way to bribe people to take your crappy job. It's the easiest way to get people to overlook the fact you're going to work them 70 hours a week, you're going to work them to death, and then you're going to lay them off in the slow season. You just pay them more. And we have a whole bunch of companies that are coming together doing this. They're just constantly outbidding each other. And now we've got wages that seem incredibly insane because this is how we've solved the problem of treating people poorly and not actually having good business acumen to create a business that can last year round.

I couldn't agree more. I hate the people that say they pay more because there's so many misconceptions on commissions and look, PTO, 401ks, insurance, paying for the gas, new vehicles you can take home. One of the biggest questions I've gotten in the last year was, do you have new vehicles? because a lot of people have old shit that breaks down it's always crap those things matter and then you look there's tricks that people do number one i can't keep you busy all day sure i'll pay you way more but you're lucky if you get a job a day maybe two yeah and so they all think the grass is greener and what's so nice a lot of my guys that have done this in the past i haven't had this happen a long time but they've left and they say listen i got out for this or that.

And I always want to be the best. I want to be the top pay, the top everything. But when they leave, when they come back, it's like, Adam's always telling me, I give it two weeks. I give it one week. Sometimes it's three days. And they go, when you give them structure, when you give them the meetings, at first they go, damn, we have a lot of meetings. Damn, we have a lot of training. Damn, we have a lot of this. And then they go, when they don't get it, they're like, there's no acknowledgement. They don't even know if they're doing good. They don't even know what the hell's going on. And they go, oh my God, we've got no camaraderie. We've got no meetings. It's like a ghost town here. We're surprised if we even get two jobs.

And sometimes they make a little bit more money, but they hate it. It's not about money. It's never about money. There are a lot of things that people would rather have than money. And coming home at the end of the day saying, hey, that was a cool place to work. And I'm excited to go back tomorrow because I get to see my friends. I get to hang out with people that care about me. Goes a lot further than a couple extra bucks an hour.

You know, it's funny because I noticed way more about the technicians. These guys are going fishing. They're going boating. They're doing fun things together. They become lifelong friends. And I tell these guys, the reason I send you to Phoenix is I love your families.

I wish they could come too. But the way that you're separated and you get to focus with your roommate and you get to learn about their lives and you get to just be focused on everything and you get to meet and hang out with me and the staff here and see what we built and some of the best. And I just love the fact that they walk away going, I've got these friends for life. It's like a fraternity for them. I think it's really cool. I'll tell you what I'm going to do, Ryan, is I'm going to invest in your system. I'm not kidding. I like to get people on the podcast. And because you did

this, it's not my way of giving back. I actually want this, but a lot of times I'll do it. But at the end of the day, I'm going to make an investment in myself to invest in your program. What's the best way to get ahold of you? Yeah. My website's the easiest way, thecorematters.com. And if you Google Ryan Englund, I show up all over the place, pretty easy to find me. But if you want to learn more about our system, it's corefithiring.com. Redirect you to the right page and everything. Corefithiring.com. Yeah. And is there any books that have stood out in your life that really made things a little bit simpler for you to succeed? You know, for me, Profit First was hugely impactful. That was one that helped me on the finance side of my business.

But I'll tell you, the one that I think was probably the biggest impact was E-Myth. Oh, yeah. Michael Gerber. You know, there's something about that franchise model and falling in love with systems and processes and hiring people that have the right behaviors and the right mindset and then actually teach them how to do it your way. That was really impactful for me early on in my business, actually. Yeah. Michael Gerber has been in this office. He's a real treat. He's a good guy. He gave me a signed copy of his first version. That's awesome. But I'll tell you, one thing that comes up a lot is how do I teach my people how to better

communicate? I'll tell you the best communication book I ever read. It's called Love and Respect by Emerson Eggrich. It's a marriage book. So it's about how to have better communication with your spouse. But it opened up my eyes into ways of communicating and listening and being able to respond correctly. That was just incredibly impactful. And I use it in business and our coaching. We reference a lot of things

from that book a lot. You know, I'm one of those guys that I get all these ideas in my head. And yesterday I was at dinner and I just was like, shut up, listen. I'm like, quit. It just pops in. And I'm like, oh, yeah. And I'm like, just live in the moment here and just smile and listen. And it's really hard, especially if, you know, I only had one older sister. But if you were in a big family, you were just like, can I get to work? Can I see dad today? Do I get to talk to him? You know, because my dad was in a family of 12. And I can only imagine how hard it must be just to have a little bit of quality time just you want to get it. You know, we talked a lot about quite a few things here, Ryan. I'm sure we missed some core ideas here. I want to give you the opportunity to kind of share,

close us out here. Maybe we didn't talk about something. Maybe you got some take action steps, but whatever it is, I'm going to give you the floor for a few minutes to close us out. Yeah. Thinking about our process and where people get the most impact from it. You and I talked a lot about investing in technology. I always tell people when you're looking to hire someone brand new, especially if they're not frontline, if they're not revenue generating positions, which we have a lot of support positions, ask yourself, can I invest in technology to better support my technicians before I go hire another person? So we talk a lot about technology.

So I think the applicant tracking system, the ATS, if you're struggling to recruit, it's an amazing investment in your business. And then the other thing is invest in your people and equip them with the tools they need to become your biggest fans for recruiting new people to your organization. We often have these employee referral programs. We're like, hey, $500 if they're here 60 days. And we completely shut those down day one. First thing is, it's not your employee's job to make sure that their friend is there in 60 days. It's your job. Their job was to get you the referral.

You did the hiring. You chose them. You did all your research on the hiring. You chose them. You did all your research on this person. You hired them. Now you're supposed to guarantee. Yeah. You know, what about the people that pay an extra thousand dollars for every year they stay on?

Because they think they're going to call them on month 11 and walk them off the bridge. Yeah, it's crazy. It's like, hey, by the way, I'll buy pizza if you stay an extra year. It's silly. So stop like, hey, by the way, I'll buy pizza if you stay an extra year. It's silly. So stop paying them to keep people there. If you're going to pay them for the referral, pay them for the referral. But beyond that, realize that it's never about money for your employees.

So if you've got an employee referral program, find something that's greater to them than the extra dollars. We've got companies that are doing all sorts of things from vacation packages with their family, movie tickets, things like extra paid time off, all sorts of things, all sorts of different ways to get your people excited about referring for you. And then if you're going to ask them to do it, equip them with what to say,

how to have the conversation, let them know you're hiring. I can't tell you how many times we've talked to employees. I was like, hey, you know that they need to hire 12 people. They're like, I had no idea. No, they don't. And they never were taught. My top guys know how to sell very, very well because they spent two months learning.

Teach them how to recruit. You might want to spend a whole week and pay them good to do it. I guess what will happen? What would happen, Ryan? This is a question I ask a lot, especially on orientation. What would happen if every single employee hired one person per month? You would double every single month. You'd be 12 times bigger at the end of the year. You'd have other problems to deal with, but those can be overcome.

It would be astronomically great for the company. I mean, it would be a little bit, the hard part is you got to teach them how to get self-generated leads too. So if you teach them how to recruit and get self-generated leads, all of a sudden you got up. Frickin. I love this shit. So much fun. Listen,

man, I had a great time. I absolutely am in love with my podcast it's not even fair you know i had a guy talk to me jeff sanford he goes if you listen to episode 1 through 50 that'll bring you to 10 to 12 million listen episode 50 to 100 that'll bring you to 20 million then it just goes and i'm like it's true because these questions i'm asking but i've gone through covid you know things change over time but it's so cool because I'm asking these questions. And I think a lot of the people out there, I'm still in the fight. I'm not a consultant. I'm still out here figuring things out with you guys.

What I love the most about it is we get to win together. We get great guys like Ryan on here. We get to adopt some of his systems and there's so much information. It's hard to take it all in. So you cannot be working in your business. You got to be working on it, listening to the podcast and implementation. So killer work, my man. I really appreciate you doing this today. No, I've had a great time. Really enjoyed it. I've learned a ton too. Thanks, Tommy. Hey, I hope you enjoyed today's podcast. Before you go, I wanted to invite you to my next vertical track event. We've opened it up to all home service companies, just like our last event. And people across all industries have been messaging me

all the time saying this last event brought them as much as a 10 times return on their investment. You need to go there, check it out, and sign up today. Now the great news is, is that we're doing it again in October, and we want it to be the best event of the year in the home service space. If you're ready to build systems to scale and get out of the truck once and for all,

get your tickets right now at VerticalTrack.com. We're about to go through some tough times in the economy and I want to give you some tools and some tips to get through it and start making more money than you ever realized. So go to VerticalTrack.com and get your tickets now.