The Home Service Expert Podcast - How To Fine-Tune Your Recruitment Process to Find the Best Talent

Episode Date: January 29, 2021

Laura Tolhoek is a Certified Human Resource Leader (CHRL) through the Human Resources Professional Association (HRPA), with over 15 years of experience in using sound HR practices with a pragmatic approach to improve business performance. As the proprietor of Essential HR Canada, she and her team work with clients, including major players in the restaurant, foodservice and retail world, in sorting through details and providing solutions. In this episode, we talked about recruitment, employee development, employee retention...

So when we talk about performance programs, and a lot of people take a performance review, for lack of a better term, and they do it annually or biannually, and all you do is look back at what an individual has done. And let's be honest, most of us don't have enough brain capacity to remember what somebody did a year ago. So we're either only managing the most recent, or we've forgotten about everything they've done most recently. And we're looking at that big mistake that happened a year ago that really, at the end of the day, if we didn't deal with it then, we should be moving on. So I like to think of performance as more of a development program than a looking back. So yeah, let's deal with things as they happen in the moment. If there is a big screw up and we have a training opportunity and we need to bring to the attention of somebody so that they could better develop their skills, let's do that in the moment. Let's not do that eight months later.

And let's take that performance program and let's look at that as a goal setting and succession and development program so that our business is moving forward because our employees are moving forward. 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 Expert. My name is Tommy Mello and today I have a guest.

I feel like everybody that I have on the show is from Canada. Nora Tolhook, she's an expert in recruitment, employee development, employee retention, and small business. And I think this is really cool because not enough people really understand HR recruiting. And I can't wait to talk about this stuff. HR to me used to be something that I didn't think was essential. Now I think it's the number one thing in the business is how we recruit retention. That's something I've been talking about every day. This new year, I'm just 100% focused on getting talent in the company. So let me give you a little bit about the bio on Laura. Laura is right now at Essential HR Canada, proprietor. She's done that since 2018,

and also human resources consultant. She was at Lowe's Companies in Canada for the human resource manager from 2011 to 2018. And she's also got another about eight years in the restaurant industry for HR. Laura has used sound HR practices with a pragmatic approach to improve business performance over 15 years, a certified human resource leader through the Human Resource Professional Association. She has crafted a team of HR professionals who work with clients and sorting through the details and providing solutions. Having worked with major players in the restaurant, food service, and retail world, as an integral member of their HR team, she's not only comfortable, but excels in

high-volume, smart decision environments. Pleasure to have you on today, Laura. Thanks, Tommy. Is that a big intro? That was a big intro. First thing I'd like to do, I want to give a little overview of what I've been obsessing over, and then I'm going to have you give an overview. Right now, we have four full-time recruiters. One of them has worked for Enterprise for 20 years as an HR. We have five full-time trainers.

I've been focused on our Indeed and Glassdoor score. I've been really focused on the user interfaces, the people that come in. I'm really focused on the SEO of getting found and amazing employee testimonials. And I can tell you, Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google are all working very, very hard to commoditize home service. The one thing you'll never be able to do is make A player employees. They're going to need our trucks. they're going to need our trucks they're going to need our fulfillment and the world is changing so fast so it's something i've obsessed over over the last couple months and this whole next year is how do i find a plus players because an a plus csr will make me an extra seven hundred thousand dollars i've been

through the math it's amazing how much extra. So I really can't wait for this because it's the most underrated thing in a company is your talent acquisition, your HR. Right now, I've had a couple of guys that didn't make it through and I'm doing exit interviews, which is all HR. Laura, you specialize in HR. There's a lot of listeners that can learn from you about the hiring and managing of team members. Let's talk a little bit about how you got started in your career and what's going on in your life. Yeah. So thanks so much for asking.

And thanks so much for having me. So essentially, HR was really born out of this idea for providing small businesses with flexibility. So probably a lot of your listeners are thinking HR, like, well, it's just me and five other people. Like, why do I need HR? Or I don't have 150 people in my store like Lowe's, or I don't have 1000 people on my payroll, like the company on the street, I don't need HR. And what I found is I've worked for those big companies, I've seen them spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on big HR programs. And now I get the opportunity to take everything we've learned in those big companies and all

the money they spent on the specialist of the specialist of the specialist and figure out what does this mean for small business and how can we make this work for small business? So I grew up, my father has a small business. He's an elevator contract and maintenance company. And he grew from when I was just a kid, him and another guy to now they have 50 people with 40 on the road. So I get the tenacity and I understand and I'm so I'm so inspired by the passion of small business owners. So coming from these big businesses, I realized I was getting phone calls and emails and from friends and family saying, Hey, Laura, what do I do about this? And

what should I do about this? And talking to my own father, and he says, Where should we go from here on this situation? And I thought just because you're considered a small business of 50 or five, doesn't mean that you don't have questions that you know the wrong answers could take money out of your pocketbook or eat up your time as we know people's situations eat up time like nothing else in the business yeah maybe it's causing you to you know sleep less at night because of these emotional and mentally exhausting situations so i thought i want to take what i know from these big organizations and really customize it to small businesses because they need the help as well. And how can we do that?

Because a lot of small businesses, they don't need a full-time HR person on the payroll. If you have 20 people or if you have 12 people, you definitely don't need a full-time HR person on your payroll. But what you probably do need is the support of somebody who can get you in the right direction as quickly as possible so that you can focus on growing and scaling your business rather than on the minutia of certain projects or certain problems that can just eat away at that time. Yeah. near as much as I am now. And I can tell you that we've had several things where we've had to go under rulings that basically, nothing too major, but just unemployment and things. And to be very, I mean, we've got a whole filing system. We've got all these sign-offs and how we hire. And we've got these letters that we give to the employees, what our promises are. I literally

was upstairs giving a two-hour lecture to the 27 people that just flew in yesterday. And I said, the one thing I can tell you is I take responsibility. If there's sexual harassment, it falls on me. If there's sensitivity or gender-related, or maybe if a person is gay or whatever it is, it all falls on me. And I take it personally. If we fail, if you get in a car accident, I didn't train you enough. The insurance company doesn't go to you. They come to us. And there's so many things that slip through the cracks in HR. I love the hiring aspect of the HR side. I love the culture side of it. There's so many rules. You got to have these posters in the

hallway. You got to make sure you're paying correctly on overtime. And these are the things that really catch up to small companies as they get bigger. And anybody that's listening right now, I can't stress enough how important a podcast like this is, especially 2021 COVID related issues, people calling off for work because of COVID related. And there's all this minutiae and walls and quick things that are changing that I think you need somebody like you to be involved. Yeah, absolutely. And sometimes what might take somebody three to four hours to think through a problem, we've dealt with it. We've dealt with hundreds of problems, maybe not exactly, but similar. And it's not it's not exhausting for us because that's what we do in the same sense that I could never go in and try to fix somebody's HVAC.

You know, I'd look at it and say, fantastic. I don't know what to do. But I know how to get you through a workplace accident and get through the administration like that. You know, I can't give you a lecture on how to get a washing machine back running, but I can give you a lecture on how to produce a recruitment workflow that's going to give you a great return on what your employer brand is. So we all have our niches and we all have our areas of expertise. And in the same sense that I wouldn't be doing my own accounting at the end of the day, because that's not my expertise. I go to somebody else for that. So I think there's this idea that when you're a small business owner, you have to take it all on. And sometimes, you know,

depending on the situation, you might, but when you have the opportunity to decrease the risk in your business and increase the efficiency of your team, I think that's definitely an area that people want to keep looking at. There's so many things I want to talk about. I kind of want to save the best for the last. We'll generally go over. So tell us a little bit about Essential HR and the services that you provide. Yeah. So like I said, we primarily focus on businesses with five to 50 people. Small business is our forte and it's our passion. So we help people or help businesses in two ways. The first is our HR relief program, which starts at five we help people or help businesses in two ways. The first is our HR relief program, which starts at five hours a month. It's a retainer essentially,

but what we call it HR relief, because that's what we're providing. We're providing more money in your pocket, more time in your day and more sleep at night when you don't have to deal with those stressful situations that come up in your workplace. So the HR relief program is our signature program, but we also do project work. So recruitment projects, onboarding projects, compensation, and making sure that your organization is set up for success and you have full trust in your compensation program, how you pay people and why you pay them and when you pay them. And then as well as performance management. So how do you go about making sure that your employees are developing rather than just getting upset that,

you know, nobody's doing things and differently than they did last year and you're not moving forward with that progression. So those are the two ways essential HR helps. We have a team of amazing individuals who keep this business going and who work with our small business owners and managers. It's so good to get started early. All I can tell you is a lot of people play catch up. I want to hear more a little bit about, I teach a lot on compensation programs and I've done a lot of research on performance pay. And I'm probably going to come out with a whole thing on how to teach people how to build what matters in a compensation program. You've got this big aspect, and I don't

really have this, but hourly versus a salary. I much prefer a performance pay that pays more than an hourly rate, but it also doesn't incentivize a person to stay on that's not a high performer so like for example i pay minimum wage to my csrs or and the keyword here is or performance pay and most of them can make over 20 an hour most of them are making quite a bit more than that but some of them rank in the 12 and they fall off quickly so there's certain laws that we have to abide to and i think that it really intrigued me when you said performance, because I'd like to hear your perspective and more about how you guys help in that aspect. So we are big fans of, you know,

when you think about performance reviews and that whether it's annual, quarterly, some people do it monthly. And most of the time when you hear that managers and employees alike cringe, they're like, oh, performance review time, performance management time, the whole concept can make people really, whether it's because it's an administrative process or whether it's an uncomfortable process, oftentimes it's not a welcomed process within organizations. And we're on a mission to change that because at the end of the day, we believe communication is the most important thing between you and your employees, your team, your supervisors, and your team members. Because without that communication, everything falls apart. You know, you can say you need to have great HR programs. At the end of the day, I say

HR programs are communication. It's really the baseline for everything we do is making sure that there's two-way communication. So when we talk about performance programs, and a lot of people take a performance review, for lack of a better term, and they do it annually or biannually, and all you do is look back at what an individual has done. And let's be honest, most of us don't have enough brain capacity to remember what somebody did a year ago. So we're either only managing the most recent, or we've forgotten about everything they've done most recently.

And we're looking at that big mistake that happened a year ago, that really, at the end of the day, if we didn't deal with it, then we should be moving on. So I like to think of performance as more of a development program than a looking back. So yeah, let's deal with things as they happen in the moment. If there is a big screw up and we need to have a training opportunity and we need to bring to the attention of somebody so that they could better develop their skills. Let's do that in the moment. Let's not do that eight months later. And let's take that performance program and let's look at that as a goal setting

and succession and development program so that our business is moving forward because our employees are moving forward. I love that. So ongoing training, we're really putting a lot of time, effort, and energy into LMS. Yeah.

We're using Absorb for that. it's it's pretty good program and we could push things we're using paylocity which we're able to push what i love is with our manuals with our everything we're working on i could push signatures so as we update things i can update the signatures and initials and things of that nature but know, the worst thing about those annual reviews is people expect tenure. It's just an old way of thinking, but they expect I've been here a year. I should get a raise. Yeah. And I just I refuse to give people that. And we're doing good.

Everybody else should. And I'm like, no, we should have the winners be making a lot more money. I'd rather have the people that are working nights weekends giving their blood sweat and tears but then again there's activity there's productivity some people work a ton of hours so i try to really push the more money and then there's this really good thing and i've been reading a lot of books about this is money's great everybody needs money or you know you and i both need money to pay our bills. But when you give somebody to a Dave Ramsey program

or allow them to go to a great trainer or you buy them a tennis shoes because they're a runner and every time they look down at their shoes, you know, I'm learning about we should not always give money. There should be so much more to it. Time, you know, and i've got this book the seven languages in the workplace or yeah the four languages of motivation within the workplace

yeah yeah that's what it is and uh anyways i got gary chapman i think this one is uh gary chapman and paul white yeah five great languages in the workplace yeah great book and it's really understanding that stuff and knowing what to do. But I feel like one of the things is we didn't have a Christmas party because of COVID. And I gave everybody 50 bucks. I think two people said thank you out of 300. I wish I got them a nice A1 jacket. A real present.

I said, guys, we didn't do a Christmas party, but we bought you guys a couple of mugs and a really nice jacket and some mittens or whatever, not mittens, but gloves, because that would have got so much further hindsight. I thought a lot about it and that was a mistake, but why not gifts all year round and have this gamification? Tell me a little bit about gamification because that's one thing that I love. Yeah. So I'll give you an example of a client that has put in a great program. So they have about 40 people on their team and there's always somebody who needs something, right? Like there's always somebody who's maybe going through a rough time that even the team members know before the upper level management care about it. So they have this kind of employee rewards program where everybody is given, I think

it's $5 a month. And at the end of the month, they can give it to whoever they want. And sometimes it all goes towards one person whose family is having a difficult time. That person just came home with $200. Maybe it's to a coworker as a thank you for whatever it might be, but they have this constant movement of dollars throughout their whole system because I don't know about you, but I've been in a lot of organizations where we try to have this referral program or this motivational back and forth between colleagues and between supervisors,

and it works for a few months and then it dies out. So whether it's a board with, you know, thanks, and everybody writes their thank you notes. And it's great when it's working, but oftentimes, it doesn't have the sustainability that we would want it to. And this has worked really well for them in terms of keeping it sustainable, because at the end of the day, it's actual cold, hard cash. And it doesn't cost them very much. It costs them the app that they use to do it, and it costs them about $200. But it's a great way to give that back and forth. And really, it is a sort of gamification of how we look at other people, the engagement between our teams. The more HR falls into culture and the more we give back, the more we communicate. Every single day before the PPP money, I was emailing every single employee about where we were at, how we were handling it. You mentioned something really

good that I want to kind of touch on is standard operating procedures. They last and then they fall off. Performance paid sounds great until the manager doesn't get it right. And I feel like just as long as you take to build a process, you need to know how you're going to inspect the process being done for longevity. And I think when I build a process or standard operating procedure or determine a KPI, I spend about three times longer determining how I'm going to manage that. Yep. And another thing is how I'm going to manage it for the least amount of my time. Let's say it costs me an extra $500 a week, but it takes me 10 hours.

I make a lot more than $50 an hour. And that's not to sound cocky, but I know how much my time is worth. So I'm looking at how I can have checks and balances with the least amount of my time. And if that's hiring a VA, right now we're getting involved in hiring a senior data analyst to come up with a lot of processes because I believe everybody should know where they're at at a moment's notice too, like a bar chart. Boom. These are the KPIs.

For example, right now for our technicians, we're looking at driving, reviews, error report, off hours, attendance. Sales is important. I hate to say it, but when you leave with zeros and don't do convert jobs, it counts. But all these things need to be rated in a way that they're not, they can't go home to their wife or husband and say, you're going to have to pull out your calculator for this one. So I think this is the number one question I get is how do you do performance? And I love what you said about development because so often we don't want to invest in development or sensitivity training or whatever it might be for your company. And I think that when people stop looking at that as an

expense and start looking at it as an investment in their people. And training is a very, very good investment. If you plan on keeping people, it completely changes the paradigm of how we think. So what other advice could you give on ideas about forward thinking instead of past thinking and more on that development side? Yeah. So from a development standpoint, you know, we talk about training and we think of it as classroom and, you know, in the age of COVID, I don't know about you, but I've kind of waved away from formal training, because I think sometimes classroom training is a lot better than virtual training. So what else can we do where we don't want to necessarily spend $5,000 to put somebody in front of a computer for three hours when we know the experience in the class is so much more valuable. And often training is also, it can be expensive, but you have the investment of time or

you have the investment of money. And one thing that I think is severely overlooked in the development process is the mentorship and the supervisory type of training. So somebody can invest in you from a training standpoint, send you to a two-day, a five-day great training, and that's going to take some effort. It takes their time. You appreciate it, but it's often forgotten. When you invest in somebody from a mentorship capability, what that does is it increases the loyalty to that supervisor or that mentor, and it increases the loyalty to the company. So yeah, we love great training, but we forget about the knowledge that we have within our own company. And I'm going to

be honest with you, investing in somebody from a mentorship capacity actually is more difficult than just sending them away for training. But the rewards of it, from the loyalty, from the engagement, from the relationship that happens because of that have such a greater increase than just paying somebody else to teach your individual. There's some things that you'll need to pay somebody else for, but I think we forget about that interaction between our supervisors and our team members. You know, I just made a note to myself because pretty much my best ideas come when I'm in a podcast. You know, I've got a field supervisor program that's designed to increase sales. And they each take on, this is a small piece of the program, but they each take on three guys a month. And we really give them a lot of the data.

How long does it take them to do a job? How fast are they a service type? How often are they converting a service call to a doorstep? All these different KPIs. And the one thing I didn't think about is what's in it for them. I mean, obviously their sales go up, which indirectly helps them, but you got to ask yourself from anybody's perspective that you're giving these two is with them. What's in it for me.

And I don't feel like I do that enough. I don't feel like most owners and a lot of managers say this helps the whole company. Laura, this helps the whole company. Laura, this helps all of us. You should just want this. Well, I don't. You know, you guys just pack on a bunch of crap every single year to make us do more. And you just expect us to just, oh, it'll help all of us.

So it'll help you. Where I feel like it should be much more, really, this is going to help you exactly this way personally. And of course, the business. And we're missing that piece of it. And I think when you think about mentorship from a small business perspective, let's be honest, a business with seven people is competing for the same top talent as a business with 700. And a lot of times, small businesses, what do I have to offer?

How do I compete with those big guys? Let me tell you, the relationships that are happening in small businesses hold a heck of a lot more weight than the carrot that the big businesses are dangling. And so one of the unique selling features, the part of your employer brand as a small business is what you give to your employees personally, that ability for them to see you as you are, for you to train them. And that relationship is such a selling feature that we underrate as organizations. We don't take that into account when we're selling ourselves to new hires. You know, that's important because now you're digging in. I was going to save this for the end, but I'm going to dig in.

Sorry. No, I love, I love talking about new talent and being a talent acquisition because right now I feel like is the best time to ever be recruiting because job boards have a whole new talent pool of restaurants, hotels, places that they're leaving because all of a sudden they were deemed non-essential. So right now they say, don't be hiring from a job board because typically either, unless they just moved here, you're definitely not getting the top of the top. Maybe it's somebody that's already disgruntled and they quit or they've been fired. But right now is the best time. But I just feel like the future of your company depends on hiring people that are better than you or will help to make you a better company. Whether that's managers, whether that's CSRs, we just hired a full-time cleaning person janitorial staff and she takes care of all the

apartments. She takes care of the building. And I was doing the math about a month ago and I said, we're paying the cleaning lady 65 bucks an apartment. We're paying her 300 bucks a week to clean this place. You add it up. I'm better off hiring a full-time employee and having them here all the time. And those are the type of things I'm better off hiring a full-time employee and having them here all the time. And those are the type of things I'm always thinking about is, and then I also had this idea that she was going to cook for the staff every morning, but that hasn't worked itself out yet. But anyways, I love talking about the hiring because we're in a very pivotal time. I think everybody really is with COVID and everything that's kind of happened this past year. And I just would like to hear your perspective on what's the best way to build a pipeline.

Everybody asks me, how do you find good employees? I'm like, you don't spend $20 on Craigslist once a year. I'm going to invest true numbers over a million dollars this year, not including my trainers, not including my recruiters, between Indeed, a ton on Facebook, a couple other job boards, between that $1,500 I give per employee, I'm rolling out a $500 referral to anybody outside of the company. I'm going to spend a lot on SEO, link building to work for A1. When you add it all up, it really came out to a million bucks. And I added all these different aspects to it. And I said,

I don't care because one top performer, one great CSR will make us a million dollars. When you really think the whole paradigm changes, but tell me a little bit about the cycle on how you set up a good program to get A plus. And I think the key word here is develop A plus because you might take a C employee and develop them into an A plus. But tell me how you find, I do personally profiling. I just built this thing. I'm looking at their social score, their Yelp, their Facebook. I'm looking at their PI test. They have an amazing ride along because they always do ride alongs. Each and every staff. How did they interview? What's their past experience? What's their their references and i want to see a w-2 from their last job i'm pretty sure you're allowed to ask for that at least in my state you could probably correct me but those are some things i want to know and i'm building a score yeah for the recruiting yeah so what your

first thing that you need to look at when you're trying to build that pipeline is who are you as an employer brand? So we know about what we are as a company brand. You know, when we think about Target, we know who they are as a company. We think of McDonald's. We know who they are as a company. We think about Southwest Airlines. We get who they are as a company.

They put a lot of branding into that. Think about those companies as an employer. What do we know about Southwest Airlines as an employer? What do we know about Target as an employer? What do we know about Southwest Airlines as an employer? What do we know about Target as an employer? What do we know about McDonald's as an employer? They've built themselves an employer brand. And maybe there's a McDonald's around the corner from you that you know you would never send your kid to work there. But maybe there's another one on the other corner that you know that their franchisee is top notch and treats their employees really well.

That's the employer brand. So think about your own employer brand. Who are you to the outside world? So how do you present yourself? How do your employees present you? And you talked about Glassdoor and you talked about Scores1, Indeed. And those are super important because people go to look there. And so how do you deal with those when you get a

bad glass door review? And how do you increase that glass door review? This is what your impression is of the outside world. And you can pour $2 million into recruitment efforts. And if your name isn't well known, if you're not establishing great employer employee practices, you're gonna be thrown $3 million at recruitment because you're not going to be able to keep people. So as much as you want to find this great recruitment flow, I think it starts before that. I think it starts about knowing who you are as an employer and marketing who you are as an employer and having that go through all of your systems internally. So if you say, we are all about inclusivity and diversity, and they talk to the

first employee on day one who doesn't agree with that, it doesn't bode well for your integrity as an employer. So let's scroll back even from job boards and even from posting on social media for individuals and let's figure out who are we? What do people think of us as an employer and what do we want to be as an employer and how do we make that happen? It's a bigger picture, absolutely. But if we're talking about pipeline, that's where you start. It's interesting because I think you're talking a lot about culture and one of the things we really made this place is a place of giving to charity, more important, your backyard, the employees. And number two is really pushing our core values through the company. And I got these pretty much

everywhere you could think of, but it's really important for me to lead as a leader and really exemplify these attributes that we want in employees. And it's tough because as a home service provider, we need safe driving. We need sales or we don't pay the bills. So what happens is there's a warehouse guy that I looked at one of the Glassdoor reviews and they said the owner really just, he's got his own personal gym. But let me just tell you, just because I'm the only one that uses the gym doesn't mean it's my personal gym.

Any employee, and I encourage employees to use it. And there was all this stuff that's never been said out of my mouth. You should see the overwhelmingly, I'm a 4.9 on both out of five. And it's impossible. You know, I've always said this, Laura. If I spend five minutes with every employee, that's 1,500 minutes. That's a week. I don't know how many times 60 goes into 1,500.

But I don't think I can spend five minutes with every employee in a work week. I don't know. Maybe. But, you know, that's why we got to delegate properly. But I think what you're saying is you need to figure out a way for the leadership to really encompass the caring and the big brother. I love the idea of just saying, hey, Laura, how are you doing today? You know, we're not going to give you a big bonus today, but you did earn the employee of the month spot, which ours is a draft because you got to stand tall, put your neck out for the company. And, and they have a big heart because they pump the blood up to their brain. So we incorporated a monthly newsletter. We put out employee of the month. We literally have so many things that we're doing and you should see the difference. We've got a big buck hunter. We've got the golden team.

We've got arcade games. And I talked a lot about the games on the podcast and it's not like you got to go out and buy games, but go pick up some pancakes one day. If you're the owner and make the pancakes, pancakes cost 20 bucks. People say, I just don't have the money to do all this stuff you do,

Tommy. And I'm like, do you have the money to go up to somebody and buy them? Every time we go to Costco for mother's day and Valentine's Day and buy a dozen roses for the girls? It costs a few hundred bucks. And I'm like that. You should see how far it goes. But tell me, do you think that you're doing that because you care for your employees?

Therefore, you think of these things. So really, those actions come out of the heart of you caring for your people. And how can we practically show that to them? Oh yeah, pancakes, of course. How can we show them we get, oh yeah, flowers, of course. And sometimes as businesses, we go after it the wrong way. We try looking for the thing that they might want. And we really need to work at the care.

We need to work at the heart. Because if your heart is right towards your employees, those things are easy to find and easy to do. But if that care isn't there, it doesn't matter how many ping pong tables you have. If your supervisors aren't treating your employees right, ping pong tables in the office parakeet aren't going to make a difference. You're right. And the hard part is I know a lot of owners that are like basically F these employees. They don't listen to me. They don't these employees. They don't listen to me. They don't love me. They don't care about me.

So why should I care about them? And that can be said behind closed doors, but it is felt no matter what. And, you know, the problem is, is if that's your attitude going in, you shouldn't own a business. Because, you know, I'm a dad. I don't have any kids, but I'm still the father figure here. Everybody looks at me and they go, if dad does it, I can do it. They follow every single thing, whether it's their desk, whether it's their email, whether it's how they talk, whether I had a bunch of field supervisors walking around and they're like technicians that are free to roam. And I go, guys, then go walk outside and go on a long walk. You're leaving a bad example. I said, I'm not upset at the other manager. I said, you guys are the best people we have in your role. And you guys have earned your position.

You've earned it. But that doesn't give you the right to be in front of every other employee and say, no, no, no, no, poo-poo. Look at me, run around the office because I've got ultimate freedom. I said, you're antagonizing everybody. And that's disrespectful. And I need to be as best as I didn't tell him I need to be, but I needed to make a hard stop to that. You know, I've got a lot of questions on my getting a lot of questions. Let's just pop a couple of questions. So in your opinion, should small businesses be having customers sign a COVID release of liability before entering the home? Yes. Okay. Yeah. All right. So this one comes from Ryan. So that's a yes. Ryan's a good buddy of mine. Is there too much training for

employees? Some HR feel if you train them, they will leave for another position. How do you feel about balancing training performance and employee expectations into retention? Okay. So there's a couple of questions. Is there too much training for employees? Yes. There's too much training. If your training is not effective, you can put someone through 40 hours a month of training. And if it's not effective, it's too much, or you can put them through four. And if it's effective, then it's just the right amount. So yeah, I think you can over-train people when there's no engagement with that training. Some HRs feel if they train them, they will leave for another position. Absolutely. And I think there's a great meme out there that says, but what if you don't train them and they stay? What if you train them and they stay? So what if I train them and they leave?

What if you train them and they stay? So the difference is I've never had a mentality of scarcity of like what happens? I'm like, look, I'm always like this. We're the best. I know we're the best because look at you. And, you know, I sometimes call it a family because we do stuff together. We're always doing stuff together. But also, I believe if we're going to have the best parts, the best reputation online, we need the best employees. And what I found is when I hire better, when I give a little bit of love, everything kind of falls into place a lot easier. The employees go out and they get us new jobs. I don't need to market as much because they're out there getting

the jobs. You know, I look at this and I'm like, wow. And then I get those employees that are good, but they're super fricking high maintenance. They want to talk to me and they want to talk to me. And there's so many of them. I love them. I really do. Some of them that call all the time. And you know what? There's top performers that really call and they say, look what I did. And I love that because then I can take them

and get them on a call tomorrow and have them. It's a learning lesson for everybody because they had a breakthrough. But then there's other people that are like, hi, and I don't necessarily know how to deal with it.

And it's not just me. The language of the five, Gary Chapman's book, they're probably motivated by quality time. And that phone call for them makes a heck of a lot more difference to them than if you just said, hey, great job. That wouldn't make a difference. The time you give them makes the difference

in that motivation for them. And this is the hard part is you got to understand. I mean, when I was a five person company, I was spending quality time with everybody. But now I'm like, dude, I need some quality time with myself. But I got a few more here that will go back. And this is super, super beneficial. I love this new platform that we're working on right now through StreamYard because it's super cool.

Oh, hold on. Let's do this one. So Jennifer said, she's a new company with no reputation. How do I find employees? So you got to figure out what you want your reputation to be. So before you can hire somebody, you need to know who you are. So what kind of employer do you want to be? What do you want to be known for? What type of manager do you want to be? Figure out who you are. Give us some examples. But there's no right or wrong answer. I don't think you don't want to be known for? What type of manager do you want to be? Figure out who you are. Give us some examples. But there's no right or wrong answer, I don't think. You don't want to be the asshole employer, but you might want to be the one that has the most fun. You might want to

be the one that pays the most. What are some examples of different characters you can make your company in the background? Yeah. So I'll tell you a little bit of a central HR. So we are a three-person team. We have some subcontractors, but three part time employees. And one of the characteristics that I have for this business, because I know who I am as a manager, is I'm not good with telling you the details. I'll tell you the big picture. And I just I assume that you know the details. And that's probably a fault in my own management style. But I also know how to hire the people who don't need me to walk them through step by step by step by step. And if that's the type of individual that you are, that might not be the best for our team. And it's not because you're a bad person, or I'm a bad person, it's just not a great mix. So what do we look for with essential HR, we are looking for practitioners who are very self directed, who are willing to pick up things, throw them in my face, say, hey, what do you think about this, Laura? I say, great, do it. I'm not looking for people who are waiting for me to say the next thing, of working for essential HR. If all you want to do is work for essential HR full time, you're probably not right for my team. If your passion is rescuing dogs, if it's being there for your kids, field trips and soccer games, if it's starting your own side

business, those are the people that we actually look for. Because as a business, we provide flexibility to employers. But as a company, we provide flexibility to our employees. So that's a main tenant. So if you're a small business and you're just starting out, looking for employee number one or employee number two, you want to be able to explain to your team who you are. And don't get me wrong, that's going to change. What you think now as you hire your first few people is going to change

three or six months from now as you figure it out. But you want to be kind of solidified in what you need right now and who you want to be right now in order to start hiring. The second thing on that is you need to have your job description. Without you writing it down on paper to know what you're hiring for, you're never going to be able to explain it to somebody and for them to actually grasp it and be able to perform to the level you want if they don't see it in front of them and if you can't write it down. So those are the two things I would start with. It's pretty interesting because I actually decided today that I was going to come up with a document. And not only do you want them to be able to have a job description,

but I think you should have a manual. And I know that word, people hate the word manual manual because they don't live and die and breathe by that manual. But if you told me, look, Tommy, here's what you're expected to do. Here is the instruction. This is, if you ever played football, there's a center, there's a left tackle, a right tackle, a left guard, a right guard. I'm going to teach you how to play the game. This manual is going to teach you how to win or lose. And here's the expectations. So what I did is I put, here's my expectations for you. Tommy's commitment to you. I will do my very best to lead this company to success and build it

in a way that lasts a very long time. I will jump through hoops to make sure this culture is the best in the industry. I will do everything in my power to give you the training and the management you need to succeed. I will give you ride-along opportunities, morning mojo calls, full supervisors that care and are passionate through their leadership

for you to be successful. And I want you to be successful in capital letters. And I'm going to give you every bullet that I have to make sure you are. That's my commitment to you. And I initialed every one of those. And I signed the bottom of it when I hired these, these new 27 people upstairs. And I think it's important because that's my commitment to them. Not that I have them. I had some commitments for them too, because when they got a sign off, they not only have to sign up on their manuals, it all in paylocity but i wanted them to take a pen an ink pen i don't know what it is about signing on these new and we all got to do it with you know we hit these little

buttons and it automatically and i'm like but man when you got to pull out a pen and you're actually like what the hell am i signing here hold on it's a completely different feeling for paper so it's one of the things that i decided i was going to do today. And I'm going to bring it out every day. I'm going to be like, just remember you signed this. Remember you signed it. Remember I signed it. Hold me accountable because I'm going to hold you accountable. You can frame them all and put them in their spaces so they see it in front of them every day. You know, here's the thing. I've got our core values. When you open up the van or the truck, you see it. And the reason I bring it up,

these employees is because we've got a two to one relationship and it's going to be a three to one of people out there working in the field versus what we have internally. So it's the larger percentage, but every employee counts. These are such good questions. The fact that the people on here asking them, I just got to go through more. Maintaining good quality team members, giving them reason to feel connected through relationships with their managers

is a great focus. Spending money to get good people needs to be the start, keeping them connected, build morals or morale. I think this whole comment, there's one thing I've noticed, is giving PTO, giving employees more. The millennials are attracted to have just they want to know how they're doing. They want some more benefits. They're not as concerned with the highest paid wages, but they still want to make a good living.

But they'll live in a tiny house now. Some of them want to live in like a Volkswagen bug. I don't know. It's crazy. But I really understood now going through business is giving them more things that are in their brains that could actually assign a value to it. And then as I've been more successful, I've never realized the quality of managers and CSRs and dispatchers, I can get by spending a little bit more. I'm very fortunate in that aspect because the quality, the less babysitting, the more of what you said, reading between the lines and not having to delegate every freaking little thing. You know, my brother-in-law said, Tommy, you could hire somebody, a data scientist in India,

the problem you don't want to, and I'll get you five of them at $35,000 a year, but they don't understand how to communicate properly. And you got to tell them every single thing. I remember I got software built eight years ago and they built the login for it, but it didn't say forget my password. Like, well, you didn't tell us that. And I said, well, it's kind of common sense, but delegation is sometimes not common sense. Is it better to get mind leaders under you or people that can prove that they can adhere to the systems in place? Oh, do we only have two options? I think you need to surround yourself with people who challenge you in an environment that's full of respect. So candor is a wonderful thing amongst a leadership team, but that has to be good and respect. So I don't know if there's a right or

wrong answer. I feel like two options isn't enough. I don't know. What do you take on that? Well, you definitely want to surround, you know, I think when you're a small company, there's four or five people, you got to be the mind leader. When it starts to expand, there should be no more than five direct reports. If you expect the owner to communicate with every single person, that's why there's a chain of command. We've got a pretty decent org chart. And I think a lot of people, they don't understand when you're building a company that when you start, if I had to talk to every single CSR dispatcher, technician, door salesman, product specialist, the marketing companies we work with, and it goes on

and on. I had to deal with four customers today. I had to deal with one of my neighbor's brother. The thing is, when you really think about it, we have 9,000 customers a month. So I think you need to hire, definitely need to get some really good people that have their own ideas to run departments and be team leads as you grow a business. Because it's impossible. I had to cut my last meeting short. I didn't get enough time. So I got to go finish this up with them tomorrow. I have the book club with my managers half an hour every other day.

And I only got to do it for 20 minutes today. And then she gave me my lunch today, which is only halfway. So I'm still hungry. But the point is you need mind leaders that can handle some of this stuff for you. So I do think there's more than one answer to that. Here's one. When mobile markets don't get enough Tommy time. How do you create some more Tommy time? For me, I understand that question. I think the problem is they get some on Thursdays.

It's just impossible. I think with what we're doing right now and maybe having a podcast for the employees and having them come in and ask questions is the best way to solve that. I think what I need to do is guard my schedule a little bit more because unfortunately certain things swing into it. And I think I'm like most owners, I want to make the time. It's just, there's not enough time in the day. But overall, the fact is, I know we're going to be a thousand person organization down the line. So I think that there's a good opportunity to figure out ways using technology to communicate

for everybody. I don't know if you have any insight on that. You know, I think it's new, right? We are figuring out virtual relationships in a whole new manner and we're getting better at it than we certainly were a year ago. There's a few ways within small teams that, you know, cause now we're having this mix of virtual and in-person as well. So some, some offices are going back in, we still have remote teams. And how do you make that mix? How do you make everybody feel included when some are virtual and some are in person?

That's always kind of, I don't know if you've ever been in a room where there's one talking head on the screen and the rest of them are talking and you're like the talking head. You're like, what are they even saying? I have no idea. You don't feel included. So there's certain guidelines that you can put into place now to make sure that those virtual people have the same experience that in-person has. And one that I love personally is that if one person is virtual, you all go virtual. So if one person has

to be a talking head, everybody is a talking head and leaves everybody on the same playing field in that meeting. Now I love in-person meetings. That is my preference always, but I also love being able to make sure that we are all at the same level of able to contribute and able to be a part of that team. That's interesting. So I think there's a certain goal that I have of as many people making it live to the meeting in their markets as possible. I do think the human interaction, although there's Zoom meetings where the people have a meeting afterwards. And I think it's important that they're there. If I could have everybody in the same room, there's that much energy. Yes.

But right now we live in a COVID environment that's a bunch of shit. And I don't like it. There's a lot of sacrifice we've had to make as human beings in general throughout the world. But overall, I do have to say that the technology I wrote down on here, StreamYard as an investment, because this is so cool. And it's the little things in front of you. Warren Buffett says, make sure you understand your investments. I understand this one perfectly. I just brought questions through here. And I take my personal money because I live on a very low budget. And I can take some of my personal money and put it into investments. But I put everything

I have pretty much still back into the company. I just don't want to take some personal money that I want to have a little bit of real estate and a little other things. I love the chance of growing A1, but I make a good salary and I want to put some of that money into a retirement account and other things. I think that's a big mistake is so many people take big amounts of money. They invest in all these other things, invest in other homes. They invest in other businesses. They invest in the stock market. They invest in crypto and everything else. And all of a sudden, they don't have much left for their own business. Right. Yeah. Just an observation. Why don't we talk a little bit about putting systems in place with software? What softwares do you believe in? You know what? I don't prescribe to one or another. I believe in efficiency. And so

your software has to provide that efficiency. So I've researched so many different types of HR softwares. And I can't say one is the golden one, because if you are a team under 20, we're going to probably suggest A, B, or C. If you're a team over 100, we're going to suggest D, E, and F. So I can't say one or another is great. But one thing you do need to do is get off of your Excel spreadsheets and get that stuff automated into a software program. So we used to think of, you know, the big payroll companies, ADP and your, your giant HRSs. And they were so out of reach for small businesses. If you're managing your time and attendance on Excel,

it's time to look at some other options. Even if you're 12 people, there are options for you that will make it more efficient, more user-friendly for your people and more risk-free. One slip of the button on Excel and there goes all of your employee data for however long. So software, yes. LMS, I love LMS. The world has changed in the last five years of how HR is so easy for any company size to be proficient in types of things where training was so out of reach for small businesses before. Now we have LMSs, which is learning management systems for small teams that is affordable and efficient and really great quality. So I would say if you think that it exists, if you like, hey, I just wish something like this existed, it does. And let's figure out which one is best for you.

You know, that's a great question. something like this existed? It does. And let's figure out which one is best for you. You know, that's a great question. This is one you might not be able to answer, but I'm looking at a company called HubSpot. They're for the backend of the website. And basically what they're going to be able to do is tell me who landed on the page, how many pages they land on. If I could get them connected with an API to my CRM, I could actually say this customer spent an hour on our website. I can make these connections that basically say if a customer spends an hour or more, their conversion rate goes to 87%. I'd say I love analytics. I'm driven by numbers. I don't get into spreadsheets really deep, but I love the numbers and I love bar charts. I'm driven by numbers. I don't get into spreadsheets really deep, but I love the

numbers and I love bar charts. I'm a visual learner. And there's so many fricking choices. I mean, look, I can name 50 payroll. We can talk about CRM, payroll companies. I think the big thing for us is we're getting sick of logging into 80 different softwares. We're looking for something that has one good user interface. So talk to me a little bit about with all the choices out there, who do we even talk to? I mean, you could go on like, there's websites that have consulting for this kind of stuff, but I wouldn't even know where to start. So I just went through an LMS search for a pharmaceutical client that we have. And I totally get that how overwhelming and time consuming it can be. Because after reaching out to three LMS sites, I came to the conclusion, they're all the same and they're all decent. So how do you choose

now? And the same with, you know, your payroll software, you know, these are the three things I need. I talked to seven different people. They all have a lot of the same service offerings and the same price point. So how do you choose? It is going to be a time consuming method. And that's where you might want to find somebody who's already done this background research as opposed to you Googling it for a day. What is that day worth for you? What is the opportunity for someone to say, here's A, here's B, which one would you like versus you going through 18 options?

If you know what your basics are that you need, we need a time and attendance that does shift work that allows people to change shifts. But you do need it all in one place. You know, we're getting to the day and age where there are too many options for you to be logging into four different things for your, your employees, user experience. Here's where we get our training. Here's where we get our attendance. Here's where I schedule my vacation. Here's where I log in to say that I'm at my shift. We need to integrate that. And so I would say, if you want to do it on yourself, have fun with Google or align yourself with somebody who has the background and,

and has already looked at all of these things and can kind of direct you into the right way. Yeah. I'm part of a entrepreneurial group that I could go to them about 700 people. And usually I'll get five good answers. And the more i could be around i always used to win these football pools not because i know crap about football it's because i'd ask the five top guys i knew about football and i'd win all the pools and the people the restaurants that i work with would be like dude how'd you win again i'd be like i just i'm asking more questions one more question this is a good one and I wish I got some more of them. There was so many great questions on here.

And I don't think we're going to go through kind of the end of the questions, but I'll make sure that we can get them over to you and maybe answer them. Absolutely. So how should one start a tough conversation? There's a good book. I have it on my shelf. I think it's called Tough Conversations. But I feel like some people, they really avoid the tough conversation. And I'm not,

I'm not the first person to jump into a conversation that I don't think is going to have a good outcome because you know, it's almost like wasting time maybe, unless I can get through, unless I could like, I could talk to someone about sales. So they're blue in the face, but if it's at what point do you decide to have a tough conversation? Do you, like, I could talk to someone about sales so they're blue in the face. But if it's, at what point do you decide to have a tough conversation do you feel like? And how do you get through? Yeah. And I mean, the word tough can be a variety. Some people would call it a tough conversation to tell somebody about body odor. It's a performance issue for maybe an employee that you really like or a performance issue for an employee that you don't really like.

Tough can be dealing with an attendance issue with somebody who you know is struggling on a personal side. There's so many tough conversations. So the first thing I would say is that you need to look at that conversation and say, if I were them, how would I want to be approached? And I think you've got to take that also with a grain of salt. Because if you're a person who said, I just want you to beat it into me, if that's it, that might not be the right approach for the person you're going to speak to. But I always say, say somebody you had to have a tough conversation about a hygiene issue, which in terms of tough conversations, that might be low on the scale. But if that were me, if someone had to have a conversation with me about hygiene, how would I want to be approached? Would I want them to sit down and start talking about how's the family? How was your your holiday season?

No, I want them to tell me and then let me go home. I'm like, dude, you smell. Hey, your breath is kicking like Bruce Lee. So I think when it comes to those types of tough conversations, I think you have to take that type of how would I want to be done? Would I want somebody to pansy around the issue before actually telling me or would I want to just be get it done with the same with a performance issue? If you have to deal with a difficult performance issue with one of your team members, the best thing to do is you have you ever heard of the whole sandwich, the conversation, the positive feedback, negative feedback? I hate the sandwich. I hate the sandwich. Shoes look nice, your belt's okay, but tuck in your shirt. Yeah.

Yeah. No, I hate the sandwich. Sandwich doesn't work. At the end of the day, when you've had enough tough conversations about performance issues, you realize that sandwiching, bad feedback, nobody hears the middle. All they hear is the belt was great and your shoes are fantastic. The whole part where customers are asking you not to show back at their homes again and your KPIs are falling through the floor wasn't heard. All they heard was belt and shoes. So when you have those tough performance conversations, you need to go at it directly. Stop pansying around the issue and have the conversation with the individual directly. Because if you put those brackets around it, all they're going to hear is the brackets. I think what you need to do too is have a regular meeting that's not once a year or

once a quarter. It should be minimum of once a month. And you should have the same exact qualifications. And you should be able to ask, this is your driving score. And no matter what, you're going to get an improvement plan. It's a PIP, performance improvement plan. The question is what factors, and if you're the best, we're going to better your best. I'm going to set goals for you to improve upon where you were last year and last month and last week and yesterday. And I don't think that's asking anything. I want the same as for me. And I think as employees, they don't want to be told, oh yeah, no, you're doing a good job. We don't have any other feedback. You're doing a good job

and this is how we're going to make you great. And sometimes we focus on those poor performers and trying to pull them out. And if you've been in this long enough, Tommy, that you probably know when you're trying to pull those poor performers out of that poor performance, what is your success rate? I would say, in my opinion, it's about 25%. 50% if you're really good at it. You get them out through a mentoring program, which you've discussed, the mentoring and supervision. But I do think that we were talking earlier. I was talking to my regional manager, and I said, we need to get poor performers out quicker.

He said, well, Tommy, the poor performers fall off. It's just our culture. They fall off. And I said to him, I said, they do fall off, but I can't. We don't wait nine months. Yeah. And I think that's one of the things is by consistently working. And one guy told me he had to be worth $100 million 10 years ago.

He said, Tommy, I've never had to fire anybody. I managed the shit where they either say, I'm either going to get better. I'm going to quit because the fact that I got to check in and do this and this and this and this and this I'm over it. I'm quitting. And I hope, and I pray that we provide that environment to where they're like so sick of it. And the thing is, I'd love to be that guy that over manages, but I'm telling you, I love marketing and I love sales and to even jump on a call about operations is like, you pay somebody else that salary. We've made a lot of people to handle this stuff, but you know, there's certain things I need to deal with, but

ultimately I love this, but you know, We could have done this for another two hours probably. We should do it another two hours one day. We will. It makes me think outside of the box. I've got a lot of great notes. I ask a few questions to kind of wrap us up. Number one, somebody wants to reach out to you. You've got a lot of great insight.

You're perfect for a lot of businesses out there. What's the best way to contact you personally? What's the best way to get a hold of your company? Okay. So personally LinkedIn, you can find me at Laura Tolook. You can find the company at Essential HR Canada. And that is the best way to get a hold of me personally. And the best way to get a hold of the company. So I've created a download. I know we were talking about interviews and some great interview questions. So I put some of our favorites together in a download that people can find at essentialhr.ca slash home expert. So they can grab that there and that will keep us connected. You'll also get some other resources, the free

template that we create, we send out through there as well. So keep connected with us at EssentialHR.ca slash HomeExpert. Or me personally, reach out directly to me through LinkedIn. Cool. And I always ask three favorite books. There's so many good ones out there. Do not say... I can't say Gary Chapman? You can say that one, but don't say...

How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie Nope It can go rich Because those are all great And I love them And they should get so many accolades But I'm ready to hear new ones Alright so I'm going to jump back on

You have that Gary Chapman book It is one of my favorites I think anybody should read that Because it's a simple read Second one is Three Signs of a Miserable Job by Patrick Lencioni. I'll be honest with you. I'm not a great reader. You got to keep me pretty engaged in things to keep me engaged. And Patrick Lencioni has done a great job of that. It's novel in its form. So it's a very easy read with great insight. And the third one, I'm going to go with Drive by Daniel Kink. Yeah.

Yep. Took me a while to get through it, but it's still good stuff. I'm going to say this one more time about a book that I read again, and I really paid attention to it. And I'm implementing so many things. They they ask, you answer by Marcus Sheridan. And it will change the way you look at your marketing. It'll change the way you communicate with your customers. It'll change the way you communicate with your employees. And it's so spot on.

But 99.9% of people that are listening will say, it's a great idea. I just can't do it right now. It's great. I love the idea. I just don't have the time. I don't have the know-how. I don't know the people. And that's great.

Cause I know a lot of garage, your guys listen to this. So sorry guys, better luck next time. We'll be the industry leader. But anyway, finally, the last thing I ask is we've got to a lot of things.

There was a lot of great questions asked, but I wanted to ask you if you want to leave the audience with something special, something to think about, something to get going on this new, beautiful year of 2021. I'm going to give you the floor for a few minutes and let you take it away. You know, I was thinking back to Joshua's question about leaders, like-minded leaders, and it got me on the thought of your energy influences your business and your manager's energy influences your business. And if you're looking at how can I just up-level that positivity and that energy within my organization, you're the one who drives it. So if you're having a bad day as a business owner, as a manager,

and you walk in, people can feel that and you will drain because of the position of power that you're in. You will drain the energy from other people. But if you walk in despite the fact that you only slept half the night because you're dealing with a problem in the business and the dog puked before you left the house and the cat got sprayed by a skunk and you walk in and you take that energy into your business, you will drain all the energy of your team members out with you. So as we walk into 2021, and don't get me wrong, I know it has been a tough year. And I'm not saying we're out of it by any stretch of the imagination. But your temperament and how you deal with life and that persona and that energy that you put forward

will come back to you in spades when you're looking to increase that culture and increase that positivity within your own organization. Joanna and Gianni are on this. I want to crop that section out of Laura and let my whole team listen to it because I think you're spot on. And this podcast isn't about you guys learning. It's about you guys executing.

It's about taking these thoughts and moving them into action. And it's impossible for me to write everything I wrote down and put it all into action one time. But I love it because I get to ask the questions I want. And hopefully there's other people out there. And we got to ask a lot of great questions. I'm like, look, I'm putting my arm out there. So many good ones. But Laura, I got to tell you,

I think this is super cool that you came on. You talked a lot. HR usually seems to be a bad word. Like, ooh, HR. And I think it's changing. It's morphing. I think we should call it something else. We should call it RH.

Research is for humans or something. Because it does got a bad connotation. And it's got this thing that people just stay away from and minimum wage and pay structures and lawyers. And I think, wow, hiring great people, great culture, making sure employees enjoy their lives and you're increasing value for their families. It really is. My goal is, is to become a better CEO. I think I do a great job of being a good marketer i think i do a great job of figuring out funnels to write hire people train them but being a good and maybe i'm not maybe i just need to realize maybe i'm one day i'll turn it over to another ceo i think i am the

role model i think i am when i say role model i'm I'm passionate. I'm excited. I talk. And I'm like, boom. But I'm not everything for everybody. And I know, you know, I talked to my brother-in-law, and I'll kind of end it here and let you say a few more words. My brother-in-law says the CEO is the guy that's shaking hands. They're doing the external things. The CFO and the COO, they're the guys that are in there every day. They're the guys in there figuring out ways to

do systems. They're in there, SLPs, KPIs. They're there working on the UI, everything like that. And you should be figuring out ways to get investors to come in. You should be handing out the trophies to employees, having a speech during the Christmas parties. Those are the things that the CEO does. And it's very interesting to look at it from that aspect, because I'm down for that. But anyways, you had a lot of great things, Laura. Do you want to wrap us up here? Yeah. So I'm just going to say back, when you're looking for somebody to be your HR outsource, you need to find that person who you want to call at 7.30 on a Thursday evening, just to run something by. You need to find that person in your own business who is your confidant, who is your support person. Because at the end of

the day, as CEOs, as business owners, we don't have all the right answers, but we need to find the people who we can rely on, who we trust, and who we actually want to have a relationship with. Like you said, HR gets a bad rap. At the end of the day, you want your HR person to be the same person that you're okay to go get a beer with at the end of the day. You know, that's the relationship you want to have. Somebody who is like, listen, this is what your risk is going to be, but do it in a way that builds that relationship with you and helps you uplevel your business. So please don't be afraid. Soon, soon we'll have patio season again, right? Yeah. Well, listen, you should definitely reach out to Laura. If you guys have not thought about the rules regulations,

that's just a piece of it. Some type of wrapping around of the driving record. You got to make sure that you're creating a fair work environment for everybody, but these are things you don't realize until they hit you in the back of the head. And I just would say be proactive rather than reactive. And Laura, great work. Great job. Thanks for coming on. And we'll do it again soon. Awesome. Thanks so much, Tommy. It was so much fun. All right, Laura, we'll be in touch. See you later.

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