The Home Service Expert Podcast - Staffing Power... Yes, You CAN Find Great Employees!

Episode Date: July 23, 2021

Al Levi is the author of The 7-Power Contractor and co-author of The Home Service Millionaire. A former contractor who worked for 25 years in every aspect of his family’s Long Island-based HVAC/plumbing business, Al has been rated as one of the 25 most influential contractors in the United States by Plumbing & Mechanical Magazine. He now helps other contractors learn how to run their businesses with less stress and more success through consultations, workshops, and webinars. In this episode, we talked about staffing, sales, recruiting, training...

What I shared with Tommy a ways back with also the team is, you know, where are we going to find these people? And I go, all they have to have is great customer service skills. So years ago, my brothers and I figured out, you know what? Being in the contract business is long hours, hard work. And I thought to myself, who else is like this? And I immediately came up with restaurants, gas stations. They have to be with people. They have to meet. They have to have customer service skills. They're already pre-trained. But the difference is that is a

dead-end job in general. There's nowhere to go. So that was really easy pickings for me. I was working up in Vail, Colorado, super expensive place to live. The guy was bringing in people from all around the country. And then, of course, they get homesick and want to go home. I said, we have to take advantage of what's here. He goes, well, what can we do? I go, we're just going to hit every gas station, every convenience store, every restaurant. And because we were asking for willing people, and here's the bonus, they already had great customer service skills. It made it so easy for us, once we had the systems, to take them through. 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. I'm here with my good buddy, Al Levy. As you guys know, Al Levy has helped A1 Garage Resort, me out personally, and quite a bit of the management out and the 7 Power steps. You guys know he wrote seven power contractor. And I guess you can kind of go through the seven powers of what we're here to talk to him about. Without further ado, Mr. Al Levy. Thank you, Tommy. Planning, operations, staffing, sales,

sales coaching, marketing, and finance. There are not 7 million things you need to know there are seven which is what i always go back to so think of them as the blocks of your foundation or if you were building a pyramid these seven blocks they're all important but today i really asked tommy for this permission to have this way to reach out to you because frankly i'm sick of hearing how you can't find people. It's not like I'm unsympathetic, because honestly, I went through the same thing. I went through the same thing, but you can look at this face and you know I've been around a while. This is not new. It may be new to you. It's not new to me. We've had this problem forever. My awakening, if you will, happened back in the 80s when all of a sudden we realized that the average age of technicians, in my particular, we were in the heating industry in New York, the average age was creeping up on 55 ohm.

And as a young man, I'm thinking to myself, are you kidding? And I realized that this was really a problem. Plus, also, honestly, I was just sick of being a hostage to my own employees. And if you're an owner or a manager, so are you, but you won't admit it, will you? Tommy admitted it years ago, and that's to where Tommy made real progress. We both got sick and tired of it. You know, most things I would say happen when you get enough pain, right? Now, I'd like to say there's enough of a carrot out there or a gain you want. I wanted my life back, and I was sick of being a hostage, and that is why I stepped into solving

the staffing problem. We're going to focus, I think, primarily on text because that is your obviously number one problem, but everything I'm speaking to applies to everything. My bookkeeper, accounts payable, accounts receivable person, also held me hostage. People who answered the phones, the dispatch. I mean, there was nobody that didn't act like they were my boss at my company. And I just got sick of it, Tom. Couldn't take it anymore so i had to change some some big habits you know yesterday i was at a a movie it was the new saul movie and uh brie was getting upset with me because i kept getting on my phone i was i was on a facebook facebook messenger thing and the guy said there's no way that you could have 35 people coming in this month

and i said no i have 25 guys flying in through their apprenticeship so they're coming in to become a junior tech through our training which i learned from al kind of the hierarchy and he said well that's great he goes so june 6th but what about july 6th i said well july 6th a little different i'll probably have 40 guys flying in and And then he said, well, what about August? I said, well, August is a little different too, because I'll probably have 50 guys flying in. We've got an apartment complex here. We go through the apprentice program that we learned from Al. And we've got right now four full-time recruiters because we just brought on George Redapper. We've got five full-time trainers. We've got apartments set up for it. We've got a full-time staff to

set up the trucks. We've got another full-time staff that sets up the wraps. It's a scheduled when they land, we've got it all figured out from A to Z. And I would say right now our fallout rate of attrition has been about 15%, which I'm happy with because 15% of bringing on a guy that never knew anything to have 15% fallout. I want top producers. So the guys that leave me, Al, I designed the system of a performance pay that they're going to leave if they can't make a living. Anyway, I just wanted to say that because this is perfect. This happened yesterday. And here we are having this Facebook Live and this podcast about staffing power. And staffing power, when COVID happened, Al, staffing became the most important thing because, you know, a lot of people let go of staff that month in March. And then all of a sudden we needed to, holy crap, and all my, Amar's calling me, Clopay's calling me, and they're going, what do we do?

We let go of half of our staff. And they said, how do we get them? And I said, well, first of all, you got and they said how do we get them and i said well first of all you got to have a pay structure that benefits you and have a culture that benefits you and then secondly you got to have a plan and i think that's what we're going to dive into now yeah you need a plan and you know just backing up to an old story which was my brothers and i two older brothers my dad we had. You know, we just went to work and we just kind of hoped everything would work out. And, you know, the idea of like being proactive, come on, it's hard enough to deal with the day to day. I was putting out fires from

yesterday that we're going to break out tomorrow. And all I ever was, was a firefighter. And I'm betting you're the same way. And Tommy was the same way. And everybody who was here, and he was not a small company when I arrived, they all magically firefighters nobody had time to work on the business nobody this idea what he's mentioned about bringing in people obviously tommy took what i talked about and took it to steroids i don't care if you're you know three trucks five trucks ten trucks i've worked with people where i was sitting at a dining room table. The owner was with me, guy outside dispatching his son in a truck. And they just grew to, you know, 12 trucks, two different locations because they used these habits. But this is not where the story begins.

Story begins, which is I was a union shop, New York City. Guys would give us two weeks notice, which was good. One week notice, still pretty good. Sometimes they would just leave the keys on the dashboard and we would wonder what happened. And so at that point, we had to go hire people and we were hiring out of desperation, which is how most of us hire, out of desperation. And we didn't proactively do what we needed to do. But here's the weird thing. We were really great at marketing, but we never applied marketing to the number one thing to recruiting. So what I always talk about marketing is, you know, it's a plan,

and you have to have a percentage of budget. You've got to know the three ways you're going to market, and then you have to have a calendar. Really good advice, not because it's mine, because it works. So here's what recruiting, which is step one of five, which is you've got to put fuel in the tank if you're really serious about ending your staffing problem finally, finally. And that means what are you going to commit to your recruiting dollars now tommy has a place to bring people in he has the cost of the travel he's got all these ways online to reach people because you have to reach these apprentices these young willing people

where they live not where you want to go get them and you have to have a marketing message that appeals to them i tell you i read want ads to this day where i was a young person i go i don't care what you want i want what i want and these ads are all wrong i don't care if they're wherever you put them they're wrong where is my whiffle so are you offering me a career or a job? Because you know what? I already got a job. Well, hey, hold on, bro. Explain to me, I know what I believe, but when a lot of people say that, hey, do you want a career or do you want a job? Explain to me what you mean by career versus job.

So I never gave up the recruiting, hiring, orienting, training, retaining. I was the lead person on it. But I didn't act alone. And I'll explain that. I'll come back and tell you why that is. But the goal was I brought them in and I showed them the org chart, the right org chart, not the one with fancy titles, and the boxes it takes. So they come in as an apprentice. They work as an apprentice for 60 to 90 days. We get them trained up so that they can get out on a truck. That's usually the first five to 10 days we get them trained up so that they can get out on a truck that's usually the first five to ten days and that gets into the orientation then they get out

in the truck they work with either the installers or the service techs or in the shop as a parts runner warehouse and we rotate them around so that when they come and they've earned the right key thing here is earning the right to come to my training my training was so precious that you had to earn your way to the next box the next box in our case was tech or junior tech and so if you think of your manuals so garage door manuals or plumbing manuals heating manuals cooling manuals electrical power wash manuals, because I got them all, roofing manuals. Those manuals, when you go to class, you learn about that much. I'm going to teach you the three most important skills to be a service tech.

Operational, technical, and sales. Yes. I'm going to teach. And where does sales come from, Tommy? What's the number one skill for sales? The number one skill for sales? What do you have to be able to do? You have to be able to teach. And where does sales come from, Tommy? What's the number one skill for sales? The number one skill for sales? What do you have to be able to do? You have to be able to talk.

Talk. And ask. Yeah. Communication. So it's really about communication skills. And if you're an installer, you don't get to skip that either. Communication, operation, technical. I'm going to train you those skills.

Now, of those three skills, I highly advise that you start with the toughest skill, which is learning how to talk to people, learning how to sell, learning how to make good recommendations. Because if they can't do that, you need to think of your slots, if you will, when I go to training. In my case, I was trying to take five good apprentices to training because that's all I really needed at the time. And so I need to take five good ones. And I hired more than I could handle because I knew they were going to drop out or I was going to kick them off. A friend of mine talked about it as a staffing train, which means people hop on, people hop off. You kick them off. Sometimes they jump. And a lot of them will go to you, with you, to the end of the road if, if, if, if you offer a career.

So apprentice, junior tech, senior tech, field supervisor, service manager, or they can swing down the other wing and go up the sales wing, become your system advisor. Or in my particular case, they went off to run my branch. People go, how do you successfully run a multi-shop? The only way that I could ever do it right, and everyone I've taught, is that I send a field supervisor out to replicate all of what I've done at the main shop so it runs the same way. I keep the CSRs, dispatchers, all the stuff at the main shop. But a field supervisor is important for running that branch. I was telling this story with another podcaster

that most companies couldn't move a mile away from where they are today and run it right. And he started laughing and I go, so what's so funny? He goes, we were running out of space. So I had opened up and I bought the building next door and next door was a completely different operation than the one that was next to the other door. Are you getting this?

Next door, they couldn't replicate. So we decided one day, and of course, like all stupid conversations are usually done at 2 a.m., sometimes at a bar. But this particular case was me and Richie were in our office because we were the last tech standing. And he says to me, he goes, Tommy, Tommy was the best tech at that shop. I can't believe how much we overpaid him. We ruined our whole system of pay. And Tommy said he could do this. And Tommy said he could do that. He's just mediocre. You know why? Because we never tested you. We just took your word for it because we were desperate. Remember I said I was desperate? So sure enough, I just looked at Richie and I go, you know what? I'm sick of it. And he says,

yeah, me too. What are you going to do about it? I go, it's 2 a.m. and we're going home for sleep, but I'll figure it out by tomorrow. And that's where I really decided we had to stop being retroactive and become proactive. So that's what me and Tom were originally talking. It starts with step one is you are always recruiting. You're not waiting till you're busy. You've got to trust that you can make the calls. Yeah, go ahead. I got a lot of things to add to this. So my average technician costs $20,000 after they get out of the week or the

month here they spend in Phoenix. So you might say geez how can you afford twenty thousand dollars well my average technician we you know me brian adam luke ross sat down and we said let's say the average technician brings in 500 grand well now we're bumping that up to 600 000. so to spend 20 000 for 600 000 of somebody that you taught the exact way how to do it you don't need to unlearn an old dog, new tricks. So just understand that piece. The job posting matters. Elle touched upon that, but let me tell you something about your job postings, but everything that you would want

to work for, by the way, we do garage doors. You want PTO, you want ride-alongs, you want a brand new truck. You want to be respected. You want an opportunity to move up. You know, we may, we had a guy, Brandon started as an apprentice. He went from junior tech, tech, senior tech. Then he went to lead tech in a market. Now he's a market manager. We have one guy run through the whole gamut now, and I'm really, really proud of that. Another thing is, you know, when you guys get a new person in, you think about our new customer. I talk a lot about CSRs. You want to make that customer's first impressions matter. But when you recruit somebody, first impressions matter. Make sure it's a clean office.

Make sure they're coming in. Make sure you're ready. Make sure you've got great questions. Make sure when they come in, you know, we had a guy waiting at the airport a couple sessions ago, and we really let him down. And we're making sure we don't do that again because the first impressions matter for employees. And then when they're looking at you on Indeed and you don't have any reviews or on glass store you have no reviews you know i try to explain to people and i put a video together on all of our ads and it says hey check us out here and then you see the culture then this is another thing adam was at our morning call the

other day and adam said hey guys when you see a good busboy at a restaurant hand him a card But what I like to do is do a little bit more than that. And I told Adam this, I said, I like to hand them a business card, but then I like to ask for their information and set up an appointment for them to come in or do a ride along. That's going to the next step because believe it or not, it might sound great to come work in a garage or a company that you see around town on a billboard. But when you, you hold them accountable to meeting you and you take it to that next level and you get the commitment from them to come at least check it out and find out and talk to a couple of your guys that have bought homes they bought that brand new truck they went on their 10-year anniversary to Bermuda those are the things that get people to want to come in and work for you so I think

there's a next level there I so. There was a million great points in that two things that kind of like, I can't remember them all. But what I shared with Tommy a ways back with also the team is, you know, where are we going to find these people? And I go, all they have to have is great customer service skills. So years ago, my brothers and I figured out, you know what, being in the contract business is long hours, hard work. And I thought

to myself, who else is like this? And I immediately came up with restaurants, gas stations. They have to be with people. They have to meet. They have to have customer service skills. They're already pre-trained. But the difference is that is a dead-end job in general. There's nowhere to go. So that was really easy pickings for me. I was working up in Vail, Colorado, super expensive place to live. The guy was bringing in people from all around the country. And then, of course, they get homesick and want to go home. I said, we have to take advantage of what's here. He goes, well, what can we do? I go, we're just going to hit every gas station, every convenience store, every restaurant.

And because we were asking for willing people, and here's the bonus, they already had great customer service skills. It made it so easy for us once we had the systems to take them through. So that really was very big to be able to do it. Also, I thought it was great was Tommy was talking about this day and age. When I used to do this years ago, you know, they didn't really, they may have gone to the website, but there really wasn't much to know about us. Today, anybody who's any good and how I judge you as an applicant, if you haven't been on Glassdoor to find out about me and how I treat employees, kind of already wondering a bit about you. And if you don't have good questions, if you haven't spent five minutes at least reading the about page, Ellen Rohr has a great thing. She talks about a light bulb either getting brighter or dimmer. So as I'm interviewing you,

I'm looking at, you know, bright and dim. These are really big kickoff points, but that's really the beginning to this process. If you're going fishing, here's my recommendation. put a lot of lines in the water and make sure you have really good bait because you're gonna have a much better result so I'm trying to talk to more people than I have slots I love the idea of competition early and often they want to go from apprentice great I got a whole bunch tell me why I should move you up and then where have you done how you've demonstrated you own this box before i let you go for the next box and they had to pay but they had to pay only in this ways if they wanted to go to these different levels i would take them now they had a volunteer their own time sign off on it and it's been approved everywhere i've gone with this

because you'd have to go to vocational school. There's no guarantee you're getting a bump in pay, no guarantee you're getting employment. With me, as soon as you graduated to the next level, there's money. Right away, there's money. You've already moved up. There's a truck. And people always say, you know what, the only way I get ahead is work more hours. Well, no. You finally get to control your career. You know, if you're really good, you make good quality sales, you do great quality work, you're moving up. You're determining how much money you make. That's what Tommy was talking about. All these benefits that are yours because you've earned it.

You've earned it. I think that there's a difference between recruiting and hiring. You know, when I look at the Army, the Navy, the Marines, when I look at a really, really good college recruiter, they're out there. They're going and getting it. Recruiting means you go out and you find people. They're finding the best baseball stud and getting them to go to their college. They're finding the greatest athletes to join the Navy, the best swimmers. You know, that's the facts.

And I think a lot of people say, well, I put an ad on Craigslist. No one came. And, you know, Anthony DeMonaco puts on a really good roofing show. He's a really, really big time in roofing. It's called Win the Storm. It's one of the biggest roofing conventions in the world. And he was on Facebook two days ago. And he puts this message out.

He says, guys, and he's sitting down with this great background. He goes, for every hundred we get, and we have full-time people that do this, half of them meet our requirements. And he gets all the way down, and this is about five minutes, and I saved it, and I'll share it on the page. But he says, out of the hundred people that we get that apply, and even put them in blocks of a hundred, one and a half to two and a half actually come in and get a job and that's on a good day so out of a hundred and that's what full-time recruiter is going through each and everything so if you think you're just going to put an ad on craigslist and maybe indeed and maybe zip recruiter and all of a sudden your job's and al's 100 right i hear this well where do you find great people is you're

proactive versus reactive you're out going to get it each of my my employees get $1,500 when they bring on somebody. Yeah, I did the same thing. How could you give that much money? And they go, how could you not? I'm thinking about giving more because the fact is that, you know, Brian's sitting here doing the video right now. How good have we done from employees? I mean, we've killed it.

Yeah, murdered it. We've done better from employees going out and becoming our recruiters than anything by far. I will share one thing about that. Yeah. I did this years ago, and I'm thinking, this is going to be great. And I got nothing. And then I realized when I was talking to my guys were happy to tell me privately what nobody would say in public. And one guy goes, well, I'm not going to bring somebody in.

Suppose they do badly, then it's going to reflect on me. suppose they do great they're going to take my job and so it was on me not them and with this great information i brought them all back in and go i completely did a bad job here and it's on me i like tommy and i know i talk about falling your sword And what I said was, they are not a threat to you. They are how you get to climb the ladder. Because if they don't come in, you can't be field supervisor, you can't be the service manager, you can't be the salesman or any of the other great things you want to be. So instead of thinking of them as a threat, they're helpful to you. Hey, you know what, you don't like all these extra shifts you have to do. Wouldn't it be nice to have more people come on, do these shifts? And my company, 7 to 4, 8 to 5, 10 to 7, 2 to 11, 5 to 2 a.m., not on-call shifts. Wouldn't it be nice to share that with other people? And

amazingly, what he just described got flooded with people having applicants because they realized, you know what? One of the things that Tommy and I always talk about is A and B players hate that you tolerate C and D players. And it took me so long to finally understand that. And they would actually come to me at the end and go, how did you put up with that behavior for so long? I had to do all their callbacks. And that is one of the worst things. When you make me keep on, so the guy's great at sales. Well, okay, congratulations.

But you can't fix anything. You can't do anything. You don't explain anything. And I'm here mopping up your callbacks instead of running my own calls. That is, talk about breaking culture. You're just blowing it apart. So we're talking heavily in recruiting.

And one of the things I also like, every one of the companies that I work with, they get testimonials from their existing people. I used to bring them into interviews at the end. I go, you know what? I've been talking to you for a while and you might think I'm selling you and I am. So I'm going to walk out of the room

and I'm going to bring in somebody who is just like you two years ago and have them sit in the room. You go ask them anything you want. They're not going to report back to me on anything. And it was a great I mean, talk about closing rate. It was phenomenal. I like that idea. Yeah.

And we know that we know that on testimonials. And when Tommy's talking about, you know, great reviews, would you not have phenomenal reviews on Google for your business? Don't think of marketing and recruiting as two separate things. You know, my best guys, they tend to gravitate towards the better guys are A plus players. They talk every day. For some reason, I'm like, talk to some of our scene players, please. Maybe you'll bring them up. But they love the competition. They love the camaraderie. So what I would say is they enjoy getting A players to bring them up to the next level. In fact, one of our amazing technicians said, I'm bringing on somebody that's probably going to be way better than me. And he goes, I'm up for the challenge, but I'm just letting you know, he's going to be

better. And I said, that's exciting to me. And the fact is I said, Hey, by the way, when I'm doing my orientation, it's three hours long. And I say, here's why you want to recruit better people. I add up everybody's tickets in that market. And I'm putting 10% of that back into marketing. Regardless, that's my number. It's 8 to 12, depending on the market. But when we do better, higher conversion rate, better average tickets, better reputation, I can afford billboards.

I can afford radio. I can afford TV. And what happens for you is that means what I call them as laid out customers to just say, I love your brand. I've seen your trucks everywhere. Whatever you say, Tommy, I'll do that. Actually, we've done Alibi stuff. And he said, Tommy, whatever you recommend, he's the same type of customer because he's been through a lot of probably shitty contractors. So he said, just do what's right for my house. Do what you would do if it was your house. And those are the customers that come from Billboards TV Radio. So by getting better technicians, by getting higher conversion rate, by upping the bar of your fellow teammates

and your peers, you're actually creating a better market for yourself. You're guaranteed future work. And they understand that when I get done through my orientation and they go, wow. So it's in my best interest to go out and find A plus players. That'll make me better, better ride alongs for me, better everything for me. And like you said, shifts are shared, but more importantly, better marketing dollars going into the market. It just all works together and the right people come to understand it. Now it is your job to educate them as to what's in it for for me the way from and every way along it really makes a world of

difference so the recruiting part of this again is really really important because that's really the top of the funnel and then it gets down to the hiring and I like to be able to hire in a minimum two it I don't think you have to go through ten interviews that just personal preference if they're any good they should be gone and if you can's just personal preference. If they're any good, they should be gone. And if you can't hire within two weeks, if they're any good, they're gone. So you have to streamline your process. It's not 100 interviews.

And you can't act like they're disturbing you. We actually gave them our cell phone number. Hey, I hope you enjoyed this conversation. I just wanted to let you know that we have a special offer from LDB for you today. So stick to the end, and I'll reveal how you can take advantage of it. But if you're in a rush, just go to 7powercontractor.com forward slash HSM. That's 7powercontractor.com forward slash HSM. The HSM stands for Home Service Millionaire and check out our exclusive offer we put together for our listeners. Okay, now let's get back and continue our chat with Al.

The average onboarding for A1, when I got involved, this was a couple of years ago, was 17 and a half days. And I said, are you kidding me? We took three weeks to get a drug test and we took another month to get a background check. And I said, none of the good people are gonna stay for that. So we got it down to under a week. And then we do a ride along and then they're patient with us and i'm telling you right now the biggest thing

is when i see an a player and this is that this is going to be actually this is a reminder to talk to our recruiting team is would you want to wait three to four weeks when you don't have a job and right now l there's a weird thing going on coronavirus told us one thing hospitality industries the entertainment industry there's amazing people on the end of planet that are coming back exactly right they've been burned and they're right but they're there's a your layers they're ready for this they're ready for this just like you know that's why our industry is so hot to people who are acquiring right now so we kept on working that's what makes us attractive

so in this hiring phase what we learned to do is really two interviews. We did an interview first thing in the morning and one in the afternoon. And the reason why I did that is because you can be clean and sober in the morning, but you fall apart at the end of the day. And so I was going to get two interviews and I used to just walk out to them. Now, I'm talking about apprentices, too, by the way. This isn't like, oh, you know, already a magical good talent. I'm not saying not to. But far and away, everyone who's ever worked with me is much more dedicated to young and willing will provide the skills. Because if you do, the market is this big.

If you're only going to try and hire somebody who's preexisting and hope that they're good, you're about lightning in a bottle. And lightning in a bottle is fun once. Well, I'm 38. i'm no young buck anymore and i gotta tell you if i was coming into this industry i'd probably want to be either a field supervisor or maybe a um a product specialist because i when i was 22 that's when i got into industry man i could run eight jobs if i wanted to jump up and down the ladder have a late night get up before it didn't even matter i could work seven days a week now i'm like you know i've got my new son finnegan they want to spend more time at home so the facts are when you see young willing and able and that's weird to say you're not supposed to say that in front of hr but they

still got to be able to pass a physical they still need to be able to pass a drug test a background check it's who i want in my home and And a good test is to say, say to your wife or your husband, what'd you buy from them? Find out your 14 or 16 year old daughter, what'd you buy? And then find out maybe an elderly grandma or somebody, what'd you buy from them? And you're doing an interview because they'll nail the sales, operational technical sales is by far the toughest. So the first question is, would you buy from them and if you rub them the wrong way from the get-go of the interview but you need to have somebody that

actually could look you in the eye if they make you feel uncomfortable i hate to say this but that's kind of a good thing because they gave you eye contact and they were loud and direct i kind of look at that and i say wow i like this guy's boredom this he's not afraid because that's the biggest thing i see is fear and when they walk in and they can barely make eye contact I'm like, oh my god, this guy is a tough climb and you know, actually my Originally was to have big strong willing people that could do install work because we live every equipment But as I progressed and this started for service, I realized they didn't have communication skills And so I had to ask great questions that forced them in this hiring process to talk to me. Yeah, not yes or no questions.

Why don't you give us a good question? Yeah. You know, so here's our plan. Here's our thing. Where do you see yourself in three years from now? And make them talk. You know, if you came on board, what do you think is the biggest thing that you bring here? This is my favorite question. And I have done a great job of following up on this that's what we got recruiters for but mr al levy if this was al in the interview i'd say now i've done some research on your last two jobs and actually we figured out who your supervisor was i've got dale munson then uh gino you know junk guy whatever when i call both up, Al, what are they going to tell me about you? Because I scheduled a call with both of them tomorrow. And I'm just curious, what are

they going to tell me about you? And some of them were like, well, I was a hard worker and I showed up and some of them were like, well, first of all, we didn't get along and that's why I'm not there. Then you hear all the drama because they don't expect that question. How do you do in your research? For me, I just, I really had to make them talk. And part of this problem of where I made them talk is because I was so desperate. I was selling, selling, selling. And even though I was a good salesperson who understood that my job is to ask a good question and get the customer to talk. Well, they are the customer. I have to ask good questions and get them the space to be talking to me.

I forced them to sell themselves to me but I have a really good show what Tommy was talking about before is my office was neat and clean I have made it very clear that people are going to be coming here forever and you'll never know when so just like you do at your own home when your family stop it over it's got to be neat and clean because that's the impression. And then I would take them out to the training room where they would be training. I would take them out to the training center. And that's where they do the hands-on work.

And they were blown away. Many, many times they said they had other interviews. And I go, by all means, do your other interviews. But when you're there, ask yourself yourself have you spoken to somebody like you just did here have they taken you to a training room in a training center have they shown you an award chart so the hiring process for us also became for experienced people where i'm just waiting so tommy you fixed a lot of garage doors and tommy of course is going to say oh i do it all the time now maybe he did or maybe he didn't i great, because we have a hands-on training center and we have a busted sprint. Let's see how you do.

It's not that I'm trying to trick him up or do the rest of it. I had a guy up in Boston, a great customer. He used this technique 100 years ago. And he laughed and called me up and he goes, you know what happens? I go, I don't know. He goes, 50% of them walk out. I said, I'm sure that's upsetting. He goes, absolutely not. They were never going to make it because the other 50%, I don't care if they do it well, pick up the toolbox and go. That's for experienced people. So on the apprentice people, I'm really looking to find out, do they have hand skills? I don't care where they are, young and willing. Do they have some hand skills? Because I'm going to do that so the hiring

really was two phases and then the key part of us is we again were so desperate we didn't even have a spell orient but finally we realized we were ruining everybody because we did a great job in recruiting hire and then we put them out in the field and they were over their heads so i asked the the five installers what do you want for me to put Tommy on the truck and be of help? So we created a five-day scripted process where we run through all of his hand skills. So for us, he needed to know how to red pipe. We had to mix cement. And by the way, for those of you who don't know, when you ask somebody young to mix cement, there's only two ways it's going to come out. Either like water or like, you know, mud, sand. It's never going to be right.

You tell them the consistency of mud. So we straightened out these key basic habits. But also we were just looking to see their capacity to learn. That's really what I wanted to do. We had model trucks. So we worked on the model trucks and how they were laid out so when they were out on a job they could instantly jump in the truck and be helpful one of the key things that i saw today just in a facebook group that i was in was a question came up tommy is i got 10 texts how many apprentices i have should i have so i wrote back if you have 10 model text that i gave you the power to clone so that they are demonstrating that they're good at sales, operations, technical, the trucks need to clean,

their need to clean, the job need to clean. I would have 10 apprentices. Now that doesn't mean they just learn everything in the field because I am not a fan of just on the job training. They learn here. But most of us had it, our guys had to go out on their own as a way to earn their way to class on their own time to run along with our existing text and the existing text loved it to the point that I found out my existing text would buy these guys their first tools because they remembered what it was like to be like them. I mean, talk about blown away. So recruiting, hiring, orienting, there is an orientation process for every one of them. Now,

if you have manuals, that is key. This whole process goes much, much better. And so if I brought in somebody to answer my phones, I don't just put them on the phones. The first thing they do in orientation is we read the manuals out loud. We discuss it. I sit in here. I have them set up with a phone call out there to make sure they can do all of that. And that goes for dispatch, for accounts receivable, accounts payable, you name it, every position on the org chart. They come on board.

The most important thing in their orientation, which is either five to 10 days, is going through the magnets because that's really about 80% of their job. And then making it come to life in role plays, in phone role plays, and hands-on training on work. You know, there's Michael Gerber sat right here when we did an interview. The one thing about Michael Gerber from the E-Myth and the E-Myth Revisit is he starts every one of his speeches on stage saying, this is going to be the most important hour of your life. So I kind of stole that from him. And when I get guys upstairs after they've gone through the manual with everybody, I said, guys, this is going to be the most important two to three hours of your life if you end up working for this company and what i do is i go through every myth out there like it's because the weather the taxes

this market's better we get rid of all the myths then i say the guys that do the best here when they leave here they're doing more ride-alongs they're asking more questions they're asking for help never be afraid to ask for and i go through everything and i said the reason you're here especially in phoenix is this is this is whereRs, the dispatchers live. This is what you're going to realize about this market is we've got great mojo calls. Those are our morning calls. We've got great motivation, great Thursday morning calls. And I said, here's what I told my market managers. And this is what I tell our lead techs is we've got this dog. He's four months old. His name is Finnegan.

And we got the trainer and the trainer said she came over one day and I said, well, why can't we send him like a bootcamp for two weeks? He comes back training. She goes, you know what? That works. The problem is the owners don't maintain the training. So the owner fails. And so all of a sudden in my mind, because I've got, I'm a new dog owner. I said, you know, a lot of times we give these technicians after their orientation and their training back to these market leads and these area managers. Perfect. And then they go down right away because they don't give them the consistency and feedback they need to survive. So I think orientation and setting it up for success is probably one of the most important things to get them out of their backyard, away from, you know, maybe their wife and kids and get them out of their daily habits and get them into our habits and i love that fact of it because orientation is overlooked most of the time usually it's hey

go ride with this guy for a week and then we'll see what you pick up like you magically clone well you know here's the deal i played a lot of sports we used to practice four days a week and play one day a week yeah but for some reason in business we go practice three days and then it's never again practice i agree and also tommy brought up a really good lead in because the next step after recruiting hiring or anything is training and this whole idea is that you know now you're here and so you're oriented training is you know but brother richie and i realized pretty quick when we were talking about training is because we were techs at heart, we didn't want to be trainers. But I learned pretty fast because my dad said to me years ago when I was a tech, I came to him and I said, is that all there is? And he looks at me and

he goes, I was wondering when you were going to ask. I go, what does that mean? He means until you figure out how to get somebody else in that truck, you're never getting out. And so I'll tell you right now, I learned how to train in a hurry. And there's great courses to train. But Richie and I pretty fast recognized a couple of things. There are a lot of people who really know their subject, but they're so boring, you'll be asleep. And then there are people that you can bring in that are really great, you know, energetic, this magnetism're really just a powerhouse. But heaven forbid you ask them a question because underneath the surface, they don't know anything. It is so hard to constantly find people who are great trainers, interesting people who really know their subject. And so here's going to be

something you're not going to like. You have to make yourself a great trainer. That's what I taught when I came here, is there's a skill set that you need to learn how to become a great trainer, because 80% of the training is done by you. Just for the reason Tommy said, I can send you off to a course and you will get better, but you will come crashing down the backside. I guarantee it. So when we did our training, it didn't stop every week. They were in some form of training. Here's the part that's really interesting because it'll come to the last step. I didn't realize when I was always training, of course, I realized I was moving them up, right? I didn't realize that I was already

doing the fifth step which is retaining so I always talk about you have a bathtub full of employees but you have a drain that's wide open and that's the ones who are leaving you they may be leaving you physically leaving you or they're leaving you because they're not bringing their heart soul to the project they're not coming every day burning with passion to do their job. And that is what's killing you. And so we can slow that up if we do enough of a good job recruiting, hiring, orienting, training. So this thing that I said is not new. It is not new to me. One of the most recent ones with dot com years ago where this boom that you're seeing here is not new to me. One of the most recent ones with.com years ago, where this boom that you're seeing here is not a boom that I haven't seen before. People stopped asking me

when I was selling big tickets, how much? They only asked me one question, how soon? And so at night, my guys were getting pirated. They were getting phone calls from everybody, headhunters looking for them. I didn't lose anybody. And the reason I didn't lose anybody is they constantly knew they came here for a career. They were constantly moving up. And they love to go to training. They love that I am so much better than all of you. Matter of fact, one of the, it was really funny because one of the guys that had gone, he was a Vietnam vet. He'd been out someplace. We had finally gotten dressed neat and clean.

Our trucks were great. And he goes into a convenience store, and a guy from another company looks at him and goes, oh, you belong to that military outfit where they make you dress up and you have to keep everything neat and clean. And he looks over to him and he goes, well, I don't want to be a slob like you. So, you know, he was just beaming with pride and he knew all of his what's in it for me and he just couldn't envision. So skip years ahead. I'm working with Zoom Drain, a franchise company, and the guy's at a gas station and there's another truck and, you know, a competition truck pulls up next to him. Oh, you got to come work for us. And he looks at the guy's truck label and he goes, are you crazy?

I want to go work for your mess. I know where I am. Come take a look at my truck and let's go look at your truck. Look at the way I'm dressed and look at the way you're dressed. The bar gets higher in such a good way when you do recruit, hire, orient, train, and then retain. It's just magical how this all happens. And then it allows you to do this hub and spoke if that's what you're ready for. You know, when he says always be training and it does lead into retention but they want to be trained you know i found myself doing this the last 14 years and it's been a huge

mistake of coaching to everyone instead of one-on-one and now we believe in way more one-on-one because a lot of the times there will be something happen like maybe an accident maybe a speeding ticket then the next morning in front of 200 techs, guess what we're doing? No speedings allowed, but we're talking to 199 people that didn't do it, one that did. So one-on-one meetings, team meetings, but we're excited, we're passionate. We're talking about the wins in the team meetings. And then I think that we're talking about job development and then we're coaching. And I think there's a lot to do with training and people enjoy training. As long as they say the WIFM, what's in it for me? Why am I training? Well, you're training because whoever it is, Bob, what we've seen in the last month is you haven't sold any bottom rubbers. So what we've

done is we found the number one guy to sell bottom rubbers. What does this mean to you? Well, we've done a little math. If you're able to sell, Bob, like L sales, what this is going to do, this means this is your paycheck. This is your bottom line every single month. I think too often we don't apply some of the stuff that we do towards people's personal lives. We spend the whole time going, here's your performance improvement plan. Here's what you need to work out. But you never say what's going on with your wife. How are your kids? What's going on with your mother-in-law? Let's talk about you. And then let's talk about, let's spend a little bit of time. I went over Brian's house the other day for his son's

birthday. I got to know a couple of the guys personally a little bit more. I met their girlfriends or wives. But what I got to tell you is it goes to a deeper relationship. And then you really do care. And then you can talk about the wins and then say, by the way, I figured out a way to even help you out more. You're doing good right now. You're making 90,000. I figured out a way to get you to 120,000. And it's a win-win for both of us. And let me show you how. I think that goes so much further and they want to work for you versus have to work for you. I think the personal touch is really key. And so when we finally built our training room, that's the classroom, if you will, we could have built it way bigger we

built it to handle 15 people just because of what tommy just mentioned we never had meetings except when one of you did something wrong and now and now we're going to bring all of you into this class and we're just going to have you sit down so we can yell at you for six hours and everybody in this room is going i'm here because of tommy i didn't do that so without manuals without training without regular meetings but regular meetings are structured and what is the most important thing in your meetings and yeah i'm prejudice is the operating manual and the reason i'm prejudiced is you can't hold this box and hope to go for the next higher box without those manuals. And you're thinking, well, they have it is not true. It's not like we read the Bible once and we think we're done.

It's the same thing. This is our company Bible. And what it means is you have to read one to two pages every week out loud. Not you. They they stand up up they read it out loud and when they get done this is after you've rolled everything out is tell me what that means tommy you got a better cheaper way of faster to do this you don't like the way we put the bumpers on what would you think would be a better idea everybody talks about it we don't have a better idea great this is how we're going to do it or someone says they have a great idea. We promise to listen. So what Tommy's doing, I take notes. I always took notes. And I took notes for a lot of reasons. I can't remember everything that's being said. I'm talking

about when I was younger. And I wanted them to know that I was truly listening. Now, if they're constantly making good suggestions because you asked for it and you never take any of their suggestions, pretty soon they know you don't want their input. Now, they get to put their fingerprints on your manuals. You do not get to hijack them. They are built a certain way. They're set up to be a certain way. The story I would share with Tommy is that we did the shop outside the step, the hands-on training center, because they were messing up too much. And it was better than not having it because we were always trying

to catch them on the job and fix it there. But sure enough, a year or two out on the road, my brother would call me up and go, didn't you show them this? Or didn't you show them that? And I said, yeah, I did, but they're out there a year or two. So we had to back up, write the manuals. And when we write the manuals and when we finished the manuals we looked at the training center and said oh we built it all wrong yeah it's the manuals that are first and then the tasks that are in the manuals tell you what do i make them do here now tommy has a phenomenal training center because he and i talked about it and every place that i've worked has a great training center and the thing about it is that I should feel like I'm running a call so the closer

it looks like that not like it's you know wide open because they're never going to see that on a job now if you're an install company a little different and I built install training centers I've been service centers I built an install training center for a roofing company, and I was never in the roofing business, but they would feel like they were climbing on a roof in a safe way and follow all the steps. If you do install work, and if you're in the work outdoors, is it the work that gets you all your callbacks? Probably not.

You didn't put the grass back the right way. You didn't break the concrete the right way and repair it. You didn't fix the blacktop the right way. Those are the skills that they learn in my installed training center. So I make it as real as possible. But it takes an operating manuals, it takes training center hands-on, and they're connected by training curriculum. And that's what Tommy has is these blocks where each night we're unpacking that manual and training and marrying the reading of it to the actual doing of it. And then, of course, the graduate school is I'm not letting you do anything in this training center until you talk to me and prove that you can communicate and do the sales process. And then prove to me that you're going to be neat and clean by putting down the stuff and protecting operational process and technical, and then close it back up with good communication,

which is the right way to exit that call and exit checklist to minimize problems. And this is what changes it. I didn't want to get too far afield because again, with bookkeepers and account payable, accounts receivable, they kept me in the dark. I had to accept whenever they turned in their homework, if you will. And until I owned the financial manager box, it doesn't mean I did anything, but I knew what I was looking for and it was their job in the office to provide it for me. software is great but if you don't know how your software works and you don't know what you're looking for it's pretty worthless so there isn't a million things to know but basically an accounts payable is paying vendors

paying taxes preparing payroll accounts receivable is who owes me money and for how long really about that simple and you have to have a manual procedure for that. And even by the way, testing, because I would go, Tommy, so you, as an accounts payable person, you understand QuickBooks? What's the answer I get in the interview? Of course I do. And of course he doesn't. And maybe he does, but he doesn't know how to do it our way. So literally the keystrokes and things that you need to do so that it follows our process. This is what gives you great leverage. This is what keeps you from constantly being a hostage to your own employees. And now the other thing is to be like Tommy, which is

you've got to have way more calls than you can humanly do in a day. And I talk about the right amount of calls from the right customer at the right time because it forces you to really do what we're talking about getting more of these apprentices moving up that track it forces you to keep moving the staff along it forces you to bring on new csrs and dispatchers but the right way and it's limitless it is limitless not the myth that you're believing now there are times that you will become desperate like you are right now so ellen always reminds me of the quote about when's the best time two best times to plant an oak tree 10 years ago and today because this conversation didn't happen today. It happened 10 years ago.

Unless you've got a time machine, it can't help you. But I will tell you, this is going to come again. So start today. Commit today to fixing it. Always be recruiting, always hiring, always orienting, always training. And don't forget the key last step is always retaining they're on till they're not so i want to tell you guys a quick story when i was uh sixth grade seventh grade eighth grade i had a uh he ended up being my football coach but he also was our gym teacher mr dulliner and every friday we got this sheet of paper and it was either blue green pink it was never white and it would show the game. And the game was volleyball, softball, soccer, football, basketball.

We learned every single way on how to score. We learned exactly what was expected. We learned there was different uniforms, different cleats. In soccer, we had shin pads. We learned everything. And then we'd go play it the next week. We'd learn it Friday, go home and study it on the weekend. And we'd get tested out on it.

Well, the way I always look at it, and I apply this as Al's manuals for me, were how to play the game. It was how to dress, tattoos or no tattoos, what we'll accept, beard or not beard, what happens if I get a flat tire, how do I do my job to the best ability. It taught me how to play the game. And then the scoreboard, which are our KPIs, our dashboard, hopefully our CRM, how we got paid, everything. The real pay, the real game score was a scoreboard. So remember that.

How to play the game is the manuals. And anybody that comes into your shop should know how to play the game and win. I just don't think it's fair if they don't do that. So Mr. Donner, I think he was one of my best teachers because he said, here's how you play. Here's how you win. here's how you lose, here's every position in the game, here's how they interrelate to each other. You need a center to block the quarterback. You need a left tackle and a left guard, and you need these people to defend.

And here's how it works. You need to defend. You've got an offense and a defense. These are your CSRs, your dispatchers, and your technicians. Here's how they work together to call it the triangle of communication. And what I wanted to do is, Al has a lot of stuff that he'll share. Maybe I could get him to post on this link on Facebook

and we'll definitely add it to the podcast is I wanted to share some sample manuals so you get an idea of what they look like. But that's very, very important. And I did want to say one more thing about everything is we learned so much by the last class. And believe it or not, every class gets class gets better yes that is a great point i got better and better 20 years of this i got better every year i did it every year i would go back and the feedback that we get and

i always tell my trainers i had a great one-on-one with three of them the other day and i said it's progress not perfection. We're the best we've ever been, but the worst we'll ever be. That's my claim to fame. We're the best we've ever been, but the worst we'll ever be. So if you don't practice, if you don't start it, you're never going to get better. And I got to say this. I just told you guys, we're putting out $600,000 producers.

We will be at a million by January of next year. Million dollar producers. That's going to be my expectation is a million dollar producer people say how's that possible and it takes time effort and energy it takes really good leads it takes people that are going to conversion rate it takes a lot of one-on-one coaching but overall is what happens when you continue to better your best these things have worked and it's it's funny because it really when Al sat down actually with this same table and in our last office we sat down and it was like pulling teeth for a while because we were so used to firefighting and not structure that we just simple figured out is that the problems come well he said what have you

went into it with a plan what if we sat down and figured out all the things gonna come and you had a point that you can actually point to in the manual and actually have the answers and i'll tell you what brian and adam definitely embraced it because they were dealing with a lot of the problems and i was forced to embrace it because really you guys know i have adhd so sitting in a room talking about tattoos and beards and brain broken down tires i'm like i love marketing and sales but we got through it that was the, I'd say that was the tipping point of freedom for us. It really did mean a huge difference of where we spent our time.

And we got so good at chasing fires that we never knew what it was like. And it actually got boring for a while, but it was boring good in a good way, meaning that there was no more fires. So now we got to focus on growing the business. And it was operationally sound. And then we brought people on and they said, wow, I know exactly what's expected of me. And to have that is, I truly believe that every home service business owner should have that freedom. And unfortunately we get addicted to the mess and the stress and the anxiety. And when we don't have those, sometimes we're like, now we get to grow again so that means a lot to

me what you've done for us l and the manuals and and the seven power contractor and everything and i you know i don't need to be here to do this but i do i do a podcast to help people and l i find myself quoting l on every single podcast some of the times i think i thought of the stuff myself but you definitely have done a lot for us and we appreciate it. Thank you. Yeah. You know, it's, I got to this point where we got boring too. It's funny that you mentioned that. And so we're, I was so addicted to being the rescuer, the fireman, the guru, even though I hated it, I hated it. I loved it. You know, it was weird. I hated it and loved it. And finally, when I let go of that old identity i became addicted to the much better more healthy thing which is how do i build careers for everybody here i've had guys who told me

people that i've worked with side to side when i first started one person came in at two o'clock in the afternoon as an owner and ellen and i had never had an owner. Usually they want us at 5 a.m. and just like, no, we're not doing that. So I asked him, I said, why do you come at two o'clock? He goes, I hate my employees. I said, well, let's see if we can fix that. And now here's the magic of it. His whole focus is on developing careers for his team. Yes, money falls his way. He's gotten great things out of it, no question about it. But it's this delightful turn that he is in love with these people. And I will tell you, I felt the same way. Every new person that I brought on board right away, I loved them. Now, they didn't all stay, and sometimes it

was them, and sometimes it was me, but I loved them, and they were on my team, and I protected them like family. Sometimes you have to say goodbye to your family, and we wish them on better. That's fine, but it's such a difference from feeling like a hostage to your own employees. Well, I guess hopefully you guys have gotten one thing out of this. The big thing is you don't have to be the person who hires because someone quit. I think you've got to be proactive. I think when I find a great person, and I don't care if COVID happened today, and it's the midst of it, if the greatest person walked through the door, I would still hire them. Even when people are letting people go,

if you find that right person, you're always, always, always. Remember, there's a good saying that I think maybe came from a Bible. I don't know, but it said, give a man a fish to eat for the night, teach a man a fish he could live forever. What I hope we taught you a little bit now is we taught you a little bit how to fish.

I'm hoping that you understand that it's always, should always be hungry you should always be feeding feed the beast and that means recruiting and i think that's so important so that's the one big takeaway i hope you got out of today as far as the manuals if you go on tommy's special link he set up a 10 discount you can see every one of those manuals there's a quick video tour of every one of these manuals. I'll post it out here. Yeah, he's got his manual. He's got a special link for that. And because of that, he's got a 10% discount for the followers.

It is the block you need to get the staffing power. Because you could do staffing power, everything we said, better than not doing it. But you'll never do it right without these manuals as this jumping off point to mastering staffing power and what i promise finally end your staffing problems i keep saying the last thing but don't get the manuals if you don't plan on doing something yeah because the manuals are they're going to sit there and get dusty if you're going to make a decision to go into this next this month this next quarter with a plan and you're going to get this done and you're going to go through them and you're going to execute i think so often the manuals

sometimes sit there then you watch the company just say nothing happened and it's almost like saying it's just like me saying my dog's not trained it's saying it's not trained because i haven't done the things i need to to make sure that he's living up to the training that we got him through so you know i find the trainer came back the last time and she said how often have you guys been working with him and me and reed were like not as much as you like but we have been working with him but the more we work with him the better he gets it's amazing how that works the more we go through these drills sit down and we practice with him the better he gets and i understand you're saying well that's a dog

but i think that human beings work in the exact same way. The more we feed into them, the more passion, the more we go over the manuals, the more we explain to them when we do role play, the better they get, believe it or not. And it's amazing the outcome. And I promise that's all I'm going to say from now on. I'm cut out. I'm done. Are we good? We're good. I was trying to give you the last word. Hey, I hope you enjoyed today's podcast with L.E.V. You probably don't know this, but I hired L.E.V. years ago to work on all of our manuals here at A1 Garage Doors. We used him to help create the dispatcher manual that took us about three weeks. We used him to create the operating manual that took us about four weeks.

He did the technician manual, the installer manual, you name it. And because he's so awesome at what he does, I asked him to come on the podcast several times. And we put together a special offer for you guys today. You can get all of LDD's 7 Power Contractors signature operating manuals today with a 10% discount. The only way to get this discount is through our special link, 7powercontractor.com forward slash HSM. That's 7powercontractor.com forward slash HSM. That's 7powercontractor.com forward slash HSM. If you want to start building systems in your business today and completely

remove yourself from the field, just go to 7powercontractor.com forward slash HSM and get these SOPs today with our $1,000 discount. you