Attract and Hire Top Talent

Welcome to the I Am Charles Schwartz Show. Today, we're diving deep into the world of strategic hiring and company culture with Eric Banholz, the founder of Beardbrand, who transformed a men's grooming startup into a thriving e-commerce empire.
Eric's story is a masterclass in bootstrapping. He built a business that not only sells products, but creates a lifestyle and a movement.
Eric isn't your typical entrepreneur. He's honest about the challenges of hiring and building a team, sharing a revolutionary nine-step hiring process that has led to a staggering 95% success rate.
He'll reveal his unique approach to reference checks, the power of core values in hiring, and how he's created a company culture so strong that his youngest tenured employee has been there for five years. But this isn't just another how-to-hire episode.
Eric's focus is on building a sustainable business that values enjoying the journey as much as reaching the destination. Whether you're looking to improve your hiring process, build a stronger company culture, or navigate the challenges of bootstrapping a business, Eric's got the blueprint.
So if you're ready to transform your approach to hiring, create a magnetic company culture, and build a business that stands the test of time, this is the episode for you. Eric is about to reveal the secrets that took him from hiring nightmares to building a dream team that's as passionate about the business as he is.
The show starts now. Welcome to the I Am Charles Schwartz Show, where we don't just discuss success, we show you how to create it.
On every episode, we uncover the strategies and tactics that turn everyday entrepreneurs into unstoppable powerhouses in their businesses and their lives. Whether your goal is to transform your life or hit that elusive seven, eight, or nine figure mark, we've got the blueprint to get you there.
The show starts now. Today, we've got Eric, and he's going to teach us some things that I need right now.
We just went through a hiring and firing process, and he's going to take us through that. Welcome to the show.
I'm so appreciative you're here. What is going on, man? I love the excitement.
Let's tell everybody, because some people don't know who you are. Let's walk through it really quickly.
What have you done? What have you scaled? Let's rock along and get into it before we teach people how to hire people. Yeah, I am the founder of Beardbrand.
Beardbrand is a men's grooming product. Obviously, we sell products for your beard with a name like Beardbrand, but we've grown beyond the beard over the years.
We have products for your hair, your body, just all over. If you're a dude, we've got a product for you.
We're an entirely bootstrap business. I have two business partners and we've grown through really our profits.
This is a lifestyle business, which I think some people can regard as derogatory. But for me, I think about it like, how do I enjoy the journey as I build the business?

And so we've made decisions that are very intentional with how we're building the business, how we're bringing on people, how we're developing products, how we're communicating to our customers. All that is built around this idea of enjoying the journey.

So that's been a big thing for us.

And there's been a lot of ups and downs over the years. So it's been a fun roller coaster.
I love that you talked about it. We talked about this before when we had the pre-call about culture and how important that is for you, that someone fits into the culture.
And we'll get into that because most people, when they talk about scaling, it's all strategies. Like, okay, you do this and then you have this funnel and then you do this and this is what your email reach and da, da, da, da.
But we so often we forget that the people you hire are the people that you're using OPT or other people's time on such a high level and building the culture and hiring the right people is mission critical because if you have the best strategies in the world, it just really doesn't matter if you don't have the people to execute on your vision and being able to do that. There's so many great books out there, but it's better to talk to someone who's actually done it and built the entire lifestyle around it.
So when you go through this, what are the things that you're looking for? I know you've broken it down into nine steps. When you go into this, are there any key things that right off the bat, before you get to the nine steps, you're like, where am I going to look for the person? Or this person doesn't resonate with me before you get to the nine steps.
Are there anything like that? Yeah. I mean, if you want me to, I can really quickly go through the nine steps and then we can kind of build, we can go deeper into each of those nine steps if you want to do that.
But the first step is really like create a compelling job listing and putting it where your intended audience is going to be so you know if you're looking for a designer you know you might post on like dribble or you know some kind of design forum rather than indeed or career builder where those real passionate people may or may not be. I'll tell you a little bit of the story of our hiring process.
Our first hire, we posted on Craigslist and we just posted a listing, ended up hiring this employee, $12 an hour. This was like when we had no money, we had nothing,

you know, kind of 1099 employee or contractor. And probably the worst thing that happened to

them was that that employee was phenomenal. It was like the best hire.
She still works with us now.

She represents everything that we look for in the employee. So we just thought it was easy.
We just thought it was easy. You could just post on Craigslist.
You'll get all this great talent. And then we effectively had like an 18-month period in the early days when we're trying to ramp up our business where we could not hire the right person.
And it was just this series, this hamster wheel where they'd get on,

hire a bad person, we'd have to fire them. They would make all these mistakes within the business and hinder the business.
And it was just like, I'd have nightmares over my team members. And it was a very unpleasant experience.
And then it creates this mindset of you're the only person who's capable of doing the things within the business. And then once we rolled out this hiring process, now the people we hire are completely different.
I no longer have nightmares about my employees. And I enjoy working with them.
And they are far more competent than what I could be doing in their job. So like this process will change it to where your mindset is like, well, if we don't get the right hire, we can always fire them.
Like that is the worst mentality to have when you're, whenever you're trying to hire someone. Um, cause you're trying to fill a hole, like really quickly to a pain point you have.
So if you ever hire someone and you're like, well, we can fire them if they don't work out, do not hire them. This will change to, to, to, to by the end of the nine step process, you cannot wait for this person to start working for you.
You are absolutely sure that they are going to be an amazing fit. They will come in, they will kick ass.
and you you know, obviously nothing's like a hundred percent, but it moves it from like a 50% hit rate to like a 95% hit rate. And in fact, like one of the problems I have now is my youngest tenured employee is like five years and we haven't had to hire anyone.
So I had to like dust off all my notes because we haven't been hiring anyone because everyone sticks around and they do a good job. I love that you're talking about the nightmares that people have.
There are employees that I don't even own the business anymore. And I still have nightmares about those employees and having to interact with them because it's like, oh God, I'm sending so-and-so to so-and-so client.
One of the companies I exited from, I literally exited because I couldn't deal with the employees. I just couldn't do't do it anymore.
I was like, I just, I'm trapped in this situation. I'm going to exit and just take the easy road out.
I wish I had this nine step process back then. I probably would still own the business, but no, people don't understand how intense it is.
And that 50, 50 gamble, you can get it. Even if you told me it was like 70%, I'm like, okay.
But if you're around 95%, yes, please, please tell me the nine steps, sir. Yeah.
The only time they don't work is when I break, I break the rules. You know, it's like, oh yeah, we'll break the rules for this candidate or this employee.
I, uh, and I have a rule. Like if I have a bad dream about an employee, they're getting fired the next day.
Like, because like, you know, subconsciously, like that person's not working out and your dreams are there to help you prepare for how they're not going to operate well within your business. So I've had plenty of positive dreams with my employees where they're doing interesting things or cool things.
So step number one, as we talked about, is create a compelling job list. And your goal here is you want to get as many applicants as possible.
So post it on a bunch of job boards, get it out to recruiters, make the job seem absolutely amazing. You want people to come in, sell the dream, sell the vision, sell the job and the opportunity and what it can be for the people.
But while you do that, you have to sell it to the right kind of people. So if you're selling it by like, oh, we got beanbags and we got foosball tables and we got happy hours, you're going to get a different kind of person than a job that's like, hey, come work for a rapidly growing business where we have hard problems to solve.
So you have to think about how you're selling the business to be able to make sure you're attracting the right people. And then in this job listing, we like to include a pretty, in my opinion, low stakes task for candidates to do to really like weed out all the like the F players.
And for us And for us, we'll send them over to 16 personalities and have them do a Myers-Briggs test. And I know there's some psychologists listening to this rolling in their graves here in Myers-Briggs, but I found that personality test is the easiest one for me to understand.
And I find it relatively accurate.'s not how we we're not really basing our decisions on people's personalities at this point um but it is like a stage to make sure someone's really interested in there and then the most important thing and kind of like this whole process is our version of top grading which is basically within here we tell them that we are going to do reference checks at the end of the hiring process and that will help weed out anyone who's not able to do positive reference checks so that's step number one try to get as many people as possible. We use a software.
Go ahead. You also mentioned that you put the places not only by what you're asking, but also where you're asking it.
You're not going to go look for a coding person in over in one place and a design person. You just, you can't do it in Craigslist.
So I like that you're very specific. I like that you're also saying that, Hey, we're selling us as much as we're looking for someone to buy.
It's a two-way process. One of the things, if it's Myers-Briggs or whatever else, as long as you understand it, it gets you that better result.
One of the things that we do on our end is we make sure that whenever we do low-end tasks, we hide in there for attention to detail. We're like, hey, make sure when you apply to the job for these really low end per diem tasks that you start the subject with this, whatever this thing is.
And it just weeds out the people just consistently putting in these little hurdles, whatever they are to make sure that people are like, Oh, okay, this is someone's attention to detail. If that's what you're focused on for this job.
I love the idea of the beanbags. Don't hire the people with the beanbags and happy hour.
Good guy. So I mean, good guy.
Yeah. Yeah.
I tend to not focus on, on benefits. And I think it's like, you have to understand that there's a lot of job seekers who just effectively apply to every single job.
Like they don't think twice about it. It's automated.
They almost have bots set up. You want to do everything in your power to make sure you're not wasting any time at all.
So if you can auto reject, so I look through the resumes or we'll auto reject anyone who doesn't put in this information. It's just like, Hey man, like I'm, you're not wasting your time applying for this job.
I'm not wasting my time looking at your resume. Um, so you, you really want to have some kind of process we use a software called jazz to to manage resumes um i think like uh there are some like a was a notion board or there's some kind of like data oriented stuff out there that you know if i was doing it now i may not use um but you want to have all the resumes coming into one spot so you can be efficient with your time.
So we use jazz. It allows us to set up like email flows and things like that, that we've already created.
So the next step of the hiring process is the resume screening process. Everyone's going to have their own kind of internal biases.
My bias is to focus on cover letters. I feel like that's going to have their own kind of internal biases my bias is to focus on cover letters i feel like that's going to be an effort that they really distinguish uh from everyone else you can quickly see if they can communicate well how they communicate if it's an automated i don't know you you read enough cover letters and you can just kind of tell us a copy and paste versus like original.
So I'm looking for people who have crafted a cover letter specifically for this job. And then they're able to communicate well.
And they're also smart enough to understand like, here are my skill sets and here are how it's going to help the business. And then based on the cover letter, I'll look into their resume and kind of like their background and experience but very rarely if ever actually never i never look at the resume first to see what they did because i think like resumes are are genuinely just kind of like all bullshit anyways so um cover letters are how i screen them.
So most people are getting screened, but people who I feel like have potential or are worth talking to, we moved to step number three, which is our core values email. So step number three is where we start setting the company culture of what we're about.
So what we ask them to do is two things. We tell them what our core values are, which are freedom, hunger, and trust.
And then we tell them what is freedom, hunger, and trust mean to you? Please reply back with what those core values mean to you. So we're setting the tone that this is a very core value oriented business, that this is how we make decisions.
And when you come work at Beardbrand, like these core values are going to be the core values that you live, essentially you live by. and we also ask them to take a one minute typing test just to see their capabilities

uh on the computer everything's yeah yeah everything's digital um so if someone can type at

you know 60 words per minute, they're probably pretty capable and competent on a computer. But if they're cranking out at 11 or 15, that's probably a pretty good indication that for an e-commerce business, yeah, it's probably not going to work.
You know, maybe if you have like more of a mechanic focus role, you know, this is different. But these processes are going to be best for digital oriented businesses.
So we do that core values. I've never heard anyone do that.
That's amazing. Yeah.
Yeah. I mean, I over index for communication with how we hire people.
I feel like if someone can comprehend what you're saying and communicate clearly back to you, then even if it takes them a little bit longer to understand something, that eventually you'll be able to get onto the same page and work things out. When people just like you you effectively can't communicate well together even if they're the the greatest gift of god like if you're not on the same page you're just two people going in opposite directions so literally happened this morning literally happened this morning it was exactly what it was great person not on the same page so great first date horrible second day yeah yeah and it's it's like it's weird because it's like you know like sometimes you know people just communicate differently and and you have to you have to work well so it's like by you also doing these processes or you or the hiring person who's going to be working with them like it's seeing all these things it's going going to kind of like, you want it to, to mesh well with the people in there.
I know there's a lot of camps out there. It is, they like diversity makes you better and all this stuff.
But like reality is your company is a tribe. You guys got to have those shared values.
You have to see the world the same way because you can't fight over philosophy. You have to be aligned there.
And fight over you know like the tactics or the execution of it but you're all aligned with like that same common mission so there's some things that it's okay to disagree on and there's some things that are not acceptable to disagree on um so really you do want to set that that expectation of what your core values are and what your business is about. All right.
So that's core values. We see emails come back.
They look good. They're competent.
There's no spelling errors, especially now, like with AI. If you can't deliver any kind of like, I don't care if you send everything to me through AI and that's like your system and process.
And if that's what you always do, great. Like, but, um, yeah, like there's no excuse to have in a job interview, like misspelling just, just like not in my opinion.
It's one of those things where I can't spell to save my life. So every email that goes out, everything that I create, all the lab reports, everything gets run through AI because it's easier that way.
I know what my weaknesses are, and then I outsource it. So it's about the person who can find the solution.
So if you know that you've got a weakness, which is you've literally spelled your own name wrong, which I've done. If you know that's a weakness, just use chat GPT.
It's not complicated. I wrote a book.
I have tons of spending mistakes. I spent 150 bucks and someone edited someone edited it know your weaknesses especially when you're applying for a job but i've never heard anybody do a typing test that i could never work for you because i can barely type um it's it's embarrassing it happens that's it i know it was a whole point of coming on the podcast you wanted to see if we're getting it just not gonna work i'm sorry i break your heart well what's your words minute? What do you type? I think it's kind of like golf for me.
I shoot about a 60 on the first hole when I play golf. So I think I type about four or five words a minute.
No, it's I, my problem is my grammar and my spelling is atrocious. My, so my middle name is Joseph and I literally in high school spelled a J O E S P H.
So I literally misspelled my own name. It's common for me to misspell grammar.
When I wrote the book, so I wrote it in nine days and my assistant who was proofreading initially, she goes, you do know that your has an R on it, right? And I was like, yes. And she goes, because has a cuz on it, right? I was like, you know what? Shut up.
So it's pretty bad. My grammar and my spelling abilities, my sister has that.
She's got two master's degrees in English. God bless her for it.
I got none of that. It's horrible.
When I do presentations or I do keynotes, it's really bad. I cannot spell.
And I just put a little counter next to it during meetings of how many times I misspell. And if I misspell to a certain amount, I end up buying lunch, which I end up buying lunch anyway.
So, but yeah, it's bad. It's atrocious.
And that's the reason you're the entrepreneur. Like, let's be real.
You can't work for people. I can't work for people.
I am not employable. No.
Yeah. So we're not looking to hire.
I mean, generally speaking, we're not looking to hire entrepreneurs. Like, you know, maybe if you're trying to hire like a CEO or COO, something like that.
My business partner is the same thing. Like every email he sends to me has a spelling error and I'm like slightly dyslexic, but, um, so I get it.
Like there's people like us that, you know, we kind of break the rules for ourselves, but we're the ones paying the bills. Yeah.
Yeah. And then there's nothing wrong with employees.
I've got employees that I adore. I love them.
And one of the tests that I would give all the time, okay, we're going to do word association games. And this is one of the things I do when I hire is I rapid fire with

word association games. And then I'll say paycheck or employee, and we'll see what comes out of their

mouth. And if they're like security, comfort, benefits, nine to five, if that comes out of

their mouth, that's an employee. And I love them for that role.
If they spit out things like prison,

punishment, slavery, servitude, if they do that type of, and they have this, this angry reaction, I'm like, all right, that's an entrepreneur. And it's a different conversation.
And I've hired entrepreneurs to work for me. Never worked out well, never worked out well.
It just, I've, I, when I do VC work and I do angel investing, I need to make sure that person is an entrepreneur versus an employee with entrepreneur-like tendencies, which is a categorically different concept for people. So yes, I am not employable, but being able to filter these out with typing tests and things of that nature, I've never thought of typing tests before.
So we've got the person where we're fishing for them where they are, which is great. We're actually pitching the job as something that they want to be part of.
And like, we're selling the business. We then get into core values and we, we, we ignore the resume first and we go after the, the cover letter, making sure it's spelt right.
We test their typing speeds. What do we do after that? What are we in the next situation to get this 95% success rate? Well, I even brought up our core values email.
If you want me to read it to you, I can read it to you. I don't know.
So yeah, we'd love it. We'll put in the lab.
Yeah, this is, this is, uh, uh, we are impressed with your background and cover letter and would love to move you to our next step of the hiring process. The best gift that we can give at beard brand is a team of people who are passionate, hungry, and love to work.
So to help us make sure we build the right team at Beardbrand, we have a very thorough interview process that culminates with an extensive reference check. For the next step, we'd love to know what the Beardbrand core values mean to you.
Our core values are freedom, hunger, and trust. Please shoot an email back with each of those core values and what they mean to you.
In addition to that, please take this quick typing test and screenshot the results and your email reply. Looking forward to your response.
And we go to typing.com is what we use for the one minute typing test. So real quick, it does like, we do have a hard process.
Like it should be hard to get a job at where you're at and you need to learn all this information. So after the core value test, everything comes back.
We move into a quick screening phone call. So I will call them up.
And then the purpose of this call is to, it's really like, if you ever did Sandler sales, there's this idea of like an

upfront contract. So basically I call them up and I verify everything.
I say, all right, this job is located in an Austin, Texas. You have to come in from this period of time, uh, nine to five.
If you don't come in, you're not going to get hired. You know, like the compensation for this job is this amount.

Like, we are paying this amount.

If that's not okay let me know because we will not go further because there's a lot more steps from here so the whole thing is like we set the expectation this calling takes like 10 to 15 minutes we we work all the details we make sure they understand what the job is we make sure they understand where it's going to be like all the the big things because i don't want to get at the end of this and they're like oh i wanted to make this amount of money or i want to so by doing it up front and i'm like this job's fifty thousand dollars is that okay and i will get yes that is okay and like, there is no negotiation for this. This is the job.

So what we're doing is like,

I found that people who tend to negotiate

in the hiring process,

it really starts the process off to a bad foot.

So the more you can just get that up front

and done with is going to be great.

So we do these screening interviews.

And if that goes well,

we move them to our skills test process. So we're doing the initial contract part.
And if someone comes in and you said, Hey, the job was between 50 to $70,000 and you love them up to this point, but they're like, you know what? I really need to make 75 or whatever it is. Do you immediately say, Hey, you know what? That's, that's not the job.
That's not what we're doing here. Or when do you make the discretionary decision to move around or are you locked in? So we're locked in because our compensation policy is that we pay 90th percentile of market rates in Austin, Texas.
So every employee at Beardbrand will be being paid 90th percentile. So we have a very, you know, we have a flat compensation.
So we want to give a range. We would say to us, this is what the job is worth.
And if we find the right person, I don't really care if they're making this or that or, you know, whatever their experience is. We try to systematize compensation as fairly as possible.

And at the end of the day,

it's like housing and real estate.

Everything is you make an individual.

And we try to do it where it's the most fair way,

where if you get a job or if you get an offer from 10 jobs,

we'll pay better than nine of them.

So we do try to pay on the high rate. I think that helps with your retention policy as well.
The reason you haven't had to hire for five years is you pay what people are worth. I've always paid a little bit more than what someone's worth in order to make sure that you increase that longevity.
Because yeah, there's a culture and the personalities and being able to work with them. But also at the end of the day, if I've got a rockstar employee and someone offers them 15 times more than they're making for me, no matter how good my culture is, probably not going to stay.
So make sure you are in that top 90. It's a subtlety that most people forget and they just don't.
Yeah. I mean, not everyone could be in the top 90th percentile.
I mean, that's the reality of the space. So we tend to not hire super money-driven people either.
That's not really like our core values. We're more going back to how we're trying to build the business.
It's more about the lifestyle. It's about enjoying the journey.
So we do trade off growth a little bit. We tend to not hire mercenaries.
That's really what it is. If you're trying to hire people that are driven by money, you're hiring mercenaries, and they're not bought into the culture, they're bought into the money, and they can do great work for you, but they're not going to be aligned with the vision.
We're a bootstrap company, so we didn't start off that way um and in fact if i'm remembering correctly it's been so long i think we actually pay 75th percentile not 90th percentile the goal is to get to 90th percentile but the expectation is also that the team members perform at that level so it's like if our company's performing well and we're hitting all of our benchmarks and we're doing what we should be doing, then yes, we're going to be getting paid that. But if we're not, the reality of the business is I can only pay what I can pay.
So we started off, I think, at 50th percentile, and then we worked up to 75th percentile. But I just like to have – that helps me know that I feel like I'm doing the fair thing and that includes me like my pay my compensation is based on market rates like everyone's pay is based on market rates um yeah so the screening test uh moves into the skills test uh it's it's a two-part test one is a online test we use a criteria corp which is online testing company.
They have a test called CCAT, which is basically a cognitive test to see how smart they are. And different roles have different requirements for your ability to solve problems and things like that.
There's also another employee personality test, like a more scientific version of myers-briggs like if you don't trust myers-briggs you can use that uh criteria is just one of many companies uh that that offer that service but we will work to do uh an in-person skills test or if it's not in person it has to be like done while on a Zoom together. So the purpose, the intent is that I can watch them work so they could share their screen.
But that in-person skills test is one that we will build to be very specific to the job they're doing. So we had a data analyst role.
I got all of our thumbnails from YouTube or from 20 videos. I got the titles and then I got all the data for those videos.
I put them in a spreadsheet and then I had all the candidates like work through that exact same spreadsheet. I mean, I would copy it for each candidate and then they would have to give me a report on what the analysis was.
Or we would do for customer service, we would have like 10 tickets and we'd ask them to go through the tickets to prioritize them and then reply to them how they would reply to them. Our copywriter, same thing.
We would have them write an email and they're all like all the candidates are doing the exact same thing. So we'd have a designer.

I would sit and watch a designer work to see how they worked in Photoshop or a video editor,

see how they worked in, um, premiere and just like be able to tell like how competent or

capable they are.

If they do have the skills to, to handle what we need them to.

So when you're running into a person who you're giving these tests, have you ever had resistance where they're like, that's a lot of work before I even do the job? Have you ever run into that? Um, yeah, I mean, I think, I think there's candidates out there and you see it on Reddit all the time who are just, they're bitching and they're like, ah, I don't want to do free work or whatever. It's it's like i don't care if you complete this you don't have to complete this in fact some of the jobs you can't complete like it's it's an hour project where you would just be incomplete so the goal is like for me to watch how you work um and at the end of the day i really don't care like because i'm going to be spending you know a half million dollars on you if not more Like depending on how long you work at the end of the day, I really don't care, like, because I'm going to be spending, you know, a half million dollars on you, if not more, like depending on how long you work at the business.
If I can't get, you know, two hours of your time up front before I invest a half million dollars over the next, you know, five to 10 years, then I'm sorry, like, I'm not willing to take that risk.

Yeah, that's what I was trying to get to because most employees don't realize that as business owners, we have to invest this level into you. This isn't just a, hey, I want to hang out with

you. Let's go.
This is a massive investment in our dreams, our future, our financial resources,

our personal resources, our time resources. So for those of you who are listening who may

not own businesses, who are like, oh, well, this is how I get hired. You have to understand this is what's going through the minds of someone who's an entrepreneur or a business owner.
When we're looking at you, we're like, okay, this is where we're going to gamble a half a million plus dollars into you over the next X amount of years. So if you're not willing to put in a little bit of effort here, that's a huge sign for us.
It's kind of like if you show up to a date and you haven't cleaned your nails or your zipper's undone or whatever

else, or you didn't brush your teeth.

There are clear indications of what we're looking for.

We're not doing this because we want to torture you.

We're not doing this because we're just like trying to get free work.

That's not this about, we're trying to get more comfortable in the idea that we're bringing

you into our culture and that we're going to invest a half a million plus dollars into

you for the next X amount of years.

So it's not, cause I get this feedback all the time.

People are like, oh, well, why should I do free work?

It's not free work. We're trying to figure out and see if it's an excellent fit.
Dude. And there's plenty of jobs that you can go spot.
Those would be like, dude, if that's your mindset, you don't align with our core values. You're out.
I would just cut them. I'm not wasting my time or energy with people who view their lives in a purely transactional thing you know it's like oh why would i pick up that trash in the supermarket and throw it away like i'm not getting paid for that and it's like well you do it because you want to live in a society where there's not trash on the ground you know why would you put your cart away oh it's because i you know like i just want to live so you do things like and in my mind like those things are important to me like to be around those kind of people so maybe they're going to be better off working for the government or you know working for a mega corp where there's not that same kind of accountability and it's these little subtleties when people ask why do you hire versus why do you not why do you keep someone it's these little things you go out you, we always talk about how the person treats the waiter.
It's as important as they treat the CEO across the table. I've walked away from deals when the person was rude to the staff.
I've been staffed before. It's these are those little subtleties of your personality.
And sooner or later, they're going to find out. So when you have a business owner that's trying to do these small things and they're trying to say, hey, we're doing these little tests.
Those are tests. And it's not so much the tests they're giving you.
They're also trying to figure out what else it does. So please understand as a, as if you're looking to look for, to work for someone like to look for, to work for Eric or someone else on that level, every action has a purpose.
These didn't happen by accident. There's very, there's huge intent for this.
Also on a complete side note, put your damn carts away when you're shopping. It's annoying to pull into parking lots, live in a society where you clean things up, pick up the trash, help people out, get out of people's way, help people get things.
If you're taller, help people get things in the grocery store, little things, try and make things a little bit better. Don't rely on the government, but that's a completely different conversation.
All right, moving on. We, uh, I, I should, I want to reiterate that all of these steps i'm telling the candidates that we are going to be doing a reference check at the end of this process so during the screen interview i'm like hey we are going to call up three of your references is that going to be an issue you know like during the skills test is like you know the next step when all this is done is we're going to be doing reference checks.
So like they know that reference checks are coming as part of this process, which moves to step number seven, which is our top grading interview. So top grading is basically the style where we look like the hard asses, it's like a two hour interview.
Like you're really like grilling people.

I ain't got time for that. We keep ours to like 30 minutes.
And we keep it to the most recent three jobs. But basically I have 10 questions.
This exact same questions that I ask for their most recent 10 jobs. And what I'm looking for is themes or consistencies or, you know, well, just themes and consistencies of how they work among different jobs.
And so I have those questions. What is the best part of this job? What is the worst part of this job? Talk about your working relationship with your supervisor.
How is your supervisor going to describe you when we do our reference check? What is an accomplishment you are proud of? What's something you recall you wish you had done differently? How or why did you decide to leave this job? What's the most valuable skill you gained here? What is something your supervisor can most approve upon? And did you reach your full potential at this job? So those are the 10 questions that we ask for every single job. And like when I get into a job, I'm like, who is your supervisor? So I'll have their name.
Be like, what did John, you know, what is John going to say when I call him up and do this reference check what can john do a lot of times that question is real interesting is like you're not going to tell him what i say about john uh and i'm like no i'm not over here like snitching on you with your past boss but what i'm looking for is like if john was if this boss was a bad communicator and this other boss was a bad communicator and this other boss was a bad communicator, then maybe it wasn't the bosses. Maybe it was the candidate.
So those are kind of the things that we're looking for. And by the end of the top grading interview, you really have a strong grasp on what kind of things they like to do.
We go through the three jobs and then we then we have three questions that we ended and it's like, why are you interested at the job at beard brand? What are you great at professionally? And what do you suck at professionally? Like, what is the worst thing that I can have you doing if you come to work for beard brand? And like those, those last two questions really like we would have uh like someone apply for a customer service job and like oh i hate repetitive tasks and i'm like dude you're just going to be doing tickets all day long like this job is not going to work for you so they are going to by this point they are the the top grading interview style is a truth serum test you are going to know exactly exactly what they like, what they don't like. And because they know that you are going to be calling up their supervisor, they don't want to be caught in a lie.
So that's, that's a really important part of this process. And then I don't know if you have any questions about this top grading interview.
I do. So there's a couple of things.
I love that you didn't do candid questions, which is like, where do you see yourself and fire your shadow? That's not valuable. This is about truth.
So then there's getting into that. There's normally also the opportunity and I, and I've had to help people do this is you're being interviewed as much as you're interviewing them.
So when you're a candidate going in and asking very specific questions of the employer, cause these are great 10 questions. But for me, when we do hiring, I want to see the initiative.
I want you to be interviewing me as well, because you're as much as I'm investing time, money, resources, you're investing time, money, resources, and in a lot of cases, the ability to feed your children. So if you're not asking me questions as well, that normally is a flag for me.
I'm like, why aren't you asking me questions? And I always ask, do you have any questions? Do you have any thoughts? Do you have any concerns? Is there anything I can answer for you? Is there details about the job or the workplace or our culture? What are some of the, do you have any questions that you've ever gotten asked by an employee or a potential candidate that was like, wow, okay. That one made me think differently.
And we had to change things up or that surprised you, or you thought that was a really good question. Well, I mean, a lot of the job detail ones are done in that screening interview.
So, you know, I don't expect like, you know, what are the benefits or what is the pay or, you know, kind of like those aspects of the jobs. And then within the skills test, they're getting a strong grasp for like what they'll actually be doing.
So because we're doing so many different steps along the way, they tend to actually have a pretty good feel for what it's like to work at Beardbrand and what the expectation is. A lot of times, the skills test will be with someone else in the company, so it's not all just me doing stuff.
It's different people at Beardbrand. They'll have different opportunities to ask questions and and get a feel for i don't think there's ever been like you know any remarkable questions um that have kind of thrown me out there's there's been ones where it's like you know this is an in-person job and they're like can you do remote at all and i'm like no like and they're like okay well or they'll get like snappy and entitled and shit like that so it's just like all right well it's just not a good fit so it's not a fit yeah um but yeah like you do you do want to see like there needs to be communication like you need to make sure that you know like along at the end of this you know i i would say something like is you know is this a job you're still interested in like should we proceed forward should we move forward to the reference checks and you know like each step you kind of give them that opportunity like do you want to continue moving forward like is this a job you're interested in um and then what we do is after that we do the reference checks and they need to facilitate them so they need to get the uh the former boss's information they need to find out when it's a good time to call those bosses um and uh they need to pass that along and they need to let the bosses know that to expect a call from this phone number and if because if we can't do a reference check we're we're not going to get a an offer for them so we'll do those i like that you make them facilitated as well i like that you're going to be involved in this process i'm not just going to randomly call and say hey i'm bob from blah blah you have no idea who i am i'm calling about suzy q i like that you put the ownership on them it's okay you this now.
You know, you're going to pick it. Cause again, you can choose any reference in the world.
And of course, if they're giving you references, normally you're going to like, no, this is God's gifts. This is the greatest human being on the planet.
You're like, okay. So being able to have to facilitate that is important.
It also shows their ability to execute. But when you go to that facilitation process and you actually get their reference on the phone, there are some legal things.
And God bless the government making this more challenging for us. There are things we can and can't ask.
What are the things that you normally ask when you're on that reference call? There are things that you're, you know, obviously we verify employment. We verify the times.
We verify what they did. Is there anything else you do ask that you legally can? Because I know there's a bunch of stuff we legally just can't ask yeah uh let me pull these up like one of them is like would you hire them again um when were they employed what was their title and role uh did they you can ask whatever you want it's you know it's whether or not they tell you that information that there's more of a legal onerous on the reference check on what they may or may not tell you, but you can ask whatever you want.
Did he or she receive any promotions or demotions? What kind of duties and responsibilities were assigned to the candidate? Can you evaluate the employee's performance? That's one of those questions where you might get wishy-washy responses if they're worried about getting sued. Was the employee punctual? Did they get along well with their peers, managers, and customers? Would you rehire the employee? Is there anything else I should take into consideration before I hire this candidate? That last one's the most important.
It's one that's very similar to mine. I'm like, is there anything else I need to know? Is there any other things that's always been kind of the most important one? Cause I then shut up.
And there's a big thing that most people run into problems is sometimes silence is your friend and it's a gift. If you stay quiet a little bit longer than someone's used to, they're going to be prone to fill in that blank because they just, they don't like it if you do it otherwise.
So they're like, oh, well, yeah, but then there's also this and this and this. So holding that couple seconds of quietness, even in regular conversations, people don't like silence.
They want to fill it. So being able to do that has always been a huge gift.
So you've gone through the hiring process, you've talked to the references, you've done a skill check, you've had an in-person meeting with them. You've gone through the guidelines.
You've already knocked out where it is. By now, you've got a really good grasp of them.
You've even made them set up the calls with their references, which I'm stealing that from you. That's something I've never done that.
I was just like, oh, I hope I get so-and-so on the call. The fact that you're making them facilitate that, that will save me so many awkward calls.
So many awkward. So thank you for that.
I'm going to steal that. What are the next steps that you run into? Because we've done so much for each one.
And again, potential employees, be it for you or anyone else, please understand this is what's happening in the background. And you missed out the months and months of us either having to fire someone else, prepare the thing.
There's so much work that's led us up into here where you just supplied to a job at this point, you're only the last 20% of this process. There's also been another 80% of us just getting to this point.
So please understand that as potential candidates. Yeah.
The ninth step is the offer and kind of wraps it up. So we should already have agreement on what the compensation is.
Through our other processes, we should have an understanding of like, when can they start working? You know, that was in the screening call, like how much notice they need to give. So we're able to draft up an offer that should check all the boxes.
And if's negotiation after the offer we we end it like hey it sucks to get all the way to step number nine um but

we've learned that like you know effectively they can't communicate because like they had those

steps and they had those opportunities and uh if they start offering we we just pull the table and

and for the times that i did cater towards that, you know, where I didn't, like, really, like, 100% of my bad hires since rolling this out are, like, times that I break it. You know, like, times that I didn't clearly define what the compensation was up front.
or times that I didn't clear, like maybe I skipped a couple of steps because they were a reference from a referral

or they're a college friend or something like that so um we we found that you really like if if someone goes through all nine of these steps they're going to be great like i think if someone negotiates with you at the step, it violates your culture. That's not the idea that you wanted to do in any way, shape or form.
Like, Hey, this is what we do. This is how we offer.
This is how we work. This is our culture.
And it's either going to be a culture fit or it's not. And if they start changing things around at the very end, that's, that's your red flag.
Because one of the things I'm always looking for, Hey, what are the telltale absolute signs? Always what are red flags? Just like people are always wondering. They ask me, how do you find out when someone's lying? There's not just one indication.
There's a bazillion different things you have to see as a collective picture. So if someone's gotten all the way to step nine and all of a sudden they're playing this, well then guess what? They violate your culture fix and you move on really, really quickly.
I wish I can say that I didn't make some of the mistakes that you have done. We've all made those mistakes.
We've hired people that we should not have hired because we're a reference or a college friend, or you just had a good feeling. I literally had that this morning.
I still make those mistakes. It's going to happen.
Just fail faster as you go into it. So I love this methodology and how this works.
And it's very simple. And thank you for sharing the details of it.
One of the questions I wanted to have is,

what are the other things that you found?

Because you've expanded this,

and you've done such an amazing job with this.

Is there anything else that you found out that,

hey, these are some practices, yeah, this is our great one here,

but if I could have told myself 10 years ago,

or whatever it was when you started this,

I wish I would have also had this insight,

or read this book, or is there any of those floating around

that you're like, wow? Because you're very meticulous with how you break down your steps and they're, they're beautiful. Yeah.
I mean, I think the hardest part of this is that it's a lot of work. Um, it's nine steps.
It's multiple interviews. It's a lot of phone calls like you.
And when you factor, you have, you know know hundreds of candidates that you have to screen through and i think the hard thing is like when you get to step number nine and you make that offer you're only making offers to people you're super excited about that you can't wait and then for it to fall apart after nine and knowing that you only have a few candidates and step two or three and then like you're going back to square one like fighting that you know that that pain of just wanting to be done with it because we don't get into business to hire people like this is not fun this is not a fun thing that i look forward to um so i think like being able to really like stick to the the nine steps nine steps is important. Our resource for this was top grading.
So if you Google top grading or look into it, you can make it your own. And that's kind of what we did.
This is not exactly by the book for it. Once they become employees, we roll out the EOSos framework for hiring which is uh or our version of eos which is kind of like you know based on rocks and quarterly sprints and um you know do employees have it do they want it do they have the capabilities to do it you know that kind of stuff so we do have like regular um we don't do like the the whole corporate thing where you you do like a once a year annual review it's like if we have a problem on that day we go and we talk about it so we just keep them up the pace on the things they need to work about and we're a small company so we're under 50 employees so if someone's not working out we just we just fire them like um in a perfect world they should know it's coming and we should have like enough communication about things not working but at the end of the day like i've learned that you know deep down if an employee is going to work and yes it would be great to be that employee that gives everyone a month notice or two months notice or puts them on a work improvement program but if you know deep down you could put them on a month improvement program and they still don't improve that you're going to be firing you're just you're delaying the inevitable like you have to be an asshole and you know like just sometimes yeah it just is what it is and and if you don't know that you don't know just pay attention to your nightmares as you said before it'll come up every single time as you said your

subconscious knows all the time you have that gut feeling it'll come up you know as a guy it takes a

little bit longer than than the females do they get it instantaneously have these gut feminine

item it takes me a little bit longer i normally similar to you i just have nightmares i'm like

oh shit this this is a problem i've got to deal with this but don't delay it as soon as you do

have i guess that's the only advice i would have um fire as quick as you can if it runs into this

Thank you. have nightmares.
I'm like, oh shit, this is a problem. I've got to deal with this, but don't delay it.
As soon as you do have, I guess that's the only advice I would have. Fire as quick as you can.
If it runs into this, trust your gut, just speed up the process. Yeah, there's going to be pain, but it'll be less pain than having to have them limp them along.
Similar to you, I've had to bootstrap companies where I'm like, listen, I would love to give you two weeks or a month of pay. Sometimes I just can't do that.
There's other times where I'm like, here's your two weeks pay, go away. And they're already locked out.
The one thing I would stress is if you're going to run into that, and this is about hiring, not firing, make sure you've got a protocol that you tested for lockout procedures, especially with an IT background. Make sure you've got your lockout procedures really intensely done.
Make sure you have copies of everything. Make sure everything possible before you don't just walk in and be like, hi, Susie, you're fired.
Make sure you've got a lockout procedure and make sure it's relatively bulletproof. If you haven't tested that out, especially as an IT guy, I've watched entire data sectors get wiped off people's servers because they were going to fire Billy and he knew it was coming and Billy's a jerk.
So just run into those situations. Please make sure you've got a firing process that is as good, if not better than your hiring process.
So from there, I want to kind of selfishly ask you questions about my beard and how people find you and all of that. So if people are tracking down, because I'm sorry, I have to ask you, you've got a better beard than anyone I know.
It's cheating. Again, so when you walk into these environments, how do people find you? How do they get ahold of you? If people have more questions or people want to find out more about how you built it, you gave so many resources that you use.
I really appreciate the value you provided. How do people find you? And then I'm going to ask you beard questions.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, you know, beardbrand.com is my company.
Go over there, buy products. If you're, you know, our products will work for dude with or without a beard we've got products for you and then also our products don't know your genitalia so really you know they can work for women we've got a lot of women who use our sea salt spray love that product our styling paste as well so there's a lot of products that we have and you don't have to pay the the woman uh beauty tax and get the same quality or if not better quality products coming from a men's company.
And then I also have an e-commerce conversations podcast called e-commerce conversations. So if you want to learn more about e-commerce or watch me interview some guests, head over there.
E-commerce conversations is put on by Pract e-commerce. And then I'm on Twitter.
That's the one social media platform that I'm on. It's my last name, Banholz, B as a boy, A-N-D-H-O-L-Z.
So ask me questions there. If you've got a paid account on Twitter, you can DM me and be happy to chat with you.

I love that you still call it Twitter.

I'm very similar to you.

I refuse to call it anything else.

It's Twitter.

It always will be Twitter.

Sorry, Elon.

Rename it back.

Okay, so I have a question.

Yes, I want to grow.

I have a beard.

I have scruff.

And I've always had scruff.

I can't do the thickening. What product do you have that you use that I could use that would thicken this up? And is there practices I could use that specifically from your brand? Yeah, I mean, so my face, make me feel self-conscious.
Yeah, our sea salt spray is a product that adds texture and waves into hair. And then from there, you can think about like your technique for how you let your beard really dry or how you style it.
So Greg Brzezinski is one of our content creators. If you like Google like Greg Brzezinski, like beard styling, the biggest thing that you need to do is you got to give it more length.
I think if you give it more length, you're going to have more more to play with it's probably going to take you about really about three months of growth to be able to get a beard of this length so it's not something that happens overnight but your beard looks good man i mean you could you could rock the beard stash which is like give your mustache a little bit longer length um and then keep yours my lip lip. Fix it.
My lip. All right.
Yeah. But yours is great.
Yeah. I mean, so the next one I have is so hair pace.
And, you know, I talk about this all the time. Girls get clobbered with the, the, the female tax.
Even when it comes to beauty products, you get the same product or even a better product at fraction of the cost. And they don't think they could do that.
One of the things that I didn't realize that you sold products, doesn't matter if you have internal plumbing or external plumbing or whatever you identify with the fact that you're going to be punished because you've got internal plumbing with those taxes. You know, what are some of the things that, cause I know women always want shinier, more volumized hair.
What is the product that you would recommend? I clearly am not asking for me, but I would like to give this information to someone specifically. What is the product that you would recommend i clearly am not asking for me but i would like to give this information to someone specifically what is the product that you would use that you guys have that's like hey this is our the best results that we have it may or may not be our most popular one but this is the best one for the female side yeah i mean like like i said the sea salt spray is going to be a great product that will give you beach like hair so that feeling where you go into the ocean you swim around you get out and your hair's got that kind of like crunchy wavy natural toss like if you want that kind of style or sea salt spray is great uh it's an innovative product we're the first company to put clay in there to mimic the sand that you get in your hair when you go to the beach most stuff is just effectively like liquid uh gel that you spray on your hair or it's just salt and waters so they've forgotten a big component of that beachy hair um so that's a great styling product our wash and softener uh we're not using any silicons in our process so one of the problems that you have with long hair is

shampoos are formulated to have silicons on it, which will coat your hair. And that's not inherently bad.
It's not like a paraben or, you know, a product that's going to, you know, quote unquote, cause damage. But what happens is for you to remove this silicone, you need a very intense wash to remove the silicone.
So what happens is when you run that intense wash through your hair, then that's when you start to cause some of the damage, you get that frizziness. And then when you add that frizziness, you're drawn to use an ingredient that has silicone in there to smooth it all out.
So our formulation strategy is to do more gentle washing with a conditioner that doesn't have any silicones in it to have really like what we think is your body is pretty awesome at doing things naturally and get it back to the roots of how your body would handle things rather than mask or disguise. It's work with your body's natural chemistry to kind of output what you're looking for.
So the wash and softener would be a great one to punch for people who are looking to cause minimal damage to hair. And women tend to, I mean, when your hair gets long, it takes three or four years to get it down to here.
So you don't want to constantly be doing things to it that can cause frizziness or damage. And for those of you who are listening, he just described his company's culture regarding his products as well.
So if you weren't paying attention, he literally just described protecting it natural being part of that. So man, I love it.
Everything you do aligns with who you are as a human being. I've gotten to talk to you on and off camera.
I hope people track you down, track down your podcast. Thank you for providing so much value.
I really appreciate you being on the show. Yeah, pleasure's all mine.
Thanks for having me. As we bring this episode to a close, we hope Eric Bandholz's incredible journey from beard enthusiast to e-commerce pioneer has inspired you to rethink your approach to hiring and company culture.
We extend our heartfelt gratitude to Eric for his insights. Your transparent discussion about the challenges of building a team and the power of a strong company culture is invaluable for entrepreneurs everywhere.
To our listeners, your commitment to personal and professional growth drives us to continue bringing you these transformative conversations. We're genuinely grateful for your ongoing support.
For those eager to revolutionize their hiring process and build a culture-first business, you won't want to miss Eric's Comprehensive Companion Guide. It's a treasure trove of practical wisdom, including a detailed breakdown of his nine-step hiring process, strategies for infusing core values into every aspect of your business, and tips for bootstrapping success.
Don't miss out on this resource. Visit our website at podcast.imcharlesshorts.com to access the companion guide.
It's your guide to building a dream team and a thriving company culture. Remember, your company's culture is your competitive edge.
So go forth, build a team that shares your vision, and watch your business flourish. Until our next session, keep innovating, from family practice to nursing education and adult care.

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