Attracting and Hiring A-Players Through Next-Gen Recruitment Strategies

Speaker 1 So, no matter who you want to hire, whether they're experienced or whether they're inexperienced, whether they're in your industry or not in your industry, if they have a great attitude and aptitude, and it's somebody that you want to have come work for your company, they're already working for someone else.

Speaker 1 Your job is to get your information in front of them so they can see that you have a better opportunity than where they're currently at, because otherwise, you're never going to get the quality player, the type of top talent that you deserve for your company.

Speaker 1 So, you've got to do something to get your message in front of them.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 Now, your host, the Home Service Millionaire, Tommy Mello.

Speaker 2 Before we get started, I wanted to share two important things with you. First, I want you to implement what you learned today.

Speaker 2 To do that, you'll have to take a lot of notes, but I also want you to fully concentrate on the interview. So I asked the team to take notes for you.
Just text notes, N-O-T-E-S to 888-526-1299.

Speaker 2 That's 888-526-1299. And you'll receive a link to download the notes from today's episode.
Also, if you haven't got your copy of my newest book, Elevate, please go check it out.

Speaker 2 I'll share with you how I attracted and developed a winning team that helped me build a $200 million company in 22 states. Just go to elevateandwin.com forward slash podcast to get your copy.

Speaker 2 Now, let's go back into the interview.

Speaker 2 All right, guys. Welcome back to the Home Service Expert.
I got a good buddy of mine that taught me a lot about business and really came into time that I needed him the most, Jody Underhill.

Speaker 2 He's an expert in digital marketing, advertising, lead generation, business consulting, and training. He was based out of South Carolina in Greensville.
Now he's in Florida.

Speaker 2 He's a senior partner at Rapid Hire,

Speaker 2 director at Green Elephant Agency, director of operations at Appointment Nerds, director of business development.

Speaker 2 While back when I used to really know him at Upside Down Iceberg, director consulting services, a digital marketer, worked with Roland Frazier for a while, really knows everybody.

Speaker 2 He worked with Russell Brunson. Frank Kern, Perry Belcher, Ryan Dice.

Speaker 2 You name someone in the digital space. Jody knows them and has done business with them and probably ran the back end of their program.

Speaker 2 Currently, Green Elephant and Point Mint Nerds and does a lot with hiring throughout the blue collar industry, Rapid Hire.

Speaker 2 He's also an accomplished social media strategist, worked with various marketing. Josh Nelson, he's part of seven-figure agency.
I mean, the list goes on and on.

Speaker 2 It's developed and helped over 150 businesses. and helped with their marketing strategy.
Jody, always a pleasure to spend time with you.

Speaker 1 Same year. Glad to be here.
Looking forward to it. It just took a little bit to get it scheduled, but here we go.

Speaker 2 We got this event coming up next week, the Freedom Event, and can't wait. It's been years in the making.

Speaker 2 And after all the vertical tracks we've had, it's like everybody would show up cleaning people and pest control and concrete and

Speaker 2 HVAC Plumbing Electrical and roofing and solar and a lot of gutter people. So it's been, I'm finally able to build a very big team to help out everybody.

Speaker 2 And that's what I'm most excited about is getting the reporting right, getting the right employees started, going and implementing all these things.

Speaker 2 And it's just really exciting times because now we get to help people build their dream.

Speaker 1 It's going to be exciting to be there. We're going to be there in full force.
I'm excited to be on one of the panels there on one of the days to share some more of the stuff about recruiting.

Speaker 1 We're going to talk about it today, but they're at the event.

Speaker 2 It's just, there's nothing like being at a live event and having the, making the connections and getting that information firsthand i mean it's just it's going to be a great week we're really looking forward to it yeah hopefully this podcast gets out this week but maybe people will be listening to it right after events so hopefully they they took a lot from it so you've been on the podcast what's been going on here the last year i know you've been busy the company's growing you've learned a lot from what to expect from clients and uh if they're not bought in this chance of success for you are zilch.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 3 We've done, we've changed a lot over the course of the last year.

Speaker 1 Some of it due to working with A1, doing recruiting there,

Speaker 1 doing some extra things that we offer now that we didn't use to, like, for instance, you know, doing background checks and motor vehicle reporting and drug screening and offering that as a service that we didn't do a year ago.

Speaker 1 But the other thing that we've built in is we've made our filtering process a lot more robust.

Speaker 1 As most people know, we recruit on Facebook and Instagram and then run it by running ads through your business manager account. Now, we also post out to Indeed and pull leads in from there.

Speaker 1 But then that's what you have as a lead. That's all you have, right? Just some information about a person.

Speaker 1 You don't really know if it's somebody that you want to take the time to actually bring in and interview.

Speaker 1 And so, what we do is we have account managers in place that walk the people, the candidates through a filtering process.

Speaker 1 We start off with an application, which is very specific to what the position that you're hiring for, asking questions that most applications don't about their criminal history, their driving record, if they have certain certain licensing.

Speaker 1 From there, we have implemented the next step, which are assessments. And we actually have assessments for field personnel.

Speaker 1 We have assessments for office personnel and management that we've actually developed ourselves internally because we've worked with over 250 home service companies across the U.S. and Canada now.

Speaker 1 So we've learned a few things along the way. So we go through that filtering and the assessment isn't, do you know how to sweat a fitting or wind a spring? It's their soft skills.

Speaker 1 Do you know if you run into a situation you've never seen before, do you call your supervisor, call a friend, watch a YouTube video, or just do the best you can?

Speaker 1 So we're looking at their communication style because that's very important, especially with technicians today.

Speaker 1 They got to be able to only diagnose and repair, they got to be able to sell the homeowner the best solution based on what they're looking for.

Speaker 1 If they pass that, then we take them to the next step, which is a disk personality profile. And their installers and service techs are different types of people.

Speaker 1 And so we look at, from that stand, we can go deeper into that in just a little bit.

Speaker 1 And then from there we have them do the automated video interview so now you don't just have a lead an application you've got a soft skills assessment a disk personality profile and the video interview to make the determination if it's somebody you actually want to bring in and have an interview with so you have a lot of pieces in place and our job is to filter those and only show you the people that look like the best fit for the avatar you're looking for So that's some of the changes that we've made over the course of the last year.

Speaker 1 And it's really elevated the caliber candidate that we are able to put in front of our clients and also help them with their success rate as far as keeping those candidates once they get them in the door.

Speaker 1 That was kind of a long-winded answer, but that's the reader's digest version of what we put together over the course of the last year.

Speaker 2 Yeah, no, that stuff is great.

Speaker 2 We just recently, Luke had a one-on-one with Deidre since I saw we were kind of failing on our end as a company. to communicate with you guys properly.
And Luke takes it very seriously.

Speaker 2 We've got a lot of problems. We're a big company, but everybody thinks everything's all hunky-dory all the time, but we're always working on things.

Speaker 2 And Luke said, hey, our applicants have gone from $700 to $2,300 to hire. And he said, Deidre kind of figured out it was, we were losing them in the training for two months.

Speaker 2 You're going to make $700 or $800.

Speaker 2 And I said, Luke, it's funny. He said this to me last Friday because I talked to him, I go, we got to go to $1,000.
And then I talked to him again. And and I said, if we got to go to 1,200.

Speaker 2 And last week on Friday, I said, if we got to go to 1,500, he goes, man, every time I talk to you, you go higher. And I'm like, we're a world-class company.

Speaker 2 I pride ourselves on being the best home service company in the world. And what does a great home service company do? They put their best foot forward and they pay people to come on and train.

Speaker 2 And he said, well, you know, I definitely think we need to increase the pay, but only in certain areas. And I said, well, let's rethink that.
I said, because we're spending over over $1,500.

Speaker 2 We're losing them in that spot. Let's just say we give them that $1,500 plus we give them a few more grand.

Speaker 2 We're not really losing a whole lot because the caliber, higher conversion rate, better people. They can take care of their family for that two months.

Speaker 2 You know, they're traveling as well for three weeks.

Speaker 2 So we're going to come back to you guys. And this is one of the things that I don't think people understand is you guys give us constructive criticism.

Speaker 2 And if we don't do anything with it and we sit there and say, well, it's on you, then we're not doing our job. We're not taking any accountability.

Speaker 2 So same thing with CSRs, dispatchers, and installers. If we don't put the right bait out there

Speaker 2 and work throughout the process, find out where we're losing them and do something about it. How are you supposed to do your job?

Speaker 3 Yeah, even when we first started, I mean, I think the CSR pay was like starting at $13.50 an hour.

Speaker 1 And it was like, there's plenty of applicants, but the quality wasn't very high.

Speaker 1 And it's like, well, it's because there's not enough money there for most people, the higher quality applicant, to come through. And then we raised it to like $1,650, the quality went up.

Speaker 1 And I think now we're up around 18 or 19, and the quality is even better coming through that, you know, coming in the door. So it has to do with that.

Speaker 1 And that's one of the things that most people don't realize is we don't just take the information from our clients and go, okay, this is what we're going with.

Speaker 1 We give feedback as to exactly what we're seeing in the industry. I had a call with someone the other day, they were in the LA area, and they said that they pay around $65,000 a year.

Speaker 1 I'm like, if that's fine, that's what you pay. I'm not going to say that you shouldn't pay that.

Speaker 1 I'm going to let you know that in the LA market at $65,000 a year for an experienced experienced HJC tech, I really can't do much for you because our job is to get an opportunity in front of someone when they're just scrolling through Facebook or Instagram.

Speaker 1 It's got to be something that catches their eye and makes it more attractive than where they're currently working.

Speaker 1 So if it's the same pay that they're making and/or pay that they're making, you're not going to get people to move and take a chance on going to a different company.

Speaker 1 You have to have something that basically have to have the right bait, like you said, the right offer. And also, it also comes down to a lot of different, like your branding, your culture.

Speaker 1 All of those pieces can come into the pie.

Speaker 1 And what I've been looking at is you, instead of targeting people, you have to make your company become the target that people want to search at, to seek out.

Speaker 1 But whenever your ad pops up there, it's like, what is this? I'm so excited about it.

Speaker 1 And that's tough to do whenever you have limited benefits and your pay isn't, isn't, and just up to the industry average.

Speaker 1 That doesn't mean that people in LA aren't making 65 grand a year as an HVAC tech, but it's not enough to get somebody to take a step and move usually.

Speaker 1 In other areas, it might be, but we're seeing across the board, you know, that going up on the upper end. And the thing is, put what they're going to make today and then future pace it, right?

Speaker 1 Just like if you get paid $750 a week during training, but they have a clear path to 100K plus, then that shows them what they can make and it becomes a career.

Speaker 1 The other thing is most people are posting jobs. We don't want to post jobs.
We want to post career opportunities.

Speaker 1 That's the difference in whenever it comes to marketing versus just a job ad and putting it out there and doing it that way.

Speaker 1 we use, you know, we use, we give ideas on how to redo the job descriptions. We have copywriters on staff that rewrite those for the majority of our clients.

Speaker 1 We have some that do a great job, but others we have to go through and embellish them a little bit and draw attention to the things that make the most difference. Yeah.

Speaker 2 Well, if you're going to make it stand out on social media, that's what did you say the average person is on social media versus going to Indeed or Glassdoor Zip Recruiter?

Speaker 1 Yeah, they're on there about two and a half hours a day.

Speaker 2 So you get the ads and your goal is to take somebody with an existing job and make them want to switch careers or switch to your company versus going to the unemployment line and hoping and praying you'll find somebody good that might have moved here.

Speaker 2 Why don't they have a job? Why are they into the unemployment line? And what I've noticed is just the caliber of people since we advertise on social media. But tell me about some horror stories.

Speaker 2 Don't go specific in the who what companies, but what are some of the things that people were just, there's no way you could ever be successful with them?

Speaker 1 A lot of times it comes down to if there's a limited population and they're wanting people with five years experience.

Speaker 1 If you have 100,000 people in the entire county that you live in, there's probably only three or four other companies that do what you do.

Speaker 1 And finding people with five years experience is going to be a long-term thing. It's not going to happen overnight.
That is, then the other part of it is, is people that don't give it enough time.

Speaker 1 Now, we have a minimum. You have a typically of a four-month agreement, and then it goes month to month.
We have people after 30 days, they're like, this just isn't working.

Speaker 1 It's like, no, it's working. It just takes time for it to build up.
People have to see it. I mean, think about yourself.

Speaker 1 How many times do you see something on social media on ad before you ever click it and actually go look at whether you want to buy it or not? You have to see it. That's called retargeting.

Speaker 2 When somebody clicks on it, I see it 10 times. It's like anything else.
There are things that I've seen a dozen times and finally, like, I'm just going to buy it. And I do it.

Speaker 2 And I think when they invented retargeting, it changed the game.

Speaker 2 And that's what you need to have is the people need to see the ad over and over and say, man, it's like, it's almost like this job is supposed to apply here.

Speaker 3 And you have to put it everywhere they look. It's not just about running it.

Speaker 1 Okay, we're on Facebook or Instagram. There's different aspects of both of those as well.
There's reels. There's the video.
There's video ads. There's marketplace.

Speaker 1 You got to make sure that they show up in everywhere you can. There's Instagram Explorer.
making sure that they show up no matter where people go.

Speaker 1 Some people only go on Facebook to look at marketplace. Well, you want your ad to show up there while they're looking in that spot.
Some of the other horror stories

Speaker 1 are

Speaker 1 looking at it as, like I said, it's really just not given the time or not doing their part.

Speaker 1 We can do a lot and we do a lot, but hey, when we send somebody over to you and say, hey, here's somebody, it looks like Demetria Avatar. The testing went well.
Here's the video interview.

Speaker 1 They look like an A-player, looks like

Speaker 1 a top candidate. And then you take a week to respond back to us or you interview them and then you don't tell us how it went or if you hired them or not.

Speaker 1 there's not much we can do as far as being able to gauge who you want to see next. And we've had that happen a couple of times.
And the thing is, these are exceptions.

Speaker 1 The majority of the clients we work with, there's very clear expectations that we go through and they know it's going to take time because the last thing I'm going to do is set them up for an expectation that's not going to meet the reality.

Speaker 1 They just hear what they want to sometimes and they get impatient. I had one person that said, this whole thing didn't work.
So we have a four-month agreement.

Speaker 1 The ads have been running for three weeks.

Speaker 1 What's not working? You've hired a person already in three weeks' time. What isn't working? That's working.
So it all depends on the area, the job description, the pay.

Speaker 1 Then the other horror stories are having someone on your team that is doing the interviews that is not doing a great job doing interviews, that is having a bad day and just and doesn't do a great job of presenting your company in the right way.

Speaker 1 And come on, as a company, you have core values. I know you have them.
It's right there on the rug when you walk in the front door of your office.

Speaker 1 And then you're having your core values and your culture statement and making it so that the employees that are, whoever you have interviewing the person, embodies those core values of your company.

Speaker 1 Because if they don't, it makes it tough for people to want to get excited about coming to work for you.

Speaker 2 How much does the HR team at most companies get in the way? Because I know I've gone through a lot of issues in HR. It seems like it's always a roadblock to hiring and it's just a constant battle.

Speaker 1 It depends on if they're on the decision up front or if they're brought in after someone makes the decision and it's just

Speaker 1 hand to say, this is what we're going to do now and they didn't have buy-in because i mean we do things a certain way and we don't change what we do and that's all the way back to i mean two years ago we were in orlando and had a conversation about these things it's like no we do things the way we do and we don't change that because we know the human psychology aspect of what we do works so the hr department if they're bought in up front it's never a problem if the owner makes the decision and then just hands it to the hr department that's whenever it because the friction starts because they think we're coming in to replace something and we we don't.

Speaker 1 We don't replace anybody. We give people their time back is what we do.

Speaker 1 But I've had HR managers that basically sit there with their nose all pinched up, like they just smelled a fart the whole time on the whole time we're on the call.

Speaker 1 And it's hard to be positive and keep going that whenever they don't want it to work. They put stumbling blocks in front of you.

Speaker 1 So we make it a policy now that the HR department has to be on the onboarding call and our clarity call so that they see exactly what we're doing.

Speaker 1 Sometimes when referrals come through, we expedite that and sometimes miss the mark. But for the most part, we make sure they have the buy-in so we don't run into that obstacle.

Speaker 2 You know, if I was an A-plus player and someone didn't meet with me when they said they would, and I was looking for a job or looking to make a move, and you don't respect my time and celebrate me coming, and I've got a family.

Speaker 2 I've got things I'm trying. I'm important.
You know, I'm ready to put all my time and effort. and change my whole destiny by coming to work for you.

Speaker 2 And you don't think showing up on time and interviewing me the day that I come in is important?

Speaker 2 I think, including A1 Garage or service, everyone needs to do a better job of making sure you make people feel important. We just got a red carpet for when the guys start.

Speaker 2 We heard a bunch of champagne. We put apple juice in there, but you know, we really celebrate when they start.
I've got a lot of work to do overall, personally, and for the company.

Speaker 2 But isn't it important to really, you get this A player and you guys recognize this is an ace in the hole? It's almost like this could be a million, two million, three million dollar producer.

Speaker 2 You should drop everything. Or a CSR does a lot more than a million.

Speaker 2 If you think about their call booking rate and how many calls are booking, they can book, we're at 37 calls per day per CSR, 37 opportunities with an average job opportunity of $1,400.

Speaker 2 You do the math, they're doing a lot more than a million. You should be taking them pretty seriously.

Speaker 1 Sometimes they're answering phone calls, but you're spending $100 to make the phone ring.

Speaker 1 So if you want to make sure that they are there, but back to the part about being there and showing up on time to do the interview, one of the things that we do to try to make that happen is we schedule an interview with a hiring manager or an area manager or the HR manager, whoever's doing the interview.

Speaker 1 We put both the candidate who's being interviewed and the person doing the interview into the reminder sequence because it's not always the candidate that gets busy or forgets.

Speaker 1 Having the reminder increases the show up rate as well for the people.

Speaker 1 You cut down on the no-shows, but you also cut down on the missed appointments that the managers have not showing up for the interview at the time they're supposed to.

Speaker 1 And it's not like that, it's not because they don't think it's important, it's because they're busy doing stuff.

Speaker 1 And so they need that reminder, they need that little nudge of okay, hey, we're gonna get something coming up in an hour, make sure you're there.

Speaker 1 And then about 10 minutes beforehand, so you show up on time. And treat them, you know, treat them like they're the gold that they are that are sitting there because they can come in.

Speaker 1 And if they're an A-player, if they've got the experience that you're looking for, the attitude, because today the majority of the, I do probably seven to 10 calls a week with companies thinking about utilizing our services.

Speaker 1 And the majority of them now, fortunately, say that they're more interested in hiring for attitude and aptitude rather than for experience level.

Speaker 1 And because they can bring them in and they have the attitude and they can mold them the way that they want to.

Speaker 1 And when you have somebody that has experience and a great attitude and aptitude, that's the unicorn that you got to treat immediately like the gold nugget that it is.

Speaker 1 So you're keeping those in place, keep making it so that you do that all the way through the process because they're taking a chance. I mean, think about yourself.

Speaker 1 Those of you that are listening, if you were, and if you're not an owner, if you're working at the company as a job, as a career, how much would it take for you to leave to go somewhere else?

Speaker 1 What are those things that you would be concerned and nervous about whenever you left and took to take that step to go work somewhere else?

Speaker 1 And because there's some real deliberation that they have to do to make sure that they're taking the right step, because if they take the wrong step, they basically put themselves back a couple of years usually.

Speaker 2 When you're thinking about like the way your team presents themselves on the calls, they're such high energy, They're selling the company. They're empathetic.
They show a lot of empathy.

Speaker 2 And then you might turn it over to somebody that doesn't share the same excitement. And they're just, how much does the interviewer make a difference in converting these great applicants?

Speaker 2 I mean, if you're filtering them down, I mean, another question is how many applicants does it take to get a great one? And it's all different depending on the industry and the market.

Speaker 1 Yeah, it's just typically four to five people who have made it through the filtering process to get to the point of saying, yes, this looks like somebody i want to interview so if you look at four to five of them to make a hire that's about the average some are higher some are lower i mean one we just went through the whole process ourselves hiring a couple of account managers and we had 300 people register for a hiring event that we did register to get on a call with us and so from that we interviewed 11 and from that 11 we hired three so usually you know it's about four or five quality candidates that have come through the filtering process to the point of you actually making an offer to them.

Speaker 1 And it seems like those are really big numbers, but

Speaker 1 most companies aren't filtering that way. Most companies are looking at a resume and going, okay, let's bring them in for an interview.

Speaker 1 And then they come, they show up in their vehicle walking across the parking lot and their shirt tail is not tucked in and they look like, you know, they'll walk in the door and they look like they've been on a vendor.

Speaker 1 You know, you didn't want to interview them. You could have taken care of a lot of that.
by having a filtering process in place so that you have a better quality applicant. I wish I could say it was

Speaker 1 one-to-one, but it's just not going to be.

Speaker 1 A lot of times it's not the company that doesn't hire the employee. It's the employee that doesn't hire the company.
They look at your reviews.

Speaker 1 Now, we had one company that had like 3.5 stars on their Google reviews, and we had like five amazing candidates for them. They made all five of them offers, and only two people took the offer.

Speaker 1 The other three said they just couldn't come to work with a company that had some of the reviews that they saw online about their company.

Speaker 1 So it's not always that you aren't making the choice from the four or five people. It's that a lot of times they're not going to actually take the step once they have the interview.

Speaker 1 So having that person that's engaging and embodying those core values of your company is immensely important.

Speaker 2 What are some of the questions, since you guys have worked in so many industries across the United States and Canada, what do you think is the most important things for candidates looking at such a large scope of candidates?

Speaker 2 I mean, you told me a lot of people ask about, do you get a new truck or do you got to provide your own leads?

Speaker 2 And it was astonishing the questions that you guys get compared to what we thought we were getting.

Speaker 1 So they want to know about work-life balance. I mean, to these day and age, almost every company, well, not all.

Speaker 1 I have calls with companies that pay like $23 an hour and have no benefits and want us to help them, which is kind of tough. But everybody has usually decent pay and they have basic benefits.

Speaker 1 That's usually a given. So you've got to have something else that gets their attention.
Like you mentioned, company truck. Company truck and gas card is important.

Speaker 1 But what's more important is if they can take that company truck home and if they can dispatch from home. That's work-life balance now.

Speaker 1 They get to start their day in their driveway and end their day in their driveway. They have more time with their family.
And then also no on-call. If you have on-call, then don't list it on your ads.

Speaker 1 But if you have it arranged where they work shifts and they don't have on-call, then that is a work-life balance that is a big deal and gets a lot of attention on the ads of not having on-call because a lot of companies haven't figured out how to do it.

Speaker 1 And then, so from that stand, ongoing training and also

Speaker 1 performance-based advancement. Because a lot of they don't want to come to work for somebody that you get advanced because of the length of time you've been there.

Speaker 1 They want an opportunity where they can come and perform and advance based on their performance, not based on how long they've been there. Those are big deals for them.

Speaker 1 PTA, personal time off, the regular things, but the no on-call, the personal, the truck, the company truck that you can take home and dispatch from home are some of the biggies.

Speaker 2 Deanna Tonelli and I did a podcast that hasn't aired yet, but when I rebranded and I started doing billboards, TV and radio and people saw us everywhere and they noticed our vehicles and then they drove by our shop.

Speaker 2 They were like, they'd show up to the door being like, we see you guys everywhere. We want to work for a growing company.

Speaker 2 It was amazing. How important do you think the brand? And you've worked with a lot.
You've worked with the white trucks that don't have a brand.

Speaker 2 And you've worked with companies that are just, they've got their core values, their mission, their vision. There clearly shows what they do.
They're proud of their brand. It sticks out like Bueller.

Speaker 1 I mean, what a brand. Yeah.

Speaker 2 I mean, what would you say branding plays to make your job successful?

Speaker 1 You get a 50% higher take rate on your ads with a good brand than with the white truck syndrome.

Speaker 1 Because what we do is we want images of people with logo shirts on, your employees, with logo shirts on, happy employees, logo shirts on doing work.

Speaker 1 and your vehicles in order for that to be in the ads.

Speaker 1 One of the things that we do, you mentioned Dan Antonelli, is if they doesn't matter if they do a rebranding, we don't charge to change the ads out.

Speaker 1 We don't charge to redo the graphics because it's going to make that much better of an impact.

Speaker 1 It's worthwhile for us to do that change free of charge than it is to charge for that, to charge for it because we know it's going to get about a 50% higher take rate on the ads. The branding is huge.

Speaker 1 And you can tell a difference. And we've had companies that had the old branding.
and they moved to the new branding and it's a night and day difference. Garage Door Doctor is an example.

Speaker 1 When you have the old branding that we've started running with it. We put the new branding out there, boom, the leads started coming in.

Speaker 1 It's like basically double what they were getting before the branding happened. We've done that with a number of them, but yeah, the branding, the culture.

Speaker 1 People want to know, how do I express my culture? Well, if you want to know about your culture, you want to know how to express it, ask some of your best employees why they work for you.

Speaker 1 Their answers will give you the ammo of what you need to have in order to put on the ads because if that makes them come stay working for you, that's going to help you tell the story of your company.

Speaker 1 Also, shoot a couple of videos of them answering those questions. That goes a long way.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 I was just going to say, what I'm going to do is send you and Deidre. I interview my two top technicians, not top performance, but to make the mental breakthrough and their mindset.

Speaker 2 I'm going to send you guys. I probably have 100 interviews.
And I was just literally in my, I did four interviews because next week's freedom. And these guys are just like, it's such a brotherhood.

Speaker 2 We've got people to lean on. We just believe in.
We're the best home service company. And they're saying this in the interviews.
And the one guy's like, I'm going to make 200 grand next year.

Speaker 2 And it's coming from the horse's mouth. And I've got so many of these.

Speaker 2 I think you guys could take these and I'll pay you guys to do it for your time to go through and chop these things up because I think it's gold and it's different.

Speaker 2 You're not seeing the same thing over and over. I'll give you guys more ammunition to do your jobs.

Speaker 1 And it's something since we started this that I'm like, man, I'm sitting here with an arsenal of stuff that I haven't sent to you guys right we have a few that we got that came over and that's one of the themes that i heard and like three different ones that i listened to because they're shorter clips but brotherhood was a common word that was used and these weren't people all in one location it's not like they were all just in phoenix they were in different locations but that word came up again and again making it so that it's and it's everybody says you know family feel but it's having the things the other thing is corporate company a company of in team events right i mean you talk about that all the time.

Speaker 1 Put that in the ad. Like you said, well, we don't have the budget to do team events.

Speaker 1 It doesn't cost a lot to buy a couple of pounds of bacon and a box of Bisquick and get a flat top grill and cook breakfast for everybody.

Speaker 2 Rent out a cheap theater for, I think we're going to try to watch Home Alone at a theater this Christmas. Listen, I have people at my house.
I love doing that stuff.

Speaker 2 I love doing it because it's so much fun to meet the families. And I think...
when you could get the family involved in the hiring process to buy in

Speaker 2 and you could bring bring the wife and kids on some of these interviews and say, we know this is a big, big change and an investment into us.

Speaker 2 And when you get them believing and them accountable, and then I ask everybody to dream a little bit bigger, set a bigger goal, have a bigger bucket list, want more than one house.

Speaker 2 And then we'll help you figure out a way to get there. I mean, it's KPI driven and we're going to have a lot of one-on-ones and we're going to work with you on.
becoming the best version of yourself.

Speaker 2 And now I'm on this health kick like you are and telling people, listen, I want to see you.

Speaker 2 What good is making a lot of money if you can't move and you don't feel good and your back is in pain and you have no energy and no focus. So now I see my guys, they're not drinking as much.

Speaker 2 They're so focused and they're winning. And it's so much fun.

Speaker 2 And the reason I'm saying this because I want to share this with the world and hopefully it wants them to come work for A1 and this, that's what you do.

Speaker 2 I mean, social media, I put out a lot of content personally. We're getting ready to do a lot more with A1.

Speaker 1 How important is that? Oh, it's because like I said, the more that it's there, right? It's just, it's the omnipresence. And like I said, I'm a coach with seven-figure agency.

Speaker 1 One of the things that we teach people is omnipresence. You got to have a presence everywhere they look, they should see you.

Speaker 1 And one of the things that happens is like when you're running ads on Facebook and Instagram for employment, you're looking to hire HVAC technicians or installers or garage door apprentices or plumbers or electricians, whatever it is.

Speaker 1 It actually, because you can't target people, it's discriminating if you target people and for employment ads, it increases your calls for service, especially if you see the phone number on the side of the vehicle.

Speaker 1 People will call that number. And we know that because people have never run an ad on Facebook, didn't even have a Facebook page.

Speaker 1 We had to create one for them, start getting calls because they saw their ads on Facebook. And they don't run ads for service.
We only run the ads for employment.

Speaker 1 So that in itself speaks to the power of the more content you have about your business that's out there, the more places you put it. It doesn't take a lot to make a reason.

Speaker 1 You can do shoot that with your phone and without even any editing and just put it there. So anything you can do to increase that is just, it has amazing impact.

Speaker 1 We're at a time now where people are consuming content faster and on more platforms than they ever have.

Speaker 1 So having an omnipresence, having it where you're on the Facebook Reels, you're posting your Facebook page, you're putting it on your personal stuff.

Speaker 1 I mean, you're case in point, whenever you post stuff, sometimes on your personal, sometimes on a one home service expert, it goes everywhere.

Speaker 1 in order for everybody to give a chance to see it because you don't know where they're going to be. So put it everywhere you possibly can for them to see it and consume it.

Speaker 1 I mean, there's people that have well and have one guy, it's well in septic, it's on TikTok. He's up in Asheville, North Carolina.

Speaker 1 He has a million followers, and all he does is talk about Wellens, Wells, and septic tanks that he's putting in, and different lessons, and different things that happens with his employees.

Speaker 1 And he's got a million followers on TikTok. So, put it everywhere you possibly can.

Speaker 1 Everything you can do for branding, everything you can do for awareness is just going to help you whenever it comes to getting people's attention. People are going to want to come work for you.

Speaker 2 You know, I'm a big performance pay.

Speaker 2 I think you get to eat what you kill and i don't have any limits of how much somebody can make as a technician or an installer you've worked with companies that just do hourly and you work with a lot to do performance what are the difference in candidates and what do you think works better and why what i've been seeing is there's the pure hourly and then and then there's a pure performance but what i've been seeing is the hybrid It's the companies that are kind of scared to go to the full performance pay or they have employees that are scared to go to it.

Speaker 1 So they offer a mixture. But the employees that only want to work hourly or want to get paid an hourly rate,

Speaker 1 they typically are not as, they're probably going to be better on the installation side of the equation than they're going to be on the service side of the equation.

Speaker 1 Because if they're getting paid hourly, they're going to do usually what they have to do in order just to fix the issue for the homeowner.

Speaker 1 And not, which they think sometimes is, you know, the least expensive way they can do it is the best. And we both know that's not always the case.
It needs to be the best solution.

Speaker 1 So the people that are more geared towards performance pay, they not only diagnose and repair, but they sell the homeowner the best solution.

Speaker 1 And when I say sell, I don't mean like sell them something they don't need. Everything we do is a sales, we do sales, right?

Speaker 1 Everything we do, we have to share the options with them of the choices that have to basically of the best solution for their situation. So the performance pay.
people you see are more go-getters.

Speaker 1 They're the ones that don't hesitate to do the assessments and go all the way through the process and do the video interview. The ones that are more on the hourly side, you'll get them saying,

Speaker 1 I just want to show up for the interview. I don't want to do these things.
You want to have somebody, I had this conversation, I had the conversation with a client yesterday.

Speaker 1 They said, well, I asked everybody at our company if they would do the assessments and they said they wouldn't do it if they would do the video interview and they wouldn't do it.

Speaker 1 I was like, well, that's the people that are already there.

Speaker 1 We do this with other 250 companies across the U.S. and Canada.

Speaker 1 We want to bring you people that are excited to come to work for you that will take a few extra steps in order to get the opportunity to work for you.

Speaker 1 And that's why we put the things in place that we do. And you see that with, you know, and some companies are strictly hourly and we do a great job recruiting for them as well.

Speaker 1 But the performance pace-based people tend to move through things quicker and have a higher attitude and aptitude typically than the ones that just are looking for an hourly job.

Speaker 2 I had a great question and I brain farmed it. I just thought of it.
And then I thought about what you were talking about.

Speaker 2 So I feel like CSRs, dispatchers, technicians, and installers are easier for you to find, especially when you got a training program because you hire for attitude.

Speaker 2 I feel like, how often do you look for like a VP or general manager or stuff like that? I mean, is Rabbit Hire set up for that?

Speaker 3 Not really.

Speaker 3 You're going to find those people.

Speaker 1 Typically, you're going to find them on LinkedIn and we don't do anything on LinkedIn. We'd rather be specific with what we do.

Speaker 1 Now, that being said, I mean, like production managers, call-to-call managers, comfort advisors, those, those are still in that realm of what we do.

Speaker 1 VPs or C-level, that's just literally not what we do. It's not, we're not going to do a great job at it, and we don't, we don't profess to do it.
But we'll give you some ideas of things you can do.

Speaker 1 But our focus is the home service, the core of the home service industry of the installers, CSRs, dispatchers, technicians. operations managers, we do great getting hiring salespeople.

Speaker 1 But once it gets above that, we're not really the right fit for that how many people do you think you guys have hired in the last 12 months in the last 12 months it's over the last two years it's over 2300.

Speaker 2 the last 12 months it's over 1500 in the last 12 months who's the best company that you've ever worked with i mean a1 is everywhere hopefully it was a one but other than a one that you've worked with that you're like Can you think of one offhand or one of the top five?

Speaker 1 Yeah, so it's Den Defenders. They're out of Mike's Mobile, out of California and California and Texas.
The way that, I mean, we've helped them hire probably, I would say, well over a dozen people.

Speaker 1 Actually, he was there at vertical track. He said that the service we provide them is the most amazing thing that they've ever had.

Speaker 1 It's the best value that they've ever had from someone providing service. And it's easy because they pay well, they have great branding.

Speaker 1 and they move quickly because it's Mike and his fiancé who that she's responsible for that that role.

Speaker 1 And as soon as something comes in that looks like it's a good candidate, they're on it immediately and they move.

Speaker 2 That's what I was going to ask you, all the things that they do well that really make them successful.

Speaker 1 It's their license, it's the branding, it's the way that the ads are positioned, the benefits that they have, and also the speed of implementation.

Speaker 1 Another great one that we work with is Fitzpatrick Painting. I know you know them.
They've come to Vertical Track. They were at Pantheon.

Speaker 1 I mean, this is results not typical, but they embraced this instantly as soon as we came through and started running ads.

Speaker 1 And they hired over a dozen people in the first couple of weeks of working with us because they were calling people as soon as the leads came in.

Speaker 1 Now, we do all the filtering and things, but our clients can be as involved up front in the process or they can wait till we bring them a candidate and say, look, this looks like it fits your avatar.

Speaker 1 But it's the same thing with Fitzpatrick. I mean, they're just on it.

Speaker 1 And I feel remiss not mentioning like everybody, but when you've worked with 250 companies across the US and Canada, and then there's the clients that we just absolutely love, like CNC Chimney or Cody at Garage Door Doctor, those guys that propose, they embrace it as well.

Speaker 1 And they're happy that we're there. They're excited that we're helping them.
And that's the other thing.

Speaker 1 Once we're working with somebody that's not excited to work with us after we've gotten started, then we'll be the first one to say, you know, it's probably not going to be a fit now that we've started working together.

Speaker 1 We try to make that not happen, but sometimes it does.

Speaker 2 You know, one of the things I've realized the last couple of years is a lot of times what got you here won't get you to the next level.

Speaker 2 And sometimes we just stick with the guys that have been loyal to us, which we should, but also their mindset is kind of stuck. And I think now more than ever, we're going into a soft economy.

Speaker 2 I mean, that's for certain. I mean, I'm in a text message with Ishmael and Christiano and Chad Peterman and Aaron Gaynor and a lot of other guys.
And we talk all the time.

Speaker 2 You know, it's hard to hit budget. There's things going on.

Speaker 2 And I think right now is the best time to be top grading and looking out there for talent and figuring out how do you either move them up or move them out quickly.

Speaker 2 Because if you're not making these decisions and you're not actively looking for great people, I mean, I had a meeting in Flatstaff a month ago, and that's all I talked about is bring me five out of five.

Speaker 2 And I said, don't just depend on Jody and his team. I said, you guys need to be networking, going to events, going at restaurants.
You guys need to be going to BNI groups.

Speaker 2 We're getting everybody into BNI groups. And I said, you know, they're going to bring you great candidates, but our speed, the best people comes through relationships.

Speaker 2 And they're still going to go on indeed in Glassdoor. They're going to look at how we're rated.
But, you know, you guys do a fantastic job, but our job is not just to rely on you only.

Speaker 2 It should be managers making a deep impact in that community. And

Speaker 2 bring me somebody you'd bet your whole bonus on. And you'd bet that they're going to win.
And you're like, don't bring me, hey, man, after a year of training, this guy, a little more self-belief.

Speaker 2 I think they could potentially be a really good candidate if we work with them for a while. You know, right now they don't have any money.
They're living with their parents.

Speaker 2 They really just had a down on luck. I'm like, bring me somebody that's going to be an A-plus player from day one.
We don't have time to fix self-belief.

Speaker 2 Like, don't bring me somebody that could barely, they're stuttering all over the place.

Speaker 2 I'm like, you know, well, uh, but bring me somebody you'd buy from today that you'd be like, I could leave that guy in front of my wife and my two daughters, my two young daughters at home, and you'd feel secure leaving him there with them.

Speaker 1 And I mean, referrals are always going to be a great source, whether it's the area managers going out and finding people or the people that are already the technicians that are out there working on a daily basis, because they want to bring people on that are going to be good team members that are going to help elevate, word for your book, elevate the whole team into doing a better job.

Speaker 1 It's going to help them be a better person.

Speaker 1 When you structure it that way and you help them understand the core values that that person needs to meet, then that kind of gives them the framework of who to bring to the table.

Speaker 1 And so yeah, referrals are always going to be great, but eventually, you know, you will have to come back to widening it up and letting people know about the opportunity.

Speaker 1 Because the really thing is, is that if you have a great company and you're a great place to work and people love working for you, the people that you want to have work for you are out there.

Speaker 1 You just have to get the opportunity in front of them in a way that's going to be appealing to them, that's going to cause them to take that step. And it's, you know, you have to be proactive.

Speaker 1 I've seen you at restaurants give the waiter your card and your cell phone number and say, if you ever want to look at a way to have a career that you're doing more than you're doing here, you're doing a great job at this restaurant.

Speaker 1 I'm sure you're making a lot of money, but I have something that I think you might want to take a look at. Give me a call and let's see what we can do for you.
I've watched you.

Speaker 2 Yeah, follow up and then follow up again and then follow up again with them. Make them feel important.
Make them think that you want them. Not just, hey, listen, you seem like a nice guy.

Speaker 2 Come work for us. Get their name, get their story, really, and then send a personalized video to them.
When you see, like, you come across a candidate and you're like, man, this person is like gold.

Speaker 2 Well, let me give you a little backstory. Keegan came into my office one time and he said, this is not the material.
This place, you don't have a coffee machine, like a real one.

Speaker 2 This place, there's no graphics on the walls. The lighting sucks.
You barely have a sign up front at my last office. He said, you got to make a place that people felt honored to go into.

Speaker 2 It's organized. It's clean.
There's a lot of amenities.

Speaker 2 And don't meet people at Starbucks. Have a nice office.
Like, what do you see that you must hear some stories of great candidates that fell through?

Speaker 2 What are some of the reasons other than bad reviews?

Speaker 1 It's how the company is portrayed to them.

Speaker 1 One of the things that we can't really do really well is and i there's no fault everybody has to start somewhere but if you're running your company out of your garage a lot of times you're not going to get a players are going to want to come to an interview in your garage right if you're running the business out of the garage that's or if you have i mean i always talk i always talk about with the video interview that if you're talking to the person it looks like it's they're like they're on the set of hoarders probably not going to be a good fit for you because that's how they're going to treat your equipment I get on calls all the time with business owners that look like they're on the set of, not all the time, every now and then.

Speaker 1 with and i can't use that that example because they look like they're sitting on the set of orders and i think to myself how am i going to bring someone out of here to interview and and help portray you as a top company whenever this is i know this is what they're going to walk into it looks like chaos or they're you're working out of a shed or those kind of things everybody has to start somewhere i mean you mentioned my office now i mean you know my last office was in a shed but you couldn't tell because it was you know it was all it looked like basically like my background now which isn't a background it's a real but anyway so you have to set professional appearance in order to be able to, you know, meeting with Starbucks, they're going to, everybody's looking for something to be a scam or not live up to the hype.

Speaker 2 People always say to me, I thought this was a Ponzi scheme or something. It sounded too good to be true.

Speaker 1 Right. I mean, look at Jeff Gilsburg with Jolly Goat.
I mean, they just rebranded, right? They had with this Jolly Goat garage doors and they're redoing their office.

Speaker 1 And Chad over there working with him has done a great job doing interviews and helping schedule interviews and bring people in.

Speaker 1 But now with their new office and their new branding, it's like night and day the difference that even, and you can tell the difference in how they feel about themselves with that newer office and with that, you know, the branding and everything.

Speaker 1 They present differently than they did whenever it was Garage Door 405 or Garage Door Solutions before. So, yeah, all of those things are immensely important.

Speaker 1 Now, that being said, it doesn't mean you can't. It doesn't mean we don't help people that have average branding and that we don't do a good job.

Speaker 1 It just makes it so much easier whenever they do have all those things in place.

Speaker 2 You know, one of the problems I have with my own company was I felt like everybody interviewed differently. There was no really standard operating procedures.
There was no checklist to make sure.

Speaker 2 How do you compare five people when you're asking all different questions? What do you think is important things when it goes through you guys and you say this is a great person?

Speaker 2 And you guys have more interviewing experience than probably anybody that I know. But I wonder what we could do as business leaders and evolve our people to ask the right questions.

Speaker 2 One of the questions I ask is, what's something you did when you were younger in school? Did you play the piano, do karate? Did you have a passion for anything?

Speaker 2 And if people say, no, you know, I didn't really wasn't involved with anything.

Speaker 2 Did you get excited about anything? Did you have to go to like practice every day at something to become better at it? And I don't know, I'm not the best interviewer.

Speaker 2 I got to tell you, I'm not as involved as I used to be because I used to sit there and try to sell people on us. When I was doing the interviewing, I'd be like, oh, you should see.

Speaker 2 And I talk most of the interview. And this is 10 years ago, but I was not good.
And I'd be like, trying to sell them versus you got to sell me on you.

Speaker 2 So what's some of the questions and some of the things that we should be thinking about when we're doing that type of thing?

Speaker 1 You want to have them,

Speaker 1 you got to ask questions in a way that's going to get them to not have a standard answer for you. You got to have an obstacle, like a situational answer.

Speaker 1 So one of the things that, because everybody, they would tell me about three of your strengths and three of your weaknesses. And everybody knows to take the weakness and turn it into a strength.

Speaker 1 Some people say i work too hard yeah i work too hard and i go i'm just i'm always i'm a little bit compulsive about getting things done and neat yeah so one of the ways around that is when we call your last employer and we ask them what your weakness it was what do you think they're going to tell us right that gets them to stop and think about what it's going to be and the other thing that we have found to be very effective is what do you feel is your greatest accomplishment right today

Speaker 1 and if they say i graduated from high school when they're 35 years old, not a lot of ambition there, right?

Speaker 1 You want to know, or one of the things that we ask, and it's, you know, what is the last book you read? And if they say, do you read all? Yeah, what's the last book you read?

Speaker 1 And if they can't think about it, that tells you, I mean, it doesn't matter. It could be Harry Potter.

Speaker 1 But if they read a book, they're actually doing something with their mind other than just vegetating. But, you know, tell what is, what do you think your supervisor is going to say your weakness is?

Speaker 1 And what's your greatest accomplishment so far?

Speaker 2 I just had Dan Martel in town.

Speaker 1 And I'll back your

Speaker 2 I've learned so much from that dude just in the last month. And he was at Joe Paulish's event and

Speaker 2 we talk a lot about the same things, but he's pretty remarkable. One of the things that was really impactful to me that he said, and it should be already out on the podcast.

Speaker 2 I'm not sure if it made it out yet. But he said, you know, Tommy, I buy exactly how I want to be bought from.
He goes, I never try to negotiate.

Speaker 2 He goes, if somebody tells me 10 grand to join something or be part of it, or I get a VIP ticket, I just pay. He's like, but then when I ask a price, I just expect people to pay.

Speaker 2 And I was thinking about it. Like some people, I ask $30,000 for their, to replace their garage doors.

Speaker 2 And then I get people that come to me all the time and they're like, I can never get that kind of money. Like people don't spend that money with our company.

Speaker 2 It's not, and a lot of the times they'll say, I'm not in the right area or that mindset.

Speaker 3 They can't.

Speaker 2 But they literally, but then you go to tell them, like, I'm sure you give them the price of what you charge, regardless if it's a lot or if it's a little.

Speaker 1 And they're like, oh, no.

Speaker 2 And like, I thought about this earlier. I got a double espresso shot, and I used to reuse my cups.

Speaker 2 I used to beat, like, I used to turn every thermostat up, you know, to make sure it's, it's not cold, but it's not warm. But now I keep it nice and chilly in here.

Speaker 2 And sometimes people wear sweatshirts in the summer because I think it's comfortable for a lot of people.

Speaker 2 And they can put on a sweatshirt, but you can't, there's only so much clothes you could take off. So I'm like, man, I would never buy like I used to want to be bought in from.

Speaker 2 And now I'm like, I take people out to really nice dinners. And I know money's been good to me, but I'm just saying, like, people won't invest $1,000 in a ticket to get them the right help.

Speaker 2 They won't listen to a podcast. They won't invest in themselves.
But yet they wonder why people will not do the things that they want them to do.

Speaker 2 And if you're not with the mindset of, yes, I invest into myself, I invest into my home. I buy the best when people offer me the best.

Speaker 2 Like I just replaced all my hot water heaters with the best tankless hot water heaters money could buy. And I thought about that.
And I'm like, man, I'm really buying how I want to be bought from now.

Speaker 1 And you have to look at the value that you're getting, right? Because you've got those high-end tankless water heaters.

Speaker 1 And I had one at my other house, and it's amazing because you'd never run out of hot water. It's always there.
It's on demand. It's immediate.

Speaker 1 But one of the things that whenever I start talking, before I ever get to the point of telling people what our services cost, which is very reasonable, I say I'm training a new salesperson that's been on our team for about a year.

Speaker 1 And they're like, I didn't realize how reasonable our prices were because they didn't know. They're just fulfilling the services, right?

Speaker 1 And not that it was a secret, but just they never had a cause to ever look at it, is I ask, what is your UMR for having an empty truck sitting out in the yard?

Speaker 1 Because most of the people that are talking to me have empty trucks. They're looking to hire people.
They have empty trucks sitting there.

Speaker 1 And the UMR, their unrealized monthly revenue from an empty truck sitting there, if they're any good, should be between $30,000 to $50,000 a month. Now, granted, I know that's not profit.

Speaker 1 You got to put your profit margin in there, but it doesn't take hiring one person to pay for our services for an entire year, but yet people still see it as too expensive and it's not that it's too expensive it's that you don't want to invest that much in getting the top talent for your company you're looking to like i said there's no such thing as good and cheap right so we're not expensive but you have to look at what is the value and just like you are buying now based on on value people have to do the same thing i mean i've i've always been that way i've always when we go to dinner i don't look at the price on the menu i order what i want i have a 17-year-old daughter who i think that she only looks at the price on the menu and then orders the most expensive thing even if she doesn't know what it is.

Speaker 1 So, um, but yeah, so you have to look at think that what is the value that you're getting from it, not just how much does it cost? Because price is a one-time thing, cost is a lifetime thing.

Speaker 1 You have to look at it. You buy something on price, you buy a bicycle to 50 bucks and it lasts for a year.
You can buy one for $200, it lasts for 10 years, which was the better deal.

Speaker 2 Yeah, you know, I think a lot of these companies out there, they read a lot, they do their research and they start, they start getting the benefits, and they think that's going to attract people.

Speaker 2 But me recently partnering or basically buying a lot of companies and interviewing, I just interviewed two texts from A Authentic that switched over to A1 and they're like, whether it's, I could go through company after company after company where they're like, it seemed like a fairy tale.

Speaker 2 Like we came here and we've got more people to support us.

Speaker 2 We've got better meetings. We appreciate the camaraderie.
We did, because they came from a place they didn't have it. You know, their trucks broke down a lot.

Speaker 2 and what the guys just said i was forced to drive sometimes an hour and a half between jobs he said the biggest thing i like is you'll leave me on the job as long as you want the dispatchers they'll readjust the schedule so i can spend the time with the client and fix it right the first time and it was just amazing to listen to the different things that were important to people and they're like one of the guys said i was number one at the company I was number one at Authentic every week, every month, every quarter, every year.

Speaker 2 And I've been there 14 years. And he goes, now I'm coming in and I'm like number 25.
And he's like, It's crazy. He's like, Now I gotta, now I'm excited.

Speaker 2 He goes, I'd be going to pinnacle, except I used to have to install all my own doors. And I, I had pride.
I'd say, if I sell it, I'm going to install it.

Speaker 2 He goes, now I'm like, I don't want to install my own doors because I know we're going to get them installed correctly, but now I'm going to do what I do best. I'm a specialist.

Speaker 2 And I just got to, you know, I'm going to send you all these recordings so you guys can look at them and just chop them up and do what you want to attract.

Speaker 1 I think it was amazing. The video you have is a Seth for Don's Garage when you went in there and did the rebranding and got him new vehicles.

Speaker 1 And they said, you know, he used to run 11 calls a day and now he runs four and makes more money.

Speaker 2 And now he's the manager of that whole market.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I know. He was there at your house whenever I was there a few weeks ago.
He's the manager there. So it's just that.
I mean, he looks different. He looks younger now than he did in the video.

Speaker 1 I didn't realize that was him when I saw him because he looks so much livelier and younger than he did in the video because he looked like he was just like, rode hard and put away wet kind of.

Speaker 1 And that's not a, it's not a bad. He's just, he was a different work environment.

Speaker 1 Your whole continent changes when you work somewhere that you really love and that's the whole thing that about it is making it so that you have a place that you can do that but it takes you investing in the business in order to treat them as your employees are your internal customers and you have to look at it that way and i think that now that i've seen what can happen if we really believe in people and really really really want them to dream bigger and help them figure out ways you know i had I interviewed Seth out of Boise, one of my dearest pinnacle club, great techs, great leader, bought in.

Speaker 2 And it broke my heart. I was just interviewing.

Speaker 2 I went and talked to Robert in marketing. He said, I'm going to go to Reno because I really want to make Pinnacle this year, but I just don't have enough jobs.

Speaker 2 And it made me feel like shit because I'm doing the best I could, but we could do better.

Speaker 2 I never want somebody to say I wasn't able to make my numbers because I didn't have enough calls, like one call a day or two calls. Like I like to get three, maybe four tops.

Speaker 2 As a leader, I feel like I'm failing if I can't give them an opportunity to make bonuses and hit this big big trip we go on and have a stake in the outcome.

Speaker 2 And it just, it's so important that I have this feedback loop when I do these interviews. I can't interview every single technician,

Speaker 2 but I really thought to myself, man, I need to do a better job. They're counting on me.
We gave them this job that we said we'd have clients knocking the door.

Speaker 2 And so we're very careful of who we're hiring now because we used to have so many people on a minimum. And we'd always talk to marketing and say, we need more leads.
We need more leads.

Speaker 2 We need more leads. And there were some leads we were paying $7 a phone call just to get a lead.
We just, and we weren't paying attention to the small things. So now we're hiring when we need people.

Speaker 2 And we're starting to build more of a formula and getting someone in the marketing department.

Speaker 1 I mean, Robert's next level.

Speaker 2 I mean, Jim did a great job. Chase was amazing.
But Robert came from this. He's like, I'll be able to double the leads by summer.
That's what I tasked him with.

Speaker 2 And I said, Robert, I don't want you to think about marketing only for clients. 50% of what we do is marketing for great people because we send the wrong person in that home.

Speaker 2 We give them a one-star experience. I don't care if it ends up a one-star on Google Yelper next door or Facebook.
I care about how they felt.

Speaker 2 And they're going to use us again and tell everybody they're going to become a raving fan. The net promoter score is going to be top, top tier.

Speaker 2 And we've got to think if we get the best of the best candidates and we get the jobs to go along with it, I don't necessarily need more calls right now. Not in every market.

Speaker 1 What I need to do is sell service agreements in every job and give them an opportunity to sell a new door at every job within these four walls and book every opportunity and make sure those convert make sure we're getting reviews and i think so many people are calling their marketing company saying i need more leads like when you got into this everybody needed people and i'm sure you're seeing as the marketing's turning a little bit i mean it's it's people it's slowing down because people aren't that because it's i mean if you look at it i think it was you posted it and somebody posted underneath there there's been a million less air conditioning units sold in the u.s in the last 12 months than there were the previous 12 months So it doesn't need, you don't need to slow down on your recruiting.

Speaker 1 What you need to do is shift your recruiting to where you're looking to bring people in so that you can talk great, so that you can make sure that you have the right people that are in there.

Speaker 1 So while it is slowing down as far as how many people are needing to recruit, it's not slowing down as far as being able to identify and bring in the more quality people.

Speaker 1 It gives people a chance to be more selective. because in what they're doing today.
And so it helps invite doing that, but that's putting the disk profile and putting the skills assessments in place.

Speaker 1 It's helping them make a better quality decision rather than having to jump and just looking at a resume and say, yeah, let's bring them in. So those are some of the things that we're seeing.

Speaker 2 Really, when I brought you guys in to help A1, I needed as many and like I was like, get these classes filled.

Speaker 2 And I would say, I wouldn't say necessarily fog them here, but I mean, I was like, bring them in.

Speaker 2 bring them in bring them in bring them in because we had you know we were spoiled during covet it was like you got this money we were essential, people were spending more time at home.

Speaker 2 The demand was through the roof. I always tell people: if you didn't make money during COVID, like a lot of money, you probably don't deserve to be in business.

Speaker 2 And now you're seeing kind of a shift, but this is the most important time to be hiring because now you need to get the right people running those calls.

Speaker 2 Because if you're not having the right person run every single call that's optimizing every single piece of that opportunity and leaving a wow, creating a raving fan, then you're not going to make it very much longer.

Speaker 2 And keeping the people that are five out of five is the biggest mistake I've seen. And either you need to train more, have better one-on-ones and motivate them, or you need to up or out.

Speaker 1 Yep. And managing it the right way, keeping track of exactly what they're doing.
So yeah, it's the prime opportunity for doing that. And the other thing is that it's slowing down.

Speaker 1 The slowdown is coming. Therefore, you have to have technicians now

Speaker 1 that are taking the time with the homeowner and helping them make the decision because it's going to take more of a process, more of a sales process today than it did a year ago in order to help them make the right decision based on the situation.

Speaker 1 So it even becomes more critical now than it.

Speaker 1 You may not have the need for as many people, but you have the need for a higher level of people typically than what you did before.

Speaker 2 I'm going to read you a quote I saw online and it really hit home. There's nothing that demotivates a high performer like a low performer who's still on a team.

Speaker 2 And A players want to work with A players across the board. They want the A players taking the calls, A players dispatching, and the dispatchers want A players that are willing to take the call.

Speaker 2 They're going to leave the customer fully equipped to make the decision and make sure all the information is within the CRM and the payment was taken.

Speaker 2 They got all their T's crossed and I's dotted for the financing promotions. And I think that's 100% true.
And so many people. They keep top performers, but they might be C players.

Speaker 2 They might get a lot of warranty calls. They might treat the dispatchers and CSRs like shit.
And they allow this to happen because they're paying the bills, but they're not managing those people.

Speaker 2 I can't tell you enough, Jody. I've seen top performers fired at companies and all of a sudden everybody starts rising.
They say, man, this guy actually did the right thing by firing this guy.

Speaker 1 And they all do better.

Speaker 2 And the owners call me up and they say, I should have done that a year ago.

Speaker 3 Yeah, I mean, it's like an, it's almost like an exorcism, right?

Speaker 1 That person's gone and the whole, the culture elevates because the pressure is not there. And I've had it it in my own company where we've had somebody that was basically wasn't a team player.

Speaker 1 I mean, we've recently changed our core values to ones that you can embody and nobody will forget.

Speaker 1 We just have four, but they're very simple, they're very easy, and you can tell immediately. And your core values should be something that you will fire for.

Speaker 1 If they don't meet that core value, that you will fire for the person not meeting that core value.

Speaker 1 But the other thing is, it needs to be simple enough that everybody on the team knows if they're embodying the core values or not. You know, ours are pretty simple.

Speaker 1 Ours is show up, be kind, leave without title. And the main one is gives a shit.

Speaker 1 Those are my core values because you can tell real quick

Speaker 1 if they're doing that. And if they're not, they got to go.

Speaker 2 Well, everybody wears the bracelet, aspire to be number one now at this company, or they should be wearing it. And people ask what that means.
And I'm like, no matter what I do.

Speaker 2 I want to become the best version of myself. I want to better my best.
I want to do better than I did last week. And aspire to be number one.
It means be number one when I show up.

Speaker 2 It means I like to win.

Speaker 1 I don't play to participate.

Speaker 2 I play to win. And it means I look at the leaderboard and I say, I want to call the guy at the number one spot and I want to find out what he's doing.
It just doesn't mean sales.

Speaker 2 It means he's not getting any warranties. He's getting five out of five stars from every customer.
He's getting high service to sales. He's selling service agreements.

Speaker 2 And so we set up scorecards for the whole team.

Speaker 2 We're going to talk about that at a different podcast, the scorecard tracking and making sure that people are, that they understand how to win the game and KPIs and how to move the needle and how to see it at a moment's notice.

Speaker 1 Yeah, we're, we're working on something I think everybody will be excited about, but it's just, it's kind of like Saturday Night Live, not yet ready for primetime players, but we're pretty close.

Speaker 2 So I really buy back your time and come up for air was a great book recently. And, you know, I buy a lot of books and I devour books, but I'll tell you this.

Speaker 2 There's some of them that just couldn't even tell you that I've read so many books, I couldn't even tell tell you the title of them. And some of them I just fly through and I love.

Speaker 2 Some of them I just fly through the first chapter. I'm like, I'm done.
And I've got so many books. People bring me books.
They know I like to read. And I'm like, and I buy a lot of them.

Speaker 2 And it's just easy for me to devour books. But is there anything that really has talked about Dan Martell?

Speaker 1 I have his book right here.

Speaker 1 But one of them that I have that I'm reading, I'm going through right now that I think is amazing.

Speaker 1 Because I've got a lot of books that are by Ben Hardy and Dan Sullivan. And the one that right right now is 10x.

Speaker 1 It's not transactional, it's transformational when you think about 10x because it has to be something different.

Speaker 1 You've done it yourself, you've done it, you've 100x'd, you've 10x'd 10 times, and you have to look when you look back at it and see it.

Speaker 1 We all have, and we've had to in order to get where we're at, but we got to start looking at what is the next 10x that's going to get you there.

Speaker 1 And that's, I would recommend everybody take that, buy the book, and listen to it. I know you listen to a lot of stuff on Audible as well, and so I would recommend that.

Speaker 1 And then that, and not only buy back your time, but who, not how. That's another great one.

Speaker 2 Very good. I'd like to close, give you an opportunity.
First of all, Jody, if somebody wants to reach out to you personally or get a hold of Rapid Hire, what's the best way to do that?

Speaker 3 The easiest thing is just this real, I mean, it's real simple, rapidhirepro.com.

Speaker 1 There's a big button in the upper right-hand corner. Just hit schedule.
Whenever you schedule a call, it's a 30-minute call. It's with me.

Speaker 1 I want to understand a little bit about your company and what you're looking to hire.

Speaker 1 And I'm going to share with you everything about how we operate, what we do, show you examples of ads and so that you have information that you're going to be able to utilize to make a decision.

Speaker 1 And even if we're not the right fit, there's information you're going to get from that, but you can take and implement yourself.

Speaker 1 We show you, I pull back the curtains to show you everything that we do because I want everybody. We're in business, yeah, to make money, but we're in business to help people.

Speaker 1 And so, I encourage everybody to take advantage of that. And I don't know how much longer I'm going to only be the guy that's going to be doing the calls.

Speaker 1 So, go ahead and get it done sooner rather than later because then you might be talking to the next guy that's going to be doing those calls.

Speaker 1 And I'll give you a chance to close this out whatever you want to something that'll hit home for people so no matter who you want to hire whether they're experienced or whether they're inexperienced whether they're in your industry or not in your industry if they have a great attitude and aptitude and it's somebody that you want to have come work for your company they're already working for someone else Your job is to get your information in front of them so they can see that you have a better opportunity than where they're currently at, because otherwise you're never going to get the quality player, the top talent that you deserve for your company.

Speaker 1 So you got to do something to get your message in front of them.

Speaker 2 I love it. Well, Jody, it's always a pleasure.
I'll be seeing you next week.

Speaker 1 I appreciate your time today. Thanks, Don.

Speaker 2 Got a lot of notes here. I'm going to be sending you some info.

Speaker 1 Thank you. You got it.

Speaker 2 Hey there. Thanks for tuning into the podcast today.
Before I let you go, I want to let everybody know that Elevate is out and ready to buy.

Speaker 2 I can share with you how I attracted a winning team of over 700 employees in over 20 states. The insights in this book are powerful and can be applied to any business or organization.

Speaker 2 It's a real game changer for anyone looking to build and develop a high-performing team like over here at A1 Garage Door Service.

Speaker 2 So, if you want to learn the secrets to help me transfer my team from stealing the toilet paper to a group of 700-plus employees growing in the same direction, head over to elevateandwin.com forward slash podcast and grab a copy of the book.

Speaker 2 Thanks again for listening, and we'll catch up with you next time on the podcast.