Winning the War for Talent - How To Attract and Retain the Best Employees

Speaker 1 There's a couple of things.

Speaker 1 One of the things is the positioning of the message to get the A players, because here's the thing: it's not just about the money that they're making for you on a daily basis, it's about the other intangibles that those A players are bringing to the table.

Speaker 1 You know, they're getting you five-star reviews, they're not calling in sick, you know, they're answering the questions, the calls aren't getting past them, coming in from complaints, and that type of thing.

Speaker 1 But the main reason is Craigslist and Indeed, and those places, what you're doing is you're only getting the people that are going actively searching.

Speaker 1 It's kind of like going to the unemployment line to find people. And it's not necessarily always the best place.
And there's nothing wrong with job boards.

Speaker 1 There's nothing wrong with it whenever you do get applications and leads from there.

Speaker 1 But what you have to do is position it so that you're advertising for employees the way you would advertise for a customer.

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 Mellow.

Speaker 1 Welcome to the Home Service Expert. Today's a really, really cool message because I got a buddy of mine here, Jodi Underhill,

Speaker 1 who's really been a friend of mine for a long time now. So, Jody, first and foremost, how's the weather?

Speaker 1 Cold. That's why I'm wearing a jacket.
So I'm going to do this. I'm going to introduce you.
I'll talk a little bit about our history. Jody's worked with a lot of awesome people through his life.

Speaker 1 He really impressive track record. He's an expert in digital marketing, advertising, lead generation, business consulting, training.
He's based out of Greenville,

Speaker 1 South Carolina. Founder of Rapid Hire.
He's a director in Green Elephant Agency. Appointment nerds is one of his companies.

Speaker 1 He's the founder of Upside Down Iceberg, which is an older company company back in the day when we were doing things like Traffic Geyser with Michael Keenan.

Speaker 1 Worked with a ton of people, people like Russell Brunson. He ran his program.
Josh Nelson ran his program. Frank Kern knows him really well.
Ryan Dice, Perry Belcher, you name it.

Speaker 1 Jody Underhill is an accomplished social media strategist who worked with various marketing experts. Like I said, the director of numerous companies in the digital space.

Speaker 1 He's helped over 150 businesses in development of their marketing strategy. And a lot of these are Fortune Hunter companies.
Awesome show today.

Speaker 1 Probably going to be one of my favorite shows of all time. And I've had Michael Gerber on here.
So, this is one I want to get out there because, number one, I'm working with you.

Speaker 1 Number two, you're just a really good guy. You don't screw people over.

Speaker 1 Even in adversity, when maybe you didn't work with the best people to fulfill their end of the bargain, you stayed and made it happen when you didn't have to. And Vanessa

Speaker 1 is right there. And you guys are just the most amazing power couple ever.
So let me let you introduce yourself. I'm super paying attention.
I'm just going to share this a couple of times. Yeah.

Speaker 1 So go do that. Yeah.
So just to kind of tell the story of how, you know, because a lot of people that come around, there's like, oh, they're, they're new kind of relationships.

Speaker 1 I've known Tommy for over 10 years. I've known him back whenever he had like three trucks.
I remember the first time I met him, I was speaking on stage in San Diego, actually.

Speaker 1 I met him and my wife the same day at the same conference, which is kind of funny. But I was speaking on stage.
I came off stage and he came up to me.

Speaker 1 He's like, hey, my name is Tommy Mellow and I'm different. And I'm like, yeah, you are.
It didn't quite go like that. But he's like, I'm different.

Speaker 1 I'm using this for marketing my own business and I'm interested in doing that. I'm going to revolutionize the garage door industry and I'm on a committed mission and I'm going to do that.

Speaker 1 And I hear those kind of things a lot.

Speaker 1 And so, especially whenever digital marketing was so brand new and there were so many things happening, and I kind of patted him on the back, gave him the thumbs up and said, you get him, Tigers.

Speaker 1 And he did. I mean, here we are, you have 400 employees later.

Speaker 1 and tommy's been to my house uh when we came we kind of put together some stuff that was sort of like the precursor to home service expert and put those things in place and then i guess about

Speaker 1 been about seven months ago back in june of last year my wife reached out to him and said hey tom if you're needing to recruit people you need to check out what we're doing in the trucking space so we kind of got started in

Speaker 1 in trucking because somebody came to me they were having an issue trying to get things in place. And I looked at it and we kind of helped them out with that.

Speaker 1 And I said, you know, we should do this ourselves. So we started doing recruiting and trucking.
And within a short period of time, brought in a bunch of trucking clients.

Speaker 1 And what we found is that it gets tough to get truck drivers because they got to stay out three weeks at a time.

Speaker 1 So what we found in home services is guys can make just about the same money and they're home every night. And it's easier to have the conversation.

Speaker 1 So in a market where it's very tough right now, it's employees in the market everywhere. I mean, come on, you go drive by McDonald's and you see they have owned a billboard.

Speaker 1 I mean, right in Traveler's Rest and here, like south of where I live, it's a tiny little town. They got it on their marquee $400 sign-on bonus and $16 an hour and pay for college tuition.

Speaker 1 You know, it's competitive everywhere. So what is it that's going to cause somebody to see something and be attracted to work-home work-for-home service company versus companies like that?

Speaker 1 I mean, you go through the, we go to a little pizza joint and they've got a sign in the window, now hiring, everywhere you go.

Speaker 1 It's funny, I was out in Phoenix back in November and where Tommy's office is, there's a Wendy's kind of caddy corner across the street.

Speaker 1 And I went over there and to get something and they had a big sign that's like, work today, get paid tomorrow. So, I mean, it's everywhere.

Speaker 1 But what we've done is kind of identified how to get the right message, first the right message, and then getting in front of the people and getting an audience and doing it in a way that's kind of different than what most people are doing right now.

Speaker 1 And that's sort of where we went. And we've been doing this with Tommy now for

Speaker 1 quite a while, since July of last year, and we're having an impact there. And that's one of the reasons that

Speaker 1 he tells everybody about it, you know, because it is having an impact. It's been had more of an impact than just about anything else.
And that's why we're here.

Speaker 1 So I'm going to do my best to make sure this time is well worth your while and that you walk away from here with things that you can take and implement no matter what you choose to do.

Speaker 1 Well, there's nothing more important than getting great people right now. Some people like the top grade.
I'm a big fan of coaching.

Speaker 1 If you guys haven't read this book, I talk about it a lot, the coaching effect. Listen, at the end of the day, one A player equals three B players.
No one could find great people.

Speaker 1 It's hard to find trucks, supply chain issues. But as I post in my different groups and I'm reading everything, I just can't get people to show up.

Speaker 1 And the biggest thing I hear is, Tommy, I've done it. I've posted on Craigslist.
And for some reason, there's a misconception, Jodi.

Speaker 1 You know, I found out I spent $385,000 on pay-per-click last month. That's just Google pay-per-click.

Speaker 1 But I always ask people, I've got a pretty big marketing budget, but how much did you spend to find an A-player? My top guy did 25,000 yesterday. He sold a few doors.
You think he paid for himself?

Speaker 1 Let's just say it cost me 10 grand to go out there and find him. He did 25 grand in a day.
So what do you say to the people out there?

Speaker 1 And I'm not going to go off on too big of a tangent because you said make sure you skip this, stick the script, but what do you say?

Speaker 1 to somebody that says, hey, I'm spending money on Craigslist and I've done an Indeed post. Why aren't they coming to me? There's a couple of things.

Speaker 1 One of the things is the positioning of the message to get the A players, because here's the thing. It's not just about the money that they're making for you on a daily basis.

Speaker 1 It's about the other intangibles that those A players are bringing to the table. They're getting you five-star reviews.
They're not calling in sick. They're answering the questions.

Speaker 1 The calls aren't getting past them, coming in from complaints and that type of thing.

Speaker 1 But the main reason is Craigslist and Indeed and those places, what you're doing is you're only getting the people that are going actively searching.

Speaker 1 It's kind of like going to the unemployment line to find people. And it's not necessarily always the best place.
And there's nothing wrong with job boards.

Speaker 1 There's nothing wrong with it whenever you do get applications and leads from there.

Speaker 1 But what you have to do is position it so that you're advertising for employees the way you would advertise for a customer.

Speaker 1 I mean, let's face it, you don't go on and put an ad out and go, we're looking for homeowners that have a three-bedroom, two-bath house that pay their bills on time and have a 700 credit score and need something fixed at their home.

Speaker 1 But that's sort of how most people advertise for employees. We're looking for experienced technicians that have three or four years of experience, you know, that have a clean driving record.

Speaker 1 I mean, what is a clean driving record? It's open to interpretation. And the way it's positioned, it basically puts a barrier up and you're making it so tough for them to even, they look at it.

Speaker 1 It's like, I probably don't even qualify versus advertising for employees the way you would advertise for customers and putting it in a way, starting off with the benefits of why they should come work for you and then having the requirements a little bit later on.

Speaker 1 And then the other part of it is those are active job seekers. Go where the passive job seekers are.

Speaker 1 Right now, 74% of people who have gotten a job in the last two to three years were not looking for a job when they found the job they're in.

Speaker 1 It came to them whenever they were just going through, scrolling through news feeds, scrolling through their social media and saw an opportunity. They're not going on ND.

Speaker 1 They're not going on Craigslist looking for a job. So you're missing a large audience out there.
And then just feel like, like, oh, I've run ads on Facebook. It doesn't work.
No, it always works.

Speaker 1 It can't help but work. What doesn't work typically is the follow-up or the messaging that you're using on the Facebook ads.

Speaker 1 You know, I read ads. Just if you guys get some time, go out there and just click on plumbers, click on HVAC, click on garage doors.

Speaker 1 And you read the ads and it says, must be, must be only eligible if. It sounds like it's a freaking army boot camp you're applying for.
It doesn't sound fun.

Speaker 1 I'll tell you that one of the things i try to do is say listen this is a fun place to work well some of the things we measure is homeownership getting out of credit debt some of the things we measure is going on a dream vacation with your significant other those are the kind of things i'm looking at right and i'm going what does somebody want to work here for we just hired you know you know this because you've been working with me on it as a dream manager And Vanessa went through the training and we'll get to that later, but it really does not seem great when I read these applications that say, all these things you must be.

Speaker 1 You know what we say? What is the number one thing we hire for? And you know this because you're hiring for them with me every day. The number thing we hire for is attitude.

Speaker 1 And what's the position, though? The position is apprentice. Apprentice.
We'll teach them how to do it. We've got a training center, a program.

Speaker 1 So find great people with a great attitude and show them the trade. This is an L Levi thing that he's taught me a long time ago.

Speaker 1 You have a lot of crazy stats. Go ahead and finish your thought.

Speaker 1 When you do that, I mean, you're basically offering them a career, not a job, right? You're giving them something that's going to give them a livelihood for the rest of their lives.

Speaker 1 You're talking about some of the stats. One of the things we see a lot is that it just takes a long time to get someone through the hiring process.

Speaker 1 Right now, the average hiring process is 42 days to get somebody from an applicant to the point of them being hired. A players don't have to wait more than 10 days to get another job.

Speaker 1 And so sitting there telling you, well, I'm busy today. I'll try to get them scheduled tomorrow.

Speaker 1 The other thing is, if you're looking for A-players, a lot of times they're already working for someone else.

Speaker 1 You need to start looking at making it so that you can make the interview convenient for them instead of convenient for you.

Speaker 1 Because a lot of times you want to during the day, they're going to take time away from their job to come and interview with you.

Speaker 1 So I'm not saying do them at midnight, but you have to make it convenient and you got to move quick. I mean, just like all marketing, time kills deals.
You got to move quickly.

Speaker 1 It kills me whenever we go through and we work with a client, we've got the leads in, we've put everything through, they've got the application, they've they've done a video interview, and then it sits there for two weeks waiting to be scheduled for an interview.

Speaker 1 And then they wonder why they're gone. It's like, because they went somewhere else, they didn't hear from you.

Speaker 1 The biggest frustration, and one of the other things is more people feel higher frustration and anxiety from not hearing back from a job application than they do not hearing back after a first date.

Speaker 1 I mean, it's just, it's kind of crazy. And then, like I said, one in four Americans weren't searching for a job when they finally, when they found it, when they found the one that they're in.

Speaker 1 So passive job seeking is kind of a big deal you know there's this uh

Speaker 1 it's either a tick tock or a youtube and someone sent it to me and the gals said like 2010 versus 2022 and 2010 she's like hello how could i help you she's like excuse me you're talking a little quick for this job slow down she's like oh you have a tattoo goodbye and click and like she just goes through a few examples and then the other one was oh a felony oh it's no big deal.

Speaker 1 What kind of felony was it?

Speaker 1 It's the funniest thing ever because we've all kind of lightened up on our hair and our tattoo policies and everything during this pandemic crap. But what is the real problem, Jody?

Speaker 1 What's going on out there right now? Why is it so difficult? CSRs have become difficult.

Speaker 1 I mean, everything right now seems like I think it's certain lawmakers that make it easy for people to stay at home. But what else is going on?

Speaker 1 Why are we having such a hard time in the home service network? Because part of it is, I mean, you have to, it's not just the money to get people to be attracted to your business.

Speaker 1 People have choices now and they're looking and they're shopping for the best place.

Speaker 1 You know, just like if a bunch of people are shopping for, to have you come to their home to do work, people are shopping to look at where they want to go to work. They're looking for culture fit.

Speaker 1 Here's the thing. Salary is big, right? It will never not be one of the biggest things.
But today, the questions we get asked a lot is, is like, well, do they have newer vehicles?

Speaker 1 Because a lot of these people are tired of being broke down on the side of the road. We talked to one and say, hey, I'm ready to move.
My van's been broke down for two days.

Speaker 1 If I don't work, I don't get paid. Are they able to get parts? Because

Speaker 1 there's a shortage of materials right now. Do they have relationships where they can have parts? Am I going to be able to continue to work? Do they have a steady lead flow of work?

Speaker 1 So I know I'm not going to be sitting around waiting for a call. So positioning the business in those ways.

Speaker 1 The other thing is, They're also looking at what people are saying about your business, not just on Google and on Facebook and Yelp, but they're going on the job boards and seeing what your reviews are there as well.

Speaker 1 I mean, it kills me whenever I see a company that's got 4.8 stars on Google and 2.3 stars on Glassdoor or on Indeed.

Speaker 1 That's just as important. So that's why it's getting tougher because there's more choices.

Speaker 1 People are able to decide where they want to go. And right now, culture is becoming a bigger and bigger play whenever they start looking for where they want to go.

Speaker 1 Yeah, that's a scary word for a lot of people, culture. We'll definitely jump on that here in a minute.
And for some reason, the

Speaker 1 garbage truck, waste management truck always comes during a podcast. But you talked about a few things there and

Speaker 1 culture. Let's dive into culture a little bit because I feel like culture can mean a lot of things.
When I think of culture, let me just throw this out there and I'll let you kind of comment on it.

Speaker 1 The number one way we really have gotten employees is through word of mouth from our best employees and them calling their friends, their buddies, the people, and actually becoming activists online for us.

Speaker 1 And actually,

Speaker 1 the number one employees that I have that have worked here for over a year, guess who's texting them and saying, hey, let me know how we're doing on Glassdoor, on Indeed, and on actually this podcast.

Speaker 1 If you guys are here and you're enjoying this podcast,

Speaker 1 I didn't mean to do this right now, but leave a review because it really helps it get ranked on other things. But tell me real quick what you mean about about culture.

Speaker 1 What is your definition of a culture? What should people be ascribing to be?

Speaker 1 The culture is the thing is, is it's more about, I mean, I know most people may push back on this, but it's about creating an environment where the employee feels appreciated and where the employee knows that they come actually before the customer.

Speaker 1 I mean, that's really what it comes down to because that is the lifeblood of your business and that you're interested in their wants and their needs.

Speaker 1 You're doing more than just coming to work, working and going home.

Speaker 1 You're putting things, you know, I was talking with a company, I think, they actually own here right now about their culture that everybody that comes in, when they come in the door, they get a fist bump or an elbow now because of COVID, where

Speaker 1 there used to be a high five, doing things where they feel appreciated every day when they come into work, recognizing their birthday, recognizing their work anniversary, recognizing milestones in their life so that they can feel like they're part of a team.

Speaker 1 Now, I call it a team instead of a family because you can't fire a family member, right? So instead of it, it's a team.

Speaker 1 they feel part of the team they're an integral part and one of the things that we do on ours is you know we you know it's built a team so strong that whenever they look at it no one knows who the leader is because they feel like everyone there is strong enough to be the leader and treating the employees and giving them that leeway but it really comes down to just appreciation letting them know all the time that they are appreciated and it doesn't mean that don't have discipline but it does mean to let them know that you care that it's about them as much as not more than the customer

Speaker 1 You know, this is weird timing because I just had a class graduate, and these are all guys you've been involved with hiring.

Speaker 1 But hey, Tommy, just wanted to reach out and let you know that I'm extremely thankful I found your company to work for and grow.

Speaker 1 And I'm only 22, and my girlfriend and I bought our first home back in October. I'm very thankful to work for such a company and have such great leaders, bosses.

Speaker 1 I got another one literally an hour later, and it says,

Speaker 1 This is Ephraim Presley from Tulsa. Thank you for giving me the education, a a bright future for me and my family.
Can't wait to get started.

Speaker 1 I don't know if these guys huddled up and just decided to do this. Then I got one of my trainers here

Speaker 1 says, love getting these guys trained. And they can still call me for pointers all the time.
And that's Parks. But I got to tell you, as good as it seems sometimes,

Speaker 1 I still got to do a much better job. I always call you up and I say, listen,

Speaker 1 how could I use technology more to communicate? Because the CSRs, the dispatchers, the warehouse guys, I tend to focus a lot on the technicians. Those are our earners.

Speaker 1 Those are the guys collecting the paychecks, but there's still so much more to it. And, you know, my expectations are here and I've always fallen short.

Speaker 1 I can never live up to who I want to be because I want to be the best leader. And for some reason, some of these guys and gals look at me like I'm their parent.

Speaker 1 They literally look at me like I'm their dad and they need to be led.

Speaker 1 And during the pandemic, I'll tell you what I did is I sent out a message every day to let them know that we're not going anywhere. Here's what we're planning on.
Here's what we're doing.

Speaker 1 And it's a scary thought to think about a leader that just stays quiet and no one knows. Like you said, it's worse than not getting a call

Speaker 1 after your first date.

Speaker 1 And when we don't communicate properly or let somebody know where we're staring the ship or where we're headed or what's going on during these troubling times with supply chain, I think that's a lot of what you're talking about is leadership.

Speaker 1 Yeah. And hearing from the leadership and understanding that they are behind you.

Speaker 1 Like I said, it doesn't have to be every day, but like like I said, just the communication, sending them a text, hey, really glad to have you out there today.

Speaker 1 Thanks for showing up on time, little things like that, that basically they become attached, right? You said kind of put the hooks in where they don't want to leave.

Speaker 1 And if they did leave, they would feel like they're leaving a team that they've helped create and a business because they're helping you build your business.

Speaker 1 They're helping you build your business. You should be helping them build their career.

Speaker 1 you know helping them with training making sure it's not just about high fives but it's also giving them the training to advance making it so that they have a path of advancement as well.

Speaker 1 Because every apprentice there is looking to not only become a technician, but looking to become a lead tech.

Speaker 1 And after that lead tech, then they're moving into possibly being an area manager or a hiring manager, having a career path there for them.

Speaker 1 Not everybody's going to get to the manager part, but where they can move to that part to be able to excel and giving them the ability to basically earn what they're capable of.

Speaker 1 Well, they're looking for a ladder. Is there any place for me to move? And I tell people on the last day, during the graduation, actually on Wednesday, I said, guys,

Speaker 1 there's no better place to be than here. Want to know why?

Speaker 1 Because we've hired, there was 16, there's 21, and then there's 30 coming in in March. And I'll get to 40 to 50.
And you know, my goal is ultimately 100 new technicians a month.

Speaker 1 And what does that mean? There's all kinds of stuff we figured out. How many CSRs, how many dispatchers for each and every multiple techs, how many do we need? We've got these fractions broken out.

Speaker 1 But they want to know that you're going to continue to invest in them. They want to know that you're going to continue to communicate with them.

Speaker 1 They want to know that, see, the thing is with millennials, and a lot of people talk crap about millennials is I just want to know there's more than money.

Speaker 1 Can I work from home sometimes if I'm a CSR, if I do a great job and I prove to you, do you trust me? Or is it like you got other owners out there?

Speaker 1 And those of you owners that are listening right now know who you are. If I don't do it, it won't be done right.
No one's as good as me. And I'm like this.

Speaker 1 There's a lot of great people out there that are better than me. And I've made sure to hire people that are better than me at a lot of things.

Speaker 1 And maybe, just maybe, maybe they want paytime off. Maybe they want a new van.
Maybe they want a new tablet. Maybe they want to have a 401k.

Speaker 1 Here's the biggest thing. People say, yeah, it's easy for you to say, Tommy, because you got all this money.
You can afford to buy all these games. And I get that all the time.

Speaker 1 And I'm like, can you afford pancake mix? Because Maybe just make breakfast one day. Maybe buy them donuts and cider if you're in Michigan.
I don't know.

Speaker 1 Like, these are little things that go such a long way. I look at a guy like Ishmael, even though I hated losing that bet the other day.

Speaker 1 I'll tell you what, he's a recruiting machine because I went to his office one day randomly. There was a food truck out there.
He's feeding all of his guys.

Speaker 1 And he goes above and beyond to make sure that his people are appreciated. That's why it grows so far in the business, his Christmas party.
And we had two comedians in our Christmas party.

Speaker 1 It was a hoop, but I look at certain things that certain people do and it means a lot because they care about their employees. I want to talk about recruiting versus hiring.

Speaker 1 Because, you know, when I was a kid, I got this thing in the mail when I turned 18. It was a Gillette Razor, and it was from the Army.
And they wanted to meet me, and they were actively pursuing me.

Speaker 1 I didn't go enlist or go to see them. They wanted to see me.
They were recruiting me. What's the difference between recruiting and hiring?

Speaker 1 So if you think about it, I mean, if you look at recruiting, like I said, you mentioned the military, they're recruiting, they're looking for A-player, right?

Speaker 1 Sometimes they're looking for anybody, but think about recruiting when it comes to sports, right? They're not looking for just anybody.

Speaker 1 They're looking for somebody that's going to come in and hopefully help them win a championship. I talked about this at Vertical Track.

Speaker 1 If you look at the Atlanta Braves, they just won the World Series. Four of their stars, four of the people that helped them win the World Series, were not with them whenever they started the season.

Speaker 1 They went out and brought those A players in in order to help them do that, but they had to go look at them.

Speaker 1 They had to move them through a qualification process to identify if they were going to be the right fit to hire. So recruiting, it's kind of like, it's almost like dating a little bit, right?

Speaker 1 You got to, they got to show you what they've got, but you got to show them what you're going to do to help them come over to your business.

Speaker 1 So you sort of have to lead with the benefits of why they're going to be there. So recruiting is getting their attention.

Speaker 1 Hiring is making sure once you have their attention that you're qualifying them properly. And what we do is we want to move through and disqualify people as quickly as qualify.

Speaker 1 Because it's one thing to get leads in, but it's another thing to make sure that there's someone that you're going to actually want to talk to.

Speaker 1 So the recruiting is you got to sort of offer some things out. And right now with recruiting, the thing you'll see a lot is a sign-on bonus.

Speaker 1 Sign-on bonuses right now in trucking, if you don't have a sign-on bonus and paying at least 65 cents a mile, you're not going to get a driver.

Speaker 1 And it's starting to go that way whenever it comes to home services, especially with the experienced technicians. Because experienced technicians, you are recruiting.

Speaker 1 You're looking to lure, basically, for lack of a better word, lure them away from someone they're already working for. And Tommy and I had this conversation.

Speaker 1 I'm like, take one of your top technicians. What's it going to take to get them to leave you to go work for the competition?

Speaker 1 That's what you're going to have to do to get those experienced people to move over. You're going to have to position yourself in a way that's going to cause them to see a benefit.
of moving to you.

Speaker 1 Now, that's not hiring them. That's recruiting them.
That's getting them into your pipeline so that you can start the qualification process.

Speaker 1 then once they're qualified now you can talk about hiring them so anybody can hire not everybody can recruit well well if i call a recruiter i'm going to tell you what a recruiter does a recruiter goes especially for a c level right they're the c-suite level the coos and cmos and cfos and whatever they go on linkedin and unfortunately we can't go find a plumber on linkedin typically we can find some owners on linkedin but there's some cool things you could do but the best thing you could do if you're recruiting is actively talking to customers and sending them an email saying, listen, if you know anybody, I see so many people putting ads out there that are recruiting ads, but they get a double whammy.

Speaker 1 We talked about this the other day is, hey, we're looking for clean, clean cut, wholesome, caring individuals for our company that are honest, that will do the best thing for our customers at all times.

Speaker 1 But we're actually talking to the customers too. So it's killing two birds with one stone.
And I just think about recruiting and I go,

Speaker 1 how can I go out and get it? How can I go out? And we talked, we're testing some geofencing things at the distribution centers right now. But really, where does your avatar live? I mean, I know this.

Speaker 1 I'll tell you this. You know, I know what you do in your spare time.
You're on Indeed all day and just surfing the internet on Glassdoor. But me, I'm typically on Facebook.
I go on LinkedIn.

Speaker 1 A lot of the times I'll be on Instagram. Shoot.
Somehow I stumbled onto this stupid TikTok thing.

Speaker 1 But the fact is, I know that a 20 to 30 to 40 year old male, the ages that could still work in a garage in 120 degrees because there's a physical aspect to it, they're hanging out on Facebook and Instagram.

Speaker 1 And that's what you taught me is this is where we need to be. And I'll tell you, lately, the reports you've been giving me, here's how many people viewed it.
Here's how many people filled out the app.

Speaker 1 Here's when we responded to them. I mean,

Speaker 1 no one's doing doing this stuff. And the thing is,

Speaker 1 you've only got a split second to get their attention. They're scrolling.
And that's what I know. That's where my avatar lives.

Speaker 1 They're not super models, but they're not the beards down to here with 85 tattoos and a pierced nose and a pierced eyeball.

Speaker 1 But for the most part, they're good kids, good younger guys, typically for a tech. CSRs could be any age.
I don't care. We don't.
But it's such a cool system. What do you think the secret sauce is?

Speaker 1 Because you talked about it a little bit, but what is it about Facebook and Instagram that just gets attention and help it? Because, I mean, that's where people, that's where they spend their time.

Speaker 1 They're sitting there scrolling and they're scrolling through.

Speaker 1 And what we have to do is it's a double-edged sword when you're looking at Facebook and Instagram because employment ads are a special ad category. That's where so many people get kind of shut down.

Speaker 1 I've talked to numerous companies that are like, yeah, we tried that and we can't get any ads to run because they keep kicking them back and they keep rejecting them.

Speaker 1 Well, it's because of some certain words. There's key words that get Facebook ads triggered.

Speaker 1 And I mean, you can get them rejected saying that it's an MLM opportunity or it's erroneous claims and that kind of thing. So it's a special ad category.
So it makes it tougher.

Speaker 1 But because it's tougher, not as many people are doing it. So when you have somebody that knows what they're doing with that, and then once you get the ad there, it's about the graphic.

Speaker 1 It's about stopping the scroll. Because if you think about it, Facebook is pictures and videos.
That's all it is. You scroll through there, you see pictures, you see videos.
What do you stop on?

Speaker 1 What's going to get their attention? What's going to stand out? Is it a sign-on bonus? Is it a company truck you can take home and gas card?

Speaker 1 We have to test those different things to see what your audience is going to respond to.

Speaker 1 And then have it so that you've got to get them to open it and see what the benefits of coming to work for you are. And then getting them to fill out a form, right?

Speaker 1 That's the whole thing is the lead form. And where most people say that Facebook and Instagram, social media doesn't work, it's not that it doesn't work.

Speaker 1 It's the ads aren't enticing enough to get them to fill out the information. But then they're using Messenger to then headman, they're using a bottom messenger.

Speaker 1 And that's fine, but the only time you can talk to them is when they're on Facebook.

Speaker 1 What you need to do is instantly get them off of Facebook and into a communication tool that's communicating instantly with them, that's sending them a text message, sending them an email, that's sending them a voicemail.

Speaker 1 They're getting a call as quickly as possible with information about what they just filled out so that you can get away from the, who are you? How are you calling me? Why are you calling me?

Speaker 1 Where did you get my information? Which is what a lot of people complain about on Facebook and Instagram because it is so instantaneous. I mean, the form is filled out automatically.

Speaker 1 They just have to hit submit, but it's also about what is the sequence of events you're taking them through.

Speaker 1 Because once they fill out that form, if you're sending a messenger, they're getting a message and it sits there and maybe somebody will respond in a few hours. Time kills deals.

Speaker 1 You got to instantly send them a link to your application.

Speaker 1 Have that application something that's engaging, that has a video there that's enticing them to come to work for you, that's got graphics that meet your branding and has all the information on one place.

Speaker 1 I mean, it's a sales funnel, what you're building. You're building a sales funnel for employment rather than for customers.

Speaker 1 Getting them into that funnel, walking them through the process the same as you would treat a customer, making that application where they're filling everything out and then instantly taking them to the next step so they don't have to wait.

Speaker 1 The biggest thing that kills it is they have to wait an hour. They might not ever remember they've even been there.
You know, it happens so quick because a lot of times it auto-fills the information.

Speaker 1 It's a couple clicks and you're gone. You know, we have a separate site called Work4A1.

Speaker 1 When you started, one of the things I know you've started to do for all your other clients is offer another site.

Speaker 1 Because if I'm landing on a site, I don't necessarily want to know how a garage is fixed. I know that's something you do as a bonus.
And maybe I shouldn't have said anything about that, but

Speaker 1 you know, if I want to go there, I want to find out what are the benefits. Why should I work here? Show me some cool videos.
You know, we got anytime we're doing something fun.

Speaker 1 We were at the bowling alley on Wednesday. I won, surprisingly enough, no kidding.
Well, I'm not kidding, but

Speaker 1 we recorded a lot of stuff with that and we got testimonials from the guys because why not? They're having fun. I wanted to know maybe they talk crap on one of the videos and I'll find out.

Speaker 1 It was good feedback. But I didn't do the bowling to create a video.
I did the bowling to tell these guys thank you. And my camera guy happened to be there to shoot some cool stuff.
And why not?

Speaker 1 Because if it's different, if I'm not actually that person, and if I'm just doing this, hey, we're going to go bowling once a year, get all the video cameras. No, we go every single month.

Speaker 1 This is what we do. So I think it's putting that fun stuff.
What do you, are you guys friends? Do you barbecue outside of work? Do your kids hang out together?

Speaker 1 Is this a place that I can build a life and have the website work for anyone? Say that stuff.

Speaker 1 I don't think ours is perfect and it's always a working in process, but what have you done as far as letting them land on another page or another site than just the main site?

Speaker 1 So what we do for every one of our clients is we build a career page.

Speaker 1 because we find a lot of some some already have a career page but it's usually tied to some other software maybe so we create a careers page that lists it's got their branding all the same stuff that's on the application page but it has a list of all the jobs and whenever we send something back out a lot of times because sometimes people fall into that you know there's sometimes you don't get a hold of them they don't respond and we remove them into a long-term nurture sequence and with that a lot of times instead of sending them straight back to the job that they put their information in for instead we send them to the career page that shows all the jobs that are open right now and so they can choose one that may be a better fit.

Speaker 1 They may just clicked on it because it was for a technician, but they're really a better installer and they just don't know that you have that job opening.

Speaker 1 And so bringing them back and showing them the different options of what's available.

Speaker 1 Another big thing is right now, and this is if you're running ads, no matter what happens, even if it's not, because a lot of people do not have remote positions for CSRs and dispatchers, almost every one of them, they just assume that it's going to be remote.

Speaker 1 So you have to basically share that with them as well. But the career page, what we found is people love it.

Speaker 1 When we build that application page out, now they can use that application page. And if they want to post something on Craigslist, they can link to that application page or the career page.

Speaker 1 It doesn't have to be so specific of just one job. And that's been a big help to a lot of our clients is having the ability to do that.

Speaker 1 And we're even getting to the point where bringing indeed leads into our system so that it nurtures them even.

Speaker 1 I want to go back to a certain thought because the next question is, what do eight players typically look like?

Speaker 1 And you guys know a big mentor of mine was Al Levy and he taught me the seven power contractor. And I got to tell you guys, when thinking about an A player,

Speaker 1 my A players, unless you promise them something freaking insane, they're not going to leave. And I have a feeling your top guys out there are not going to leave you.
They're your family. So

Speaker 1 the point is, the apprenticeship that we talked about to junior tech, to tech to senior tech to potentially field supervisor, or we've got a virtual product specialist.

Speaker 1 You got to be able to identify personalities and people that want to win

Speaker 1 and typically they're not in the home service space right now they might be the top bus boy like i was a bus boy or a bar back or a server or a bartender because you know covet changed the rules there the hospitality but go identify winners outside of our space unless you want someone else's hand-me-downs unless very rarely they move across the country and you get a guy that's moving that typically they're going to to talk to somebody that's going to know somebody through one of these forums online.

Speaker 1 So ultimately, I just go back and says what do A players typically look for when choosing a company to work with?

Speaker 1 But typically A players, unless they're not being treated right and they're not very much out there, you got to homebrew them.

Speaker 1 So what are your thoughts on what an A-player looks for and your thoughts on this?

Speaker 1 Like I said, this shouldn't fabricate anything, but you got to lead with what the best thing is with your business.

Speaker 1 And chances are you're not going to get the A-player possibly from somewhere else, but you can get those people to move that are just still decent experienced technicians, but be ready to help shift their paradigm a little bit about what the work life really should look like and what does look like.

Speaker 1 So you're putting it in that light. And I mean, people do jump.
The other thing is consistently running the ads and continually putting it out there so people are seeing it.

Speaker 1 Because the thing is, it's like you don't know what time it is on their watch.

Speaker 1 When they are able to see it and you change the ads up and you continually have them running, you're going to put it in front of them whenever finally, finally, it is that thing that says, you know what, all right, I need to do this thing.

Speaker 1 So it's more of a thing of it's yes, the benefits and what you're leading with and what makes the company very cool, but it's the consistency of always having it in front of them.

Speaker 1 And that's what happens, especially with employment ads. Like I said, mentioned earlier, it's a double-edged sword.
You can't narrowly target because they look at it as being discriminatory.

Speaker 1 And so what that does is it winds up putting it in front of a lot of other people and the people that may not be your ideal candidate. But it does increase your brand awareness.

Speaker 1 But the other thing it does is it puts it in front of people who know people who have those jobs, who know how to do that.

Speaker 1 And they wind up, you make it so that that ad is shareable and they wind up sharing it with other people that they know might not even be looking right now, but they are, hey, here's an opportunity you need to look at.

Speaker 1 So it's always, it's having the benefits there. what makes the company so great, why they should move, running consistently, and then always making it so that it's shareable.

Speaker 1 Those are the things that are going to wind up eventually getting in front of the right people.

Speaker 2 Hey, guys, I hope you're enjoying this podcast. I wanted to let you know that our guest Jody has a special offer for you guys.

Speaker 2 If you want to go there right now, you could check out rapidhirepro.com forward slash Tommy or just wait till the end, but let's get back to Jodi.

Speaker 1 You know, I've told this story a few times on the podcast. So those of you that have heard it,

Speaker 1 it's just repeat.

Speaker 1 There's a great book called The Compound Effect somewhere up here by Darren Hardy. And he makes this statement, Jody.
He says,

Speaker 1 I'll never forget the time he sat down and wrote down 100 things that he wanted in a woman, right? And he wrote down her looks, her smell, her touch, her motherly features, whatever it was.

Speaker 1 I don't know how you write 100 things. I could write down about eight.

Speaker 1 I'll just draw a picture. No, I'm kidding.
But, you know, then he looked back and said, hey, wait a second here.

Speaker 1 The way I sit today, Darren Hardy, I can't even pull a chick like this. What do I need to become to get a woman that I've just described?

Speaker 1 And I'll never forget the day that I read that and I thought of this. And I didn't think about me in a relationship.
I thought about me as a leader as a one garage drawer service.

Speaker 1 And I walked into Luke's office and I said, can you write down what you would work for? Write down 100 attributes. Just write down 20.

Speaker 1 Communication, just being part part of something, acknowledgement. And the more things you can write down, how could you demonstrate that in a video and an ad?

Speaker 1 And how could you allow that to come into your culture? Okay. How can you allow that to be part of the picture? And I know one thing.

Speaker 1 As much as I want to do it all, and I'd love to be in the finance department, do all the marketing, knock on doors, go out there, do sales, be the dream manager. I know one thing.

Speaker 1 I need to hire people to do this, but they need to believe. that I want this.
I want to acknowledge birthdays. I want to acknowledge anniversary dates.
Are we doing it?

Speaker 1 we're five out of 10 on a good day but most people are a two so that's okay but i want to be a 10 out of 10.

Speaker 1 so i had a guy jodi that that worked next to me four shops ago one of my my second shop ever and it was moxie the guy's name is austin

Speaker 1 and um i walked in and he had these cubicles like were about as thick as me i mean they were just there was 15 people in a small room and he's like yeah i'm only paying them a buck above minimum wage and i go, How the hell do you have all these people?

Speaker 1 He goes, Oh, I treat them like gold. I feed them breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
We go to movies after the thing.

Speaker 1 He goes, I got a waiting list of 20 people.

Speaker 1 And I go, You've got to be kidding me. You packed them in like sardines.
And he's like, Well, this way we can manage them better. I'm like, But how do you guys go to the bathroom?

Speaker 1 But what I couldn't believe is, then he told me years later, I moved into a big facility, then moved back into a small facility. But regardless of how you pack your people, whatever you do,

Speaker 1 I couldn't believe that he had a waiting list of what he paid because so many people say, you got to pay more. Pay, pay, pay, pay.

Speaker 1 No, he said he took them to movies afterwards and he fed them and he took care of them and he listened to them and he probably helped them parenting and probably helped them in their relationships.

Speaker 1 And I just think sometimes we miss that piece. And I know, how hard is it for you when you're recruiting and helping?

Speaker 1 When you talk to an owner or a manager, a recruiting officer at the facility and they don't have anything.

Speaker 1 They're like, well, we haven't really, no, this is what's making people different, right, Jody? This is the first time in our lives we've actually had to be really good for our employees.

Speaker 1 And it's really bringing out the dirt. It's like, what are you doing for them?

Speaker 1 And I'm sure you're sitting there like, and I'm not perfect, but you know, you got Aaron Gainer and guys like that that are like, I love my employees. I give them trophies.
I shower them.

Speaker 1 What do you say to them when they're like, hey, I pay minimum wage and these people ain't working hard for me, then they ain't working.

Speaker 1 Then they're not going to be working for you without that attitude. So the thing is, it doesn't have to be the moon.

Speaker 1 If you're not doing anything, you don't have anything in place, start small, do little things.

Speaker 1 I mean, give them a gift card to go to dinner, give them movie tickets, go on like Thanks.com and send them something small just to thank you, a Starbucks gift card, something just to begin with, just to start that so that you can start to build that culture.

Speaker 1 But it's hard. It's hard to get someone to come work for minimum wage.
It's hard to get them to, because I can tell you, if you're paying $15, $16 an hour to no fault of our own

Speaker 1 the comments we get on those kind of jobs are oh so you're saying basically the same as McDonald's okay so what can you circumvent that it's 15 to 16 dollars an hour with you circumvent you know that it's a great workout it's a great workplace and one of the things and I think it was Dustin's idea he's like hey on these ads for CSRs and dispatchers can we like run some ads like show that show the games that we have here the massage chairs and see if that makes a difference and it was amazing people made comments on those so it's like just those small things that you can do to start with and let them know that, look, we're working on building a corporate culture where the employee is the most important part of it.

Speaker 1 Just explaining that that's where you're going can sometimes make a big difference.

Speaker 1 But if you don't have anything, you have to look at, because I talk to people, especially in some of the smaller companies that, well, we don't have any benefits.

Speaker 1 And fortunately, I haven't talked to anyone recently that their employees are at 1099. Just about everybody is a W-2, but some don't have have benefits yet.

Speaker 1 But what can you do to help them in lieu of those benefits? What are the things put in place and get there as quickly as you can?

Speaker 1 There's some questions in there, but it's just start with what you can control. What can you control?

Speaker 1 I tried to boost a hiring post on Facebook. It was rejected.
Any suggestions? So you have to look at why did they say it was rejected? They'll tell you because it was an unfair income claim.

Speaker 1 It was discriminatory. You can't put anything on there about age.
You can't put anything on there about male or female, you can't say anything.

Speaker 1 If you put the words excellent income opportunity, it's going to get rejected. You know why? They look at that as being network marketing.

Speaker 1 So, if you're unless you're going for the Supreme Court, right?

Speaker 1 So,

Speaker 1 I would say, boosting a post. The other thing about boosting a post is you're not going to get much traction with it.

Speaker 1 You know, basically, you're when boosting a post, it's one step above just posting it on your page. You need to create an ad account and make it a full-fledged Facebook ad

Speaker 1 so that you can and make it because it's in a special ad category employment. The other thing is, if you boosted the post and you did not select the category of employment, that's why it got rejected.

Speaker 1 They'll tell you it's employment is a special ad category. You can't boost a post without it being in that special ad category of employment.

Speaker 1 You have to select that whenever you create, when you boost the post in order for it to work.

Speaker 1 Jody, what did you used to do? You used to work for the power company. Tell everybody in your previous life what you did.
So I'm a recovering executive.

Speaker 1 I was the director of executive and national accounts at Florida Power and Light Company. They're the fourth largest investor-owned utility in the country.

Speaker 1 During my tenure there, I was an engineer, crew supervisor, area manager, account manager, all the way to being a director.

Speaker 1 I was one step between me and the actually two steps between me and the president of the company.

Speaker 1 And I was responsible for hiring those account managers that were handling $16 billion of revenue a year.

Speaker 1 So you've been in this industry almost, the home service space, kind of, but indirectly. So, if I think about number one,

Speaker 1 when someone's going to come after me, if I was an employee, I'd say, you got to move quickly because I don't have time. I'm not going to sit around and twiddle my thumbs waiting for you.

Speaker 1 You might think you're important, but I'm important.

Speaker 1 And that's what I'm going to say in my head, hopefully, because winners say I'm important. Winners love themselves.
Winners say, I'm a prize. You come after me.

Speaker 1 And typically, you don't have time to BS. You don't have time to puss around.

Speaker 1 And I've done it. I'm I'm literally sitting here saying, we've literally made people wait way too long and lost amazing people.
But I've seen some of the stats out there.

Speaker 1 You've talked to me, but I've seen it from other recruiters. You know, my good friend, Lauren Kreiter, is a recruiter.
The fact is,

Speaker 1 you got to move quickly. These people, they've got to make a decision if they want you.
That's the best talent in the world.

Speaker 1 Now, if you guys got people begging at your footsteps, they're probably not great talent. So why is it that people take 20, 30 days and it makes your job difficult?

Speaker 1 Because they haven't accepted the fact that it's changed, that they used to be able to do that and still get good talent. And so they haven't embraced the fact that it is now an employee's market.

Speaker 1 They're going to have to recruit. They're going to have to court the candidate through the process and stay in touch with them on an ongoing basis and let them know every step of the way.

Speaker 1 If you look at the statistics, 85% of employers feel that they do a great job explaining the hiring process to a new candidate.

Speaker 1 Only 21% of new candidates feel that the employer does a good job of explaining the hiring process that they go through. And it's just a lack of communication.

Speaker 1 And it's the speed of the communication and having the ability to not just pick up the phone and call and chase. I mean, let's face it, how would you rather get a communication from someone today?

Speaker 1 You've probably gotten a text message while we've been on here.

Speaker 1 I need to get text message, okay? That's it. If you want to get a hold of me, Facebook messenger works okay, but do not, my voicemail is full for a reason.

Speaker 1 So it's texting, it's a text message and that's how everybody communicates so you have to do that and you have to move quickly and move them through the process because they'll respond whenever you make it so that

Speaker 1 just text me yeah i've texted cody today as a matter of fact i texted a while ago it's text with a call to action with a link not just hey do something where most people miss the boat is they send a text without a question without asking them to respond to something it's an ask you got to ask you got to have a call to action a link to the application.

Speaker 1 Is there anything holding you back? If you'd rather have a conversation, respond or call me.

Speaker 1 One of the things I love doing, one of the things we do with people that have gone dormant is I send out a text and it's, it's like, hey, I say, I, the system sends out a text.

Speaker 1 It's like, hey, just checking to see if you're still interested. How about this? Let us know where you're at right now.
Number one, take me off your list.

Speaker 1 Number two, keep sending me these text messages and emails. I'm not quite there yet.

Speaker 1 Number three, I'm ready to go and people respond because it's easy one two three i'm going to go over today just so you guys know i'm going to go over by 15 20 minutes listen one of the things that i you know i was with the wizard of ads um roy williams we'll get to that question here he said tommy there's one thing i've never seen yet in all my days

Speaker 1 is an amazing call center he goes i was just on the phone with lauren from Search Kings before this and he said, do you know LSA ads actually monitor how quick you pick up the phone and if you could answer 24-7?

Speaker 1 He goes, you know, you could actually double your exposure and get way cheaper leads. You know, we're talking about this stuff, local service ads, which are Google local ads.
And it's amazing.

Speaker 1 The wizard of ads, the guy that's been doing this, the billion-dollar jewelry companies he's worked with, hundreds of companies, the guy just sold for half a billion dollars that he worked with.

Speaker 1 I believe you should always, and we've talked about this, be running ads for CSRs because it's not a fun job. But anybody that says, my God, I can't wait to go to work and answer phone calls all day.

Speaker 1 It's the best thing that's ever happened to me. Thank you.
Usually it's a year or two job, and then they'll find another job in the company because we've talked a lot about technicians.

Speaker 1 We've talked about installers is you guys, as good as you think you're on your call center, do not lie to yourself anymore. You're not that good.
You're not answering.

Speaker 1 You use an IVR, which is a mistake. Google penalizes you for an IVR.

Speaker 1 Anytime someone clicks on an ad and they get an IVR, they go, oh, God, here we go. You know why IVRs were made, Jodi? It's because when you have an alarm company, you only got one choice.

Speaker 1 If you got got to call Comcast or Cable or Cox, you'll hit five menus because you wait because you got to.

Speaker 1 But when you call when your garage door is broken or you've got a leaky pipe, you're like, BS, I'm not, I don't want to call national crap. So here's the deal.
Always hire for CSRs.

Speaker 1 Always be running an ad. And just know this.
What does a good CSR do? 50 booked calls per day is where you should be eventually. Am I hitting there? No.
I'm not going to lie to you guys.

Speaker 1 But we have a goal for excellence.

Speaker 1 So I just, I didn't want to leave that out out because i think it's so important because so many people are like i need more leads i need more jar i need more people book the most calls you need book the calls that are coming in answer the call and book it because we screw this up a lot or any thoughts on that the consistency of having it out there one of the things that right now i want to always have a pipeline of people and you can you'll have those that are sort of like just kicking the tires a little bit But you said, continually running those entry-level positions so that you can then, because what I hear over and over and over again, well, we don't really have an opening, but if we find a rock star, we definitely hire them.

Speaker 1 And so it's just kind of always having the ability.

Speaker 1 You can, and the thing is, you can scale it back and just have it running at a smaller run rate per day, but you have a consistent flow of people to continually be looking at.

Speaker 1 It also gives you then the opportunity to top grade.

Speaker 1 Almost everybody I talk to right now is like, we would love to be able to top grade, but right now we're keeping everybody we can no matter what, because

Speaker 1 somebody's asking a question here about the employees demanding things.

Speaker 1 Well, it gets to, I mean, yeah, they can demand things, you know, you have to protect the company whenever they start demanding those things. But we can talk about that a little bit later.

Speaker 1 But yeah, it's always having a consistent flow coming in.

Speaker 1 Well, let me tell you, we're not hiring right now means we don't have a good enough performance, so we can't afford to spend the money in marketing. We're not bunking enough calls.

Speaker 1 So we're not hiring because we can't get any bigger, or my infrastructure is not big enough. In that case, there might need to be an operational manager change.

Speaker 1 But we're not hiring right now means I haven't figured out how to market right to get more calls. I'll tell you this.
I haven't remembered a time I'm not hiring.

Speaker 1 In fact, we accidentally put it on pause in December because of the holidays. And I didn't do that.
I didn't know about that. And I was like, dude, what the hell happened?

Speaker 1 Because we need CSRs like yesterday. And we always need CSRs.
Because here's what happens. Unfortunately, there's a stupid disease virus going around.

Speaker 1 And if it puts out seven people, all of a sudden you got an abandonment rate of 15% and you just spent, what, two grand on PPC that day? What in the hell? Have backups.

Speaker 1 You know, how much extra does it cost you to have two extra $800, $1,600 a week? What does that equal? $6,400 a month.

Speaker 1 But you guys know, if you're any good at sales, HI Pleming Electrical, roofing, windows, whatever it might be, that's a fart in the wind to have great customer service and have a backup and have them doing stuff that they could switch, like data integrity.

Speaker 1 And I could, you know, this thing could go, we've already talked. We weren't going to make this three hours, so we'll try to keep it just over an hour.
I really wanted to get these questions, though.

Speaker 1 Talk to us about an experience of pre-qualifying before interviews. What are the best ways to pre-qualify? And tell me after that about the ride-along forms.
Sure.

Speaker 1 So the best way we found for pre-qualifying is obviously looking at the application, but using a video interview, because they can do it anytime. It doesn't take your time to do it.

Speaker 1 And they get there, they get a link, they go to it, and you ask them questions. You ask them questions that are sort of a little bit different, like, what's your favorite sports team?

Speaker 1 What drives you to win? Tell me what experience you have in this job. You can ask them whatever you want.
You want to keep it light, but really what you're looking for is to see how they communicate.

Speaker 1 Let's face it. It doesn't matter if it's a technician, installer, if it's a field position, especially, they're going into people's homes.
You want to see what they look like.

Speaker 1 See, make sure it's somebody you want to have representing your brand.

Speaker 1 Now, I know that you can't really do age discrimination, but if I was applying, for an apprentice job and I did an interview, Tommy would not hire me. Why? Look how I look.

Speaker 1 I'm an an old Santa Claus-looking guy.

Speaker 1 So you can look and determine whether or not it's somebody that's going to fit an entry-level position because you can't really see that on application, and you can't ask them how old they are.

Speaker 1 You can't do those things. So you're able to see that.
You're able to see they have face tattoos, gauges in their ears the size of coffee cans.

Speaker 1 We had one that the guy didn't realize that he was, I mean, clean-cut guy, logo shirt on, sitting in a company van, answered a question, and then didn't realize the camera was on.

Speaker 1 And it flips over, he's tapping around, he picks up a one hitter and fires it up on the camera. It's like, probably not going to make it.
Probably not going to do that.

Speaker 1 People are like, oh, that's legal now. Yeah, but so is beer, but you don't do it on the job.
But you're able to see those kind of things, but you're able to do that.

Speaker 1 Now, does that mean you have to have that every time? Not necessarily, but it does give you the ability for those that do it to determine if it's somebody you want to have a conversation with.

Speaker 1 I mean, come on, you get somebody that does a video and they don't bother getting up out of bed. They're laying in bed doing the interview.
You can start to move through that with that qualification.

Speaker 1 Disqualify as quickly as qualify.

Speaker 1 Once they do walk through that, and especially like customer service positions and dispatchers, you're able to see how they talk, if they say um, if they're comfortable doing things.

Speaker 1 So it allows you to do that. So the video interview is very important, and it doesn't take your time, it only takes your time to look at the answers.
But I see you got a big cheeseburger gran there.

Speaker 1 I know we're going somewhere. No, it just reminds me

Speaker 1 in my book, I used to do this to people. I used to be sitting at the interview desk and it was a

Speaker 1 longer table. And

Speaker 1 it's like, all right, listen, we're just going to start singing real quick. Just start singing with me.
Happy birthday to you. And people would be like, really?

Speaker 1 And I'd be like, yeah, come on, sing with me. And if they won't sing with you, and I put this in my book, like they got a stick up their ass.
And it's not for every single role.

Speaker 1 I didn't want my accountant singing happy birthday because that's a different role. But if they're a CSR and they're supposed to be having fun, some people are like, hell no, I ain't doing that.

Speaker 1 And I'm like, okay, well, nice to meet you, you know, but it just reminds me, like, have fun too. It's like, I hired a full-time video guy.
He's starting February 13th.

Speaker 1 He's going to be following me around. We're going to be having fun.
And I just love putting out great content. And that's a lot of people.

Speaker 1 Do you know how many people have said, Tommy, I went and looked at your videos? You're the type of guy I want to work for. And when I talk to them, we have fun.

Speaker 1 They go, they come out to these bowling things, extravaganzas and all of our lunches and breakfasts.

Speaker 1 They literally found me before they decided they wanted to work here so start putting out more content for yourself and your company too talk to me about these write-along forms because i'll tell you what we weren't doing them very well at all and they're a game changer so one of the things we have the ability to do inside of our rapid ir system is build out surveys and build out forms that are easy for a technician or anybody to go and fill out Because one of the things that happened with the write-along form they had before, I mean, they're filling it out on their phone or on a tablet, and they were having to type long sentences and very detailed descriptions.

Speaker 1 So we were able to take the form and look at, there's only so many answers that somebody could really give to a question about a ride-along.

Speaker 1 And so we're taking it and turning it into dropdowns where they can easily click on their choices, as well as in having a place that they do want to write something specific, they can, but then also having it so they date it and sign it and pre-populating it with the information from the candidate that they're riding along with increases the conversion.

Speaker 1 I know we've greatly increased the number of ride-along forms that come back. It's because it's easy for them to do.
And the thing is, why do a ride-alone?

Speaker 1 Other than the write-alone form, why do a ride-alone?

Speaker 1 Because they will say things and they'll be more themselves with a technician in the field than they typically will with an interview with a hiring manager.

Speaker 1 When they're being interviewed by a hiring manager, it's kind of like a first date. You're seeing them at the best they're going to be.

Speaker 1 When they're writing with the tech, they're in day-to-day situations. They're in front of the customer.
They're talking to how helpful are they? Are they really eager to learn?

Speaker 1 Are they really available the hours that they say that they would tell the hiring manager? They'll tell the technician what the real story is. Are they smoking on the job? How are they dressing?

Speaker 1 How are they really conducting themselves?

Speaker 1 So it gives you the ability to have that next level of qualification and making it easy for the technician to fill out the form makes it so that you get that information back a lot quicker.

Speaker 1 One of my guys, Rory's watching, and I just took a peek. So Rory was a great example that started as an apprentice and is just killing it these days.
I mean, he's moving up, hopefully to a

Speaker 1 going to be an area manager. Listen, I'll tell you,

Speaker 1 gathering that data when you're on a ride-along and looking at what happens and allowing the recruiting manager to know what's going on, it gets them better and better.

Speaker 1 You know, I've had guys do like a line of, you know, what on a just being cool with a guy. go pick up a beer or just talk shit to a customer.
I can't believe what I've seen. It's nuts.

Speaker 1 But these ride-along forms change the game. And what I love is, you know, right away after a ride-along, you got to make sure the guy, though, is representing properly.

Speaker 1 You can't put them with your worst technician because we're also selling this future possible employee. So we need to sell them on the job.

Speaker 1 And you can't put them with somebody that's going, oh, great, this guy's going to be better than me. So you got to make sure you're getting with the right person.
That's why.

Speaker 1 certain times if you're a smaller company, you can only do like one ride along a day instead of two guys because there's only one person you trust to do the ride along.

Speaker 1 But you want to see the questions they're asking you know and then during our apprenticeship we've got four weeks to judge this guy in his own market and if he makes a mistake if he comes in hungover if he's lying to people if he just seems not into it he we won't send him to arizona for a month so that's a big piece of it and you know there are a lot of common mistakes that people make when looking for talent what are some of the bigger ones we've got a few more here questions Yeah, so some of the bigger ones are, like I said, we've kind of talked about a little bit as far as the, they lead with making them have too much experience, but it's different for different jobs.

Speaker 1 Like if you're hiring a journeyman electrician, they got to have a journeyman ticket, right? They got to have four years experience. Yeah.

Speaker 1 But the biggest mistakes they make are not treating the candidate as important as they are. And because I mean, these candidates are like gold.

Speaker 1 I mean, if you get the right person, I mean, every prospect that I talk with, I find out, you know, what their needs are, how many technicians, what spaces, and then. I get kind of real with them.

Speaker 1 It's like, what is the lost revenue opportunity from having an empty van sitting out there in your yard? What is that? And I mean, I know from having the conversation with enough people,

Speaker 1 it doesn't matter even if it's landscaping to the higher end things with HPAC technicians. It's between $20,000 and $50,000 a month of lost revenue opportunity of that van sitting there.

Speaker 1 So looking at it from that standpoint, why would you take time and slow the process down? whenever you know that they can have any job they want and they're talking to you.

Speaker 1 That's kind of like being at the bar and having the hottest person at the bar talking with you and saying, well, I'm going to go see if I can buy someone else a drink.

Speaker 1 I'll come back and talk to you a little bit later. No, you got to put the time in, but that's what it's like.
It's like dating, right? You got to talk to the hot chick at a bar.

Speaker 1 Do not go take a long poop. Okay.

Speaker 1 So it's just like dating. You got to keep them moving through the process.
Because the other thing, what happens if you're talking to the hot chick at the bar and you walk away when you come back?

Speaker 1 Guess what? Somebody else is talking to her. Right.
That other dude got in. And it's the same thing.
It's a good analogy.

Speaker 1 It really is because, you know, you got to get away to get good and you got to have dedicated resources to it. There's nothing more important.

Speaker 1 What's more important than the future of your company if you're growing? What possibly, of course, stopping the bleeding of people quitting.

Speaker 1 I would say that because I've seen people going out just as quick as they're coming in. But once you get a good staff that aren't leaving, it's the most important thing is the talent scout.

Speaker 1 You know, you've seen this time and time again. People go, I have a recruiter in-house.
What have you learned about these in-house recruiters so far?

Speaker 1 And I, you know, you found out a lot about my, I've got a whole new team now because of you.

Speaker 1 So the thing about, and again, some are great and some are comfortable. And when they get comfortable, cause it's not directly impacting their life on a daily basis.

Speaker 1 And what we've found in a lot of companies is you should absolutely have an internal recruiter. I'm not saying not to.

Speaker 1 You should definitely have an internal person in your recruiting department, but you need to have some accountability in place and systems where you can identify and know what they're doing, basically on a minute-by-minute basis of what they're doing as far as bringing people into the system or the communications.

Speaker 1 The way we have our system set up with our recruiters and also with recruiters on other staff, the staffs of the companies we work with, we know if they have looked at an application, if they have responded to the application, if they have talked to the person, if they made a phone call.

Speaker 1 Every phone call is recorded in our system. Every text message is recorded.
We know when someone is pledging the numbers and it's very easy to see with a system the way it's set up.

Speaker 1 But we have people like oh yeah i've been in working since nine o'clock in the morning and you go look at it and oh they they didn't do anything on the board until 2 p.m and we've been able to find you know people that are taking advantage of the situation so i'm not saying that they're bad people and they necessarily have to go but it gives you the ability to know and it basically what it does is it increases their level of interaction and their productivity because now it's being measured and then you look at it you go back to you know what gets measured gets managed and there's not really a great way of measuring what a recruiter does because what are they doing now?

Speaker 1 It's a lot of manual process. It's a lot of them picking up the phone and calling.
And there's no recording. There's no documentation of how many of those calls have been made.

Speaker 1 We're having a system where if they're calling from the system, they're texting from the system, they're sending the emails from the same system.

Speaker 1 So everything is in the right place makes it so that you're now able to identify how much that internal recruiter is actually doing. And I'm not saying that anybody should run in and clean house.

Speaker 1 It's to our advantage if you have an internal recruiter because our team then helps with moving through the system.

Speaker 1 We have a couple of different levels of service, but everything we do, they should never look at us as a threat. They should look at us as being able to make their job easier.

Speaker 1 And what they don't like is though now they're being measured. They're having to be accountable.

Speaker 1 But that does give you the ability to know whether or not they're doing the things that they need to be doing in the process.

Speaker 1 There's a lot of things that happen within the system. I want to go through and tell the listeners about the whole process from soup to nuts.
What I love is what you kind of just described.

Speaker 1 You know, it's funny because up right above here, I got my Monday board open for Graduate Freedom stuff I'm working on. And it's just nice to know that there's accountability.

Speaker 1 I get to know who touched what, even for my Graduate Freedom stuff and who's assigned this tasks. And when's the last time it got touched? And when do I, I can notify people.

Speaker 1 And, you know, you introduced me to Monday, really.

Speaker 1 I mean, we were using it before in the marketing department but i wasn't using it and you've got a lot of different things you use but you've got the videos of certain things and just all these different tools and the ride along forums and the surveys and text messages and you brought finnegan my dog into one of the text messages it sends out so talk to us about the system from soup to nuts a little bit sure so the way it's set up is there's two different aspects one we have our system which is rapid hire and that is the communication tool with the candidates that's where everything is happening with the communication with the candidates the lead comes in, the automation start.

Speaker 1 This is sort of how it works. We have the Facebook ad running.
We have it managed in the Facebook business manager. They see the ad, they fill out the form.

Speaker 1 It instantly sends them a picture of the ad along with a text message to get them to the link to go fill out the application. And it starts to nurture them.

Speaker 1 Once they fill out the application, it instantly takes them to do the video interview.

Speaker 1 Most of them aren't ready to do it right that moment, and that's fine because we have them in a nurture sequence sending them text messages and emails and voicemails to move them through to get that process done, to get them to do that video interview.

Speaker 1 As soon as it's done, and all the way through the system, we're using Monday.com to communicate with the company instead of the candidate.

Speaker 1 But in there, there's a little talk bubble, the application is in there, the resume is in there, the link to the video interview is in there. That's where all the communication is happening.

Speaker 1 And what's so great about it is they don't have to go do anything. If they look at that file, it shows when they looked at it and who looked at it.
You can sell if someone's looking at it or not.

Speaker 1 It documents it instantly. And it's flawless.
But let's say they're not in there and you need to ask them a question.

Speaker 1 You just tag them, you know, add to when they're at Tommy and ask a question about Garage Door Freedom. And it's going to be in there.

Speaker 1 It's going to notify them in Monday, but it's also going to send them an email. So there's no way of missing a notification that's happening.
I've got a company.

Speaker 1 There's no reason for an interview to sit there waiting for two weeks to get an interview. Because they're being tagged every couple of days.
Hey, where are we at with this?

Speaker 1 Or ready to schedule an interview or ready to schedule So much so that we've gotten to the point where we're requiring most of our clients that have a calendly set up so that we have that access to the calendar to be able to schedule interviews on the calendar in the available times.

Speaker 1 That doesn't mean we can just schedule them willy-nilly.

Speaker 1 You can moderate and you can limit what hours you have available for the interviews, but at least it gives us the ability to get it scheduled right then while the person is paying attention.

Speaker 1 So we use Rapid Hire, we use the video interview, and we use Monday.com as a communication tool. Well, then you're managing the social media a lot of the time too, as well.

Speaker 1 You're doing the media buys. You know, one of the listeners said, I couldn't get my sponsored ad to go.
So you're handling all that. Yeah.
What we do in that case is

Speaker 1 because

Speaker 1 employment ads sometimes get shut down. We've had an ad account, unfortunately, one time shut down because of too many employment ads rejected, is we, for each of our clients, we build a standalone.

Speaker 1 recruitment page because we don't want anything that we're doing to impact negatively on anything that you might be doing for generating leads currently for your business and Facebook.

Speaker 1 And so we build a standalone. So we're managing our business manager.
We're creating the ads. We're managing the ads.
We're managing the lead flow. The leads are coming into our Rapid Hire system.

Speaker 1 We have an account manager that's monitoring that on a daily basis. So that recruiter or whoever's internal to your team that's getting that is getting a daily update of here's how many leads came in.

Speaker 1 Here's how many are in the process of video interview. Here's how many have applications.
Here's how many are in the process of video interview.

Speaker 1 Here's how many are ready for pre-screening and then here's how many are ready for a hiring manager interview when you're monitoring that on a daily basis you start to see the needle moving because it's always in your face because you're not you can't really ignore it and we've just recently kind of gone to that everyday communication and we do it with whoever on your team needs to get that communication because it's recruiter yeah but sometimes you know somebody else on the team like an hr manager or even an owner might want to be getting that notification maybe not daily but at least on a weekly basis to see what the scorecard looks like.

Speaker 1 We'll get some questions here. I'll tell you guys,

Speaker 1 Vanessa and Jodi and their team, I'm getting between 30 and 40 employees a month. And I know

Speaker 1 you guys know I'm in 30 markets, 19 states. And that's CSRs, dispatchers, warehouse guys.
We've gotten on some different managers. I mean, literally, it's not all technicians.

Speaker 1 We've got installers too. It's crazy.
We've got just different people for different things. You've actually got us some recruiters.

Speaker 1 Yeah, we've hired the lead recruiter and two additional recruiters right now. We've hired two recruiters.

Speaker 1 Your recruiting team found us

Speaker 1 recruiters. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Because the thing is, is that we would rather be in a position of bringing in the leads, moving them through the system and being that piece of the puzzle that assists your internal team.

Speaker 1 Now, we do have a level where we actually do all that all the way through to getting the interview done. But our strength really is in the first part.

Speaker 1 And we're, because we're doing the recruiting, here's what happens.

Speaker 1 And it's just unfortunate that it does, but we don't have the power that an internal recruiter has on your team because no matter how good we are, we're still looked at sometimes as a consultant.

Speaker 1 And the hiring managers look at us as we're just bothering them. And rather than it being somebody that's part of the company, this then has a little bit of ability to make things happen internally.

Speaker 1 So it doesn't happen all the time. It doesn't happen most of the time, but sometimes it does.
And it makes it difficult to do that. So it really is.

Speaker 1 i want to just say one thing jody is i'll tell you guys this and this is really sad and it's it's unfortunate but chances are

Speaker 1 and i'm saying this from experience for myself

Speaker 1 is when they get deep in the woods and they find out what's really going on with your recruiting most likely you guys might want to

Speaker 1 find somebody that they'll help you put in the role because it's a lot of hard work and there's a lot to be said about that initial when they first learn about your company it's a different world out out there.

Speaker 1 Listen, your old recruiter two years ago, boom, it was easy, man. People come to us.
They know we're the best company. We got people lining up.
Now everybody's going, man, what are we going to do?

Speaker 1 The role has changed for this job and this position. I've gone through a dozen because it takes somebody that all day long, they're talking to people.
And it's, I'll tell you what, I couldn't do it.

Speaker 1 And you guys have figured out a way to do it. So do you guys help?

Speaker 1 with the background checks if they don't you know this is cody if you don't have a recruiter who does the background check for us us or rapid hire?

Speaker 1 But at this point, it would be you. If you want us to do that, it's something that we can do as an additional service.
We've done it for in the trucking industry with MBRs. It's probably still better.

Speaker 1 It comes across better if you're doing it, but we can facilitate and help you set up how to get that done rather easily. It can be done.

Speaker 1 Guys, I really enjoyed this. Yeah, I've known Patty a long time.
She's been in a couple of different groups that I've been a coach in. I've known her for years now.

Speaker 1 But thanks, Patty, for being here it's great conversations here somebody said uh they're really enjoying the conversation uh can we get into our recruiting manager we'll make sure we'll go on there and get this listen last couple things here

Speaker 1 by the way i'll just throw this out there guys me and jody are really good friends i'm here to help him but he actually flew out here helped me with garage door freedom he's helping me build the website for garage door freedom He's helping me reach out and he's going to speak at my next event for garage door freedom.

Speaker 1 Those of you that don't know what Garage Door Freedom is, it's for garage door drawer companies we're trying to give them freedom give them access to all of our buy deals we've got 159 things we've got a deal worked out with service type we're going to deal out with paylocity everything you can think of and jody's been a big piece of it he's helping me on the back end he talks to me for 10 hours a week just trying to get it sorted out so the least i can do is is try to get him as much business as possible not because he's helping me because he has a good product and trust me you call me he does what he says he will there's one thing i know i've recommended some people and i know sometimes if someone goes to get a loan or something, sometimes if they can't do it,

Speaker 1 all I know is I can vouch for this guy. We're not done yet, just yet, but I can tell you guys this.
The shit that he's had to pick up for in the past for people is insane. And I'll tell you this.

Speaker 1 He'd rather give you your money back if you don't feel like he gave you a good value.

Speaker 1 And I don't know what kind of guarantees he's got, but the fact is he feels like he's working right alongside of me in this company. And he cares.

Speaker 1 There are days that him and his wife, I don't think he's cried necessarily, but literally tears have come to their eyes for some of the stuff they've seen going on because they care that much.

Speaker 1 So I just want you guys to know that this is the reason we're going to be at a thousand people here in the next year, a thousand employees from 400.

Speaker 1 This is the reason why when the pandemic hit, we were at 132 and we're at 400 today. This is it.
And I got his back and he'll have your back. You know, I believe in what he's doing.

Speaker 1 I believe in what Vanessa's doing.

Speaker 1 And they're wholesome Carolinians.

Speaker 1 So you've got other business owners that work with you. And,

Speaker 1 you know, I know that you came into this helping me out because you were doing a lot with truck drivers and it just, it blossomed into like something pretty big now.

Speaker 1 What are you working with? What have you learned? What kind of advice? I'll give you some more stuff. And then we've got a link for people.
that you'll give.

Speaker 1 I don't know what you're going to give to them because you and Gianni worked it out, but no, I wanted to know who you're working with.

Speaker 1 Oh, okay some of the stuff you've learned talk a little bit about that so we have over 20 clients that we're working with right now in the home service industry ranging from handyman service with five trucks to the largest cabinet manufacturer in the country with it has 600 employees hiring 34 different positions at a time and so some of the things that you know this like whenever we started doing recruiting and trucking we didn't know what we didn't know we started off yeah we can get truck drivers for anybody and we found out really quickly that yeah we don't really know how to get owner operators.

Speaker 1 So, we had to, you know, we figured out, okay, we don't do owner operators, we can only get company drivers.

Speaker 1 And then we don't really do really good with flatbed drivers because it's a different animal and they got a tarp. So, we had to learn lessons there.

Speaker 1 And just like we're learning lessons in the home service industry as well, as far as the difference in getting apprentices versus getting experienced people.

Speaker 1 Now, we can find experienced people, but the offer is different. The way you position it is a lot different.

Speaker 1 And so, you know, the things we've learned, like working with people like Aaron Gaynor with EcoPlumbers, or Preferred Home services here in the carolinas or you know trusted toolbox out in here in um in atlanta the different companies that we're we're working with has made it you know so that we're learning these things as we go and so as far as a guarantee right now we don't have enough information from what we're doing to offer a guarantee other than the fact that no one's going to work harder or do work harder to fulfill what they say they're going to do than our team does.

Speaker 1 You know, we have a, on our Facebook page, we have a picture like from Tombstone. It's like build a team that's so strong that no one can identify who the leader is.
And that's what we have in place.

Speaker 1 No matter who you're talking to on our team, they are a leader and they can make those decisions. So Tommy put a link in there.
It's rapidirepro.com forward slash Tommy.

Speaker 1 And when you go there, it's going to have some information and there's going to be a link to go schedule a call. And what I did before is I would do a discovery call.

Speaker 1 to find out a lot about your business and then I would come back and we'd do a presentation. But we've sort of modified how we do things right now.

Speaker 1 And we've just, because of the experience that we've had over the last three and a half months working with 20 different home service companies, we sort of streamlined the operation to where I can get some basic information from you and we can go straight into a Zoom call where I can share with you how it looks like, what it does, and what that would mean for your business.

Speaker 1 And I'm not a sales guy. I mean, I am, but I don't have anything to sell you.
I have a solution that I can show you.

Speaker 1 I can show you what it looks like for your business and then see if it's something that you think is a fit or or not. And either way, it's okay.

Speaker 1 I'm not the kind of person that's going to throw scarcity in there, but I do have a deal worked out so that anybody that does this, go ahead. I got a two-fold deal.

Speaker 1 One is for every 10 people that we wind up working with through the Can Through Home Service Expert through Tommy, and it's a big deal because Tommy pays us a lot of money because he's got 28 to 30 markets in 19 different states.

Speaker 1 But we're going to basically, for every 10 people that sign up, Tommy, we're going to work for you for free for a month for every 10 people that sign up.

Speaker 1 But we also have a deal for those that come through.

Speaker 1 It's going to be a significant discount off of the setup because there is a setup fee because we customize everything we do. No one ever knows our name.
They only ever know your name.

Speaker 1 And so we're going to discount the setup fee from that. And like I said, I'm not going to go into what it is.
I'll share with you on the call what that discount looks like.

Speaker 1 And I can promise you it's definitely worth your while. So we can kind of look at it from that standpoint because it comes down to to every company is a little bit different.

Speaker 1 Everyone's needs are a little different.

Speaker 1 And it's not a one-size-fits-all solution, but we do have it streamlined to where with just a little bit of information, we can go straight into the nuts and bolts of the system.

Speaker 1 You've heard about what it looks like. On that call, I'm going to take you behind the scenes and show you what it looks like.

Speaker 1 Show you what a text message with Tommy's dog, you know, Finnegan, that we send out that says, hey, this is Finnegan. Every time someone, he's our mascot.

Speaker 1 Every time someone completes an application, Finnegan gets a treat. So go ahead and complete the application.
Finn is counting on you.

Speaker 1 You know, and people, you know, they send us back pictures of their dogs, but to show that the marketing aspect that goes into it, and then how we manage the Facebook campaigns, and then how Monday works on a daily basis.

Speaker 1 Because even in the last two weeks, and Tommy can attest to this, we've been putting everything together.

Speaker 1 We've just gotten our reporting to where you can go in on a moment's glance, see how many leads have come in, how many of those are in, and what stage of the process, and exactly where people came from.

Speaker 1 We've developed a relationship with indeed where we're going to start offering to be able to get leads from indeed not necessarily applications because they're going to a pay-for-play just before i got on here tommy i got a message from blake basically he has now has an account manager with zip that's going to seem very excited to work with

Speaker 1 nobody's doing what we're doing and that's why indeed has it they've assigned to someone zips assigned to somebody i mean we're we're testing so many things and i'll tell you guys this literally i won't even go into how much i'm not even kidding i feel like they're charging me way less than they should but it's it's in the tune of several dozens of thousands somewhere in there between the aspen and stuff he's got a program i think that'll be very very economical if you sell a good garage store tune up turn turns into an overall that covers the program and those are you garage guys i'll put it this way it will be more affordable than you would ever imagine yeah no i know that i needed a lot of help we're trying to get so many employees employees.

Speaker 1 When you're trying to hire 40 employees a month, you're going to be paying Jody a lot more money. I promise you.

Speaker 1 When you're looking for three or four or seven, it's different, especially if you're willing to take it on on your own. But I'll tell you this.

Speaker 1 If you guys sign up or know somebody that needs this, I know one thing. How many people have you got there now? We have 11.

Speaker 1 So you're bringing on more and more, but you're also working with our internal teams. The technology, the fact is you penetrated ZipRecruiter.
I'm guessing you're going to penetrate Craigslist.

Speaker 1 You're already penetrated indeed. You're doing things right now on social media that no one's ever done.
You're about to do things on TikTok.

Speaker 1 The fact is, the more people that you get, I know for a fact, you're bringing on more resources. You're doing bigger things.

Speaker 1 So I'm telling you guys, look, if you know somebody that's having a hard time right now and they're a good company, then they should reach out to them.

Speaker 1 If you don't know anybody that needs help, but if they're a shitty company, don't even waste this time because it's hard to make miracles happen for crappy companies that don't care about their employees.

Speaker 1 Let me tell you about our culture. So basically, if you've never heard of it, I would say, tell this to anybody.

Speaker 1 You need to go get the book traction, and you need to implement the entrepreneurial operating system into your business. You need to implement a dream manager into your business.

Speaker 1 Even if you don't go do the certification, employees come to work for their dreams, not yours. And you can help them achieve their dreams without having to give away the farm.

Speaker 1 You just, it's basically identifying what they want to do. But here's how we are.

Speaker 1 So we've hired a bunch of people recently, and we've gone from a skeleton crew when we were in the trucking because we kind of things were different there.

Speaker 1 And doing this we've had to bring on extra recruiters we've had to bring on a director of operations I said I hired someone away from a national chain who is an indeed master in Blake I've brought in our project manager who is managing multi-million dollar sign projects for a national brand as our project manager I have a recruiting manager that we feel like is part of our family but We brought in the project manager.

Speaker 1 She walked away. She's actually came to work for us for less money than she was making at the sign company, but she wasn't appreciated at the sign company.

Speaker 1 She was supposed to get a sign-on bonus, not a sign-on, supposed to get a bonus for the year. She didn't get paid her bonus the year before.

Speaker 1 She was supposed to get a $3,000 bonus, which she was using for a wedding.

Speaker 1 So we were having our meeting, our internal meeting for EOS, for Entrepreneur Operating System, putting together our plan for the quarter.

Speaker 1 And she was sitting there and she got a text message and tears came to her eyes. And it's like, what's wrong? She goes, I just got a message from the company I was working for.

Speaker 1 I'm not getting my bonus. Vanessa looked at me.
I looked at her. I nodded my head.

Speaker 1 Without saying a word, she wrote a check for exactly what her bonus was supposed to be and handed it to her and said, you don't have to worry about them. We'll pay your bonus.

Speaker 1 That's the type of culture that we have. And that's the kind of culture that the people that we like working with that do that.

Speaker 1 I had a conversation with someone out in Nebraska, they're an HVAC company. And before I finished telling that story, he said, we just did exactly the same thing.
Let me guess, you paid the bonus.

Speaker 1 I'm like, yes. That's the kind of company that we have.
That's what we do. That's how we operate.
And we have goals.

Speaker 1 I mean, we have one of our recruiters that for the first time in her life bought a new car. That was, she did that about a month ago.
And she was not able to do that before coming to work for us.

Speaker 1 Those are the kind of things that you can help people do that don't take any extra money out of your pocket, but helping them plan, helping them identify, helping them understand how to go in and buy a new car.

Speaker 1 Those are the intangibles that they don't fall into the how much do you get paid realm. So those kind of things.
But I will say this. We've streamlined the operation.

Speaker 1 We've made it more more with more accountability in it and made it so that it's affordable no matter what size your business is.

Speaker 1 And then we do have the upper level solution for the constares level service. And I will tell you, it's expensive.
That part because we are dedicating numerous employees to your recruiting process.

Speaker 1 We're calling the employees, the candidates. We're calling them.
We're moving them through. We're texting them.
We're answering their questions.

Speaker 1 We go through such an extensive onboarding process of we're offering the constaires level of service that we answer the phone as your business.

Speaker 1 I've got a video that I did that where for a couple of the apprentices there, I went in and asked them, I said, so let me ask you a question. Did you talk to anybody when you came through the process?

Speaker 1 They're like, yeah. Who did you talk to? Like, Deidre.
I was like, so have you looked for her since you've been here? Like, yeah. I was like, guess what? She doesn't work for A1.

Speaker 1 She works for Rapid Ire. She lives in South Carolina.

Speaker 1 They were blown away because that's the, let's see, how in-depth we go into your business so that what we're doing the concierge level, we're answering the phone as your company and we're answering their questions without having to ask you.

Speaker 1 We can go through the pre-screen, we do all the pre-screening for A1.

Speaker 1 It gets to the point where when it comes to A1, they're pre-screened, and the only thing left to do is set an interview with the hiring manager.

Speaker 1 And so, there are two different levels, but constrains is not for everyone, it's expensive. But we do have a solution where we're putting all the stuff in place.

Speaker 1 That lead gen recruiting arm that's bringing that information in so that your recruiter can move it through the process as quickly as possible for you.

Speaker 1 We did 341,000 in sales so far today. That doesn't mean we've installed that much, we're We're not there in revenue, but I'll tell you guys this.

Speaker 1 If you don't think talent matters, my mentality has always been one A player equals three B players. I'll just tell you this.
I've been inspired by what I've learned over the last few months.

Speaker 1 With Al Levy's help, I'm going to let Jodi write a couple pages in there. I'm bringing on a military recruiter, a sports talent recruiter.
This is my new book.

Speaker 1 It's going to be the Home Service Millionaire on Recruiting. and it's going to be an inside look on what we've done.
And it's not going to be anything about Indeed or ZipRecruiter or any of that shit.

Speaker 1 It's going to talk a lot about Dream Manager. It's going to talk about scripts and questions that work.

Speaker 1 And I hope you guys will support me in that. Not looking to become anything but pay for the printing, which is about three bucks or something, and just get enough out there to market it a little bit.

Speaker 1 But give me three books. You gave us traction by Gino Wickman.
What's another couple of books you really like, Jody?

Speaker 1 The other ones, I have to reach over here and grab them off of my Who is a great book.

Speaker 1 One of the questions that I think everyone should probably ask in their video interview, and Tommy, we may want to talk about changing that. It's like, is

Speaker 1 what will your previous supervisors say about you

Speaker 1 when we call them up? Right. That's from the book, Who.
The other one, let me grab it off of here. It was the culture-driven recruiting.
I suggest that. It's an easy read.

Speaker 1 You can read it in a couple of hours, but it gives some really good things about how to position and how to onboard. Onboarding is another thing.

Speaker 1 We didn't even talk about onboarding because we don't really get that deep into it, but onboarding is another thing that will drive people away if the onboarding process is too long.

Speaker 1 The traction, the culture-driven, and then the other one, this is a pretty cool one. Kind of funny that you put on there the war on talent because this is one of the other books that I recommend.

Speaker 1 It's the talent war. And it's basically how special ops and great organizations win on talent.

Speaker 1 Because whenever you eliminate the competition, whenever it comes to your offer, you don't have to worry about them.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I just, I can't even explain how important this is. I knew this was going to be one of my most important podcasts, but.
I got to say one more thing real quick. No, no, no.
You go ahead.

Speaker 1 And I was going to give you a last chance here. Remember that text message? That's talking about getting text messages.
So I just got a text message from Vanessa.

Speaker 1 And she said, guess what her text message was? It's the name of a book. It's two words.

Speaker 1 Dream manager. Oh, yeah.

Speaker 1 Dream manager. You need to have that.
Dream manager is right up there and understanding that. And a quick thing of the dream manager is really, what are your dreams?

Speaker 1 And what if my legacy is helping a thousand people meet all their dreams? Dude, what if somebody says, when you come to my wedding,

Speaker 1 we're here because of you. I was able to give my kid a great life.
Look, it's not because of me.

Speaker 1 It's because they work their ass off and they deserve everything they've worked for, but we help create these opportunities. So hopefully you guys take something from this.

Speaker 1 If nothing else, implement some of the stuff we talked about and just try to put yourself in their shoes. and say, do I want to get responded with quickly? Do I want to get asked good questions?

Speaker 1 You know, I love that question. When I call your boss, Jodi, I looked it up.
Her name's Kim Chelsea, whatever. I'm making up names, but Tim McGregor.

Speaker 1 When I call Tim McGregor up tomorrow, what is he going to tell me about Jodi Underhill that I you think I should know about?

Speaker 1 And where that's really cool is where you can use that in your interview process as well for your live interview is because when you ask people about their strengths and their weaknesses, they take their weakness and turn it into a strength.

Speaker 1 Oh, yeah, my weakness is I work too hard. Yeah, so it's like, what would your last supervisor say is one of your weaknesses?

Speaker 1 When I called Tim McGregor up, you know, by the way, did you guys leave on a good relationship? Because I got a call. Here's his number.

Speaker 1 And it's really good to actually make those calls, believe it or not.

Speaker 1 Last thing here we do here, Jodi, is I'm going to give you whatever you want to say, but I think it's important to leave everybody with a final thought, a final to-do, something that maybe will move them in a direction to help themselves out.

Speaker 1 Sure. I got two things.

Speaker 1 One is when you go to that domain, rapidhardpro.com forward slash Tommy, is like I said, when we get on that call, the stuff that I'm going to share with you is not necessarily for me to sell you something.

Speaker 1 It's information that you will take and find useful, that you can implement yourself, whether you choose to work with us or not. I'm going to show you examples of Facebook ads.

Speaker 1 I'm going to show you examples of the text, of how to position it, of the emojis, of the messaging that we use, things that you can implement yourself, even if we're not the right fit, because we're not the right fit for everyone, and we know that.

Speaker 1 And so we're going to do that. That's the one thing.
So, you owe it to yourself to at least do that. And it's going to be a, it's not a call of a salesperson, it's me.
I'm going to be on that call.

Speaker 1 I'm the only person that talks to people about the system and how it works. And we're going to go through that.
We're going to spend 30 minutes, no more than 30 minutes.

Speaker 1 You're going to walk away from there with either a decision of, hey, this looks like something that's really great. I want to do this, or yeah, that's great.

Speaker 1 Thanks, but I'm going to take some of this and do it myself. And I'm fine either way.
The other thing that I want you to do that I want you to take away from here is look at what your offer is.

Speaker 1 What is your offer for employment? How can you phrase and frame what is the benefit of coming to work from you? And don't make it something that everyone else can say.

Speaker 1 Well, we're family owned and operated. Guess what? So are 90% of the home service companies out there.
And we treat you like family. Some families, that might not be a good thing.

Speaker 1 I mean, it depends on how they got treated in their family. But look for the things of newer vehicles that take take the van home, gas card, that cuts into their money.
That cuts into their money.

Speaker 1 It's an intangible, right? It's money they're not having to spend on gas to drive to your shop to get the van to then go run, you know, access to materials. You know, look at what is that offer.

Speaker 1 And then even if no matter what you do, look at putting it out in that way where you're leading with the benefits rather than the requirements. Advertise for employees.
I mean, come on.

Speaker 1 You're in business. You must be doing something right for generating leads for your business in order to be able to have trucks that are running and have calls coming in.
Do that for your employment.

Speaker 1 Do that. And you will start to see that shift and start to be able to find people.
Whether we do that for you, whether you do it on your own, market for employees the way you market for customers.

Speaker 1 Read the book by Janie Smith, The Competitive Advantage. And she says, track things that matter to your customers, like how quick you answered the phone call.
What's the customer journey?

Speaker 1 How quick did you get the garage door installed? The warranty honored. Well, what about internal customers? Who owns cars? You said you're tracking.
You got somebody that was able to purchase a car.

Speaker 1 Who's been able to buy a house? Who's been able to go on a vacation? Who's been able to put their kids in private school?

Speaker 1 Imagine if you had 10 stats, 10 new homeowners at my company in the past year, four new children into this world, 10 people put their kids in private school, whatever their dreams are.

Speaker 1 Imagine if you started calculating that stuff.

Speaker 1 And I just think he's a good bridge to get you guys there. And I got to tell you this, Jody, Vanessa, the whole team over there, they're good at what they do.

Speaker 1 And the fact is, he just built this plan that I wish I would have been on it. It's like, like I said, he's cheaper than everybody thinks.

Speaker 1 So, I mean, we talked about it and I shared it. And it was like, Tommy

Speaker 1 got more excited about how much it will help companies that aren't necessarily his size than what we can do for him. Right.
It was like, that's awesome because we figured some stuff out.

Speaker 1 And here's what I got to do. I didn't develop this plan.
I'm not the one doing the recruiting every day. I'm not the one moving things through the process.
The team did it. I was gone.

Speaker 1 I went to the dentist. I had calls I was on.
I came in. They were on a Zoom call from 9 a.m.
to 3 p.m. They went through and completely revamped our offer.

Speaker 1 And I can tell you this, it's so amazing that I've done that offer three times since they did that on Wednesday. I've made that offer three times.

Speaker 1 All three of them said, yes, let's go ahead and do it. I didn't even have to think about it to come back to it.
They just said, send over the agreement. Let's get started.

Speaker 1 It's just, it makes so much sense and it's better than what we did before. And it costs less than what we were doing.
And it gives more value. That's hard to do.

Speaker 1 And I know it kind of sounds like a pipe dream, but the team did that. I couldn't have done it.
I would have sat there and said, why it wouldn't work. They looked at why can't it work?

Speaker 1 Well, you know, the deal is, is, I think one of the things that I think about, and we'll end it here. I know we've gone way over, but technology is such an important thing.

Speaker 1 Like we talked about project management. We decided to win, no more Trello.
We're going 100% Monday. We've decided we're going to pick one BI tool, business intelligence.

Speaker 1 You know, there's a good book called The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, and everybody in our company seems to be sometimes an asylum. And they only care about their division.

Speaker 1 They care about their CSRs, their dispatchers, their market.

Speaker 1 And it's the best for the whole thing. So this technology that you guys are bringing is literally.

Speaker 1 And I'm going to vouch for this. It's the best I've ever seen.
It's the best, most accountable. And I got disgusted.
I wanted to throw up when I saw saw how much my employees were working.

Speaker 1 Within, if you actually pay attention to the leads coming in and you're on top of them and you're with and you're on it, you will hire more people this next month with your program than you've hired this whole last year in 2021.

Speaker 1 Facts, facts, facts. Jody, you're a brother from another mother, my man.
I love you, buddy. Thank you for everything.
Oh, man. Same here.
Love you, buddy.

Speaker 1 And we're just glad to be able to be there and continue to be of help to the whole A1 organization. A1, Garage Door Freedom, the home service expert, the whole thing.
A1 from A1, baby. There you go.

Speaker 1 It's funny. Somebody said, ask you if it was trademarked.
It's like, hell yeah, it's trademarked.

Speaker 1 Exactly. All right, man.
Thank you so much for having me, giving me the opportunity.

Speaker 1 For those of you that, like I said,

Speaker 1 put down the domain. It's like there's not a time limit on it.

Speaker 1 The first 10 people that do. wind up taking the offer, they are going to get that huge discount on the setup.
So take that for what it's worth.

Speaker 1 If nothing else, get on there so you can get some ideas and see some examples of exactly what you can do for your business. Until then, this felt like 15 minutes, but geez, the hour and 40.

Speaker 1 It's a record podcast. Thank you so much, brother.
I'll give you a buzz here later. All right, take care.
Yeah, bye. Thanks, everyone.

Speaker 2 Hey, guys, I hope you enjoyed the podcast with Jodi. I wanted to tell you, real quick, the reason I used Rapid Hire Pro is because Jodi and I, number one, we're great friends.

Speaker 2 Number two is I'm getting great results. Literally, I just met the guys that showed up here at A1.
20 brand new guys. We're bringing on more CSRs, more dispatchers.
All I would say is this,

Speaker 2 he's came into my life and my business for a reason. He's making big, big moves and he's giving me the data I need.
I could tell you we spend darn near a quarter million dollars with him a year.

Speaker 2 And you're not going to spend a fraction of that, but he's such a big piece of what I'm doing. I think I owe it to him

Speaker 2 pass this along to you. I know that if you get on this, you're going to do something with it.
You go to rapidhirepro.com forward slash Tommy, and I think you're going to be happy you did.

Speaker 2 I don't like to recommend people I don't use, and this guy's amazing. Thanks, guys.