 Hey, good afternoon, everybody, Tom Stewart here with Liz Trotter and this is smart business words. Hi, y'all. Happy to see everybody. Even if we are, what, 45 minutes late, I think, Tom? No, my goodness. We just had some technical difficulties, new computer, passwords. Oh, y'all, you think getting a new computer is such a dream and I do like it, but the challenges, the challenges. So also, we also had a challenge because our guest can't make it today. Hey, Denise. She had something pop up at the last second or roll by at the last second. Hey, Tom, you know what? I was just thinking, though, I would love to talk about this new book that we're, we're reading. And I don't know that we want to talk about that, but we could. And then the other thing that I thought we could talk about is maybe what we're going to be doing in Vegas. That's another thing that would be like interesting, fun to talk about. But actually, before we do any of that, how about we just do a quick is a kiss and talk about what ISSA is up to right now? I know they're prepping really hard for convention and they are, let's pull, let's pull that out. Let's see what what's going on in the ISSA world. Okay, I need to really like, I feel ethereal with this stuff in the background like, Oh, people listening on a podcast are like, what, why is she ethereal? Yeah. Sorry, y'all. My background is giving me some, a little bit of grief over here. How are you doing, Danit? So I am going to the, if you go to arcsy.org, it's will redirect to residential.issa.com and I'm going to go to events, and education, and SSA show north of here. Here we are. Oh, early bird ends at the end of this month. So we still have like a week and a half, you know, like 10 days. What is the early bird special Tom? Oh, I guess it depends if you are a member and I'm assuming everybody here is. If not, you should be do that for me wrong again. What? All right. Well, we might not know. We may never know. I don't know. We save a hundred dollars if you do that. That's good. Save a hundred bucks. That's good. But even if I had to pay an extra hundred bucks, I'd still be going. So it's a great event, not only the showroom floor. And we talk a lot about, I know that convention and all of the different reasons why you should go, et cetera. But I just have one thing that I wanted to say today. One thing that is happening that we haven't talked a ton about is every day they have a just a quick check in. I can't remember what they call coffee and chat, maybe on the showroom floor in the booth in the ISSA booth. Are there multiple ISSA booths? We probably have an ISSA residential booth, I'm guessing. I think residential has its own. There's a whole, I think what they call it, like a community. Our whole little section, our residential cleaning section. And the ISSA residential is there. I think I see Tricia Lake trying to pop in here after all this. I do. I do see something happening there. I'm not sure it's all the way there, but it looks a little blank still, but we'll see. So anyway, what I was saying while we see if Tricia's going to be able to overcome some tech difficulties she might be having, one of the things they do is with that coffee and chat, the conversation and coffee, whatever they call it, it's really fun. And hey, Tricia, and it looks like she was able to overcome the little challenge she was having there today. Hey, Tricia, how are you? Maybe not. Maybe not all the way over. Maybe not. I might be able to unmute her. I don't know. Last video, too, though. All right. So while they're figuring out their little tech thing, it is a great thing to do. Just jumpstart your day. Go there in the morning. One of the things that they do there is they have drawings of quite a few. Last year, I think there were like 10 different drawings each morning where they're giving away a bunch of stuff, a lot of free things, some amazing things. I know Debbie Sardone gave away her. Oh, what's that? What's the big event? I can't believe it's like escaping me because I'm all stressed out about Tricia. Oh, my goodness. That's crazy that I can't think of it right now. Cleaning business fundamentals. No, it's not the fundamentals. Maybe it is. Actually, I think she did give away fundamentals, too, the cleaning business fundamentals course. But they have the one big, large event, I believe it's in February each year. And she gave away access to that last year. So I know that was a really big prize. We always give away. Core profit builders always gives away quite a few things. We'll be doing the same thing this year. And also listening sales, the new sales program that Dan and Maria and I just launched will be giving away some stuff then, too. Cleaning Institute. Institute. Hey, I'm holding that. Expand upon Cleaning Institute. And I'd love to hear a little bit more about what you are coming. Is that what Debbie's giving away? Or is that something different? No. I know that they give away some, like, RSA Residential gives away PhD classes. There's a lot of cool stuff. So much. So much stuff. They gave away a vacuum cleaner last year, maybe even multiples. They, I can't even think of all the different things that they gave away. But who knows what they'll be giving away this year. But even if you don't win a prize, I feel like everybody won something last year. Oh, Sharon gives away her training last year. Sharon Timberk, I'm sure she'll be doing something similar. She's partnering with ISSA on that. And I think they're offering that through the learning management system. So that's going to be really nice. That's going to be awesome for people. So even if you don't win anything at the morning event, you'll still have a good chance to jumpstart your day, find out what other people are doing. It's a really, I really like going there in the morning and kind of getting my day started that way. And I did it. Actually, this is maybe the third year, fourth? We skipped a year because of COVID. Yeah. Well, we did it online. It was just, and we did do it. We did the conversation and chat thing, or conversation and coffee thing online, too. But it was harder, much harder online, so much better. It's why you really realize how nice it is to connect up with people in real time in real life. And just so you know, we call it coffee and chat, I think is what they call it. You have to bring your own coffee, though. Yeah. Don't do like I did and show up, expecting to get a confidence. That's not happening. Bring your own coffee. Oh, you're back, Trisha. Maybe. I'm back. Oh, my God. Can you hear me? Yeah, we got sound. We got picture. What's the temperature there, Trisha? Like 75, I think. Oh, that's not too bad. I know one time Liz did one of these from the car, and the temperature was like 110. And we had to call EMS. Oh, my gosh. Do you know Tom's stories? They get bigger. She went crack the window because it was making too much noise. It got so hot, her phone shut down. Oh, my gosh. That is true. I had to go hide in my garage. I got seven people in my house, so I had to go hide somewhere. That's funny. And you're hiding in your garage. Well, you have a nice comfortable garage, though. So that's not bad. I sit in your fancy car. Yeah. Yeah. So see, yeah. What's your fancy car, Trisha? I have a souped-up pink Mustang. Oh, you ever seen it on Facebook? Yeah. It's a GT. It's got the 5-0 in it. Yeah. Is it a supercharger? Oh, wow. Did it come with that? Did you put that in? I bought it all souped-up. So someone previously. Do they come stock with a suit? I mean, can you, they'll send it that way to you from the factory? I don't think so, no. Like, everything on this car is almost all aftermarket. Yeah, I'm thinking the supercharger. Somebody put that on after. Yeah, there's a ton of work done to it. Is it an automatic or manual? Definitely a manual, yeah. Yeah, she choked a couple of times when I was in Fargo last time. She chirped coming off the line a couple of different times. I was like, whoa, OK. A little bit of power on that thing. Works on your neck a little bit, doesn't it? Yeah, I tried to baby you with Liz, though. You actually, no, she did. She drove really mellow, but I think it just has a lot of power. So like, every once in a while, I was like, I know when Tim would drive the Ferrari every once in a while, he'd come hot off the line and be like, hey, stop it. Yeah, yeah, you can spin the wheels on a fourth gear, which is kind of insane. Wow. Well, you know, I used to be a defensive driving instructor, so I appreciate the caution you're taking. You did. You took good care of Liz. Or after you got that last ticket that you got. No, that was framed. It was the last day of the month, and they needed to make their quote. Oh, my gosh, excuses, excuses. So now that we have Tisha here, I really want to, because she could literally talk about this topic for days. And so I want to get talking about it, because we only have like 40 minutes here. But Tisha, you're coming on to talk about your culture and some of the things that you've done to create a strong culture. And one of the things that we always talk about how to create it, one thing that people don't talk a lot about is the benefits that you get from having a really strong culture. I was wondering if you would talk a little bit about that. Hey, Denny, the best culture around, she says, in all caps. Yeah, I don't know. Yeah, I mean, ultimately, the benefit of having a strong culture is that you have people wanting to come work for your company. They want to get their foot into the door of your company. It's less of you chasing people. And then people feel proud about where they work. And that reflects in their work that they're actually doing. It just makes the whole company run smoother, more organized. Just everything is more streamlined when you have a good company culture. Like, your culture is the core of their company. So if that's not on point, the whole company is not going to run. It'll run very well, anyway. Yeah, always give you struggles. Yeah. So is there like a five-point checklist? Or what do you have to do to make that happen? Sounds wrong. No. I mean, everyone's culture's going to be different, right? I think it kind of goes back to, for one thing, is like, what is your core values? What are the things that you want your company to really make a difference and matter? And then you have to build a culture around those core values, in my opinion. And everything has to tie to those. So transparency is not a core value of ours, but it should be because we're all about it. But in our company, we do where everyone calls out publicly. There's a public channel where everyone calls out in front of each other's coworkers and stuff. If you break something, like you post publicly, that you damage this, you do a report on there. If there is just everything is public, and it's not really much as hidden, if that makes sense. So I think that's a really big part of our culture. I think the point of that is that you can't really have that level of transparency if you don't have a strong company culture. Because there are some people that heard you say that. They're like, oh yeah, you have to request time off, or you call out publicly. Some people are thinking, no way, that never work in my company, that my people would quit before they would do that, or everybody would just jump on and yell at them about having time off, or they always, it would be a train wreck. But it works in your company because of your strong culture. So it is one of the benefits of having that culture is you could have that level of transparency. So Trisha, can you tell us what are your core values? I'd love to dig in a little bit to how you bring like each one of those to life a little bit. Like some of the things you do. Yes, but why can't I remember right in front of everybody what they are? I have no idea. Loyalty, adaptability, adaptability is a big one. Like we talk about in our company about how, like through the whole interview process, like if you're not adaptable, this will never be the company for you. I can't, you got me on a spot now, I can't even remember my damn core values. Is it on your website? They're everywhere, and we talk about them all the time and the second I hang up, I'm gonna know them all instantly. Well, and I think it's really funny because you have rattled them off to me more times now. I know, it's like when you go to the doctor's office and they ask you what your kid's birthday is, you're like, uh. Well, you know where they are. Hey, Tom, look up her website if you would for me. Yeah, that's what you're doing. They're not on there. They're not on your front, on that wall? Not on there? No, that's a really good idea. You have that wall, so I love it. I can't believe it. I know. All right, let me see, I know I have a picture too. So anyway, while we're trying to find those, actually, anybody else that was at her event didn't eat you were there. Did you get a picture of that wall? Maybe you could tell us what they are. I'm seeing if I can find the wall too. But, what would I, well, you mentioned one right now, though Tricia, what was that first one that you just mentioned? All right, so here's my core values in list that I should know and I don't know why I don't. All right, so optimistic. So we're always wanna look at situations in a positive manner. Gratitude, trustworthy, adaptable, growth, loyalty, and reliable. So our company, we look at every situation that we do with like, if we make a mistake, we make a breakage, a damage, we look at that as how do we learn from it? How do we improve from it? So that kind of goes hand in hand with our growth core value, is just always trying to improve. Loyalty, we expect a two week notice plus with our company, if you come work for us. Same reason of like, if you mess up, if you break something, we don't just fire you, right? Like we are loyal to you and we will work to help improve you and grow you throughout the company. So all of our core values really go hand in hand with all of our hiring decisions, all of our termination decisions, all of everything. That's what I was kind of hoping you could give me to a little bit to start us out. How do each of your core values tie into your hiring process? Because you do have a really unique hiring process. A lot of people are going kind of the same thing that everybody else does. Yours is very unique. You created it yourself, you built it yourself. It works really well. You don't struggle to hire people like many other companies have and do. So I thought maybe you could tap into a little bit about like maybe tie each core value into how it's related to something and part of your hiring process. When we talked, I remember that they were all in there. Yeah. In small little and big ways. Yeah, so let's go down my list here. So optimistic, you know, when we are looking at people applying, we are kind of looking to see how do they handle situations. So we show them videos of really disgusting stuff. We, in general, try to find ways to make them grumpy and crabby. And we're looking to see do they bite on that or do they stay optimistic and positive minded? We also listened for in the interview process, are they bashing old employers? Some might be legit things, but we listened to how they do it. Are they respectful about the manner or are they looking to dig? Those people kind of tend to not be a good fit for us. Gratitude, we're also looking through the interview of what were they grateful for? What last employers had done for them? What, why do they wanna be a part of it? Uh-oh. Tom, you're so happy that she cut out right there because you really wanted to know about it. I wanted to know what the disgusting things were. Yeah, she does. Yeah, he does. I could see him just like chopping a thing down. Give me an example. Do you have any pictures? Did I cut out? Yeah. No. So discussing things like we'll show a video of just like really bad before and afters and stuff. And like there's this picture in particular that has an elderly man's bathroom and it's all handicap accessible and it's just really, really bad. And we show this picture in this video and we just simply say, hey, you know, like when you see this, what do you think? And it's a group style interview so we can see their faces. And they just simply, you know, you can see the ones go, ugh, ugh, ugh, you know. And then I say, you know, what do you think about this? Or like, what's the first thing that comes to your mind? The people that go, well, it's gross. I instantly know it's not gonna be a good fit. Like we're gonna send them to gross stuff. The ones that go, well, my first thought was, oh man, that's bad. But, you know, I can see that they have a handicap accessible toilet and stool and this is somebody that really needs our help. So those are the ones that I'm like, yep, they get it. Because we're not hiring people because they love to clean. The majority of my people, yeah, they like to clean but that's not why they're working for a company. They're working for a company because they wanna come in, they wanna make a difference in people's lives and this is how they're able to do so. But they have to know that and see that and want that in order to know that this job is for them. If they're just coming because they like to clean toilets, it's probably not a long-term thing that they're gonna like to do. So really similar to like, oh, what are they called? Not the physician's assistant, they're home helpers. You know, like when they come in and they help assist elderly people, absolutely. You know, nobody says, ooh, I wanna wipe a butt today, right, like no one says that. But when they get to go in into a home and say, I am able to assist people stay into their homes longer and live a healthier life, that's why people should be doing those jobs. And so when we are hiring people, we're actually looking for people that, do they need this job? Yes or no. Do they want this job? Yes or no type thing. If people just need a job, we don't really want them. That's not really the fit that we want. We want people that want our job. So in our area, there's a bajillion jobs out there. So I want people that fight to come into our company and want to be at our company. Because if not, they'll be taken instantly within two months by any other company. And so my hiring process is really long because I'm wanting them to fight to be at our company and prove to me, huh? Talk about it, talk about how they have to fight for it. We like fights. We don't got long enough to go over my whole thing. But I mean, I make them do, yeah, I mean, they have to do, they have to watch certain videos. They have to do certain tasks multiple times sometimes and we like to see if we ask them to do the same thing over again. Are they annoyed by that? Or do they happy go lucky go and do it? They have to almost write an essay to us of why they want to be at our company and telling us all the different things that they learned over an hour long video that we require them to watch. You, I remember you sharing that in the past. You actually have them write a letter to you explaining why they want to work. Yeah, like I said, we make them fight for it. And so it's not a short hiring process at all and I want it to be difficult. And even once we finally hire them, we only hire them for a two-day temporary position. And we let them work for two days. We tell them it's a temporary position. And after the two days is complete, then we evaluate we want to move them forward with a full offer or let them go. 50% of the time we let them go. The other 50% we take them on. But every single step of the way, every time they graduate to a new step, they feel honored and privileged that we're getting to move along the line. So when they actually secure a job with us, it feels really good because they fought for it. So anyone that has a college degree or that they had to work towards something in life, right? It took time to get to that. And so once you get to it, you appreciate it. If you're handed something in life, you don't really appreciate it. And so- I don't know. Tricia, I have to argue one thing. Okay. Tom really does appreciate that cup that he keeps holding up and you just handed that cup to him. That's true. Up. No, that's not true. I made him work for that. Do you know how? No, tell me. I required, I made him deal with me for years of abuse, of mental abuse. And I was looking for his optimistic and positive personality when I was sending him photos of random people. And because he successfully completed my mission, I gave him a cup. If I had known that for the reason, I would have hit you up for something more than this lousy cup. Oh, you know what? I don't hear gratefulness. I'm taking that cup back. Yeah, I'm like, oh, you're not gonna do that. I'm full of gratitude. I appreciate that. And I got that on my birthday no last. Thank you. That was awesome. Basically, you make people jump through hoops to come into your company. It does two things. It makes the person that gets the job feel grateful they got the job and they feel good about it. They feel proud about it. And two, it makes everyone else in the company know that their job is not easy to get and it makes them feel better about working there. When you hire anybody and everybody off the street, it devalues your current people and it makes them just irreplaceable. You know, just replaceable and just not a big deal. All right, so that I do have to agree with. I was joking that you can hand people stuff and they just like... But absolutely, when people work for things, they appreciate it more than... And we all know that. We've all experienced it, right? When we work for something, we feel better about it as well. One of the things that I know that you do is you're creating an environment that people wanna come to even before they have had to jump through any hoops, right there? I know we saw people while we were there that wanted to work at one of your other locations but you didn't have openings over there and they were willing to drive how far? Hour and a half each direction, so three hours a day. Hour and a half, yeah. This wasn't just a... Okay, they say they're going to do that and then a week later, they're like, okay, never mind. People that were doing this for months. Months, yeah. So yeah, that's become pretty common in my company to where if I don't have an opening at one location, they will apply for whatever location is available and they'll work that location until the location that they want to work at becomes available so they can make the transfer. It's kind of an instant shoo-in for them to get that position in that location they want but they just have to do some driving three hours a day for a few months until that position opens in their area. I think most people that are hearing you say that right now are like, no, nobody's going to do that. No, these are real people, y'all. These are real people, yeah. And obviously these are people that are, I don't wanna say better, but these people want this job. So when they get the job, they're doing the job better. They're trying harder. They care, they care a lot more. Yeah. They care more about the job. Yeah. So they're- And I'll fight this comment because I always, when people hear about like my hiring strategies and stuff like that, they always think it's weird and they're like, oh well, there must just not be that many jobs in North Dakota. That's not the case, especially my area. We have like the lowest unemployment rate in like the entire nation. There's jobs everywhere. Everywhere. Amazon here is like, I think they have like 5,000 open jobs and positions right now. Like there's just every single place has jobs. And we are literally one of the worst unemployment rates ever. And it's been like that since before COVID. So we've had these rates, these low forever. And so we've always been fighting people. And so you just have to, I guess, learn how to fight better, if that makes sense. But given that though, how many people spend three hours a day commuting in Fargo and North Dakota? I mean, there's some parts of the country, you know, large numbers in areas where that's kind of a thing, but- And that's the thing is that goes back to the company culture is like they want to be here. And but if they were just looking for a job, they would never do that. There's a bajillion jobs out there. And that's why when I look for people, I'm looking for people that want to only be at TLC Cleaning. So what do you think makes them want to be there? Trisha, other than just that, you know, they have to work so hard to get the job. I think our reputation, what they hear in the community about us, we're big time community people. So we're always doing community events. We're always showing recognition to our staff over social media. We are a lot of our employees that will bring their friends and coworkers to our events. Every location that we have, we do once a month team builder. So we'll go bowling or we'll go out just doing something every single month. We do homemade breakfast every Monday. We do birthday gifts, anniversary trips. For their five year anniversary, I take them on a trip just to the boss and them. Like a weekend, two to three day trip. For their 10 year anniversary, I sent them somewhere massive with their family. So we just, it's hard to really go over everything we do. We do a lot though. And we just put our time and our money into our staff instead of trying to just replace them. You know, like we just, we just take really good care of them. People hear it, people know it and they want to come work for us. And so you don't have to spend as much money on, as a lot of people do. So that's another thing that we had talked about, right? You're able to- The benefits? Yeah, you're able to spend more money on your people because you don't have to spend the money getting them. And we're a constant turnover. It all goes into like a circle. Like I'm a big believer in like, just the circle type relationship to where like, there's a client, you know, circle triangle, whatever. You can say that there's clients are involved. The company is involved and our staff is involved, right? And all three of those areas need to be happy and healthy in order for it to work properly, the relationship like a mutually beneficial relationship. Everyone needs to be benefiting. And so we have 750 reoccurring clients. I can't keep 750 people happy if I tried it with all my life, right? I can't do it, but so what I try to do is I try to take all my time, energy, money, everything. And I dump that into our employees. I make them, you know, 60, 65 employees very happy. They show that in their work and they make all of their clients happy. And that's how the whole company in general just stays, I believe it in a really good situation. Yeah. And the other alternative is you can have a bad culture, a high turnover and you dumping all that money and recruiting and training. And then you get into the trap of, well, I can only spend so much on training a new person because I'm training so many people. And that is important. Anyway. Yeah. So, yeah. Everything starts to degrade when you're putting your efforts and all your resources into things other than your employees, yeah. Yeah. I mean, at the end of the day, our employees are our most important, you know, if we can't honestly ask that as an example, our employees are our most important of everything. It's just what, as a service-based company, like it only makes sense that we are trying to take care of them. And because without them, you don't have a company. So did you just start the business that way? No. No, no, no. Our company culture wasn't very good for many years. I worked my people, when I say I worked them, I worked them hard and bad and I was rough. And I mean, we used to be a very much like client pleasing company where everything we did, we were just trying to make the clients happy. It wasn't about the employees. And I turned and burned employees like left and right and I used to work my staff. I feel like the last five days of the month were the worst, but they would work from 8 a.m. to 2 a.m., five days in a row. I would have employees crying. That sounds like, what? Yeah, crying, quitting, everything 8 a.m. to 2 a.m., yep. And we did five, for five days in a row until we finally got so burnt out and we just got so tired of all of it, we decided to open up our deep cleaning division of our company to be able to take off some of that responsibilities of us, to be able to ease our loads. But anyway, you could get off at midnight, maybe 11 o'clock. What'd you say? So instead of having to work to 2 a.m., maybe you could get off at midnight or 11 p.m. With that change, I'm being sarcastic, forget about it. Yeah, I don't know. You know, that's time, so I remember my team worked 48 hours straight at one point in time. You know, like we had new construction we were working on and as a small company, being a small company is hard. And that's where I think you have to take the brunt of everything. But we were working on this really bad job and sure enough, the sun is coming up and I remember I sent our manager home and I said, go get a couple of hours of sleep. I'll open shop. And I went from that cleaning straight to the office and opened it up for the next day to do a 48 hour shift. So our company wasn't always employee friendly. We'll put it out. But that was your culture because, I mean, that was, you weren't asking anybody to do anything that you hadn't done. No, I was out there with them. Yeah, yeah. And I used to go around in my, when I stopped being out in the field we still were working hard like that. Probably not as bad, but still pretty bad. And I used to drive my vehicle around and I'd have homemade food and I'd go to every single employee's stop for like the end of the month like that and I would feed them all dinner. I think it was lunch and dinner, I can't remember. But I'd open the trunk of my vehicle and I'd have homemade chicken alfredo or spaghetti and like all the fixed things and stuff like that. It was funny. But that was my way of like taking care of them when they're out working like them. And it's not as bad as she's making it sound because she did let them like take 10 minutes to eat dinner. Yeah, that's about it. I was like, you know what? I look at my staff and it's funny too because I have staff that's, you know, that they worked like that with me still today. And we look at our people now like the last six years and we're like, oh man, you guys got us so easy. You don't even know, you know. As those employees that worked with me back in the day they were, you know, they rode pretty hard. But Trisha, you also still have some of those people. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. I still have some, yeah. Yeah, you still have some. So the newer people come in and complain about a long day because maybe they had to work to 5.30. Right, it just makes you want to slap them, yeah. And then we call my people that have been with me a long time, you know, we call them our OGs. And we just, yeah, I mean, they got work ethics. All my people have work ethics, but I look at my OGs and it's like, man, I know, I know what you guys have gone through. And so when they see me being easy on other people, like our newer people, they're like, really, you would have never been like that with me. And I'm like, I'm a changed woman. But that is making a really good point too, Trisha, because that point is even though it was that bad, y'all, so bad. How many of y'all have required your people to work a 48 hour shift, right? Even though it was that bad, people still stuck with you. People are still there today that went through all of that. So it's, you can get a lot from people if they are treated in a way that they feel like- Appreciated. Appreciated, like they belong. Like they're important to the company and that what they have to give is bigger than just, like you said, cleaning, cleaning. People aren't gonna just clean toilets forever. I think respect a bid who digs in. I think I respect a bird who digs in. Sure. She respects you for digging in or a person who digs in. I'm not sure. I can't say boss. Yeah. So I wanted to give an example. So Tricia, you do a lot of things for your people. Ah, I always respect a boss who digs in. Yes, yes. And cares. Tricia cares, like in a deeper way than most bosses that I have seen. Like really- I've set up appointments. I've set up gynecologist appointments for my employees and told them their date and time that they need to be there by. I have went to the hospital for miscarriages for my employees. I have, I mean, things that are almost inappropriate for a boss to be around for, I'm right there in there. Yeah, just pulling up. Oh, thanks, Tom. Yeah, but you also do, it's not always the big things either. So a lot of times people hear these stories. They're, you know, you're told all of the big stories, right? Well, I would never do that. I would never this. Yeah. Those are just the stories that illustrate the story, the deeper story in a bigger way. But that's not really what it's all about, even though it kind of can seem like that on the surface. Like, well, if you're willing to do all of these crazy, huge things, but I think it's really more the little things that you do. You have a lot of very small things that might not even be noticed by someone, but they make, I saw you do them multiple times when I was in Fargo, multiple, multiple times. An example that just pops into my head really quickly is we had, it was a large room. We had a lot of people in there, it was a very hot day, but we had massive fans going. And so certain parts of the room were colder than other parts because it was hot outside. Like, I don't know, was it like 105 Tricia outside? It was hot, yeah. It was hot. So we had all of these fans, but they were blowing in some areas. And there was one woman that was sitting over there. Yeah. Hey, Rosie, congratulations, married lady over there. So the, what happened was, I think it was Veronica, one of her trainers was sitting over on- Kalen. Yeah, Kalen. And she was sitting over there and she was chilly. And she was rubbing her arms and she was trying to just warm up just a little bit. And everybody was talking, we're all in the middle of a training and Tricia just looked over, took a double take and immediately just jumped up and went and got her a blanket. While everybody's talking in the middle of this training, she's still talking and grabbing a blanket and putting it on Kalen to warm her up. Didn't miss a beat. It wasn't like this was anything new or unusual. This was just, oh, cold person here. Here's your blanket. All right, let's keep going with what we're doing here. I thought that was a really good representation of how she cares for her people and at a different level. Tom, I can guarantee you that if I was at your office and you even know me, that if I was cold, you're not going to get me a blanket. I actually did that at a cheerleading event the other night. One of the cheer moms that I had never met before, she was cold and I had a blanket in my car, so I went and got her one. But so why I do that though, Liz, is so you know like the typical hierarchy of a company, they always have like a triangle or whatever, you know? What, one of the bosses on the top and everything else. Yeah, so like I envision mine as upside down. So myself as a CEO, right, I'm at the very bottom and the low man in the totem pole, you know, right above me, I have Mark, our general manager, right above him is Iris, our operations, right? And it keeps getting bigger and bigger. And the very, at the very top is all of our technicians, right, so we have our trainees and then we have, so we have our trainees, then we have our, you know, our field technicians and then underneath that trainer is the lead trainer. It just kind of keeps going down the road. And I see that as whoever's on the bottom, it's their responsibility to take care of the people above them. And so for me, I'm responsible for taking care of everyone above me. So they're all my responsibility to take care of a nurture. You know, Mark, his job is to take care of Iris and everybody above him, Iris's job. So all of us are looking at each other as we need to uplift the people that are technically below us, right? Those are the people that we have to watch out for and take care of. And so as you work higher up our ladder in our company, your arms need to open wider and you need to take care of more people. So Liz, if I'd noticed you were cold, you don't think I would, I'm just- I don't think you can notice. We're gonna be locked up in this room till two o'clock in the morning and the air conditioner turns off automatically at five and it'll warm up then suck it up. Is that what you would hear? I don't think you would notice. And like as soon as I said, oh my gosh, Tom, I'm dying, you'd be like, oh, you jump up and you do the thing. But I think you'd notice that I would over there like shivering. I'm oblivious to a lot of things. That's true. And I think most of us are. That's kind of my point is that most people wouldn't even think that that was something that would be on the boss's radar, right? That why would the boss, like if you're cold, go get your own sweater. I'm not your mom. But your attitude is never that I don't wanna help. I don't wanna support. I don't want to- Is that an inverted organization chart? I'm here for them. Yeah, she, like I love the way she describes it, right? She is supporting everybody above her and whoever's below her, they're supporting them, right? So everyone's being supported by whoever is below them. And the longer you've been in the organization, the further into the org chart you are. And so you have more people that you're supporting, but you're also always being supported. I mean- And it's really cool to see because I do think our company does that. Like it's not just me. That's everyone in our company does that. So like our lead trainer, right? She'll be having a conversation with trainers about who she thinks they need to be lifting up recently, right? Who needs to be lifted. And so she'll assign four people to each trainer as an example. And the trainers will reach out to those people and check in with them and see how they can help them, see what they're, you know, and they try to uplift those individuals. And the trainers do a great job of always trying to uplift our trainees. I don't think I ever realized that we probably do actually do a really good job of that. And I don't think I quite think about it. Yeah, I saw y'all doing it a lot and in a lot of different ways. I think you also hire people that are very caring. It's part of your process, right? Well, I know you do because, you know, having walked through that whole entire process, you put a lot of emphasis on the things that really matter in your company. And you gave a couple of examples, but like you said, you wouldn't have, even if we're on this for an entire hour and all we talked about was your hiring and went through all of the nuances and the minutiae. But it is a lot of little stuff that... That's really what we're listening for is when we're hiring is we're listening for their caring heart, you know, of do they want to make a difference in someone's life? Do they care, you know, or are they just doing this just for a paycheck? There's a bajillion jobs out there. There's no reason for us to hire somebody that's just looking for a paycheck. It's just, that's not the company that we... And we actually just recently let somebody go because of that. I think she was with us, she got through our whole process and we looked back and we're like, I don't know how we let her slide through and we let her go within two weeks because she was a great cleaner, great everything, great speed, great quality, but her heart wasn't what we need. What did that look like? What did it look like? How are you recognizing that her heart went? How do you let somebody go so your heart's not right? Yeah, it's just... What did it look like though? Tell us about it. Yeah, so what it looked like was her being very money hungry, her being very... You know, because you think, normal person was like, well, yeah, people go to jobs to get paid, but that's not the people I want working for me. So it would look, I don't know, they're just, I don't know how to explain it. Exactly, you just know when you know. Did you do anything or say anything that you can? I can't remember, because I didn't have direct contact with the situation, but my trainers just all saw it that it wasn't a good... She was doing a good job, absolutely, but we need a little more heart, I think, put in than what she was. She just wasn't a good cultural fit. Yeah, yeah, cultural fit, it wasn't for her. You know, physicality and everything else, she would have been great. And if it was a different company, if we were a different company, it'd work, right? So we all know a certain person in our industry that has a very opposite type of personality than I do, very much like Matter of Fact and to the T, and that person would have done excellent in his company. That would have been a perfect fit. It would have been someone that would do exactly what they need to do, when they need to do it, no extra lolly, no extra, you know. But... Nothing else. Not for us. Doesn't move any of the emotional stuff that... Yeah, we kinda need some emotions behind it. Yeah. This is cool, this is cool. You know, it doesn't feel like we've been sitting here for an hour. Maybe we got a little late start, but we are pushing up on top of the hour. You got anything, where is it you need to share before time completely gets away from us? Why are you thinking about that? I have one thing. We're doing our first Maze Central live event on the road. We're gonna be going to Detroit here, the 11th and 12th of October. We're gonna be at Lisa Shaw's office. Woo-hoo, I love Lisa. It's gonna be awesome. And we have a few seats left. It's pretty much, it's close to being booked out. It will definitely book out. But if anybody wants to sign up for that, I dropped the link in chat. It's made Central Dot Academy. When is it? What are the dates, Tom? The 11th and 12th of October. 11th and 12th, oh. Yeah, I wish I could make that go. I'd love to go see Lisa's place and see how she does. She does both residential and commercial. So that'll be a fun chance for people to see things a little bit differently too. That'll be fun. I guess the last event, there was some discussion about how come you guys never take this on the road. And it's like, I don't know, where could we do it? And Lisa jumped up and said, have it at my place. And she was probably surprised, okay. We're gonna be there in just a few weeks now. We'll just show up. Yeah. Well, I know that that is a great event. The last one that you did, there were a ton of people. So the people in the circles are always struggling. How do I find all my numbers? I need all these different numbers, but that is one thing that is huge for people is understanding, okay, now I know where to get them all. I know how to get them all. I know how to read them. People, not only do they need it, but they actually love it when they understand it and they can figure it out. It's not easy, when it's not easy, it's not as fun. And we've done this seven times. This will be the eighth time that we've done it. So we've kind of tweaked the program each time and it's getting to the point where we believe that we're hitting the mark now. Yeah. I saw that too, at the last one for sure. And it's very smooth. It's very comfortable doing it. How are you going to break people out, Tom, have you decided that yet? Cause that's one of the things. We're doing something a little bit different. One of the things that we've been getting feedback on is people want to be able to see more live demos. So rather than the doing breakout sessions, what we're going to do is like in the general session, people get to submit scenarios, questions, things they want to see made central and advance and everybody gets to log in at the same time. Oh, and everybody has like a demo account with their live data in it that they can go in and do stuff without breaking anything in production. So everybody gets to log in to the demo account and follow along. It's going to be cool. I know that one of the main things that, or not main things, I know one of the things that a lot of people love is where they're able to see their quartiles, where they fall and made central data. Are they one of the top people in this area or are they at the bottom in this area? I know a lot of people love that. It's pretty powerful. Yeah, even if they're at the bottom, they love it. People say, oh, I'm in the fourth quartile here and boy, I had no idea that people would do it well. You work on that, you can make a big difference. Easy peasy. I don't even know where to find that. I know of this class, Tricia, October 11th. Yeah, come on, come on to Detroit. I would. It's my daughter's birthday, though. Oh, gosh. Okay, well, yeah. And of course, somebody like you can't pass up on birthdays, kids' birthdays or anybody else's, of course. So Tricia, we only have really one minute left here and a minute. If you could give just one piece of advice to people and that would have an impact on their culture in a really, really positive way, what would it be? Organize your company for everyone to uphold each other, I would say. Okay, set up the structure so that everybody is holding everybody else up. All right, I love it. I think that's great. Well, that's it, Tom, I think. Is it? We're at the top of the hour, so we're gonna go ahead and call this a take. Hey, Tricia, thanks for sitting in the garage for the last hour and chatting with us. I'm getting hot. I know that. I know that. All right, y'all, thanks, everybody. We will see you. Oh, actually, I won't be here next Wednesday. I'm going to be, I'm gonna be in Maine, Portland, Maine. I'm excited. You're gonna see Joe Walsh? Hopefully I'll see Joe, but I'm going to see Riss. I'm doing a three-day on-site with her. Oh, cool, okay. With Riss and Tyler, yeah. Somebody will be here, okay? Somebody will be here. Somebody will be here. Not me or Tricia. Yeah, probably Tom. So we'll see you next Wednesday. Five o'clock each, bye-bye. Bye, y'all.