 Hey, and good afternoon. I am so glad you guys have joined me here today I'm Angela Brown and I'm here with Shawn day from hire lead chill now one of the most interesting things about today's Conversation is we're gonna have a really difficult conversation that many of you ask me about all the time Which is how do I find and hire good employees, right? so we've gone right to the source himself and Shawn has owned a professional house cleaning company for 20 years And so he ran into a lot of the same challenges that many of us have run into over the years what's really interesting is he had 11 different service companies in a variety of different areas and he had over a hundred employees and So he said wait a second I've got a really master the art of hiring people and keeping them motivated to show up for business every day And all the things okay, so we're gonna ask all the questions today and Shawn is gonna give us all the answers I know I'm super excited right what a great way to start out the year So I want to encourage you guys to jump into the comments to say hi and to ask your questions So that we can get those answered today So thank you for joining me and please help me welcome Shawn day. How are you today Shawn? Good Angela? Thanks for having me on hi everybody We've got a Nick who says woohoo, we've got Rachel Rose from England. Hey Rachel. How are you today? Good to see you She says yay Nick says ten T minus ten nine eight seven six five four three two one yippie. Okay, so that was our countdown yippie Thank you Nick for participating Rachel says hello, how much should I charge to clean a residential oven is ten or twelve dollars? Okay, the answer to that is no that is way too low But if you guys have questions about cleaning leave those in the notes below And we are gonna answer those as soon as this conversation is over because today We're gonna be talking all about the hiring cleaning employees. Okay, so this is a really fun conversation We've been waiting for for a very very long time Alex says nice to see you guys It is so good to see you as well. So hi and welcome you guys. All right. So Shawn I'm really curious. This is the beginning of a new year. Many of us are gonna branch out We're gonna hire a bunch of cleaning employees. What do we need to know? Well good news January is probably the best month of the year to start recruiting if you if you just google it You'll find that there's a bunch of blogs and a bunch of recruiters and job boards like indeed that will tell you January is the time to recruit for a number of reasons So I think that's good news If if you think about it in this country, we have this thing we we call New Year's Eve on January 1 and We all have these resolutions and what happens is their health and always always what career and finance We're gonna make more money. We're gonna change jobs We're gonna find a better job than what I have now and there in January becomes very fluid in The marketplace and I think if you folk if you're looking to hire in the next month or two I would highly suggest you really really start recruiting and engaging like right after this podcast So when you use the term recruiting tell us a little bit more about that. What does that mean? Great question recruiting to me means this if you use the word marketing in any sentence I can take the word marketing out of that sentence and replace it with the word recruiting Okay, and and so it's an entire marketing system to to research your labor market Engage with candidates in your labor market and have a system to run them through that Engagement and relationship and screening and vetting and finding out who the best People are to sit down at an interview table and hire the best that you can that's that's really what I look at and view recruiting as Well, that's a really great answer So it sounds like it's an ongoing conversation with the market to say I'm we're constantly looking for good help and when the right person comes along Then you hire them or do you wait until you're just desperate and you're kind of between Jobs you've got too many jobs and you're just scrambling around and then you're like we need to hire right now Yeah, that's a great question, too. What are the things that we did? many many years ago if Six seven years ago was that we created this idea and we call it the ABCs of recruiting always be crude that's what we say always be crude and You know, we've all decided to enter an industry that has high turnover The cleaning industry has had high turnover 30 years ago has it today. We'll have it 30 years from now It does not mean you need to be short staffed. That is a completely different thing to your point Angela We are recruiting all the time if if you're if you're our company that has one or two employees You're getting your first employee. You still want to keep cultivating and developing those relationships There's plenty of places online and boots on the ground The the old stuff that we used to do higher, you know a hired sign or our hiring or now hiring sign outside I call that boots on the ground stuff all of that can be done for free and doesn't take a heck of a lot of time Why on earth would you not do that if it's free and doesn't take a lot of time to possibly cultivate? Relationships with people that you might need or want to hire Yeah, in a month or two or three So Hire lead chill is that somebody that can come in and take over that relationship building for us Or is it a series of things that we have to learn from you so that we can do them ourselves? I think you can do either of those two things. So with with my philosophy I didn't I've been in the cleaning industry for about 30s years It's about 30 almost 35 years now. So I'm not Motivated by money at all. I'm truly not I Really impassioned about helping and serving other people and I don't mean that as a cliche So I've been accused of giving away the secret sauce a lot with what we do and I am fine with that I will literally if you if you set up a zoom with me for example I have no problem talking even if it's not about recruiting. I'll talk about whatever you want to talk about If you want to talk about recruiting I will literally show you The step-by-step process including the screening the questions all the things that we do for our own cleaning companies and What we've done for thousands of cleaning companies around the country and you can take that information and try it in-house or on your own and And I will help you to some extent with that the best I can or if you'd like you can use our Application tracking system, which is like a CRM right a customer relationship management tool for recruiting it It's it's it's very easy to use You can use it on your own or if you'd like and this and this might be for a company that has five or more employees You can hire us to be sort of your full-time recruiting department. So you've got all those options So you just mentioned CRM, which is a customer relationship management program Most of us think of a CRM as a place where we keep track of our customers Not our employees or potential employees So explain to us a little bit about what that is and why we would want those people inside our CRM Beautiful question. We actually called a candidate relationship management tool, right? And again everything we do in marketing I can do in recruiting I literally can from the you know, the I can go out on the job ad and everything else, but it's a relationship building thing It's it's that's what we do with our clients when a when a prospective client tries to reach out to you to get a price Or some more information about your cleaning service and and you and you talk with them or however you really Communicate with them and they decide not to use you for some reason You don't just throw their contact information out and go away. You might send an email out every now and again Put them in an automated campaign That's exactly what we do and highly suggest you do with the candidates out there because it doesn't mean they're a bad person Because they they didn't take the job even if you offer somebody a job and you and you've gone through that entire recruiting process Angela It does not mean that they are bad people because they didn't accept the job where or you know They they even if they decided not to show up to an interview or called you and said I'm not gonna show up to the it doesn't make them a bad person They might have just gotten another job. Maybe their boss said, you know what I will give you that raise And I'll do whatever I can to keep you because you're a great employee Right and so we in fact will communicate with them after interviews sometimes Sometimes if they come in and score really well on our system, but for whatever reason they never set up an interview We've got them in a drip campaign just like you would a prospective client All right, so many of the house cleaners that are just getting started in the business are unfamiliar with what a drip campaign is So tell us a little bit about that. Yeah, it basically is a way to Continue communicating with somebody and building a relationship with them So that when they are ready to make a move because what the cleaning company down the road from you promised them is not Is not coming true for them or maybe they're upset about their job and they're ready to make a move If you're emailing them every now and again, maybe every month or two and just saying hi I'm still here. Just letting you know, we you know, if you're not happy where you're at We're still hiring love to meet with you so on and so forth because when somebody is ready to make that move The first person you want them to think about is you And you've taken the time to reach out to them and actually care about them and build a relationship with them and engage with them And it doesn't take a lot of time to do but it's super potent So you said you have a software that does the drip campaign that does the customer relationship management or the recruiting relationship management candidate recruiting management What is what is the software that you use and tell us about how we use it to Nurture those relationships. Sure. So there's a they're called application tracking systems And there's if you google that there's probably thousands of them out there So there's a variety of different ones you can use we choose go high level And actually go high level is more for a marketing marketing companies that it was for for recruiting But because our mindset is that Hiring a person is the biggest sale of our life. That's the way we literally view that We use a marketing tool CRM go high level to take care of our recruiting system. That's what we use and it's phenomenal So I want to say something that is going to sound really Confusing to a lot of people that are just starting in the house cleaning business And I want to preface this by saying that we're also speaking to a whole bunch of property managers today They're also in the b&b and vacation rental industry as well as realtors that do move in move out cleaning Okay, so we've got a really wide audience we're speaking to today And one of the things that I want to remind you of is while we are focused on the cleaning end of the business Sean has just said something really important and I don't want it to slip by And that's that we need to always be marketing because what happens when we are able to articulate our marketing message This is what our business does. This is why we need your help. This is what we're looking for What happens is this your happy employees who love working for your company can turn around and they can recruit their friends And so it's not just cold leads that you're looking for But if your message is clear It's going to be easier for other people to share that message as well Your your clients can share the message with people that they know and it might even be some of their children Or their spouses that are looking for jobs It can be your employees that already have a job with you and they understand what your company culture is And it can also be people that are not going to come work for your company They might be working for another company But they say you know what I heard this company over here is really great And they will send referrals and recommendations because they themselves are not in a position to hire the new candidate But they will send them over to your company as a referral because they know that you're a good company And you're going to take care of their friends absolutely And and that's all about relationships everything you've just outlined there You know angela is about building relationships and just being open and moving and contacting people And and that's it. You never are going to get What you want by staring at the wall You need to move you need to go around and you need to just talk and all of a sudden really good things start to happen So tell us how important the company culture is how do you become a company that people want to work for? It's it is Culture is so important and many times we think of culture as the retainment part of the of the recruiting cycle Right or system, but we view that as a selling point In the job ad as well and the messaging in between culture is Is is one of those things that if you have it dialed in Really really well That alone can can take you to a level that you didn't think you can get to The other thing with it on the flip side is If one person is allowed to to come into your business And not adhere to your culture and your core values Can absolutely destroy a business Quicker than anything almost anything I can think of really and so the culture is absolutely important We feel it's so important That if you were to come to anybody with any employee of higher league and chill They're going to be able to recite our culture word for word and our core values word for word And everybody will say the same thing because we truly believe in it. We talk about it We live it we breathe it and I don't want it to get away from it because it's it's that important to us Um, you have a reputation as being an employer with a heart Where you have helped employees through some really difficult times How important is it to treat your employees? as um An extended part of your your company your company business or your company family if you will Yeah, um, I can we can have a whole show on that I I think that it's not a bad idea to treat your employees almost like your children And and I don't I mean that with all due respect in that you've got to be caring But you've got to be tough sometimes you really are looking out for their best interest um, and and you've got to have some difficult discussions And and sometimes there's going to be situations where you're going to find out that There's some things going on in their personal life And you're you know, if they're going to allow you in to talk about that and open up to you Number one, I think if you've got some good leadership and good culture that should be a part of the culture They they should feel comfortable Um, or at least maybe it's not comfortable for them But they should at least know that they should be able to go to you and open up about hey There's something going on with my boyfriend my my wife my kids Whatever it is and you know, and and this is why you know, I I wasn't real You know happy with what happened yesterday, and I just wanted to talk to you about it I actually miss those conversations. I that's raw That's life And I I love that stuff and I don't know why I don't know if it makes me strange or whatever But if if I can be helpful to somebody that's been really helpful to me and good to me and help me pay my mortgage My rent my utility bills and my car payment. I want to do whatever I can to help them out Well, and what I hear you say is when we go the extra mile to try to help our employees They in turn turn around and they want to help us and they become loyal to us And they show up for work and they treat their customers whom they are frontline to with respect and with with the same Common courtesies that we showed to them and I think that's an extension of the company culture. Is that is that about right? Yeah, it's all based around your company culture, you know Your company culture has to be what you want it to be though. There's I'll give you an example there's a guy that we recruit for And his company culture simple if you're not somebody I would hang out with And watch a ball game with I don't want to hire you and that's that's literally his culture. That's what he so he's got pinball machines in the office He's got you know, all these things, but he wants He wants it to be Not not necessarily like we're all buddies necessarily. We all have to hang out after work But for some reason with that culture They all hang out after work and it works pretty darn good for him All right, so I've got a couple of questions How do we find employees that we can bring into our company culture that will be a good fit for us? Yeah um The number one thing that I see that I never used to do until I really really understood The business and as angela said I had a cleaning company for 20 years and I can tell you That I never used to research my labor market. I never once researched my labor market I can tell you what my competition was charging. I can tell you the demand side of it the marketing side of it But I never never really understood it So you can get a lot from that one of the ways that you can do that is getting on Indeed.com and they've got free things you can look up zip recruiters Got some free insights that you can look up and find out what others are doing and paying One of the big things that you can do on some of the job boards is find the keywords That people are looking for when people meaning job candidates job seekers. What are they actually typing in? When they're looking for a job and so If you're looking at keywords on the job boards and they give you those keywords those keywords or keywords that are coming from the job candidate and the job seeker And I'll give you an example of how important it is We owned a window cleaning company in minneapolis, minnesota one north Cincinnati, Ohio just north of Cincinnati, Ohio And we use the the job title general labor in minneapolis, minnesota Now if I just said that works great there and we hired 40 technicians there We've got a much smaller cleaning company in Cincinnati, Ohio And if I said oh, we don't need to do the research it works great minneapolis We'd lose about 40 of our applications that come in because House cleaning or house cleaner job title worked much better there. It's different. It's it's as though Very much like this if you smack me in the face with a with a sneaker. I wouldn't know what you hit me with I'd buy tennis shoes I have no idea what a soda looks like. I buy pop where I'm from Those things matter in different parts of the country. So that's one of the things I see Um, there's a lot of other things I can tell you but that's one thing I think that maybe your audience hasn't thought about that. I wanted to just kind of give a little golden nugget Well, when we speak about researching the job market, are you talking about just researching other cleaning companies? Are you talking about other jobs that are in the same? Uh general home, uh home service or the same price range? it's it's When I say general uh or uh labor market, I mean not just abc cleaning company. I mean do you have an amazon warehouse? That's that's your competition retail. That's your competition One of the best things that we found out a couple years ago as a strategy is um We're able to hire a lot of people that work at motels and hotels And you know, imagine what you see in clean and it's 24 7 365 christmas day new year's day and all that And compare that to your job Uh, sometimes you walk into a home. You don't even know it's dirty because you're doing it for maybe somebody that just needs some dusting and so it's a whole different thing and you're going to make more money doing that so um It's it's basically whoever is in that market that you would hire And it doesn't have to be somebody at another cleaning company. No Or or another home service business for that matter. It could be retail. It could be a restaurant. That's our labor market So one of the questions that i'm really curious about is what are some of the characteristics or qualities that you look for in a person that you hire I think this will be a a little bit different So when we start putting our putting our recruiting system together I collected a lot of data And data data data data and what what and learned a lot through our data. And so what we did was this Um, after we were getting so much data, I'm thinking I can build a car with this stuff after we're done So I said, wait a minute. We've got to really focus. What are we actually trying to accomplish here? And I said forget what we know forget what we think we know Here's a magic wand. What is the number one most important? Thing piece of data we can find out about a human being that we would want to hire And we all decided after conversation it's this How long are you going to last with my company period end of story? So we've got a series of questions that Find that out and I'll give I'll give you the question or I'll give you the data on it If if you've got a couple seconds here one of the questions that we asked is this If you get the job Which one of these three things would upset you the most? And it's a drop-down menu to have to choose one of our three answers One of the answers they can choose is Someone's always late to work and the owner or manager doesn't say a thing about it Now on the surface, that's a very reasonable answer I'm coming to work every day. I'm 10 minutes early Jane over here shows up late twice a week and nobody even says anything about it. Here's the problem if we're looking at the data The data says this and this is employees of past employees of ours That those that answer someone's always late to work and the owner or manager doesn't say a thing about it On average only last nine months or less with our company That's it you get low score for that answer because that's the thing we're trying to find out So so that's one One you probably haven't thought about maybe because it's a little unique and quirky Is we find that if we can find technicians that understand business in general More so than other technicians They tend to be much much better employees And what we tend to find is I don't expect them to write our marketing strategy or something like that but maybe The important key to that is maybe their parents owned a business Maybe they work for an uncle's pizza place as teenagers They their best friends parents owned owned a business. They know business owners What we find is four things come to the surface number one. We tend to not have to babysit them as much That's and that was a big pet peeve of mine. I didn't want to babysit employees Number two is they tend to be better problem solvers and have better judgment those two things kind of go hand in hand The third thing is that they tend to be more loyal And I think the reason for that is if if you know a business owner or you were close to a business owner You probably know that we work on godly amount of hours many times. We're really hard workers We care about good employees in our communities and things like that I think that creates some empathy towards business owners Which creates loyalty and the fourth thing we see and this one not as often but we we tend to see really Possible good leadership skills And so if we find two of those four, we kind of have silver if we get three of those four We got gold. So that's a little bit unique. I think but I'll leave you with one question If if there's anything that you take from this the best question in the world and it's worth tens of thousands of dollars And it's very simple Rate your luck in life from zero to ten Let me give you just quick data angel on that with us and most of our clients The magic numbers under six Those that answer under a six with our company on average last day wop three months or less with our company So it's very very very difficult to get to an interview table with us if you answer under a six There's a couple exceptions to that rule, but that hopefully that gives you a little bit of maybe some different things you haven't thought about out there Tell me why you ask that question I'll give you um The I'll give you the answer that probably many of you think is the answer and in part it's true Yep, they're negative What was me? I'm unlucky in life and life just stinks and all that that's true But the other a couple things with it we find that they take zero ownership when things go wrong They don't help they never take ownership and I let me give you a quick example and I and I think it's you know A lot of you out there will recognize this story very quick I had two employees one was a really good employee positive all the time the other one not so And it's happened to both of them And one of them I'll get three complaints from clients in the same week and it's this employee And it's it's not oh, it just doesn't feel clean. It's it's no it's the toilets are not clean It's specific. So when that happens, you know, it's our fault When three different clients the same week exactly the same problem with the same employee There's no doubt it's our fault the the employee that answers under a six when you approach them on it We'll say I have no idea what they're talking about. I do what I always do at every single house. I go to That's what you get with the under six The one that's over a six is going to be the one that says, you know what I I had a horrible week last week I will do whatever I can to fix this. Give me their phone numbers. I'll go there sunday whatever it takes That's a whole different story and an attitude that's much different And that's that's the importance of that question So instead of saying how do you write your luck in life? Could I also ask the question and maybe just rephrase it a different way to say this Who is responsible for the success of your job? Absolutely, absolutely I I I think that if if we tend to do this though the only thing I would caution about With something like that is we stay away during the application questions. We stay away from open-ended questions And I know that's a little bit different out there, but I am a big data driven guy I don't want to I don't want to have a bunch of sentences written and then I have to read a bunch of sentences I want dropped on menus choose one of mine because I know the best answer I know the okay answer and I know the worst answer That's very simple and clean for me to go through that The other thing we find with open-ended questions and we've got a lot of data on this And this can change with the with the labor market and we have changed this with the labor market And that is we found that if we ask more than two open-ended questions On an online on an application The drop-off rate is pretty drastic and we and they're not really yeah Yeah, you know why here's what and real quick when we talk about open-ended questions It's describe this tell me about that. Here's why we found this out This thing here this phone. This is what 85 percent of people are applying on And we're social right a lot of people are with friends watching a ballgame the kids play a ballgame or whatever it is On their phone They do not want to sit there and type sentence after sentence after sentence with five six seven open-ended questions We'd like to think that everybody applying for our job is at home with a big desktop computer Music's turned off and they're focused like a laser That's the world we lived in about 15 years ago 10 years ago. Maybe even seven years ago Everybody's using this phone to apply So we we've got to live in the reality that we're in and how do we make it happen So we want to make it as easy as possible For people to apply. I didn't say qualify. That's a whole different conversation But as easy as possible to apply All right So how do we get people from the application process to the interview because I know lots of house cleaners will come to me And they're like angela I had all these interviews set up and no one showed up for the interview And I laugh because I I have my reasons But tell me what your reasons are and how to get somebody from the application through the interview itself Yeah, the no shows I hear that every day the no shows I I've got a very simple answer that will solve the no show problem almost for sure Oh, tell us it's very simple do group interviews Because if you get eight or nine people that say you're going to show up and only one does I'll take that every day of the week if you do one-on-one interviews It's very difficult to deal with three no shows in a row And then your mindset has completely blasted you again hate recruiting You're you're in a bad mood the rest of the day. You think you wasted your time I highly suggest that you do group interviews and I know it's hard to get kind of personal and really in depth with With a group interview and by the way we can have a whole nother show on group interviews. We do it It's crazy the way we do it Maybe as well Yeah, it's it's unique. Um, but but So you'll find a couple of good people in there Maybe one or two and that's okay, right? That's fine If there's only one or two people that show up to the interview then you can make it a little bit more personal But nothing there's nothing to say after a group interview That you can't have a one-on-one interview after that So so but we the no shows we don't like no shows. So we do group interviews Is there anything that you specifically put inside your ad? That would suggest that this is the type of company that you are and this is exactly what we're looking for And you might you might do something a little unconventional that is not A standard or a typical thing for your ad We do There's a couple things one is That I like to Use the phrase and or something like it Why you're going to wake up every morning and love to come to work for us? We tested that one sentence and everybody steal that and use it and see if you get any different Results that that alone changed a lot of things for us with as far as no shows and interviews and quality and everything else But that message has to continue. So when somebody schedules an interview Hey, I want to make sure you know why you're going to wake up every morning and love to come to work We'll talk about it at the interview And when that message goes through There's a few times where we'll talk to a client and we've done this with our own company Instead of saying we're going to vet and screen you. How about we say This is actually something that we call a job satisfaction predictor. It's the same thing But isn't that it sound a little bit better if you're actually looking through the lens of a job seeker or job candidate That's what you need to do. You know, it's it's a tough thing to put your ego on the shelf and I talk a lot about that Put your ego on the shelf You're not a business owner when you're recruiting you the better you get at looking through the lens of what a job seeker Or a job candidate wants to hear smell taste and breathe and live The better your job ads going to be the better your interviewing is going to be and the better your culture probably will be as well So why you're going to wake up every morning and love to come to work I love that We use just the opposite Oddly enough we have a disclaimer and the disclaimer is this job is not for everyone and it's not for the faint of heart Love it. Love it. And then what happens is people will go. Well, I'm I'm not a faint of heart I'm I'm like I I'm I'm a go-getter I'm I'm a tough person and then they will try to trip over themselves to try to prove to you that They're the kind of person that should deserve to have that job So it's almost the takeaway close. We say it's not for the faint of heart. It's not for everyone Yeah, I've got a I've got a theory where And I'll go back. It's marketing and recruiting are identical. So In your job ad and this is just us and in a job ad we look at it as a as a website for prospective clients and so Because we believe so much in our screening process Our view is huge funnel on top It's a job ad to sell that this is going to be a great job for you And then we let our screening process and our scoring system Figure out who's actually the ones that we want to invite To the interview. So if you don't have and most of us don't it took us a long time to put ours together So if you don't have that you might need to do a little bit of Screening and I mean a very little bit of screening in your job ad One of the things that I think is a big mistake is if you Make the job ad sound though like it's going to be you better do this you better do that You better sound like this you better look like this you better That's not what a job ad should be and and if you looked at some of my job ads 15 years ago I wouldn't let my son apply for the job, you know So we've learned an awful lot with that, but you're right There are some things and messages you want in there that will uncover Some things before you even have communication with the human being Well, and you know communication is really important because when somebody comes for a job interview For me, it's kind of where the rubber meets the road I'm trying to really find out if you are going to be a good fit for my company And I don't want to sugarcoat things in the beginning and I don't want to like over promise Because it's really hard for me to try to deliver on my promises if I've over promised what we're actually going to be able to deliver And so my goal my goal on bidding jobs and my goal on on recruiting is to under promise and over deliver And so I want to be really Shallow on the promises Because I don't want to say I'm going to give you this and this and this and this because what I find I end up attracting And maybe this is different for you But if I over promise what I find is there a whole bunch of people that show up Forgive me because this is going to sound like I'm making judgments and I'm not But people that have these very long fingernails and they're like, oh, I can't work I can't do anything because I don't want to chip my nail And then they just kind of like Dust a little bit of things like, okay. I'm done with a job now. Like no, that is not how we do Like we have to we have to really get down and get grubby and we have to do the cleaning We gotta actually clean right don't don't be walking around afraid you're gonna break a nail because this is a job where People pay us to to get grimy, right? It's not cute. It's not fun um, but so We have to uh paint a realistic picture Yes, so tell me tell me what you would do in order to find the right fit for a company We for us we rely on our screening process our scoring system and our screening process We actually used to have a lot of those questions during the interview process And we said why are we waiting to the interview process to do that? Let's ask them on the online application Track it and let that data determine based on data who's going to be a good fit for our company And then what we do is And this is going to sound crazy. I'm telling you but it works for us in most of our clients Our our messages What to expect at the interview zero questions and zero stress It will be a presentation by the owner or manager As to why you're going to wake up every morning and love to come to work for us Now that doesn't mean we don't screen during this But what happens is as we're talking about our core values and our culture And how you can make money and even more money if you do these things And we're how we started the company where we're at today and where we want to be in three years from now Okay, you're going to see people looking out the window You're going to see people looking down But you're going to see a couple people getting going like this a little bit and looking and asking questions And I I'm telling you when you see somebody get a little bit excited about your culture and your core values I don't know of any better screening than that We've already screened them with our our behavior in our sort of personality assessment stuff I now want to see if you're going to really really Get a spark when you hear us talk about who we are And it's the same thing. We're really screening the other ones are the ones we're screening out Now do we do we set expectations that this is going to be an easy job and the best job of your life? Absolutely not in fact We tell you there's going to be a lot of tough situations But this is where our culture comes in when you come in and you're not feeling real well Or you see a customer that's your boy. She's kind of a pain in the butt. She's on my schedule It's up to your team or any ownership and managers and the team to come up to you and get you riled up and get you To good mood and take care of you. We're all in this together. That's that's part of the culture with that So there are things that we we definitely set the expectations There's this is not unicorns and cotton candy all day long for sure We definitely tell them the expectations and how they're rewarded for those difficult times as well So there comes a moment if you have people that are like looking out the window and they're bored and looking at their phones and whatever How do you tell those people like You didn't get the job So at the end of the interview And imagine five people in the room This is literally what happens almost every time those that were looking out the window say, thank you very much And they walk out the door the ones that were excited and asking questions one or two will stick around and talk you and say That was really unique. I've never had an interview like that or something like that And then they say, you know what I really love what you had to say and I really hope I get the job If we're hiring We put our hand out and we say jane you got the job Subject to a few things that our insurance company makes us go through with background checks and so always make it subject to a few things But before everybody leaves we tell them we're going to reach out in 24 hours or less Reach out to every one of you and let you know, you know, where we're at with things And so we'll email the ones out that we know that we're looking out the window and all that sort of thing And we just let them know that it's not going to happen If we get a lot of people to the interview and there's maybe 10 or 12 people in the room and that Doesn't happen a lot, but if there's a big a big location of ours Um, we actually will have somebody sitting in there as well Whether it's a technician or a manager or something like that and they'll actually look around the room Because if you're doing a presentation, you can't see everybody and what they're up to so we absolutely it depends I want people that are excited about our culture and who we are So is there anything unique that you do that maybe a candidate did not see coming? Hmm I think I don't think so. I think we used to do that um Our scoring system is probably something they don't they don't know they're being scored Uh, so that's that's a little bit different, but we used to do things like tell me a joke And then wait and just that's it we'd be quiet and see how they react to see if they can think on their feet and that sort of thing Um, so we used to do some things like that Um, I think for us. I'm going back and saying our screening system. We're so confident in our screening system We we just don't do that and the tougher the labor market is which it's very difficult still right now The less we're doing that type of thing and again, would you do that to a prospective client? Would you do things that that would surprise them and get them off their feed and make them? We don't we treat them like the biggest sale of our life because in the residential cleaning space usually If you hire one person they're in there and they're working 30 hours a week 35 hours a week or whatever They're going to go fetch 50 60 thousand dollars of revenue for you in cleaning I know we have a I certainly don't have a client that is worth of 60 thousand dollars a year residential You better believe that i'm going to treat them like the biggest sale of my life and that's just our mindset on it And it uh, I think they sense that and they sense that You you are somebody that we're going to respect you're coming into our house for an interview We actually have beverages for them We have things for them to eat and we treat them like the biggest sale of our life I love that. That's great Thank you We we also have a screening process And the screening process is screened by three different people And like you said, they don't know they're being screened They don't know that they're being counted on a scale of one to ten in 20 different areas There's a possible of 200 on our score And if we have less than a 150 we don't hire the people Then we hire on fact not Charisma Because in the early early days I made the mistake of hiring on charisma people would come in and they would wow me with their charm I was like, oh, this is the coolest person on earth While I discovered that I would love to go hang out with some of them And there may be a time to do that What I discovered was is the person that's actually going to get the job done sometimes And I don't want to sound ugly, but sometimes they might be a boring person with little charisma Yeah And I have hired people And I don't want to say any names, but I've hired some people that were boring and had no charisma and they were the best employees ever I agree. Absolutely. Absolutely So for me for me throwing a monkey wrench is not like to try to trip them up But the monkey wrench in my business is this When you come in and there's a group interview The people that you're talking to While I'm doing one-on-ones in the other room Those are the people that are determining whether or not you get the job Not me Because everybody tells me what they think I want to hear But they let their guard down and they tell the other people in the room Here's how it really goes And I cannot tell you how many times I've made a decision. I've got a pretty good reading I've gone through my scorecard and I come into the other room after everybody's gone I'm like, tell me what they think. Tell me what you think and the other employees that are there are like, not him Not him. Yes to her. Yes to her. Yes to him. And I'm like, that's exactly what I What my reading was as well And we found that we're all pretty much on the same wavelength because we do understand our company culture And we do know what we're looking for and we do recognize a good team player when we see one Based on fact not charisma. Does that make sense? Absolutely. It's it's um I'm if I if I went just on um Not straight a scoring system. I'd probably hire most people. I just I like people I think I look for them the best things in people, you know that type of thing and so Yeah, I'd have a problem myself if and the other point if your name was Joe and I had a problem with a guy named Joe in high school or college or something like that I might have a problem hiring you you can't let those emotional things either dictate who's going to be there or not be there um And to your point to what we do Angela as we look at that and we say Um, if I don't want to hire a good interviewer or a good test taker You know, I want to hire somebody that's going to be a good cleaning technician And so some of the old questions that that you you might ask Um, we we try to stay away from them if you can google it I don't and find out how to take a test and the disc profiles have their place They're absolutely fine But I don't want to have somebody google disc profile because when you do that There's a hundred youtubers on there telling you how to take that test and what the employer's looking for And so I don't I don't want to hire somebody I want to be unique in what i'm doing and what i'm looking for and it should be tied to Your culture and who you guys are and make sure it's a good city and that's all we're doing It's like a match.com You're just trying to get a good match between your company Your employees your culture and the next team member that's going to join the team All right, so my next question is How do you find a good person that's a new i'm going to say a new person because they haven't worked for your company yet That's going to integrate with the existing team that you already have and it's going to be cohesive I don't know if there's a magic bullet for that. I really don't I think that if you do everything that you can with the messaging and and talking about the culture And I think you hit it over the fence expectation Uh, I think I think after the hire If you've got somebody that's going to have them and and help them integrate into your culture and really talk about those things and Continue the relationship I think I think your training Is probably the most important thing and all that and how you're going to take that person and bring them in and train them On your systems on your processes I think that the number one thing you can do in your training to me Is and and to and to figure out how To rate the success level of your training is how confident is that employee and doing his or her job When you're confident in a job and you go in there with confidence It's pretty easy to integrate and feel comfortable if you've got confidence, right? Yes, it is Crystal has a really great question crystal says, uh, how do you get good employees and keep them? I think you've got to have a really good culture. I think you've got to have really good leadership. I think you've got a Researcher labor market. I think you have to understand what job candidates want If you're a company that's only got one employee or looking for your first employee It's a little bit more difficult to have health insurance benefits and all these sort of things, right? Telehealth out there is a is a very interesting thing in telemedicine being COVID really catapulted this Into into our economy into the business world There's some pretty expensive inexpensive telehealth things you can do 20 dollars 25 dollars a month per employee That's a good creative way to do some benefits I think there's a huge benefit in being the first employee of a company That's going to by next year have five employees because they're going to need to manage some people for you one day Career ladders. I think to have a good career ladders really important. What's in it for them? What's in it for them? That's really what's most important I think if you're somebody that's got a small company and you go You're going to be the one that goes out and trains them when they see how you're scrubbing and working hard And going after it your passion That's huge I used to tell my employees not one of you has cleaned more toilets or floors than I have trust me I know how difficult it is to do your job. So I get it. Believe me. I get it Um, that goes a long way now if you're a company with five ten more employees And and you're not doing the training and you're not doing the day to day activities like that Then whoever that person is you need to make sure that they're taking care of that that training and and going out there and taking care of that person How do you find good employees? There's a number of ways to do that. I think finding a good employee Is is just building relationships Talking with people if you don't have any money to spend on boosting and sponsoring job ads and that sort of thing Most job ads. I'm sorry job boards have free stuff Facebook is still free. You don't need to boost and sponsor there There's if you have a church a club an organization of some sort You definitely can find employees that way. I call it boots on the ground and we have a but I love automation I love data, but we still are in the people business We still have to build relationships and talk to them and how you keep them is you pay them well You treat them well and you have a great culture and you've got something for them to look forward to a job they want That's it. I mean everything else is silver bullets and kind of shiny objects So how important is hiring the right person for your business or can you hire a person that just Is trainable and you can teach them everything they need to know about the business That's a great question too. There I know a gentleman that does 200 million dollars a year in the home service business Okay, he's doing more than that now And when asked about how did he ever find this many employees to do all this In different locations around the country and his answer was I kept hiring and hiring when I didn't need to I kept hiring and if you were the worst on the on the podium told as far as whether it was your attitude Your quality or whatever it was. I got rid of you and that's what I did So his you know, that's that's a 200 million dollar mindset right there That's how he did it and he started doing that when he only had a location or two not not just when he was big That's one philosophy, but there's no harm in doing everything you can defining somebody that would be a better fit for you I I think it's uh when you're starting out and you have less than 10 employees less than 15 employees I think you've got to do everything you can to find somebody that's going to fit your culture And and you've really so most of us a lot of businesses don't even have a culture a written formal Culture for your business and that's okay. A lot of you don't Do it find do it and make sure that it's Cohesive to who you are and what your vision of your company is I think there's companies out there that are happy with one or two employees And they'll live the rest of their life with that and be happy and I think that's great I think there's others that want to open up three locations one day So I think I think if you find employees that are okay working in a smaller business That's something to think about that's something to talk about in the job ad We're really a fan and when we're when I talk family on there's two or three of us here We know each other very well and we take care of each other that's going to attract somebody that's okay With a smaller business If you if you're somebody that is looking to grow then you want to attract somebody that is going to want to Move up the career ladder. You're going to want to talk about that in the job ad So that's a little bit different on where you're at with your your vision of your company And and maybe where you're at in your business cycle So what do you say? About the people that come to your company and they want to get a job with your company So they can learn everything there is to know about your cleaning company and then they're going to spin out and start one on their own Well, most likely they're not going to tell me that they're going to start it on their own. So If they tell me they're going to start it on their own I I and I don't know them very well I'm not going to hire them. That's not happening If they did with me a while and they're in a couple three or four years maybe and they say I think I really want to start my Own thing I'm going to have a sit down if they've been a really good employee of mine and they then they've been a good person And I sure as heck should know that after three or four years of them being with me I'm going to talk a little bit about the possibility of having a little equity in my company Maybe a little bit of ownership in my company If you want to I'd love to partner up with somebody that's that got that kind of ambition And I already know who they are and their character and their behavior That's the best business partner in the world. I have conversation about that. That's what I would do nice Okay, so going back to the guy that had a 200 million dollar company and he was hiring always hiring people In spite of the fact that maybe he didn't need somebody at that time And then he would reevaluate his current existing workforce and maybe send someone else Out the door that was not living up to their potential Do you hire somebody then? Just because a good person came along or do you wait until you're desperate? And you're in that frame of mind of I've got to hurry and hire somebody this week or my business is going to collapse Yeah, I would I would say this we have a mantra with with uh higher league chill And it's the abc's of recruiting always be crouton always be crouton So I I'll answer that in a couple different ways one is We believe in a hopper strategy So you can you can do this you can we if you're always crouton We always interview whether we're hiring or not. I want to interview people and I've had clients go Well, that's not very respectful that you know, you're not going to hire somebody and yet you're having them in for an interview Couple things with that number one is Um, I don't know if somebody's going to break their ankle that day of the interview or not So I'm going to be prepared for that number two There's nothing against the law that says you can't start a relationship with somebody and and tell them We're in a high turnover industry. We can't quite place you now because some things have happened Can I stay in touch with you? I've never had anybody get up and scream and throw chairs That's that I've said that to and neither have our managers Uh, I will say this If you've got a few employees Five six seven employees or more I highly suggest always be recruiting and if you're if you've done really well in our application You love our culture. You've done really well in the interview. I'm going to hire you and figure it out later I'm not letting you go anywhere. That's just how we operate and there is I can't tell you how Important it is to be if you're going to err on the side of having too many employees or having too little I beg you to have too many employees than not enough There's just so many horrible things that will happen to your business And your bottom line if your short staff versus if you have Maybe one person too many Maybe two people too many. It's just there's no comparison I don't know if I answered your question, but Yes, you did and I want to tag on to that because this is a really important thing that I think a lot of the new cleaners miss Okay, so the reason and we also do the same process We hire people even if we're not hiring and for every job interview even maybe I'm only looking for one person I usually hire two because somebody's going to drop out and or If two people learn the same job simultaneously, I'm doing one training. I'm training two people Simultaneously, so it saves me half the time for training not only that but now they're fighting for the job Okay, there was only one job and both of us got it. I hope I get to keep the job And in the minute that somebody doesn't show up or they fall out or they're no good at what they do Somebody else has already learned the job. They've already been trained on it. They can totally take over Okay, but the the other thing is this and this is the reason why we are always Cruton I don't I've never used that term, but I love it. I think it's amazing When I'm desperate and I go to hire somebody the person that I'm hiring I'm hoping they're going to save my business Okay Here's the catch the person that wants the job They're looking for a job because they're hoping I will save their finances And so this is two desperate people coming together hoping The other person is going to save the day and it doesn't usually happen that way If you are not in a position of confidence and strength and you are hey, we don't need anybody right now What happens is you come at this with desperation and you hire the wrong people because you're hoping They're going to save the day and they they usually don't they're hoping you're going to save their day But if you hire people like oh a good person just came along we kind of don't need them But let's figure out a place for them. What happens is oftentimes you'll end up hiring somebody that doesn't really need you either And they're like well this this is a company and they're doing really well And somebody recommended that I that I take the job And maybe I can offer something maybe and it's a completely different frame of mind on both parties Now it's both parties doing this because they want to and they want to make it work Not because they're desperate and they're both Kind of going down the same sinkhole. Yeah, does that make sense? I I think that's brilliant. I don't know that I've ever thought about that part of it There's so many things that are that can harm you with that That's that's something I don't think I've put much thought into it. That's brilliant. Absolutely. Um, you know I look at I look at it like this If you picture a starting basketball team on the basketball court and there's five starters And they look over at the bench and there's nobody on that bench. How hard are they really trying to keep their job? When they look over at the bench and there's three or four people on that bench ready to take their job They're going to be staying after practice practice and free throws getting better trying to improve themselves That's just how we do that's what's natural and if you're a c employee You're probably going to end up quitting because you know, you're not going to be around very long anyway The other thing with it too is when when you get the most desperate that I've been in when I own my cleaning company And you talk about being desperate, right? Was when I knew I had a fire one or two people But I was so afraid Of being short staff. I couldn't be more short staff. So I'm going to hold on to these one or two You feel like you've lost control of your business because they know they should be fired and they know they've got you And worse than that. I think is What are your a employees doing? Eventually, they're going to wonder why they're waking up every morning getting here early and these people are getting away with everything And why is this happening and they want to help but they're just wondering you've lost control of your business when that happens And so I'd much rather be a little bit over staff than under staff And we're pro we're very proactive about that like you said Angela when when we need to Hire five people We want to make sure that there's double that at the interview We want to make sure if we need to hire one person we're hiring two at least And and that it's really that's the truth of it. You've got to be that proactive when you're recruiting and hiring I love this conversation and oh my goodness. Our time has come to an end Where did our time go? This is fantastic Uh, please tell our listeners where they could go to find you shown Absolutely. So you can go to hire lead chill dot com And we've got all kinds of information on there. I've got a face facebook I'm uh doing podcasts and things like that like angela Hire lead chill is our group Uh on facebook and if you want to talk to me about anything you want to see our system You want to know what I might be able to help you out with with finding good employees Giving you some good ideas to try on your own or hire us Uh go to hire lead chill and there's all kinds of buttons on there that say is a request free demo with shawna Something like that request a demo And it's not that i'm just going to give you a demo, but i'll i'll answer any questions you have and we'll chat about anything You want to chat about Awesome. Okay. So with this being the new year, I want to encourage everybody to always be croutin Thank you so much shawna for today. This was awesome. You guys. Thanks for tuning in. We'll see you soon