 Hey, good afternoon everybody Tom Stewart here. This is smart business move our guest today is Jason cup and Jason brought some team members with them Liz isn't going to be able to make it today. She's kind of tied up had some things pop up this afternoon is going to Keep her keep her out of commission for smart business moves David. That's okay because you've got a lot of help here Jason, how are you? I'm great. Tom. I This is a really kind of fun exciting time of year for us It's supposed to be a little bit slower for us, but it is not slow at all We are incredibly busy, which is great or grateful for that You know, I think this is my third time that I've been on smart business, but I believe my third time. Is that right? I believe it is. Yes. Yeah, and and I I kind of are the opinion that Business just continues to grow and give air even light of some of the most recent as of today headlines that That's CPI inflation number keeps rising and all that good stuff I mean gosh for for the people that we're working with their businesses are growing their scaling their adding clients and That means that they need people so it's it's kind of an exciting time But but we are we're a lot going on. We don't sit around and pop bombons very often during the day Yeah, we were talking a little bit before we go on the air that the whole consumer price index thing They announced that again this morning eight 8.3% right. I mean his prices are continuing to go up at a rather rapid cliff Predictions are that gas prices are going to continue to go up this summer for a number of reasons, right? I Was talking to a friend earlier this week who's in the food service business here in Charleston And there's some restaurants downtown that the labor situation is so short that some nights They're paying dishwashers anywhere at 40 sometimes up to $60 an hour just to get dishwashers That's insane. Yeah, we've definitely heard, you know, some of the some of those same statistics that that just What happened and I think we've talked about that talked about this When I've been on the show is that what business owners have done in almost every segment They've taken the opportunity with all of this to inch their prices up as their costs are rising But then what they've been able to do to your point about your friend with with the restaurant and food service is they've been able to pass some of that price increase on to their team members and And so we're seeing, you know base wages for team members Increased just as a as a natural progression of that phenomenon, which is which is great I've always been in favor of But I call it right sizing the wage that people in the industries that we serve are paying their employees So we're all we're all for that. Absolutely Yeah, and a few months ago I guess it was in March target came out with an announcement that they were Raising their minimum wage in some locations up to $24 an hour, right? Absolutely. And I think you know that started Gosh, I want to say it was three years ago come where Amazon I think was the frontrunner and I sure you might remember I know we talked about it. They went from I think 12 to 15 when they acquire whole foods Then that became a $15 starting wage in the grocery store segment And that caused all grocery stores who has I think everybody knows called noses on razors and margins to have to bump Their pay up otherwise people were leaving grocery store to go work for whole foods because they could work for Amazon Essentially and get a level up in terms of pay and that was way before Where they said hey, we want to attract the best talent that we possibly can so we're gonna level that up to $15 Now and I think that maybe Amazon is up to 16 or 16 50 now in terms of what they're higher than that Sure, okay, what you've got some good data. Maybe it should be a good idea rather than time Yes, yeah, you bet so Typical typical me and Tom we didn't we talk a lot sorry So this is Brian's film and Brian's on our team Brian actually works and all of our Colby administration also works on the HR side Of our business and Cheryl is completely on the HR side of our business So they're looking at resumes hiring doing phone interviews doing backward uncheck hiring on an almost daily basis for our clients and when We talked about the the topic of today's show being recruiting Brian and Cheryl living in that world every single day And I thought they might have some good nuggets to share with us about those interviews and Communications with people that they're looking at and and could be really beneficial to have them join us today So I'm really excited to have Brian and Cheryl and they're on our team At Kincaid and and are working in that space every single day Yeah, I appreciate you bringing the crew with you here because Topic and this is like a really important place in time And a lot of us have been running businesses for a long time and things are relatively static But the whole you know ever since COVID I guess we've been dealing with unprecedented events and issues But gee whiz we're with the labor market and inflation and everything else What used to work doesn't necessarily work anymore. Yeah, that's true So what what Jason was saying I can kind of give you some more information I was driving down the highway On a long trip and this is in a rural area Not far from Kansas City. So like 45 miles south and they had an Advertisement huge billboard on the side of the road or chewy that Tom warehouse $23 an hour Wow Is dollars an hour now in our area so The rate of pay that we are paying people is definitely going up as you said with the dishwasher story $40 and wash dishes like is Unthinkable and and no one probably ever thought in a million years that we were going to paint anybody back But you're desperate and you're in a restaurant and you've got all these people that want to come there And you can't find people. What are you supposed to do, right? What part of what part of the country are you in Cheryl? Oh, I'm sorry. I'm in Kansas City. So we're in the Midwest Where it's not like you're in downtown Manhattan or anything. Oh, no, I am in normal everyday America We are not in the very very high cost of living area, but the fact is that there are people who are expecting more money and Are basically they know they are a hot commodity so they are going to Try to get as much as they can I read an article today about hosting where we all have heard that right where you've set up an interview and someone just no call no shows you They respond to them and then they never get back with you ever again, and you're like, okay, or it's worse now apparently People are accepting jobs and they never show up to the job and then when you call them thinking we're all good, right? You're going to show up day one. You can't get ahold of them They want to answer the phone. That's just they just completely completely ghost you now before they ever have an opportunity to no call no show you Unfortunately, that's the way it is And are these jobs like You know technician type jobs that we typically hire for a business. I mean what type of positions are these? It's all all aspects the art of the article. I read was office work as well as the hospitality industry pretty much it's hitting all industries, so you know because so the Rationality is that the generation coming up is very very Comfortable with being ghosted or ghosting people on Aiding apps so to them. It's not a big deal to just like not show up even though I said I was gonna show up or whatever Which is totally not Professional business This is what is real people. This is what's happening Now we were hiring for a client and you know the salary range. Well, it's let's call it between 80 and 100 Thousand a year and Cheryl and I would get ghosted on a weekly basis. It was mind-blowing Stanley Like they just they in and we would go so far as to use our own Calumly links and say schedule with us We'll let you decide, you know when you want to do this interview and then they then they do that and then not show up I mean it is they it is a it is a different world we're living And these were people I guess who like sent you a resume that actually had professional experience that You know had invested in their career and they wouldn't have had that resume if they behaved that way all the way up to this point So that's just hard to fathom that things change that much. It's true It is unbelievable, but nobody thought we would be here three years ago, right in this situation, so And I think that it's it so I you know, I've been doing hiring for gosh More than I want to admit and this happened back then I always kind of said I was telling somebody earlier today that you know Hiring was tough or five years ago. It got a lot tougher in coven It's almost returned to some degree what it was precoven and so it just is amazing to me That there's qualified people so on paper, you know, they're qualified. I've got a great resume work for good companies And and then they get to the point where they just don't show up for the first day of work Or they've got a face-to-face interview set up and they just don't show up And we don't know what the motivation is because I wasn't brought up that way I don't think any of us were brought up that way I mean, I would have I mean I would have gotten a lot of trouble if I did that, you know I was just grew up with a different level of ethics to be able to Morally have a moral compass to not do that. It is so common And so, you know, one of the strategies that we try to work through is is to send them through Certain checks as you go along to reply to a certain email by a certain day Getting certain information that they're unwilling to reply to an email in a timely manner That's probably the way that they're going to handle their job. It's not going to be on time It's not going to they're going to procrastinate things and that's not what any in Modern business or people that we're working with want at any regard whatsoever in their business So it's really interesting that the vibe that's out there is super bizarre so one technique that you can use as an employer is to Try to create some challenges for that candidate to to work their way through to prove it their series Yes, that's what I I mean, that's what we do. I would definitely do that for anybody in any kind of office position Or any or like a customer service person On the phone or anybody that has to answer clients in a timely manner Either by email phone or text chat whatever or in person Just for the fact that you want them to do things a certain way, right? You have policies that you like things to be done a certain way So if I ask you To set up this interview using this link do not email me back and say when can I talk to you? Okay, I give you specific instructions. I need to find out. Can you follow instructions? This is why i'm doing Please I guess the challenge is or the problem is that I have some dogs misbehaving excuse me You know, we talk about the jolts report every month and that's like the number of job openings that are You know in this in america and you in the us and there's like 11 and a half million job openings There's like six million people looking for jobs. So there's like two jobs for every every every person that's that's looking for work. So You know You want to you want to you want to like that people and you know You want to do all these things to kind of filter out the people that aren't serious But at the same time you find yourself in a situation that you don't have any candidates at all to talk to The human reaction is to reel back on that. It's like well, maybe we shouldn't make this so hard Right. Well, I mean when you're in a situation where you need a body What are you going to do? I mean you need a body, right? So Um, unfortunately, you're right. There are a lot a lot of problems out there right now. However To be honest through that great resignation period People were just quitting everything people were fed up scared Who knows what the reason was or what the motivation was for just putting their job But people were people were just leaving it And they weren't freaking out about repercussions or how they were to get their bills paid or anything like that. They were just I'm done with this So what happens? Now when what we are seeing is yes, there's a lot of jobs out there and to be honest Our clients have good jobs. They have decent benefits. They offer a great work culture They pay very well for their market and their industry and still we can't seem to attract people and I That what I have seen in the past and just talking to young people younger people Let's go with about these issues is that they are not wanting to work physical labor manual labor Anything like that where they are face-to-face with a customer Where they are concerned they're going to contract some kind of illness Whether it be COVID or not and so that is a big issue for a lot of people is like maybe they may have loved their job Or maybe the best perver that ever lived But they're scared about going back to work some of them Some of them are just worried about Some of them have been burnt out and just exhausted because no one's ever showing up, right? So you got to take up the slack and so they're tired of being burnt out and you're trying to go to a totally different industry So I mean, yeah, there's jobs there. There's millions of times there But there are people who are not applying for these jobs even though they need a skill set and could do the work Well, the thing I might add and I've seen this and I don't know Still or brian if you've seen it or Tom, although I know you're always hiring folks as well Is that we've got those folks that are taking I don't want to typecast somebody but kind of a millennial attitude that they want Flexibility of work hours. They want to be able to work remotely They want to be able to do things kind of on their terms. They're committed Loyal employees when all of their check mark are checked Uh, but but if they're not checked then they oftentimes are not interested in that long term They're okay skipping around and jumping around in terms of jobs, which I mean I have had I don't know But I've had like two jobs in my entire life or maybe three You know, so and I'm 49 years old where most people have had 10 jobs or 12 jobs or 15 jobs because they just jump kind of looking for that utopian position And sometimes Even though I know that money is money and money makes the world go around and people need the almighty dollar I get it. I understand that sometimes money is not the motivating factor It's the way to the job or a position or a career makes them feel and what the culture element is More so than what the almighty dollar is as long as their needs are met financially I would a hundred percent agree with that cultures king right now like People I have heard the term work life balance at least 50 times in the last three months on interviews Yeah, people do not want to work like to death. They want to enjoy their time Yeah, so we have done a really good job of painting a pretty bleak picture of what we're dealing with Aspiring employers, right? No lie. That's It's also a change of mentality and I'm going to tie this in with parenting and People are going to say wow you're this guy's nuts When and tom and Cheryl and jason. I roughly the same age and we grew up you'll do this because your father said so Oh, yeah That was the mentality and in a lot of ways that was the mentality of a lot of bosses Was because I'm the boss and I said so The millennial generation I'm not saying anything bad about them They have created efficiencies that no one else has that my hats off to them. I will not slam a millennial ever But that is that that mentality has gone into the workforce of no, I don't want to do that and Okay, you're the boss. You told me to do it I care and so I'm going to go somewhere else that has a better culture Where someone's not barking orders at me because those same people if you said look I need you to do x y and z and here's why Nine times out of ten will do it. It's it's just bizarre how the two are so connected Because we did things because our dad or mom told us to We didn't need the logic this generation really seems to need the logic The why they want to know the lie behind They do they want to know the why and here's another thing this generation and the one coming up after that even the z-lineal people Are very collaborative. They are used to working with group projects all the time They are used to working on a team They like to do things And you know, I've seen some like psychological studies about how to get people to do stuff that you want them to do and A lot of times they've proven that or at least their studies that that show that the why doesn't even have to make any sense You can just give them a y You know It you know why because it's really important. We need to do it is better than nothing at all, you know, so Um, you know, we're in a hurry. It's late. We've got to there's always like a canned set of whys that don't really Flesh things out very much, but a lot of times it'll move people better than than nothing at all Okay, so with this bleak picture and it's 2022 and there's two jobs for every person looking for a job This number the job participation rate is at all time was What what what do we do? I mean you guys are out. You're doing this every day. So let's share some hacks Let's share some best practices in terms of You know, what do we what do we do as people running cleaning business owners? How can we recruit talent that you know, we'll come to work every day that will come to an interview Won't ghost us To perform at a high level I I have a handful of things and I'll let brian and sure I'll come in up what I'm gonna right to say because I'm gonna get way above the clouds They might have some more tactical things to throw into the mix, but number one I think that we really need to Create an environment where we can be quick to hire that we don't let people Hang on to a string for very long. And so if someone That's great takes the time to apply we need to respond to them quickly We need to put up a phone interview or a face-to-face interview as quickly as we possibly can And if they're the right candidate we have to make an offer as quick as we can if they're a great candidate They're going to be gone by the next company in two days And so we need to be quick we need to be quick to market We live in a world today where Any of us and anybody that's watching this right now can order something on amazon depending on what major city you're in You can get it today or tomorrow without doubt and so we live in this world where it's quick to market So the first thing is quick to market The second thing is is that hiring is absolutely a full-time job You you need to constantly be leveling up your effort to hire and hire Hire constantly you have to be developing the bench to use a sports reference And you need to be a great coach with lots of strategy behind building that bench up to the best possible bench that you can create And that doesn't involve a reactionary hire It revolves a proactive hire meaning Constantly refreshing your ads revising your ads putting them in lots of different places Have your recruiting hat on on a very regular basis The the third thing is is you really have to know What you want so many people say oh, I want to hire a salesperson. They can't put any brackets around that What are they going to sell? What traits do they need? What experience do they need? Cheryl and brian could probably go And tell you stories where they're working with clients where they say I just need a salesperson Need somebody to come in and sell they can't really put brackets around what they absolutely need in a lot of detail So it's harder to find somebody when it's a big wide swap rather than a very acute swap The other part about it which still blows my mind Excuse me in 2022 Is that I feel that great business owners? Spend tons and tons and tons of time creating client acquisition strategies. They have consultants They have marketing companies. They're spending tons of money on google ad words and and uh, and and facebook ads and seo And building their website up and and they're having regular meetings and dashboards and all this crazy stuff to acquire the elaborate campaigns that you know high levels of automation Absolutely, but they don't have that on the hiring side They almost expect if you're going to go acquire all these clients build all this revenue up and then they're not developing strategy Uh processes automations budgets hiring professionals Really making it an every single day strategy to go and acquire team members and the thing that I back into kind of on our On the other side of our consulting company on the financial side is is that we have things like cac client acquisition costs We've got all of these categories on a p&l and recruiting there's like $800 or and i'm not suggesting you need to go spend crazy money on it But you can go and sell it a very wide person told me a long time ago That if you sell it you have to produce it if you don't produce it You're not going to be able to sell it again meaning you got to build up your operations to be able to To work through the client acquisitions to deliver the product that you're promising your client And that requires recruiting and those processes And it blows me away that that's not something that people are really kind of peeling down and say what works for me what works for me and and you know review sites are such a big part of marketing at this point and You know any house cleaning company if they get like a bad review the sirens go off and like everybody drops What they're doing and everybody starts freaking out. What are we going to do about this bad review? You know, how many companies even think about glass door and some of the other review sites for them as an employer is that You know, I think there's a large number of companies. That's that's not even a consideration I totally agree with you Someone who you know, like when someone leaves the company are people doing exit interviews. Are they learning what they can do differently? um, I I did an exit interview 10 days ago on friday And I learned so much About what this client could have done differently to cause that team member not really now Not all of it was self-inflicted not all but was the client's fault some of it was the team members fault But you know, they're I mean they're three hours away from clocking out for the last time. They're kind of willing to say A lot and I learned so much And we're already putting what we learned into play In a feedback type of a situation to be able to you know, correct that um And I think that that having that strategy and understanding this because you know what an employee Especially a great employee leaving is like a bad review Brilliant. Um, and you said that because it is like a bad review. Why are they leaving? Is it pay? Is it is it culture? Is it compassion? Is it the job responsibilities? What is the reason That someone is going to leave the company and when you know that now you have the special sauce to go fix it So that other team members don't leave for the exact same reason Yeah And I mean certainly if you've got better retention, that takes a lot of pressure off the whole recruiting and hiring side But if you got people leaving for the wrong reasons, that's kind of like the whole word of mouth thing and bad reviews and everything else you're Going to have a harder time completing in them and competing in the labor marketplace. I would think I would say that if I was going to be looking for a job today I would add an automatically do tech class store and see what the Former employees said about a company if it's bad If their rating is bad, I'm applying there. I don't want to work for turkey people. I'm just not You know, I can do it So so back to your your your point jason. I know a lot of companies spend a lot of time they actually license software To reach out to their customers to encourage them to go to review sites and give them reviews Oh, should we be asking our employees to be doing the same thing? Really good comment. I've never really been asked that before. What do you guys think Brian Cheryl? I mean you're you're touching the team member You know every day in the hiring process sometimes in the the departure process as well I think I love that idea. I think it's really good. It can give you I wouldn't say necessarily doing a survey or necessarily having people go out and fill out reviews You may not like what you find out But but like a survey monkey review where you have an anonymous 100 anonymous review Third party ask your people Get a temperature check on how they love their job. Do they like to feel underutilized? Do they love the culture all the different things that we as business owners? Are trying to portray and make our company the best place for somebody who's looking for the job that we are Allowing to have Would want to work there. I mean that's easy those survey monkey things are not that expensive And you can get a lot of good information I know a lot of companies train their office staff But every time they talk to a customer the customer says you guys really did a great job of cleaning my home The automatic response is well, thank you, mrs. Jones. We really appreciate that You know, we're a small company and a lot of how we grow is through reviews Would you mind going to google and ensuring that information? So as talking to your employees and your your that that work for you every day and some of them Hopefully are happy and like their job But when you have an opportunity to say, you know what we're a small company And a lot of you know, what helps us find, you know team members who you know Brace the same values that you and I do is through review sites like glass door Here's a link. Would you mind going there and telling last door? You know, how much you like your job I think that I think that people are afraid to do that tom because they're afraid of the opposite They're afraid of of of giving permission for someone to go and put a negative review up So I can see both sides of it. I think most Employer employers are hesitant to get Critical feedback because they don't know if they can fix it or they don't know if they can implement Or they don't know if it's going to be a budget killer And so I I like the idea I love getting feedback because then I think that you know what we don't know We don't know if we don't know we can't fix it, right? And I think most great entrepreneurs that we're aware of want to go and fix it They want to build the best team the best business the best set of financial But they don't know they don't know You know I see this time and time again that business owners are afraid to do things because Rate increases for example, you know, business owners are afraid to do rate increases because they're afraid all their customers are going to quit Right and time and time again, you know, it's been proven that they don't I mean you might lose one or two You know a small percentage But the amount of money that you're going to be generating off the rate increase for all the ones that take at more than make up for the difference And you know, it's like well, I'm afraid to ask my customers for reviews because they might go to google and say we You know, we we we we stink and well They think that then you probably wouldn't be in business anyway. I mean it's head trash. It's a lot of head trash You might have an employee that would would would flame you but For every one of those I would think that you would have 50 that would would would say decent things if not great things about the job If not, they wouldn't be there especially in 2022 why would anybody in 2022? Staying in job that they didn't like it certainly wouldn't be because they didn't have other options They could go downtown and wash dishes for 50 or 60 dollars an hour You're right You're right Tom because you're exactly right At this point we could probably if every one of us posted our resume today We'd probably have recruiters killing us with emails killing us Trying to get us to come and we wouldn't even be that serious, right? You know, we're we're not serious The point is is that there are also many jobs available to anybody. So if you absolutely hate your job Probably gone by now Right or you're on the way out It's probably getting fired because you hate your job so much and everybody knows it So, you know, it's one of those things Jason Ola has a question for us here. Ola August has been a guest several times a number of times and he's an awesome business owner up in Massachusetts and um, he wants to know when it comes to retention in a Horious industry. How do you handle that? I almost feel like there is a lifespan on team members on how long they can stay in the field Good question I think it's a great question and and it's so fun for me because we Just recently reconnected Just like probably what Ola in the last maybe month or so and So that's kind of fun to see him on the show today So I would say that it really comes down to there's a physicality of it, you know Whether it's in health cleaning or other service industries where there's a there's a lifespan of what the body will handle And that's one thing. Obviously if the if the body's, you know, a little like I'll tell you what I know none of us don't get any younger And I I I creak a little bit more in the morning than I did two years ago and five years ago So the body's part of it, but if it's just the fatigue of an ongoing job I think that you can make a lot of wins by really focusing on Culture and what team members really really really want and need years ago I um I call maybe I've mentioned it on the show before But it's called the bridge and I've been talking about the bridge on stage and an educational event for probably seven or eight years now and the fridge is peeling off some budget in in your employee expenses And stock in a fridge at the shop or your warehouse with Gatorades and bottled waters And and and maybe snacks, you know go to Costco or a Sam's club and you know peel off 200 bucks a month or 500 dollars a month When you really recognize what those team members want and what they need And sometimes it's a Gatorade or or an energy bar or something And and and that might be one key thing to invest in culture The other one that I think is really important and the cost of this is really really really small And I got to tell you we saw this happen In COVID is that there were a lot of people that we work with It's actually came out of one of our live events that we had probably four years ago Was the idea of getting some supplemental insurance plans Things like disability some supplemental not health insurance, but supplemental insurance that could be life insurance that could be What is it Yeah Affleck when COVID hit Affleck paid out a lot of people had had an Affleck plan because They couldn't work because their job was temporarily paused or whatever There's a lot of people who had that Affleck plan that have been paying in 12 dollars a month or whatever it might be that It got a Nice roi on that insurance plan And so I think that there's things that you've got to think about That are small items in the budget But mean the world to your employees Things like one of the things that we did when you know, as I think you know, Tom And some people might that are on the call know that I own the lawn care and landscaping company And so, you know, we we had a large Hispanic workforce So we celebrated, you know, we celebrated Cinco de Mayo We didn't celebrate 4th of July in our company We would we would stop our company midday everybody would go home They put on the biggest hats and big belt buckles and cowboy boots and come back to our office And we didn't we didn't Americanize it. We had we asked them and we would have an authentic Hispanic meal catered in our office and these men and women that work for us They bring their wives and their kids and it was just like a culture like blowout session in our office Because we were celebrating what they wanted to celebrate rather than what we wanted to celebrate When you really get into the mind of your workforce And you you you really kind of understand what they want Whether that's, you know, a random day off on their birthday or that extra holiday off or having a half day off Before maybe Thanksgiving or something so they can travel to be with family and friends Those small little things pay huge dividends in the asset of the team member And they don't really cost a lot of money at the end of the day But they get your employees to come back over and over because I guarantee they're not going to get it down the street With the competitor because that competitor is not going to think through the culturalization of those elements Is it are there any techniques you could share in terms of how to help? You know leaders and and and house planning companies Get that type of information get inside of their employees. I mean I know there's a lot of You know discussion trying to figure that out and you know, the answer might be obvious, but I don't think it's obvious to everybody So I have a really great client So I can't take credit for this one, but but they did the simple ask them They actually in this past off season, I think it was maybe November or December Uh, well, I think we're a little bit slower for them in their business model They actually sent out to Cheryl's point an anonymous survey They put a box in the office So it didn't have anybody's name on it and they they filled out a survey of what was most important to them in terms of benefits And and and what we found was pretty staggering. So it was literally asked them All would that be a multiple choice or just a blank piece of paper? How would that work? So what this company did is they they actually went in and they they thought through We brainstormed the ideas of aplac and the bridge and additional pto day a vacation plan health benefits life insurance Uh Handful of different, you know things that they thought of but then there was a blank line kind of you know Choose your own adventure right something in the box And what we learned was really really really interesting What the team members of this particular company wanted is that they wanted some flexibility in taking three-day weekends Uh, that's really what they found is they they felt really confined to just having a saturday or sunday off Which did not allow them to take a three-day weekend with family and friends to leave on a thursday night come back on a sunday night To maybe go on a road trip or go see, you know people that were four hours away or whatever And it reminded me when I saw that come back. There was there was an article that came out I believe a cbs sunday morning. I've been 60 minutes, but I think it was cbs sunday morning Maybe four or five years ago about the power of the three-day weekend About allowing employees to to periodically have that three-day weekend. That's not a three-day weekend That is tied to a holiday that it's you know, maybe you get to choose two three-day weekends a year as an additional benefit That that team members can take so that they can have a little bit of time to re-energize the fuel and the tank for them To to to feel like they can take that time off There are certain criteria as you can imagine like two team members couldn't take off the same three-day weekend And you can't over abuse it. I can tell you so our our company, which is a new Kind of strategy that's out there our company has unlimited pto So our consulting company has unlimited pto So brian and sharyl and other team members can ask for as much time off in fact sharyl Be out of town for one of her kids Graduations the next two days and we're happy to you know give it to her because brian and i will be running the show along with our other Team members and that's completely okay. We've got a couple of criteria in there But but we do offer unlimited pto and that's a trend that's happening in some business I also understand some businesses can't do that and so there needs to be some guide posts in there To make sure that people don't take advantage of it and some criteria on on the way that that's granted But when you can find those small teeny tiny little things that make a big difference to your team They're going to stick around and they're going to enjoy that. They're going to love that because it provides them the flexibility You know the three-day weekend I I think is starting to In some cases just starting to be the the expectation for every weekend um At least flex scheduling and stuff like that and you know the whole You know the deficit between the number of open jobs and the people looking for jobs like Some of the things that used to be considered as you know, this is a really nice benefit I think uh more and more is just kind of a basic assumption And that's said that everybody's doing it, but I think more and more people You know things are moving in that direction The unlimited pto and that is pay pto, correct? It is correct yes um I've run a little bit about that and I've seen some numbers that you know where People actually take less time off under under that situation and they do when They're earning, you know three four weeks of pto a year that Use it or lose it. That's like, oh, I guess I'm going to take You know these days off because you know, I'm going to lose it otherwise where it's just unlimited They take less time right I Brian show you guys need to be taking more time off Okay, I'm doing it tomorrow And then Brian's going to be gone the next week. So We're doing it In the magic in the magic it makes that work is you can take as much time off as you want as long as The work that you're responsible for is being taken care of right right I will say that I've been in some other companies that have done unlimited pto And they utilize that or kind of differentiated that from everybody was able to take or not was that um, salary employees were allowed unlimited pto, but that Uh, non-exempt or hourly employees were not so That's one way like if you think that that might be a great idea for some of your workforce, but not everybody Then that is an option. It's one way to go about it um Which is what you had said about the three-day work week a lot of a lot of labor businesses are going to four tens So doing four work four ten shift 10 hour shifts a week And then then their people get friday off or what other every whatever other day you pick right as your day um, so That that can be a great thing because The the longer people work and it's harder to get appointments. It's harder to go to the To the doctor. It's harder to go to the eye doctor. It's all of that because they only keep certain hours and so Um, giving someone another day, even if it's not even a whole day Even if it's a half day like let's say you do like half days on practice or something Giving somebody another opportunity to know that every every friday morning I'm going to be able to if I need to go somewhere making a point. I can do it on those days As opposed to worrying how they're going to fit it all into their Well, and I and I would say I agree with everything schilder. It's that but the other thing I would say is is that Is that if it's the right team member, you know, which brian and schilder are the right team members Is that, you know, churl is going to make sure that her inbox is cleared out. I was going to glance at her phone You know in between things I mean, you know, and I don't expect that but I know she'll do it because she's a committed team member That's been around for what for a year now this this year It'll be four and one right So so the right team members, you know, brian is going to be out next week and and you know He's going to be plugged in and checking his email and jumping on zooms as he needs to And even though we're out we're still in you know, and and and I know that maybe that's a little bit unconventional But the right team members do what is necessary because it's much bigger tom and you know this I mean It's much bigger than than a job and a paycheck. It's a career and it's a connection To to the greater purpose of what you do And when you do that and and you know that and they're the right team members they're really going to do what it takes to Get the position done and that is one of our you know I saw Olu said, you know, how do you manage the abuse? You know and and that's the way you manage the abuse the right tim member tim member actually isn't going to abuse it And at the end of the day, although we have unlimited pto week definitely have guidelines You know, you can't you can't just pop a pto for tomorrow or next week I mean there's there's a there's a pre-time period We try really hard for all of us not to be gone at the same time And if there's been missteps in job performance the answer might be no You know Part of it is it has to be approved, right? Absolutely at the end of the day. I'm the one that approved those We have a we have a group calendar that it goes into we make sure we're not stepping on other people's shows And that's an important part of the process. It's not just like hey I want to take my unlimited pto and you know the the royals won last night And so I want to take tomorrow off because maybe I have man blue or Or eight night or whatever it be that doesn't work that would be written up in our world That would be written up in our world And so it has to be something that's premeditated like Cheryl Cheryl told us that Caleb was graduating three months ago and said here's the days I need to be off great put it on the calendar absolutely approved But if Cheryl would say to me on you know today. Oh by the way, Caleb's graduating more obviously like Cheryl And you know, where are you at in your workflow? What's going on and so on and so forth? I don't know that I can do that because I'm finding out about it today Or tomorrow right so that's the way you put guidelines up to make sure that there's compliance and that it's not a beauty Well, we are Kind of in the home stretch here um We'd like to take a minute especially, you know since you've got bright and Cheryl with you to uh Talk a little bit about your organization and the work that you do and You know, you work with a lot of field service companies house cleaning companies being being part of them And you know part of you know dealing with this whole labor situation Shortage that we have in this dismal picture that that that we painted earlier is to You know get to Get help we don't have to figure it all out ourselves, you know And this is what you guys do for for a living, right? I hope so That's the goal that's the plan Tell us a little, you know How can you help house cleaning companies? You know with their hiring and and recruiting and You know other services. Did you offer as well? Cheryl brian i'm gonna let you run with this because you're touching this every day well Okay, i'll start and then i'll i will let brian talk he teases and says i never let him talk, but i do um, we can do as little Of what you would need or as much as what you would need someone to do So we can help you write job descriptions. We can help you write job ad tests Um, we can place ads if you just want that and that's all you want That's cool You know, we can do that if you want us to place the ads But you want to review everybody and you don't want to talk to anybody You just want us to place ads for you and send all the candidates your way we can do that too If you want us to do all of everything I just said as well as screen everybody Get the best candidates for you and then send like the top two to three people we can do that as well We can also set up interviews. We can do offer letters. We can do reference checks. We can do background checks We can do All of it we can like I said, we call that the soup to nuts We can do all of everything or as little as you need someone to do We are very good at hiring We understand that you business owners do not have a lot of time to spend looking through the 300 resumes you're going to get Especially for unqualified people Maybe a hundred people are going to be unqualified right off the bat, right? You don't have time to go through every one of them and look at them. Um, we can write ads that Um purposely try to Grab the attention of the type of people we are absolutely looking for Like the kind of employee you would like Um, Jason is really really good at that. A lot of Colby stuff comes into play I don't know if he talked about Colby, but he probably will in about two minutes. Uh, but um There are a lot of ways we can help you go about trying to find the right person to get the right person From the right seat on your bus, which is your company And now now Brian No, I think I think you're very thorough as as always which is great. Um, and yeah, I mean I Just today was issuing Colby's And I'll let Jason jump into that a lot deeper but We're geared to help that's really Jason's motive and for everyone listening I've known Jason longer than anyone on this call and his motivation is to help We are not after Really anything else we we succeed when we help the small business succeed Brian were you guys uh like in the landscape business together? Were you with him back even further back? Oh, even before that You guys ride the school bus together Sort of right Okay, um, I I didn't because I lived out in the country. Um, but um But yeah, known each other since known each other since sixth grade, which was uh a few years ago and Um, I've been very close ever since My best friend uh officiated officiated my wedding But yeah, we Which is another dynamical by itself, which we navigate. I think pretty well so, but yeah, I mean I've learned a ton from him and hopefully he's learned Some for me Yeah So from a recruiting standpoint, is this like technician level jobs you're recruiting for is it all more for Like admin and and management What is the scope from an organization standpoint the scope is director of operations to Really all points in between You know depending on depending on the model. Um, but yeah admin for sure labor some And it's it's a pretty it's a pretty wide scope, but yeah, we we see a lot of resumes daily so It sounds like that the admin side in the office side and the management side. I mean Those are leverage positions. I mean every job's important, but you know, those are harder positions to fill A lot of times at least fill it with the right candidate You can hire people, but maybe not, you know and making the wrong hire in some of those positions can be very expensive um So if you're you're you're trying to hire a manager You guys can help with that. Oh, yes. I would say that Primarily that is where we're the best at is because Like you said, it may not be cost effective for you to or someone to hire a company Which is ours to hire field labor or you know, the country level person Let's say in your company. It just may not make sense, right? But somebody who you need an administrative assistant or a customer service rep or a salesperson or a manager or Even a director or ops manager or general manager or like vp level We can hire all of that That realm It's not that we couldn't hire your labor people. It just not may not make sense for you or anyone else Depending on your financial situation It might not be as cost effective as it would be For you to be the majority of the hiring that doesn't mean we couldn't maybe help you write ads But for us to place ads in different poles and that's it may not be the most cost effective. Am I right? Jason, what do you think about what I'm saying? Well, I would I would say absolutely all of those positions Sales operations office admin co-keeping customer service all of that are positions. We hire every single day I would say that the the the more specific technicians tom We we have the ability to hire but Cheryl's point is that sometimes the platforms that we do the advertising on It it can it can get a little costly and you've got to pay the play in those spaces So sometimes when people come to us, it's just not something they want to invest in but we can do it Depending on what the position is in the company And where they're located we'd probably probably be a one offer us But we definitely could do it just depending on a couple of those factors But you know, I hear this all the time, you know, I'm looking for an office manager an operations manager And you know, I just can't you know, I hire people and doesn't work outright I just can't you know find the right person This is what you guys do. We've we just made a we just made an office An operations manager hire Yesterday, you know, so that's something we do every single day Review resumes and whatnot for those critical management physicians is I mean, you know, but we'd be happy to talk to anybody about that process So you've mentioned Cole be a couple times here and I know that we've Touched upon it and and and you know some of the prior prior, you know visits to smart business moves And the three minutes we have left Jason. Sorry Can you I kind of give us a thumbnail of what Colby is and how that can be helpful in Finding the right candidate Absolutely. Yeah, so so I've been Colby certified for almost 17 years And Colby is a is an assessment tools an index that measures a person's natural instincts doesn't measure personality Or skill and measure somebody's the natural instincts and those natural instincts allow us They don't change over time So they allow us to be very predictable and very reliable and assessing The way that either a current team member or a potential candidate Would be in decision-making problem solving communication kind of completing the work process work task What is it that they do the path? The road the map that they're going to go down to accomplish A task that they're going to be faced with every single day in their position on the existing team member That's called issuing a colby a and doing a team success and all those different things on a hire We use what's called Colby right fit where we assess what the position needs and then we plug candidates into that When Colby right fit will give us a grade of a through f About whether or not they have the instinctive ability and drive and energy to do the job It's not an automatic hire if somebody gets an a because we need to make sure they have the skill and the culture To attach to it the Colby is a great tool We've issued thousands upon thousands of colby's over the last 17 years And it's a tool that almost all of our clients are using and building the team retaining the team Working through concerns that exist in the team And and more so in recent times, you know on the hiring side as well And so that's a that's a tool that we use every single day In our business in a variety of different ways with our clients So, you know For most things in life the more you do it the better you get at it And for most of us who are running like house cleaning businesses We don't get many opportunities to hire You know these leverage positions office managers and operations managers and positions like that So it's not surprising to me just thinking about it and talking to you why we oftentimes mess it up We just don't have a lot of practice at it Sure If you're doing it on a regular basis If you're doing it every day and you've got these tools that you can use to make better decisions You guys are going to do a better job Totally agree 110 percent and that's why I say hiring is a full-time job There needs to be strategy behind it and we need to make sure that that is top of mind that we're doing it to the Best that we possibly can't every so like we're going to get better at it for sure 110 percent Well jason, I dropped a link to your website in chat I'm assuming if anybody wants to know more about you know the services you offer and how you can help them They just go to your website and reach out that way Absolutely, just hit the contact throw an email in there those emails come directly to me And I will kind of push them to Cheryl or brian or someone else to take care of it or myself If it's something for me So that's the best way to do it Email is kind of like blood in the way that that we communicate every single day As you know, tom when we are communicating about coming on to our business moves We're emailing back and forth and whatnot So email is the best and you can get those email addresses and everything on our website Well Brian it's good to see you again. Cheryl. It's nice meeting you Jason as always your help is as much appreciated You're an awesome guest and you do you do important work and we appreciate you sharing a little bit some tips and And information that can help all of us do a better job. And he's very Trying, you know labor work at times We are at the top of the hour Um Any last thoughts jason No, I just to everyone's success. I mean I I I always say that you gotta have a great product Yeah, I got a great process is within that product You have to have great people behind that product if you do that you're going to great profit And so people is such a great part of it. I hope that today's hour that we all spent together Uh was was an investment in everybody that's watching those people because that's important Yeah, and if you're trying to fix some things in your business, especially, you know hiring, you know leadership in your organization You might want to might want to talk to jason a little bit. He's got some some some ways that he could definitely help you Jason bryan. Cheryl again. Thanks a whole lot. Appreciate you being here Uh, we'll be back next wednesday five o'clock eastern for smart business moves until then take care. Take care Bye