 Hey, good afternoon everybody Tom Stewart here. Our guest today is Dan Plata and this is smart business moves Dan how in the heck are you? Tom if I was any better man, I'd be twins actually. I don't I say that because it sounds funny I don't I don't I don't even understand it, but I don't know what that means. Do we know? No, I don't know what it means But it sounds cool. So Google out one Ask chat GPT what that means and get a chat would know Yeah, I would know. Oh, thank you. It's been a while since I've been on the show hanging out with you Again, I think Liz is afraid of me. She ditched you again when I'm on the show. Yeah, you wait Liz isn't here is Yeah, you know chief said, you know Dan's gonna be there. I need to find something else to do No, I'm just kidding. She has she has a lot of training event that she's doing in Phoenix and I she's like in transit, you know, she's been a lot of time traveling doing training and Coaching and yeah, she's moving and grooving. Yeah, she's making it happen That's how the magic how the magic is made Wow So what you got on tap back there? I got everything on tap back here. What are you thirsty for? Yeah, I got water in my mug right here, but I do I do I'm starting a new podcast Which we'll get into all this stuff I'm starting a new podcast called home service happy hour that I'm starting tonight tonight will be the first recording and This left to change from water to bushlight or something, you know Is that a requirement in order to participate in that you have to be drinking something? Um Not for anybody, but me like the guest doesn't need to it The guest is you know, whatever they want to do they can drink whatever they want. I had a Curt Kempton on from responsibid and he's a milkshake connoisseur. So he was drinking milkshakes and I'm on my previous show. He was drinking milkshakes and I just threw I put some brandy in my mind It was more like a brandy Alexander. So, you know, whatever whatever floats your boat. Yeah, whatever you want to You know smoke or consume or whatever. It's you know, we're all adults here, right? Well, it's happy hour It's happy hour. That's the late-night happy hour. So it's even a little more loosey-goosey, but we we work hard We we deserve we deserve that right. That's right So what's what's been going on in your world? It has been a while and I heard some rumors that Some things have been shaken and bacon and there's some some some positive change Yeah, I've been over your way. We've been moving and grooving so For those that well, I guess maybe I like can do a little intro of myself So for people that don't know who I am and what I do and what I'm all about Get caught up on on the damn plot of saga and then I'll kind of give some history and talk about what I'm up to now. So And I met you in my in my my foray into the home service world pretty early on Like right when you were even starting build made central I think like we came down and took a look at it even That was like 2016 2017. So for Five six years. I had my head down running made-service businesses running window cleaning companies and By accident that was at a company called blue skies and I'm still partners in some businesses with that with those folks By accident we started a pretty sweet bookkeeping business and a recruiting company that my boy Shawn Day runs And we started doing some marketing for some people kind of like we built these skill sets for ourselves at one point We had 10 different companies. We were running and then we start I don't think we even realized that other people needed it Just other people started saying like hey, Dan, how do you guys do the bookkeeping for this stuff? And I was like well, I do because I like finance. I'm a weirdo And then of course they're like, well, can you do mine because I hate it and I was like, I guess So we built the bookkeeping business. We built a recruiting company And then it started to to grow up and I Realized I was the minority owner in it. I was trying to buy more shares over time But effectively I did the stupid thing where I made something that was too valuable for me to buy Tom I outgrew a business outside of my wherewithal and I kind of realized I was The catalyst for me to realize this was really stupid too because I was exploring some other partnerships that I wanted to pursue And I kind of like a couple times I had a CPA partnership I wanted to look at I had a marketing partnership I want to look at it and each time they were like Dan I'd be awesome to work with you except I'm getting the majority of these other people and I'm working with you, but I'm really in bed with them and I'm just like man That's a really good point. I didn't think about that If I were in your shoes, I'd be a little nervous about that too like who am I really getting in business with? Man, I need to like if this is gonna be my thing and it's my thing It's like I gotta I gotta own this thing, right? It's got to I gotta do it for me and my family and I can't have a ton of partners in it And the part the partners were you know me coming in and then this business was an accidental boom You're talking about the accounting the bookkeeping business. Yeah, I mean the bookkeeping and the recruiting both like I wanted I wanted to add marketing to it So we kind of had like the full admin package and I wanted to bring the CPA services and specifically for the bookkeeping side of it But I just couldn't find a good way to get it done I tried to buy the business, but monetarily it just was too expensive. It didn't make any sense for me to buy the business He did stupid a job of building it. I did. I made it way too valuable And so my business partners didn't want to give it up and I said hey well if that's the case Can you guys buy me out, right? And they said yep, we'll buy you out. We totally get it You know appreciate everything and we'll exit you so that was kind of what happened. So I'm no longer at blue skies I'm still partners with them and they have a great relationship working on other businesses that we're still affiliated in But they let me kind of spin off to do my own thing and and so I started a new bookkeeping business called best damn bookkeeping Which I get asked now a lot a lot of times people like is it best Dan bookkeeping? And I'm like sure so I went and bought that domain too because somebody's gonna type in best damn bookkeeping or best Dan bookkeeping And so, you know, whatever you want to call it either works for me I was I was on a show earlier that I was joking the The runner-up name which I actually like I'm a goofball I wanted the business to be you know to make accounting not boring because accounting is already boring enough Hence best damn bookkeeping a little edgy, but the other name I was going with was buh buh buh buh buh keeping I was like man That's fun. That's fun to say it makes people laugh when I tell them The downside was like the domain name kind of sucks. You're like is it 3b? How many bees is it? How do you spell that? Yeah, and then and then Frankly like I had a couple clients that blue skies that had a stutter and I was like man This is just funny until it's not like somebody you're funny until you're an asshole and at some point I would just be an asshole somebody so I get their hurt feelings are yeah, yeah And so so maybe it's more of a tagline than a business name, but but so I ended up with best damn bookkeeping So we're starting that and the other thing that I so so that's pretty new I think Tom I sent you the the calendar link. I don't even have a website. I don't have a logo I don't have a website I'm busier than I can handle already because Because people just know me for doing bookkeeping, so I'm still I'm often running with that And obviously if you guys are watching and need bookkeeping nerdy help or CFO help hit me up We can drop my link in there Love helping home service companies with that stuff And so that's gonna be like my main jam, but then I really Love our recruiting business and Sean day who's been at that with me for a long time He really was like spearheads that What we were missing and part of the reason what's up Molly? That's Dan bookkeeping. It's right up right up there right in there One thing we were missing with our recruiting business and we realized it and why I wanted to partner with a marketing company Is our recruiting is very much like a pay-per-click marketing company We're doing digital ads right trying to get as many applicants and candidates and filter them and convert them It's just marketing And so we were good at the job ad writing and the filtering but we're not like pay-per-click experts and so Realizing that all these businesses out there like obviously over the last three to four years finding employees has been harder and harder and harder and harder They need some help People are used to paying somebody else to do their google ads Or their facebook ads or whatever else the case is But they weren't really used to hiring somebody else to help them with this on recruiting But now recruiting's got more and more and more intense and complicated and harder And so it looks a lot like marketing if you really stop back for you know, it's just about if you're looking for customers Are you looking for cleaners? It's same thing. Yep. Absolutely. Absolutely. So so That was where I was like, man, we got a The skill set between recruiting and marketing is so similar. Let's see if we can combine them put them together but also If you're a home service business out there, I guarantee you you have at least one of those problems You might have both of them But you for sure at least have not enough cleaners And too many clients or not enough clients and too many cleaners The chance that those are matched up and your capacity and demand is perfect Is like the chance is about this big and I guarantee you tomorrow it won't be Because somebody's gonna call in somebody's gonna be you know, you have some shitty behaviors. You're gonna need to fire them Uh, you're gonna get a bunch of phone calls or the phone's gonna dry up or whatever the case is and so Recruiting is great, but not if your marketing sucks and marketing is great But not if your recruiting sucks And so that was just the thing where I was like, man, we really need If we're gonna be the best in the world at helping people find employees. We need to be able to pair Good marketing with it so that it's not just a oh, we can help you with like driving one side of your car But the other side of your car can't go anywhere. So what's the point? um And so a guy that I had a really good relationship with Michael Gregory at click call sell He builds websites paper click marketing We've used him for a long time in our blue sky services cleaning companies and he's been awesome and so He and I had looked at Partnering everything together and he and he and I ended up buying The the blue skies recruiting also known now as higher lead chill We bought that from blue skies So we're actually just we're like that that happened in the last week here So we're just getting The bank account set up and the payroll set up and holy shit time I forgot how much of a pain in the ass it is starting new businesses Even when you buy an existing one It's a momentary slice in time though and you'll power through that and then you'll start having having the real fun Yeah, I have a question here. Christie wants to know can you help with hiring contractors as well? Yep, we sure do we sure do and actually that ends up being even a little bit easier you because you have a little more flexibility in it um Obviously you have contractor law that comes into play, but yeah, it's the process is very similar so But but you're right, you know, you we've we've talked about this for years that you Either have too many customers and not enough cleaning professionals or too many cleaning professionals and not enough customers and You know, it's either like this or it's like this and the only time that it's like this is when it's shifting in the other direction You know, you know Oh, there goes a bunch of employees or here comes a bunch of clients and if I There's an analogy and I don't know if I've if I've given this analogy before and if I have it's been long enough Since I gave it so I'm gonna give it again Yeah, yeah, so it'll just act like it's brand new if I've already done it before but um The way I view it You've got a vehicle right with with tires on the right side tires on the left side Now most of the time when we're driving a vehicle like today, you know Your it's front wheel drive or whatever the case is and then the steering wheel turns both sets of vehicles The the vehicle that we drive in our business is made a little bit differently though Uh We're in the vehicle and all of our employees and all of our customers are in the vehicle too I guess maybe they're on the outside of it But the the right side of your vehicle Is your marketing And those tires work independently of the left side of your vehicle, which is your recruiting So your your marketing is your demand and it's got its own gas tank and its own gas pedal What it doesn't have is a steering wheel Okay, like it can go forward and backward and the only way to turn the car is to speed up one side or the other side More or less So marketing has its gas tank you put money in there to run ads and as the ads convert that side of the car speeds up faster The left side of your car is your capacity It's your recruiting you can put some more money into there more effort into there get that side of the car going And if you're driving this car perfectly, it goes straight, right? Your your marketing and your recruiting is happening at the same time So literally every time you get another 15 to 20 clients You have a magical a player employee that shows up and never quits or never turns over on you And this car just keeps going perfectly down the road and you run the best recurring home service, you know home cleaning business in the world I see where you're going with this though. If you're out of balance, you're just going in circles Yeah, and if you and a lot of times people push that marketing pedal down and won't take their foot off the gas Right because you don't want to give up the sales team in the left side of their car The the tires are bald and their leadership sucks, right and employees keep turning over and so the car just goes Right because the right side of the car keeps moving the left side of cars not going anywhere And the the same thing can happen, right if you hire too many people And you can't give them enough work to do All that happens is the left side of the car starts going really fast And then three cleaners quit because they don't have enough hours And then right that side of the car jerks back and you end up spinning out And so the the home cleaning businesses that are the most successful are the ones that balance capacity and demand the best And it's not necessarily Not now some can go really fast and do that, right? I've heard of people growing multi-million dollar home cleaning companies in like a couple of years I was never that good at growing it that fast and keeping capacity and demand in check that whole way But the ones that are the best at it can market really fast and can recruit really fast And at the same speed so the car keeps going straight when the speed starts to get off If you're going fast like you just get more off course, right And so one of the one of the goofy things that I see over and over again Is people are generally really willing to put gas in the marketing tank And they're generally unwilling to put gas in the recruiting tank They'll spend thousands of dollars a month on google ads or or facebook ads or whatever marketing and flyers and this and that But spending 500 bucks a month on indeed ads like scares them Right and they're and part of it's just we're not used to having to do that I think we're starting to get more used to having to do that over the last couple years But historically we didn't have to do that And the the math is the finance nerd the mathematical conundrum to me and I've and I've made this mistake too So I'm not saying I'm immune to it um A client is worth three to four thousand bucks a year On average A home cleaner is worth Sixty to a hundred thousand bucks a year depending on how fast they are and what your business model is So We're sitting here spending thousands of bucks a month on marketing for something That's worth a few grand and then we like skimp out on the thing that makes us You know somewhere between 50 and a hundred thousand bucks a year in revenue um Now obviously it's not apples and apples. That's such a simplification But we do tend to short change ourselves on finding the best players It's easier to complain about shitty employees And just go get the customers that are coming in the door than it is to solve the employee thing Right, so we tend to like not necessarily solve it We just like to to stew in our own demise of oh, nobody wants to work anymore Which you know, we can say that but that definitely doesn't solve our employee problem You know, oh, nobody's reliable anymore. Well, maybe your culture just sucks And you haven't invested in that and so like the left side of our car that capacity side of our car tends to get like Left out a little bit Um, but man, if people aren't good at that they they crush it. Yeah, you know any other part of that I guess is is the conversion process you certainly Aren't doing yourself any favors if you're you know only have three candidates to talk to and You're picking between three bad alternatives in terms of you know your next hire Um, but you need to have a process in place if you're going to be spending more on the on the advertising Presumably you're going to be getting more candidates Presumably some of them are going to be really great They're kind of sifting through all of that and finding the right candidates. Do you do you help with that as well? Yeah, a couple of things that we do on hire lead chill. Um, and actually we're revamping this a little bit I'm super pumped for some new automations And again, this is like stuff coming out of our new partnership that I'm really excited about because The Michael who we're bringing in is is really good at creating the automations um People can basically like sign up to use our funnel. So people Applicants come in they get scored they get vetted and they basically end up at your doorstep like pre vetted Um, and so it creates an efficient process where if you go get a hundred applicants You don't need to look at a hundred applications, right? The system can do a lot of the weeding out for you and I think that's that's super important because The amount of applicants we need to find one good employee is significant. Usually it's somewhere between 50 and 100 applications to find a good employee And if you're the one looking at 50 to 100 applications a you're going to be miserable And b you're probably going to get bored and and not actually do the due diligence and not pick the best one Um, I and I find the same thing in interviewing like I feel like I'm a pretty good judge of character. I am a perpetual optimist So I do tend to think everybody's gonna be awesome and I've hired so many shitty people tom Hired I've hired I've hired a lot of great people But I've hired at least as many shitty people because I'm just like no everybody's awesome. They're gonna be so good here um, and so part of having a good process can protect you from yourself in that case where You're either gonna not be critical enough or you're gonna be too critical People are great at bullshitting their way through interviews We some actually like one of the best home cleaners I ever hired was maybe the worst interview I ever had And I totally just dumpster hired her. I just needed a body with a pulse and I was like Erica You're here and I need somebody tomorrow and you said you can work tomorrow and and so you're hired She can you start can you start today like right now? Can you? She was awful She was awful in the interview and she ended up being a phenomenal home cleaner for me And I've had other people that were so good at interviewing and just sucked and so Interviewing interviewing skill has nothing to do with being a good cleaner being a good office manager um Oh, that's my aunt sally. What's up, sal? So I a is that different than a I I don't know. I think maybe sally just got a backwards Maybe she started happy hour a little too early. Yeah, she uh hit the tap early Yeah, which hey, you know Get me one sale But but so so one of the things that we found we can do a bunch of like weeding out early What's up, Michael Gregory in the house? Um, shout out my god, it's my new business partner and highly chill right there. Um One of the things that we do is you know, we we We help get a bunch of applicants and that's doing labor market research That's doing keyword research The job you post on indeed has to be way different than the job you post on zip recruiter or facebook Like those algorithms are different So figuring out what those algorithms are looking for is part of what hire league chill would do Getting the right questions to expedite Getting somebody through that funnel and getting them to a business owner is really important And then making it easy for the business owner to like access that data in interview now one thing that This this can go like two different ways here and I'll tell you the way I like to do it It depends on the role you're hiring for but especially for hiring technicians, right? It's like a speed game It's a it's a It's a quantity I won't say quantity over quality But it's definitely like a focus on quantity You just got to get as many applications as you can and you got to get through as many as you can as fast as possible The more you get the way better chance you have of hiring somebody good if you're trying to hire a general manager Obviously, it's quality over quantity then right like you really need to find the right person and you're almost doing more That's important I mean every you you don't want to make a bad hire, but the cost Of making a bad hire in a leveraged position like a manager You could pay for that for months and months. Yeah, I mean that can that can erode your business massively right So so when we look at hiring technicians or even like office managers are a pretty common role that we end up helping people hire um A lot of what I have found Is to take us as the business owner out of it a little bit like we insert ourselves at the beginning as like the culture person and the You know the the you rah rah who like the hype man if you will But I like to exclude myself from the decision-making again I'm the optimist right so i'm a freaking hire everybody that shows up But one of the ways that we have found that this works and we did this In our Minneapolis window cleaning business first and we We did it. I won't say by accident, but out of necessity We were getting enough applicants that we were having like 20 people that wanted to interview And a we all know you get 20 interviews. You're gonna actually have five of them Right, maybe 10 of them So that sucks having all the no shows And that's frustrating and debilitating in a huge waste of your time And it's just a ton to get through Um, and and we were hiring 10 technicians at a time sometimes here So we started doing group interviews and again, we did it out of necessity And then we realized how much better we did by doing group interviews And I'll talk a little bit about our process because I think there's some like secret sauce to To how to do a group interview well and get the right result um There's a few reasons to do group interviews though, especially with technicians or for our office people I wouldn't do them for your general managers And so let's back up just a second. How does a group interview work? Do you just invite a whole bunch of people to your office at the same time? Yeah, so this is our process tweak it however you want, but I'll I'll kind of go like step, you know a through z here so We don't tell them it's going to be a group interview We just say hey four o'clock Tuesdays and Thursdays. Let us know what works for you Maybe they can read between the lines and tell that that's going to be a group interview But we have a couple open standing spots So the beauty of that is it saves us a shitload of time, right instead of a bunch of interviews all week long It's this time or it's that time Here's when we do interviews and if we're if we're trying to bring in a lot of people Maybe we'll do one every day at four or five o'clock Let's see Dan is asking about he wants to know about using zoom for group interviews I don't I don't like it because I'll tell I'll get into why I don't like it when I talk about why I do like doing in person group interviews, okay, not not to say it won't work But there's some drawbacks to it for sure that I think are the main benefit of doing group interviews So We don't really tell them it's going to be a group interview We're trying to catch them off guard a little bit and to see how they react because chances are if they're going to work For you they're going to get caught off guard going into somebody's home And you know grandma's walking through naked or you know the the house is a freaking hoarder's house, right? We know in our world they're going to get caught off guard It's okay to catch them off guard a little bit and and they're they're going to have to be able to read and react to situations That's going to be a requirement of being a home girl So you get you give them a couple of times and they're not even committed Do they do you have them commit to show up at a particular time? Yep. Yep Yep, we asked them to to confirm a time let us know, you know Is it this day? Is it that day? Is it this time? Is it that time? But we give them the options instead of just like an open book I'm coming on tuesday then if they don't show up on tuesday. I assume they're no longer a candidate Yep, they're out unless they Unless they reach out with a great reason as to hey, I can't make it today Can I come back thursday during the next time slot or whatever the case is like obviously if they're if they communicate? Well, we can work with that. We know people have lives But if they don't communicate they're out not to say now not to say we won't retarget them Right, and that's why I think having a crm. That's housing all your application information is super important Just because they didn't show up to your interview doesn't make doesn't mean they're a shitty person There's a good chance. They applied to 30 jobs in two seconds Right, and so by the time your interview happened, they might already be working somewhere That doesn't mean they suck. They applied to 30 jobs They're not going to get back to the other 29 jobs to tell them they're not showing up to their interview Right, the world the world happens too fast and and we see that there's all the no shows and the non-communication stuff I'm not going to write somebody off just because they didn't show up or just because they didn't communicate Now the system will keep weeding them out every time they don't but i'm not going to totally like say never talk to that person again It's it it's there's no harm in me just assuming they got a job somewhere else. I wasn't fast enough Right because a lot of the times people know show us or don't communicate with us. It's because we sucked Right, it's not necessarily because they sucked. We didn't we didn't have the best sexiest opportunity for them They took a different opportunity. We were either too slow. We weren't we weren't paying enough our office smelled funny It was dirty whatever it was. We weren't the sexiest gal at the bar. So we didn't get the date so We do the group interview we invite them to one of those time slots. We have them confirm it When they come in and and Sean talks about this a lot Going back to the value of this person Our clients are worth a few thousand bucks Our home cleaners are worth up to a hundred thousand bucks or maybe even more if you're charging a lot This is the biggest sale. This is the biggest customer you're gonna have It's your biggest sale So many of us like rush people through an interview And we don't give them the time of day and we kind of treat them like livestock Unless until they're an employee of ours and then we try to love on them later But when they come in for that group interview, it's can I get you some water? If it was me, I've got can I get you a beer, you know But we try to we try to treat them like it's the biggest sale of our lives, right? What can we do for them? How can we make them comfortable? It's our opportunity to impress them We don't bring them to an interview to get them to impress us How many people would you invite to a group interview? We would invite like 20 knowing that only five or 10 are going to show up. Wow So There's you don't want too many that you like have No space for them, right? Is that it's super uncomfortable for about one in one in four show up I'd say between one and two and one and four and it kind of fluctuates in there And I and it might be different Some of that depends on how hard you vet them in advance in our Minneapolis location We don't even vet them in advance. It's just we invite them And that's about the show up rate and we get everything we need from doing the group interview So we don't even show up that's Saying something about you because you're already better than Some you know 75 percent of the people who apply Yeah, and generally it's like we can teach anybody to do the job that we have So so interviewing them doesn't tell us if they're going to be a better cleaner, right? Which is why I said earlier. It's like I've hired terrible You know great people that interviewed terribly and hired terrible people that interviewed greatly The interview doesn't tell us crap about are they going to be a good employee of ours or not It just tells us are they good at interviewing which is not a skill set that my cleaners need So what I do need to know is like can they show up? Well went to wendy's comment. No, we don't tell them. It's a group interview ahead of time They can be surprised Yeah, we want to cut you hold on do you think if you told them you would have less You know less than 25 percent of the people showing up I don't know But we'd have to like ab tested to get some data on it. I don't know Because it would be like well, what are the chances of me getting it if all these other people are going to be showing up Why am I even bothering? Yeah? Yeah? I don't know. Yeah, that's a good question. I never thought about Um But so so we get them in again. It's like it's our biggest sale, right? This is the most important piece of our business This is the the thing that our customer is going to experience is sitting right here and they're going to generate $100,000 a year for us So we treat it like that Like we're we're trying to make it as comfortable for them Food, you know snacks drinks, whatever we want them to to enjoy themselves But when they get there they're going to realize like oh, I'm not the only one Now they could get they could walk out and leave, right? But chances are they're probably going to be like Oh, I better, you know sit up a little straighter or or they're going to think like oh man I wore like these torn ass jeans and this person sitting over here in like a A suit coat or whatever Looking around it's like look look at these other people. There's no way they're going to hire me Yeah, so so like the competitive juices start flowing a little bit and now you like They're going to try to impress you from that rather than impress you with answering your crappy interview questions Which are again aren't going to tell you if they're a better cleaner or not Five people show up. Do you like have them all in the room at the same time or do you talk to them one at a time? How does that work? So so we'll have them all in the room at once and I like to The first move for me is to like make them feel comfortable and then for them to let their guard down And I do that by saying something along the lines of like hey if you're here I already like you right you've done everything you need to do to impress me and Now, you know like any relationship. This is a two-way street And what's actually more important than me being impressed with you is you being impressed with me As far as I'm concerned if you if you want this job and you're gonna be great at and you're gonna love it I'm probably gonna hire you today But that's not important What's way more important than me liking you is that you're gonna love this job If you love this job, there's a really good chance. I'm gonna love you If you are not gonna love this job You and I are gonna be miserable and it's not gonna work So the point of this interview is not for you to impress me It's for me You know, maybe impress you but to make sure you're gonna love it here If you're gonna love it here, there's a really good chance you're gonna show up every day There's a really good chance you're gonna work hard and make a lot of money if you're not gonna love it here Just don't take the job Like nope. Nobody's holding the gun to your head. You don't have to take this job I don't want you to take this job if you're not gonna love it here The next 30 minutes to an hour is is me giving you everything you need to know if you're gonna love it here And then you get to decide if you want this job So I try to let their guard down to almost make them feel like they've already got the job Okay, so that's almost a head fake. They don't but you are just You're you're selling at that point. Is it just like Yeah, it's just it's your biggest sale. It's your biggest sale Um and the fact of the matter is like you probably are gonna hire them if they want the job, right? Like they already Generally, you've scored them and so you only invited them if they scored good Like I said, Minneapolis, we don't even score them because we're just like just bring them in We'll know enough from doing the group interview Um, but they showed up if they were interested enough from your job at again Your job ad has to be good or nobody's gonna show up If your job Discussion or everything is done in this group everything is done in the group setting because we we kind of want to see How they interact like that's what's actually gonna tell us if they're interested in the job Are you asking them questions like you would normally ask on an interview? Nope, we ask them zero questions Um, and I think that's part of the secret sauce We we just watch them you can tell if they're interested and generally again, we can teach anybody to do this job It's not there's no interview question. We can ask them. That's gonna tell us. Are they gonna be good at cleaning What's gonna tell us if they're gonna be good at cleaning is are they interested? Are they sitting forward? Are they are they giving you their attention? Are they Interacting with you what what's Sean have to say application for screening behaviors Interview match your culture and core values. Yeah, baby um So so I think what's really important is we get their guard down To make them feel like they've already got it that way As they're interacting with us They're just being them their true selves and their nonverbals will tell you everything about whether they actually want your job or not That's what you're reading I know a guy that does this and he literally plants somebody in the room To watch everybody else's nonverbals And so there's a plant in there and there's an interviewee as a candidate. Yep. Yep They'll be sitting there acting like an interviewee and they'll be taking notes on what everybody else is doing Because if the if you're asked if you start talking about your core values and somebody's sitting there with their arms crossed leaning back You're not gonna hire them. They don't want to work for you. They're just looking for a paycheck, right? They're not interested in in what you're all about So so does this plant like like have a have a script? Are they supposed to act like they're a good candidate? Are they supposed to act like they're a bad candidate? Did they show up? No, I've never used the plant yet I've never you're pouring up jeans and the you know Make it whatever you want make it whatever you want. I've never used one I just know that this is something one of one of my buddies does Um and and he says he gets good info from it because nobody Knows that they're sitting there like taking notes on the entire room like they got a clipboard. They're taking notes The need has another question you hear about having them read about your company or do you suggest talking to them? I mean, I think like they'll come with their questions, right? And so that's another way you can tell who's actually interested in working for you is Are they gonna interact with you? Are they gonna speak up? So when we go through our And I call it like a sales presentation again, we're we're selling them on working for us We need to make sure they're gonna love it here So the first thing that we do is we start telling stories Stories sell We're not gonna like read bullet points and show a bunch of slides. We're gonna start telling stories The first story we tell is how we got started. Here's our origin story. Here's what we're all about Here's why we're passionate about this And we weave that into our core values Core values are super important because that's why somebody's gonna stay and the whole point of this is to hire people that are gonna stay, right? If they showed up the you you probably listed how much you pay or how you pay in your job ad And if you didn't you're probably missing out But your job ad is this is the sexy thing that you need you need a great job ad to get them to show up Then once they show up you need a great culture to get them to stay and want to work for you And so the story about how you got started why you're passionate about this the story about how your core values came about And why you're passionate about those That's usually where you can kind of tell who's interested and who's not If you start talking about how you got started and somebody clearly has checked out Like you know everything you need they don't give a shit about your business, right? And you don't want to hire somebody that doesn't give a shit about your business we Sean and I actually like revamped our core values when we were at blue skies And so every core value like had a story I mean there was an there was an event that happened that made it so that that became a core value Tony like our we had our plow was our acronym for plow horses and uh Our core values were positive attitude loyalty ownership and accountability and we serve The positive attitude was because we had to fire Tony. He was just a piece of shit He was a great technician. He could clean windows like the dickens. He showed up early every day It was it was like hard to fire him And then we just realized he was an asshole He had the worst attitude by the end of the day everything was negative negative negative So we said like we need a reason to fire people like that Positive attitude and we literally would tell this like literally the the event that caused me to fire him Was he broke? He broke a freaking screen over his leg at a customer's house. He was having trouble with her screens He took the screen out of the window broken over his leg through it in the woods And that customer was a maid service client of ours was a window cleaning client was a holiday light client And she thank god she had my cell number. She called me. She's like damn Can you tell your technician to leave like and couldn't send somebody else out here? I was like, oh my god It's so embarrassing, but clearly we needed to fire this guy and I never reason to do it So I tell that story And when you tell a story People want to tell a story back to you or they're like nodding their head because they're like, oh my god Like I worked with this guy that was a total piece of shit And he was negative about everything right and so so when you're telling the stories You're looking for the person that's nodding their head for the person that wants to tell you a story back That's the person that's that's like soaking up what you're feeding them, right? That's the person that wants to bleed your blood and do the thing with you because they believe in what you're saying So when you're telling these stories People that are interested in what you have to sell Want to tell you a story back and that's what you're looking for. Are they sitting forward? Are they nodding their head? Are they trying to communicate with you or say like, oh my god, I worked with a guy like that Because they're gonna now I'm not saying you're this is going to be bulletproof And you're never going to hire somebody that sucks and you're never going to miss out on somebody that would be good but You're you're finding out the people that believe what you believe And those are the most likely people to love working for you And are going to stick around the longest because they love working for you and that's what you're trying to find Right, you don't you can train anybody to clean a house Anybody so you're just trying to find the people that are going to stick around the longest And if they love working for you, they're going to clean houses better. It's just as simple as that so We go through the core values then we start getting into more of the nuts and bolts of stuff Here's what a shitty day looks like Right, you had three houses on your schedule The first one you showed up at and then the kids were sick and so they sent you home And like and then you drove out of your way and here's how we deal with some of that stuff And then the next house was super dirty and that one took you even longer And they wouldn't let you come and fill 10 o'clock so you had to waste some time and go get a cup of coffee And we're not paying you unless you're cleaning. So now you're like wasting time there and then the last house The you know, whatever the case is we thought we could get you some help But we can't because somebody else's day got extra long and now you're out clean until six o'clock It's gonna happen shitty day The next day you clean four houses and you're done by two o'clock and you made a shitload of money So you had a great day the next day might be another crappy one Can you live with that shitty day like I guarantee you it's gonna happen It might even happen in your first week here might happen on your first day here We don't get to choose where our customers live. We try to route them as efficiently as possible We don't get to choose what time of day they want us We try to route them as efficiently as possible But you're gonna have a crappy day and then you're gonna have a good day And can you handle the ups and downs of that or do you need an eight to five schedule? Because we go to people's homes and we don't know exactly what we're gonna get when we get there And if you need an eight to five schedule, you're not gonna love this job So don't take this job. I don't want you to take this job because you're gonna hate it So if you're flexible and you can roll with the punches, you might love this job stick around like here. What else I have to say Um, so so I want to like paint the negative, right? We can't hire them if they're not okay with that and then we want to get to the positive, right? Our clients freaking love us. We change their lives You know, you might get a $200 Christmas tip just because like you are their person, right? And so you get to build relationships with your clients You you get paid for doing harder work and the more work you do the more you get paid on like an hourly job Where maybe you just get paid to sit to sit around and do nothing So now we like open up our crm. We might pop open maid central show them what a day in the life looks like Here's what she cleaned yesterday. Here's what he was out doing yesterday Here's how our pay structure works and how you make more money and you get to decide, right? If assume you're paying commission if you're not you should think about it um We get to like show them how the inner workings of the company work and we can just throw it right up on the screen We're we're presenting right? As we so we go through the good the bad the ugly how they get paid kind of a day in the life We get into if you're gonna stick around and get hired. Here's what training looks like Here's how we get you through that And then we open it up for questions, right? And again the people that are interested in what you're selling are gonna interact they're gonna ask more questions They're gonna be way more engaged So at this point at this point you're watching body language and you're watching You know you're listening for what questions are being asked and All of that is is it's how the competition works and if you're looking to hire You know one person out of those five whoever asked the best questions and you know Came across with the best body language. They win I mean Some answers questions about introverts, right introverts probably aren't gonna ask you a lot of questions back They're gonna they're gonna try to ask them in private. That's cool. They're body language I mean if somebody's doing this, I don't care if they're introverted and extroverted. They're not interested in what you're selling right introverts don't Don't have a resting bitch face Introverts just maybe are less vocal, but they would they would still be sitting forward interested in what you're saying So you're reading the nonverbals you're an extrovert. That's They're sitting there on their phone, you know watching tiktok videos. Yeah. Yeah and even an extrovert That's disinterested isn't gonna ask questions an extrovert that's interested is just gonna dominate the questions, right? Now you might based on them being extroverts You might decide not to hire them if you're like wow this We've all had this employee that you're like Yeah, they're a great cleaner, but they might start talking politics and religion to that customer The minute they walk into the house, right? We had a we had a sales guy like that in our window cleaning business He's so good at sales But we literally had to subcontract him We're like Dave you can't you can't be an employee of this business anymore. You can go sell high-rise But like he eroded employee relationships and and some customers loved him But some customers hated him because he had no filter He just and so like an extrovert like him Like he's so good at what he does, but but he might not be the right home cleaner Um, he was great commercial sales for us, but wasn't a good window cleaner for us for for various reasons so You know you might get that from an extrovert that speaks up That's a thing that you're looking for right if if you can't send him into somebody's house without having to worry about the Shit they're gonna say to the customer But and by all means like the first time you do this It's it you're not gonna have it all figured out right like the more you do these group interviews You're gonna know what to look for that's a match for you right you're reading their non-verbals you're reading how they're interacting and what we found And again, it's not as much about you picking them I want to like keep getting back to that is we think we're the ones that need to pick them We need them to pick us That's why there's so many no shows. That's why we have a hard time retaining people is we're not the sexiest one there's always A segment of the market out there though that you know, I just need a paycheck wins wins pay day and You know, they're thinking maybe maybe they're only planning for for working three days. I don't know but it's like I will this will be the Sixth job I've had in the last, you know, a month and a half But I just need some money and if you hire me I will be there But I'm not going to be here very long. You know, you know the type I'm talking about they will they will pick you But they are far from committed. They're just Looking for a check. Yep. And and generally that person will look disinterested during the interview, right? Like they're like, oh my god, this guy's spewing core values at me like I just want a damn paycheck, right? Like you'll you'll read their face Um, and and again, you're gonna get it wrong But you're gonna get it wrong less than you would if you're just interviewing them and asking them questions about the same questions You asked the last person that came in um, the the The thing that we found that was really interesting to me is When I would do one-on-one interviews Like yeah, I could hire enough people they wasted a bunch of my time Waiting for people that didn't show up be I tried to hire everybody that showed up because I'm the eternal optimist and there are a few people that didn't offer jobs too But I have like a hard time not hiring somebody in a one-on-one interview. Like I just I see the best in everybody um But but what would eventually happen is I would offer a job to somebody that was great And I knew they were great And I got the confirmation that they would have been great because they were the person that when they turned me down they had enough Decency to actually reach out and say hey dan. I got another job offer and I think I'm gonna take that Right most people that suck just aren't gonna get back to you The ones that you know are really good get back to you and tell you they're not gonna take your job And that was the revelation to us. It's like we're missing out on the best people It's not that yeah, like we're hiring some duds because they fool us in an interview What's worse is that we're not getting a players. They're choosing something else We're we don't have the sexiest proposition here. That's the problem And so that's where I said it's like you need them to choose you It can't be you interviewing them and you expecting them to impress you They have any job they want out there. So how does that work like towards how how long does this whole process take? I mean it depends on the interaction from them, right? So it might take a half hour. It might take 45 minutes It might take an hour if you got a bunch of people that showed up and they're asking a bunch of questions So at the end of the half hour hour, whatever it is Do you just ask people to raise their hand? Who who wants a job or how do you know? Especially with the introverts that would make them so uncomfortable, right? As they like don't want to have that that pick and choose so we basically say That's it. Um, you know grab a grab a water on your way out the door grab another snack Um, I don't it's you know, I'm not gonna be like you suck. You're cool Like I'm not gonna do that right here and right now And I don't expect you, you know, you can come up to me if you've got a question That's more private come up to me afterwards ask me the question or you've got my number Go out to your car. Shoot me a text Let let us know if you're interested in the job or not If it's if you're gonna love it like only text to me if you're gonna love it here if if if One out of these 10 things you're not gonna love. Don't buy the text to me I only want you if you're gonna love it here. That's the only way it's gonna work So only text me if you're gonna love it here get out to your car Let me know and if we think it's a good fit. We'll start working on a start date And and so you kind of take the pressure off nobody needs to like raise their hand right then but you give them an opportunity to ask private questions You give them an opportunity to like opt in once they get out to their car and You've got your notes, right of who was good and who you want and who you don't want And then you just start working on a on a higher date The the thing that was interesting to me is again when I did one-on-one interviews We didn't get all the people we wanted We lost people that we thought would be really good. They didn't end up working for us When we do it this way a we have a really sexy job ad to try to make sure people show up but b This interview to them Is way more appealing than if they come on to an uncomfortable one-on-one situation Like when they leave this interview, they're like, holy shit They didn't ask me a single question They wind and dine me the whole time and they told me all the reasons that i'm going to love it here And they told me not to pick this job if i'm not going to love it here like they actually care About if i'm going to like working here versus am I going to make them more money? Right because that's the employee's worst nightmare is that they're going to work for somebody who who only wants them to Go make them money Right, so when you can frame it in a way that I want to make sure you're going to love it here And and you're the one interviewing this way and your competitors are and all the other job offers that they got We're not done this way. You're the memorable one. You're the sexiest gal at the bar. You're getting the date And that's what we found is when there was somebody that we wanted in that room We got them almost every time versus when we did one-on-one interviews We didn't get all the people we wanted and I think that was the biggest like aha to us is like, holy shit Like if there's a if there's a person sitting in that room that we want We're going to get them almost every damn time Yeah And you know the whole idea of like planting somebody in there If they you plant somebody that's a really strong candidate and if they act like it They're really like interested in the job You might be able to create some fomo with the other people and it's like well This person here is awesome. And if they think this is a great job You know, I trust their judgment more than my own. This does sound like a great job I want this job too. Yeah Yeah Sounds a lot more fun than You know your typical interview which oftentimes feels like an interrogation And I mean like I said my experience with interviewing and I I think I'm just a shitty interviewer, but I can't really tell when people are feeding me a bunch of shit versus if they're really sincere And I've had it both ways and been like, I don't know um Oh, so uh the the zoom interview um My worry would be that you don't get the full nonverbals Because it's hard. It's hard for people when it's not face to face To keep their attention span, right? I mean like I've been on a zoom call for an hour before You guys have been watching this for up, you know 50 minutes and you've probably checked out and done other stuff while you while you were listening to us talk So it's hard to read their nonverbals. It's hard to like see how they interact I'm not saying don't try it. You might do it and it might be super efficient for you and work really well For me, I mean, I am extroverted. So I like that personal interaction. So so it would it would be easier for me to do it in person um I'm not saying it's got a very important question here then Do you see shit in interviews? I I don't have a filter tom and I wouldn't want I wouldn't want to hire people that expected me to had a filter because then they'd be Severely disappointed later. So I don't you think shah knew the answer to that question before answering it or before asking I think he did. I think he did But I think I mean that's where like you you need um The a guy gave me this feedback when I first started doing my radio show on my podcast Because I was trying to like find my voice and figure out what what's my What's my shtick, right? Right and and to what she just said like I try I'm I'm engaging like I want to be in your face I want to be loud and obnoxious and funny And his advice was be yourself with the microphone turned all the way up um, you're definitely gonna Like totally push away some people who are like no not my jam And that's fine, especially if you're hiring them because you need to be their jam You are the jam and they are the peanut butter and that needs to happen and if it doesn't happen It's gonna suck. So it's fine if you're Fully on yourself and you're attracting people that like that because they're gonna stick around and you need people to stick around Because you need them to go out and do an awesome job for you So shawna you doing a demo at six o'clock at night. Geez. I love it. You gotta love it. Go get them Guys working his butt off out there Yeah, um So anyway, bookkeeping numbers, huh? Yeah, we're uh, we're approaching the top of the hour here So in a few minutes that we have left. Let's uh, at least do a quick flyby on that Tell us about the bookkeeping side of the business Man, so I I mean i'm a broken record about finance stuff But even even this recruiting stuff It's all still a math problem, right? And I talked about it earlier about how the number one thing I see with recruiting is people don't invest enough in it And from a financial perspective, it's the biggest sale we make It's like the number especially in maid service. Our business is literally only as good as our worst cleaner That's that's what we're sending out there every day. So when we look at our financials There's two different things that happen The first thing that happens is your true expenses We call it cost of good sold you go out and clean something and cost you x pretty much your labor Maybe you add supplies in there because you usually need some supplies to clean something Everything else on in your financials is an investment Your recruiting is an investment. It has to generate a return your admin person that answers the phone is an investment They have to generate a return your marketing is an investment your rent. That's an investment The the cost to go clean the thing we try to keep that lock tight And that's why I said earlier like I'm a big proponent of commission-based pay It locks in your cost of good sold it makes it so that you know every time you go out and clean You make x amount of money Super super important because it's hard to make a bunch of investments to grow your business If you don't how much if you don't know how much money you're gonna make When you go out to clean we're we're big fans of that as well Really big fans, you know, you're you're creating incentive for people to be productive and Out of all of the things that you need to manage worrying about your cost of good sold is one of them If you're paying commission, you know what your cost to get sold is and and and then it helps you focus on culture right if you're not worried about the The financial productivity of the person because you're well aligned right you win when they win they win when you win when you pay commission Then your focus isn't on the money I mean, it's you're still focused on the investments, right? You're still focused on their productivity But you know they are too because they make more when they're more productive But then you get to focus on culture And especially in maid service. We are an army of people That is our business model. We're a friggin army of people And so the better your culture is the better your businesses So like You've got several things that you're doing here. You're helping with the recruiting. You're helping with bookkeeping and 90 seconds give us a thumbnail of the services you offer and If anybody in our audience could use help in those areas, you know, how they can contact you So there's three things that i'm involved with that can be helpful to a home service company I'm a bookkeeping nerd So if you need help getting your quickbooks dialed in so that you can make these decisions That's like can I can I add something to that if I may dan and if i'm off based on the straighten me out We all have somebody doing our taxes off, you know, I hope it's a cpa and that is not business accounting They're basically wanting to make sure that you're giving the irs what you owe them You're doing something that looks like business accounting You're hoping companies actually be more profitable rather than paying their taxes. Am I right on that? Exactly and and bookkeeping still is like helpful to pay your taxes But that's not the point of doing bookkeeping the point of doing bookkeeping is so that you know your cost of good Solder's dialed in so that you know if your marketing is working or not So if you know if your recruiting is working or not, it's a financial There's a lot of us out there running home service businesses though that all we have are numbers that are cpa's giving us And we think that we have what we need and really what we have is what we need to pay the irs That would be like playing a football game and not knowing the score of the game until the game's over You do business accounting from You know bookkeeping from a business accounting standpoint. You help companies be more profitable nailed it. You nailed it tom So what are the other what are the other legs on this? This business stool that you're offering So um, these are separate entities by the way, we we carved them up separately So they're they're they're their own little animals the the second thing and obviously what we talked a whole bunch about today Was the recruiting side of it higher lead chill is designed to help you get and keep more employees And there's a re there's a reason why it's higher lead and then chill and it's not just higher Right because you can hire all you want, but if you can't keep them because your culture sucks or your leadership sucks That's not that's not going to go well for you or for them Which is why I talked a lot about the group interview You got to find a way to be the sexiest business owner out there So they want to come work for you and you got to keep them, right? You have to build a great culture to keep them so you can you know grow a cool business Um, so higher lead chill is all about that helping you find great people and helping you keep great people And then the third business is click call sell. That's with michael gregery He's he's the marketing partner in higher lead chill. And so it's websites. It's google ads Uh starting to do some facebook ad management stuff And so that's the other side of that vehicle, right? If you're if you're putting all your money into recruiting, but you're not getting more customers You're gonna have a shitty business if you're putting all your money into marketing, but you're not getting more employees You're gonna have a problem as well. So I think click call sell and higher lead chill There's a reason why their names sound really similar. They have the same cadence They can drive that car forward for you and make sure that uh, you grow a sweet business Okay, so the contact, uh, we dropped that in chat earlier It is your calendly link at the moment. Is that right, Dan? Yep, that's the easiest way to get a hold of me is to there's like a 15 minute grab time with me whenever you want it Okay, so we just dropped that in chat again. So if you want to talk to dan schedule some time in calendly and you know when you uh get your website up and and and Want to come back and share a little bit more about what you're doing I like it because it's kind of like one-stop shopping for you know home service businesses and It's it's a heck of an idea I love it. It's it's the fun stuff. It's the fun stuff You know like bookkeeping doesn't get any more fun than that. Oh, it's uh life's a party. Hey, Dan Thanks for joining us today. It's uh, it's been too long. We're gonna have to uh do this again We can't I mean we did have it on the schedule a couple times and like I think I had like two different conflicts and Sarah kept being like Come on, Dan. Come on, Dan. So I'm glad I was able to to appease her once and For all and actually stick to a time that I committed to so it's cool to see sam on here Your checkout was I think she's out in phoenix, uh This week. That's my understanding Sam's uh in phoenix as well Christie, thanks. Thanks everybody for joining us. Dan. Thanks for your help, ma'am. You're awesome. Good luck in the new venture. Okay Heck yeah, I appreciate it. Thanks everybody hit me up. See you. See you soon. Bye. Bye