 Hey, good afternoon everybody. Tom Stewart here. I'm with Liz Trotter and our guest today is Mike Callahan. This is smart business moves Whoa, Mike. Hey guys. How you doing? Long time no talk. I Feel like it's it's been a long time since you were on here. Yeah Can't imagine I'd actually say I miss public speaking, but it's been a long time with COVID and everything So I know that's where we first met and yeah, definitely glad to have be back on here for sure Yeah, yeah, it has it's been a it's been a haul. You know, this is September. We're in a whole new month here First yes But but you know what? We this is now a year and a half that we've been doing this isn't it 18 months now and We're only doing it twice a week now. We used to do it every day Remember that Tom Every dog on day. Yes All right Look at Denise laughing at the time because we were an hour early and she wasn't prepared on Monday. We went early Yeah, I think you guys had everybody confused yesterday. It was a little off or two days ago. So yeah, I'm on it We announced it, but apparently not well enough No, it was it was a good one too. So Riley very impressive there very very impressive Isn't he can you believe he's 19 years old? I've met him a couple times in person just a complete stud like what you see is what you get Yeah, I love him so much. I'm so glad I found him He's a great guy. He's a great guy. His dad's great. I mean, it's just a Amazing little family. I can't wait to see what the the younger brother slash son does. Yeah gauge Yeah, he's a he's a really good kid to have met him once or twice. So yeah, just a great great job Jonathan Tiffany I've done with the kids for sure. Yeah, awesome Well, that's not surprising, you know, you see these business owners that are doing a great job It's not surprising that they're good parents as well So what are we talking about today well first catch us up Tom tell us about tell us about Delta It's it's out there and I don't know I hear a lot of people are concerned about it hospitals are crowded Yeah, I don't know from one week to the next where that's gonna go. What did what have you heard? I'd say it's a tough one. It's I've been trying to honestly avoid the news But a lot of conferences speaking engagements are being canceled or even going virtual it's a tough time, but I think this kind of Kind of gets into our talk a little bit today around employees employee retention because unfortunately or fortunately in the service industry right now We are on the front line. We are going in and out of these homes. We're servicing the outside of these homes So it's something that's business owners. I think we need to be aware of and how do we handle that? I had a really interesting conversation with young lady that does the recruitment and onboarding for Amazon they're putting up a couple of ones in upstate New York and their The flexibility to around COVID is really really interesting Obviously, they're huge companies, but you can actually call in and there's nothing against you Like literally if you don't feel comfortable coming to work if there's an outbreak or something It's a free-paid pass basically So there's a lot of a lot of shifts going on in these companies around this and in how do we make it safe and comfortable for our Employees is still want to come to work Yeah, and that's a lot of implications, you know down the road because I don't know if it's ever gonna go back to the way Way it used to be I don't think it will and things like, you know Perfect attendance in schools. I've been reading is is really being questioned as as Being looked at as a bad idea that they're looking at making that go away Certainly for for COVID reasons, but even after that It's like is it really cool for somebody to have perfect attendance because certainly they went to school a few days with You know feeling bad and spreading germs and and and so forth same with workplace I know a lot of companies. I know I know I know at Castle Keepers. We kind of have We don't have I mean we track attendance But you know, there's no penalty for for being out of compliance if you're out because you're sick Especially, you know, if you've got COVID you just Can't you can't take that risk? You've really had to modify stuff because of that too with well, how do you really want to deal with it if You're saying anything about people being sick and turns out they have COVID Yeah, you definitely don't want to see a penalty going there Yeah, that's an interesting one Tommy just put on the on the screen there. We're seeing more and more of that Yeah So, I mean this is the residential cleaning obviously going to people's homes I know Mike you don't work a lot when you work with cleaning companies you work with with landscape I guess landscaping doesn't have to deal with this particular issue Not necessarily I would say it's almost a 50-50 split between cleaning and lawn care companies now As we've kind of grown in the cleaning industry But yeah, the lawn care industry isn't seeing it as bad But part of the issues is the employees So most cleaning companies traditionally I run in solo cleaners now after COVID unless you have two solos meaning it's like a deep clean You're at the top to bottom Where your lawn care companies now you've got three to four Gentlemen ladies that sit in the same vehicle. So that is been that's kind of the the converse of it that Tradition most cleaning companies unless you do a commercial It's usually only one individual in a car or two, but you've got four or five guys or girls packed into a tight space Especially in the spring and the fall with the windows closed traditionally. So they're having their own transportation issues there You know, we should real quick time before we go any further Have Mike at least give a quick intro Because some people might not know who he is. They haven't had him on in a long time Yeah, no problem. Take a couple minutes and tell us about yourself. Yeah, so started out literally freshman year in high school Started running a lawn care and snow removal business just to pay for the car insurance After five years in college through business degree. I had three almost four full-time crews In the upstate New York area and then kind of hit that That fork in the road. Where do we go entrepreneur? Do we go the corporate route with with all my buddies and at that point? I was making significantly more money than I would have with the corporate routes So obviously that's kind of the route I went with the entrepreneur route But the biggest thing that that I found at least in college is no one really taught you how to how to run a business In the idea of what they taught was really you being the single point of values this business was built around you You were doing the estimate you were doing the billing and in no one and even even the gentleman teaching a lot of the classes Was literally running a broken business now looking back at it and then all my people I looked up to in the local area We're literally working seven days a week. They're never at their kids hockey games or soccer games But that was that was how you read a business. So I didn't know any better and then eventually that business ran to a divorce Got married the first time no kids. Thank God, but Wife came home and just said let's literally I'm leaving you this business runs your life So obviously hitting rock bottom at that point was either figure out how to fix it or get rid of it I thought well, it can't get any worse Let's try to fix it and literally went on the internet and tried to figure out like how do you get your life back from Business I found marketing automations the platform we were working on at that point One night I bought keep with no technology background and we just literally No intentions doing anything we're doing right now To help other people but I literally was my journey to go in from a hundred hours a week Literally seven days a week to three to five hours to an absentee owner 30 days of pop when we went out and systematically hired the best consultant to be a Different types of automations like integrated text messages or drip campaigns or whatever it was We went out and just found the experts and you know, it was a five to six year process but eventually that business ran itself and now Right near the end of that we started a company called simple growth where we help cleaning businesses automate their sales process their employee recruiting training onboarding and repetitive tasks and Right near the end of that about two and a half years ago. The lawn care business actually got acquired So I exited that business and now we're working full-time with simple growth. So Probably I'd say between somewhere between 650 and 700 Service business and about 50% of our cleaning businesses right now that we're helping Wow, so this is your simple growth website. We'll talk about this more a little bit later But if anybody wants to check it out, I'll go ahead and drop the URL and chat. That's good So who who is looking to hire your company Mike? Why would they they they need? Automation is that what I heard? Yes, I there was really two separate things we do The main thing is automations and then to be honest a few people in the early days came in and we went to go in and automate their Software so we automate multiple platforms Software platforms so basically some people are coming to us and their their systems in their software We're so break broken and a mass that we're like ethically we would love to take your money and automate this But we can't have this thing is like we're gonna 10 acts a massive problem This thing is going to come tumbling down because traditionally, you know a company will come to us making half a million to three quarters a million Traditionally and within a year or two will blast them past that million dollar mark because we we overcome those growth hurdles through Processing systems that are automated, but as we'll probably talk about at some point There's three major bottlenecks to growth and obviously employees is one of the big ones But it's cash flow and knowing your numbers and having the systems together So if you don't have a production rate based estimating system around number bedrooms bathroom square footage Pets dirt code whatever that looks like however, you're putting that together or in a way to compensate your employees Whether it's based on budgeted hours or just hourly or percentage of both It's really tough to scale that business So we originally started with the automations list, but now we also help implement those systems in a software system So that's traditionally we do but but people will come to us literally Similar to my story and they're like I know there's got to be a better way I'm not seeing my my significant other my kids don't know who I am One of the biggest ones is a gentleman came to us and said hey Mike. I just want to thank you I went to my kids football game last night So that's great, you know Dave and he was no I don't think you understand it's a senior year in high school and I've never been to his football game But the process and the automations Actually allowed me to be comfortable enough to leave my business and actually enjoy that time So that's when I realized, you know, I think we had something it yes We're making money but on a higher level like we literally my mission is to help business owners like myself take your life back from the business So if they're suffering like I was or they're about to hit those issues we can help them on that. That's that's traditionally where People come to us, it's not a hard sell we have a solution for their pain point if it's not a good fit We point them in the right direction So you're automating businesses you're helping them be more successful more profitable But you're also creating a better lifestyle for the people who run those businesses Maybe saving some relationships, right? Oh, I mean for sure I mean, and that's just one of many that we've gotten some candid feedback So that's at the end of the day. Yes, we want to make money We want to make sure everybody's taken care of the team But we really at this level it's more about just helping other service business owners because no one told me in the early days That that's you know, that's the wrong way of doing it And it's I think today's mentality of you got to go out and grind you got to hustle like yeah That's great in the first couple years or few months like you've got to put the work in just similar You guys doing the Facebook live every day you got to do it to get going but that's not that's not scalable You can't continue that forever It's just like a badge of honor had a talk with Mike McCallow. It's a prophet first and he talks about his book clockwork When he's talking to his buddy was like, yeah, I only slept two hours last night. Oh, that's nothing I only slept one hour last night and then and you kind of look back at that We've all done that and you're like, this is insanity like this thing is built on my back Like we can't do this. We need built. We need to build a team and actually leverage them So I think that's kind of what we're gonna get into later today. But yeah, I mean, that's that's kind of what it's about And you know, we're gonna jump in we're gonna talk about a you know employee retention here in just a minute But one thing you touched upon earlier that I think is important that I just want to swing back to as you guys do the automations the technical computer part if you will the technology part and That's necessary but not sufficient in a lot of cases You have to at the same time do process changes and get the numbers right and there's things inside of your business that you need to do in addition or in concert with the technology to get the outcomes that can Increase, you know lifestyle make be more profitable and save relationships. Is that what I heard? Yeah, absolutely. I mean that spot-on for sure But you know before you scallop business you got to just make sure it's foundationally set financially and your systems are set I mean, that's that's the scary thing like most business owners and we've worked with companies up to 19 or 20 million in the cleaning industry It's amazing that the scallop of business a million or two million dollars Like how do you throw it against the wall consistently and how it still work? I mean, it's just it's Russian roulette with your financial future, but once you get that dialed in Very similar like the dashboards are made central. You can see exactly where you're making money. You're losing money That clarity at least for me is what you need to start to get and then you can then you can automate that thing and grow it and scale Yeah, I really appreciate Mike that something that you said a little bit earlier was Yeah, we want to you know follow our passion and build this thing and this is what we care about But bottom line is we do need to make money. We do need to be profitable I think a lot of times people think it's an if this or that right this or that this or that no You can have both of those things and you really need to it's not okay to be building a business that you're all passionate about if You're going bankrupt and you're destroying your relationships and in your life so yeah I mean, I'm happy to be vulnerable because trust me if there's a mistake to be made I've either gotten lucky enough to get it or you know figured out how it made that mistake and fixed it But I mean literally on the back end of that divorce I had always been like Methodical every day running the numbers at least once a week if the law the longest period But I had a really good idea where the business was and a lot of business owners and I did made this mistake After the divorce I was in a low spot I started running the business by the bank account balance and I knew at the scale of business at that point if I had around $100,000 plus in the bank like we were good. That was the normal liquid cash flow of the business for operating Problem was Tammy and Christine in the office had been with me for eight or nine years They were really good at getting receivables. So and we started processing credit cards as well So the money was coming in Before the bill so I it literally we had up around $100,000 in the bank It wasn't till November December in that season where I had realized before we switched to the next seasonality of snow removal That we were upset on $70,000 and it was too late to fix it We had a really good winter and we hustled and we grind and we cut some some of those fixed costs that we could And we got through it But that's that was I mean it's a lesson to be heard because I mean I've always run those financials We always still do now on a daily basis But if you're running your business by that bank account balance, it's a scary scary place to be The first time I never done it it bit me So You know that that's just it can happen to anybody and that's that's where I think we're very passionate when we go to help build out These pricing are basically not in price of the production rate based estimating systems in the software Does it actually make sense when you start running those numbers? Are you actually profitable if you're losing $40 for every time you go to clean this house on a reoccurring basis? You might as well drop 220s off the door and go to the next because that's what's happening So we raise the price that emotionally or that's it. I mean that's that's where it's at All right Well, I am writing down the date that we are having this because I'm I'm gonna go back And I'm gonna get this video off of Facebook live and I'm posting it in all my groups Do you know how many people I have to fight with about this idea that you have to be watching your numbers all the time y'all like Like when you first start you have to do it daily because you don't even know what they are You don't even understand them. You've got to get into a rhythm and at least you got to be looking at them weekly. So Thank you And you know a lot of times if you take your eye off of them long enough You can find yourself in a situation where you can't pay the bills, you know, solvencies in question Yep, but send me upside down Even if it doesn't get that bad if you take your numbers off of them for a little bit Then you go back and you look at it and you go, oh my god, I think of all the money I just lost all the money I could have made that I didn't Yeah, I mean and that's really the whole point of this There's a lot of folks in this industry who judge success by how many employees they have or have any homes They clean and you know, all that's nice But at the end of the day, we're doing this to be profitable You know to create opportunities for the people at work for us provide good service build value And if we're not being profitable, we can't do any of that so Yeah, it's hard to make that benchmark too Tom because you see this whole big fleet of shiny new cars that are cleaning all these houses It's crazy office. They're posting these pictures on facebook and instagram I will tell you when you get behind this underneath the levels of some of these companies that what you think you see it And you're comparing yourself against is not actuality. So I think honestly forget your competition. Do you know your numbers and You know, just make it consistent and you're you want to make money You've got it and especially with the labor market right now those that cost of labor which is going most service business It's going to be at least 60 percent of your your overhead. You've got to get that right um And and being transparent with those employees about the wins and losses financially more of an open book management To an extent at least with your office staff Um, maybe not your field staff as much But I mean, I think that's also important because like it's simple growth Pretty much to the penny every month. My team knows where we're winning where we're losing and and what's going on um, but that that That builds a culture that you can't buy And you know, there's really no excuses now for for not knowing your numbers I mean if you roll the clock back, you know Liz if we roll the clock back 20 years, it was a whole lot harder to Oh my god, so much harder But you know the technology has gotten so much better and it's available to to everybody now It used to be that you had to be like a publicly traded company to have the type of technology where you could You know generate the points, but we all have access to the tools to do this um And that's part of it the other part is you know making a commitment to Do the things in your business to actually, you know, generate those numbers and then, you know Use them to make smart business moves but um That's a big part of what mike's business is about. I guess that's kind of at the core of what your business is about Isn't it mine? Yeah, for sure. I mean that's you know that I mean it really that's it Um, and it doesn't matter and it's weird going from the service industry. Um, you know just recently icing it and we've just hired uh Uh, we've got dylan on our team. We've got chat on our team We've got virginia just joined our team all of them are seven figure business owners They've been there the the wounds are still fresh and it's amazing because I mean what caused them to be successful And actually be able to sell their business and exit had been the same common denominators And that's and it doesn't matter if it's cleaning commercial or residential another service industry like lawn care It's all the foundational parts are all at all the same They really are Yeah, I'll just make it a good point too I had I had I got stuck reading there. I had a question For mike. Oh, well, I'm sure I'm sure it'll come back to me. No, it's okay in a minute here Well, it's okay for you, but I wanted my answer Like I said early long as I'm not following you following after you on stage in a live event With those crazy speaking skills. We are good. It's easy. Oh, please. Please. Please Uh, gosh, what was it? I wanted to ask Okay, what were you talking about right before that popped up? It was past the Oh So tom, I know what it was. So tom you talk a lot about You know people think of profit as a dirty word and now going back to this idea of employee retention you're seeing a lot this this new idea that That We're not paying our employees enough period no matter what we're paying them Just I don't know a couple days ago. I saw in one of the facebook groups somebody was saying That I can't get anybody to they can't hire anybody and they pay 1750 an hour I think is a decent wage in in my state where I live. That's above the living wage and people were just slamming this lady because hey if you're not going to pay a decent wage How can you expect anyone to come work for you? She was like, hey my profit margin is only like 14% and they're like, that's ridiculous You expect to get 14% profit and you're only paying 1750. That's ridiculous I'm like, this is like this new wave. I don't How how are you the rules the rules have changed and I think like just dropping off my little one rory who just turned five to kindergarten orientation today We moved out of the main part of the city of it might be a smaller lakefront area But I mean literally the two main intersections I went through to go to school There are signs pull astrid on all four corners 5,000 6,000 $7,000 sign-on bonuses all these wages text email QR code whatever that is But the thing that really struck me is I got off the intersection and I'm going by it was a manufacturing plant In the so the main entrance there's a main entrance, but the employee parking lot There's got to be I'd say a couple hundred cars in this parking lot They've got recruitment signs like how does your how does your employee actually talking around attention? How was that employee feel driving by that sign and this one's a $5,000 sign-on bonus? um for all positions Like at some point you've got to be mentally defeated like well Why wouldn't I just leave this company go to another one that's doing it pick up a quick five grand for doing? Absolutely nothing so Hey, you know what? I'm thinking about quitting and taking the $5,000 bonus down the street But if you guys get your checkbook out, maybe I'll stay I wonder if that happened You know those conversations are happening. I mean we we had those conversations Um in our company like I mean, you know, we'd have people say hey if I I'm looking for this I got the software down the streets and If you don't match it, I'm out of here. But those are decisions as well. Like is that a good move? Do you? Do you allow that employee to be in control of that relationship? Or are they on the right seat on the right bus and we can move them up and actually have them in a position that actually Warns that and we've done it several times in the service business We had to to good effect and bad effect But one of the gem and it really rings out is okay we we basically had our tax and then we had like a lead tech we called that ran the crew and um You know, we'll call the we'll call bill but like bill bill was really good. He was a really good technician Bill was not a good lead tech. He was not he he was managing He couldn't train. He wasn't and we tried to train him to train It wasn't a skill set and quality control outside of his what he was doing was not a skill set So we ended up having to sit down and have a really tough conversation Like this is not for you like either we need to bring you down here Or you know your best fit maybe down the street with that competitor I think that's the other scary thing right now in this market. Everybody is desperate I mean there's facebook ads in the college towns around us. We'll hire you on the spot Well, I think the most and maybe we'll talk some numbers around hiring the bad the bad hire But that can be even worse than not having any employees because those are really good employees right now What you're doing is just killing them around and you're actually Basically forcing them to go look for another job eventually So that that's the scary part. You got to get it right up front before you actually create the retention Not only does the bad hire leave but they have the potential of driving some of your good hires away too Yep We just talked about that on monday, too Talk talked to us a little bit more about that mic. You're talking about have to get it right up front What do you what do you mean about about that? Yeah, so I mean I guess um, let me just see here. I've got something on my other screen I might have to be able can I pull this up real quick? Sure, go ahead and just set the screen share button down at the bottom This is the first one on this one here. So we'll see how this goes Thought I had just about seen every uh screen share there is there we go So I just grabbed a couple slides here if you can see it there you go so kind of just To do some justice to this picture what this is it's really um, we've got uh, this was several years ago in the Launcher comes so this is actually what about 35 40 thousand dollars of direct mailing looks like in about 20 to 25 days um But the the main thing that scared me before we did this is We needed to know how to actually take in all that work and actually have a team to do it because Worst thing we could do is go out and double or triple in size And literally get destroyed on google and facebook and yell and not be able to justify that so as we were looking at it here The main things that I was looking at is basically the bottlenecks to fast growth And I think right now and I'm curious your guys thoughts on this is If you figure out the staffing right now This is the best time to go out and grow your business because right now a lot of service businesses are Retracting they're not growing. Um, and we're talking to a lot of them I mean probably several several hundred cusp like cleaning business a month We're talking to right now and the majority of our retracting But man if we could figure out these bottlenecks, this is a time to go out and actually dominate your local market And why why do you think they're retracting mine? Just that it's labor they can't find the clean text to do it. They they want to grow Um, they want to go out, but they can't figure it out But foundationally what we figured out at least in my business and the business we work with is Really going out and growing fast without the right people is the biggest issue And this was before the cove and labor issues, but now it's just been compounded and we talked about it early We need to know our numbers and we need cash flow Um, so if we've got the numbers and the cash flow thing, right, we're ready to scale We just got to figure out this the people problem Um, and we talked about the cost of a bad hire So I ran some action numbers from my company of how how this negatively affected us Um, but we got direct costs. Obviously you've got your help ads your screening interview training bonuses raises But what we don't look at and what I didn't look at at least Is how could a bad hire be two to three times a person's salary in a year like that seems Absurd, I mean, I understand the direct cost, but then I actually Took a look under the hood at some of the really awful hires we've had and we and when we sold we had 18 or 19 Vehicles out on the road. So you figure that's a two-person career. That's a 35 to 40 person You know size companies it not small not huge but big enough But those indirect costs to like that lower customer satisfaction We started getting dinged hard on social media And it started to affect the morale of the of the office. We had customer cancellation So it was great. We were pumping all these people through the sales funnel But as many were coming in the top they were dropping out of the bottom So your client acquisition costs would it cost you to acquire a customer? Maybe you're spending 100 to 120 dollars to get a client You want to recover that and they call it a client lifetime value So what's that client lifetime value? So the average client we had was about three and a half to four years So when you're taking that projected client lifetime value and shrinking it down to three to six months Depending on your acquisition cost in the market, you may not even be breaking even on that yet And then the loss of productivity and the loss of team morale. So liz you hit on it and tom you did as well So not only is it a bad hire Bad for for just that person But now it's starting to affect the morale of your a players And it's bringing them down to be your sees and they're leaving and they may be bringing your other key players with them to your competitors So the numbers I came up with believe it or not and then The other things that we're looking at is damage So in our company people stop like the bad hires wouldn't check the oil in the morning We ended up blowing engines vehicles or mowers They would like just damage people's custom like clients property So we started to really add this all up and this was earth shattering to me A couple of the extremely bad hires I ballparked about 100 to 125 thousand dollars in cost Wow, and I was like Wow, maybe we should just kind of pump the brakes It kind of fix this problem before we go in because that extra money we got in the bank is going to disappear And how much did you say you had in your that marketing effort 50 grand? Uh, yeah, so it's about yeah like 40 to 50 thousand the highest I think we ever did was about 70 thousand So unlike the cleaning industry, it's not as it's very seasonal So you literally have a month and a half to get it done So that's where the automations that we've built specifically for the cleaning industry are different But it can handle Unbelievable volume coming in especially like around the holiday seasons people are looking for those one type deep cleans in the outer the stove and fridge upsell so Yeah, but I mean it's just just Perspective-wise and a normal cleaning business that probably would have been spread out over 10 or 12 months But the in that industry you've got a month and a half to hit it and hit it hard So we needed to Basically, and it's interesting you had uh, jonathan potoshnik there on yesterday or monday I actually flew out to jonathan's company where he was doing 10 million dollars a year in residential services And I and there was only one thing I wanted to know from jonathan How do I actually create a workflow in my office to handle that volume? And what does that look like inside of software and what's the processing system? And that was the one thing I walked out. I didn't want to know anything else But that there was a lot of takeaways, but I was like, I'm leaving with that one thing And that's the only thing I want to know And that's that was right before we went to this and jonathan I should have taken his total advice. He goes well wait six 12 months Try it and get used to that flow and then dump in well me being me I was like, well, let's just throw all the money at it. Let's just make this happen I thought tami and christine and paul in the office were literally going to kill me, but We got through it and and that's kind of what happened And The main thing I kind of wanted to at least share with us. We can dive in some some more back and forth Chat about this but I wanted to at least provide a little value for people watching this library corded with basically three low cost high return hiring strategies So interviews at screen for values alignment So one of the things that we believed in and one of our core values at callahans was we do what we say we'll do So we're going to go out and maybe christine or tami are going to do a pre interview several questions But one of them I do remember was what how do you feel when somebody says they're going to call you back and they don't call you back And we would just let them go But if the person said I absolutely hate it like I always follow through That's a cultural alignment now. You may not be the best cleaning technician You may be never clean. I can teach that skillset, but I can't teach a cultural and values alignment And along that we want to have our job descriptions whether online printed through app mobile whatever that looks like We want to have job descriptions to actually fit that culture And the value systems that we've built very similar like the right person on the right seat of the boss You may be the best cleaning technician, but if you don't fit this values alignment and culture You're not the cleaner for my company Um, so we're going to send them down the street even if markets really tight for labor We got to make we got to get this right at first Um, and that's okay. Oh, sorry. Sorry explain that one a little bit more like job descriptions that focus on culture What would that sound like like give me a line on that job description? It would it would look something like this. So this was uh from back in the day Probably had like 20 maybe 30 employees at this point a little clip here But we had a video in the video and this is probably Six or seven years old. So this was something we've been incorporating video forever But it gave you a taste of what we were about Um, and the guys who got their hands up. They're kind of riled up But we're talking about what we're doing and we're talking about every position in the company And we're talking about what they're doing on a daily basis. What's expected what's not expected and the pay rates So right off the bat, we're qualifying them here and and you can see up top It's it's the lifestyle you desire. So that was something I really took Into the lawn care business when that tragedy kind of happened with the divorce is it was it was kind of our Our thing our mission is we wanted to give our clients their lifestyle desires So if they didn't want to worry about taking care of their home while they're at that football game or ballet class That's great. But we also on the flip side of that use that as a value for our internal staff So if your goal was to get out by 3 p.m. And spend some time with your family or sports team or softball or whatever that is That's great. Um, and that's where we created a um, about that created but in Institute a piece rate pay system. So a lot of times in the cleaning industry. That's called paper performance But we've been doing this probably for about 15 years. So they get paid on the budgeted time with a quality constraint So this video overlaid that um, but to answer your question is what are we looking for? Well, you what we'll be doing what you'll need to be successful What where you'll stand out and that cultural alignment really came out in that video? I don't know if that makes sense Oh, do we lose this? Sorry. I'm having a little bit of trouble with my headset No, no problem So so this was it's a job description but this is like a marketing tool to recruit The same people who buy people who buy into the same values as as your company Yeah, and once you got to the end of that video, you knew what we stood for and Not only did we show you all the good but at the end we showed you the bad because Let's face it if you're if you're in the service industry, there's going to be some long days You're going to be on your hands and knees So we we did you out at the end too and kind of qualified you So you knew what you're getting into right off the bat And if this is kind of the culture that you wanted to get into then You're a great fit, but I will tell you that video Drew the right people in for the most part And kind of excluded some of the people like whoa, wait a minute We're going to actually be doing this in there's a picture in here A clip of a guy in a snow sleet storm. He must have been out for like 10 hours shoveling sidewalks He looked like a wet dog just he had a smile on his face But it looked miserable and we just said hey if you're going to be part of this part of the team You can be doing this if you're in this part of the summer crew Guy was like literally trimming a hedgerow that was like a quarter mile long and 90 degree heat The guy looked like he was going to die, but we just showed the worst of the worst too So we qualified him out as well So when Mike's talking about job descriptions This is really like the recruiting ad part of it. It's a job description explains what the job is but Not to be confused with the things that Say society human resources management puts forward as a job description, which is a legalese type Very plain. It's not a sales piece. I've seen people do that and I would suspect that No one would say that's best practices where they take like the the legal job description Use that to recruit with because you really aren't selling know anything about The tough part right now too is is it's that values alignment. I've got another slide. I'll show you here Well, how we actually did that as well and it was a clip from that video But the the thing is that It used to be old school that kind of worked like you must have a car You must do this you must do that and honestly if I was to re-put that ad out Some of those different headers I would put in there would be more geared of what are we doing for you as the employee Not what you're doing for me Because basically the millennials and gen gen z there They're they're fit to it is completely different I believe it was gen z the stats are going to look at five more reviews of Five times more reviews of your company is a place to work and social reviews of your clients before the relation entertain working with you So you've got to like the glass doors and things like that We've got to Got to be really conscious of when we have these employees We let them go or how we treat them because it's no longer siloed Like the world is going to know if you did them wrong um And we've got to have some kind of standardized selection process that's going to speak to the fit and the alignment and basically building that virtual bench you can't go out and recruit anymore When you need somebody you need to have literally that bench stacked like a sports team And if somebody's Acting goofy or get a bunch of work You need to be able to replace that that person or add another person immediately and that's tough right now So we got it like recruiting is basically its own position Almost like a sales sales position. We've got to go out and sell our company these people Yeah Much more than we ever have had to in the past. You know, it's always um a bit of a sales position I mean we had to Sell them on our job because it's not the most glamorous job on the planet, right? But not like nowadays Now they have so many options. Why do they want to clean toilets for you? Exactly doing so many other things and kind of what this slide here is We've got a higher train and fire to the core values So slow to hire quick to fire and it's still got to be some of the in my opinion At least still part of the process right now. Um, and even simple growth isn't immune to this Um, we're up to 17 or 18 full-time employees And I will tell you there's been some some bad fits that within a month or two of training We literally just we ripped the band-aid off. We had to there's no way we can double in size each year And not have the core group and that cultural fit Um, kind of what you're seeing here is it we took a sales pipeline and flipped it on its side And basically replicated what we do in our sales process and actually use that to go out and sell our business to future applicants Um, and it's not only enough once we hire them we've got a while Basically aligned with that culture and reinforce it. Um, and it's an ugly place, but quarterly reviews In my opinion, at least let's face it like employees like structure. They need structure They may tell you they don't like it, but they want structure and then we want to celebrate Um, the winds so like in in the office when our the girls in the office would make a sale of the phone We'd ring like a bell But we're it's something that everybody knew it was a gathering client and everybody kind of Rallied around that so there's certain things that I think we can do that really don't cost us a lot of money But we need to reinforce and continue that positivity in the business if that makes sense Yeah, absolutely. Are you finding it any harder Mike now that um, you know You said it yourself so many of the businesses now are going solo so there isn't nearly the interaction with Team members people in the office or other people are you struggling with that? Yeah, it's tough and especially a lot of the office staff now are all completely remote Um, I mean there's somebody they're getting them out in the morning But if it's a larger multimillion dollar company a lot of these individuals are basically demanding to be working remote Now whether you let them do it or not that's a whole different story But I think if we can do it with social distancing or wherever we're comfortable with Getting the team together outside Picnics whatever that looks like we still need to have that Peace that's been missing the last 18 months in most companies One of the things jason cup is a big consultant in the financial industry for the green space, but In his business he used to always talk about having a stacked fridge for like breakfast burritos and food and things like that But it just it gave those employees something As an added perk But some of the side effects of story He told me once was he had a gentleman He caught it on the camera that the guy literally emptied out like half the fridge when no one was around one night And you know, he was concerned and it was staff, but being jason being jason He's colby certified there. I know you guys talked about that monday, but jason's a pretty cool cat So he pulled the guy in and said hey like is there anything I need to know They'll just notice that you basically emptied the fridge last night. We've refilled it But the guy was taking all his money and helping pay for medical procedures for somebody in his family So he didn't have the money to put food on the table So there's little things that you can do to build a culture and those little additional perks that you and I may not think that Are big they could be game changers So and I think just sitting down and having open communications like jason did are really really important That's going to mean a lot more than money and most of these millennial workers now that I've seen Once you hit a certain threshold, it's not about the money. It's about the culture alignment And things like that and this picture right here is a clip of that video But what we did in the company is we donated services for a free a full year for free to veterans So right around veterans day ramping up to that was a big social media campaign You could donate or you could basically submit a veteran's name. We did a live drawing on facebook So this is me actually walking into this couple's house and actually surprising with a certificate for free services But we that was intertwined in our culture and that was part of the alignment we gave back We wanted to be part of the community really cute. He was an infantry man And she was a nurse I think in world war two they had met But it was a cute couple but that that aligned with people like when people saw that video We actually had an in-person interview. Oh my mom or dad's in the military My grandfather's in the military. It was really cool that you did that I really would like to be part of a company that respects that so some of the stuff we did We really wanted intertwined and actually Reinforced that culture Yeah, I love that So I I talk a lot about matter meaning measure and autonomy And bringing those four things into your business and this is the meaning piece You know a lot of people struggle with how do you bring meaning? Into it's like a house cleaning job or a lawn care or whatever, right? It's How do people find meaning in that? Well, here's a perfect perfect example. You're giving back And and I see something else going on here too because I think for the longest time companies would think about marketing and building brand and all of that on the you know This is how I get customers like an asilo and how do I recruit and you know Get employee engagement and all that being an asilo But I think you're demonstrating here that there's a ton of work that overlaps on both sides Like this is building culture inside of your business. And this is also uh, you know generating, you know A brand and and and generating demand for your service in the community at the same time Yeah, and it wasn't purposely to drive business But I will tell you once this went live in a few weeks it caught a lot of views on facebook That phone was off the hook Like we had a lot of military personnel calling us for for for work and it was that wasn't the purpose of it But you're like you said it just comes full circle so You know Is there I think there's an opportunity when we're thinking about developing marketing pieces be it for you know getting more clients or being To recruit to get more employees to be thinking about how can I make this dual purpose? How can I take this you know burn these calories one time and use it for for for both sides of that equation? Yeah, and the last thing I want to leave you with here and before I forget I do want to talk about Um the retention piece because let's face that these employees aren't going to stay with us forever Um, but I've got a great book. I think everybody should look at uh read or listen to I'll bring that up in a minute But I think it's it was pretty instrumental when I found this book But basically the idea is that we I like to call it our virtual events like that sports team But when you automate it and this is our manual process before we automate This is how we automate it, but I really I don't want to focus on the automation piece I want to focus on the action employee part Um, but what we're looking at is you've got a hosted landing page on your website an office form And probably a bot or something on social media depending on where they're coming But we want to focus there on that job description that fits that culture there And once we drive them through that online application process here So they come in they drive through an online cap application process some virtual hoops I'm suggesting that we potentially run them through and If they meet those qualifications We're going to go in here and basically set up something through like a calendar or something An automated time to go in to get that virtual in person interview But when we go into that interview we've got a standardized interviewing package And we want to interview and screen for those alignments So before they get to the interview My admin would call in this process before they would actually set up the interview Or if they hit like a calendar link we'd call and actually do a pre-screening interview But that's where the question is like, hey, how do you feel if this happens or tell me about some time That made you feel like this So I do we if you meet that if you meet that alignment then you're going to go to the standardized interviewing package And this is where I think it's important is we need to build that virtual bench So if you're not constant recruiting at least two to three times a week, I don't think you're doing it enough We used to do it every Monday Wednesday and Friday And there's something to be said Even when I was an absentee owner I would still get out of the shop and meet the guys and girls and occasionally go to paul who was running the company that time Like hey, I'm gonna be I would verbally say it's a lot of so people can hear me Hey, I'm gonna be in the office most of the day. I've got interviews lined up all day And they're kind of looking around going wait a minute. We're fully staffed so There wasn't the ability to get there and basically have that employee in that power situation Um, and if you had a two person team come in and no one no call No showed and the other person black males you for a $2 an hour raise to finish that cleaning by themselves for the day Okay, let me make you may make it to friday But i'm going back into my virtual database and i'm going to find your replacement So that's why we really even if we don't need anybody I think we need to have that bench for that standardized Selection process we're going to have five or six standardized questions We ask everybody and the way we tackle is ranked an ab and c and inside the software We created a database of all our ab and c applicants with or without a driver's license So we can go back to our virtual labor pool and hire from that And then if we hired them we dropped them into a two to three-part introduction to company culture which eventually was automated So as we got bigger my culture Induct donation started to look like paul and not what we had originally built as a team So we started to standardize that because I Paul had a great view of it But that's not exactly what we were driving When we created an automated process for tax document collection as well or 1099 employees we had as well But those are like the first things that the employee sees like Wait a minute. We've thrown their PPE at them. Hopefully they're uniforms. We've got them trained But we haven't even collected the payroll information like they want to get paid So when that first friday runs it rolls around it paycheck better be there So we created a process to make sure it was a smooth Transition and their employment contract was there And then what we also tied in was video training. So All these other places were competing with the amazon You know uber Walmart they have it. They've gotten multi-million dollar training programs So we've got to be able to come to the table and have a similar experience So what I did literally is took an iphone About a $30 tripod you can see behind me from amazon it made videos how to do each service low budget But we had an automated onboarding video series But that was a great first impression and believe it or not the professionally ones we had recorded Didn't work as well as the ones that were personal that they could relate to Um, but it was the onboarding experience because it wasn't enough just to hire them because if it sucked after that They're quite their second guests and especially now they're seeing those signs down the road They're going to go somewhere else And then we we created some automations around the contract and handbook fulfillment because all these things It should happen on the first day or the few first few days traditionally for really busy We were scrambling for employees. They never happened um So that's kind of the process we put behind it And the final thing we did is inside multiple softwares Softwares is this picture of one of them. We basically created that labor pool. So you can actually see um All the applicants that are in here and we we went in and actually tracked clients source So it wasn't enough just to to get them all in there But I want to know did you come from a facebook ad did you come from a another referral from an employee Where'd you come from in very similar to like a marketing standpoint? There were stark differences obviously the ones that referred from existing employees lasted a lot longer There were better fits, but if you're looking like zip recruit or indeed facebook ads Um or craigslist they had significantly non-emotional Jurassic different results. So we started to build a marketing plan to actually go out and recruit employees based on Basically sales acquisition costs in addition Each one of those employees actually had a physical cost like a client based on the marketing source So for us to give 250 bucks as a referral to one of our employees that the person last a certain tenure Was significantly cheaper than going out to one of the major platforms But very similar like in marketing you need different channels Um and spread out and diversify it But we wanted to take the emotion out of it actually have a hard number around it So if we're going to double the size next year, we know like it's going to cost us $30,000 to actually recruit this person Another example of knowing your numbers, you know, you knew the ROI out of all your Recruiting channels and a lot of times if you don't actually crunch the numbers You think some channels are working better for you than others because there's more activity, but uh As I say motion is not necessarily movement So if you got the numbers you really know where to spend your money To hire the quality people that you're looking to get and how much money That you need to spend in order to get the number of people you get Yeah I was going to say and staying on top of Continuing to look at those numbers because yeah when you first started looking at them indeed was just bringing on the bringing on and the Employees and then all of a sudden it's not working But you're like, you know that everything's coming from indeed when was the last time you actually looked at the numbers Where are you really spending your money and where are you getting the results because that is not right? It changes it numbers talk emotions walk at this point. That's that's what I found to be the most successful thing You've got to just be a number But one thing I do want to just share with everybody and I don't know if you guys have heard of this book But one of the cool things I had the ability to go to infusion soft Headquarters and walk around I became good friends with a lot of them But when we were going through the company tour And their their culture is infectious. I mean it's I don't want to say it's like a cult But I mean everybody's there is drink the purple juice. I mean it's it's it's wild Yeah, they live in the green the green of infusion soft But but with the interesting thing there's two stories I wanted to share and I want to tie this into this book is as I was walking through they had this big wall and it was the dream wall and you you were encouraged to write your dream in there and As long as you weren't becoming a direct competitor of that company, which obviously wouldn't be a good fit anyways to be there If you know if you wanted to go on vacation you wanted to get your college degree whatever it was you put it on there And there's this gentleman named dan rels. He was their dream manager Really really cool guy, but his job was to take the employees And their dreams from the wall and help them execute on and hold them to it because let's face it Especially now our employees aren't going to stay with us forever but if you want the most committed And employees that are going to basically be retained If you can align your goals or their goals and help them attain whatever they want They are going to be committed to you and that was the most infectious part about this company And this is something we try to do in the lawn care company not 100 success, but pretty good Um, but we would find somebody that would traditionally last a season maybe two We're getting three to five years out of them and that's huge in the service industry But it was that alignment of where they wanted to go And if they we had a lot of room to grow within the company, but if their goal was to One guy was wanted to become a cop so we helped him basically get like The the funds to go to different um training and then had him Like a gym membership because he had to pass a physical agility test But all the things like we started like where is this guy going and how can we keep it for three to five years? But he actually does what he really wants to do But man, he gave us 110 and he was an awesome awesome employee and he brought a lot of other guys and girls like him in um, so The book I really highly recommend is it's called the dream manager and it's by matthew kelly Um, and believe it or not it was actually written and focused on a janitorial cleaning company So really really cool book. Um, but I really recommend it's unaudible if you're not into reading like me in the car But uh, it's a really good book and then the second story I got around that employee retention Is that I was walking through the rest of the fusion soft every all the all the offices are glass Somebody pulled out there was a duffle bag on the on the table with about four or five thousand dollars cash in it Kid you're not and I'd heard this story, but I didn't know it was true Well, I assumed it wasn't true like it was a wise tell But basically after your training period of so like 90 days or three months, whatever that is They would sit you in the room before you signed your final contract They would literally take this bag of money and stick it on the table in front of you And they would actually cut you a check But it was just to actually visually see it and say are you committed to this company? and If you're not a hundred percent committed to this company We'll cut you a check for the five thousand dollars in the front of you and be on your way I know zappos was doing that quite a few years ago, too. They started out doing that Uh, it never really appealed to me because I know me. I'm taking the five grand. I don't care what the company is But where I mean, it's not necessarily the five grand though. This is where I'm going is Is there's some way to screen them out? Oh, yeah And when you start to see those like those flashing red lights and you're like Labor markets short. I just need to keep this individual. I got houses to clean Right Don't make the hundred and twenty five thousand dollar mistake I made you may need to keep them for a few days But you got to go out and find that person and make sure there's that alignment. They're committed Because otherwise they're they're going to run you out of business And that's such a good point Mike that you might have to sometimes you do need to bring on that person for a few days you need A little bit of help, but Just because they're coming on to help you that doesn't mean there you need to marry them, right? Yeah, those people but you don't marry every single person you date It's tough. I mean we've been there. So I was telling you guys before the show we had Shortly there after that marketing spend we had I would say a third of my company It actually staged a mute me and tried to start their own company. I came in Monday morning and no one was there And foolish me. I tried to jump out on that truck and and do the work of like 10 people and Obviously, I didn't work out. So what I should have done is actually went out and continued to interview and hire But yeah, I mean if you had a pulse and you showed up like you were hired that you know that day Um, but I think that might have even caused more damage than than possible because we were losing Clients because of the really awful service. We'd level them and said, hey, we're having a massive issue here We'll be out next week while we're plugging the gaps like most of the people at that point probably would have been pretty understanding Yep, that's it right there. Perfect. Tom. All right. So, you know dream manager Somebody brought this up. I don't know last week or the week before The same book and if you're gonna plug this book tom, then you also have to plug uh the No, I can't think of the name of the show I mean the the program. So there's a program go to clean profit builders.com And you can purchase this program to implement This idea because you have a certified dream manager. Very very cool Okay They you can do that. There you go. Yeah And I'll I'm posting all this in chat by the way. All right, you guys can get all over it And so it's this just a program to implement that sort of that idea Yeah, I forget who it was is there's um With somebody at martha woodward's qts conference a couple years ago that actually is a certified dream manager In cleaning and she just exited um within the last few years and retired the from the cleaning But I can't think of who it was though. Are you thinking of kathy gauge? That's it kathy. All right. Well that program that I just showed you is the program that she created Yeah, definitely check it out from what I've seen. It is awesome. So yeah kudos to kathy I couldn't I couldn't think of her name for the life of me. But yeah, very very cool stuff But we've uh, we read that book and we we instituted parts of that My wife actually brought dan in to she's a an administrator for a school district and they actually did dream management In with the the teachers one of the teachers actually started a school in africa Oh through this like like literally They went through it and she did it and that was kind of her fulfillment. That was her dream That's uh, yeah, I think the school somehow aligned with it with educational stuff. So it's It's really interesting the stuff that you could get out of really investing in aligning with your employees I reached out to kathy Just recently seeing if I could go to be a a guest on smart business moes She's very busy making quilts right now I haven't been able to negotiate her as a guest yet, but Maybe this will be able to create a little extra Motivational pressure this discussion here. This is good with top of the hour Mike awesome discussion good information. Thank you for for sharing your your deck with us as well This is your website if people want to get ahold of you I guess they've got a bunch of channels They can click on a book of call and I guess leave the contact info you got your your online chat going here I'm sure that everything that you've shared with us here people need more details or Help actually making it actionable and implementing it. This is what you guys do, right? Yeah, and if they want to book a call uh dealing with myself on the team We do basically a free audit for basically your workflow and automations. Um, it's it's software independent But basically what we do is we give you a free report At the end of it with graphics and everything. It's a really cool process. It's about a 30 minute call and we literally expose um Scaling that seven figure business or beyond what the pain points are and what's the biggest bottleneck to where you're at And actually how to fix it yourself And it's something we do obviously we can show you what we can do But the idea is to just really go in and figure out where you're at Where's the pain point and how do we kind of blast through that bottleneck or that hurdle? So that's something if you booked that call it's a 30 minute free audit that dylan and i've been doing We've done several hundred of them. They've been very helpful for folks just to kind of understand Hey, is it is it a a systems issues an automation issue? Is it a productionary based estimating system? Where are all those things and uh, where's the weaknesses? Very cool mic very cool I hope that people take advantage of that because that's one of those places where we think we know everything But sometimes we just need to get out of our own way And go go hook up with somebody else that can help us out So, um Are we uh pretty much done for the week? I guess right? Yeah We're we're late today. Sorry everybody. We have been running late. We're sorry. We'll do better robin here I haven't seen you in a while. Hello. Hey robin Okay, so we're gonna bounce we're gonna be back monday five o'clock eastern. We're gonna be picking up the discussion on the whole employee retention Yeah, lots of talk there Thanks again, Mike much appreciate it. Appreciate it. We're gonna you guys do for the industry really really helpful I love the knowledge share and just being open to help everybody So really appreciate having me on and hopefully share some share some knowledge Thanks, Mike. We're we'll have you back. All right. Appreciate it guys. Have a good one. Bye y'all