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In this episode, hosts John Wilson and Jack Carr discuss the art of recruiting top-tier talent that can help your home service business grow and thrive. The key? Build an organized, sales-like approach for recruiting top-tier talent. Tune in to see just how it's done! The discussion also includes when to bring in Human Resources or a recruitment hire, how to build an appealing business culture for potential hires, methods to identify and close on high-level candidates, and the benefits of consistent hiring practices.
Episode Hosts: 🎤
John Wilson: @WilsonCompanies on Twitter
Jack Carr: @TheHVACJack on Twitter
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John Wilson, CEO of Wilson Companies
https://www.wilsonplumbingandheating.com
Jack Carr, CEO of Rapid HVAC
https://rapidhvactn.com
Owned and Operated Episode #62 Transcript
Welcome back. Welcome back. Hey, how you doing, John?
Welcome back. Man, I'm good. I'm good. I'm, I'm ready to, I'm ready to chat. Today, we're diving into HR. We're diving into recruitment. I'm, I'm ready to kill it. Yeah. I mean,
auxiliary functions of a business as you start to grow are some of these like huge questions that you get, right?
Yeah. It's when do you, HR person? I mean, we joke around that one of our techs who's probably the least HR person is our HR person, but at one point, really, really, really soon we need, it keeps me up at night. So I mean, maybe we start there, like what, when, when did you get a recruiter? I mean, that's how I started all these, these, when did John do this X, Y, or Z?
Yeah.
Yeah. So, I, I think HR is an interesting one and I'll give my history on it, but it's like, it's one of those things that everybody knows they need and everybody knows they want. And they, nobody really knows when it happens, but I think we can actually line up some really clear like here's when this happens which is, which is, I think helpful.
So. We got HR and that's H. Yeah. Yeah. So when we got hr, we were at 50 employees when the biggest lesson, like when should
you have gotten HR then?
Yeah, yeah, exactly. Was 50. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So that's, it was. It was too late. It was too late. So like, Mm-Hmm. . What? I remember hearing this podcast. It was like 2019 and Brandon and I were sitting in an office or no, it was like a, a weekly live video interview from certain path.
And we were sitting in this office together listening to it. And it was about recruitment, which was like, obviously recruitment's always a top five concern in a business. Like the people always, always a top concern. And Gus from Milestone down in, down in DFW, he said, if you're serious about your business, you at 3 million, you need to have a recruiter.
And we were at like 3. 4 and, and I was like, you're out of your damn mind. Like what are you talking about? I need a recruiter. Like I, like we're, like every day's a fire, . Like we, we don't have the cash for that. It seemed like such an unnecessary, insane use of overhead dollars.
And I thought that he was so out of touch with reality, which he was a hundred million dollar company. So it's like, that makes sense if he's out of touch with reality, but like. I've reflected back on that moment so often because it's, it's probably one of the most wrong, like one of the times I've been the most wrong in my entire career, like it is, like, I was so dumb, like, and like now looking back, I'm like, Oh my God, like he's right, like 3 million is the perfect size to have a recruiter, perfect size.
When you say recruiter, I mean, that that's are you referring to like an HR and recruiter or some, 'cause I mean, at a $3 million value or $3 million gross revenue, that person, you don't have enough time. They're not recruiting full time, I guess is what I'm saying. Yeah. There's other
functions that they can take care of.
So I, when I say that, when I say that I'm, I'm saying a majority of their time is focused on recruiting and retaining new employees. Mm-Hmm. . So that could be 51%. Maybe the other 49% is payroll and benefits administration. And three, $3 million isn't what, $3 million today in 2020 $3 is not what it was five years ago.
So maybe $3 million five years ago is 20 team members. Maybe it was 25 team members, whereas today maybe it's 15 to 20. So obviously a little bit different, but I really do think that that 20 to 30 mark of employee size is a good time. To be thinking about someone whose majority of their job is recruitment.
And there's, there's obviously a lot of other things going on in HR, but like most of the, most of the complicated stuff that happens with HR happens after a hundred employees. So like our current HR team is we have a payroll and benefits coordinator. We have a full time payroll clerk. And we have two recruiters, and one of those recruiters also does our onboarding.
So, about 70 percent of her time is recruitment, and 30 percent is onboarding, like, the first day. Right, those first two days. And then the other one's full time recruitment. So we have 1. 7 people focused full time on, on recruiting. So, that's our current stack. And I, so when we brought on our first HR person a generalist heavy focus on recruitment, but it happened at 50 employees, it probably should have happened at 30.
30. Yeah. Yeah. Cause like you always, we talked about this last episode, but like, it took way too long for me to understand how much a good hire moves the business.
Yeah, and I think that we forget to, you get, you get pigeonholed into this I don't want to call it being afraid of your employees, but being afraid to lose employees because it's so hard to hire new employees.
And so you let them get away with things that they, one, shouldn't be getting away with and two, you're not holding them accountable like you should, building the correct culture. Because you don't have someone on the back end who is really upholding that culture by recruiting top
talent. I mean, I think I tweeted the same thing like a week ago.
It was like, it is very, it is very difficult or impossible to hold your team accountable if you don't have a strong recruiting function. Because exactly that. You can't let it, you can't do anything about it. Like there's no, people can get away with murder if you're never going to fire. Right. Whereas we have a pretty healthy habit of firing people that aren't doing the thing.
Like we want everyone to win and we want to be an amazing place to work, but we also have expectations.
Yeah. And I think that that's what we run into it being a significantly smaller company. I mean, there's that fear, right? If we lose. Two of our guys, two of our techs right out the gate. I mean, we are struggling.
Service managers are going into the field and all this kind of stuff. So the minute, even, I, I would, I would say even before 30 employees, you, you look into part time, I mean, part time or, or some kind of getting some kind of, what do you call them? Temp recruiter, not, not for temps per se, but like, fraction, like a fractional CEO or CFO, how they do that.
Picking up a fractional HR recruiter who can actually do that function for you. I mean, we've been chewing on it too, especially having some kind of auxiliary site that we're going to pick up here in the next two to three months. So, I mean, we're starting ahead of time. I mean, you gave me that advice and then, I sat down one day and I went, man, if I lose half the employees there because they just don't care because it's a new, new owner.
That business is going to tank right out the gate for loose and yeah, and, and if I have the ability to bring people in, right, right immediately at least key people, key positions, key points that, that fear goes away, right? Because somebody's on top of that. Someone's
owning it. So like right now we are the best at recruitment that we've ever been.
There's a couple of reasons for that. One is just capacity. Like, I just, I get it. I have more recruiters than most companies my size. And I'm like, I'm not immune to that fact. The other one is, we are, like, we don't turn it off. And that is a, that is a non negotiable. So what we've told our team is there's no safe word.
Like no one's calling uncle on recruitment. If we find a million dollar plumber, we're hiring that million dollar plumber. Like we don't care. I'm going to find him a vehicle, marketing is going to drive him leads, and he's going to be on your team because like, we're not going to let rock stars go anywhere else except for here.
And we're going to pay him like crazy to be here. So. That has really helped, one, hold people accountable that weren't delivering. Because we really can go find great rock stars any day of the week now, which is amazing. And that's a new muscle that we've never been able to flex before.
Last episode you were saying you're averaging 25 a week with three rock stars. One, two, three rock stars. Yep. And so that really holds people's feet to the fire knowing, hey man, if I don't produce... They have someone who will, and I think, it. Well, I mean,
we, like, I obviously don't want it to be, like, perceived, I, I don't think it comes off that way.
But, if, like, for most of our team, 99 percent of our team is amazing. But, like, yeah, there's people that aren't going to do the thing, and, it just puts us in a position where, we can say, Hey, if you don't want to do these things, that is okay, it genuinely is, we, we probably just aren't a fit for you.
And someone else is going to drive that truck by next week, and that's okay.
Yeah, no, I, I mean, I'm not trying to, to be. Not, not caring. It just, when there's specific, there's specific set points that need to be met in the company. Especially, like I said, it's coming from a smaller company that this is a very difficult thing to hold people accountable to your standards, to metrics that are industry wide, right?
Because it's, it's just, or even
just attendance, like attendance, the reason, we got so good. At recruitment was because of attendance, which is like the craziest reason , we would walk into our call center and like a third or more of our call center would be off that day, every day for three weeks straight.
And it's like, what is going on? Like, I don't think to not show up all the time and it was just constant, attendance issues. So what, like I said, a week ago or whatever, that churn in the call center is real. It's like, now we just lean in because we, we have to select at this point, we just assume from now until the end of time, a new call taker starting every Monday.
And that's what's happening because that's like, that is just how it's going to go. So that's how we got good at recruitment because then we started doing that with every other position. We have like our, we give three focuses a week of like, Hey, here's the positions that are a big focus. Go chase them down.
Go get them. I need them by next Monday. So this week was HVAC service tech, two ISRs, and an install manager for HVAC. And then next Monday we'll set new priorities, whatever those are. But , we did what we needed to do. We hired two ISRs, we hired two HVAC service techs, and we're... We're going to hopefully close on install manager on Friday.
So we hit the priorities and then we're going to go do the same thing next week. So next week, the focus is probably going to be plumbing install and HVC install. So those are going to be the marching orders and then we're going to go get them. And then the next week it'll be something new. I love it.
Closing on employees is like, I think we were talking about this last week, like closing on a deal. It feels good. It feels good. Oh,
have we talked about our closing? Have we like talked about this?
Closing on, oh my gosh. Well, hold on. I'm deciding if I should like say this. I I'll give a little bit, I'll give a little bit, but it's like some of this is my secret sauce. Like, so, so closing like hiring is sales. Right. And like,
Oh, we haven't talked about this now. Okay. I won't give the secret sauce. You got to draw them now.
I'm interested.
Like, hiring is sales. In a sales process, there is a, there's like the eight steps or this, the 10 steps or the five steps or the whatever of like, Hey, I'm going to come in. I'm going to do my greeting. I'm going to talk about why we're here today. I'm going to, look at your problem.
I'm going to know whatever, like whatever the eight steps are. And. A couple of months ago, I'm sitting there and I'm like, and we lost two rock stars. Like we didn't get them. We couldn't hire them, which was such a punch in the gut because these guys were amazing and they were going to be needle moving hires.
And I'm like, why didn't, like, why didn't we get them? That doesn't make much sense to me. If I was a smaller company and , I didn't have a lot of opportunity, I would get it. But , they ended up going to companies a fourth of my size for half of the total compensation. That had way less opportunity for their careers.
, so I'm sitting here like, what, what didn't we do in the closing process to demonstrate the value to my prospect that this is the right decision. So that, reframed how we think about hiring. Where now there's a sales corridor, literally in our case, it's a hallway. But you know, when you talk about sales, it's like, you're walking a prospect down the hallway, you got to close the doors.
So like, that's what we did. So now we have a 10 step process for how we close on hires. So they come in the door. Their name is on the TV. Welcome. Here's your name. Excited to see you. If you walk into the front door. Oh, I love this so much.
Terrific. Quiet. I'm just, I'm like trying to absorb every single bit of this.
This is so
cool. So the recruiter, the person that dragged them in meets them at the door because that's, that's their face. That's who they know so far. They're like, Hey man, so excited that you're here. Like, can I give you a tour? So, so what, what used to happen is we would, this candidate would come in.
And we would shove them in a conference room and we'd be like, Hey, fill out this paperwork. And someone would get to them in 15 minutes. And it's like, well, that doesn't like that person doesn't feel like a rockstar at all. That person feels like they were discarded and like, weren't that, that they are inconvenienced or like we are inconvenienced.
They don't want
to feel like a cog in the wheel. They want to feel like someone here.
Yeah. So like, so what would happen is these rock stars were brought in to do these interviews and they were just dragged straight to the interviewing conference room and, and I'm sitting there and I'm like, well, I don't, I don't like that.
Like, I wouldn't like that. That's not cool at all. So, so we, we created a tour. So, it's, and it's very intentional. You have to be like, there's like steps to the tour, right? Because what you're doing is every step of the tour that you stop and talk for 10, 30 seconds, you're closing a door. You're closing a door.
Down the hallway. So, okay. So they walk in through the door, they, they greet the recruiter. The recruiter's like, Hey, so excited you're here. We're really excited to talk to you. Before we go any further, I just want to talk about our company for a second. So like there's four banners right there on the wall.
It's like, Hey, here's our core values. This is what we're all about. This is who we are. We're core. Betterment, accountability, teamwork, transparency, definitions. Here's, here's where we're going. We're going to be a hundred million dollar company by 2030. We're going to have 400 team members. There's four or five more things.
Here's how we're going to get there. We're going to hire the best talent the market has to offer. We're going to overpay them. We're going to create win, win, win scenarios. We're going to recruit like crazy, and we're going to build a meaningful moat through our marketing and recruitment. That's how we're going to get there.
You walk another 10, 10, 20 feet. Here's our history. We got our corporate history up on the wall. Photos. My grandpa started this. Ralph Wilson started this company with 500 bucks and a pickup truck back in 1958. Here's the building that we moved in in the 60s. Like, this is where we're coming from, right?
This, this is us. This is who we were 60 years ago. You turn the corner and there's an org chart with 140 people. This is where we're at now. Like we're the second largest company in this market. We're the largest non PE backed one. Like, check it out. Like, aren't you excited to be a part of that? You go another 20 feet.
And so, so like what we're closing is like, Hey, this company has a vision. They're going somewhere. They came from somewhere. They've been somewhere too. Yeah, exactly. They came from really small and like, wow, look at the scope. I'm coming from a 20 to 40 person. Company, this, they've got 140, right?
So the next, the next ones are really important. You walk them through the call center. Because the big objection that you're dealing with right now is, are they organized, and do they have work? So like, you walk them through the call center where they see 25 people. Every day. Dispatching. Yeah, we're organized like crazy.
Like, man, our guys get on the best jobs. We get all the jobs. This, this call center team over here, they dealt with 800 phone calls today before noon. Like, yeah, we got leads.
And so do you have like recorders around the office that are playing phone ring sounds too as they walk in?
It's just... That'd be funny.
We actually got really intentional about the playlist, about the like music that goes over the loudspeakers now, cause it used to be silent. So we started playing music. So then, so then you walk them through the call center, you take them into the training room and like the idea there is, Hey, here's the training room.
This is where we train. We invest in our people. Door closed. You walk them into the warehouse. Where they see 500, 000 of material and five people behind a counter prepping to give people parts. So are they organized? Do they have support for me on my jobs? Yes. They walk through staging where they see... All these jobs staged.
Are they busy? Yes. And then, you finally deposit them into the hiring room. It's a ten minute tour, but, like, by the time you get there, you've closed most of their potential objections. They already know about benefits. And the only thing that they're thinking about, it's, this is no longer Do I want to be here?
This is, I want to be here. Am I good enough to be here? And it totally reframes the conversation.
No, I think that's a wonderful idea. I'm sitting here going, man, good thing we're coming on these tours. John, I'm going to come work for you here in a second. Yeah, dude. Let's do it. That's cool. No, I love that.
It is. I mean, so you've hit on all the points like when I'm, when I was a W 2 employee looking for work. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah. Stability, organization. Yep. Growth. Like those are the three things. Is it a stable company? Yep. Is it organized? Is it going to grow? And do I have growth opportunity? And all of those prerequisites were hit right out the gate.
Yeah. Before you even walk in there.
Yeah. And then, like you said, I completely reframe everything. At this point, the one personally sitting across from all 25 of those interviews. And I, like, at this point, we've already talked to them for probably an hour and a half, right? We had a phone screen, recruiter talked to them a lot, they already know the benefits, they know the company.
At this point, they've seen it, so they know and have seen it, and my role in this is, do their eyes light up when I tell them about the role? Are they going to be a culture fit? When I explain what betterment and teamwork means to me, can they get behind that? When I talk about where we're going and why we're going there, can they get behind that?
And then, if they basically pass my sniff test, then the hiring manager comes in for about five minutes. And that's it. So like the actual sit down, our sit downs went from an hour and a half to like 25 total, because we have like 90 minutes of prep to get them ready for, for that.
Yeah, and so, I mean, now that we're at this point what, I mean, you say, As you're describing the position, you want to see their eyes light up.
So, I mean, that, that's definitely one aspect is that they're hungry. They want to work there. They're excited. They come to work every morning, really go, go, team, go. Yeah. In terms of skill, I mean, is that the recruiter's job or are you doing that inside that
meeting? No. So like the last step in every process is a ride along.
So like you have your phone screen. You have your tour, you have your sit down with John, you have your sit down with the hiring manager. And if you pass all those, then you're gonna go do a ride along for a day. And you're gonna basically get tested. You test us, we test you. See if it's a fit, and you get an offer after that.
So, everything up to the mechanical... What dictated that ride
along? Like, what, what, what caused you to start doing those ride alongs? Oh, we've been doing that for years. Is that a normal thing in industry?
I have no idea. I know that we've
been doing it for years. Yeah, I don't either. And so what would cause you to start doing that?
Is it, we've always done it this way, so we're going to continue doing it this way? It's a great tool? Or was there a specific turning point for you that you were like,
No, I mean, people, people can say anything in an interview. Like, yeah, the amount of times that I've sat down in an interview and someone's like, yeah, I know how to do friggin everything in the world.
It's like, yeah, like, I really don't care. Like, I don't. You're going to go on a ride along and my guy's going to tell me if you can. What I care about is, are you a culture fit? Are you going to be a, are you going to add to our average or are you going to take away from it? And then like mechanically, we'll figure that out tomorrow.
That's a good point.
That's interesting that who does the ride along? Is it just a senior tech that you trust?
Yeah, yeah, we have a few ride along people. Basically, whoever's going to be really blunt. Like, hey, this person's not a fit. And like we, what we want. Those are my favorite employees. Hey, they're the best.
What we want is like, we want to hire the best that the market has. Like that is a very, that is important to us. So in our pre screening questionnaire, there's like 15 questions, I think. And one of them is, is this a top 10 percent higher? And if it's not a top 10 percent higher in the recruiter's eyes, they don't even come in the door.
Like we're not going to talk to them. We'll we want top 10 percent hires. And then the actual get to hire is we want top 5 percent real hires. Like, so you have to get through a few processes and we have enough interviews that we can just, man, we can just go like, it's all good. If we didn't have low quality candidates, we're, we're hitting it.
We're hitting it hard. And I think that what I said earlier, like, off camera was. What we've done, I don't think is magical with recruitment. We're the best we've ever been at recruitment, but anyone could do what we're doing with recruitment if you are willing to put the investment into, obviously it takes an investment, but we would have had a better company if we would have started earlier because we held on to people that were no longer a fit.
Or they didn't, like, they didn't want to be accountable because we couldn't hire or we didn't have a good enough hiring process to really, like, weed, weed out people that weren't a great culture fit or mechanical fit whereas now we feel like we're doing, we're doing a good job.
Yeah, or, or you brought them in and they, you, you liked them but they didn't like you, right, because you didn't have that process in place to really drive that.
I mean, that, that's huge. I mean, that, that's a really cool way of looking at it in, in, cause we've had that issue too, or we've, we've, we're a smaller company. So in the beginning it was very hard to convince certain individuals, top tier talent, like, Hey, come over here. You'll have enough work. You'll have this, you'll have that.
When, there's really no, like I said, I think I said it in one of the first podcasts is we're, we're driving into a storage unit. It's like, Hey, top two talents going, guys, this, this really isn't this. So we've had to get scrappy on how we so we ended up,
Getting, that's a good point.
Like we are, our recruitment game stepped up significantly when we changed our offices to one headquarters. And it's like, now, I think, I, I don't think correlation is causation here. Like we did several other things. Like we hired more recruiters. We really aligned focus. We built a, a walkthrough, like we've done a lot of work on recruitment in order to be where we are, but our previous physical location was a deterrent to top candidates.
And that's real. And,
and Chris Hoffman tweeted about this recently too. Like he's got this insane facility. And like, yeah, like, yeah, people like. Yeah, driving up to that as a plumber, you're like, okay, like, okay, it like, am I good enough to work here? That's what you want candidates to think when they walk in the door. Like, this place has their stuff together.
Am I up to their level? Yeah, I saw, I saw
that tweet too. That was a, yeah, I love this facility. It's so cool. It doesn't look like a HVAC or anything at all facility. It looks like a, I mean, a Red Bulls facility or something crazy like that, but it's an interesting subject. And so when you're, when you're starting and you're smaller, the goal is to create that environment through different means, right?
And so, I mean, just offering higher pay and higher packages in, in my experience doesn't drive it. We, we couldn't even get people paying them higher because they're worried about all those stability, organization, growth potential. And so it becomes a game of, vision and charisma and character and who the company is and who you are as the owner.
And so it's hard not to take it personally. Yeah. How you explain it and who you are as the owner. I think the big distinguishment there is RUPE. Like that's real. Like the, the best candidates in the market right now that we're interviewing want nothing to do with private equity. And they say that as a part of their initial interview, they're like, Hey, I'm the, I'm the best tech over at this company.
Like I have an HVAC tech that we're trying to close on right now. And he's amazing. And one of his, one of his biggest things, like it's, he can go get a job anywhere and he's going to get paid a lot wherever he goes. And I believe he's choosing us. And one of the big reasons is we're not PE backed.
Like, we're not, we're, it's me. So people can be, yeah, people can be really choosy. And I think like, like you said, there's a, it's hard to present them with with the why of, of why you're the spot.
Yeah. And so the story that always comes to mind is I think PayPal at one point early on in their days, they hit a rough patch and, and most of their team didn't work for pay for something crazy like three months or something like that.
And that always comes to mind is it's like, Hey, these people were willing to work for three months, six months, whatever the time period is. No pay. because of vision. And so it's really important as you're walking through your steps, you're talking about where you were, where you've been, where you're going, what your vision is.
I mean, I think it's huge to capitalize on that as a smaller company who's focused on growth and is focused on giving these people these opportunities. On the, the downside to that though, right, is you're They're holding you accountable to deliver on that, right? Yeah. So they're holding you accountable on growth and they're holding you accountable.
And so it's a, it's a rough place to be in, but that truly is how you get really top tier talent in a, in a smaller company. And just recognizing and, and selling it that way. Yeah. But, I, one day, I, I love that process
though, like the walkthrough and everything. I, I think the important, it's wonderful.
Yeah. I, I, I mean, and, and frankly it's worked, right? So like. We are closing if we are making a hire in the field, they are a rockstar. They are a top 1 percent in our local market rockstar. Which is wild to me, right? Like I had no idea how many million dollar plumbers there are. I had no idea. I had no idea how many million dollar electricians there are.
And like, it reset my expectations for my own team because I used to think, Hey, 600, 000 is pretty all right. But then I interviewed 20 million dollar plumbers. And it's like 600, 000 is not, apparently. All right, 600, 000 is less than these 20 people. So like, that's crazy. What are we missing? So it really forced us to level up internally too, just because we were like, okay, like this, this is real.
I think the, the important thing on hiring for me is have a process and it doesn't have to be as robust as my process is. Obviously there's like more going on there, but it would be, be deliberate.
Yeah. Be deliberate and understand what your position is and it what you said, right? There's doors that you have to close.
And so in that process that you create in the hiring to close as many of those as you, your business can. Yeah. Understand that your business can't close all of them, right? I'm not going to be able to close the same doors that you will, but person that I need at this time. I need to close whatever doors I can to get them to a point where maybe they would have a better shot at saying yes than vice versa.
And you can't even get there if you don't hire a recruiter. Boom.
Pretty much. I mean,
like you, you got to have the recruiter to
shoot your shot. Yeah, you do. You freaking do. Because that, and this is, this is how this whole like second recruiter thing started for us like four or five months ago. Was we're like this, the surface area of the top of our funnel is not wide enough.
We are not, we are not shooting enough shots because if only 1 in 10 interviews is a rock star, then like we need to have 100 interviews. Like 10 is not going to cut it and 20 is not going to cut it because we're growing and we can't grow. Without the best people that this market has to offer. So, yeah, you just don't get there because what happens is hiring always gets dealt, like it's always somebody's second priority, like it's the GM or the ops manager, the service manager.
Oh yeah. I'm I do the recruiting. And it's like, yeah, you also fight fires every day, like, like you're, you're doing other things. And it's if, if it's everyone's focus, it's no one's focus. And I think
a good thing to remember too, is it, there's a snowball effect, right? You hire good people, which then drives more revenue, which allows you to, drive more leads, which then allows you to hire more people and then this.
The snowball that, that grows and grows and
grows, but if you miss a step in there. And killers want to work with killers. That, I mean, that, that's the other part of it. If you're like, Hey, everyone else here is a killer. Like the least, like this was an interview I had yesterday and he was the top shot at his current company and, and he, and we were talking about expectations and I was like, to be clear, I know that you're the top shot where you are.
Every single person on my existing team is driving more than you right now. Like everyone here is a killer and it's okay if you're not a rockstar, but like these five guys are, and like, this is the expectation coming in, and, and people.
Of the high caliber really like to work with people of the high caliber.
Oh, yeah. It's a competitive, it's a, to get to that level to that mentality. They want to build. They just, they're hungry and that hunger drives and feeds off each other and builds this really cool culture. I mean, I think we've talked about that with I forget the guy's name, but down in oh, down in Southern California, the, he built a, 200 million, I want to say it's Ubersmooth or something like that.
Down in L. A. No, anyway, I don't know. Someone else tell us who it is but the, the guy, I mean, just the culture there is very, very hungry. Oh,
Ishmael from NextGen? Ishmael. Yeah. Yes, yes, there you go. Yeah, yeah,
yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, I mean, you, you talk to anyone who's worked there, you go on any of his Instagram, Facebook, posts, and they talk about people who've worked there with him.
And the culture there is just incredible. Everyone there is driving. Like true hustle culture, which is just wild to see when you get that many people hustling in
the same direction. Yeah. It will. Yeah. And that's, that's what's been happening for us over the past, like four or five months where I'm not exaggerating when I say that every hire has been a rockstar, everyone, we're knocking out of the park.
Every hire has added like to our average, everyone. And because we're, we're interviewing so many more people than ever. And the pool, and we got better selection. We got like, we became a better employer. We did, there was a lot that goes into that. But like, it is real where now every hire is a game changing hire.
Like, every new guy is a million dollars. Million freaking dollars. Like, that's crazy. That was my entire company seven years ago.
I was gonna say that. Yeah. Like, that's, those two guys out of the truck. I know,
and I hired three of those this week. So it's, yeah, it's crazy to me how much this, the, the needle moving hire moves the needle.
So for everyone going from zero to five million, right? The goal is to get five of these guys and you're
there. Yeah, they're there. And I think it's like, you have to, how do you present yourself? How do you, like, we've, we have people walk into our office now because they can walk in anywhere. They walk into our office and they sit down and they ask you, like, some very real questions about your business.
And that's what rock stars are going to do. That's what the needle movers are going to do. Like, they want to understand how you dispatch. They want to understand how you price. They want to understand what the org chart looks like and why it looks like that. Like they're going to ask some probing questions about your business because they are evaluating you to make sure that you can supply them with what they need to be a rockstar.
So when you get somebody asking you those types of questions, like buckle the hell up and make it a good offer because they're, they're going to be a game changer.
Is there any, and this is moving off, off topic a little bit, but there, are there any red flags that you hear and you're like, Nope, this guy's
out or girl?
Yeah. So I think a lot of complaining like vibes, like what are vibes, like, are you super complaining? Are you just like trash talking the old place? It's like basic stuff. And,, I genuinely mean this. I'm not exaggerating about this at all. If your eyes don't light up when I'm talking about the role, like, that is a, that's a non hire.
Easiest example. Well, we've all felt that. I mean, that's not, that's not a crazy thing to say. I
mean, we've all felt that. No, it's not, but people still hire, they still hire that person. And they try to convince them that this is the right role, and I just don't do it anymore. Like, I had someone today that was like, they came in for an ISR interview.
They get in there and they're, they're like, they didn't want it. They're an in home salesperson for like roofing. Like, I'm not, I'm not going to give them anything that they want. This is a phone's sales position. And, and he kept trying to, like, he just really needs a job. I can totally receive that.
Yes. But like he's taking this out of an act of desperation, not out of the, I really want this role. So we, it's not gonna be higher, like, I feel for him personally, but like, Mm-Hmm. , if his eyes weren't lighting up, but I would've had to convince him that this was the right role for him.
And I used to sell people on the role, and now I sell people on the company. And, I think that's a really important distinction, because if your, if your candidate flow is really low, then you are selling people on the roll, as well as the company. Like, hey, here's why you should be a sales plumber, you can make a lot of money, you can blah blah blah blah blah.
And like, yeah, that's certainly a part of it, but like, do you like talking to customers all day long? , do you want to be able to present options? , this is what that looks like. Do you, do you want that? Does that excite you? Are you hungry? Do
you, yeah. Do you like
being out there? Are you entrepreneurial?
Are you scrappy? Or would you rather, like, be working on pipes? Like, neither one's right or wrong. But, like, if I try to convince you to take something, you're not going to be a rock star. Yeah. In that role. Like, maybe one in
a self driven. That's a good point, because I think when it comes down to it, it's a self driving motivation, right?
Because people are all very intrinsically motivated for whatever reason. Money, status, whatever. And if they don't have any, that doesn't visibly show when you're asking them these questions or explaining the company, explaining the positions, explaining the opportunity, then they're not going to suddenly become intrinsically motivated down the line.
It's a good point.
Yeah. Yeah. I think people just don't have the courage to do that mainly. And that's not like a, I'm brave or anything. Like the only reason I have the courage is because we have so much candidate flow. That I'm able to, I'm enabled to have that courage. But like, if I didn't, I'd be in the same boat as everybody else.
Awesome.
Recap 30 employees, HR slash recruiting, focus on recruiting, does a great job at providing your recruitment flow, which then for, therefore flows into getting better candidates, snowballing into a I mean, a better company just in general. An additive culture. Builds more revenue. I love it.
I mean, I, I think, like I said, once we close on this deal, we're going to, we're, we're going to be at a part time hearing shortly, maybe just recruiting, not HR, but just recruiting to help us out.
Yeah. You've convinced me. It's good. And I think just set clear expectations. Like, Hey, you need to talk to 50 people a week.
You need to bring in 20 for interviews. We're going to hire two to three. That's that's ours. You obviously do whatever fits your current like recruitment flow, but like people tends to be the biggest barrier to growth. You can, you can spend more money on leads. You can buy trucks. But people is the barrier.
Mm hmm.
Good people. Good people. Good people's barrier.
Hundred percent sweet. You convinced me. Converted. We did it. We did it. Well, man, that was solid anyway. I feel like, see, I want a third recruiter. Like that's what I want now. Yeah, this was a, this was a good episode. I hope this helped. I hope this helped people.
Recruitment is like a real thing. No approach it like sales. I'm
so excited to implement this. This is, this is on par, this episode's on par for me for as call center, like the minute that we finish up call center. I immediately the next day, well, first I wrote everything down and the next day I'm like, we're doing this, we're doing this, we're doing this, tomorrow my head's going to be spinning with recruiter, need, need part time recruiter, start recruiting for this position, this position, this position.
So, I mean, I'm on board. Yeah, I think setting priorities, setting a scorecard and, and like really setting a process and what I found was helpful. Is like, when we think about, when you think about sales, you have a customer archetype. How do you think about technician archetype? Like, what do they do, right?
Like, who, what are they like? Like our customer, our technician avatar is like scrappy. Entrepreneurial. Entrepreneurial, yeah. Like, like curious, intellectual curiosity. Humility. And then, and then you take that and you, you turn it into a real, a real person. So like, Hey, it's somebody that likes monster drinks.
That's going to roll down the highway, listening to like Christian rock or whatever, like that's one of our archetypes. That is literally one of them. And then there's like three other things they tend to like motocross. They tend to like this. And that's a sales archetype. An install archetype, in the interview, he's going to pull out his phone and he's going to show you pictures of jobs that he's installed.
That's an installer. The moment that happens, that's an installer. Like, immediately, that's an installer. So like, so what we did was we came up with, here's their personality traits, here's the things that they do. And here's the behaviors that you're going to notice when you talk to them. So we did that for every hire in the company.
So that way, cause it's not me out there recruiting initially, I'm not doing the top of funnel. I'm doing the weeding. So like our recruiters need to be armed with the information that they give us the best candidates when they, when they see them. Like how do you identify a top 10 percent hire? 100%. So you create a technician archetype.
Not to do that. Yeah. Cause I mean, we're going from. Eight, nine employees to probably 30, 35 here in two months. So, got to blow it up, man. Go full recruiter mode. Yep. I love
it. Cool. This was good. This was a good episode. All right. Thanks everybody for tuning in. Own and Operated, twice a week, Tuesday and Thursdays.
We're, we're dropping bombs. We probably have to get back and do some business model analysis, so we'll do that next time. And thanks for checking it out. Yeah. Let us know what you want
to hear.
Yep. Appreciate you all. Hit subscribe.
Thanks for tuning in to Owned and Operated, the podcast for home service entrepreneurs. If you enjoyed today's episode, please hit the like button and subscribe to the podcast. If you have any questions or topics you'd like us to cover, feel free to reach out. You can find me on Twitter at at Wilson companies.
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