Wendy Sellers, The HRlady, joined the guys on this episode to give the NO NONSENSE scoop on how human resources is more important than business owners realize. Wendy tells us it should be looked at from a marketing perspective. HR can be an important part of setting up and running a solid company with a great culture. She doesn’t care if you have 5 employees or 500, we all go through cycles of HR needs and figuring out how to stay in compliance BUT also thrive as a business! Did you know our amazing voices can go beyond just the microphone? Yes, we have video! Subscribe to our YouTube channel here!
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Wendy’s Links:
• Website | https://thehrlady.com/
• LinkedIn | @wendythehrlady
• Wendy’s Book | Suck It Up Buttercup
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GOLD NUGGETS:
(08:36) - Navigating HR and Social Media
(16:23) - Leadership Challenges with HR
(27:22) - Interviewing Etiquette and Hiring Tips
(40:38) - Letting Go, RV Adventures, Customer Service
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Previous guests on The Small Business Safari include Amy Lyle, Ben Alexander, Joseph Sission, Jonathan Ellis, Brad Dell, Chris Hanks, C.T. Emerson, Chad Brown, Tracy Moore, Wayne Sherger, David Raymond, Paul Redman, Gabby Meteor, Ryan Dement, Barbara Heil Sonneck, Bryan John, Tom Defore, Rusty Clifton, Duane Johns, Beth Miller, Jason Sleeman, Andy Suggs, Chris Michel, Jon Ostenson, Tommy Breedlove, Rocky Lalvani, Amanda Griffey, Spencer Powell, Joe Perrone, David Lupberger, Duane C. Barney, Dave Moerman, Jim Ryerson, Al Mishkoff, Scott Specker, Mike Claudio and more!
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If you loved this episode try these!
• Are Leaders Born or Trained? – Ron Reich
• Growing Small Business E-Commerce Brands | Tyler Jefcoat
• Adults Need Stickers Too: Leadership Lessons with Brian Gottlieb
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Find our newsletter here! Or at chrislalomia.com
Wendy Sellers, The HRlady, joined the guys on this episode to give the NO NONSENSE scoop on how human resources is more important than business owners realize. Wendy tells us it should be looked at from a marketing perspective. HR can be an important part of setting up and running a solid company with a great culture. She doesn’t care if you have 5 employees or 500, we all go through cycles of HR needs and figuring out how to stay in compliance BUT also thrive as a business! Did you know our amazing voices can go beyond just the microphone? Yes, we have video! Subscribe to our YouTube channel here!
-----
Wendy’s Links:
• Website | https://thehrlady.com/
• LinkedIn | @wendythehrlady
• Wendy’s Book | Suck It Up Buttercup
-----
GOLD NUGGETS:
(08:36) - Navigating HR and Social Media
(16:23) - Leadership Challenges with HR
(27:22) - Interviewing Etiquette and Hiring Tips
(40:38) - Letting Go, RV Adventures, Customer Service
-----
Previous guests on The Small Business Safari include Amy Lyle, Ben Alexander, Joseph Sission, Jonathan Ellis, Brad Dell, Chris Hanks, C.T. Emerson, Chad Brown, Tracy Moore, Wayne Sherger, David Raymond, Paul Redman, Gabby Meteor, Ryan Dement, Barbara Heil Sonneck, Bryan John, Tom Defore, Rusty Clifton, Duane Johns, Beth Miller, Jason Sleeman, Andy Suggs, Chris Michel, Jon Ostenson, Tommy Breedlove, Rocky Lalvani, Amanda Griffey, Spencer Powell, Joe Perrone, David Lupberger, Duane C. Barney, Dave Moerman, Jim Ryerson, Al Mishkoff, Scott Specker, Mike Claudio and more!
-----
If you loved this episode try these!
• Are Leaders Born or Trained? – Ron Reich
• Growing Small Business E-Commerce Brands | Tyler Jefcoat
• Adults Need Stickers Too: Leadership Lessons with Brian Gottlieb
-----
Find our newsletter here! Or at chrislalomia.com
And so you don't need an HR person, but what you do. I recommend having an HR person that's confident, especially to make sure that all the compliance issues are taken care of and making sure that we're actually following the laws we're supposed to be following. But you could train your managers on how to talk to employees, how to hire without breaking the law, how to hire without offending anybody, how to hire without getting desperate and just throwing somebody in the role because you'll do your breathing. Come on in. That's gonna end up in a nightmare in three months or in three days.
Chris Lalomia:I told you she's never met me. I'm just saying.
Alan Wyatt:I'm just saying you're hired.
Wendy Sellers:You're breathing, you're hired. Don't do that, don't do that, don't do that.
Chris Lalomia:Don't do what I'm about to tell you. I did, and that is heard. The guy at 8 am had him at a job site at 7 am. Welcome to the Small Business Safari, where I help guide you to avoid those traps, pitfalls and dangers that lurk when navigating the wild world of small business ownership. I'll share those gold nuggets of information and invite guests to help accelerate your ascent to that mountaintop of success. It's a jungle out there and I wanna help you traverse through the levels of owning your own business that can get you bogged down and distract you from hitting your own personal and professional goals. So strap in Adventure Team and let's take a ride through the Safari and get you to the mountaintop Music playing. Whoo Hell, I just got back. Small Business Safari. We're starting again.
Chris Lalomia:It's not like you were working out, man. No, I had a lot of work. I just came out of my HR department and they said once again Chris, you can't say get back to work, get your head down, quit whining, suck it up, buttercup, you gotta get to work. Uh-oh, that's bad, I guess. So I don't know. That's why we have some help, we have to do, and so I'm so glad I'm back in here we have Wendy Sellers. Welcome back.
Chris Lalomia:That was so good of them again. Throwback Wendy C Tea Show. Ready everybody.
Wendy Sellers:Stop, so close.
Chris Lalomia:Sorry.
Wendy Sellers:Элляpfīaly to HR and honestly in the past. We are changing, but HR usually just sucks. They're there for the company, they're not there for the employee.
Alan Wyatt:That's the title of this podcast.
Wendy Sellers:Yeah, it's like HR usually just sucks. Hr usually just sucks. It's the truth. And to be fair, though, to HR, especially now since the pandemic, there has definitely been a lot of changes, people that only wanted to do compliance and never wanted to deal with employee relations. Many of those have left HR, and I say buy a good riddance, don't let the door hit you on the way out.
Alan Wyatt:I'm really glad to hear that, because Chris is a lot older than us and back in his day HR used to be part of onboarding and recruiting was underneath that and it was all about employee development morale of the whole nine yards. And then it just seemed like it turned into your internal Polit Bureau officer of compliance and I mean it was scary. Hr is scary.
Wendy Sellers:It is, and most of our businesses in the United States are small businesses, so if they even have an HR department or an HR person, that's one thing, and so that's what I really really love to do is I love to teach the average person how to have the HR skills and, at a minimum, keep the company out of court.
Wendy Sellers:And then stop employee turnover by stopping the managers from being jerks. And then let the managers know hey, employees want to talk to you, not HR, so don't send them to HR, not to dog all my HR folks, because there are many people now that are like all right, I know what HR really is supposed to be. Unfortunately, there's just so much compliance that bogs HR down. So a true HR person who's like yes, I'm in this for the employee, I want to increase revenue, I want to increase retention and improve recruiting, yada, yada, yada, that person is usually tied up with all this red tape and compliance that they can't actually do the job that everybody wishes they would do. So it's not cheap to hire a good HR person anymore and so many companies don't necessarily realize that and they go to hire somebody like, oh, $40,000, I'm like two years experience, $75,000, any questions.
Alan Wyatt:That is a position. You get what you pay for in HR, don't you?
Wendy Sellers:Yeah, you really do.
Chris Lalomia:I mean, yeah, we have done that. We jump right into it and started talking about HR and where it all comes from, and we're going to come back to how Wendy started her business, but I do want to talk about that. I've always felt like HR was like insurance. You know, when I was in corporate America it was insurance and payroll and payroll that's right.
Chris Lalomia:So you had to have it because, just in case, a guy hypothetically said he was going to come and shoot everybody and one of the other ladies overheard it and they came to me when it was at SunTrust and I knew this guy and he was an older dude and he was a computer programmer and he said something he shouldn't have. And then bang, because he said that flag on the field, boom, had to go. So I immediately brought my HR partner in, who was one of the best ever Sally Haskellow, who won't listen to this because she's retired. But she came in and said no, chris, you're going to have to put them on two week administrative leave. And I told him that and he got.
Chris Lalomia:So he got obviously got angry and I'm like Ron, you got to slow down, bud. I mean, you got to be sad about this, right, because you can't say that in the workplace, when 50% of the people in the cubes are women, son, you can't sit there and come in there and he goes. Oh, I guess you're right, but I didn't mean it. I mean of course you didn't mean it.
Alan Wyatt:So that's why saying that women are more easily threatened by gun violence in the workplace by a man.
Chris Lalomia:Yeah, did I just violate something?
Wendy Sellers:Well, I'm glad that he questioned you on that, because I was thinking that too over here, I was thinking well, hey, hey, guns a gun. You know violence is going to scare everybody, and you know there's a lot of mental illness in the world and unfortunately, it's not just about trained, teaching people what they can and can't say, it's also about assessing, you know, are these people mentally stable? And so HR is payroll, which, by the way, I can barely add.
Wendy Sellers:So I was never payroll but we're insurance, we're workers comp, we're safety, we're policies, we're procedures, we're recruiting, we're you know, we're the, we're the behavior police, and now we're also a million of other things. We're also supposed to be mental health counselors, and it's like no wonder why the good people that really can do all this stuff are getting paid a lot more and they deserve every minute out of it. And many others are saying peace out, I'm retiring early or I'm just going to change my career because my company is crazy. They expect way too much for me and this. There's no amount of money in the world worth it, and so that's you know. One of the reasons I became a consultant was so I can help more companies instead of just one company who was going to bleed me dry.
Chris Lalomia:All right. So let's take a step back, because this is about people who are thinking about trying to start their own business or scale a business, and what we need to know is the Wendy Sellers story, and so the best part I heard was her first job was an adult daycare. How old were you when you went to work there?
Wendy Sellers:I was in college. So I went to college when I was 17. So I would say probably 17 or 18.
Chris Lalomia:Okay, we've just both did a double take. All right, super genius. Now listen, you can't use big words with us because we didn't get to college for a little while, so we definitely did do it at 17.
Alan Wyatt:But you were working at what's like not there took me a while to get out, and you know that's seven years of my life.
Wendy Sellers:Yeah, so I was. I went to college originally because I have three degrees, because I'm not smart enough to realize, hey, you should have just got one and figured out it was HR. But I digress and I'll be paying that off till I die. So don't, don't go so happy of like, oh yeah, she's smart, she went to school early.
Wendy Sellers:So, beyond social security before she actually pays that stuff off. But you know, I went to school to get a degree in healthcare administration thinking, oh, I want to change the world through healthcare administration. And I quickly realized after I got my first degree in it, while I was working at this adult daycare and then doing an internship at a hospital, to that I was like no way, this is way too slow for me. I cannot sit here with all this compliance and, you know, wait to be told what to do. But I continued getting a masters in it anyways. And then at that adult daycare is when I really said I was like no, this isn't for me. Funny thing is I always joke and my friends joke to that. I'm like I don't really like people that much. How the heck did I end up in HR?
Chris Lalomia:Wendy, I think you're sure she'd say I hurt people Okay.
Wendy Sellers:Yeah.
Chris Lalomia:I hurt people, she can tell she cares. Right here, big heart for me.
Wendy Sellers:The funny thing is I think a lot of HR people end up going through this that we end up joking at conference and stuff that, like I hate people because our cup floats over you know a lot of people.
Chris Lalomia:HR hates people. That could be a title too.
Wendy Sellers:Many people who get into HR thinking they're doing it because they love people end up going, oh my God, I can't do this. I'm like these people are driving me crazy. So it does take a special skill, but I like fixing things and I like putting chaos in organizing it, and so that's how I kind of ended up in HR saying, okay, there's things that need to be done here in this company, and sure, I'm going to be the one to do it. I just got to teach myself real quick. And then I went back and got another degree in HR. Wow.
Alan Wyatt:So the book title Suck it Up, Buttercup. Does that kind of come from all the whiny people that you've had to work with in HR?
Wendy Sellers:You know what it comes from the fact, I used to always say that, too, I used to say suck it up, buttercup. And I thought, okay, I want people to read this book and I want them to think they're going to read it because they're attacking others and making fun of others. And I wanted them to read the book and say, oh crap, I'm part of the problem, and that's what the Suck it Up Buttercup is. It's Suck it Up, buttercup. You might be part of the problem.
Chris Lalomia:Oh, love that book title and that's why because I've used that word too many times or embrace the suck. Now get under that crawl space, get that board put in and let's get out of here. Yeah absolutely.
Alan Wyatt:Construction. So yeah, I mean, what word was that? It wasn't buttercup. I didn't say that one. No, actually trying to keep that one clean.
Chris Lalomia:I did end with get your fatty ass in there, but it was being goody. My sales manager, Wendy. Is that bad? Probably Another violation.
Wendy Sellers:Well, not necessarily. Harassment and discrimination is when it's unwanted. So you?
Alan Wyatt:know that person, so when can Chris?
Chris Lalomia:So it was consensual. So this is one of those things I could say it was consensual that I called him a fatty.
Wendy Sellers:Yeah, I probably want that in writing, that it was consensual.
Chris Lalomia:Oh, my God.
Wendy Sellers:Where people screw up and say, oh yeah, me and him were screwing around and it was consensual, but they don't know about the other employees that walked by and heard it and that's the part that's not consensual and potentially discriminatory, harassing, and you know just your downright shitty behavior.
Chris Lalomia:Yeah, that's true, I had delgation. Thank you, wendy you're welcome. She doesn't even really know me. I mean, I just got to see her speak at a conference. She didn't even get to meet me and she already figured out who I am.
Wendy Sellers:Yeah, I've worked in construction, I know, I know the type.
Alan Wyatt:I mean, don't you think people are just kind of too sensitive today? I mean I know there yeah, let's talk about that there's a lot of crossing the line that shouldn't have been crossed, but at the same time there's just people that just get sensitive about everything and I mean that's what I think is sucking up Buttercup.
Wendy Sellers:I don't know if people are too sensitive. But we do have this thing called social media and, like you know, fake news all over the Internet and the people thinking it's real and it gets people riled up. You know what I mean it really does. It gets people riled up where before the average person didn't have an outlet to, they had a bad day at work, they couldn't go home and post it on Instagram and then get all these crazy people to support them. You know where. Now you have this. You post something on you know any of the social media and people you don't even know are commenting where they're either taking you down or they're supporting your own craziness, and I think that's where it's all coming from. So I just tell people when they are in, you know, in the slumps, like just stay off of social media, go watch like a nature video or something.
Chris Lalomia:So I've found the HomeMark channel and I'm really enjoying that right now to help me decompress. Thank you, alan. Your therapist wasn't available. No, she's on vacation. She's got your phone number blocked, that too. And, funny enough, the door's always locked every time I go there.
Alan Wyatt:It's weird to see a light out there there might be a few things going on.
Chris Lalomia:I'm not sure, but, wendy, you hit on something that I think is interesting in that that is actually at my company, the Trusted Toolbox. Right, it's just a construction company, but we have a social media policy that we have to tell everybody about, just because of what you just mentioned, and my term is always soundbite management. You know, everybody works right in little soundbites with our attention deficit disorder, and I'm the best at it, I'm the hummingbird at it. I'm all over every social media there possibly is as a 50-something year old, that's how I said it, like that, yeah wait a round down, thank you.
Alan Wyatt:So what is the?
Chris Lalomia:social media policy. So it's about posting and what you can and can't post. And if you are a member, you're an employee of the Trusted Toolbox. You have to be sensitive to what you're posting out there and we talk about. You can't post from customers' houses while they're approval. You can't post inappropriate stuff and tag the Trusted Toolbox and when, then we highly we don't put this in writing, but we highly recommend that you don't do dumb shit on social media in your own personal freaking account.
Wendy Sellers:Yeah, no, that's a good piece of advice. It is contentious of piece of advice because people think I have the right to say whatever I want to anybody in the world. You know, especially as an American, and that's not actually the truth. You know, our freedom of speech is not protected in the workplace. Now there's a little bit of protection if you're under a federal workplace, but we won't talk about that here. But the employer can say what you can and cannot, you know, say in the workplace, including social media. And even if it's not at work but you're a highly representative or you have the work shirt on with a logo and you're saying it on your personal social media, it could 100% affect your job. And there have been lawsuits about it where the employees won and where the employees lost. So you know, my piece of advice if you were my friend is like shut your mouth perfect, I actually have a great, great little chicken song.
Chris Lalomia:If you want to, guys want to go out there and Google something. Google chicken sing, shook, the f up song, and I play that everyone's well, well, okay, yeah, work during a sales meeting, especially one of them starts whining about something. I say here, let's listen to this little video, look at this one. Huh, there you go. All right, let's keep going again. I'm in the HR ladies office, so I'm, I'm, you're confessing.
Wendy Sellers:I'm good.
Alan Wyatt:I'm gonna put you on a performance improvement plan.
Chris Lalomia:I'm on a pip yours.
Wendy Sellers:Yours is a bit.
Chris Lalomia:It's a behavior improvement plan actually it's a BA BIP, it's a big behavior improvement plan, you're put on a couple of those in corporate America you know what I'm proud to say. I'd love the joke that I did, but no, I never was, I never. You were called into HR a couple times I have been yeah absolutely, but that was about behavior like me fitting in the culture.
Chris Lalomia:I actually had to go to the. I had to go to the honestly twice. I had to go to our industrial shrink to make sure I was a good fit for a company, for the new position, and to to understand that perhaps my behavior at a southern genteel bank was a little different than what most people were used to. You were a bull in a china shop. I was I. Not only was I a bull in a china shop, I took the door off, the windows off, I ripped it all the china off. And they're like you can't do it like that, chris, I know. Good news is I never swore and I never disrespected anybody but I. But when people are like I'm not really sure that's my job, I'm like I think, I think that's your job. Yeah, no, that's your job, right, because our job is to be a better bank, right, and you're not doing your job.
Wendy Sellers:Boom in HR for that it's funny that you mentioned that, though, because in my book suck it up, buttercup, be a leader, people will follow. I actually have in there how I was a bull in the china shop really it's only bolded in there on one of the pages and, oh yeah, I was rough around the edges. I was very much, very much like you. No offense that I'm done.
Alan Wyatt:I love the tagline be a leader, people will follow.
Wendy Sellers:Right, I know it be a leader people will willingly follow, not that they're, they have to or pretend follow.
Alan Wyatt:You know that's my definition.
Wendy Sellers:Of leadership is when you turn around there's actually people following right, you know they could be following you over a cliff, but they're still following.
Alan Wyatt:It's still leading, just not necessarily in a constructive direction.
Wendy Sellers:I was definitely a bull in China china shop and I would say things like suck it up and things like that, and it backfired. I learned my lesson, but sometimes you just have to go through some of these you know difficult situations in order to say who. I didn't like the way that felt. I'm not gonna do that again. And so I also feel like we, we coddle our young employees and our and our you know, young people in general and I would say, if you're 40 or under, because we don't, we want to stop them from making mistakes and we need them to make the mistake they make the mistake no, it's because the parents and the managers say go, I want to not have you make this mistake.
Wendy Sellers:So I see you about to make it, so I'm gonna stop you. So you don't make it. And it's like no, no, no, let them make it and let them go through how painful that is. So they say, oh, I don't ever want to do that again that's a great line.
Chris Lalomia:I, we we talked about this in sales quite a bit in my company is that when you go on a sales call, you're the manager or you're the coach, and there's two of us, me and the sales guy. I had to tell my guy I'm like, just let them fail. You have to let them fail. I said, I know we're gonna lose a sale. And I said, and it hurts me more than hurts anybody else in this company. I said, but if you don't let him fail, he won't know what it's like to win the next time. You're so right, we're doing that now.
Chris Lalomia:You know and I don't want to get too far into the kids thing because my older and I've clearly not raised them correctly, even though my daughter is a braves fan and we watched that. But you know back when we were kids. You go out and if you were home, you know you would go out, run around, run around, run around, come back and you have dinner. Now you're like, hey, can I go to this person's house? I'm like, well, I don't know their parents, you're not allowed to go there. Well, why not? Well, it's crazy out there. Now we need to have play dates. That was a when I my kids another 25 and 23. But anyway, I bring it down, let's bring it back up. Wendy, when you left corporate America or whatever corporate you will act, did you have, did you have employee? I mean, did you have customers in hand? Did you have a plan that you were gonna do?
Wendy Sellers:No, not really, Not at all. I just I worked for a really great, really great company for most of my career in the architectural engineering industry. So you know, I got very familiar with construction and I loved the professional employees. I loved the, you know, the on the on the ground employees. I loved everything about that company. It kept growing and, you know, after one of the US recessions we got acquired by another firm in the culture change and so that's when I said tap, I'm going to tap out and I'm going to go to another company where I can affect change.
Wendy Sellers:And it was one of the worst companies ever worked for my entire life. The culture was awful, people were on eggshells all the time. Hr was in and out. There was so much turnover in HR. They were beautiful, they were pretty buildings, everything looked right.
Wendy Sellers:But it was awful and I was like I'm not even going to make it through a year here, but I'm going to make them fire me because there is no way I'm going to go ahead and give them the gratitude of not giving me some kind of severance and unemployment. And at that point in time I was probably only a couple months in and I was like I'm out. I'll do my job, but I'm going to start setting up my business and I just started networking, ended up meeting a consultant who had a big client who needed help and so one of my first clients. Honestly, I ended up almost be. I ended up being full time HR, but I was able to start developing, figuring out how to run a business, gave myself an X amount of time with that first client and then just got out and started beating the streets and speaking for free and helping people and referrals started coming in. It's all about relationships.
Alan Wyatt:Yeah, who's your target client?
Wendy Sellers:Honestly, anybody would breathing human beings that you really narrowed it down. Yeah, I've really narrowed, it down.
Alan Wyatt:You're a niche HR person. Yeah, I really am not a niche.
Wendy Sellers:I would say you know. So my business has changed. In the beginning I've been in business a little over 10 years now, and when I started I helped the small businesses mainly just small businesses that didn't have HR departments, and I was their HR consultant on on call almost 24 seven. It was fun, but it was also exhausting. And so in the past couple years really, the pandemic has has propelled me this to this direction where I'm mainly doing management training and any type of type of industry, whether they have HR or not.
Wendy Sellers:I go in and do management training, from new managers to seasoned executives. So you know we can talk about increasing every tension and stopping the turnover. That's the biggest thing that has been happening, and I know that's it's going to be awful to say, but the pandemic helped my, my cause and my vision, because in the past, before the pandemic, companies weren't as worried about attracting and retaining employees, and now they are. And so they're like Okay, what? How can we stop the bleeding here? I'm like, how about you hire or train your managers to be managers? And now they're going Okay, we'll listen. I know you've been saying this forever, but we'll finally listen now. So that's, you know, I still do HR consulting but I get to pick and choose who I work with. But I mainly do training and conference speaking all over the country.
Alan Wyatt:So quick question, since a lot of our listeners are thinking about starting a business or they're new in business and you need that HR support. You need that HR help from employee one, but you can't afford it. So give some advice to somebody who's you know. At what point do you? Can you justify in house? You know the consulting? What do you do with employee one, two, three, four, five, you know?
Wendy Sellers:Yeah, so it's. The old, old, old rule of thumb was like if you had 50 or more employees, you would get in it. You'd hire somebody for HR. I've seen companies at 17 employers hire somebody. I've seen companies at 100 employees that they just have a really good leadership team that took on the HR duties, that they didn't have a full time HR person.
Wendy Sellers:But you know, you don't need an HR person to train your managers. You can hire consultants. You can, you know, go online to all these training companies. You can hire myself, and so you don't need an HR person. But what you do, I recommend having an HR person that's confident, especially to make sure that all the compliance issues are taken care of and making sure that we're actually following the laws we're supposed to be following. But you could train your managers on how to talk to employees, how to hire without breaking the law, how to hire without offending anybody, how to hire without getting desperate and just throwing somebody in the role because you'll do your breathing, come on in. That's gonna end up in a nightmare in three months three days.
Chris Lalomia:I told you she's never met me.
Alan Wyatt:I'm just saying. I'm just saying you're hired, you're hired.
Chris Lalomia:Okay, perfect, don't do that, Don't do that, don't do what I'm about to tell you. I did, and that is where the guy at 8am had him at a job site at 7am. I mean, if he had all the skills.
Wendy Sellers:That's fine, that's great, but the interview better lasted more than two minutes.
Chris Lalomia:Right, I know it's got to take longer and yeah, no, we, we have a pretty exhaustive interview process for our guys in the beginning, but it might say exhaustive, especially in construction. We're, you know we're at 45 minutes because those guys won't sit there much longer than that. Anyway, but we have to have the background check in hand before we go out as well.
Wendy Sellers:Yeah, as long as I mean an interview could can last 10 minutes or it can last four hours. I just tell everybody, just get prepared for it in advance and start training your admin staff to staff to help out at least with the initial resume selection interviews. You can standardize questions that you ask of all candidates, including about like visas or you are you legal to work in the United States? When can you start? What's the pay? Anybody can ask that, but you do have to teach that admin team and your managers what they cannot ask so you don't get yourself in trouble.
Chris Lalomia:All right, let's hit them. Give us some of the questions you can ask just off the top of your head, because a lot of these guys you're probably out there one man, two man shop three man, three person shop three get four lady. What are questions you can ask?
Wendy Sellers:So you can ask things like where were you born? Oh, that's a cool accent. Where were you born? You know, even though you didn't mean that like in the way of a discrimination, they don't know that and they can now accuse you of discrimination. How old are you? Oh, what year did you go to high school? You know you can't be asking things like that hey, do you have any disabilities? You shouldn't be asking things like that. Now they could put on their application or they could be telling you hey, I do need an accommodation. You, you still go through the interview and you deal with that later. You know things about their, their, their gender, their gender orientation, marriage status oh, my goodness, so many people ask about marriage status. Right, who takes care of your kids? That's none of your business. Here's the job description. Can you do it? Thanks, see you tomorrow.
Chris Lalomia:Yeah, that one. That's a great. That's the one I was looking for because it seems innocent. But I had to train my operations manager to not ask that question. I'm like you can't ask if they're married or not, and usually we're here hiring carpenters, drywall guys, handymen in my business. So it seems like an innocent question where you're just trying to make a connection. And I told him like dude, you can't ask that question.
Wendy Sellers:Yeah, now the other thing is then I have one other one, but for our listeners that are hearing this, your candidates might bring it up and you just don't continue the conversation, just be like thanks, that's not part of our interview process and you just keep moving along, you know, because they're human and they want to get to know you too. And please, please, please. I know everybody's listening from all over the country and possibly further, but you should not be asking about arrest. It's convictions that matter, not arrest. So have you ever been arrested, right Illegal question, no matter where you're at in the United States. And now you your application, might, might be able to say have you been convicted of a crime and if so, you know when? Now it does depend on what state you live on in now, because a lot of the states are. That is now illegal to ask about convictions until after you have made a conditional job.
Chris Lalomia:All right, let me ask this question. Can I ask this question? So I asked questions, questions anyway, and if I googled you, what would come up? Can I ask that question?
Wendy Sellers:Yeah, I guess you could ask that. But my question to you is why are you asking that?
Chris Lalomia:because bugshots comm is out there. That's and that's how we found out a lot of stuff about people, because we always do their name.
Wendy Sellers:I wanted um, I Probably wouldn't ask that in an interview for that case, because you are trying to find the answer to a question that you're not supposed To be asking. So, remember, somebody could have a mugshot and have been wrongly arrested, so now you're holding them accountable because of a racist police officer. You know. So you know you got to think about the world that we're in and that you know the three of us that are on here are white and we have privilege, and so you have to make sure that you know. If you like it or not, we do, and so you need to make sure that you're training your managers to Understand oh well, they had a mugshot, so that means that they're a bad person.
Wendy Sellers:No, no, no, no, no. You might think about that in your skin color, but not in somebody else's or, depending on where they're from, their accent, their age, their education. So please do not ever, ever, ever, ever, ever ask about arrests. Some of you may want be able to legally ask about convictions, but please check your state laws, because a lot more states have laws that you cannot Ask about convictions until you've made a job offer, a contingent job, conditional job offer, sorry right, that's.
Chris Lalomia:That's when we go for the background check with the conditional job offer. Yeah, it seems like such a waste of time.
Alan Wyatt:What we just talked about, no, no, no. I mean, if you can't ask about a conviction, I understand about the arrest, that makes perfect sense. But yeah, I didn't ask about a conviction, you know what you can do instead.
Wendy Sellers:And this is what I tell people, because if there's still like no, we have these policies and we, you know, we'll pull the, we'll pull the job offer because, whatever, we're on a government contract and we need this stuff. So I just put it in the job ad like FYI, we do conduct Background checks and this is our policy and we are strict about it.
Chris Lalomia:So here's the gold nugget if you've never put an ad out, you've got to put that in there. Yeah, you must be willing to submit to a background check, and that will.
Wendy Sellers:And this is our policy, not just about submitting to a background check, but this is our policy, or you can refer them maybe to it. Maybe you create a career page for your company and then you explain your policy on your careers page and you refer to that in the job ad. Because I know many organizations that say we conduct background checks but please, we are willing to hire people who are reformed. So please be honest with it and with us in your interview.
Chris Lalomia:Well, that's a good one, I'm thinking for a minute. Not reformed, because there's there's a couple no-nos. I mean, there's for us, we have hired guys and but it was 20 years ago and it was, it was marijuana and I'm like, okay, you know, we'll let that go. Other stuff you know domestic violence is a hundred percent. No, no, especially my world, because we go into people's houses.
Alan Wyatt:Yeah you think that?
Chris Lalomia:could be a tough one. Yeah, that's impossible. I mean, that's just. That's just. I'm sorry, man, you're gonna have to go find something else.
Wendy Sellers:Yep, but not with this company. My advice is just be consistent Don't favor one person or another, because you'll get yourself in hot water in the discrimination and bias territory so I have a question on the flip side of this thing.
Alan Wyatt:So the, the, the common wisdom and I even heard mark Cuban say this at the other day is to hire slow and fire quick. And we joke about it here because you know, chris is hires pretty quick. It doesn't seem like you can fire quick without getting yourself in trouble.
Wendy Sellers:So you know I actually use that piece of advice to hire slow, fire fast. And then I go kidding within reason. So you know, hiring slow means taking your time, getting your act together, getting the job description, creating all the interview questions. So you know, admin people or somebody with less experience could jump in and help, and you're asking all the candidates pretty much the same thing, at least to start off with until conversations get going. What? What they mean at least what I mean when I say fire fast is listen, if you're doing a true Onboarding plan, you hired somebody and say, okay, in your first 30 days, these are the things we're gonna train you on. Here's the feedback we're gonna give you. You know, blah, blah, blah. If you actually do the onboarding process, you would know by day 15 or 30 or 65 or 90 that, meh, this person's not gonna work out.
Wendy Sellers:And so a little quick Nugget here for you is that 90 day Window, the. The reason that 90 days is selected is in most states. In the United States, if you are let go From your job before 90 days, you can't collect unemployment. That's where that whole 90 day comes from. It's ridiculous. I say no unless you're in a contract, which most of us are not. You are always on probation, so stop using the word probation to. It's the most Negative word there is. Welcome to the team.
Wendy Sellers:We just spent five thousand dollars to get you and now you're on probation and we're gonna give you a no feedback and we're not gonna train you and we're gonna be mad at you a day 89 89.
Chris Lalomia:It is no. Yeah, I'm sorry, here's your 89 day.
Chris Lalomia:I set him up for an idea review and bring both how it's there's in and go hey, here's your 89 day review. Goodbye, good luck, get out of here. No, our onboarding process now is very stout, meaning that we know, and I just had this happen. We just hired another guy and within six days done, and it was because he figured out that our culture was strong, this wasn't a place he would be able to perform and hit his personal's goals, and Opted out and you go oh wow, it must have been your culture. And no, it was exactly our culture that we expect people to do what they say they can do and have accountability.
Chris Lalomia:So he washed himself out. You wash himself out and that's what's happening right now with the way we're doing it. Yeah, it's been, it's been very powerful because we've been, we've been. We were so focused on at the beginning and how we did it. So Not saying kudos to me, but it's I Was trying to get. When he's know that, hey look, he's not so bad, all right, but maybe is that bad.
Wendy Sellers:I'm gonna hold that judgment for a little bit longer.
Chris Lalomia:We're still in session. Oh my girl, hey, now, no, no, the hand signals here. I mean it goes on YouTube, buddy, all right. So, wendy, you got a podcast as well. Tell us a little bit more about the podcast you do, and and who would want to listen to that and check it out.
Wendy Sellers:Sure, so I have a couple podcasts. I do a podcast for a training company or a training advantage. That's how I started in the podcast world. I'm their host and then I just started my own. At the same time we were kind of duplicating efforts and so I have a podcast, the HR Lady podcast. It's on many sites. I have recently changed my format a little bit, so I'm doing more about just like once a week, 15, 20 minutes. Sometimes they're a little bit longer. Some have interviews, some don't. I have a co-host, but we're very real and honest and we want to help anybody in who's a business owner, who's a leader, who's a management, who wants to be in HR, who has the HR hat just talk about real things and some advice. And so I also just started a new mini series within that HR podcast called Fuck Around and Find Out, so what?
Chris Lalomia:we talk about F-A-F-O, baby.
Wendy Sellers:Yeah, F-A-F-O. That's exactly what we I'm getting shirts made.
Chris Lalomia:That would be nice.
Wendy Sellers:But what we talk about on there is, you know, real case scenarios of employers who didn't care and they got sued for it. And you know we're also talking about some other real life issues too that business people go through every single day and so definitely tune in. It's very light, it's not always for little ears, but I do warn people when there is a cursing in there.
Chris Lalomia:All right. So I went to check that podcast out and here's literally how it starts. This podcast is going to be full of lots of bad words. It starts just like that. I'm like did I just get on true crime podcast or something?
Wendy Sellers:Yup, that's my co-host, JC. He's an amazing MC and I say, hey, I need to do a warning on this, and so he recorded it and then he edited his voice. I'm like this was. I said this scared me when I heard it.
Chris Lalomia:I'm telling you, hopefully I got close, but it's that scary. But no, check those podcasts out everybody. It's a good podcast. I've listened to a couple, I'm sure like a lot of us, you know, but I mean of course you listen to ours all the time, every time.
Chris Lalomia:But I'm sure what you do is probably a lot more like what I do. Guys, you go in, you go out, you pick off some topics, you come back to them. These guys are fun. They're giving me some good information. Wendy's definitely given me a lot of good information. I've actually brought some of this stuff into my house, into my company before, so that's why I asked her to come onto our podcast and share some of her great gold nuggets. But, wendy, we are coming to the end of this amazing session of talking about all the things Chris has to be growing in this business. I mean all the things that other people should be doing better. How else can we find the HR lady out there?
Wendy Sellers:Sure, the best way to find me is my website, the HR ladycom. And then I'm a LinkedIn junkie too, so find me on LinkedIn Wendy's sellers, the HR lady and also. I have a couple books, as we've talked about. Suck it up, Buttercup, be a leader. People will follow. So you can get it on my website as a PDF or on Amazon. And then I have another book about how to deal with crappy leaders and jerks at work, and that is also on Amazon or on my website, the HR ladycom.
Chris Lalomia:Definitely compelling titles right, Suck it up.
Alan Wyatt:You know exactly what you're going to get with those books. Yes, there is zero sugarcoating here.
Wendy Sellers:But you know my purpose in life is to just help, you know, with employee retention on the employee side and the business side. So I don't work with companies that are jerks. If you want to stop being a jerk and you want to actually listen to me, I will help you. But if you're going to use every excuse under the moon to not change your practices, go find somebody else to take your money, because I won't do it.
Chris Lalomia:All right, I love that stuff. This has all been great. All right, when do we can't let you go without asking our famous four questions? Number one what is a book you would recommend to our audience?
Wendy Sellers:Oh boy, it's right over here. It is from Mark Manson. Everything is fucked.
Chris Lalomia:Seems to be a theme here. Oh my God, you went to party with him.
Alan Wyatt:I went to party with you, oh boy.
Chris Lalomia:All right, mark Manson, everybody.
Wendy Sellers:It's actually not what you think, but check it out, look it up.
Alan Wyatt:What's it about?
Wendy Sellers:It's really about the fact that, you know, maybe we stress over the little things a little too much and so maybe we just need to let some things go, and that's what I have personally done. I made some lot of changes in my life the past couple of years and trying to get stress off my plate and focus on people that want to be helped and helping them, and not the other people that don't want to be helped.
Chris Lalomia:Nice, love it. Great, all right. And what is the favorite feature of your house? Because I'm in construction. You were in construction helping people out. You love that stuff. So what's a great feature of your favorite feature of your house?
Wendy Sellers:The favorite feature of my house is that it's on wheels, because I live in my RV.
Alan Wyatt:She had a little twinkle in her eye when she was answering. So you just travel around the country permanently?
Wendy Sellers:I did so. I currently am stationary since I moved here to St Pete because there's literally no reason to go anywhere else. But in the summer of 2021, I did a cross country road trip in my previous RV my motor home for 69 days by myself, from Florida to California and back. I have a website on that. Of all the crap that happened and there was a lot my website there is wendysellersgodaddysitescom. It's a free site, but it gives you a little bit of the clean version of what happened on my trip and you name it from air conditions blowing out in the middle of the Midwest in July to a mouse living with me to. You wouldn't even believe the things that have happened.
Chris Lalomia:I thought I wanted to do a cross country RV trip to Yellowstone and I think I'm going to have to go watch Wendy's website. You know probably talk me right the hell out of that one.
Wendy Sellers:Yeah, it is Not with the family.
Wendy Sellers:Chris, yeah, that's what happened it sounds like a really great idea and I had an amazing time. It's actually how I ended up here in St Pete I met somebody at. I was staying at wineries and breweries for the great, the good part of it, and I was at a winery at one of my last stops in Kansas down this dirt road, I would have never found this winery ever and I pulled in and these other people pulled in in front of me. We jumped out and started drinking and they said you want to move to St Pete and live in our backyard? I said, yes, I do. I'm on my way.
Chris Lalomia:Oh my God, Wendy, she violated some HR policy there. I'm sure some are not kidding. That's awesome. I just can't believe there's a winery in Kansas. I'm sorry, Kansas All right honestly. Kansas. But yeah, I mean, is it good?
Wendy Sellers:It was good.
Chris Lalomia:It was really good.
Alan Wyatt:It's like canceled by Kansas too. We've got a couple of countries aboard it.
Chris Lalomia:Yeah, we've lost a couple of countries one continent and two states, but we're still going live in a couple of your other continents and some of the states. Thank God, there's 14 continents. Woo, thank you. All right, let's question C. Question C in our what is a customer service pet peeve of yours when you're the customer.
Wendy Sellers:When I'm the customer, it's really just not. It's the follow through. You know the follow up and the follow through. So if it is something where you're spending some good money, you know they should be making sure that there's a follow up, especially if it's a service. Now, if it's a product, that might be something different, but I do want I'm buying something from the internet or from Amazon. When they send me feedback or asking me for feedback, like take your customer's feedback into consideration and change your product, your package, your delivery, whatever it is. But it's the same thing about employee relations. It's like talk to your customers, ask them what they want and then make the changes and then let them know you've made the changes.
Chris Lalomia:Nice, that's a good one. Follow through, I like that one. That's good, all right. Last question Give us a DIY nightmare story. This might happen to be with an RV, and it could be a rolling DIY. That's exactly right.
Wendy Sellers:Yeah, like I said, in my trip in the summer of 2021, you name it it happened to me and I had to fix a lot of things by myself with duct tape on the road in a like Walmart parking lot, and so I hit. The first thing I did is I was backing out of a parking lot that I had no business being in and I hit a fence and it took the door off of my storage unit, and so I went and picked it up from the road and threw it in the passenger seat and then later on I put it in together and duct taping everything together, including, you know, the bumper thing that ripped off. So duct tape does work.
Chris Lalomia:All right. Duck tape is your friend. Duck tape your door while going down the highway at 75 miles an hour.
Alan Wyatt:You know you can use that as the podcast title, and people have to listen all the way to the end to get there To get the duct tape.
Chris Lalomia:Yeah, I know, Alan Alan's bummed because we just got some feedback on our podcast that people listen about two thirds of the way through and then drop off.
Alan Wyatt:He's like no no, no, the good stuff happened to the end of the because this is the best baby.
Chris Lalomia:I mean, the whole thing is the best. It's the best 45 minutes of these people's lives. Okay, I'm just joking. You better be listening to this sucker on 1.25 or at least 1.5 speed. That's what I do. That's ridiculous.
Alan Wyatt:It is, you can't absorb it, not quickly enough.
Chris Lalomia:No, all right. Hey, did you learn something today? Because I did, I did. Yep, do we all learn something today? I think so. Yep, we've all learned something today. Wendy lives at Irving. No, that wasn't it, it was actually just a couple more things.
Alan Wyatt:Wendy's a badass because that's what I learned.
Chris Lalomia:Honestly, yeah, man, I'm telling you great stuff. This was awesome. If you don't learn something today, that's on you, because Wendy dropped it. Go check out her website, go check out her stuff, listen to her podcast. Hopefully, you got something out of this one. We will see you next time because we got a rock and roll. Get out of here because I got to go fix some things in my office.
Alan Wyatt:Got to go out of here later Cheers. Thanks for watching.