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Matt, welcome back to The Site Shed podcast. It's good to be

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back, mate. We had a bit of a technical glitch in the last episode, so

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we're back doing a re record, but it's all looking fine right now. So fingers

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crossed. I think we're. Think we got it this time. Maybe. We'll

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see. Hopefully. Hopefully we haven't jinxed it. So you were on a recent

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episode back in episode 383, where

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we talked about some virtual estimating techniques and

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things like that. By the way, that was very well received from a lot of

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our clients in the solar space because be

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close to home with what they do, trying to give those estimates before they go

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out to site. It's wasting time and stuff like that. Do you guys did miss

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that? Go and check it out. Super valuable, especially if you're in a situation where

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you're sending sales text out to jobs to

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quote on things. It's a really good conversation on how to pre qualify and make

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sure you're not wasting time. So that was episode

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383.

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Anyway, today, Matt, we're here to talk about how to hire jury a labor

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shortage. And before we jump in this episode, I want you to give us a

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bit of background on this because I know you've certainly got some runs on the

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board in this space so far away. Yeah, it's

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funny. We first met on a topic that I don't think I've ever

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talked about publicly, which is the virtual. We

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built that model pre pandemic

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and had it kind of close to our chest, so we started there. And the

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thing that I always talk about we're talking about now, which is

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hiring, how to recruit a players, how to take control of

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your company, how to motivate this concept

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of filling gaps in the company, right.

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Bringing in the right people and then maximizing their output.

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How do you get things to become full circle where it's like, I got tons

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of people, they're doing the right things and they're motivated

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and maximized in the company. That's where really the

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sweet spot is for a lot of business owners when they can find it. Yeah,

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man, it's one of those things that's just forever relevant, especially

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in my own busiNess. Perhaps the reason I had you on this show was selfishly,

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I don't know, but I'm sure no one else has problems with productive team members.

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Right? Anyway, so, man, I'm keen to hear a little

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bit about. Obviously, you build out a really defined and intricate

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course on how to find candidates and that kind of stuff. Tell us a little

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bit about that journey, how you got to there and what that is. Yeah, my

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stuff is interesting because I don't see myself as a coach. I never

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really set out to consult people. I liked being in my business and kind of

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just having the freedom to do things the way that I wanted to see them

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done with the team and specifically

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hiring. We've been in the industry for four generations,

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so at this point, 104 years, and it seemed

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like, gosh, it would have been about five or six years ago. Everything I

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knew that was like, my tried and true ways of

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staffing projects didn't work. And so

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we're in this huge growth expansion mode. I'm selling

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jobs left and right. We're high fiving at all the sales meetings.

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100 grand, 300 grand. I mean, it was crazy. We

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were getting deposited. What's that, Wolf? Of Wall

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Street? It felt like it was the pinnacle of the company. It

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was like we were doing a couple celebrity homes. We were doing some government work.

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A big government national cemetery that a ribbon

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cutting. Like, I felt like we had made it. And I

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wasn't paying attention to my team saying, hey, look, we're posting on

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Craigslist. We're not finding anybody. We're posting on. Indeed. I'm like, don't worry about it.

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We're selling so much. Are you kidding me? The problem was everyone else was selling

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a lot, too. We weren't the only ones. And so it created this huge

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demand for people. And I got spanked. I got spanked

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in a big way. I lost about a million bucks in the span of three

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weeks. My team had this meeting. Yeah, we had this

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meeting. I still get tight in my stomach when I talk about it, but

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they brought me into this meeting because they had been telling me, and finally, all

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my managers, they pull me in, like site superintendent, project manager,

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OpS manager. They're like, you need to come to this meeting. They had all these

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whiteboards, right? And one whiteboard was, like, hand drawn. Was

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all the clients canceling contracts. The other were all the jobs we were

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going to go over on because we didn't have enough people. The other was

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liquidated damages on commercial. It was like a

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train with so much momentum, and it's like, you got to

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stop it, and you're going, oh, shoot, it's going to take me a mile before

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this thing stops. And every foot that this thing goes is just

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bleeding out. And so I had probably the lowest

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point in my business life was leaving that

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meeting, and it was because I didn't know how to hire. Like, I

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hadn't modernized the hiring side of things,

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and so I made it my mission. In that moment. I said, I'll never,

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ever not know how to hire. And so I just

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went crazy. I mean, I hired recruiters. I read books. I

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traveled the country. I hired mentors, and I spent

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hundreds of thousands of dollars, I think, very quickly, over a

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million in the course of, like, a year and a half. Just being obsessed

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with. I took every interview, I vetted every recruiter.

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I had assistance. But I was like, I got to understand how this works

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because it was, like, what? I called it the Golden

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Prison, because I had millions of dollars of

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backlog work at 25% net margin,

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and it was on a wall, and I literally

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just couldn't get it done. I couldn't subcontract it. I

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couldn't give the jobs away. It was

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simultaneously the best and worst feeling. And so that sparked a

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journey which turned into some things that I had figured

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out over the course of a few years. I

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then went on to help people. I knew local

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contractors that were like, hey, Matt, you don't seem as stressed. And I'm like, no,

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we've hired four or five people this week. We hired another three. We hired another

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two, and we're scaling the team, and we're hiring the right

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people. And then, so it just evolved, like, people I knew to

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trade associations. I was doing presentations. I didn'T really know that I

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had built anything unique until I started going out into the

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world and showing it and being like. I'd be like, all right,

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Geofence, your competitors have a career video.

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Incentivize your team. Do an honest employee audit. And everyone's looking at me like, I

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got three heads. They're like, what is that stuff? And I'm like, well,

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that's the stuff that works. So that's kind of the long and

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the short of it. And then we made it into a course when my wife

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sat me down, and she's like, you can't be, like, doing coffee dinners for

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contractors. Like, we got a daughter. You need to be home. And that was the

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inspiration for making it a course. Sure. So talk us through it. What

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are the different stages? Or how do you want

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to drive this conversation? Well, so I

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think successful hiring, we break it up into four parts, because I'm not the

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brightest guy in the world. So if you get six or seven steps, you lose

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me. So how do you find candidates is the first step. How do you

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build a really big pipeline? Number two is, how do

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you vet them? How do you quickly sift, sort and screen?

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And what I mean by that is how do you take the good ones and

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elevate them right to the front of the line? And how do you take the

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ones that you're questionable about and make sure they're properly vetted? So we had to

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build this kind of double sided system. And then how do you hire,

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like, I'm going to hire someone? Do I just email them the offer letter?

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Well, probably not. In this day and age,

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if you don't want them to get a 10% raise where they're at and never

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leave, you probably want to do it differently. And then how do you

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retain, how do you make sure that they're going to be here 3510

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years from now? What does that look like? And the retention we cover

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in depth. It's not fully. Fully. Like, we don't go into everything. My

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main thing is, like most business owners, if you've got two or

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three employees, you have some ability to

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hire. You just don't have a predictable ability. It's like, kind of like

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saying you've got a project here And a project there. It's like

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you're building it. You got the core components, but if you can't do it

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on demand, there's that feeling of helplessness.

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Interesting. Yeah. And so the big thing we find most people

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struggle is on the find section. So we have 37 different

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ways, proven ways to find candidates, and we built that.

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That's just to find candidates. I thought that was the whole process. No, that's

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just 37. It's just how you find them. Then we go into the vetting. There's

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the informal formal interview. There's certain questions to ask. There's a

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skills assessment. I mean, we can cover as much or as little of all these

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things as you'd like. Sure. Yeah.

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I think one of the 37 ways to find candidates

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is definitely interesting. So I think most people sort of lend

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themselves to just posting an ad on a job board and then be disappointed when

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they either don't find someone great or just getting a bunch of dub

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inquiries or Facebook groups or something like that.

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Yeah, there's a formula to it. Right. So, like,

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let's take a job board. One of the things we found

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is, before you post on a job board, there's two audits that you want to

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do. One of them we call is a competitor audit, and the other is an

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honest employee audit. So if I can understand

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what competitors are doing, and a competitor

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could be in a big city 200 miles away, but if I look at what

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are all of the companies out there that are big and hiring

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successfully? What are they offering? What are they putting their job

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posting? What are the incentives? I can start to see

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patterns and trends and I can bring those to my local workforce. Like, for

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example, we have some clients that will do like 410 hours,

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days. We have some that will do. They're

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leveraging the fact that all of their jobs are very unique or different,

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or the fact that they don't travel further than 30 or 40 minutes.

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We call the exercise, would you work for you? And it's like, what are the

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reasons why somebody might want to come work for you? And one of

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the ways you can figure that out is by interviewing some of

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the people that have been in your company the longest. So it's always fascinating when

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we do this for companies, we'll ask them. We'll say, what makes you great?

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First they have to think about it because they don't know it offhand. Then they

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go, well, we do this or we do that. Very few of them have those

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things on the actual job board. Right. But

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even fewer. I'll ask the same question to everybody. Who's the

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longest tenured person you have at your company? Oh, it's Michael. He's been here 15

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years. Or it's Jane. She's been here nine years. Okay.

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Why is Jane showing up every day? What does Jane love about your company?

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And is what Jane loves the same thing as what you just told me?

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In doing this literally hundreds of times, we found that what

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Jane Loves is not what the company thinks

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Jane loves. Right. And so you expose these

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things that make a company unique, and then you're able to put those on the

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job description. Not to mention if you have a career

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video, a short 92nd to about

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two minute long video that showcases you. It's like,

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compare that job description and job posting

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to just a standard, like top pay. This is a position.

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The five things we want from you. It's night and day, and so you're going

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to get a much higher application rate. Awesome.

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Doing things that are a little bit different, I'm guessing, is the key

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here. There's so much noise out there in the recruitment space. There's so many people

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competing for the team members that you're trying to get as

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well. It's marketing 101, right? If you're saying the same shit, no. One'S going to

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hear, yeah, I would agree with that 100%. And

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a lot of the best marketers make great recruiters because

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they understand the fundamentals, like speed to lead when we do

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this for clients, we guarantee that we're going to respond to the candidate within

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three to five minutes. Most companies are like, how fast are you

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responding to your applicants? They're like, well, sometimes it's

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ten minutes or 15. I'm like, what about the other times? They're like, well, it

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might be a couple of hours. I'm like, well, what do you think they're doing

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after they don't hear back? They're going to line up four or five

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interviews and then they're going to stop for a little bit, see how they go.

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So you want to be the first interview in a perfect world, the

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dream Company. But there's technology now, like words

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like geofencing huge. The ability to put

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an invisible fence around a competitor or

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a supplier. And if they pull out their mobile device and they're

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on know, seeing your hiring mean there's so many tools,

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right? Insta on social media or

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something. So geofencing runs,

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it's like almost like a Facebook ads platform. It's its own

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user interface and basically you can position and place

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ads through. It's geo

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targeted. So it's like if I cross through this building and walk in and I'm

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on my phone or my tablet or my desktop, I will see,

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I can run display ads. And so if you knew

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on what. Platform, though, or just on Google. No. So

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in the US, there's a bunch of them. Like, there's ground truth and there's a

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few others. But yeah. The big thing is

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making sure that whoever's running the ads knows how to do it specifically

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for hiring. A lot of people use it in the event

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space. They'll geofence a big trade show

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with like, maybe they didn't sponsor the event, but they want everyone to see their

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product, so they'll geofence it and blast product ads.

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Kind of a shortcut. It's one of the ways in which I think the technology

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grew quickly, but we've seen great success in the hiring side using

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it. Yeah, it's cool. It's an interesting evolution, for sure.

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I don't even know if we have geofencing in Australia, but that's such a cool

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idea. I'm guessing, though, it only really worked if you're logged into the platform though,

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right? Just internet. So anything

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browsing on your phone, it's the same way you'd see like a display ad, but

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there's a lot of old school things. So we have another

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00:14:09,936 --> 00:14:13,354
example that works really well is really targeted

234
00:14:13,402 --> 00:14:17,166
incentives. So we took a company when we were building out

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the course, and we were doing a lot of beta testing on how to make

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things really digestible. I took a company that I

237
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knew. Two companies were very similar. I went to one of them,

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and I convinced the owner. I said, we're going to offer everyone

239
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$500 for anybody that they refer,

240
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right? And I said, I'll pay out of pocket. I said, I want to run

241
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an experiment. So we brought everyone together. It was generic. It was like $500.

242
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People were excited. We got, I think, one or two hires from

243
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that. My friend ended up not taking my money. He's like, man, I'm

244
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so happy. He's like, don't pay. He's like, I'll pay. He just got me two

245
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hires. But on the other company, similar size.

246
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What we did is we sat one on one with each person for about

247
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five or ten minutes. We brought up the program. We said, hey, we want

248
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to hire and grow and find more people like you.

249
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And so we personalized each incentive so we knew that

250
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this person really loves to travel with his wife. So we say, hey, we're doing

251
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a $500 weekend getaway with you and your wife. If you find somebody, then the

252
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next person is a sports fan. We sit them down, we're like, hey, if you

253
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happen to find somebody, we're going to get you great seats to this sports team.

254
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Next one really enjoyed whiskey. We're like, hey, we're going to get you to this

255
00:15:29,052 --> 00:15:32,726
whiskey tasting event if you find somebody. So we did that experiment over

256
00:15:32,748 --> 00:15:36,182
ten times. What we found was almost a four

257
00:15:36,236 --> 00:15:39,560
X in the number of applicants and people brought in

258
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because we did two things. Number one, we deputized or

259
00:15:43,616 --> 00:15:47,386
incentivized the current team, which everyone should do. But then we took it

260
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a step further and we made it personal to what they wanted. So now

261
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they're doing it for the big payoff that is for them. So

262
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that's kind of the theme when it comes to hiring, is it's

263
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like half the stuff. If you just do it, you're going to get a good

264
00:16:01,732 --> 00:16:05,422
result. But then if you do it at the highest level

265
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and you really understand the psychology behind it, you're going to blow everybody else

266
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out of the water. How do you address the lack of talent in the overall

267
00:16:12,846 --> 00:16:16,274
pool? I see this incentive model

268
00:16:16,392 --> 00:16:20,162
working great for people that have friends and colleagues

269
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and things like that that might be within a similar industry to them or profession

270
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or whatever it is. But then if you're, like, looking for

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candidates in the current climate where there isn't a lot of

272
00:16:31,484 --> 00:16:35,194
them in some industries. How do you address that? Well, we get this question

273
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all the time. They're like, really? Is there people out there? When we do this

274
00:16:38,128 --> 00:16:41,766
for people, we have a 60 day money back guarantee, and people think we're

275
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crazy. They're like, can you really do this in this small town in the Midwest

276
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or in this big city, whatever it may be? And

277
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one of the things we've done

278
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is we look at the number of licensed contractors in that area.

279
00:16:56,068 --> 00:16:59,506
Right? So I could take a small town and I can show somebody, look, you

280
00:16:59,528 --> 00:17:02,658
have just in your small town, you have 73

281
00:17:02,744 --> 00:17:06,020
licensed contractors that are actively doing what you're doing.

282
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So at some point at

283
00:17:09,756 --> 00:17:13,526
scale, you'll find that you might run into this. We've never seen it.

284
00:17:13,628 --> 00:17:17,302
One of the things we've done, we did this with somebody who had an issue.

285
00:17:17,356 --> 00:17:21,066
They were really struggling to find people. I said, all right. So

286
00:17:21,088 --> 00:17:24,938
we built out a strategy for them. We said, we took the list of

287
00:17:25,024 --> 00:17:28,762
all the newly licensed contractors that year that fit

288
00:17:28,816 --> 00:17:32,586
the criteria. This was a concrete contractor. So basically, these are people who are

289
00:17:32,608 --> 00:17:36,378
year one out on their own. I said, we're going to run a campaign. We're

290
00:17:36,394 --> 00:17:39,902
going to call them after the end of the year, after they've paid

291
00:17:39,956 --> 00:17:43,726
taxes. We're going to call all of these people and just see

292
00:17:43,748 --> 00:17:47,422
if they're open to a conversation about joining a company. He hired

293
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two people. Do you want to know why he hired two people? Because they had

294
00:17:50,968 --> 00:17:54,706
paid their taxes. Their wives, both of them exactly the same. They were

295
00:17:54,728 --> 00:17:58,546
pissed. They went, man, by the time I paid my taxes, by

296
00:17:58,568 --> 00:18:01,798
the time I looked at how many hours I worked, and my wife was

297
00:18:01,964 --> 00:18:05,526
complaining the whole time, you've never worked this much. You're never home.

298
00:18:05,628 --> 00:18:09,286
They said, screw it. I just want to go work for somebody. Now, those are

299
00:18:09,308 --> 00:18:13,146
two people that were prime candidatEs. They were qualified, they had their own

300
00:18:13,168 --> 00:18:17,018
licenses, and they did really well. But it was like, because we knew the

301
00:18:17,024 --> 00:18:20,846
strategy, we knew where to find them. So you're right. At some point, all

302
00:18:20,868 --> 00:18:24,634
of these tricks won't work. But the good news is, hardly

303
00:18:24,682 --> 00:18:28,526
anybody's even doing it remotely close to what we're talking about. So

304
00:18:28,548 --> 00:18:30,990
the runway you have is massive.

305
00:18:32,710 --> 00:18:35,330
So then how does the conversation look? I suppose

306
00:18:36,710 --> 00:18:39,650
beyond recruitment, onboarding,

307
00:18:40,950 --> 00:18:44,754
success, journey, retention, et cetera? Well, it's pretty

308
00:18:44,792 --> 00:18:48,146
simple. So you get to the lead quickly. So you have a bunch of ways

309
00:18:48,168 --> 00:18:51,814
to find candidates, right? 37 is what we have right now. It's actually more than

310
00:18:51,852 --> 00:18:55,558
that. But you fill your pipeline, and then you quickly sort

311
00:18:55,644 --> 00:18:59,222
and sift and screen right. Good ones go right to the top, mid level

312
00:18:59,276 --> 00:19:02,966
ones. And so you've got the informal, informal interview. Informal

313
00:19:02,998 --> 00:19:06,726
is just asking a few basic questions, getting to them quickly. Formal interviews

314
00:19:06,758 --> 00:19:10,506
a little longer. You got to have a skills assessment. So I don't care if

315
00:19:10,528 --> 00:19:14,378
it's a COO, office manager, anybody

316
00:19:14,544 --> 00:19:18,174
that's hands on, you need a skills assessment. They need to come to your

317
00:19:18,212 --> 00:19:20,814
yard, your office. If you don't have that, they need to come to a job

318
00:19:20,852 --> 00:19:24,414
site, one that's preferably quiet. We got a client, and he's like,

319
00:19:24,452 --> 00:19:28,174
I'm too small. I'm a plumber with two techs. I was like, great,

320
00:19:28,212 --> 00:19:31,890
have them come on your job site from the hours of four to 06:00 p.m.

321
00:19:31,960 --> 00:19:34,946
And just sweat and bend pipe in the back of your truck for 2 hours.

322
00:19:35,048 --> 00:19:38,194
You got to see if they show up. They know what they're doing. But once

323
00:19:38,232 --> 00:19:42,006
you have that skills assessment and you know how to hire, the

324
00:19:42,028 --> 00:19:45,846
best way to hire is like you're closing a sales deal, right? So you

325
00:19:45,868 --> 00:19:49,478
bring them into your office, you show them the offer letter, you go over everything,

326
00:19:49,644 --> 00:19:52,460
and you say, how's this sound? Oh, it sounds good.

327
00:19:52,990 --> 00:19:56,390
Ideally, they've already talked to their husband or wife beforehand,

328
00:19:56,470 --> 00:20:00,122
right. You've sent them the terms bulleted out, not the formal offer

329
00:20:00,176 --> 00:20:03,466
letter. So they can talk to their family or whatever. They come to

330
00:20:03,488 --> 00:20:07,246
you, and you ask them. At the end of it, you say, great, this

331
00:20:07,268 --> 00:20:09,598
sounds so good. All right, so you're going to join the team. They say, yeah,

332
00:20:09,684 --> 00:20:13,086
just let me get this home. You shake their hand and you stop and you

333
00:20:13,108 --> 00:20:16,206
say, is there any reason that you might change your mind? And you pause while

334
00:20:16,228 --> 00:20:19,954
you have their hands shaking, you wait. If there is

335
00:20:19,992 --> 00:20:23,586
something that you might lose out on this

336
00:20:23,608 --> 00:20:27,362
hiring deal, you're going to know in that moment, I've done this 40 times,

337
00:20:27,416 --> 00:20:30,886
and I've literally handled objections. They'll pause and they'll be

338
00:20:30,908 --> 00:20:34,438
like, no. And I'm like, is there anything else that you want to talk about?

339
00:20:34,444 --> 00:20:37,814
And then it opens up another round of like, oh, I'm nervous about this, or,

340
00:20:37,852 --> 00:20:41,686
this wasn't clear. So let's say you've closed that deal. Well,

341
00:20:41,708 --> 00:20:44,170
then the next thing you want to do is you want to onboard them. Well,

342
00:20:44,240 --> 00:20:47,674
and there's a bunch of ways to do this, but the most important thing

343
00:20:47,872 --> 00:20:51,398
is communicate early and communicate often. The easiest framework to

344
00:20:51,424 --> 00:20:55,274
adopt is they come in. Some people do the buddy

345
00:20:55,322 --> 00:20:59,166
system, some people. But in essence, what they got to have is access to all

346
00:20:59,188 --> 00:21:03,022
of their logins, email, all of that stuff,

347
00:21:03,076 --> 00:21:06,322
they need to have a good baseline for

348
00:21:06,376 --> 00:21:10,066
onboarding. But if you schedule a check in the

349
00:21:10,088 --> 00:21:13,714
first two weeks, then the first 30 days, and then after that, three

350
00:21:13,752 --> 00:21:17,454
months, two weeks, 30 days, three months, that's

351
00:21:17,502 --> 00:21:21,186
three check ins in the span of almost four months. Make all of them eligible

352
00:21:21,218 --> 00:21:24,966
for a raise. You will inevitably find that you're going to get

353
00:21:24,988 --> 00:21:28,214
ahead of almost every shortcoming in the company that you might

354
00:21:28,252 --> 00:21:31,880
have. Wow.

355
00:21:32,330 --> 00:21:36,134
So two weeks, 30 days, three months, all eligible

356
00:21:36,182 --> 00:21:39,820
for a raise. All eligible for a raise. Because

357
00:21:40,190 --> 00:21:43,946
what happens is you're motivating them. We've had people in

358
00:21:43,968 --> 00:21:47,166
my company, it was upwards of 70% of people would get a raise at all

359
00:21:47,188 --> 00:21:50,734
of these junctures. Now, they wouldn't be huge, but it would be like, because

360
00:21:50,852 --> 00:21:52,958
we would set out and we'd be like, hey, these are the things you know

361
00:21:52,964 --> 00:21:56,766
how to do. Now when you learn these things and demonstrate this, your pay

362
00:21:56,788 --> 00:22:00,322
will increase. And you'd find people out of the gate, like taking

363
00:22:00,376 --> 00:22:03,794
class. We had somebody who didn't know how to use, they were real entry level.

364
00:22:03,832 --> 00:22:06,066
They didn't know how to use a mortar mixer, didn't know how to use any

365
00:22:06,088 --> 00:22:09,746
of the cutoff saws. He took classes. He literally,

366
00:22:09,778 --> 00:22:13,174
within the first two weeks, started taking classes at tool

367
00:22:13,212 --> 00:22:16,886
yards to learn this stuff. Comes back after two weeks. He's like, I can do

368
00:22:16,908 --> 00:22:20,154
these six things. We're like, all right, well, you get a raise and then did

369
00:22:20,192 --> 00:22:23,580
it again in 30 days. But

370
00:22:24,510 --> 00:22:27,898
when you have that kind of culture where somebody walks in, they know how to

371
00:22:27,904 --> 00:22:31,166
get an A, they know that they've got plenty of opportunities for

372
00:22:31,188 --> 00:22:34,910
communication, and you've given somebody a raise three times

373
00:22:34,980 --> 00:22:38,602
in four months. It's a game changer. Family, wives,

374
00:22:38,666 --> 00:22:42,238
husbands, kids. It creates a different. But you have to

375
00:22:42,244 --> 00:22:45,530
clearly define the goals and the outcomes. It has to be measurable. It's not like,

376
00:22:45,620 --> 00:22:49,106
oh, yeah, you had a good few days, here's a quarter. It needs to be

377
00:22:49,128 --> 00:22:52,180
like, hey, this is our pay plan. That's got to be in place.

378
00:22:52,710 --> 00:22:56,402
Totally. Yeah. You say that because we

379
00:22:56,456 --> 00:22:59,950
run a scorecard system within the business, and it's amazing how many people come to

380
00:22:59,960 --> 00:23:03,734
us asking for pay rises when they haven't achieved anything on the scorecard. Or maybe

381
00:23:03,772 --> 00:23:07,506
they have and the department's been failing or whatever it might be. And it's just

382
00:23:07,548 --> 00:23:11,194
like that conversation, making sure they understand that

383
00:23:11,232 --> 00:23:14,666
dynamic, that there's a business there as well. It's not just

384
00:23:14,688 --> 00:23:17,820
like an individual 100%.

385
00:23:18,270 --> 00:23:21,702
And then it's great communication.

386
00:23:21,846 --> 00:23:25,546
It's finding things that are unique. So one of the things we do that we've

387
00:23:25,578 --> 00:23:29,150
rolled out across the country is we have

388
00:23:29,300 --> 00:23:33,086
a spinning wheel. So basically it's a wheel. And on the

389
00:23:33,108 --> 00:23:36,826
wheel are different prizes, and every company does differently.

390
00:23:36,858 --> 00:23:40,354
But it could be $100 gift card for work

391
00:23:40,392 --> 00:23:43,906
boots. It could be a free car wash. We had one in my company. It

392
00:23:43,928 --> 00:23:47,138
was a $2 an hour raise for a year. It was this real skinny lion,

393
00:23:47,234 --> 00:23:47,880
right?

394
00:23:51,050 --> 00:23:54,562
It was like 30 different prizes, I think. And so anytime

395
00:23:54,626 --> 00:23:57,906
somebody did something good, management, ownership, didn't

396
00:23:57,938 --> 00:24:01,706
matter. We have these company branded poker chips, and so we hand them

397
00:24:01,728 --> 00:24:05,226
out. If a team stayed late, if they got a good review, we built out

398
00:24:05,248 --> 00:24:08,874
the criteria on the sales team. If they hit

399
00:24:08,912 --> 00:24:12,698
quota, whatever it was, all these different things. And then once a month, we

400
00:24:12,704 --> 00:24:15,610
do a team. Either we do a breakfast or we do, like, a late lunch.

401
00:24:15,690 --> 00:24:19,326
So they either start late or finish early. And we do a

402
00:24:19,348 --> 00:24:22,746
whole company get together once a month and we redeem

403
00:24:22,938 --> 00:24:26,738
these poker chips. So we bring the wheel out. And it

404
00:24:26,744 --> 00:24:30,546
was so interesting because one of the prizes, when

405
00:24:30,568 --> 00:24:33,938
we first did this wheel, this was like five years ago when we

406
00:24:34,024 --> 00:24:37,826
spaced it all out. We had one extra space, and we

407
00:24:37,848 --> 00:24:41,638
had already calculated the cost of all of these and whatnot. So I

408
00:24:41,644 --> 00:24:44,866
was like, I don't want monetary because it's going to mess up my cash flow

409
00:24:44,898 --> 00:24:48,486
projections. So I said something cheap that we can do. And one of the guys

410
00:24:48,508 --> 00:24:51,738
was like, give away a rubber chicken. So I was like, okay, so one of

411
00:24:51,744 --> 00:24:55,498
these things you can win is a rubber chicken. I went to one of

412
00:24:55,504 --> 00:24:59,226
these events. It was about six months later. We

413
00:24:59,248 --> 00:25:02,746
still had the $2 an hour raise that was on there. I had nine of

414
00:25:02,768 --> 00:25:06,398
my ten foremen. There's like 55, 60 people in the

415
00:25:06,404 --> 00:25:10,206
field at my company, right? And then the rest of the company, too. And

416
00:25:10,228 --> 00:25:14,014
there's, like, all these rubber chickens, they're squeezing them. And

417
00:25:14,052 --> 00:25:17,826
the guy, he's one of the only guys in the field who doesn't have one.

418
00:25:17,848 --> 00:25:21,566
He slams this thing down. He's like, rubber chicken. And he goes to spin

419
00:25:21,598 --> 00:25:25,278
this thing. And in that moment, I was like, wow, it's

420
00:25:25,294 --> 00:25:28,678
so interesting. I got a $250 Airbnb gift card. I got a

421
00:25:28,684 --> 00:25:32,534
$200 work boot gift card. I'm like, and this guy wants

422
00:25:32,572 --> 00:25:36,326
a $2 rubber chicken. And so it reminded me how important

423
00:25:36,428 --> 00:25:40,058
fun is in construction now everybody's fun is different. Maybe the

424
00:25:40,064 --> 00:25:43,866
rubber chicken doesn't work for you. I don't know. But it

425
00:25:43,888 --> 00:25:46,890
was interesting in that moment to go, shoot.

426
00:25:47,710 --> 00:25:51,290
When you do have the right people, the right culture, and they're paid well,

427
00:25:51,440 --> 00:25:55,054
the last piece is fun. What makes

428
00:25:55,092 --> 00:25:58,766
it working there truly fun. And so it was really interesting when I

429
00:25:58,788 --> 00:26:02,398
sat back and watched, I was like, wow. People say, oh, it's all about the

430
00:26:02,404 --> 00:26:05,978
money, or you got to pay more. Literally

431
00:26:06,074 --> 00:26:09,874
$2 an hour raise. I think that got spun twice. Cost me like two

432
00:26:09,912 --> 00:26:13,186
grand or whatever the math is. Every time I'm like, I'm clenching my. You know,

433
00:26:13,208 --> 00:26:15,490
I'm clenching my butt every time they spin the wheel.

434
00:26:19,990 --> 00:26:23,378
That's hilarious. That's the culture side of it. It's

435
00:26:23,394 --> 00:26:25,510
like, what's your culture?

436
00:26:26,890 --> 00:26:30,474
On the back of that, I would say, how are you making things fun? Yeah,

437
00:26:30,512 --> 00:26:34,154
man. Even

438
00:26:34,192 --> 00:26:37,526
within my own business, I found lately it's been such, like a stressful, busy

439
00:26:37,638 --> 00:26:40,886
period where there's just that engagement, that culture has just dropped. I mean, I've dropped

440
00:26:40,918 --> 00:26:44,698
it totally, but it's something that's going to try and get back. Yeah, it's

441
00:26:44,714 --> 00:26:47,120
not easy. And that's why the wheel for us,

442
00:26:50,210 --> 00:26:53,822
as I was coming more out of the company, we built

443
00:26:53,876 --> 00:26:57,586
this as a system that just makes it so you have to

444
00:26:57,608 --> 00:27:01,442
have fun once a month. Everyone's getting together. Doesn't matter if the month's great,

445
00:27:01,496 --> 00:27:05,330
if it's hard, if it's not, and we're giving out the poker chips,

446
00:27:05,750 --> 00:27:09,382
we have our criteria. It doesn't cease to amaze me.

447
00:27:09,436 --> 00:27:13,174
These barbecues and stuff grew to the families, their

448
00:27:13,212 --> 00:27:16,774
wives, their husbands, their kids, their aunts, their uncle. Now it's this

449
00:27:16,812 --> 00:27:20,614
huge thing. And then in front of all of that, they're celebrating. And

450
00:27:20,732 --> 00:27:24,394
here's what else is interesting. I got a few people who don't get any

451
00:27:24,432 --> 00:27:28,154
spins. And when they're there with their significant other, and they go, hey,

452
00:27:28,192 --> 00:27:31,918
why aren't you up there? That lasts only usually

453
00:27:32,004 --> 00:27:35,854
one month. And then magically, they start to do

454
00:27:35,892 --> 00:27:38,800
some standout stuff. I don't think anybody,

455
00:27:39,410 --> 00:27:42,762
you're an outsider if you're not getting at least one or two spins. And so

456
00:27:42,916 --> 00:27:45,906
the wife and the husband's, like, looking like, hey, when's your turn? And he's going,

457
00:27:45,928 --> 00:27:46,820
I didn't get.

458
00:27:49,430 --> 00:27:53,118
Gamify. Shame. Yeah, it's hilarious. That's

459
00:27:53,134 --> 00:27:56,100
so good. And so go back to a little bit, to the.

460
00:27:57,030 --> 00:28:00,866
I know you mentioned before, like, making sure that people understand what they're accountable

461
00:28:00,898 --> 00:28:04,726
for, what their KPIs are. How do you set those up? Define those.

462
00:28:04,748 --> 00:28:07,640
And at what stage in the process and how do you evolve them?

463
00:28:09,130 --> 00:28:12,858
This is an area of weakness for me. I'm glad you asked this, because

464
00:28:12,864 --> 00:28:14,540
this is where I was weak for a while.

465
00:28:16,510 --> 00:28:20,342
For me, it started off slow. It was literally

466
00:28:20,406 --> 00:28:24,142
just being like, what are the things that I can measure that have to get

467
00:28:24,196 --> 00:28:27,534
done? And we started very crude. And then when I started looking

468
00:28:27,572 --> 00:28:31,120
at Al's stuff, for example, or

469
00:28:32,290 --> 00:28:35,822
there's a bunch of great books on this, then things became more sophisticated.

470
00:28:35,886 --> 00:28:39,262
But really, what you're trying to do is you're trying to align

471
00:28:39,326 --> 00:28:42,946
goals. And so we started very crude. It was

472
00:28:42,968 --> 00:28:46,706
like, we want jobs to be finished on time or ahead of

473
00:28:46,728 --> 00:28:50,546
schedule. We don't want tools lost or broken. I literally just had

474
00:28:50,568 --> 00:28:54,006
to write down the things that pissed me off, anything that pissed me off that

475
00:28:54,028 --> 00:28:56,758
I would get news of. I'm like, these are the things that end up on

476
00:28:56,764 --> 00:29:00,294
the scorecard in one form or another. And so

477
00:29:00,492 --> 00:29:03,978
we just started with the, basically, it was like the Matt pissed off list. It

478
00:29:03,984 --> 00:29:06,506
was like, what are all the things that I'm like, what the heck? Why did

479
00:29:06,528 --> 00:29:10,266
this happen again? Those were the things that. And then

480
00:29:10,288 --> 00:29:13,226
also the things that made me really proud. So I looked at like, what are

481
00:29:13,248 --> 00:29:16,526
the things that in a month, I go, wow, the team did that. And I

482
00:29:16,548 --> 00:29:18,926
went, how do I get more of these? And how do I get less of

483
00:29:18,948 --> 00:29:22,638
these? And that was mean. That was the birth of. So a

484
00:29:22,644 --> 00:29:25,680
Matt pissed off Liv and a mat not pissed off. Pretty much

485
00:29:26,450 --> 00:29:30,162
simple. That was the early know. That was how it really

486
00:29:30,216 --> 00:29:33,746
kind of just boiled down. Yeah. Interesting. I know. That's like,

487
00:29:33,768 --> 00:29:37,300
when it's so easy for team members to get caught up

488
00:29:37,670 --> 00:29:41,426
doing things that aren't, like, what they should

489
00:29:41,448 --> 00:29:45,238
be doing, and they justify it because they're busy, but it's like, okay, but this

490
00:29:45,244 --> 00:29:49,094
is the outcome you're responsible for and you're not doing it. All that other

491
00:29:49,132 --> 00:29:52,700
stuff. Cool, but not at the cost of what's important. Yeah.

492
00:29:53,710 --> 00:29:57,066
As we grew. As we grew, and there were more and more layers of

493
00:29:57,088 --> 00:30:00,906
communication, more and more reports, more and more spreadsheets.

494
00:30:01,018 --> 00:30:03,934
As we became like a real business, those

495
00:30:03,972 --> 00:30:07,134
scorecards had to evolve to become much more

496
00:30:07,172 --> 00:30:10,446
sophisticated because it was like you didn't have the

497
00:30:10,468 --> 00:30:14,270
oversight, the management, the kind of

498
00:30:14,340 --> 00:30:17,922
sloppy, just like you were going to the job. Or that

499
00:30:17,976 --> 00:30:21,522
stuff existed when we were a certain size. And then when we really started

500
00:30:21,576 --> 00:30:25,166
tracking everything, well, it was like, wait a minute. We don't need to be stopping

501
00:30:25,198 --> 00:30:29,014
in on these job sites from a site super perspective, but

502
00:30:29,052 --> 00:30:32,326
we do need to do a better job of keeping our foreman accountable. Yeah,

503
00:30:32,428 --> 00:30:35,910
totally. And is that all tracked through technology?

504
00:30:35,980 --> 00:30:39,158
Typically for you guys, I suppose that's really important. As long as it's tracked. Yeah,

505
00:30:39,164 --> 00:30:41,722
I mean, we have a dashboard, and I have certain things that I look at.

506
00:30:41,776 --> 00:30:45,242
So for me, it's like, I kind of have, like the four hour

507
00:30:45,376 --> 00:30:49,194
business work week where it's like, I listen to my two

508
00:30:49,232 --> 00:30:53,050
production meetings. They're recorded. I get a financial report

509
00:30:53,200 --> 00:30:56,830
on how much work we did. Billable. I like tracking things,

510
00:30:56,900 --> 00:31:00,746
and it's very abnormal. But I do things Weekly, so it's like, people hate

511
00:31:00,778 --> 00:31:03,806
it, but I want to know weekly. I'm like, how much this week did we

512
00:31:03,828 --> 00:31:06,640
bill? How much this week did we. Even though I know

513
00:31:08,210 --> 00:31:11,966
it's not perfectly aggregated because of the short duration, I'm the type

514
00:31:11,988 --> 00:31:15,120
of person, if it's important to me, we,

515
00:31:15,690 --> 00:31:19,426
my team, thought I was crazy to do stuff Weekly. I started daily knowing

516
00:31:19,458 --> 00:31:21,766
that I wanted to get weekly. I was like, we're going to track how much

517
00:31:21,788 --> 00:31:24,806
we do daily. Like, I want to know this and this daily. And then they

518
00:31:24,828 --> 00:31:27,078
were like, oh, this is impossible. I was like, all right, let's just track it

519
00:31:27,084 --> 00:31:30,214
once a week. They're like, okay, we could do that. So that's how I got

520
00:31:30,252 --> 00:31:34,090
to the weekly stuff. But, yeah, I mean, all those optics are super

521
00:31:34,160 --> 00:31:37,674
important. Sure. Yeah. I think that's the thing that most business

522
00:31:37,712 --> 00:31:40,922
owners don't do enough, is tracking those metrics. Because if you let it go too

523
00:31:40,976 --> 00:31:44,400
long, inevitably you find yourself in a situation where

524
00:31:46,770 --> 00:31:49,662
it's too hard to reel it back in. It's too hard to make the change.

525
00:31:49,716 --> 00:31:53,118
Like, if it's a weekly and if it's all biweekly or whatever, but then

526
00:31:53,284 --> 00:31:57,054
if something obvious is tripping up here, you can kind of reposition

527
00:31:57,102 --> 00:32:00,606
and get it fixed. But if it's months quarters yearly, forget

528
00:32:00,638 --> 00:32:04,398
it. No, a lot of the stuff I get is daily. I mean, what's

529
00:32:04,414 --> 00:32:08,166
my answer rate? What's my booking rate on the marketing side, what are

530
00:32:08,188 --> 00:32:11,542
we spending? I have two marketing meetings a week. All that stuff

531
00:32:11,596 --> 00:32:14,040
is we try and manage.

532
00:32:15,450 --> 00:32:19,130
There's so much freedom and data that fear

533
00:32:19,470 --> 00:32:23,050
target that you have. Anybody listening

534
00:32:23,870 --> 00:32:27,580
that high, low, like, oh, shoot, this happened. And then, oh, no, that happened.

535
00:32:28,990 --> 00:32:32,714
I can't tell you when it came time to make big investments in the business,

536
00:32:32,832 --> 00:32:36,586
how comfortable I felt knowing I'm like, okay, this is

537
00:32:36,608 --> 00:32:39,118
what we're doing on the marketing side. This is our cost per customer. This is

538
00:32:39,124 --> 00:32:41,678
our booking rate. This is our close rate. This is how much we're doing in

539
00:32:41,684 --> 00:32:44,718
billable. This is our backlog of work. When I could see all that, I was

540
00:32:44,724 --> 00:32:48,322
like, oh, of course it makes sense to upgrade the office or to do this

541
00:32:48,376 --> 00:32:52,162
or to try take a certain amount of money and just

542
00:32:52,216 --> 00:32:56,062
trial it in marketing campaigns. That confidence

543
00:32:56,126 --> 00:32:59,902
came from that rather than this. I think it'll work. And then

544
00:32:59,976 --> 00:33:02,806
you're kind of, like, running around, which I did for years. I mean, I'm so

545
00:33:02,828 --> 00:33:06,646
guilty of that. I had no business background, so I was the good

546
00:33:06,668 --> 00:33:10,486
enough guy for so many years. I'm like, is the phone being answered? I

547
00:33:10,508 --> 00:33:13,370
would literally walk up to my team, like, hey, we answered all the calls today.

548
00:33:13,440 --> 00:33:16,794
Oh, yeah, Matt, we're good. I'm like, all right, cool. It just made me feel

549
00:33:16,832 --> 00:33:20,342
good to do that. How do you go addressing the conversation

550
00:33:20,406 --> 00:33:24,074
around, and do you do it this way where you say

551
00:33:24,112 --> 00:33:27,646
your team members, like, this is what I want to track. I don't care how

552
00:33:27,668 --> 00:33:30,458
you report it to me. Just give me the report. Or do you have structure

553
00:33:30,474 --> 00:33:34,286
of them. To follow so the team has structure? I'm a what guy? I'm not

554
00:33:34,308 --> 00:33:37,874
a how guy, and I've learned this. And for a lot of people

555
00:33:37,912 --> 00:33:41,154
listening, I don't know, you might be that same person.

556
00:33:41,352 --> 00:33:44,546
I'm very good at knowing. I'm like, these are the things that I need to

557
00:33:44,568 --> 00:33:48,258
know, but how to get there? I was the

558
00:33:48,264 --> 00:33:51,526
worst person for that. I'd be like, well, you could do it this way or

559
00:33:51,548 --> 00:33:54,630
you could do it that way. And my ops manager would be like, hey, Matt,

560
00:33:54,970 --> 00:33:58,166
why don't you go get a coffee? We'll figure this thing out. We'll present it

561
00:33:58,188 --> 00:34:01,334
and see if you like it. I'm like, all right, cool. So I think finding

562
00:34:01,382 --> 00:34:05,194
somebody the what versus the how I think is a really big

563
00:34:05,232 --> 00:34:09,034
thing, because I find

564
00:34:09,072 --> 00:34:12,810
that we end up on one camp or the other. We're really good at

565
00:34:12,880 --> 00:34:16,334
understanding how to do something, or we're really good at the high level. What of,

566
00:34:16,372 --> 00:34:18,606
like, I'm trying to do this, and then I'm trying to do that, and they

567
00:34:18,628 --> 00:34:22,254
can see it and figuring out which one you

568
00:34:22,292 --> 00:34:26,046
are and then building out a relationship with somebody who fills the

569
00:34:26,068 --> 00:34:29,738
other side of it, honestly, was one of the biggest cheat

570
00:34:29,754 --> 00:34:33,342
codes for me in business. Yeah. Cool. So, Maddie, I suppose, all in all, this

571
00:34:33,396 --> 00:34:37,078
process, essentially, what I'm getting is, it's a

572
00:34:37,084 --> 00:34:40,786
process. It's not something you can just wake up one morning and rub

573
00:34:40,818 --> 00:34:43,046
two sticks together and hope that it plays out for you. You got to put

574
00:34:43,068 --> 00:34:45,926
the time in. You can put the effort in. There's a structure, and luckily for

575
00:34:45,948 --> 00:34:49,306
the listeners out there, you've got that structure and you've got it documented in a

576
00:34:49,328 --> 00:34:53,178
course, right? Yeah, exactly. Cool. Where can

577
00:34:53,184 --> 00:34:56,566
people get hold of that? On the website? The contractor

578
00:34:56,598 --> 00:35:00,378
consultants, plural. All right, sweet. We'll post some links to that

579
00:35:00,384 --> 00:35:03,834
over the show notes and things like that. Man, it's been very good

580
00:35:03,872 --> 00:35:07,354
conversation. Honestly, there's so many things there. I've pulled out this and implement

581
00:35:07,402 --> 00:35:10,698
myself. So I thank you once again for coming along and sharing your expertise.

582
00:35:10,794 --> 00:35:13,680
Yeah, you teased it out. I mean, you did the hard part.

583
00:35:15,650 --> 00:35:19,390
Yeah, I guess years of school of hard knocks.

584
00:35:19,970 --> 00:35:22,862
If you listen to some viewers out there, if you've got any questions or anything

585
00:35:22,916 --> 00:35:26,600
that you think we haven't answered properly or we need address further, let us know.

586
00:35:27,050 --> 00:35:29,366
I'm sure if I ask Matt to come back on the show, he'll be able

587
00:35:29,388 --> 00:35:32,820
to jump into some of these things. So, Maddie, thanks once again.