One Bad Hire Can Break Your Culture with Paul Sanneman

Reece sits down with Paul Sanneman of Contractor Staffing Source to talk about the real cost of hiring mistakes, and why marketing and recruiting are no longer optional if you want to protect profit. They break down how AI is changing the game, plus Paul’s step by step recruiting process you can run in house if you have to. You will leave with clearer standards for who to hire, how to onboard them, and why one “almost good enough” employee is costing you way more than you think. If this helps, share it with a builder friend and check the links for Paul’s resources.

https://contractorstaffingsource.com

Show Notes:
00:00 Culture Can Break
00:42 Meet Paul Sanneman
04:08 Marketing Mindset Shift
09:04 Recruiting Isn’t Optional
11:30 Replace Yourself First
14:12 DIY Recruiting Steps
20:40 Onboarding Matters Most
25:00 Hire For Integrity
33:46 Cut Toxic People
35:09 Final Three Rules

Find Our Hosts:
Reece Barnes
Matt Calvano

Podcast Produced By:
Motif Media

Transcript

0:00

Who they are as a person is much more important than what they know, because you can fix what they know, but you can't fix who they are. One person in a company of 15 can destroy the entire culture. Welcome to builders budgets and beers. I'm Rhys Barnes and I started this podcast to have real conversations about money in the building industry, the wins, the mistakes and everything in between, I believe builders deserve to feel confident about their finances, and that starts by hearing from others who've been through it too. This industry can be slow to change, but the right stories and the right tools can make profitability feel possible. Let's get into it. You all right. Mics are hot. We're on Paul. So I was saying I've done like 600 podcasts, yeah, which is nuts. I did 300 literally 15 years ago. We're like, the fourth pod, or maybe 20th podcast ever, right? My friends and I got together, we probably drank too much and said, Hey, let's go through this podcasting, right? So we did it. We had, it was interesting. We got all kinds of businesses. We had like, 10,000 listeners, which is lot for a long time ago. And we have various guests on business success tips that we would have. Yeah. One of the most interesting ones was a, I was a brothel in Australia, dude, it was cash flow positive, open your market. And I said, Where's your skirts? I mean, what can I say? Yeah, exactly, exactly. So that was interesting. We had actually one guy listed the he moved over from Germany because of his business success tips podcast and he went to start a business. He had a software company. He moved to, like, wherever we were in, like, you know, San Francisco. He moved there, started his business. I'll tell you his citizenship cost him, like, you know, three years and $20,000 it was not easy to become a citizen 15 years ago. But he started his business has been successful. So I've done lots of these, and I always find the interesting thing is, if you're starting with a business, all business owners have the same issues. You know how to make more money, less time and have more fun, right? That's correct. The fundamental thing so what I've learned about is I can tell you some basic things that I've learned over the years doing this like, God knows, 50 years, that's a long time to do anything. Yeah, hang on, hang on, hang on, hang on, hang on, hang on. Good. Hang on. You're doing great, by the way. We just got to let them know who you are before, okay, I've been a business coach for 50 years. I've worked with 2500 contractors. I have almost 200,000 hours in coaching. And I started a recruiting company about seven years ago because my my clients couldn't find employees. And now I have 42 employees in that company. We've recruited 4000 people last count, and we're probably one of the biggest recruiting companies in the construction market, the US and Canada. You're, obviously, you're one of a kind, Paul, truly one of a kind. I do have to, I have to check you on your data. Did you say you have over 200,000 hours? Just do the math. Okay, let's say 2000 working hours in a year, right? For 100 years, 75 and I've done it since I've been 20. Five, right? Yes, so do the math, okay? 50 years, 50 years, right? Yep, 50 Years times 2000 let's see. Let's say, I'd say it was 10. Let's see, not, not well, 2000 I've actually 2000 out working hours are in a year. Okay? It's only 100,000 I guess 100,000 Yeah, I was gonna say, I was like, Paul, where are we getting this from? Unless you're working 100,000 hours, it's a long time. Yeah, okay, okay, you're gonna have to update your marketing now from two. That's fine. A long time. My whole life I've been doing this. Yes, yes. Okay, well, okay, well, okay, so starting on so you obviously so business tips. I mean, you're in the consultant, you're in the in the recruiting world, right? Well, let me take a couple of business tips. It says one of the ones, and I try to convince my co, my my clients, is that you need to consider yourself a marketing company that does some kind of product or service to fund your marketing. Okay? And most contractors don't get that. Where do they miss? Go ahead. Well, they consider marketing is an unnecessary evil. They don't want to do it. They have this fantasy that says, Bill, you know, build it, and they will come like, if I do a great job, and it's, it's all going to show up just by doing a great job for my clients. And it's not true, okay, that's what about, what about the guys that I hear that they're like, I'm totally referral based. I don't spend a dime on marketing, and I have a, I have a pipeline and backlog built for the next two years. Then they should scale or not. I mean. Whole point. Maybe they're doing 2 million a year and it's booked. That's fine, but they're not doing 20 Sure. And to get to those bigger numbers, you have to throw marketing in. Seriously, yeah, you have to do scaling of some kind. I mean, okay, so they miss because they have this pipe dream of like, if I build it, they will come. Let my work speak for itself. I don't need marketing, yeah, and that's, I mean, and it's going to get worse with AI, okay, how so? Because what's happening now, I know if there's a word called walmartization. If it is, I made it up, right? Walmartization, right? So remember a year old, if your business so many years ago, everybody had a downtown. The Downtown had a grocery store, a drug store, a market blog, and they'd always complain, I can't find any employees. It's difficult, you know, in bump trip, Idaho, Idaho, it's just hard to be here, blah, blah, blah, right? Then what happens is, some they build a Walmart outside of town somewhere, they come up with 500 people, either where they got it, when they come 500 employees, right? And then they suck all the business out of downtown, because they do a better feature, faster and cheaper. I mean, yes, you know, I mean, how much stuff do you order on Amazon or Target or WalMart, what percentage of the market they own? It's huge. Yeah. Just better, faster and cheaper, right? Yeah. So what's happening in the in this industry? And that's my wife in the background. Say, Hi, I'm on stream yard. I can't blur it. Sorry about that. No. Good. You're good. So what happens is, with basically, AI is disrupting this industry. Because, you know, if you're selling information for money. You're sort of done. Whether you're an attorney, you're a doctor, unless you're doing surgery, anytime you're selling information for money, what happens is that AI can do it better, faster and cheaper, right? So you're a private equity firm, you've got pick a number, 100 million, $300 million pick a number, and you got to put it somewhere. You're not going to invest in a movie studio, you're not going to invest in a law firm, you're probably going to stay away from health care. So what is a safe place to put $100 million that's going to be around five years from now, become a plumber? Right? Yes, yes, because you're not well. Could you argue that if there was, like, somebody who just wanted to, like, sell information as a plumber, it's to be you got whoever doing the work. I mean, I literally podcast the other day, and some guy was an AI Guru said, Hey, tell your son to become a plumber, because plumbers, electricians, anytime you're physically doing the work that's way down the line, robots are just not there yet, and it'll be a while. If it's just information, it's done. So what happens to this? Millions of dollars, it comes into buying companies, like buying electric companies, buying HVAC, HVAC. They're buying companies, right? And they're paying stupid, you know, EBITDA multiples. I mean, I've got a guy, you know, he's doing a million. He got 10 million for his company. I mean, like, sane, which is crazy, right? Because they got all this cash, and what are they gonna do with it, right? So they gotta throw it somewhere. I had a guy, he had 10 million, so I'm gonna start a roofing company in Nebraska, right? Because it hails in Nebraska, they don't know what they're doing. I could, you know what happens is he's going to own Nebraska, whatever it is, roofing business, in three years. So with this happening, I've had Walmart in like, the building industry, they're either going to buy you or put you out of business, I mean, and so you better get on the bandwagon, because Google ads are going up exponentially as they throw money at them. Now, if your contract, your valuation relationship with architects that works, it's hard to take away, but you've just got to get on. You've got to do marketing. If you've got to compete with these guys totally. They have more expertise in marketing, more expertise and recruiting, and they can hire whatever you know, plumbing. How they can learn plumbing? Is that hard to do? Okay, so let's, let's take this back, and we don't have to if, I hope you've got your two other business tips on deck. But I do have a question. I have a question, and it is in relation to the Walmart. Walmartization is for the construction company that does struggle with recruiting, that does struggle with marketing, that is trying to figure out how the Walmart comes in and finds 500 people that they've been in the community for, for dozens of years, and they can't find them. How does that builder tactically start to hire in those people, or find those people? What happens is he uses, he out. He hires a company like ours that? No, I've ever recruited 4000 people. I know how to do it. I mean, I'm going to tell you that the labor shortage is self created because you've been consistent with this for years. Go ahead. If you, if you, where do we find 4000 people? They're somewhere, right. I mean, so if you do it right, you can find people you. If you do it right, you can find clients, but you've got the good news is, there are companies like mine. Here's whatever they can they can outsource a marketing, outsource the recruiting for a nominal fee, and get it done professionally, which didn't used to be, don't do it yourself. Bad idea. You don't know how to recruit, you don't know how to market. Hire a company to do it for you. Okay, to make a decision, but that's what I would suggest. Okay, that's how you that's how you compete, okay? And that's where this is great, because I actually just released an episode with another talent group, Suman cherry. Do you know Suman? It's cherry talent group. There's a bunch of them out there. Super sharp. Cal she had an opinion on, like, how to, how to do this as well, and it was in line with, like, work with a staffing agency, right? Like work with until you're, like, at a critical mass, to where it makes sense, or if it ever makes sense, as a builder, to do it in house, right? Work with staffing. When do they start with you? Is there a threshold of business? Well, I would say, since we're way less expensive than like, for 1500 bucks a month. I can work with a company and five positions versus 10% of the salary, right? Sure. Well, I would say anybody over a million. In fact, I was new companies anywhere. Million makes sense, because if you know, if you work with a normal staffing agency, you hire a project manager, it's 100 grand. They went 15% that's 15,000 right there, right? I can work for a year for 18,000 online. So that's why I built this model, because this little guys can afford it. We work with, I think 700 clients. One of them wrote 600 was and most of them million and 20 million. Yeah, million, 20 million. Okay, and where do you typically direct them? Because I imagine when you're working with these like, million plus guys, there's like a, like, a shared misunderstanding of who they should hire first. Who do you suggest they hire first? I mean, what's the most what? Now, that's question for you. What's the only asset you can't get more of time? That's it, right? That's your most valuable asset. So you look at where you're spending your time in the day they're doing he has a 15 million companies still doing project management. Why? It makes sense, right? Well, you said a $15 million you're still doing project management. Insane. Yeah. Okay, go ahead. So it's you need to the most important thing do is replace yourself. It could be you can buy a, you know, get a VA offshore for five bucks an hour, that can take no notes and go with your email and that kind of stuff. Kind of stuff. Or you could hire a project manager in town for pick 150,000 a year. It depends, but the MO, if you're going to build a business, you got to replace yourself. Okay, so it's just like a reflection of where you're spending your time. Is how you answer that question? I mean, you look at where you're spending your time, and can somebody else do it better, faster and cheaper than you can, yeah? Okay, beautiful. Tip number two, okay. Tip number three, all right, wait three. We went from one to three or number two, yeah, that was Tip number two, right? Is that good? Yeah, I think this is, this is all free. There were no tips shared. I think we're just going with it. So tip number three is, always be recruiting. Always be marketing. Because you know, if you look at this, you're only as good as your clients and your employees. That's it. That's your company. It's all you. And if you look at people that are very successful, if you might love them or hate them, Elon Musk, what's Elon Musk superpower? Go for it. I don't know the ability to build teams Sure. Okay? Because otherwise, just be a smart guy with a lot of good ideas, right, right, right? His ability to build teams has made him with even Bezos. You may life or hate him, but he's he knows how to build teams. So your ability to build teams, more than anything else, will determine your success, at least in this culture. Okay, so do you have any do you have any depth to this? Or can I start prodding? Well, how do you get better at building teams? Well, you hire somebody like us, it's good at or you hire like how you better marketing? You don't want to learn. Just go hire a good marketing company. Let them do it for you, right? Okay, so this seems just too obvious, right? And there's certain there's got to be some bias here, Paul, right? Of course, it's like, I won't be able to like, go to like, I want them to go to contractor, staff, staffing, source, right? But you can. I'll tell you, if you do it yourself, okay, I can take you might do it yourself. I'll tell you what you need to do. Yeah, yes. Okay, so if you do it yourself, 10 steps to successful recruiting. All right. Step one, write an ad and put it everywhere, like 100 job boards, LinkedIn everywhere, not just indeed, and you're done everywhere, all right? That stuff, and you got to write a job ad to track me. So I guess everyone's write the right job as you can use chat, GP, do that. It's actually pretty good. You can use AI, write me a job ad that's going to get somebody to quit their job and come to work for me as a project manager. It'll do that for you. It's good, all right. Then you post them everywhere you can do that takes a lot of time. You post 100 job board. That you post it everywhere. You should do that. This is the tough one. Respond in real time. Okay? We respond to 25,000 job ads in real time, in resumes in real time every month. Okay? People to do that. So if you can respond the minute they apply, you got to be back within minute, give or take. It's like speed to lead, right? Totally, like, if you're doing marketing and you have an ad on Google and somebody calls you, you can't call them three days later, they're gone, right? Same thing in recruiting, totally speed to lead, you got to get back in real time. And that's probably the hardest one to do yourself, yeah, is get back to all these people in real time, because we have to go through a typical week for us, we go through 5000 applicants to hire 15 to 20 people. 5000 to hire 15 to 20. Yeah, that's just the numbers, sure. Okay, okay, and you can't fix that. All right, responding. Then you need to do a detailed skills and behavior at Havel test. We have one developer. There's a lot of them out there. There's just, there's Briggs, Myers. You need to give them an assessment. They will do a deep psychological dive on who they are as a human being. Okay? And there's you can get those skills test, intelligence test, integrity test. You need to this profile season. You need to do all the things you can to assess the person, to make sure they're the right person for the job. Okay? So you do really in depth assessments. Hang on, I imagine that there's like, some level of understanding and analysis there as well, because you get, like, Briggs and Meyer or disc or whatever it's called, right? And they're like, they're just like, Okay, we've got the speed to lead down. We've got all these. We've got, like, we've got the Paul sandeman recipe tagged. We're starting to crank it out, right? But then it's like, you're looking at these, this information. It's like, okay, great. It doesn't do you any that's the point. That's kind of what I'm getting at. So it's like, what do you like when you look, look at a Briggs, Myers say we're talking about a project manager. What do they got to have? Well, I mean, we get good at that, obviously. But you can either maybe hire somebody who does the assessments to assess them for you. You can hire, pay somebody do that, because you got to know what the assessment says about the person. Our assessment, we know, you know we've done. We do a whole like DISC profile, hold honesty, integrity, thing intelligence. We test everything, and we'll know we, in fact, we actually program what a successful project manager looks like on this profile. We've done like 300,000 to reverse engineered it. And so what makes a project manager? So make sure that when you, when you do the assessment, somebody does the analysis that knows what the heck they're doing. Yeah, because the test without a decent now, you cannot, maybe the people that you bought the assessment from can do it for you or something, but you need to find Yes, this person has a per psychological profile to be a project manager or carpenter or whatever, right? Okay, next, after the detail assessment, you additional you do video interviews. What I would suggest is, there's some software that we have on our website, but you probably get some on the internet that basically does a video interview. Do it on the phone, you have a list of questions, and they do the video interview on their phone or computer, whatever. It's much better than real time, as much you should do. So you do a video interview, which answers all the questions you couldn't get on the assessment. You can't say, How's your English? Or, you know, you can't say, Are you healthy or not? Are you 92 or 29 I mean, so the video interview allows you to find out everything you couldn't find out on the assessment. So that's do a video you do the video interview, okay? And the next, once you do a video interview, do it. You can do an in person zoom interview. That's like a lot, you know, like, so you actually get to talk to this person in real time. All right, correct? Yeah, you do background checks. Important. But I literally had a client once hired a bookkeeper. The bookkeeper embezzled them. He went to the DA, and the DA say, look at you. Realize she got fired for embezzling on her last three jobs. What? Right? Like, dude, you didn't do no research, right? How is she walking the streets? By the way, hey, you know, trust me, you don't go to jail for embezzling. You just slap your hand and say, sorry about that. Hand and say sorry about that, all right, like some crazy nevermind, 10 or 20% of contracts are embezzled, and you're always embezzled by people you trust, right? Absolutely, because you don't trust them, they can't embezzle from you. So if you trust them, they can pull it off. So do background checks and make sure that. Then call references. If a person says that this is all the time you worked here, that's a bad reference, right? Yeah, because that's all I got to tell you all right, and then you got to make a competitive job of that. Now, AI is good for this. You can say, hey, I'm in, you know, a contractor in Kansas City. I'm hiring a project manager, this, this, and this, what's a competitive job offer for this job? And it'll do the research and tell you, and then onboarding is crucial, right? Because there's no more there's no day more important than the first day, right? Because when you show up to work, you quit your job, right? They were and you. Went to work for this new company. Now you're going to go home to your spouse. It's going to be one of these two extremes. Oh my god, this is the best decision I've ever made. These people are awesome, or maybe I made the wrong decision, right? You've got to make sure they say the first thing, right, so you don't throw them a tool belt. So go out and work. You've got to appreciate them. Tell what they're going to do. Set up KPIs, set up a whole onboarding process. And AI is good for that. You go to AI and say, I'm hiring a project manager, blah, blah, blah, give me a six week onboarding process that does a great job. Yep, totally and then do an onboarding process, and then make sure you're still a great company to work for, because you're not a good company to work for, you're not turnover, totally okay. And I think the onboarding one is is huge. And I think that actually kind of sheds light on this. Like, okay, everybody, for the listeners, you just went through the 10 point checklist on how to do this successfully on your own. Now, there's a lot to this, right? It's like, you can give someone a set of plans and say, Okay, go build the house, right? Then it's like, what do I need the contractor for? Right? It's like, the devil's in the details, right? There's all this nuance, right? And I think with the onboarding piece that resonates is a I've heard that regularly, right? Like the emphasis in recruiting is onboarding. Like you can get through all of the sludging and the the getting all the interviews reviewed, and the phone calls and the screens and and the tests, and then the interviews, and then the offers, and then the signing, but then you get into the onboarding and just like, totally collapse, right? I think this is something that I'm probably a little bit more like, bullish on, is, like, there's a lot of people that look at like, Hey, I'm a million dollars. I need to go hire somebody, when it's not as much like a monetary benchmark of what is determining if you're ready to hire or not, is, what are the like, what is the validity of the processes you have in your business? Right? Because you have, you could hire whoever you want, plug them in and they're gonna freaking drown. Well, it's a cultural thing, right? I mean, like, you know, why is it offshore? We have, like, I have 40 some people that work for me, and, like, once I discovered off, share offshore, I've got, you know, five pill Bridge and wyo's offshore, because I get amazing people. We have to go through four or 500 to find one, but we find one. They're amazing, right, right? But we have a culture where we trust people, right? We don't monitor computers, we don't say, you know, we have KPIs. They have to meet. But we're like a great company to work for. So we have zero turnover, right? Because we're a real place to work. If you're trying to use offshore and you look on their computer video, trust them, they're going to quit totally. So it's the same culture is crucial, for sure, it has to be a nice place to work. If you have heavy turnover, it's your fault, right? That's not a good place to work totally. And that's everything. And people, when they quit, they generally quit not for money. They quit because they're not respected, they're not trusted, they're not treated well, and they leave because they used to want to be there, and that's your fault, right? 100% and that's this goes back even like the KPI thing, right? The KPI, the expectations, the job description, the accountability, the onboarding, right? It's like we can say all these things, but if it's not reflected in the day to day, like you're gonna get, you're gonna get uncovered pretty quick, right? And people aren't going to work there and leave, right? For sure. Do you ever get into those conversations with your clients when they come to you? Yes, and some are successful and some are okay, well, then what's the determining factor? You've seen winners, you've seen losers. Coachable, the person is right, meaning the owner, the owner, right? So if the owner says, I totally get it, I'm going to follow the onboarding process, I'm going to respect the human being. I'm going to treat them well, that's fine. If they go look at I pay them the money, they do what I tell them to do, yeah? Don't work out well, yeah. Okay. So it's coachability, it's application, right? Okay? And you do that, you give them, because part of what we do is, if somebody has, if we have a client, come on board and say, Yeah, I went through four project manager the last six months ago. Oh, my God, it's obviously, yeah, right, yeah. Some convinced to say, you know, I married seven women, and all women idiots. I mean, it's so you got to take responsibility, right? Of course, if it's and the one thing I learned as a coach is the most important thing for somebody to get as a business owner. But let's look at the bell shaped curve humanity. Right on one side, you've got people that the dog ate their homework. No matter what happened, it's not my fault, zero responsibility. And the other hand in the scale, you got people my car get hit in the parking lot, I must have parked in the wrong place, right? Right? They believe they character in reality. They took the blue pill or whatever it was, yeah, sure. They believe they carry on reality. So you want to hire people toward the non victim part of life, sure. Because if they interview and say, Yeah, my last boss was an idiot, the body before that was an idiot. I never paid enough money, and they give this whole kind of drama queen or king, forget it. They're just going to bring all that to you totally, totally, since you want to hire people that take responsibility for their life and are not victims. Yeah. Does this come through in like, the, like, the DISC assessment, or does this come out? There's one that shows responsibility. There's one honesty that we have. If they're like, if their honesty scores like, terrible, then they probably lying, which is not good, because this person lies 10% of the time. You never know in the 10 percentage, so you can't trust them, right? Totally. Yeah. So you know who they are as a person is much more important than what they know, yeah, because you can fix what they know, but you can't fix who they are. And sometimes in recruiting, one of the issue, I want a guy with 10 years experience and building $10 million houses, blah, blah, and go look it. You can train that, but you can't trade integrity. You can train honesty. You can't train, you know, being a good human being. There they are. They're not right. You can measure but you don't want to hire people that don't fit your culture, because they'll just, I mean, literally, one person in a company of 15 can destroy the entire culture. Totally, totally. How often do you see that? A lot, a lot. Well, what happens is, essentially, I was coaching. When I was coaching, they'd say, there's John. One day, John was great. John's amazing. I can't believe John crashed a truck again, or he didn't show up on time. And the world's worst employees, when it's bad enough fire good enough to keep they suck, yeah, because they stay on forever and they're terrible, right? Because, you know the good thing, bad thing, good thing. I mean, I believe if there's anybody you wouldn't rehire in your company without a question, you should fire, right, right? The cost they have your company is way more than you think, because, you know, there, unless you have built a culture of honesty for lack of a term, right? And they lie, well, then the person goes, well, I guess lying is okay now, because he lied and he lied, I can lie, you know, it may just be, yeah, we just, I mean, maybe a lie like, yeah, I really didn't steal the tool I need it more than he did. Or I always show up 20 minutes late, because who cares, or any lies can take a lot of it. But basically a lying is you don't tell the truth that you know it right, and that you can't fix. Yeah, yeah. And that's where, again, you come through and like, you do these tests, and you do the interviews, and then you're, you're, you're diligent onboarding, and you're, you're available, and you're you're evaluating during onboarding, is that fair, right? That's, it's all about your success in business will be 100% correlated with your ability to build a team. Yeah, and that's where Elon Musk comes in full circle. The guy's incredible at building teams, right? But that's, that's the key building if you can't build a team. And you notice when he builds teams like he spends time on the floor with them, he's like a regular guy. You may love him or hate him, but he's not. He doesn't. He isn't arrogant, in a classic sense of arrogance, right? Right? And he always, he always pushing, hey, here, if you look at every time he launched on the other side, cheering, yay. We put, we put the spaceship up there. We put the satellites up there. We is it never, I right? Totally, totally. And that's like, I think, just go to this, like, he's not arrogant. And the traditional definition, it's like, like, he's, you do, I mean, you see. And frankly, I'm not like, I don't follow Elon Musk like, I don't like, know enough about it. I know enough about him. But from what I see is he is like, he's like, the guy that he's like, I have 52 problems I need to solve a year. Because every year, one of those problems gets a week of my attention, and I'm always looking at, like, the biggest problem to solve. And what that week is, is him being in the trenches, that's where you're like, he's not, he's not arrogant. But I think probably the better way to put is, like, he's not too proud, right? To rob a sleeve, and he's like, so close to the business, right? He wants to. So I would say, you know, there's books on team building. There's, you know, tons. Now, all information is basically free, right? You can ask AI, you can go on all information is free, so it doesn't cost you anything. You have to go and say, How do I increase my team building skills? What does that look like? How do I build a great construction team? It's all out there. You just have to ask for it, right? And now, information is all free, but that's more important than your ability to, you know, frame a door or lay a foundation in a straight line, right? And that's the key. So unfortunately, a lot of contractors don't work. You know, Jim rohn's one of my idols from way back when he's dead now, but said you got to work harder on yourself than do on your business. Yeah, go ahead. It's all about. You know, are by listening to podcasts, am I being a better human being? I don't care with spiritual, mental, physical, whatever I can do to become a better human being is going to help my company be better. And I think that's where a lot of people that own businesses don't spend the time. Because they don't understand the value. I think it's because they don't or it's hard. I mean, that's another question, right? Yeah. I mean, like, who wants to run through? I mean, I probably spend three hours a day doing between meditation, running, working, like every day, right? On me, yeah. And anybody could do that. I think of work after three hours. And most people, you know, the number reason people don't do things is as funny story. The reason most people don't take time management is no time Right, right? So you need to spend the time working on you, whatever, whatever, spiritual, mental, physical, whatever that is for you. You need to focus on that to get better as a better human being, that will do the best thing you can do for your business. Also attract quality people, right 100% because they'll want to be with you because you tell the truth, you're honest, you're fair, you're the kind of person they want to work with, and that will help you attract the right people. It's all part of the same package. Totally, totally, I think we can wrap this up, Paul, but I think even like, back to the Elon thing, and I'm kind of fixated on that, because I think it actually ties this conversation around quite well. Is like when you're not too proud to get in the trenches with the team, and you are out of your way, assuming that your way is the best way, and you're focusing on, like, what are the themes or the trends that we need to be following to get the work done? That's where you can build the foundation, the processes, systems to hire into. You're also a good listener, right? Right? People say, hey, this isn't working. You need to say, Hey, you're I mean, I I surround myself a lot of smart people, and they don't mean if my coo says this isn't going to work, I go, Great, let's do something else. I don't argue with her, right, right? So it's, it's, it's listening, it's, it's becoming, I'm sure there's, you know, a bunch of, like, what is it? The Seven Habits, high successful people, the what is it? The four secrets are all. There's all kinds of books out there. And have become a better human being. And to me, that's where you spend the time, because it wish you were better. You'll attract better people, better subcontractors. Your life will be easier. If you look at people whose life isn't working, it's generally some form of victim. They blame the industry, they blame their brother, they blame their genes, they blame their pick one, right? And it's always, never their fault. And they're like, you know, you know, brown people, like they're the drama king or queen, right? You just show up. And if any, if there's three women walking down the road and one's terrified of dogs, which one's the dog gonna bite the one that's terrified of dogs, absolutely, it's like, magnetic, right? So if there's really bad employees, what company is going to attract the bad employees? No one actually get bad employees, right? All employees suck. They're not any good. You can't trust them. They don't work hard, and they have this, this vision of employees, and that's the people they get, right? It's a self fulfilling prophecy, yeah. How long do you give people like that, Paul in the organization, like, you start seeing this stuff, and you're like, dude, how I'm seeing it the answer way too long people do, but you should Nip it, right? But I, I'm, I've done it myself, right? You know, because it's Yeah, but they know. And I went through same thing, like, yeah, this. And then you just, you justify it, you justify it by well, and it just drags on and on, right? And then when they finally go, My God, best thing ever did. But, you know, I'm sure everybody listening this podcast has somebody either in their life or in their business that they know needs to go, Yeah, but for whatever reason in the universe, they keep that person involved with that person, and that person brings their drama to their life. It just happens. Okay? And so now strategy you you're listening to the podcast, you're like, Dude, I know I got to get rid of this person. Or there's a couple of them. Or you're like, but they're like, they're carrying the weight like as much of a pain as they are, as much misaligned as we are. Do you strategically advise them to start recruiting in the background, preparing for a replacement, and then double replacement, and then to do that. I mean, sometimes you're open, sometimes recruiting depends on the position, but you know, you need to get rid of that person, because they're they're killing your company, and so you just need to let them go. And maybe you need an intervention, like for your employees go and say, hey, you know, like an AA thing, like you aren't an alcoholic, right? Well, you, I'm gonna call this, what's the word for that? Codependent? Yes, yeah. And, and most people disguise codependence is being nice, yeah? And it's not, it's codependence, yeah? And, you know, to me, if a person should go and you're going, well, they have a family, and I've known him for five years, and blah, blah, blah, and they don't they, it's coded. They aren't willing to go through the emotional pain to make the right decision. And that's codependence, yeah. Okay, this is great, Paul. You're always a wealth of knowledge. One last piece. Yes, I. What do you leave the fine Contractors of America with regarding the business tips we've talked about recruiting practices, what do you think is the most actionable, the most high yielding that you can leave them with? Well, I'm going to give you three. Okay, no partner on yourself and you do on your business. Okay, always be marketing and always be recruiting, because your business is determined by your clients and your team. Okay, that was two. Always work on your work on yourself harder than your business and and, and basically emphasize marketing and recruiting, right? Because you're only as good as your team and your clients. Okay, so there's a third. Okay, okay, Paul, I appreciate it. Where can, where can the listeners find you well, go to contractor staffing, source our website and really get a point with me. They just say, would like to meet with Paul? Click on the button and I'll set up an appointment. Half hour talk with him. No problem. Hundreds of 1000s of hours in this space has worked with 1000s of builders. Paul sandman's got this down to a science everybody, you need to follow Paul along. The man's passionate about this, Paul, it was great. We met at the remodeler Summit. Yeah, absolutely, yeah. But I appreciate you, sir. I'll let you get back to it and opportunity. I appreciate that. Of course, of course. We'll see you, Paul. Bye.