CFO Chronicles: The Secrets Behind Success

The Productivity Gap You Can’t See (Until It’s Too Late) - With Rhamy Alejeal

• James Donovan • Season 3 • Episode 50

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Losing one hire can cost you 4+ months of productivity and most founders never see it coming.

In this episode, Rhamy Alejeal, CEO of People Processes, breaks down the blind spots killing your team's efficiency and what elite companies do differently:

• Why your onboarding is leaking revenue
 • The math behind a single bad offboarding
 • How to design people processes that scale without drama
 • Why "employee experience" isn’t fluffy, it’s financial

If you’ve got 5+ employees and want to hit your next level without burning out or bleeding cash, this one’s for you.

📞 Connect with Rhamy: peopleprocesses.com/partner

🛠 Free resources & tools at the end of the episode

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Speaker 1:

Welcome back to CFO Chronicles the secrets behind success, the podcast where we go behind the scenes with business builders, finance leaders and operators who are scaling, smart and leading with intention. I'm your host, james Donovan, and today's guest is someone I had the chance to meet just a few weeks ago at GrowCon in Utah. Rami Al-Ajil was one of the standout speakers and sponsors at the event, and after a few conversations it was clear this guy brings the goods. We hit it off right away. He's insightful, approachable and laser focused on helping businesses solve one of their biggest blind spots people. Rami is the CEO of People Processes, a company that helps small to midsize businesses streamline their HR, payroll onboarding and compliance, not just to stay out of trouble, but to create true organizational leverage. He's also the author of People Processes how your People Can Be your Organization's Competitive Advantage, and he's on a mission to help owners get out of the weeds and build systems that scale.

Speaker 1:

But before we dive in, a big shout out to our sponsors. Billcom If you're still managing expenses manually or chasing down approvals, it's time to upgrade. Bill spending expense is a smarter way to control spend backed by credit lines from 50k to 5 million, empowered by the bill divvy card. Check out your exclusive offer at billcom slash promo 500. Terms and conditions apply. Now let's jump into this episode with the one and only Rami Al-Aziz Rami thank you so much for coming.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, Really looking forward to diving in. You were just telling me before we started recording you've been busy. You've been busy since Girlcon. You've been all over God's creation.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, man, I've had a lot of fun. If you're in the accounting space, that first quarter press in the HR world. January 1 is our insane spot because that's when a lot of companies that's their fiscal year, that's when they're changing over their benefits all that world. Companies, that's their fiscal year, that's when they're changing over their benefits, all that world. So we have you know, on any given month you think there's 12 months you should have about 8% of your contracts renewing On January 1, we have about 40%. So it's always a crunch time for us. And before our finance professionals dive into tax returns, everybody needs their W-2s. You got all your 1099 work. We have our 1095s on the ACA reporting. So January, february is crazy. March and April are marketing May that world. I just had a bunch of conferences and then, yeah, had a good couple trips just to fill up the time.

Speaker 1:

Awesome. You mentioned you went to Mexico, philippinesines and japan. Which one was your favorite of all three, I mean?

Speaker 2:

well, I should say mexico, because that's where I took my wife and kids right, like that's the the time philippines was for work. We have some uh we've outsourced uh employees in the philippines as well that are awesome, and so it's all. It's great to get out and actually meet them and have fun, go karaokeing and all that. And uh, tokyo was uh just a personal trip and it was a blast, so I enjoyed every minute of it. Uh, I was tired when I got home, though I'm happy to be here.

Speaker 1:

That's fair, awesome. Well, rami, let's kick it off from the beginning. What inspired you to start people processes and what problems were you solving in those early days?

Speaker 2:

Well, you know, like every other 13 year old boy, I dressed up in a turtleneck with a clipboard and I wanted to be an HR guy, right? No, like everybody, you know, you find your. You find your spot. I was always very entrepreneurial and when I started the company, I'm a nerd. I'm a labor economics nerd in particular, or economics nerd, and I studied a lot and did my dissertations on, specifically a couple of concepts in economics that are around why people work where they work and how to optimize that spend. So when I started the company, I was working in the employee benefits space, specifically around how do people allocate those dollars more and more effectively. So kind of a different side of HR, not the sweet and loving, you know. Let's make everybody comfortable and build your culture. Hr side it was. You know, do you give people a 25 cent an hour raise or do you add pet insurance? Right, and we did the math on that for large organizations.

Speaker 2:

We wound up going down market and eventually a lot of the data we needed was in payroll, right, and doing my work. The hardest part of it was getting the dang data. I could do the analysis, write the report, give them a good recommendation, but we couldn't get the data, so we wound up acquiring a small payroll company Give them a good recommendation, but we couldn't get the data, so we wound up acquiring a small payroll company and it was like, hey, this way we can, if we're the pay, I could do the labor analysis. I could do the payroll for free if I could just get the dang data Right. I didn't do it for free, but it was a very profitable acquisition. And eventually, now we're doing labor analysis and we're doing payroll and people are asking lots of HR questions. Right, it's like I'm using your culture as a baseline. I don't know why your managers are buttheads. That's not my job, right, I'm just here to tell you how to spend your money. And that pulled me into HR.

Speaker 2:

We acquired a small HR company, integrated that and we were able to move down, market them, so 250 employees and under. We are that HR department for them. We look at how to attract and retain the best talent, lower their turnover, lower their time to hire, lower the time we call it time to productivity or ramp up, be compliant, not go to jail, not have your business blow up because of some employment liability, and do the day-to-day work on it. And what we found was as we got smaller and smaller, like as we got to smaller and smaller clients, we had to do more of the pieces. It wasn't just advice we had to give, we had to do it.

Speaker 2:

So under 250, we serve as the HR department for our clients and over 250, we kind of all look hard at it. We still have very large organizations that we're purely there in that analysis and advisory capacity medium size, five, 600, 700,000 that we're doing just kind of benefits analysis in that world for. But the majority of our business is that sub 250 where you hire us we're starting it Organizational design, job description, job advertisement, hiring process, pre-onboarding, onboarding, performance management, benefits, compensation and termination, right the whole shebang. And we just we not just figure it out.

Speaker 2:

We actually execute on it.

Speaker 1:

That's so cool. How is your approach different from a typical HR tech or payroll company?

Speaker 2:

There's a lot of different ways of doing HR. Most HR, when you look at it across the competitive space, is something like ADP. They're a software-based organization. Then they add on. Maybe they can add some compliance tools, they can add compliance advice, they could add some culture tools and some culture advice. But if you go look at their software, which is obviously a way of executing things, that's the broadest space. When you get into the ones that actually do advisory work, most of them are in advice and software and there's no execution in between. And then the ones that actually do the whole stack.

Speaker 2:

In theory, they are very reactive, is what we find right. So it's like you can call our 1-800 number and talk to a SHRM advisor and they'll give you advice on how to do it, and you can also schedule for our systems engineer to help you, show you what buttons to click, and it's like no one. There's not many people in the market that I see anyway that are saying look, we're going to come in, analyze your business, find the gaps, figure out the solutions, build it into a process software driven, communicate it, do the webinars, talk to your employees, train your people and then follow up and make sure it's actually being done by your managers and figure out when not, along with actually doing the kind of HR consulting piece of being there when you terminate somebody, onboarding the employee, welcoming them to the organization, that sort of piece. So it's a pretty different than what we see. That to us the software is a very minimal piece of what we do, but if you're doing it yourself, it's everything right. You got to have the right tools.

Speaker 1:

That's awesome. A little bit of a controversial one here for you. I know a lot of people think automation and HR don't mix, but you you argue the opposite. So how does systemizing your people's operations improve the employee experience?

Speaker 2:

Oh man, well, that's like saying you know, I don't want to make my widget, I don't want to have a process, I just want a master craftsman to meditate over my birdhouse that he's going to build for me. Right, it's like there's a place for that. But business is about process and optimization over and over and over. If you aren't following a process, there's nothing to iterate and improve upon. Interview people by process, because you're going to suck at it when you start. Or maybe you're a savant and really good and you can just your gut tells you who to hire and you nail it 10 out at it when you start. Or maybe you're a savant and really good and you can just your gut tells you who to hire and you nail it 10 out of 10 times. Great. Well, unless you're going to spend the rest of your life doing interviews 40 hours a week, you got to teach someone else how to do that. You got to pull someone else in, and so process in people is just as important as process in marketing and sales and implementation and logistics and delivery. You got to start with a process that you can iterate and improve on, and I also argue that people processes are kind of the ultimate process.

Speaker 2:

Most companies, small business, your CFO, listener. He spends his first six months to three years in business trying to figure out market fit, what he's offering, what he's charging, what the market will support, what he's willing to do like that intersection of what he's good at, what inspires him and what people will pay for. Right, because there are a lot of things that I think are super cool but I'm terrible at and there are a lot of things I'm really good at that are that inspire me and no one will pay me for. But finding that spot it's tough. And then there's that what I think of as kind of entrepreneurship revisited, very famous book building that into operational processes. The first great filter is most businesses never figure out a product and service that are going to fit in the market. That's 80% of businesses gone.

Speaker 2:

Then getting that from there to scaled operationally Now you know what to do. It's profitable, you like doing it. How do you get other people to do it consistently? And that's operational processes. And that gets you to another great filter. That's why you see lots of no employee businesses or two or three people. You see lots of 20, 30 employee businesses, maybe even 50 some industries.

Speaker 2:

But there's a great filter there to move you from small and up, and that comes from the next great filter, which is when you're operationally focused. You're thinking every day about the process to deliver your product and all you're having to deal with is the new processes, the novel, the things that you don't have something written down about. But as you scale that rapidly, the novel, the decision making rapidly exceeds one person's ability to figure out, and so you have to come up with a new process to create the people who will create the actual delivery process. So that move from I deliver to I create processes that deliver to I create people who create processes who deliver is kind of the trajectory of most executive function.

Speaker 2:

And it's you know, not everybody gets there. It's probably only 5% of people who start a business that need the. First they got to figure out a product fit and then they got to figure out how to like write the recipe down. But once they got that and the business is growing, you rapidly have to figure out how to develop people and that's the place we come in.

Speaker 1:

There's so many great visuals there from what you're just speaking about. That's so good. What's one process every business should automate, but most still don't.

Speaker 2:

Automate is a strong word, right. Like I don't need it to be click a button and nothing. Like there's no human interaction and it all just works Like. First of all, a lot of administrative tasks should be that way your 401k submission, your workers' compensation pieces like there's a lot that small businesses often are still doing on paper and they're going to lead to error and it's going to suck a bunch of time.

Speaker 3:

Stop doing that.

Speaker 2:

What I will say is people have a tendency not to processize things that they should, whether it's automated or technologically driven with human intervention. I think just a great example is what we call ad hoc life events. If your turnover is 30% which is not bad depending on your industry and you have not given thought to what process should I put in place for when my employees get married, divorce, have a kid, move kids, change schools or have a death in the family, right the six life events that your employees are going through. If you can put marginal thought into the process, a system of what you will do when that happens that makes the employee feel that you care about them, allows your business to function under those more stressful times. With that employee less focused, you're going to wind up cutting your turnover rate significantly, like from 30 to 20. And that's huge, and you will find then that you're able to handle significantly more revenue with the same number of employees.

Speaker 2:

Just by looking at this one very minimal people process, because an ad hoc life event happens to all of us every two or three years. If you've got 20 employees, that's probably seven or 10 of those a year that could have blasted out a key employee, but if you can put a little effort into it, you could cut that rate of leaving in half, and so it's just little stuff that would make a big difference. Now, of course, figuring out how you design jobs, requisition pay people, provide benefits, onboard them, train them like yeah, do that too. But I want to give you an example of a very simple one that most business owners haven't even considered. That is one reason why your competitors are able to get more done with the same number of people you have, and I think that's a key thought we should dive into, james, with your audience, the CFO what is the cost of these bad people processes, or not even bad average?

Speaker 3:

right.

Speaker 2:

And I'm going to we'll do a call to action at the end. I'll put this in a calculator or something that they can use for their own clients. But a key concept that your CFOs need to be internalizing is your productivity per employee. You look at their payroll taxes, benefits, leave, retirement, pension, whatever. Add all that up, you got a cost $80,000 a year for this employee. Now I guarantee you the revenue that they are responsible for, the production that they get done, is worth more than that. You wouldn't have them otherwise, right. So say you got a 10-person company. That company does 1.8 million a year. 180,000 in revenue per employee. That's about average in the US. Some companies it's 2 million. That would be Apple. Some companies it's you know, 120,000, that'd be like a daycare. Okay, that means each employee on average is responsible for $180,000 of production. Of course, some of your people are worth a lot more some less but we're using averages.

Speaker 2:

If it takes you from the day you fire somebody to the day you hire somebody a month and a half, 45 days. Sherm says average is 42 to 60 days, but 45, a month and a half, 45, a month and a half, that's a month and a half of lost productivity that you're having to fill in with other people of the same level, which means you have to keep additional headcount at all times, or managers who are stepping down. You're paying them more but they're doing a low-level task, overtime or and it's not being done by the person dedicated to it, so it's being done at a lower quality, rushed, less likely to keep clients right. Just that time to hire metric 45 days. Then you hire them. How long does it take to go from I hired you, you do nothing day one to you're of average productivity of an employee in that role. Mcdonald's says a fry cook takes four months. They hire a fry cook, it takes them four months to produce fries at the average speed of McDonald's. Maybe your role is less complicated than that. Maybe it's more complicated.

Speaker 1:

That's a wild stat.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, Four months. You need a fry cook to stick around for four months to pump out the fries at the rate that McDonald's expects. How long for an accounts payable clerk or a CFO? It's a long time. In my business it's 14 months, by the way. We know that number.

Speaker 2:

What I use in this is an average of, let's say, six months, A little more complicated than a good fry cook. That's six months. You could say they're at half productivity. Right, they're at 100% at six, zero at one Maybe there's a different curve, but half. You've now got three months of productivity ramp up and a month and a half of time to hire. Four and a half months of the year of that guy's productivity is gone. If that happens to you four times a year in a 10-person group, you either have to maintain a headcount of 12, or you're leaving 20% of your productivity on the table, and these are very conservative estimates. So if you're doing 2 million a year on those 10 employees, if you could just lower that you could probably do 2.4 million a year on the same people. That's your profit, that's your as a CFO.

Speaker 2:

Looking at a business, understanding these effective costs are a major differentiator. You know we just don't the turnover cost, vacancy, drag time to productivity. Just those three, and there's a bunch of other ones. They're an untapped storytelling asset for you as a CFO going into these businesses, because you're looking at these companies and they're saying, look, I spend this much on labor and this much and you just take labor as a given, but you don't even have to make the people work better. You don't have to operationally make it better which you can do too but you just have to make it so that fewer of them quit. When they do quit, you can hire people quicker, and when they get hired, they're more productive, faster, Like. Those are three very easy things to work on, especially when you're in these businesses that have put no thought into their people processes.

Speaker 2:

So, it's a very valuable way to be able to say now you can handle two and a half million dollars of business instead of two million on the same spend.

Speaker 1:

There's a lot to unpack there. I need a calculator. Well, my initial thought is and this is why I love having experts like you come on is because it sounds so simple for you and, as you're saying, all that, so many different examples and like scenarios that have happened, scenarios that I'm sure will happen. You're talking about all of these significant life events. I don't have a process for that. I've never even thought about it. I didn't know that was something to think about. So I really appreciate you sharing all of that and I'll definitely go back and at least put a bit of thought into it, like you've said. But I can imagine most businesses.

Speaker 1:

You'd be the best one to ask, but I'm guessing most businesses don't have that in place some do, some don't.

Speaker 2:

Uh, I think you'll find that apple does. I think you'll find that that companies that are getting the most out of their people are, and some of them do it because the business, every business owner is different, right, james? Like I mean I, you can ask my staff. I'm a nice guy but I have a tendency to think in dollars and cents, right, and until someone lays out for me what it's costing me not to do that thing, I'm not really thinking about sending birthday cakes to their kids' graduations. It's work, go to work. I have that mentality and it was. Yeah, it's really. I'm not a, I'm not your normal HR guy, but the reason these things matter comes out to real dollars and cents.

Speaker 2:

Think about if you acquire clients right, you're a business to business organization CFO out there and how hard you work, your marketing, your outreach, your discovery process, sales, qualification, the proposal, the sale. You'd get the contract signed. And then you wait two weeks and you send them a black and white copy in the mail of a 300-page manual and say, cool, that's what we're going to do, bro, like you would never do that. It's such a ridiculous thought to think about. That's how you would treat your client. But if you've got five employees right, you're expanding your labor capacity by 20% on one hire. And what effort are you putting into that experience to engage them and motivate them? And some of it comes down to the same crap. For clients it's like well, maybe we should send them some flowers. They really like it. The experience becomes remarkable as in they will remark upon it and tell their friends how do you lower your time to hire? Well, you make a better job advertisement. Yeah, you make you pay better. Sure, could, could be. But you know what really helps having 30 people in your company who love working there and you have a waiting list. Like 20 of them have friends who want to come work for you. If you can do that, your time to hire is two days. They will quit their job with no notice to come walk in your door. Right, that is a huge, huge financial piece and it affects the behavior of the whole company, right?

Speaker 2:

Knowing that other people want to work here, people ready in the wings, I'm not getting along with my manager. What's likely If you're at a place no one really wants to work? A lot of moaning and whining and they got a problem with their manager. They are likely to go look for another job. They're in the same company, but they know that a lot of people love working here. There are people waiting in the wings to work here.

Speaker 2:

There are Reddit threads dedicated to how do I get a job there? Right, and they got a problem with their manager. First of all, they're probably going to give their manager a little bit more slack and say maybe there's something I should talk to him about there. But if not, the manager really isn't they go and go. There's something wrong.

Speaker 2:

Everybody around me loves it here. I hate my manager. They're going to go to the executive or to HR, go around and figure out is there something here? Just that hesitation gives you an opportunity to potentially save that employee. By the way, the reason they hate their manager maybe because they're a terrible employee and they should be fired. Like could happen. Maintaining those standards is important. It's not just about making a daycare, but I'm just saying all of these metrics have financial effects, but they also have behavioral effects. Right, how quickly can I replace this person? How quickly can someone who starts here get up to staff? Like? That's a big load off your existing employees. A difference in manager, contribution to a new hire in terms of training time and, of course, lowering turnover means that everybody gets to maintain relationships longer, and that's also it kind of is a self-propagating cycle.

Speaker 1:

This is so good. It resonates a lot as a team of five where when one person does leave, we bring on on someone else, like it's such a big swing. We don't have a team of 100 200 people where it's such a marginal percentage of the labor. So right, I'm really in deep thought of, I'm just hanging on to every word you're saying here and I have a lot to think about after this recording's done. This is really cool.

Speaker 2:

I think another cool process that you could take a look at is your offboarding right. A lot of people really underappreciate their offboarding. Offboarding is such an important part of your people processes. Of course there's compliance and legal risk. Sure, of course there's compliance and legal risk Sure, there's also. But this is also, to me, the most important people process for understanding the other ones. If you lost 20% of your business, james, tomorrow, do you think you'd sit down with your team and go? Where did we go wrong?

Speaker 3:

And when they go that 20% client.

Speaker 2:

They were just assholes. We don't even like them. I don't even know why you brought them on. You would say, well, let's dive in a bit deeper, because I thought we did go to work with them. Maybe there's something in our sales qualification process we need to start cutting out. And it's the same with an employee when you lose an employee, either you fire them or they quit.

Speaker 2:

That is your opportunity to go back to the processes and figure out did we scope the job wrong Job design? Did we advertise and get the right kind of candidates? Did we screen and interview appropriately? And if the answer is, by the way, this guy was a bad fit. He was a druggy asshole who wouldn't do his work. Guy was a bad fit, he was a druggy asshole who wouldn't do his work. It's like, okay, well, that's our fault too. We're glad he's gone, but that's our fault. We never should have hired him. Let's figure that out. Or they're a great candidate. And then it's like where did we over-promise, where did we under-deliver in that career journey, in those lifecycle events? And you want to use each one of those off boardings as an opportunity to go back and think if I could just improve one thing every time someone fires or is quit, you're going to consistently lower that percentage, and the net effect on your productivity is so insanely high.

Speaker 1:

What I'm hearing is just having extreme ownership.

Speaker 2:

It's always your fault, anything in the business business.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, everything's your fault and what could you have done as the owner, as the team, to improve it? And I think that's such a such a healthy way to look at it and maybe not everyone looks at it the same way, but I've had to learn that lesson the hard way. You know clients leave, team members leave, and you know it's their fault and it's never mine. Well, eventually, who's the common denominator? It was me. And then it's looking really hard in the mirror. Okay, what could I have done different? And I really like what you're saying there, because I and I still have room to grow. But I really try to apply extreme ownership to everything and think how much of this is mine to to own? And where could I have done better to either set that person up for success or to set the client up for success or whatever it is, but it's. I rarely look at the case now saying, yeah, that was the client's fault, no, it's, I'm owning. Majority of the percent, percentage of that.

Speaker 2:

And the likelihood is yeah, and a lot of times the client. So I mean we have this happen. Clients bring us in way too late. Yeah Right, I'm under a Department of Labor audit. I have a class action lawsuit from 20 employees who are suing me for discrimination and unpaid overtime, and I'd love for you to come in and do my HR take that client on that. I'm entering into a relationship that's likely to end in failure.

Speaker 2:

The people that I'm working with don't care about this stuff, obviously, right. So do you want to screen for those things? And is it something that you don't want to work with? Or do you want to be the fixer who goes into those spaces? Right, if you're the CFO, you want to go into turnaround cases, build your model to go that way and qualify for it. You know it means that companies that are in clean financials may not be your target audience and you should charge a lot more so that people with clean financials wouldn't come to you, only the people on fire. Don't screw up your pricing and charge for clean and get a burning mess. So just up to you.

Speaker 2:

But it all goes back to I would add that to the extreme ownership the process-driven side. So it's my fault. I've identified a problem and I'm going to make a change on a process. Not I should have spoken to that guy differently in that meeting Probably should have but is that something that you can reproduce and actually make an edit to? And every once in a while, once you get the, once you do this for a few years, you'll start looking at things going. I don't even know what I would change. I I feel like I'm having trouble and that's where kind of outside help often comes in, because it's like I'm out of ideas on how to fix this issue. Yeah, um, that's so good for most business owners. They can get 80% of the way there just by putting some thought in.

Speaker 1:

That's so good. All right, A couple, a couple of rapid fire questions for you, Rami, and then we'll. We'll wrap things up here in the next handful of minutes. Um book or mentor that's made the biggest impact on your business mindset business mindset Oof, um, uh.

Speaker 2:

lots of books. I read a ton. I enjoyed the it's it's it's trope, but the first 87 pages of entrepreneurship 2.0, um is an amazing guide into vision setting and figuring out what you want your company to do. Uh, the ultimate sales machine by Justin Rolf Marsh is actually my favorite sales book by far for designing an organization that sells, and I think that's a really I think every business owner should read that, because I spent years in sales and that book changed everything about my business, how I Raised Myself from Failure to Success in Selling.

Speaker 2:

By Frank Betker written in 1955, to get the traditional view of that stuff, and it's really good too. Those are probably my top three books that I can just think of off the top of my head. Personal Development I love the compound effect by Darren Hardy. You haven't read that yet. You should. It's a great process-driven idea to personal development that I'm a big fan of. And yeah, I think that there's your reading list.

Speaker 1:

Awesome.

Speaker 2:

Appreciate you sharing that what's one system or process you use in your personal life that you can't live without. I am a nut, for I'm going to I'm going to call it a system or process but I use tonal, which is a weightlifting system that's in my gym. It's like really sleek and modern and all that, but it's the. The metrics are so cool. Like I look at total volume lifted, uh, and it automatically tracks that stuff. I can click a button and see my best, my, my pieces on those. So I've been super into that for the last two or three years, uh, slowly progressing my volume. And then, as a personal process you can see right there, I actually keep three journals at all times.

Speaker 2:

Um, I'm a I'm a nut for uh, fountain pens and and kind of uh high end writing supplies and I always keep my various journals and pieces in there. I journal every morning and always do a recap at night. And the three different journals I keep the top one is like a year-long kind of single journal planner. The big one at the bottom is my personal development and those pieces, and the one in the middle is my business pieces. So every morning I actually wake up, work out and then I spend just 15, 20 minutes, but I go through each one of those and it keeps me on track. And then at the end of the night I use the personal one just to have a little checklist of 10 items and how many I got.

Speaker 1:

Nice, that's awesome when you're not speaking, leading or building. What do you do to recharge?

Speaker 2:

I am an avid reader of trash, so I love to read and I do try to read good books every now and again, but I read trash. I'm a big fan of RoyalRoadcom. It's like fantasy isekai. That day I died and was reborn as a slime. Just trash Fanfiction. I still read a good Harry Potter fanfic and, um, that's, that's very much my thing. I have in my den downstairs, I have my reading chair, I have my tablet and my Kindle and an entire library of books, and so most days I get off work, have dinner with the family and I'm sitting there just reading trash. That's my, that's my getaway.

Speaker 1:

I love it Fully disconnecting. Yeah, if someone listening today is overwhelmed by HR or unsure where to begin, what's the first move you'd recommend?

Speaker 2:

Well, besides calling me, because we can totally help with that, or is this my call to action spot?

Speaker 1:

Whatever, hey what would you recommend? I'm going to give you two pieces.

Speaker 2:

One is you're not ready to talk to me. I want you to think about the life cycle of your employee, from when they see your job ad to when they interview. Pre-onboarding, which is like background checks and skills test, onboarding Onboarding is like their first 90. It's the time, it's the ramp up period, right From started to full productivity, and that's not day one. Look at that experience, performance reviews, maybe, and offboarding, and maybe those ad hoc life events. Make that list. Go back, listen again and just think about what you actually do.

Speaker 2:

Systemology David over there is amazing. He always says write down what you do now. Don't be aspirational. Right, make your system what you actually do now. Write it down. Jack talks to them for an hour about all the things we do. Okay, that's your process.

Speaker 2:

Write it down and just take a look at what you're trying to accomplish with each one of those right. With an advertisement, you're trying to get the right person to apply. Look at your ad Does it do that Right? With interviewing, you're trying to filter from those people to the best fit for you and once you find that person, you want them to actually accept the job. So it is both a filter and a sale. Do you actually do that? And when you look at all this you're going to go oh my God, no, I do it all poorly and that's okay. Most businesses do 99% of the stuff they do poorly. Just write it down, look at the goal and make one improvement, just one improvement on each one of these spots and you will find you don't need 15 years of experience doing this stuff for thousands of companies you can get. If you can get the stupid stuff out, you will hugely increase your ability to attract and retain talent. And I believe in you. You're running a business You're doing great. Just put a little bit of effort into that.

Speaker 2:

The way I do it. Again, journal-wise, I always book an hour every week to look at my people processes. It's my HR department meeting. But now that we have people on it, but back in the day it was like how am I going to make my labor go further and do well on it? So just book an hour, it's your own meeting. Keep a single journal online LLM, whatever you want to do piece of paper and write down those things and look at how you can improve it and see if you can make one small improvement a week and in a year you're going to have a heck of an employment practice.

Speaker 2:

Okay, having said that, I offer free consultations Any US-based employee that has more than 10 employees. You can reach me at peopleprocessescom. There's a button to request a consult. Book it. It will be with me. I allow three a week. They're 30 minutes each. So if you go on there and there's nothing for a month, I'm sorry. You can email me if it's urgent and I'll be happy to fit you in. I just try not to let it get over built out, but I'm happy to help.

Speaker 2:

We also have tons of great tools at our YouTube page People Processes. It's youtubecom slash, people processes. It's also on our website and they had a lot of downloads like a lot of downloadable material on there. If you don't know what to do with onboarding, there's an onboarding checklist. If you're not sure if your job ad's right, there's a job ad example and questionnaire. If you don't know if you're paying people appropriately, there's a performance compensation analysis tool, like. All of that's available for free and if you meet with me for 30 minutes, it's mainly going to be me figuring out what the problem is and saying here's the six free tools. I have to go deal with that, and if you need more help than that, then I'd love to talk about handling your HR for you.

Speaker 1:

Amazing, so good. Last question for you when people hear people processes, what do you want that name to mean to them?

Speaker 2:

That's a good question. We have our core values. So when I think about the name, I think about the brand, and the brand is actually the experience people have interacting with it, right? So we focus very much on our professionalism, our responsiveness and our politeness. I know it's weird to think about politeness as a thing, but we're in really weird waters a lot of times and people are yelling at us for no reason. So we actually look at those three core values all the time professionalism, responsible, uh, responsiveness and politeness. And so I think and I think if you ask my clients in fact I know if you ask my clients how well we reflect that those three are very highly reflected.

Speaker 2:

Um, I also think that when people think about people processes, they think about the personal, deep interactions they've had with my team. If they're a client, um, we're there in some of the worst parts of running a business. No one gets into HR cause it's sexy, right, it's not like oh, that's the best, I love compliance. Oh, yes, this is why I wanted to run a company for employees to complain, a grievance process, thank you, that's not what it is. So we kind of are in the we're in the shit with the client a lot and I think a lot of times, the reason we retain so long is because there aren't many vendors in your company, there aren't many employees who have seen where the bodies get buried, really seen, like we had to make this choice. It is what it is and it hurts, you know, and we're on your side for that part. So I think that's a big part of it.

Speaker 1:

That's incredible. Rami, thank you so much for coming on and sharing so much wisdom and insight. It was an absolute pleasure meeting you at Grokon. I hope that we can see each other again real soon at another event or cross paths if we're in the same city. I can't thank you enough for coming on and sharing everything you have this afternoon. It is my pleasure.

Speaker 2:

I do want to do one quick call to action, if people are still listening. Absolutely, peopleprocessescom slash partner is our financial professionals partner program. It's purely for fractional CFOs, fractional COOs, bookkeepers. We have on there really cool tools for you. We have some cool opportunities like revenue sharing and marketing pieces that can really help you grow your business, and we also can teach you how to utilize these hr data to data to tell stories so that you can attract new clients and look at your old clients with kind of a fresh set of eyes and a new set of tools. That's peopleprocessescom slash partner and we'd love to see you there.

Speaker 1:

Awesome. We'll put that in the show notes so people can get in touch. Check out that link Again. I can't thank you enough for coming on and sharing your time and just for an amazing conversation. Thank you so much, rami.

Speaker 2:

My pleasure, thank you.

Speaker 1:

Thanks for tuning into this episode of CFO Chronicles the secrets behind success. I hope you found value in today's conversation. As we wrap up, I'd love for you to do two things. First, make sure to subscribe to this podcast so you don't miss any future episodes. If you enjoyed today's discussion, please rate and review the show. It helps others discover the insights we share here. Second, if you're ready to take your business to the next level and attract the high end clients you deserve, head over to accounting leads nowcom or click the link in the show notes to book your strategy. Call. It's time to position yourself as the advisor your clients need. And don't forget you can connect with me on LinkedIn to stay up to date on what's happening in the world of accounting and financial growth. We've got exciting topics coming up, so stay tuned for the next episode of CFO Chronicles. Until then, keep pushing forward. Your growth is just one strategic move away.

Speaker 3:

Thanks for listening to CFO Chronicles the secrets behind success. We hope today's episode provided valuable strategies to help you attract more high-paying clients. Be sure to subscribe, follow and share with fellow professionals. Connect with us on LinkedIn and leave a review or comment to join the conversation. Your feedback helps us bring you the best insights in finance and marketing. Until next time, keep striving for success and unlocking your business's potential.