Jim Roddy - Hire Like You Just Beat Cancer (#98)

This week on the Maximize Business Value podcast, host Tom Bronson is joined by four-time podcast guest Jim Roddy! Listen in as they discuss Jim’s philosophies on equipping business owners to boost profitability and achieve their employee development goals, as well as Jim’s book, Hire Like You Just Beat Cancer. You won’t want to miss this! Be sure to check our blog later in the week for a free excerpt of Hire Like You Just Beat Cancer!

Jim Roddy, CBA works with high-initiative, growth-oriented companies throughout North America to help uncover their blindspots, utilizing the best business practices to do so. Jim works by applying his 25+ years of business management experience, executive leadership, and industry expertise to help improve customer and employee relations, as well as business function. His core purpose is to help companies improve their profitability and achieve all desired employee-development outcomes at a fraction of the cost of a typical full-time employee. Currently, Jim offers these services through his role at the Retail Solutions Providers Association as one of the association’s business coaches. We highly recommend checking out Jim Roddy’s book, Hire Like You Just Beat Cancer, on Amazon!

Tom Bronson is the founder and President of Mastery Partners, a company that helps business owners maximize business value, design exit strategy, and transition their business on their terms. Mastery utilizes proven techniques and strategies that dramatically improve business value that was developed during Tom’s career 100 business transactions as either a business buyer or seller. As a business owner himself, he has been in your situation a hundred times, and he knows what it takes to craft the right strategy. Bronson is passionate about helping business owners and has the experience to do it. Want to chat more or think Tom can help you?  Reach out at tom@masterypartners.com or check out his book, Maximize Business Value, Begin with The Exit in Mind (2020).

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Tom Bronson is a serial entrepreneur and business owner. He is currently the founder and President of Mastery Partners, Mastery Mergers & Acquisitions, and the Business Transition Summit. All three companies empower business owners to maximize business value and serve business owners in different capacities to help them achieve their dream exit. As a business owner, Tom has been in your situation a hundred times and knows what it takes to craft the right strategy. Bronson is passionate about helping business owners and has the experience to do it. Tom has two books to help business owners on their journey to a dream exit: "Maximize Business Value Playbook," (2023), and "Maximize Business Value, Begin with the EXIT in Mind," (2020). Both are available on Amazon.
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Transcript

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Welcome to the Maximize Business Value podcast. This podcast is brought to you by Mastery Partners, where our mission is to equip business owners to maximize business value so they can transition their business on their terms. Our mission was born from the lessons we've learned from over 100 business transactions, which feeds our desire to share our experiences and wisdom so you can succeed. Now, here's your host, the CEO of Mastery Partners, Tom Bronson! Hi. This is Tom Bronson and welcome to Maximize Business Value. A podcast for business owners who are passionate about building long-term sustainable value in your business. In this episode, I'd like to welcome our guest, Jim Roddy, back to the podcast. Now, if you're an avid listener, then you already know that Jim has been on three times first talking about his book, the walk-on method to business and career success. And then as a guest on our series tales from the 17% club, and the last time as a guest host to interview me for the same series in his unprecedented fourth visit, we're going to talk about his first book Hire Like You Just Beat Cancer, hiring lessons, interview best practices, and recruiting strategies for managers from a cancer surviving executive. Now I want to give a little disclaimer here. The book was published 10 years ago, and there are a few things that should probably be modified for today's business environment. We'll get to that in the second half of the podcast, but make no mistake. The book is full of pure gold, and you should not hire another person without getting a copy of this book and reading it first. So welcome to maximize business value. Jim, how are you? I'm wonderful. Great to talk with you again, always a pleasure. Awesome. So at the risk of repeating yourself, since you've been on the podcast before, tell us a little bit about your career path and what you're doing today. Sure, sure. Happy to do it. So I guess the right place to start is I've actually been in the business world for 30 years now when I was 22, I was a senior in college. I was going to school full time at Gannon university here in Northwest Pennsylvania. I was on the a walk-on on the men's basketball team. And then I was also the full-time public relations director for a minor league basketball team called the Erie wave that played in the summer. And so that's how I was able to kind of cram all that stuff in. And then shortly after that I became self-employed. I started my own sports magazine for Northwest Pennsylvania, did that for five and a half years. Then I jumped into the technology publishing world with the company was then called Cory publishing, then became Jamieson publishing again, published a series of technology and pharmaceutical magazines start as managing editor, then became operations manager. The last 11 years I was company president, and then I became a business coach full-time and then a little over three years ago, I joined a group called the retail solutions providers association, the RSPA. And I served as a business coach and vice-president of marketing, working with technology solution providers, folks were bundling together the hardware, the software, the services, and then the folks who are writing the software as well. And then earlier this year in 2022, I was named president and CEO of the RSPA. So that is like in 45 seconds, 30 years of work. Yeah. So I can only imagine, you know, you and I have shared the stage at many RSPA events through the years, but now that you've got the power, I guess I've seen the stage for the last time. Exactly. Right. We will not only not have you on this stage, we're not going to let you in the same zip code as well. So I'll probably save a lot of money. So what prompted you to write this book Hire Like You Just Beat Cancer? Sure. So the source of it actually was we had done training inside of Jamison publishing because we were growing, we needed a lot of folks to do hiring and make hiring decisions. And we want to train them up on our best practices, but, you know, internally we put together a binder. And so it had, you know, a three ring binder, it was an outline format. And then, you know, I was doing presentations at a lot of artists, PA and related events in the industry. And if people come up and ask me questions afterwards about hiring, and I just realized they needed something deeper than what I could answer in the back of the room before they would go on to the next session, but I couldn't give people that binder. Right. It wasn't exactly like the most accessible thing in the world. Like one point, you know, here page through this thing. So I was trying to think, how can I make something more accessible? And so I decided to tell the story of the hiring best practices through my own personal story. And a lot of that, what made me get serious about hiring was when I was 32 years old, I was diagnosed with colon cancer. And so that made me realize, right. I was either, you know, I'm going to step away from the business temporarily or full-time. And I really needed to upgrade the kind of people who I hired and really take that seriously. And so that's kind of where the cancer angle of it came in. I have to say also I was celebrating about being 10 years cancer-free and I just kind of wanted to shove it in cancer's face that I was, that I was still surviving. And so I guess I should say, now I'm moving in on 20 years, cancer free. And so again, thankful very much to all the great nurses and oncologists at the Erie regional cancer center and then the surgeon at the, and the nurses and everybody else at that, the, the Cleveland clinic. So that's really where all the book comes from 10 years and 20 years from now, I'm going to be able to say the same thing. I, our listeners probably know I was recently diagnosed with prostate cancer and I'm thinking that my next book is exit planning. Like you're about to get cancer. It might be an approach. So 10 years, 20 years from now, I hope to be able to look cancer in the eye and tell them to shove it as well. So yeah. So one of the things I love about Hire Like You Just Beat Cancer is that it lays out a hiring process. Too many small businesses don't have processes in general, but they, most of them don't have a real hiring process and therefore depend too much on what I call gut instinct when they're hiring. So can you share with us some of the steps of a solid hiring process? Sure. And it's interesting that you say gut because the presentation, I would give a ad, a lot of these conferences, it was called don't trust your gut because that's what a lot of people do and when they hire. So, so folks are listening and you think, okay, he's going to start and say, here's step one, step two, step three. So I will do that in a second, but first I want to back up, because before you get into your hiring process, you first have to have principles and you have to have patience. And so principals are in terms of what kind of person are we looking for? What culture do we want to have, and really fully understanding that. And then having the patients to actually hold out for those things that you kind of dreamed up in your conference room or talked about your leadership team with, right? So if you don't have the principles and you've found that don't have the patience to hold out for those, you can probably stop listening to this podcast right now, right. And take a nap, go do something else because you need those things. In order, before you start actually interviewing people. And then even before you get to interviewing, you have to have what I call an employee hiring process. And this is the aim part of ready aim higher. And two, oftentimes people don't do in that order. They panic because they lose somebody or they're growing, or they're just overwhelmed with work. And they just go and grab whoever they can. Right. If somebody Fogg's Amir, they're like, that's good enough. They're going to take some labor off. And so the employee hiring process helps you determine what exact kind of person I'm looking for, what I'm going to be, their duties, how are they going to be paid? How are they going to be trained? Right, good. We're going through all the thinking before you start interviewing people. And then as before you enter that, you also have to have assessment tools and then align a question in order to do that. And so I will pause right here and say, you can get my book on Amazon, but some of the tools that I just mentioned now, if you want to email me directly, probably the best way to do that. As Jim at Jim Roddy, cba.com, CBA stands for coach and business advisor. So Jim at Jim Roddy, cba.com, I'm happy to share with you a sample in play hiring process. And then also an interview packet that has some assessment tools in line of questions. You don't have to, you know, go from a blank sheet of paper. So all of that said, once you start interviewing people, I highly recommend first a phone interview with some basic knockout questions to see if it's a fit at all, then multiple one-on-ones, whether that's video in person, you know, a lot of this depends on where the person is. I, I like starting off with video now because it's not a burden for them to take time off work or anybody to drive anywhere or clean off a table or put on long pants or anything like that. And this, this day and age, I also recommend towards the end of the process, if you really think you're going to hire somebody, having dinner with their spouse as well, to really get to know them, and they really become comfortable with you. And then also a step that's called the aversions interview instead of going through the interview process and going our company's so wonderful and perfect and them going, I'm a wonderful, perfect candidate, and you go great. And you don't talk about any of those hard things. The aversions are saying, where is this potentially not a fit? And the aversions interview is actually the first step in the management process. It's not so much, you're uncovering new information, you're gaining agreement for moving forward. And that really sets the stage for your entire relationship. So again, once you get through all those other tools, which folks can email me about, you have phone interview, you have multiple one-on-one video and in-person interviews a dinner interview with the spouse or significant other. And then an aversions interview is the final one. And that's right before you make the job offer. Awesome. No, I know Jim just gave you kinda, you can find his book on Amazon. We're going to put a link to it right on our website and on our blog posts this week, we'll have another link to it so that you can go get directly to that book. So you've pretty much answered all the rest of my questions. Any final comments, Let's say, as long as I got the Amazon plugin, right? So people can buy the book, you know, and the book I it's now an ebook is like, you have the printed one. I haven't been putting them at all. It's like four bucks or five bucks. So it's for a lot of advice, it's a, you're going to have to spend a five and get some change back. Yeah, yeah, exactly. So, all right. So let's unpack a few of those things. You, you, you talk a lot about having multiple interviews and I got to tell you, that's a big mistake that a lot of companies don't go to the trouble of having multiple interviews sometimes even with the same person. So why do you recommend multiple interviews? Well, let me ask you this. How many dates did you have with your wife before you propose to her decide to marry one? Just one? Well, no. I think after that, within the timeframe of that first date, it was a very long date. I pretty much decided that she was for me, but we didn't talk about that until probably date number four or five. Right. And you go down the road and my guess is you probably went out with some people prior to that and you were thinking maybe this could be, and then after time you're like, wow, what a mistake? Or maybe more likely they went out with you multiple times. They were like, yeah, this is not the match that I'm looking for. Right. And so what happens is like, imagine if somebody said, imagine if your honest answer was, yeah, one time we spent an hour together and decided we were going to have this long-term commitment. Like nobody does any relationships except when they're hiring. Right. And why they do, why you do it. I don't quite understand, but I think it's just people trained. And again, I think they get in that panic situation. I need somebody, this person seems fine and they just assume that everything's going to be okay. And so part of the reason to have the, you know, multiple interviews and with the same person first is just the opportunity to really dig deeper. Instead of just having some surface level, it seems fine kind of thing. You can really dig in as the person, the right fit in terms of not just skills, but also personality in terms of character as well, and then really mapped to have the job, right. Just because somebody has done sales for three years, that doesn't mean they actually should be in sales or they are a good salesperson. And just because they had a firm handshake or you get along for the first 15 minutes, that doesn't mean they're going to fit within the culture of your team. And so you've got to make sure that you really dig in and be skeptical about it, not thinking in terms of, I'm sure this person is going to be great. And here's where it lines up. Be really skeptical and figure out, you know, just like when you're buying a car, you don't just say, seems good. It looks good. You know, you take it for a test drive. You're doing all the research on it. Things of that nature, make sure from every single angle, every appropriate angle, you're looking at it to say, is this person a good fit? The other thing that I do from a, a multiple interview standpoint, sometimes he might just catch with them, are you on a good day? Right. We all have our different moods and our ups and downs. And sometimes you walk out and you're like, oh, that's person seems really good. Then you'll bring them back in and you'll start asking the questions again. And you're like, there's not a really whole lot outside of the first time that I talked to them. And then you realize there isn't enough there also, if they have annoying traits, I always say, take those annoying traits. And don't say, I'll be fine. Multiply it by 2080, right? Because that's a number of, you know, 40 hours a week, 52 weeks. And that's what you're going to have to experience. And so the more time you spend with someone, you should not leave neutral. You're either going to like them a lot more. Are you going to say now it's not really a good fit. And again, the more time you spend with somebody, the more excited you should be for them to coming on coming on board, the more data you should have that makes you warranted in that excitement as well. After one hour, somebody who seems great might actually only be good or might actually not be up to your standards. So I'm a huge, huge fan of multiple interviews and being skeptical in terms of that, that person didn't just have a good hour, make sure that you're spending several hours with them to really find out what they're all about. And they find out what you're all about to. I liked that the, the being skeptical, it's the same way I am about this interview right now. You know, and somewhere along the way, I can't remember where it was in the book. It, the, you said, can you, would you invite this person home to have a beer, right? Or something like that? I, I think that that was something. And I think that that's like in the first interview and, and I've been telling folks for years, you know, in that first interview, if you're together with them for an hour and you know, Hey, I'd like to take this person home and have dinner with me tonight. Right. I mean, if, if the answer is no, then probably move on. Right. That's right. Because you there, you know, you walk a hallway, you see somebody walking towards a year, they're going to say, Hey, great to see you. Are you going to like, pretend to be on the phone or right. Hope that they duck in another way. I mean, let's be honest, right? You and I just saw each other a couple of weeks ago at an event I was going to say, I was glad to see you, except you did lean on me pretty hard and bend my thumb backwards, joking around. But really like when we see, right, well, it's not, it's not exist anymore. And so I'm showing that I have no thumb pretending I don't have one listening on audio. Don't have to think like, you've ruined one of my digits, but no, when you and I go to an event, we're happy to talk to one another they're mutual friends who we have that we're happy to talk to them. Not just that we just have a beer, we're able to have a beer and have a meaningful conversation and talk about things. We're on the same page, from a philosophical standpoint of how we treat people standpoint. You can't, we did not find that out. The first hour we spent together, the first couple hours we spent together, right. It took multiple interactions with one another in order to do that, to get to where we are. And again, you're not just hiring somebody to shuffle some papers or to, to dig a ditch or something like that. You probably don't need all this if you're only hiring for that. But if you're talking about somebody who you want to really be a partner with long-term, you've got to treat them like a partner during the interview process. It's not just, you know, an hour here, an hour there, and then you, well, let's take a shot at this. Yeah. The, the, one of the first things I think it was on page 10, that that just jumped off the page at me was when you offer someone a job, visualize yourself, bedding a sack of your company's money that your new hire will be successfully working with your company in 10 years. If every one of your new hires does not meet those criteria, you lose. So 10 years is a long time in today's business environment. Do you really expect to keep people that long? So first my answer is you're darn right, right. And so I'll expand upon that. But first I do want to make it very clear before the 10 years thing, when you're hiring somebody and their first few weeks months, they're not providing a big lift for you necessarily. You're spending a lot of time training them, right? You're slowing down. They're not really earning that money. So if you have somebody who flames out in the first year, you basically put a whole bunch of money and set it on fire, right. It did nothing to really build your business whatsoever. You spent a lot of your time, you spent a lot of that money, training them for no real gain. So, you know, I think everybody listening to this interview, now, they might not agree with the 10 year thing, but they can all agree. If you have somebody who doesn't last that first year, it's a complete waste of time and complete waste of resources. But back to the tenure thing, nobody has built a successful business based on employee turnover, right? Nobody's like, what's the key. Well, we just turn people over every couple of years, right? That's that's the big thing I heard about the insurance industry. Well, I was going to say They turned over. Right? But, and so the way that I look at it is every year beyond year two, that person is a multiple of effectiveness in terms of doing their job. And time-saving. And so again, I've now been at the RSPA for about three years now, I've been working with Chris. Arnold is a great example. He's been our marketing communications person, Chris, and I can say two or three words to each other, or draw an analogy for something that happened a few years ago. And he gets it. We get it run the same page. We don't have to go through the whole long. Let me explain this to you. Well, if Chris would have laughed, you know, a year ago, I'd have to train somebody up on that. We wouldn't have those shared experiences. And so the more, the closer you get to that 10 year goal, the way stronger that folks are going to be, and somebody might think, well, yeah, you just say that in the book, but it hasn't really happened. So back when I was at Jamison publishing and when our business solutions magazine sales team, and we were crushing our competition, we had big profit margins. We were growing sales, but the only way we can move into new markets right, were that our salespeople could become competent on their own. And we didn't have to keep teaching them and train them and jumping in and filling up their gaps. And so we could have some get into new markets. I wanted to help start a new events division. And so we could actually go and do those things because we didn't have to keep retraining and starting over. Right. And so that was just an example. I mean, I could have gone around the sales team and in fact, a lot of them are still there because I left the company about five years ago. They're still there, right. Moving in on 15 or 20 years working and keeping that thing going strong. So if you're hiring 10 people and you aim to have all of them be there for 10 years, are they all gonna stick? No, but if you get half, right, you've got five people you can really, really rely on from a longterm standpoint. So I know 10 years sounds really daunting and there's a heck of a lot of turnover. But part of the reason there's a heck of a lot of turnover is because people don't look for that good match right from the get go. So my advice to folks, if they're thinking that 10 years is too long, raise your standards, right? You've got to raise your standards and aim for something higher than a typical is two years. I'm going to be fine with that. You're going to regret it three years, five years down the road. And back to that sack of money, you're going to wish that you invest in more time upfront finding that person who is a better fit than taking, you know, the least worst person who applied for the job. To be honest with you. No, th that is so true. There are the higher, the level in the organization. The person is mis-hires, we'll call them mis-hires costs, you know, 6, 7, 8, 9 times that person's annual salary in training costs and, and missed opportunities and lost opportunities and things. And so the higher in the organization, the more important it is to really be thinking longterm. Now we do that even for some of our short-term gigs, we just hired a new intern and we, we typically hire college students to be interns. I won't even let our team interview college seniors because they're probably only going to be with us for six or eight months. I want somebody who's going to be with us for at least a year, because at that timeframe, they're going to at least be dangerous and, and have, you know, all kinds of bring all kinds of value, even as an intern in our organization. And I recognize even at that level, that, that the turnover cost is just astronomical. So we hire interns that have at least a year long opportunity with us doesn't mean that they have to stay with us that long, but I just don't want to turn them over every semester, every semester, because it takes so long to train somebody, even at that level. Imagine if you will, you know, hiring an executive level and, and people are not effective on their first day, you know, I would argue that the higher up in an organization, it might be a year before. They're really firing on all cylinders. And if that person, if it's a mis-hire and that person doesn't last a whole year, it's astronomical the cost to, to the business. So now you say also that you bet your money on the future with every job and bedding is all about probabilities and odds. So don't be against, or don't bet against the odds. Now, a friend of mine who is, does fantasy football, I've never done that stuff, but does fantasy football, you can do the same. I'm sure with basketball, you know, you're, you're so much into basketball, but this year I was talking to him recently and he won like every week, right. You know, he's winning everything. And I said, well, what's your secret? He says, I'm betting the Vegas odds. He said, I'm just betting the odds. You don't bet against the odds. And I win every time. So it's, don't bet against the odds. So when you are trying to stack the odds in your favor, how can you do that when you're hiring? Sure. Before I answer your question, I have to give my stance on fantasy football. I share it with Jim Rome. If you remember the, you know, long-time radio sports Castro back when he was single, he would always say, go ahead, guys, play fantasy football. It gives me more time to spend with your girlfriend, get into least one, one or three. Why not? Three? You love it so much more time for me to hang out with girlfriends. So as a priest, I always appreciated that stance on it. So yeah, no, I've not, not a fantasy football guy by any means. And so a bang, but back to your question, how do you stack the odds in your favor when hiring, just like your friend did in fantasy football it's data, the more data you get, the clear it's going to be in terms of is the person a right fit for you, or are they not the right fit? And so oftentimes when I tell people get more data, they think, oh yeah, I need to get like a bucket full of data, dump it out on the conference room table and sorted through. I'm talking about, if you get a wheelbarrow overflowing with information, you dump that on the table. Before you get through all that data, it's going to be pretty clear to you in terms of whether the person is a good fit or not, but too often, people limit themselves to one or two or maybe just three hours of interviews. And sometimes the interview is them doing all the talking, right? They're not really getting that other person sharing new data with them. If you can get a system that uncovers a lot of data and it's the right data, it's almost no decision to be made whatsoever. Just seems so natural that the person is the right fit for your organization or not. Right. You don't even have to throw them out of the process. They just realize, yeah, this isn't, isn't the right fit for me. And so again, folks might be listening to this now, because every time I give this presentation in person paper, like you spent how many times with somebody, but think about this. If you want somebody to be at your organization for five years, they're going to work for you. What 10,000 hours, more than that, you only spent two in the preemployment phase like that just set ratio seems completely out of whack. So spending 10 hours, when you want them to stay with the 10 hours, it seems like it's not a problem at all. And so, you know, to me, there's, you know, going back to getting the data and there's no substitute for a competent person getting closer to a situation. So if you get competent on what your goals are, right, what your principles are, what kind of person you're looking for and the tools to be able to assess them, your percent is going to be way, way higher, a hundred percent. Absolutely not. Right. You cannot predict human behavior 100% of the time, but you're going to get to the point where you're winning way more than you're losing. And you're missing out on that doom loop cycle of just turning people over and over and over, or having somebody who's not a good performer. And they're the ones who stick around, right? They're the only ones that are going to be loyal to you. So this is a, this is a process for hiring people who over time will give lift to your organization, as opposed to that weight that they could provide the first year or so on the job You want bucket loads or wheelbarrows full of data, not the thimble full of data that most hiring decisions are made. Absolutely right. Hey, look, I looked at their resume. I see where they graduated from. So-and-so speaks highly of them. Let's give it a shot, right? Like that is not the way you would get married. Right. That is that isn't the way you would pick your fantasy football team, right. Either. So, you know, you would go get more data. So by all means get that data. Yes. Yes. You know, when at my last company, the hiring managers would always do the multiple interviews. You know, we'd have we had prescribed questions. Maybe a sales rep would interview than a sales manager would interview. Then the sales VP. I always interviewed everybody in the last interview. They, they, they had, by the time they got to me, they had at least two, mostly three interviews before they got to me. And I was there for one reason. And one reason only I wanted to see if they were going to be a cultural fit for their organization. I already knew that, that the reason they got to me in the first place is because they've got the skills that we need or the driver, the ambition. But I wanted to be sure that they were a cultural fit. And to me, that's part of the data that you want. You want to be sure that they're going to fit in the culture of your organization. You included one of my favorite quotes from I, you know, I used to own an advertising agency. I don't know if you knew that about me, but advertising executive advertising giant David Ogilvy is each. If each of us hires people who are smaller than we are, we shall become a company of dwarfs. But if each of us hires people who are bigger than we are, we shall become a company of giants. Now, one of the things I advise all hiring managers is to always be hiring for your replacement. And I think that's especially true if you're a business owner. So clearly you agree with that philosophy. Can you tell us why it's important? Sure. And I'll tell it through a story and this will expand upon, you know, my, my earlier story. So when I joined again, Cory publishing it then became Jamison publishing. I came on board as a managing editor and the first person I needed to hire was a production manager. I was going to be supervising them. And I hired somebody named Nikki haikus and hired her, not just because she could do the production manager job, but she brought a lot more from a character standpoint, from a skill standpoint, from a drive standpoint, way more than just that production manager job and thought we're a growing company. You know, that'd be a great place. You know, she could, she could grow with us while I was managing editor. She ended up filling for me as managing editor. So I could move into the role as editorial director. So the editorial director supervises the copy editor. We need to hire a copy editor. And then I ended up hiring who long story short became my wife, Barbara Abbott. And so she was our copy editor by hired her knowing man. She could really be an editorial director and sure enough, she moved up into that role. So then I could move from editorial director into the operations manager role and it got so big. We need to have multiple operations managers. So Nicky haikus, who I'd mentioned earlier, she moved up into an ops role. We hired somebody named Karen Stewart who moved up from an ops role. Then as we continued to grow, we had a gentleman named Ken, Ken Pascoe at height. And what did it allow me to do? Become president of the organization, right? And so I wouldn't have become present in the organization if I didn't make those other hires, I would still be doing the ops manager or the editorial director or something like that because here's the whole thing. Those folks came on board. And my biggest concern, Mike, you know, putting quotes around concern was they could kick my butt. Like I remember walking out of there and being like, it was actually, so Barb did the copy hundred test. She caught more things on a copy of her test. And we had on what we were testing for. We're like, actually she's making improvements. We have to adjust the test, right? Cause she actually beat, you know, what we had as our, as our floor for that. So if you want to grow, if you want your organization to become more, you've got to hire people who can kick your butt. Not physically, just like, you know, David Ogilvy. Doesn't talk about literally taller, bigger than you, but that's what you need to do is have somebody who almost scares you in terms of man, this person wants to get up to speed is going to be better than me. So if you want to grow, if you want your organization become more, if you want to become more, you know, hire people bigger than you. If you want to stay small and just stay spinning in the same things you are every day, you know, hire people who you're going to have to be barking orders to day after day. I wanna back up for a second. You had hired your wife. She wasn't your wife at the time. She was not my wife at the time now. And you Didn't hire her just because she's pretty. No, no. So here's a, here's a funny thing. So we had careful, oh no, this is no. So I was, so I was single and we had an employment agency and then our HR people, when she was the HR person was like a matchmaker. And so she would always say like, you know, we would, they would joke around it. If a woman came in the interview process, they would say, oh, this could be the next Mrs. Rodney. And I would always say to them, like, you can't do that. Like, I'm happy to have fun and joke, but you can't do that at all. Because then people think it's, you know, inappropriate. And I'm like, that's not what we're doing here. And one from this was back in the fact stays, the agency actually sent over a fax to me with the resume and it said another potential Mrs. Rodney and I had to pick up the phone and be like, no, you can't do that. I remember I interviewed someone, eliminate her from the process. And the agency said, well, maybe you should just tell her the bad news she's eliminated, but maybe you can ask her out on a date. I'm like, what point of this? You're not getting like, you can't do that. And so I always do this clear, distinct line between I'm not hiring somebody, I'm going to go out on a date with or marry. And then it turns out that what happened, but that is not the reason why you hired in the interview process. She was actually, you know, dating somebody else at the time and it developed a years down the road. So feel like I have to talk myself out of that one, but it was an ongoing joke from our agency that we get trying to say to them, like, you know, ixnay on the Erin may. That's hilarious. I love that story. I'm going to be telling that over and over and over again. So, so before we take a break, one of the steps in your hiring process is to conduct. And you mentioned this earlier in your process that we described you conduct preemployment tests. Now of course, there are lots of great tests out there, including disc culture, index, predictive index. I mean, there's, there's dozens and dozens of tests that you can, that you can find to administer. Why is it an important to have this as a discipline? And can you share a story about using them? Sure. So having them as a discipline that goes beyond the resume, cause you can get hypnotized by somebody's experience, but you don't really know what's inside of them. And again, that's when you're hiring is this process that we're talking about behavior based interviewing. And so what have they done historically and then getting even deeper, what drove that behavior? Oftentimes people may get to the behavior part of it and then they never get to how deep it is. So you want to get beyond their resume and really understand what makes them tick. So I'm a big fan of the disc test. So that's a personality testing. You can just search the ISC testing and find all sorts of information on it. And by getting that information, it leads you to better questions. So I might be speaking in tongues here in terms of talking about somebody who tests is a very high S and this actually happened one time. And so there's a different ways to approach what S means it's sociable or steadiness. But if somebody has a super high S they put relationships above everything that oftentimes is what they do, if they're in the extreme core tile. And so what we did was we had somebody who tested that way and we started asking them about, tell me about times you had a hard conversation with somebody and this person said like, Hmm, I don't know if I have any really good examples of having one, but I'm going to need to have one. Okay. What is that? So my roommate lost her job. And so I've been covering the rent and it's been going on and I'm going to have to have soon that conversation with them about paying the rent or them getting a job, like, okay, how long has this been going on for I it's now 18 months. And you're like, Ooh, wow. But you can't show that in the interview. Like, are you kidding me? You have to think, oh, why, why have you waited 18 months? Well, and you know, have they gone to look for jobs? And this person clearly didn't have the ability to have our conversation, right? Because it seems like common sense to you and me and probably everybody listening to this. But by getting that personality tests, you can start asking questions. It prompts towards confirming and to what degree those tests shows. So it also by getting the disc test, if you understand what makes everybody tick and what personality works inside your organization, that can help you shape the next kind of person that you're hiring. So for salespeople, you want people who are high. I like, that's something that we learned at Jamison publishing. That was something that you really wanted, but you couldn't have them be absent of the D right. Which is the, you know, the dominant because then they wouldn't really push anybody. They just liked to talk to people and hope that things would happen. So again, it can help you not just understand your current team and understand that candidate, but can really help you build a team and understand what makes them tick collectively and individually Might not be surprised that I'm a very high D Most business owners are most business owners are Yes. And a moment of silence for the other three letters, right? So I've used a predictive index and culture index. You know, one of the things I love about culture index is it kind of maps out a little graph of you. And, and if you've used that before, and I've used it many times, I know I can see on a graph, what compliments my style. So for example, my sidekick, Kim Benson, who has been with me for eight or nine years now, I am, you know, way off the chart on the top two, and then way down, low on the bottom two on the graph. So it, mine just kind of goes like this. Hers is completely opposite to me, which is why we compliment each other so well, she can finish the sentences that I can't. Right. And, and so it's important to, to understand and to whether you use this or, or predictive index culture into any one of the things it's to, to really build that profile for what is the, what does the ideal candidate look like? And so don't just use the test to use the test. What can you learn from the test and where are the high performers in your organization that can, that can benefit from that? Embrace science, ignore your gut, not a hundred percent, ignore your gut and not a hundred percent embraced science, but don't lean totally away from the science aspect of it, right? These things have been put together by people who really know what they're doing. And so take advantage of it, man. The science says, I need to hire this guy and that'd be great, but he's such a jerk. Well, okay. So then maybe your gut can come in. Just exactly. That's exactly right. That's a hundred percent, Right? So we're talking with Jim Rottie, let's take a quick break. We'll be back in 30 seconds. 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You list 16 of these rules. Now I don't want to take time here to tick off all 16 of them here, but I'm wondering since this book was written 10 years ago, are there any of these rules of thumb that you would change today and why? Sure. Well, first I want to give the definition of rules of thumb, because this has been, I'd say the most controversial part of the book where people read them as the 10 commandments, right? Without shout, not, it's not thou shalt, not rules of thumb or like a principal who's brought application. It's not intended to be strictly accurate or reliable in every situation, but it's just a guide. Right? And so that's what it is. It's something that you should run through the, and see, see if it applies. So I'd say the ones that jump out that probably I would tweak one is don't hire candidates with a sideline business. So again, when this was written, virtual was not like in virtual side work and side hustles and more flexible schedules. Those weren't as I want to just say invoke, but you almost couldn't accomplish them because of the way that the communication aspects worked or didn't work, right. You actually had to be onsite in order to work for something you had to have stated work hours, hours in order to do it. So I'd say today, the way that virtual is, it's easy to do a side hustle from a virtual standpoint, and it doesn't infringe upon the actual outcome of the work that you're doing. But at the same point, don't be like, oh, I don't have to pay attention to that anymore. Don't fool yourself and dive in and find out if somebody does have a side hustle, what exactly does that mean? How would that impact the job that you're hiring them for? Right. Does it require them certain, you know, days out of the month or extended travel or, you know, what are they going to do? I remember having this conversation with somebody who they owned a couple, you know, houses, right? Some apartment complexes. And we're like, okay, what a fun deadline? And you get a call that the water, you know, is off. What do you do? And the person was able to say, well, I have a management firm who handles that, right. Or I have this handyman who handles that, and I'm just going to call them like, I'm not the one fixing the pipe or anything like that. And you go, okay, now we can see how this thing can balance out. So I'd say that's one that I would tweak. And again, you know, it's, don't hire candidates with a sideline business. In most cases, it's going to infringe on a lot of cases. It is you have to run through it. The other one is only offered jobs with candidate who's family or who spouse's family lives in or near the city where your office is located. A lot of times, it doesn't matter where the headquarters are for the organization. Like I can speak from an artist based standpoint. You know, we have, Charlotte is our technical headquarters, but we have two people there. We have I'm in Northwest Pennsylvania. We have Colorado Springs. We have St. Simon's island, Georgia. We have a couple people in Virginia. We have one up in Connecticut. Like, it doesn't really matter where those are, but you know, but here's the thing. If somebody, if the work can't be done virtually and it has to be done in your city again, don't fool yourself thinking just because that person's never lived in that town and their spouse and their kids haven't lived in that town that they're going to absolutely love it. And you're pulling them away from their family. A lot of times what happens is somebody moves to a new town and they say, it's not what I expected or they're, you know, oh, aging parents want them back home. Or they just want to be able to see the grandkids or things of that nature. So again, that one I say has become lesson. Both of these have become lessened, but I certainly wouldn't. Wouldn't throw them out. The one I'll double down on is don't hire kids just out of college. And a lot of people hate it when I say that, cause they just paid 50, 80, a hundred plus grand for their kid to go to school. But when kids come out of school, right, they're looking for, what should I be doing? And they oftentimes really don't know, let them figure it out somewhere else. And then you can get them later. And just like we talked earlier about the learning curve, you said a year, I've oftentimes seen it be 18 months. If you've got a kid just out of college, it's usually going to be, unless it's, again, this is a rule of thumb. It could be somebody who's an exponentially special candidate, but most of the time, they're not as special as you think they are coming out of school because they've taken a full class load, which is what, 15 hours a week. Right. And you're going to ask them to work 40, 50 hours a week. They're just not used to that. And so they'll end up looking for something else. So I've really seen, I, I have not moved one iota. In fact, I've moved even further towards in terms of let somebody else train somebody when they're, you know, coming right out of school. So are there any that you thought, Tom, I would've mentioned that maybe I didn't or were those the ones you Well, he does where it says are really the ones. In fact, after I mentioned to you, when we ran into each other at that conference that I had just read the book on the plane, it's that easy. I read the book on a plane from Dallas to Tampa and, and I was, I had just kind of finished that section. And those were the ones that kind of stood out to me that in today's environment, a lot of businesses have learned that what they thought had to be in the office now can be virtual. And so people can, you know, work from wherever they are and make it a lot easier. The, the hire, not hiring the candidates out of college, that's a toughie. And I think it's a hard one for folks to swallow. And I could go either way on that. I will tell you that many, many of my new freshly out of college hires that really were high potentials, you know, they had the, the thing that counts against them is they don't have any other experience to compare this company to. Right? So, so the grass is always greener on the other side. And so at the first opportunity to make, you know, a nickel more or, you know, whatever it is, I'll run to new opportunities when they don't really value and appreciate what you have. So I look at it from that standpoint, I try to hire somebody in their second or third job, especially if I want that young person, because many times I think that training somebody, especially in sales, it is way easier to train somebody the right way, the first time than to first untrain them, all of the garbage that they've learned at a prior hire. And so I want to hire them relatively young in their career, but I want them to have some experience because that way they can then realistically compare this business and this culture against other businesses that they've been in. And so to me, they are, it is a high risk. So double-down, I guess I'm going to have to go along with you on that. Yeah. And again, this is getting back to playing the percentages and I can think of, I was going through, as you were talking to my entire career, I don't know of only two people who got hired out of college and they were getting close to that 10 year or beyond threshold. And they were really high performers and both of them had full-time jobs while they were already in school. Right. And so they were the exceptional candidate that way. They weren't going from 15 hours to 50 hours and it was intimidating them. They could give up their, their two part-time jobs that they were working in addition to going to school. Right. That's a different kind of person, different kind of situation. I, I did when I bought my last company, one of the kids working for it with somebody fresh out of high school and I'm happy to, as he was in the support group and a go getter, he ultimately moved over into sales and into sales management. He's still with the company and what is this 21 years later? And so, but just an exceptional guy, but again, really more the exception than the rule when it comes to that. So rules nine and 10 talk about hiring a candidate who fits your predetermined profile, which of course assumes that businesses will go to the trouble of having a predefined pro profile. Now, in my humble opinion, most businesses, especially small businesses, don't do this. So why is it important to start there before you start interviewing? You mentioned a little bit of that at the beginning, but let's hit that again. Yeah. I said, ready aim. And the aim is the important part. And then the higher part, you don't shortcut all those things. So like, here's a, I guess I'll give you an example cause I can go on about this. But if you're saying I need to hire a salesperson, right. You need to figure out, well, what kind of experience am I looking for? What do I want them to inclined towards? Because the sales person, isn't a salesperson as a salesperson, think about somebody who sells cars versus somebody who sells insurance, right. How different that sale is, where insurance is more going out and getting it knocking on those doors. Cars are like, Hey, somebody shows up, it's your turn. You got to, you know, tell them all about the product versus somebody who's in telemarketing, right? That's a kind of sale as well, but that's all sorts of inbound as well. Or maybe it's outbound telemarketing, right. And there's different lessons they can learn from there. Or what if they're doing advertising sales, selling an intangible object that's different. And they have to go out and knock on doors, right? They have to do funnel management, lead management, that's way different from selling insurance, right. Or selling a car or somebody is, you know, a machine, you know, a representative, right. You know, they have, they're representing a handful of different products. That's a different experience. That's a different kind of person as well. So that to me is where, in terms of, you know, where you're getting back to a profile, you can say the type of the person who likes this kind of sales are inclined towards that kind of sales that builds a really clear profile in terms of who you're looking to hire. Because again, just because somebody is a very good car sales person, that means they're really good at sitting pack and somebody comes to them, right. And maybe it was just, they work for a Honda dealership and Honda's are super popular. Right. And so you really have to dig in to find out what makes up that kind of person. And again, just that one line item that I had about the type of sale that has done before they even client towards that's one of the many things that you look for just in one position, You know, I think you probably hit all of the different sales types and you're right. People don't think about that. People think, well, I'm just going to hire a sales person. Well, what kind of sales is this? And what is the ideal profile? So it, it really is incumbent upon businesses to dig as deep as they possibly can to really understand what that profile is because I've hired salespeople. For one role, we had actually had three different types of sales roles. At my last company. We had a, what we called our customer relationship manager. These are the people that manage the existing customer relationships and upsell them other things in our product portfolio, you have the new account sales reps, which are basically taking the leads that come on from trade shows and from magazine ads and from, you know, from our web advertising and trying to convert those into customers. Then we had key account sales people that were doing that kind of thing, but only if they had 50 stores or more in there, and these are all three very different profiles for salespeople. And we had on occasion, hired somebody for one, we thought that they fit that profile, but it turned out that they were in a different, you know, they would have been a better fit for different. So we had the luxury of shifting them over to a different type of sale because we had all of these different processes going on, but most businesses have kind of one flavor. So it's important to define that at the, at the very beginning. I think that is so very important, but so many business owners don't take the time to really predefine that if you learn nothing else from this podcast, take the time to do that before you go out and interview That, that, and don't talk about potential spouses in the, in the preemployment process. Yeah. And make sure that your recruiting agency doesn't send you faxes with, Hey, another Mrs. Jim Roddy, Another potential Mrs. Errata. Yes. I'll never forget that. That's right. You, you have mentioned the, the 90 10 ratio and the 32nd rule, the 32nd rule is what I say for chips or none wet food that hits the floor. Right. But what, what are the 90 10 ratio and the 32nd rule of hiring and why are they important? Sure. So this is all about communication in the actual interview. So 90 10 is you should let the candidate talk 90% of the time. You only talk 10% of the time. Oftentimes people want to talk about their business and talk about the job and go on and on. And then they start asking the questions and then the candidate just simply mirrors what you've already told them in terms of here's what we're looking for. And then they're like, okay, good. I'm going to say I'm that right? And then you don't want to, you don't want to that a classic one that I have is somebody came in and we asked them, I can't remember what the exact question was, but they started going on a rant about outsourcing and, you know, sending jobs that you're doing and working with developers overseas or something like that and how wrong. And I would stand up against that at all. Why would you feel that way? And then after they got to the end of it, I'm like, did you know, we have a sister company who does that? And they were like, well, I'm sure you have your good reasons for it. And so it was like, well, now you're just, you know, backpedaling at this point. So that that's one thing. Again, let them do the talking. So you can really learn, be very neutral and brief in your questions. And if they ask you to describe something, tell me about what you're looking for to say, oh, we'll get to that later. But I want to ask you a few questions first, right? Make sure that you're getting all the data from them first. And then the 32nd rule is breaking up your questions and your comments into digestible chunks, right? You don't want to go on for three minutes and they're going to lose it in terms of what questions you're asking them or what data you're trying to get them to, to digest. And so combining those together, you become a better listener and you gather more data and you gather better data because then you're not polluting it with all these other data points that they're then trying to mirror. So I'm friendly to people when they come in, Hey, how you doing? How's this? But we get down to business right away. I do not talk about what we're looking for or the job description or our company culture, or here's our principles or things of that nature. If they want to ask about those, we can talk about those later, but I'm there to get data from them first Love that that is a great way to kind of kick that can down the road, you know? Well, we'll get to that. I I've got some questions that I want to ask you first. Now I will tell you that when I was young and stupid in my, you know, first management role, nobody trained me how to hire, right. It was a small company and I was out there. I've probably made, I don't know, every one of my hiring decisions was a bad hire. Why? Because I'm so enamored with the business I would drone on and on and on about the business. And if I really thought about it, I was probably doing 90% of the talking and 10% of the listening and the fact that they were nodding at me, Mayo, these are good candidates. Right? Good at nodding. They agree with what I'm saying. Yeah. And so, so, but that is a, that's a tough thing for business owners because they've built a business. They're proud of what they have. They want to share that with people. But to me, the, the 90 10 ratio and the 32nd rule are all about a discipline to make sure that you're really gathering the data from them. I mean, if by the time you get to that, to the dinner interview, which you suggest in the book, and you mentioned that earlier, if you want to drone on about your company, feel free. Right? Absolutely. Yeah. And that's why this is part of having a system. So the, the document, again, if people want to email me, I'll send the interview packet. It has questions and big gaps for you to write in the answers. Think about, I need to complete this report, not the F to get it, you know, from step one, all the way to the end, bringing in and fill this out. So I can talk to somebody about the data that I gathered in order to do it. But if you don't have anything there, it might seem all fine. And you think you didn't do a lot of talking, but if you're realizing I'm not writing anything down, because I'm doing all the talking, that's going to help steer you. The best interviewer I've ever, ever worked with was a former military police officer. Because he was so used to just going in and saying like, well, what happened? Oh yeah. And then what'd you do? Oh, that's interesting. Tell me more about whatever. Like that's all that he did. And he would get his unbelievable, unbelievable comments. And one, this might be a little off color, but he interviewed somebody and the person was unemployed. And he said, okay, what have you been doing with your time? You've been unemployed for seven months. And he said, well, looking for a job. And then he said, well, you can't look for a job like 50 hours a week. Like, what else are you doing? And the guy said, well, I've started to get into movies. Oh, well, how do you move? It's like, what kind of movies? He said, actually, I've really become interested in porn. I think I was like, no. And if he didn't go, like, what are you crazy? He said, oh, did you see porn? Yes, I did. Oh, why have you become interested in, wow. The guys started talking about it. Meanwhile, he's like, oh my gosh, I can't believe this. But he was just completely neutral. Just drilling down on things as opposed to, oh, you're looking for a job. Let me tell you about or whatever. Right. So he found out these things about the person that made them go crime. He sakes, like this is not a fit. Like, why are you telling me this, that kind Of stuff. It's going to say, see, my joke would be, and then Tom Bronson was the best employee we ever had. Right. But it's just, if you're talking, if you're blah, blah blind and you're not focusing on, let me really understand what this person is doing, what makes them tick? You're not going to find that stuff out. So he would come back with unbelievable data from people because he would let them talk and just lead them down and drill down in what they were saying. You know, It's really interesting. And I've encountered this before former police detectives or, or a military, like an MP perfect candidates for sales jobs, because they just keep asking questions. Right? Sales is about asking questions and uncovering things. And of course that translates well to, to interviewing. Cause I, I remember hiring before former police detectives, because they're just relentless with the questions they don't stop. Yes. And just keep going. I love that. Drill out, drill down, drill down. So before we wrap up, I wanted to ask about a versions. You mentioned that in the first half, you take a great deal of time in the book. In fact, a whole section kind of on aversions, uncovering, exposing, and overcoming them. What are aversions and why is understanding them critical to your hiring process? Sure. So you have to go in with the mindset of there's no perfect candidate and there's no perfect employer. So if you can agree on that, then you say there are going to be places where this is not a fit, right? But then you have to say, is it not a fit to the point of that? It's not going to work out long-term or it's just going to be something that we need to manage. We need, need to talk about. And then it gives them the opportunity to address it, to say, here's why it's not going to be as big of a problem. Here's how I've handled in the past. You talk together about what are we going to do in order to make this work. And again, this is where it begins the whole management process and do the accept the management. Do they accept the criticism that it's not a perfect fit? Or are they just in denial of it? And it also sets a tone for willing having a candid environment inside of your organization that you are in the interview process. You've not offered them the job. They have not accepted anything. And you're almost pushing them away to a degree. You're not shoving them right over a cliff or anything like that. But you're saying like, I'm skeptical. I can see why this might not work out. And here are the things you're going to need to do. And that's them saying, yes, here's how, what I'm going to do. And then you say, here's what I'm going to do as well, to help you get better. So their first day on the job, it's not just like, you know, the honeymoon period. You're talking about things that they need to work on. I mentioned early that MP who, you know, we, we interviewed, I can tell you though, so the first hour and a half I spent with him, he was very like almost too low key. Like what, what can you speak up a little bit? I can't hear you. Like, we always talked about a sparkle meter. You didn't want somebody to have a 10 on the sparkle meter, like woo. Right. But you didn't want somebody to have too low because then you're kind of like, they're not enjoyable to work with. And so I paused him halfway through his first interview and said to him like, Hey, so here's this aversion that I have, you know, that you're going to be working with folks who are a bunch of high eyes. And it's like, you have almost like really, really low enthusiasm. And then he basically said like, well, once you get to know me, I'll perk up a little bit more. And I said, okay, well, why don't you try to do that a little bit more for the rest of the interview? And so then at the end of the interview, I asked him how he did. And I remember my answer is saying like, I think you did better. And he would always say, my answer was like, we'll see, like, that was always his recollection of it. But we brought them back in and over time it certainly proved he wasn't the sparkliest guy in the world, but we addressed that head on as opposed to saying, well, we hope he gets better. Right? That was something that we said, you have to be mindful for all the high eyes you're working with. You're going to have to go maybe a step outside your comfort zone in order to do this, this isn't the military anymore. We were managing like, that's part of the interview process. It's like, think about that. We were recruiting him. We were managing him at that point. And we saw firsthand that he was accepting of it. And he could actually improve live in front of our eyes on doing that. Not just promise like, oh, am I going to get better? I swear to God, I will. So that's part of where that comes in and why I'm such a big fan of talking about the aversions upfront and not ignoring them That you, you start the coaching process even before you hire them. I will tell you that in my, in my deep dark past, when our company, we sold a company to PSS world medical, they did have a hiring process and questions to ask. And when you were hiring salespeople just before you made them a job offer, and this is whatever, however, deep in the interview, just before you made him a job offer, you were to look them in the eye and go, you know, and I just don't think we're a good fit. And then wait, if they don't fight back, the interview is over off. They go. But if they're a salesperson, you're looking for them to fight back and tell you why they're a good fit. And so, so I always liked that it was a little tricky and, and sometimes it was a little uncomfortable, even when, cause you both knew that it was a good fit, right. But I just don't think you're a good fit. Well, we didn't exactly phrase it that way, but we were almost pushed them down. We'd say like, if this isn't going to work out, here's why I think it's not going to work out. We call the dropping of down the elevator shaft. And so did they try to climb back up or did he just, we just keep falling down on the bottom. Are they scratching and clawing to stay on it though? You're right. You do that with a sales person. You have to do it delicately, but that'd be the position you do. Exactly. So one last business question, the podcast is all about maximizing business value. So what's the most important thing you would recommend business owners do. And let's put this in quotes here in their hiring process to build value in their business. So I'd say tying in with all the things I said before, about the ready aim higher and raising your standards and all that I'm going to channel. I heard Dave Ramsey who talks a lot about hiring. People don't know him for that, but I've seen, I've heard him do that. And I can specifically remember the first time I heard him give this advice and I'm going to channel. I was driving back from a business coaching session in Toronto, driving right back, close to the border. And they asked him this question about hiring. And he said, double or triple, the amount of time you invest in your preemployment process with a candidate who you think is going to work out. So, and people are like double or triple. Are you crazy? And it's like, if you're spending two hours, spend six. If you're spending three hours, spend nine, like you don't just increase it by a little bit. You have to increase it exponentially. That's how you're going to get those wheelbarrows over. Foaling overflowing of data. I don't make you better decisions. That is Some great advice. So our bonus question, of course, I've asked you the bonus question so many times, you know, what personality trait has gotten you into the most trouble over the years? One of them is probably knowing me because as your beautiful wife who you hired, the real Mrs. Radi commented to you after we, after I met her for the first time a few weeks ago, how long have you known this guy? Let's let's, let's just mix it up a little bit. Peanut butter and jelly or bologna and cheese. So before I answer that, I do have to say when my, when I did first meet my wife in the job interview process, she had interviewed with our recruiter and our recruiter said, Hey, I want you to come over and meet her. And because she was driving back to Washington DC or something just to do, and then set up the next meeting. And so then a recruiter came afterwards and said to me, what did you think? And so I gave very quick, it seems capable, seems this seems this. And the recruiter paused and said, I mean, what do you think? And I was like tone. So again, I've been fighting that, fighting that for years, but again, it all did, did work out. We've been married for, for almost 17 years now. So I am a PB and J guy. In fact, for lunch every day, I do eat a PB and J in part that's because I'm a vegetarian and I've been a vegetarian ever since I was diagnosed with colon cancer, but I can't say pretty vegetarian fried bologna, nothing better than fried bologna. Burn it a little bit. Oh, my word, fantastic stuff. Well, deli here where I can get a big old fixed slice of fried bologna and cheese. Oh, that's the best thing in the world. It's probably not the best thing for me. It's probably, it's probably why we're going to be both cancer survivors because of the bologna. But man, it was delicious on the way down. That's the shark. Exactly. Remind our viewers and listeners how to find your book and how to get in touch with you. Yeah. So both of my books Hire Like You Just Beat Cancer and the walk-on method, career and business success are both available on Amazon higher. Like you'd just be cancer is an ebook only. And the best way to get ahold of me, and some of the resources that I'm always happy to share, is Jim@JimRoddyCBA.com. The CBA stands for coach and business advisor. It's not because I don't know the alphabet. Or hopefully, one of the next times you and I will cross paths will be at the RSPA retail now event that is in late July at the Gaylord Palms in Orlando. So that'd be a great opportunity for us to, to meet. Face-to-face awesome, Jim, thank you as always for being our guests for an unprecedented fourth time. Well, I'll say this and you can interpret this both ways. I need a fifth, I need a fifth interview and I may need a fifth in order to survive. Yeah, I'm sorry. I'm starting to think that, you know, we're going to have to be like Saturday night live. I'm going to have to get you a smoking jacket with a five on it or something on the next time you come on, but you know how cheap I am. So it'll probably be a really, really long time. And you'll see, you'll steal a robe from a hotel. That's what it's going to be. It'll have one of your logos on it. You can find Jim Roddy on LinkedIn. Of course you can email him. He'll be happy to send you those documents that he was talking about. There'll be a link to this book. And there's a link of course, to the walk-on method on our website. But if you'd like, I would love for you to reach out to me and I will make a warm introduction to my good friend, Jim Roddy. This is the Maximize Business Value podcast, where we give practical advice to business owners who are passionate about building long-term sustainable value in their businesses. Tune in each week, follow us wherever you found this podcast, because when you follow us, you'll be notified every time we drop a new episode every week and drop us a suggestion or two as a topic that you'd like to hear about. Until next time, I'm Tom Bronson, reminding you to review and revamp your hiring process like your business depends on it, while you maximize business value. Thank you for tuning into the Maximize Business Value podcast with Tom Bronson. This podcast is brought to you by Pastery partners, where our mission is to equip business owners to maximize business value so they can transition on their terms on how to build long-term sustainable business value and get free value building tools by visiting our website, www.masterypartners.com that's master with a Y, masterypartners.com. Check it out. That was perfect. I wouldn't make any changes.