Episode 154: Small Business, BIG RECRUITING with Alex Shattuck

So the big question is this: how do small business owners like us grow our leadership, develop our teams, and scale our business in a way that allows us to get our products and services out to the world yet still remain profitable? That is the question, and this podcast will give you the answers. I'm Bradley Hamner, and this is the Club Capital Leadership Podcast. Hey, before we get into today's episode, did you know that Club Capital is the largest accounting advisory firm for insurance agency owners in the country, providing monthly accounting, CFO services, and tax preparation. Check them out at club.capital.

Welcome to another episode of the Club Capital Leadership Podcast. My name is Bradley Hamner, your host. On today's episode, we have a repeat guest, Mr. Alex Chatuch. He came on on episode 67, a little over a year ago on August 2nd, 2021. Make sure you go back and listen to that episode, Complacency Kills, with Alex Chatuch. Today we spend time on a topic that I know is fresh on everyone's mind, and that is how do we recruit and find top talent to be able to grow our businesses? I really love this conversation. There's so many nuggets that Alex shares from his wealth of experience, not only bu— building his own businesses, but also helping business owners around the country to be able to do that with quality people. Without further ado, here's my conversation with Alex. Shattuck. Alex Shattuck, welcome back to the Club Capital Leadership Podcast.

Thanks for having me back. I'm excited.

Excited to have you. So, man, a lot has changed. It was a year ago, a little over, actually almost a year and a half ago since we last had you on. Before we got started, I looked it up. It's episode 67. We'll make sure we put that in the show notes for people to go back and listen to the first conversation you and I had. But in the last year, year and a half or so, a lot of things have changed economically, certainly inflation, supply chain issues. But one thing absolutely resonates across the country in any business, and that is people are trying to find good people. And that's been, it's been harder now than it really ever has been. One of the things I know that we did touch on last time, but really want to dive in a little bit more today. On is, number one, just why is it so hard to find good people? And then we'll get into kind of some of the mechanics and your thought process and mindset around recruiting, you know, A-players and top talent to be able to grow the business. But what are some of the things that you've seen in working with business owners around the country over the past year, year and a half or so, things that you've seen?

Yeah, when it comes to the, the talent war that we're fighting right now, I think the first thing to point out is that this isn't something new, right? I think that we have this perception that when COVID hit, all of a sudden we had this recruiting problem. But I started writing on recruiting and speaking on the topic of recruiting before the pandemic hit because we had a major pain point back in 2019, 2018, before that even too. If you remember back, low, low, low unemployment, everybody had a job. Then all of a sudden the pandemic hit and the problem shifted. From everybody had a job to everybody didn't have a job. But then all of a sudden everybody's making more money sitting at home than what we could afford to pay them to come sit in our offices. And so that created a whole nother issue. And then now, you know, it's kind of a balancing act of people— some would say don't want to work, some would say like everybody's got a job again, low unemployment. People are consistently changing jobs. The data is telling us that 2 out of 5 Workers that changed jobs in the last 12 months are actively seeking jobs again somewhere else. And so I think what COVID's done is that it's just, it's just changed the game more so than ever. I think that the technology, everything has just been fast-forwarded a decade or more in some industries. And so before we were in this local talent war, which was problematic for us, but now I think what you're seeing and experiencing is that we're not just in a local talent war. We're in a national, in some cases international, talent war because of the technology that we all have, and that is not going to ever change. And so depending on your market and what your cost of living is, you might be on the winning end or losing end of that deal. But this thing isn't ending. This thing is not coming to a close.

That's a good point. You know, and you're so right about the advent of technology. Is that there's two aspects to that. That's almost like a double-edged sword. One part of it is you've now been— you can open up to be able to expand your horizons, your own mindset about what— where you can actually try to find top talent. At the exact same time, other companies are doing that and are fighting for those same really good people too, internationally, not even just domestically.

Correct. Yeah, right. So we have to be willing and able to play offense while at the same time playing defense. Or we're going to lose. That's all there is to it.

Before we got started, you and I were talking around a lot around mindset of recruiting, and I think that that is maybe one of the biggest missing pieces. I think we a lot of times get into the nuts and bolts of having a documented system, right? A step-by-step that you don't skip steps, etc. And that's certainly not to minimize that, But can you just talk about your, your mindset and the mindset that you share with other people about when it comes to recruiting and it comes to finding really top talent, what, what that is and how do we— well, maybe it's one of two things, either get rid of a limiting belief mindset, which we kind of already mentioned, one, and then number two, adopting the correct mindset.

Yeah, I think even looking back to my earlier years, you know, there are certain team members that I've had that I held on to probably far too long because I was worried about what would happen if I lost them. Like, what would we lose in production? What are the tasks that I don't know how to do that I have to figure out? What would the customers say or think? Can I go replace them with someone as good, if not better? You know, that scarcity mindset when it came to recruiting and just talent in general. And I'm not saying we shouldn't have a healthy fear of change and turnover, but we also want to be fair to ourselves and our teams and our families and, and even the company that we represent and consider all the things that could go right also. And when you really start to, to paint that picture of, okay, what if I could replace this person with somebody better? What does that look like for me? And, you know, I get the question a lot, what do you do when you have a full staff, right? And I'll say, well, if you have 3, somebody's in 3rd place, right? Someone's wearing that bronze medal. If you have 10 people selling, somebody's number 10 and they're hanging on right now, just hiding out, clinging on for dear life. And so my challenge is, what would your future— let's look into 2023— what would 2023 look like if you could upgrade that last seat to somebody better? And when you start thinking about financially Considering like who's on your team that's selling the most in comparison to who's selling the, the least, the gap in that monthly production, man, if you can take that bottom player and upgrade to someone comparable to the top and you really focus on how we get paid, man, it's a lot of money every single year that we're leaving on the table if we settle on average people. And so I think we have to change our mindset when it comes to assuming the worst and start thinking about all the things that could go right also, making that list also, and really putting some dollars and cents to the opportunity cost of selling on average. Because if you don't do that, you'll have that assumption that, well, you know what, Gary always shows up on time, he sells some stuff, is he really costing me money? The answer is hell yeah, a lot of money, a lot of money.

Yeah, there's a couple things you mentioned there that I just really want to make sure that people Colt, you mentioned scarcity mindset versus an abundant mindset. I did an episode the other day, um, I think it's coming out maybe this week or next week from the time that we're recording this, but it's called Out of Bounds. And the idea behind that— by the time this episode comes out, it would have— and it was really around, you know, when I'm playing golf, you know, if there's a tough hole and I don't want to hit it out of bounds or don't want to hit it you know, in the water, I can get so fixated on don't go here, don't hit the ball here versus what, what do I want to have happen? And you mentioned around, well, what would happen if this person was actually replaced by someone better who was actually getting it done? That said, how do we balance not constantly like being— seeing an opportunity for someone to train and develop them to get them to that level versus immediately saying, you know what, they're not good, I'm going to get them out and get somebody in that's better. And it may not actually be the case. Does this make sense?

Yeah, I think I got it. I think I have— I think I'm tracking. And I think the biggest thing is, is first off, understanding where you stop losing money on somebody, right? Like, what is that minimum expectation? Whether they're not a loss center, they're profit center for the business. And, and if you can get them there relatively quickly, that buys you some time. Right, and I always say, and this is where I kind of speak out of both ends, right, both ends of my mouth, where I, where I say, hey, you shouldn't settle on average, but then I'm going to turn around and tell you that you should hire someone relatively quickly if you have empty chairs in your office, right? And that could mean settling in some cases because I don't think we all understand what exactly qualified even is in some of our industries. And I get that a lot where An insurance agent will say, hey, this person wasn't qualified, so I don't want to interview them. And I'll say, what exactly is qualified?

Oh, that's good.

What does that actually look like? Um, and I can give you story after story after story of people that I've hired or I've seen hired that were not qualified in the eyes of many that crushed it and made a lot of money for that business owner. And so, um, first off Again, don't leave empty chairs. There's also an opportunity cost when you don't have enough butts in chairs to do the job that needs to be done to make sales and grow your business. But I've seen team members that get spun up in 30 to 45 days. I've seen team members take several months. I think early indication is their, I guess, their attitude within the office. Do they fit into the culture? Are they coachable? Are they excited to be there? Are they passionate? Are they appreciative? If they're all those things and they're not lighting the world on fire in the first 30 to 45 days, like, that, that is perfectly okay. I've seen some folks that really turn it around after month 3 or 4. But as you get beyond that and you're finding people that are clearly better, you have an option, right? You have a choice. You can either— if you have 3 chairs, 3 people selling, you can either add a 4th And then maybe that will motivate that number 3 to increase his or her activity in production or whatever. And if that's the case and all of a sudden you're batting 1,000, you're 4 for 4, outstanding, right? Great problem to have. You're not gonna lose money on that additional hire. But if you hire that 4th and number 3 still isn't figuring it out and then number 4 does, I think that's the key thing. When you see number 4 get spun up faster and they get better than number 3, And number 3 has been around for a while. And so 1 and 2 are doing their job. Number 4 is doing the job. Number 3 is just not doing the job. At that point, you know, it's not you, it's not the training, it's not the coaching or marketing. It's number 3. That's when you make that tough decision for number 3.

This may be a difficult question, but I think that we'll be able to at least kind of pull some, some goods from you. Okay. So different places around the country. Base salaries are slightly different. I mean, New York City to Huntsville, Alabama, as an example. And you have different compensation plans within different business owners, right? So there's differences there. So you have different parts of the country that are going to demand a different base salary, and then you've got different compensation plans, and then you've got different rates in which the commissions are coming in at, just given the area that you're at. So all of those factors together, things are not going to look the same. Nobody is playing on an equal playing field is what I'm getting at. However, you've mentioned a couple of times just understanding your breakeven, understanding your return on investment. How would you advise someone to go through that process so that they say, well, because a lot of times we look at it just on production. Like just here's their sales versus converting the sales into actual dollars and seeing the difference between profit and cash flow. Does that make sense? Because there's a big difference between those two. You can be profitable from someone, but that doesn't mean that that cash is going to be there immediately.

Yeah, I think that's a mistake that a lot of, a lot of business owners make, a lot of young insurance agents make where they'll look at the fact, okay, here comes December, my paycheck is already going to be late and now I'm hiring this person and now it's really going to sting. But we can't have this 2-week or even 2-month, I guess, lookout to see what's going to be coming through financially. You really should at a minimum be looking at 18 months. I can make the case for 24 to 36 months. But if you think about all the different ways you get paid, and this is going to vary depending on who's listening, but if you're getting paid residually off of some of the products that you're selling, what does that look like? Does that impact any, any bonus as far as retirement bonus that you're getting from that residual growth of your core products? Is it impacting any other large bonuses that you may be coming into every spring, right? Like, what does that look like? What does it look like if you have any variable compensation with those residual commissions and You have to factor in all of these things.

Yeah.

And then you got to look at, like, again, how much of that business is going to stick around? So if this person brings in 10 households, how many are still here after the first year? What's your lap scan on that first year business? What about the year 2 to 3 business, and then 3 to 5? Because if 2 or 3 of those households stick around for 5 years, you're not losing— it takes a, it takes a really, really poor performer to lose money. And so Again, that doesn't mean you settle on that person and don't actively recruit to maybe replace that person, but you don't have to necessarily rush that person out the door before you have a better candidate to replace that person with. And you certainly don't want to go to empty chairs because you think that person's not lighting the world on fire when it comes to production. So, um, it does matter to know, obviously, like your average premiums and things that directly impact your compensation based on your area. But once you have that all dialed in and you know what you're talking about financially and how you get paid, that's where you can start to do those other number crunching tasks to figure out, all right, what does he or she have to give me and then how quickly to justify a seat in my office. Yeah. And where do you think, where do you think the break-even generally is?

You kind of gave out some. At what point is it, does it say, hey, I, I kind of want to be breaking even on this person 12 months, 18 months, etc. And then everything past that is profit. If I'm, you know, because there is so many factors, there's, there's, uh, there's certain bonus incentives that can be in place that, that obviously impact that, etc. You and I were talking before this about just different businesses. Well, some businesses, they, they— that salesperson makes a sale and that sale is worth $20,000 and they make $10,000 in commissions. It's pretty obvious, like, you just— the business just profited $10,000. It's cut and dry. But if you're talking about an insurance agency specifically, because of the residual benefits of it, just because it gets fuzzy and it gets harder to do, you know, specific math doesn't mean you shouldn't do it, right? What are your thoughts on that?

Well, I think it's worth the time. I mean, I think it's simple math, right? There's a lot of different ways we get paid in the insurance industry, and so it's— it will take some time, but it's worth the time, and it's not that complicated, right? If you know what you get paid residually on P&C Insurance and you know your lap scan the first year, the second year, the third year, even just focusing on that alone, you should be able to put some numbers to paper on what does this person have to sell when it comes to auto and fire. Now, when you look at the bonus structure for whatever company you're representing, um, you gotta, you gotta take into account that as well. Um, and that's where we could take this conversation all over the place. But I think the biggest thing is know how you get paid and then know what they have to give you to break even in the short term, and then knowing long term they're going to be making you money.

Uh, you know, one of the things that I really, uh, respect about you is your discipline and your consistency. And consistency is the name of the game in recruiting, right? You mentioned that, you've mentioned that before, just the importance of— I think a lot of owners, founders understand that conceptually, but they just can't seem to get it put in place as far as their habits and natural rhythms of their schedule. Because they'll even hear this episode and say, I need to do that, I need to do that, and they just never do it. Can you just talk about that? Because I know that that comes up a ton whenever you're talking to people.

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Yeah, I think that it can be overwhelming, and I think that we, we shy away from the activities that drive results with recruiting because of the bad experiences that we've had. And I think most of those bad experiences were because we weren't consistent in our efforts, right? It's like when you go to the grocery store when you're hungry, you make really bad decisions and it gets extremely expensive. And the same thing goes when it comes to recruiting. If you only start recruiting when you have an empty chair to fill, you make bad decisions and it gets extremely expensive. Then you have this bad taste in your mouth with recruiting and hiring and change. And that's where complacency sets in. You start to settle on average team members because of that bad experience you had way back when. But if you're just consistent in your efforts, a little bit every day indefinitely, you're not going to make those bad decisions because you're going to consistently get in front of good pre-screened people, and you're not going to have that urge to just fill a chair because you're going to be hopefully plus one on your staff and you're going to have a bench. That's what the magic is when it comes to consistent recruiting. It's not overly complicated. It's, it's kind of like working out, right? If you're trying to get ready for spring break and it's 2 weeks before spring break, like, your Instagram photos, like, you're going to be using mad filters and angles and the whole thing. But if you were just doing a little bit every day for the previous 365 leading into it, like, you're probably going to be okay, right? The same thing goes to recruiting. Now, the trick is, to your point, it sounds easy and it is easy, but man, like, just like working out, how many days do we not, right? How many days do we, do we skip? Even though it could have just been 10 minutes, how many days in the 365 do you not give it that 10 minutes? And the downside is when it comes to recruiting is it's much more devastating than the 1 or 2 missed days that you have a month or a week when it comes to working out. Because you're not going to necessarily miss out on something extremely special by skipping 1 workout a month. But if you're not consistently recruiting every single business day and something comes through that's special and time sensitive and you're slow to act in the labor shortage, in the labor market, the talent war that we're in, I mean, you just lost not just a good candidate, but you lost a lot of money by not being on top of things every single day. And that's what I'm passionate about is getting agents and business owners to understand that, that little bit every single day is going to make you a hell of a lot more money over the course of your career. And in comparison to almost anything else you could be doing with your time, when you really look at what do you do from 9 to 5, whatever your hours are, You sort of prioritize what I could be doing, what I should be doing. How is this not up at the top? When you understand what that can impact, how is it not up at the top? I always say we're, we're just one hire away from taking our businesses from wherever we are to the next level, one hire away, but you're not gonna find that hire unless you're consistently recruiting. And yes, that means even when you're fully staffed, because that's when you find the best people, when you don't have to. Find people when you're not hungry, if you will.

Yeah, that's so true. You know, uh, in sales, people can smell commission breath, right? And do we not think that the same thing would be true with recruiting? Is, you know, you can tell— people can tell when you're desperate. And not only that, but you're going to make mistakes because you're going to end up— you've mentioned actually a couple of times, and I think it's important, you end up settling. You end up settling for less than what you could have had if you would have been out ahead of it. Somebody's wondering, what does it actually look like, Alex, on a day-to-day basis? Okay, I get it, but how much time do I need to be doing spending? Is it, is it 30 minutes? Is it an hour? And then what am I doing in that, in that period of time? Can you give a little more? I'm sure somebody's wondering that. Sure.

Yeah. So I think, uh, 30 minutes is probably plenty. Right? Just like working out, 30 minutes is probably plenty. I think the first thing that's a non-negotiable for me is you need to be in your applicant tracking system every single business day, every single business day. And so for a lot of those listening, it's probably CareerPlug, right? That's, that's the system a lot of us use that are listening. And for me, when I opened up my second agency, uh, this would've been November. So I opened in August, but this would've been November of 2018. I was at a fall planning conference and a younger agent came up to me And he said, hey, guess how many times I've been logged into CareerPlug this year so far? And I said, I have no idea. He said 64 times. And I said, that's outstanding. Where are you going with this, my man? And he said, well, guess how many times you've been logged into CareerPlug? And I didn't realize this at the time, but this information was accessible back then. I understand it's not now, but, um, I said, I have no idea. He said, you've been logged into CareerPlug over 1,400 times.

Wow.

And that would've been November, I think, of 2018. So the year wasn't even over yet. And so that just speaks to my aggressiveness within that system. Like if something's coming through, you need to be in there. Now, do you have to be in there 1,400 times? No, but every single business day at a minimum, and not just to see what comes through and act quickly, but the algorithms with those major job boards reward consistent use within those systems. So think Indeed, ZipRecruiter, those types of things. They're going to follow you, more people, if you're consistently using those platforms. So that's another thing. Other things you can and should be doing every single day is being mindful of the opportunities in front of you. So I use a business card, um, I've since created a better version of it, and I, at the end, I can give you the website where you can download it. But it's a recruiting business card, and so you can put your logo, your email in there, and it's basically Saying something like, hey, you rocked, and it acknowledges the fact that you want to talk to them about an opportunity. And the way I would use this is if I'm out to eat, out to the coffee shop, out to whatever, and I'm experiencing some awesome customer service and/or sales, I want to recruit somebody away from something, I'll give them the business card and say, hey, look, I don't have any reason to believe that you're looking to change jobs, but you were amazing and I would love to clone you. So if you're not interested, I would love for you to give this to someone just like you that might be interested in maybe some money, more fun, um, something that's essential, right? Uh, just have them shoot me an email. I'd love to connect. And so either they might email or they might actually pass it to someone like-minded and they might email me. So playing offense, um, just being mindful of those things around you. I get my team involved, especially if I ever get surprised. So I got a 2-week notice from one of my sales team members that they're opening an agency with a competitor. Top salesperson in my first office. So I thought, well, hell, I need to ramp it up a little bit, right? And so I got with my team and said, hey, instead of pivoting to life insurance and whatever else we typically pivot to today, let's pivot to people that have great phone voices that we enjoy talking to and have them apply. And within 4 hours, I kid you not, I had someone bring it up to someone that came, called in, state-to-state transfer, coming up from Florida, up to Michigan from Florida. She applied that day, she works for me today, and she's doing a great job. And so When you think about those little things you can be doing, like, it doesn't have to be just you. Lean into your team. If you have 3, 4, or 5 people, why not have them go out and do the same things that you could and should be doing also? And why not incentivize that? We bonus them for everything else and pay them for everything else. Why not put a dollar amount on that? Because it's— it's a guarantee, whether it's $500 or $2,000 or $3,000, if it's the right candidate for your office, you're going to make that back relatively quickly. So it's worth putting a little energy and some money behind those.

I was just thinking to myself, people maybe heard me say, I think one of our titles is to be CRO, Chief Reminding Officer. And that comes in a lot of different ways. I bet a lot of people listening to this have reminded, spoken to their teams, have told the teams, I should say, that they're looking. But I bet it's been a year or maybe more since the last time you've done that. And we have to continue to share that with them. Over and over and over and over again, even if, as you've said, that you're full. I like earlier you mentioned, you said having a plus one, plus, and, and a bench, right? We have, we have plus one and we have a bench. I think that's so good. Um, even if you don't really have a seat available, you're always wanting to build the bench and reminding our teams. I think it's great. You've mentioned a lot of things around really kind of mistakes, lack of consistency, not doing things on a daily basis, forgetting to remind our teams or even incentivize our teams. What are some of the other maybe biggest mistakes that you see that when people come to you that they've been making in their recruiting, either mindset or in process?

Oh, wow. Um, the list is long, you know, and it's, it is nothing against anybody. It's just we were never trained on this stuff, right? And so we do our best. And, you know, some things that we have to do, like if you're an insurance agent, you have to learn to sell insurance. And so over time, you're probably going to get pretty decent at that, or you're going to run out of money and fail. Um, but with recruiting, it's like, I don't know, people can get by with being pretty bad at it. And, and so one of the biggest mistakes that I see insurance agents making specifically, but I'm sure it's in many other industries, is, is really setting too many barriers to entry, right? And that can mean a lot of different things. The biggest— one of the biggest things is, is, is not giving people that deserve a look a look. And what I'm talking about here is, you know, when an agent says, hey, I don't want to interview that person because she's not qualified. You know, my challenging question for the agent is, well, what exactly does qualified mean? What is qualified? You know, and then so when I speak to larger groups, I oftentimes will challenge the crowd. I'll have everybody stand up and I'll say, all right, hey, listen up. If some of you will remain standing, some of you will take a seat as I ask questions. So the first question is, or statement is, if you have a 4-year college degree, please remain standing and everybody else sit down. Some will sit down, some will remain standing. They'll say, all right, if you had, um, Sales experience prior to being recruited by your insurance company that you work for right now, please remain standing. Everybody else sit down. If you had an insurance license before being recruited to the industry, please remain standing. Everybody else sit down. By the 4th question, everybody's seated. Every once in a while there's like one, but for the most part, everybody's seated. And I say, hey, look around, not one of us is qualified to be here right now. And so when you're posting jobs You don't necessarily want to put in all of the unicorn boxes that you want to check, right? And that's what a lot of agents do. They, they put everything in there. It's like they're picking their next spouse, or they put everything they wish they had in there that they don't have. And then they wonder why nobody's applying. But what it screams to the candidates and the applicants or potential applicants is simply, you're not qualified to work for me, so don't even bother. And so my challenge to agents is get all that out of there. Strip it down, cast a wide net, get the whole world to apply, and be willing to step up to the plate and interview some people because there's some amazing people that are not getting a look. And some of those folks are better than the qualified people, whatever that means. And I have numerous— one, one story I'll share. I was speaking to an agent and, and she was a customer of my recruiting service. And she said, hey, I'm not, I'm not quite sure about my recruiter. I said, well, who's your recruiter? She told me her name. I said, she's awesome. What are you talking about? You know, tell me more. And she said, well, I haven't interviewed anybody in a while. I said, okay, well, do you think maybe you're being too picky? And she said, well, I don't know. I said, well, let me, let me tell you a story and then I'll ask you a question. My most recent sales team hire, she was a cook at a nursing home and she lives in a trailer park. My question for you is, would you interview her? And she looked down and she looked up at me and said, no, I wouldn't have. And I said, that's your problem. That's why you're not interviewing enough. That's why you're not hiring enough people. This girl was in her third full month with me selling 30+ Roni Watto, 40+ fire. And a lot of insurance agents would never have even interviewed her because of the part of town she lived in or because of the previous experience on her resume, or lack thereof. And I'll tell you what, those are the folks that we can afford. Those are the folks that don't have 5 or 6 other job offers. Those are the folks that aren't necessarily looking around after 3 or 4 months because they're getting burned out of a certain task they're asking to do every single day, all day long. These folks are super appreciative of the opportunity. Now, I'm not saying you can't go out there and find that qualified person, whatever that looks like in your eyes, and do that too. And through consistent recruiting, you'll find that A-player unicorn or whatever, but don't wait for that. You'll be waiting for a while. There's some really great people. We just gotta look through a different lens at these people and give some folks an opportunity. And I'll tell you what, I was one of those people. I would've never ever been interviewed by a lot of agents. Infantry Marine, right? No college degree at the time. The one I was working on was criminal justice. Nothing about me screamed like, this guy's got it, right? Nothing about me. Thank God my agent gave me an opportunity. And so I'm passionate about getting other folks opportunities. And it's, uh, agents that are willing to do that, they, they typically figure out like that, that's, I think that's our sweet spot right now. You need to diversify the talent pool that you have.

Yeah.

So that is really good. That was, that's worth the price of admission right there, because I think we do that. We, We judge off of the resume, you know, and we're putting together a narrative and a story about someone and what they're capable of. And we don't— we've not done that. I mean, I think I certainly am guilty of doing that. You know, I watch a lot of college sports, in particular college football. So I'm going to make somebody mad by saying this, but You know, I'm not a New York Giants fan, but I think about the quarterback for the Giants right now is Daniel Jones. And I remember when he got drafted by the Giants, I thought, Daniel Jones? I don't even know who Daniel Jones is. And so I think, like, Google the guy and where's he from and where do you play. And boy, they— and look, and obviously they're having a great year, uh, at least as of right now. And versus, oh, they've got to be a Heisman Trophy-winning quarterback. And don't get me wrong, there's examples of that. Tom Brady's obviously one one of the best examples of where he got drafted. But you just never really know. And some of those people— and what I hear you saying is they just need to be given a chance. Somebody just needs to give them a chance, and they'll be so grateful for the opportunity. I want to ask you, as we kind of transition out of mistakes and mindset, I want to kind of ask you around this idea of like locating top talent. I know I've had some people kind of mention about that, and they just really struggle around sourcing, uh, sourcing talent. You've mentioned the, the software CareerPlug, which is a fantastic, really like CRM, right? It's, it's really what it is, is a CRM for managing your talent pool. And you've given some great ideas around having, um, the business card for whenever somebody is a rock star and you hand it to them. What are some of the other ways and places that people can go to try to locate some of the top talent?

Yeah, so we can start with Career Club, you know, I think that, or any applicant tracking system that you're using. I think you need to understand that when you post a job, people apply for jobs that they understand and also they feel they're qualified to get, right? So an example is like everybody wants like a sales shark on their team, whatever that is, you know, they get sales monster, but you go posting these like cool, sexy, crazy sounding names most people aren't going to apply. Even if you post something like insurance and financial representative with whatever company, like, that sounds really high speed, you're going to attract these like awesome people. Not necessarily, right? All those folks that have licenses that we all want to just like plug and play, they're making money either on their own or for somebody else. Like, they're not applying to your office, right? So if you're holding out for that, don't do it. That's a laziness thing. Don't do it. But post jobs that cast a wide net, right? Post jobs that people understand because you're going to get, again, way more people to apply. Now, you got to have a proper screening process. So if you're using certain terms or names that maybe will cast such a wide net that maybe there's candidates in there that you don't necessarily want to hire, well, so be it. What are the screening questions that you're going to use to filter them out before you're spending too much time with them? What assessments, what, what phone screen questions can you use to really differentiate someone that maybe applied for this that only wanted that thing versus someone that's actually open to some other things? They just didn't really know and they wanted to get their foot in the door of that company. So that's a big one. Um, I talked about playing offense yourself when you're out in the community. That's a big one. I think social media, you know, LinkedIn and beyond, Handshake, Facebook, going into, you know, so what one thing that we'll do is we'll kind of sneak our way into different community groups. So if you're, if your office is in, where is it, where's your office there, Bradley? Remind me.

Huntsville.

Huntsville. Yeah, so there's probably half a dozen community groups in Huntsville, you know, so, so get into those community groups and then at some point drop a generic job description in there and get some activity, get some people commenting and sharing, and then start reaching out to them and then funnel them through your applicant tracking system, in this case being CareerPlug. So those are some things you can do to play offense. You can have your team do that as well. I think having your, um, and depending on what company you're with, there's certain things you can and cannot do with social media. So do your homework before you take action and do those things. But, but get it out to the world, right? When we first got into the industry, I know I did. I started Facebook messaging people, and if I'm at like my kids' soccer games, I'm talking about things. And what I was doing back then was, hey, I'm an insurance guy. If you ever want to see if you can't save some money, like, I'd love to run a quote, you know. If it's not saving you money, like, no harm. But, you know, worst case scenario, you're still, you know, like, that same level of discomfort, that same amount of effort and anxiety or whatever you have to go through to pivot or ask that question It's the same exact amount of effort and anxiety and whatever to, to do that when it comes to recruiting, whether you're out in the community, whether you got your kids' soccer game, whether it's a Facebook message, whether it's a post out there to the world sharing what you're looking for. But when, just like with insurance, and you probably to this day, every once in a while someone will Facebook message you or email you or text you or something. They'll say like, hey, you're, you're, you're with one of those farm insurance, right? Which one of them, you know, they always confuse it, but they'll know you're in the insurance industry and they had a bad claims experience or they had a rate increase and they thought of you first, right? And that's the goal as an insurance agent. How many people think of me when they want to shop for insurance? So that's great, keep doing those things, but also start to think about how many people think of me when they're looking to change employment, right? How many people think of my business that I've created when they're looking for a decent opportunity or opportunities for their kids or whatever, spouses, you name it. Be really loud and voiceless. Like, let the whole world know what you're looking for and good things are going to happen, just like it does when it comes to selling insurance.

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I love that. Yeah, I think one of the biggest takeaways that I've gotten from this is that someone would have spent so much time creating a job description and a post to try to say, hey, I'm looking for this perfect unicorn candidate, that you end up missing out on some of the people that would— that, that could have applied, that they, they could have been looking for a pretty significant career change and to say, you know what, this is where I thought I wanted my life to go. That's not what I want to do anymore. I really want to do this. And, um, I think just casting a much wider net and then allowing your questions and the assessments that you use to begin to narrow that down, because you're obviously not suggesting at all to hire mediocre people who are not going to give you a good positive return on your investment. You're saying completely opposite of that. But we're starting with too small of a pool of candidates to begin with, correct?

That's 100% correct. The small pool— I could go on and on and on about this alone, but you hit it, you hit it right in the head. If you think about the pool or just look at it as a pie chart, right, you should never exclude large segments of the population. That's what I hear agents doing. I've heard people tell me that they've said, hey, I only want extroverts. Yeah, okay, we just eliminated 40% of the population and you excluded me, right? I'm gonna— I'm a, I'm an introvert, and so that means you wouldn't want to interview me. Does that make sense? And the answer is no, it doesn't make sense. Why would you remove 40% of the population? Um, I've heard some all types of things, but Here's what I've heard. I only want to interview bilingual licensed candidates. So let's do the math. Let's do the math here. You got 100%. Now let's, let's be super generous and say 5% of the population is licensed, which we know it's not. It's probably more like 1%. We'll say 5%. Now let's say 20% of the market in that agent's market is bilingual. So now 20% of 5% is 1%. So now you've asked me to only deliver the 1%. You give me a 1% pool and you want the same results as someone that's, that's swimming or fishing 100% size pool. Doesn't make any sense.

Yeah.

It doesn't make any sense.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's so good. That, that makes so much sense. And I think that a lot of times they're coming at it from the, from the right place. They're trying to come at it to say, I— but it, it doesn't— even that, it comes from a scarcity mindset. Like, I don't want to make a mistake. I cannot make a mistake with, with this, Alex, because I really need somebody and I really need the production. So therefore, this has got to work out versus, listen, do it every day, a little bit every day, time under the bar. Do it a little bit every day, just like if you were working out, and, and make sure that you're casting a much wider net and don't judge people off of just their initial cover letter, etc., and then ask really great questions. Is there anything that you think that we should touch on that we haven't? I want to certainly let people know about your latest book, and we'll talk about that in just a sec, but anything that we should have touched on that we didn't?

You know what, no. I will say one thing that you just said, I want to, I want to break you, because it's actually a great comment. You said that they— and I'm paraphrasing, but what I got out of that was those folks mean well, right? They, they, when they say, I only want bilingual and licensed and whatever, like they mean well. Right. And so that's a good thing because I do think it is important to know what that unicorn looks like. So know what you want. And if you're hiring a recruiter or anybody else, like know what that unicorn is, know what those boxes are. So that way, when, when one of those attributes from the unicorn, like is in somebody else, you can then like make a better decision on that person. So an example would be, I want licensed, bilingual, sales only, 4-year degree, orange hair, right? Whatever. And so when you get someone that maybe is a 6 and you only want to interview 7s, if you want to use a 10-point scale, well, maybe if they're bilingual, it goes from— that person goes from a 6 to a 7. Right? And so you recognize, like, okay, this person actually might be getting in front of because she checks at least these boxes. It doesn't check all 10, but she checks 4, and that's good enough for me. And so I think that's a great point you made.

Yeah, so true. Um, you know, there's, there's times where— and I don't mean to bring up another football analogy, it just happened to come up another one— but, but there's just a lot of 3-stars that make it into the NFL because they were in the right environment. They had the right things inside of them. They had enough God-given ability, yes, but they got with the right coaches and they worked their tail off, and somebody gave them an opportunity, and then they were able to go on and, and star on their college team and then obviously make it to the NFL, etc. So, um, yeah, I, I think that makes a lot of sense. So you've written your second book. Tell people about your most recent book that just came out from the time we're recording this, um, just a few couple weeks ago.

Yeah, this, this book is on recruiting. Surprise, surprise. It's called Small Business, Big Recruiting. And really my focus here is basically how to hire in the labor market and within the budget. So I'll talk about how do you, um, well, first, the first section, I really talk about getting excited about recruiting again, like getting your mind right when it comes to this stuff, because if we don't get our mind right first and get our mindset straightened out when it comes to this topic, we'll never take action. So I focused on that a little bit. Which you heard a little bit today. And then we'll jump into how do you actually locate top talent, like how do you locate it? We talked a little bit today. I dive a lot deeper in the book. And then the third section is how do you then land that talent? That's one thing that we didn't have time for today, but we all know it's one thing to locate talent. It's a whole nother beast to actually go and land that talent, right? So if you've ever done any guided hunts, you know, a lot of times they'll say, hey, we have 100% success rate of getting you on an elk or whatever you're hunting. But you still have to pull the trigger. So you still have to pull the trigger. And so the locate section will get people in front of you. The land section will get you sighted in and ready to pull the trigger. And now I'm excited about it. I really, you know, after speaking on it for so long and then developing the recruiting service that's helped agents all over the country. To me, this is just something that for those that are with the service, great, this will give you some tips to go play offense to complement what we're doing for you. If you're not, great. If you want to do it on your own, this is something that if you read this book, you'll be in a better position to take action when it comes to recruiting a small business owner. And the industry, I mean, everybody's hurting right now. And so I know the positive impact it can have on a lot of businesses and ultimately a lot of lives. And so I'm pretty fired up about it.

Yeah, well, this 30-minute or so episode has been obviously just chock-full of a lot of nuggets.

Where would you—

okay, where— couple things. Um, where can they find out about your service, number one? Number two, where can they pick up the book? And then number three, you were going to mention, uh, where they can find, uh, download a copy of that, um, business card.

Yeah, so the book's on Amazon, titled Small Business, Big Recruiting. And it's on Amazon paperback and Kindle right now, I believe. And, uh, as far as the recruiting service, it's called Autopilot Recruiting. And if you go to www.autopilotrecruiting.com, uh, you'll be able to watch a 20-minute demo video where if you do watch the entire thing, you'll know exactly what you're getting. If you choose to sign up, um, I would encourage you not to sign up if you don't watch the video, but if you watch the video and you still want in, love to have you. Right now we're only taking care of State Farm. Insurance agents. Part 2 to this business model for me, it's going to be the food industry because I like to eat and they're hurting also. So if you're in the food industry, help is on the way. State Farm agents, we're ready for you right now. And then the free resources tab or resources tab on that website is where you can download the, the business card where you can add your logo into it, your email into it. It gives you detailed instructions on how to actually go out and Vistaprint and make those yourself with our template. And there's some other free resources on that as well that can help you from, uh, the recruiting standpoint and also interviewing as well.

Awesome, Alex. It's been great. Have you back on in the future.

Looking forward to it. Thank you.

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You all know that I try to come away with maybe 2 or 3 big takeaways. I think the, the one biggest takeaway is for sure that we're all casting not wide enough of a net and we're kind of judging or screening too many of the applicants on the front side versus being able to put them through the portal with questions and assessments, et cetera, working them through your, um, You know, you're effectively your CRM, your recruiting pipeline tool that you're going to use. Obviously he referred to CareerPlug on there. I think that's number one. Number two, the consistency of taking daily actions. He mentioned 30 minutes a day and kind of thinking about it like working out. I think that was a great kind of idea of just being able to put the time under the bar to do something that, you know, you should be doing and is a big leverage point for you and your business. I think whenever he gave the story about kind of sharing about somebody, I believe it was on his team, and asking someone else, you know, would you have interviewed this person? They said no. I think that that in and of itself speaks to it, is that some people just need an opportunity to be given. And again, he's not saying at all to bring someone on board that's not going to be quality, going to get a return on investment, but it is about giving, uh, casting a much wider net so that the pool of people you're looking at is much bigger. I think also just one thing he mentioned, the idea around having the card and sharing that with someone, and even the verbiage around that was so critical. So go back and listen to the part whenever he talked about handing over somebody a business card that says, you know, you're, you rock and you're likely not looking to leave right now, but if you know somebody else who is, imagine how many people would have contacted you or in his case contacted him to just have that conversation because they're looking for a better opportunity for them in their life. I love that. So make sure you go and check out his, um, website, autopilotrecruiting.com, autopilotrecruiting.com. That's a great name. And then his newest book that just came out that is on Amazon. We'll make sure we put links in the show notes to all of that. All right, everyone, give a big shout out to our podcast sponsors, Club Capital, Rock Solid Assistance, Direct Clicks, and of course Coach P. And if you're familiar, Coach P and Alex, they do, um, They go around the country. They have 5 insurance guys that they're going around and they'll do some 2-day workshops, 1-day workshops, and do a fantastic job. We're actually having them to come on the podcast. Wish me luck interviewing all of them all at once. That should be interesting. So hopefully we're able to come up with something that we share with everybody, but hey, if you're wanting to develop your team, it's the last couple months. You know, you want to be able to develop your team, go to coachpconsulting.com. Make sure you mention you heard about him on the Club Capital Leadership Podcast.

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And how you've done this year and want to start having some clean financials, you can make better decisions so you know what the return on investment is, and so you can see what's my cash going to look like. That's exactly the kind of stuff that you can get with Club Capital, and in particular with their CFO services. So to go to club.capital— I mentioned many times about— get— I get emails, uh, from someone even just today about requesting someone to come on the podcast. And I said, that's great. Thank you. I'm so glad that you've been able to get value out of it. So if you know somebody, it'd be great to come on the podcast, let me know. And I'm going to send that to my assistant Courtney, who I wouldn't be able to do it with— do all of this without my team. I'm just so grateful for them. And if you want to be able to have somebody on your team and you don't exactly know what it looks like to have an executive assistant, I think of my team as growth assistants. I specifically think Courtney is really a growth assistant for me in the business. Then go to rocksolidassistants.com. They can help you with a marketing assistant or an executive assistant. rocksolidassistants.com. And finally, you know, it's on at the very end of the year. A lot of people are trying to get their goals finished up for this year and then also starting to get an idea of what's that, what is that going to look like, uh, building a pipeline for their sales team going into or for their team as a whole, but especially particularly their sales team going into 2023. If you really want to boost your online presence and you want to be able to get quality leads in, that's where DirectClicks comes in. Go to directclicksinc.com. All right, everyone. That's a good episode. Till next time, lead well.

So the big question is this: how do small business owners like us grow our leadership, develop our teams, and scale our business in a way that allows us to get our products and services out to the world yet still remain profitable? That is the question, and this podcast will give you the answers. I'm Bradley Hamner, and this is the Club Capital Leadership Podcast. Hey, before we get into today's episode, did you know that Club Capital is the largest accounting advisory firm for insurance agency owners in the country, providing monthly accounting, CFO services, and tax preparation. Check them out at club.capital.