The High Cost of Turnover: Retaining a Better Workforce | Podcast Ep. 103 | Toolbox for the Trades

Philip Mize, you are the CFO at Happy Hiller, a ginormous company. I can't wait to talk to you. But we are going to start this podcast the way we do every single one, which is, how did you get into the trades?

Good morning, Jackie. Good to be with you. You know, after a number of years in distribution and light manufacturing, I joined Bill Haslam's team when he was elected governor of the state of Tennessee to run operations for for the state's Department of Revenue. And near the end of the first term, I was contacted by Jimmy Hiller's first cousin, a very successful business owner in his own right, who I had met a couple of years before that. He was aware of Jimmy's business. It was growing rapidly. He was looking for a CFO with operations experience. He did the matchmaking, and here I am today.

Oh, my goodness. So, started off in state government, which is something that we're going to get to in a little bit, because as a sidebar, I absolutely love talking to folks who have unique origin stories when it comes to the trades. So I love geeking out on that. But. So you came across, you got introduced to Jimmy Hiller, you joined the team. How did you get to become cfo? Is that the title that you started with?

Absolutely. Was hired as the CFO initially at the beginning of 2015, but also to provide executive leadership over our IT group, call center, and internal operations. So, yes, same. Same role from the start.

Oh, my goodness. And how many years has it been, by the way?

Yeah, 2015. So almost eight years now. Time flies fast when you're having fun.

Totally. So Happy Healer is a giant organization. I alluded that to at the beginning. So for anyone who doesn't know, can you please share a bit about the company?

You know, the company has experienced really explosive growth. We are 10 times the size right now that we were 15 years ago. In fact, we've doubled the size of the company since I arrived nearly eight years ago. For those that don't know, today we operate out of 17 physical locations in four different states with more than 825 employees.

No, just as a small little operation. Just a small little mom and pop.

Shop just trying to make it. Exactly.

Oh, my goodness. So you've doubled since you've grown. That had to have been incredibly exciting. But also, I imagine a lot of scrambling and a lot of you putting together new workflows and fine tuning the operations to accommodate for such massive growth.

Yeah, and the growth has come organically and inorganically, no question. Same store Sales are way up with the growth and population growth in the markets we represent. But also through acquisition. I believe we just completed during my tenure, the 10th acquisition. Some small, some large since I started.

Awesome. I may want to pick your brain about acquisitions if we have enough time at the end. Just as a heads up, because that's one of my favorite topics. But I know you're a financial expert technically, right? Your title is cfo. But you do have a love of operations and building a great team. Can you talk to me a little bit about that?

Most of my career has been in operations. Candidly, I've never really liked the day to day monotonous grind of accounting, but it does come fairly easy for me and it's a great foundation for understanding business. Team building and personnel development has always been what it's about for me. In fact, even in my government days, I led the state's recruiting task force. We were thousands of employees short of what was needed to run the state. And perhaps more important than that, we didn't have the top notch talent personnel. So what was really difficult there was overcoming the relatively low pay in the public sector versus the private sector. So we couldn't just go out and buy the talent.

Wow. And I want to just call out that not having a lot of budget, not having a really high budget being in the public sector and then also not having access to the top talent that you can get as a within the private sector. Give me an example of how you overcame that.

You know, we had to vary our hiring strategies in a lot of areas and not just, well, avoid accepting that we weren't going to always hire people that are going to stick with the state for 30 years. I used a crass slogan at that time that we had to rent thoroughbreds versus buying mules. But for example, in one division I had a team of more than 500 auditors. But we were severely understaffed, which was critical for the state because these folks typically produce 10 times their salary in revenue. So I had an idea and brought in the largest regional and national CPA firms in the area and convinced them to join a program whereby we would hire college graduates, train them for two to three years and then make that pool available to them for hire. So at that time, and I'm sure it's the same Today, the largest CPA firms wanted top of the class college graduates, the 3.5 to 4.0 GPA students, which left that next layer out. So we targeted that layer coming out of school, the 2.75 to 3.5 GPA students and then prepared them for the higher paying private sector jobs that they weren't initially a candidate for. We effectively use that story as a recruiting pitch when we were in the schools and it has been and continues to be very successful for the state.

Yeah, I mean, I'm hearing that now. And by the way, I have a physical aversion to all things accounting and financial finances. It just does not, it does not vibe with me. But I love that you established that program because, let's face it, not everyone is great at school. That's just the way things are. And I love that you created a pipeline for students who weren't able to hit that top tier GPA in school, but you're able to give them a pipeline. It's like, okay, you know the basics. We're going to fine tune you, turn you into those thoroughbreds, and then we're going to set you loose on these really prestigious firms and in the process, you're going to give back to the public sector while you're doing it. Which I think is actually really lovely.

Yeah, I remember an old phrase. We were talking to some, some fellow cabinet members and they said, you know, you really want to train these folks and then they leave. And I said, well, what's the alternative? We don't train them and they stay. So it was very successful and the firms liked it because they essentially were hiring people that could hit the ground running as auditors, which of course is important to firms as well.

Awesome. Also, I just, my mouth, my jaw dropped. For anyone who's not watching the video, when Philip mentioned that these auditors would produce 10 times their salary. Just incredible. So.

Well, you know, and obviously the reason for that, as you might imagine, there's a, there's a massive tax gap in the country, both federal, state and local levels, meaning tax due versus what's paid. And so, I know, not always a welcome site, but to get taxpayers to do what they should be doing, they were able to produce quite a bit of revenue for the state of Tennessee.

I set you up as someone who works in the private sector. Now, to answer diff. To reflect on a difficult comment I made. And you, you, you walked that line perfectly. Philip, you are a professional for sure. So I just, I'm so, I'm so happy you shared that example because one of the top themes that comes up on this podcast is I can't find the right people, I can't find the right talent, I can't find what I'm looking for. And I Know that Happy Hiller has really worked on growing talent. That theme of training people to be the best they can be has been something that's been prominent within the company for years now. So. So, and I know one of those elements was purchasing a training school to grow your own tech. So how has that worked for the company so far? And were you instrumental in kind of bringing that model over when you joined?

You know, so back in 2014, Hiller purchased a training school to grow our own technicians. Back then, we recognized that there, as there is today, Jackie, there are more folks exiting the trades than entering. So we had to develop a strategy of growing our own to fill the pipeline. When Total Tech, and that's the name of our technical training school, was purchased from its founder, Don Miller, the original intent was for it to be exclusively used to train our own personnel. And while that's still a major initiative for us, it's also a commercial training center open to the public. The school and I would encourage anyone, if you ever get a chance to come see us, please do that. But it's still led by its founder, and they've been through amazing technological innovation over the years. It's an impressive institution that has been absolutely awesome for us.

That's great. And so this happened in 2014, about a year before you joined. When you saw that they had this pipeline through their training school. Is that something that made you really excited about the job?

Absolutely. Because I had been through something similar in a previous distribution company where class A CDL driver very, very comparable to our business. We're relying upon technicians in that business. We were relying upon class A CDL drivers, which were A, difficult to come by, and B, took some training. So we built a school in that business to teach folks how to do that and to get licensed, because the pipeline was just dry externally, and it proved to be great for us. So, yes, this was instrumental and very attractive for me coming on board and very attractive.

I love that. Another thing I talk about on this podcast a lot is how. And Ken Goodrich, who was episode 100, he talked to me about finding folks that come from different industries to bring their expertise into the services, the services space. You obviously come from this public sector. You have a really personal experience with how that works. So could you talk to me a little bit about what skills and knowledge you carried along from the public center, the public sector, that influence how Happy Healer works today?

Well, of course, keep in mind, Jackie, that's. That was a limited part of my career, about four years. The bulk of my Career has been in the private sector, distribution and light manufacturing, only four years in the public sector. And ironically it was the governor at that time that wanted to bring private sector business people to bring innovation, business management expertise to that industry. So it's not, not dissimilar. Another industry, I serve on the board for a major healthcare company, which is often they keep a lot of folks that have been in healthcare forever, but recently they've tried to get other people to bring ideas and different business acumen to help. And as I think, you know, certainly healthcare, given the kind of inflation we're going through of nearly double digits over the last 10 years, they need help. Right. So, so similar mindset and I think it's been very effective for them, it was effective for the state and it's good for us. It's good for us. Not everything was hatched inside of a particular industry. So it's good, it's good to think about and consider outside perspective.

I love that you're incredibly fascinating and I love the answers you're giving. So I apologize that I'm kind of hopping all around the place. But I would love to talk now about the relationship you formed with Walmart through the training school that we just talked about. Talk to me a little bit about that, how that relationship formed and what lessons you learned from Walmart, which as a, everyone knows is a pretty big company on its own.

Walmart, I believe, is still the largest employer in the United States. So a few years ago, four of their human resources leaders came to see us. They wanted to hire graduates from our technical training school to fill electrician, H vac technician and plumber positions in their distribution centers around the country. So while they were here, we got into a number of conversations, one of which was about employee turnover. And I asked them about that. Tell me about employee turnover. And they readily had statistics about these jobs. And by the way, they employed between 6 and 8,000 of tradesmen in these distribution centers. So a massive employer. But anyways, they told me about their unemployed or their, excuse me, their employee turnover rate, which was below 10%, which is remarkable in this industry. So first question, how do you do that? How are you able to sustain a workforce with, with this kind of very low turnover? The first answer that the Chro gave me, well, it's, it's our pay. And I said, well, let's talk about that. And so I assume because they're the largest employer in the United States, perhaps their pay was top of the market, but that wasn't it. Actually, it was surprisingly low. So the second answer was it's our benefits package. Same story here. I thought the benefits had to be outstanding from a company this large. Perhaps it included Walmart stock options and other things. But that wasn't it either. In fact, our benefit package was substantially better. So the conversation continued and finally I got to. Or we got to what I believe was the real answer or answers. First, their distribution centers are in fairly remote areas of the country where jobs are fewer and more coveted than they are in major urban areas. And then two, perhaps just as important, they have dedicated work schedules that rarely extend beyond the standard shift. So the learning lesson was for me, today's workforce predominantly likes a schedule they can depend on so that the life part of work life balance can be counted on in many situations. I have found it's more important than money to employee candidates and employees themselves. And two, perhaps what I call a hub and spoke strategy with smaller satellite branches is more effective today than larger operations in urban areas serving broader territories. Today's worker, I believe, want shorter commutes and the opportunity to work in the communities they live in.

Yeah, yeah, I 100% said the hub and spoke model, which is actually another model we're going to talk about on this season of the podcast with another guest. But just to kind of summarize what you what we've talked about here. So while you were working in the public sector, you created this pipeline for folks to get trained and then eventually be hired by the largest CPA firms in your state. In the Walmart example, you have a worker that is highly skilled but is still in their area where jobs are more precious. And you're also guaranteeing them time to spend with their families, do what they want to do, you know, because no one, I mean it can be contested, but I don't think anyone lives to work. Right. So giving them that flexibility. So in both of those examples, we're talking about more flexibility and we're talking about more opportunity with a within a finite time constraint. And none of those have to do with salary. Right. And I think that really speaks to how companies need to evolve and shift to attract the best employees out there. They have to give them what they want. Do you agree with.

There's no question I agree with that. And you know, if you're in Nashville, Tennessee, where the traffic we're now down to a pre pandemic level, it's just horrible. There's not a great population in the inner core, so you're hiring from outlying counties. But those are not people that Want to be stuck in traffic for an hour and a half to two hours a day trying to commute. They want to work in the counties and by the way, we service those counties. So that's what I'm talking about in the hub and spoke strategy. Let's build smaller satellites there and we've done some of that. And take out some of the corps in Nashville trying to service a 20 county area.

Yeah. And even just making it so that your techs don't have to drive like sit through traffic to drop off their truck or something. Right, right. That's right in the middle of the city. They can take it home with them, that kind of thing. And boy, let me tell you, Los Angeles has also returned to the pre pandemic traffic. And I those first few months of the pandemic, that was the one silver lining. It was the one silver lining.

Well, for those of us that never deviated from the come to work schedule, yes, I did enjoy that part of it. And that is completely over here in middle Tennessee.

So let's actually keep on this one thread of giving employees what they want. So from a financial perspective, given that we have to not only consider pay, but also what are some incentives, what are benefits that the employee really wants? From a financial perspective, what does it cost to build and retain an excellent workforce?

Jackie, it's expensive, but it's worth it. I think perhaps the better question that really needs to be asked is what does it cost if you don't? On average, it costs a minimum of $50,000 every time a contractor turns over field employee. And it's much higher when you replace experience with inexperience. So there's a lot of the cost that's hidden and difficult to measure, including callbacks that are created by inexperienced personnel and the impact on your brand in the marketplace. I have talked to so many employers that hire under pressure and desperation and when they do so, they make mistakes. They don't check references, they don't thoroughly vet the candidates. And therefore expectations are not clearly understood from both sides, the employer and the employee candidate, which inevitably leads to termination. Building a team is hard and it's time consuming. You must be a constant recruiter and you must have something to sell. And we talked about that even in the state days. Selling a potential jump from government service to the private sector and more money. And while I think some things have changed over the years, the one constant that I see is that employees want to work for someone that is genuinely interested in their development and prosperity, which makes management structure of your organization. Critical. My biggest failure. Candidly, building a team was a time when I constructed a particular division I was responsible for from the bottom up. You can't do that. You must build your teams from the top down. If you don't have the right management infrastructure in place, you are destined for failure.

Tell me more about that. And thank you for being so candid about some learnings that have happened in your career. So talk to me about the top down versus the bottom up approach.

Yeah, and so in the example that I gave you, again, a fairly large division, we had, or I had an inadequate leader that clearly needed to be replaced. And as we were bringing in better candidates, revamping the training process, hiring plans, etc, the folks were coming in, it was looking good. However, you leave and you turn these folks over, these employees over to bad leadership, what do you think happens? They want to leave and they did leave. So I didn't understand that at first until we finally made a change at the top and then everything started to click. You've got to have that in place first or you're in trouble. Right? So that's the way I view it today. I don't think about gaps in any division, whether it's our call center or field operations, it's got to start. Do you have the right leadership in place? Is this a person that people are going to want to work for? If you don't, you are spinning your wheels and likely hiring candidates and won't be with you for a long time anyway. So that's what I mean by that. Make sure management leadership is in place that can retain these folks.

First. I 100% agree and as you were talking, I was putting what you were saying through my personal lens at Surface Titan. I say this, he knows this already. But Scott Goldman is my current manager. He's the head of content at Service Titan and I love working for him so much. He's an incredible leader. He always shares a vision. Incredibly gracious and part of one of the reasons I love to come to work every day is because of him. And I think it's so. We oftentimes overlook that, but you spend upwards of at least 40 hours a week at work. You want to make sure that the person you're working under has got your back and is inspiring you and is helping shepherd you to the next place you want to be. Whether that be I'm chill just being a service technician and chugging along and doing repairs, potentially doing installs. Or maybe I want to grow into a management level and how can you help me do that? It's selling the pitch, it seems like, of how are we going to support you in the next step you want to take in your career and your personal life, what have you?

Well, and of course it starts with knowing what that actually is. And I think you have a lot of employers that aren't having those conversations formally during performance reviews or otherwise. They don't know. They think there's an old school expectation someone's going to come in and answer the phones, be a call center representative or a field technician in the same truck for four years, and that's just not going to happen. So first it starts with understanding what it is so you can help people get to where they want to go. You do that. I think all of a sudden your employee retain percentage just goes through the roof. Your teams get better. Absolutely critical.

Hank, that's wonderful. Oh my gosh. I have so many things I want to ask you, but that's how I know it's a mark of a good interview. I'm like, oh my goodness. I want to ask Phillips so many things. I want to hear though about how you guys work with, with folks in the military because I know you have a bit of a military pipeline as well at Happy Hiller. So can you tell me a little bit about that?

Yeah. And that's, that's especially personal, personal for me. My dad is retired military, spent 30 years in active duty, retired at Fort Campbell, Kentucky. So we built a formal relationship with the US army initiated by one of our former HR employees several years ago. And that allows for soon to be discharging active duty military personnel to train with us the last few months of their their active duty tenure, preparing them for a post active duty career. It has been tremendously successful for both the soldiers and the companies that have hired these folks. So selfishly we try to hire as many as we can when they're graduating and discharge, but often if we can't because they want to relocate back to their hometowns, we reach out to contractors in those markets and help place them.

I love that we had a guest on quite a few episodes ago, Eric Nack from Isaac, and he is former military as well. And I believe I asked him this question. So I'm going to ask you this question as well. What do you think it is about outgoing soldiers and folks who have military experience that make them excellent at this industry?

You know, I think I used to say this about different industries, but especially this. We're a process business with a set of routines that need to be followed on every service call, on every call that's answered in the call center, in every installation. In our experiences, these are folks that, they're well trained, they're well disciplined, and they follow instruction and guidance to the letter, which means there's a lot less opportunity for failure. That's.

I 100% agree with you. And I also just, I love it when I hear about companies that are giving back to returning soldiers or outgoing soldiers and who are supporting them. I think that's wonderful because I think we need to do more to integrate our troops into everyday life once they retire. So I'm very happy to hear that Happy Hiller does that. So we are plugging along. I actually, I need to use mentioned this stat before and I don't like to interrupt my guests because I never want to interrupt your thing, but you quoted that when a employee, when there's turnover, it costs you about $50,000 per technician. Am I, am I hearing that right?

That's exactly right.

Oh my goodness. I just want to sit and marinate in that number for a second number.

And then think about organizations depending on the size. People should do the math on that. I don't think they, those numbers are thought about. They don't understand the hiring cost, the training cost, the pre hire costs, and then the cost of having less experience running jobs for you of the experience you previously had. I have spent a lot of time looking at that. And by the way, that is a, that's a low number. It really is a low number. That is a minimum without argument number.

I just, it's bananas to me. It's bananas to me. I, and it just is such a reminder as to why it's so worth it to invest in making sure that your team is happy. You're growing them, you're giving them the type of benefits that they want and you're just nurturing them. Because 50,000, I mean if you lose three or four technicians a year, that's $200,000. That's not small amount of money.

That's right. That's absolutely right.

Oh, sometimes people on this podcast throw out numbers and I just as a, I'm not a C level executive and I just hear them and I'm like, oh my goodness, that's like four college degrees. So I just need to have my own personal moment to collect that because it's such a big amount of money for me. Anyway, my, my stuff aside, I know you lecture best practices groups as well that Jimmy Hiller is involved in because you want to help other folks in the industry. So what are the some of the biggest learnings you try to impact on up and coming contractors?

You know Jackie, I think there has to be more than 500 KPIs contractors in our trades use to measure business performance and often though intermittently and inconsistently. My advice has been that everything starts with what I call roster management. In this, in nearly every industry I've been involved with, the top three priorities should be the same. Personnel Personnel Personnel business for me is about assembling the best talent, developing that talent and letting them do amazing things. I recommend and have recommended starting each day with an overview of your detailed organization chart. And that chart should include positions open and filled, dates of hire status, especially if they're trainees or apprentices. When did they start? When do you expect them to be in production? Other notes that are important Always keep track of your org charts. Start and end the day, every day with that. You know, I remember talking to Jimmy's Praxis S10 group a few years ago and used an analogy related to the New England Patriots. They had just won the super bowl that year with presumably the best football team in the world. However, they were preparing for the NFL draft that was three months later and expected to replace at least 20% of their 53 man roster. So that's an old General Electric principle applied there. Always be recruiting and developing. In fact, something I've advised many employers is that if you are fully staffed with the best team you've ever had, interview at least three people that week.

Say more because they may leave.

Well, they may leave, there may be better, there may be market demand for more. So it's just not a time to rest. Always just like the Patriots best team in the world. But they're already thinking about likely 10 of those players were going to be replaced for better.

Dang. So I asked this question a lot and KPIs obviously come up on this podcast all the time. I've never heard someone say start every morning looking at your org chart and looking at where people are in their life cycle with your company. And I imagine that is really approaching it from a from approaching your business in a very proactive way because you're looking for any squeaky wheels, you're looking for opportunities and you're revisiting this org chart every day with fresh eyes and more information than you had the day before. That's where my mind's going as you're describing this.

Yeah, and it's a little bit different depending on size, of course Jackie, if, if it's a sole proprietor that's got one employee, it's probably not relative. When you're getting to 50 employees and certainly at our level, you know, approaching a thousand divisions all over the Southeast, you've got to pay attention. We have a lot of people incoming into the system that are in different stages of training. Where are they, when are they going to be ready to be productive? Are you getting the reports you need back from the training arm of your field to keep, keep focus on this? Because it's expensive. You have to understand where you're going to be at certain points in time to meet market demand, to meet budgeted demand. And to me, this is the best way to do that.

Wow. I really, I 100% agree with that. And sometimes, sometimes I really fail as an interviewer when my interviewee is just, just laying down some serious facts. But I remember what I was going to say, and that's why I'm an excellent host, because I can vamp while my brain is turning. You mentioned acquisitions. So when we talk about how personnel is so important here, right? How it's so important to know what your employees want and how those challenges just grow and grow as your roster becomes larger and larger, talk to me a little bit about how you integrate acquisitions into the existing happy heeler machine and how that works from a personnel standpoint.

You know, I think it's important to look at this at the onset. You know, when we're introduced to an acquisition opportunity. I'm the one that's going to lead the valuation process. And of course, there's all kinds of technical elements to that to put, put a price on what I think the business is worth. But I can assure you before I ever start looking at that, I am looking at the team that they have, who's there, what do they do. Now I quickly move to their customer list. And what's the value of that also? But I promise you, each time I want to see tenure capabilities, detailed information, because as important as anything else, to include that customer list, we're buying people, we're buying expertise in a marketplace. And if I look and you've hired, it's a 25 person organization and 90% of the teams have been hired in the last 12 months. That has much less value, real value and intrinsic value than an organization where I look in, the majority of the team has been there more than four years, for example, so very, very different. That's where I start.

Got it.

You ask about, you know, integration. That is, it's interesting that we tried to have a blueprint for that, but it's never the same because there are market dynamic differences, ownership differences. We've gotten better and better with that. Oftentimes we are bringing in the team to our organization even before the deals close to make sure they get as acclimated to us and have realistic expectations on the front end. And the good news is, because of our size, more often than not we are bringing better for them. Better opportunities, often better compensation, better benefits, better training platforms. So for the most part, other than perhaps working for a small family held business where you're interacting with 10 people every day instead of hundreds, some people don't always like that, but for the most part, it works in their favor.

Awesome. I love that you're a cfo, but for the last half hour or so we've talked about team building and how important personnel is, which just really goes. I mean, it's so crazy. Every episode I do of this podcast, it always comes down to culture, it always comes down to team. That's what makes a successful business. And so I'm glad that you, who but for all intents and purposes, is very much the finance guy. You're like, let's, let's put KPIs and numbers aside for a second. Let's focus on what's real important here, which is our team putting on your CFO hat. For as we, as we get to the end of this interview, what's one financial best practice every contractor should abide by?

That's hard to single out. And I've talked about many of these with different groups, so maybe I'll talk about two. From a technical perspective. When owners or business managers are reviewing financial statements, I suggest start with your balance sheet, then your cash flow statement, and then finally your income statement. Most do the opposite and they start with their income statement. I teach, especially with the internal team here, that the best way to ensure accurate financial statements is to have your balance sheet, each item in that independently supported, meaning that every item reconciles to an independent schedule. For example, cash to your bank statement. If you do that, your income statement will be correct. To me, that's accounting 101, not taught in schools, but unquestionably what is learned after you graduate. And then second, focus on your core business and limit reporting and information flow to exactly what you need to run the business. I see so many business managers today, even with service titan reporting, they've got scheduled, you know, 50 reports coming in. It's just, it's too much to read. What do you Need? What is it? The core. So that you can make great business decisions and act on it and get rid of all the noise. Maybe when you get to the point where your core is rock solid, you can start getting higher up into the tree, but focus on the core and limit data flow.

I 100% agree with that. I think too much information can be overwhelming and you just, you're just freezing. You don't know what to do. Right?

That's right. That's right. And people get lost in it and it's so difficult. I tell people, I had someone ask me yesterday about different information that they wanted. I said, great, what are you going to do with it? If you have it, how are you going to act on that? How will this help you make decisions as a manager? If you don't have a great answer for that, I'm not sure it's worth the investment. Right. So my general philosophy about that.

You've got some excellent philosophies, Philip, you got some excellent tips and this just was. This conversation flew by for me. So thank you. In your opinion, who else should I have on this podcast? Who else in the trades or maybe out of it do you think has a great story or great lessons to share?

You know, really good question. I have two. I recently listened to a Jim Abrams podcast on the show to the point. Mr. Abrams is frequently referenced as the goat of H Vac and someone Jimmy Hiller credits as his mentor. I've had the privilege of hearing him many times and although he'd be very difficult to get, he would be an outstanding podcast guest. And on the opposite end of the experience bar is Alexa Rippey. So Alexa is our assistant controller here at Hiller, someone I hired as an intern while she was in her senior year in college about six years ago and then converted her to a full time employee upon graduation. She has become without question a service titan expert, but I think more importantly understands how to connect that ERP system and its data to the business needs of management. She would be fantastic.

I love that. And I love that you shouted out someone that you have hired and grown. That is awesome. They are going on the list. Final question of the podcast, Philip, you are in Nashville, Tennessee. So I, I kind of have high expectations for your. Your answer to this question. But if you had to pick a song to be the soundtrack of your life, what would it be?

Really tough. I'm in the music capital of the world. I am a big music fan, collector of music, avid concert goer. A few years ago I won the Nashville Business Journal CFO of the Year award for Middle Tennessee. And they asked me the same question and the answer is the same. Give it what you can is a song by a group called the Meters. It's a New Orleans funk based group from the 1970s, and the theme of the song is essentially give everything you've got every day while you still Great. Great tune.

Oh my goodness, I love funk. I'm going to check that out after we finish recording. Philip, thank you so much for being a guest on Toolbox of the Trades. I had a great time chatting with you.

Jackie, thanks so much for the opportunity.