Episode 218: Putting People First with Rhamy Alejeal

So, Kelsey.

Yes.

You know, there's. What's a cauldron of animals? What kind of animal is it?

Oh, rat.

Pretty close, actually. It's bats. It's close because it rhymes. Oh, my God. Dude.

What?

So we move into our new house.

You have rats?

No.

You have bats.

No, I want bats. We have so many mosquitoes. So I'm gonna put a bat. I'm gonna put a bat.

Bat.

Houses, I think. House. No. I go to the mailbox, and the driveway is a long driveway. I would say it may be from the garage door to the end driveway, maybe 150 to 200 yards. It's a long walk. I go down there with my neighbor. He's just, like, looking the property Art, the guy go biking with. He came over and so.

Your old neighbor.

My old neighbor. And I grabbed for the mailbox. I'm like. I look at the tree next to me. Like, I've never seen a tree move like that when there's no wind. I'm like, oh, my God. That's not a tree. That's two snakes hanging three feet from my face. Pitch black snakes. And first I throw up my own mouth, and then I start yelling, tyler, that's my oldest son because he is a herpetologist, which is not a person with herpes. It is a person that studies reptiles.

Yes.

Thunder Thighs comes running down the road in his flip flops. You see, it's like. It's. He's. Have you seen Tyler? Right? He's kind of like Sasquatch. He's 6, 4. He looks like Sas. He's got a beard the size of a house. Comes running down his flip flops and grabs the snakes out of the trees. Like, I love these snakes. One of them was almost six feet long. The other one, that was the female, the male was smaller, maybe like 4ft long. And he's like, these are rat snakes. I'm like, what's a rat snake do? He's like, oh, Jesus, dad, they eat rats. So rat snakes.

Yeah.

All right, I have more questions for you about animals, but we gotta kick the show off.

I thought we were talking about mosquitoes.

Oh, no. I gotta get a bat cave for that. Now. You asked me what's a. I asked you what a cauldron is. You said it's for rats, and I kind of meandered over to it. An interesting story.

Oh, I get it. So the mosquitoes are more about the getting a bat house. I get you.

These snakes do not eat mosquitoes.

I get you.

All right, kick me off and then.

Okay, welcome, everybody, to the Profit first podcast.

The Rami episode, It still blows out there. It still blows out my ears away. Did you introduce yourself already? No.

I'm Kelsey Ayers, your co host.

And I'm Mike Michalowitz, the host guy. And here's the deal, my friends. You're listening to the Proffers podcast. This is show where we talk about, you know, profitability. Today specifically, we're going to be talking about HR systems. Yeah. You can grow a very profitable business with the right people hired the right ways, doing the right things. And Rami is coming on to teach us how to do that. And my friends, I also wrote a book called Profit first, so why don't you go pick that up if you haven't read the book Profit first yet? Like, I don't know what I can do to encourage. Encourage you to read it or listen to it. Like listening to podcasts. Go to Audible and download it. I promise you like it. And listen, if you hate the book, you think it sucks, send Kelsey an email. She'll buy you a case of beer.

Or a slab of beer.

A slab of beer, as the Irish would say. Or the Australian. Whoever says that, they really call that a slab.

Yeah.

Okay. I also wrote a book called Clockwork is out in stores now. Design your business to run itself. I spent six years studying how businesses can run on automatic. I think we got the formula.

Yeah.

And we got businesses actually doing it during these prototyping, if you will, of the system with multiple businesses doing it. And we got their feedback in the book itself. Okay. And this show. Why are we telling you what the show's about? It's about profitability.

Yeah.

That's all I got. You got to just take it back for me.

You can find us on itunes, Stitcher, Tunein radio, Google Play, or any podcast or anywhere. And especially the Profit first podcast dot com.

Yes. Okay, so here's the big icebreaker, Kelsey.

Yes.

I want to give you groups of animals. And join us, podcast listener. Join us in figuring these out. So here's how we do it, because we obviously can't hear you speaking right now. Your job is wherever you are, you just shout it at the top of your lungs.

Yeah. Wherever you are.

Yeah. So you could be in like, a subway, and I go, a cauldron. You're like bats, right? And then I go, just to give you another example, I say a gang. You're like, el. As loud as you can. Just yell it out loud. Okay. Do we have a deal?

Okay.

Are you good? With that, I think it's fair.

Okay.

A shadow. Shadow and Rami, if you know these, you can see.

No idea. Muskrats.

Muskrats. No, I don't even know. I just lost it. Oh, yeah, I got it back.

Skunk.

No, but very good thinking. Jaguars.

Oh, yes.

Jaguars, I believe are blue.

Yeah, that's good.

This is funny. A labor. What animal is a group of them is a labor. Rami, what's your idea?

Democrats? No, not humans.

Well done. Well played. Well played. It is those animals. Now what? What do you think it is, Kelsey?

A hyena?

Nope, It's Republicans. No, I'm kidding. Okay, it's moles. Moles. Moles. All right, now this one, both of you have to say at the same time, because if you don't get this one, you don't get the obvious. Okay, what group of animals is called a prickle?

Platypus?

Pricks.

Well, yeah, not pricks like you did. Hey, who are those pricks over there? They're prickles, not pricks.

Prickle.

Why is this obvious?

Porcupines.

Oh, gosh.

Yeah, I kept thinking mosquitoes. That doesn't make sense.

All right, I'll give you two more. This group of animals could be called a pod or a gam or a herd. Easy.

Dolphins.

Close. Both of you. I'll take dolphins. It's whales. It's whales as well. And last one, but certainly not least is a pace of kittens. Pace of a pace of Rami.

Pace of pace.

Any idea, Rami? You have a guess?

I have absolutely nothing.

It's pace is donkeys.

Oh, that makes sense.

I hope our listeners. I hope someone just went jackasses. Who are those pricks over there? Prickles. All right, so that was our. That wasn't. That wasn't as fun as I thought.

No, this is not my area of expertise. That's what I just learned.

Yeah. You know, I think, Rami, the best is when we do we use a different language. Like. Or we had, like, someone come on and spoke German or slangs. We had someone that spoke German and we put German words out. And it was just so funny for us to try to find these words we didn't recognize. And they say what the real word was. This one didn't work out so well. You can't.

Yeah, Icebroken. We're all here.

Icebroken. Bazinga. All right, before we get started with our guest Rami, I do want to tell you about our corporate partners. Make the show a reality. I want to thank Nextiva. Receipt bank and the big one. Write networks. Rami, do you ever hear of Right Networks?

You know, I know they do something with technology like moving things around, something data. Yeah, yeah.

So you've heard them. You know, they were new to me, not new to Rami. They've been around for a while. They do something cool with technology and they do exactly what Romney said. They move things around. They take your old stale collection of legacy software, which is, by the way, is called a leap. A leap of. No, that's leverage. I was testing there. We got something funny. Finally. No, they take your collection of outdated, outdated software. Like, I don't know, Rami, if you knew this, but Kelsey uses that Bedazzler for her jewelry company on my computer somehow. Yeah, it's such an old, old 80s technology.

Antiquated.

Oh yeah, Pictures of cats, little, little stones.

Yeah, that's my favorite.

She bedazzles them. Well, the software. Now with Right Networks, you can get software even as antiquated as the Bedazzler software system. You can get onto the cloud. But if you QuickBooks for desktop that you love, or something special for your industry that's only on desktop. Right. Next, Right Networks will move that to the cloud for you. They take away the entire IT burden. That's a big bonus. You don't have to have anyone coming in supporting your software. You don't need a server at your office anymore. All those legacy applications are finally on the web and Right Networks is the company that will do it. Here's the benefits. Work from anywhere, work at any time, and have the added security of all your data being backed up for you. Reliability, flexibility. That's what Right Networks does. And we have a special arrangement with them. If you call them at 888-210-0237, that's 888-210-0237. And you say Bedazzler, you'll get nothing. They'll be what? But if you say profit first, then you'll get 10% off. That's what they do.

I mean, that's awesome. I mean, that's hugely awesome. There's so many unique industries that have that, that one piece of software that runs their company that's specific to them, that's been running since, you know, 2004. And it's so hard to get that stuff with a, with a good company available everywhere. It's a great, great business.

There's your endorsement, everyone. Rami's been using right networks for 10 years now. Okay, I'm kidding. I'm putting Words in your mouth. You said 12 years, actually.

Oh, my God. There's now coffee all over my. This is a great interview.

This is going well. All right, council.

Okay, so we have a shout out from Andy Richardson. Says, I've enjoyed listening to the Profit first ibook and also the Profit first podcast. I've been implementing the program for about four months now and has been a blessing to me and the business. I'm growing as a business and could not imagine doing without the various accounts.

Oh, that's beautiful, Andy. Congratulations. And Rami, don't tell me how to pronounce your last name because I. I forgot to ask you beforehand. But the nice thing is Kelsey does the checks prior, so I'll let Kelsey. How do I say this?

Last week, I'm gonna say Alijeel.

That's it exactly. Rami Alijill. You guys got it. Kelsey's the one checks.

Damn you, Kelsey. I want Rami. I pronounce all the names of every guest incorrectly. I pronounce my own name incorrectly. I pronounce so many things incorrectly.

She spell it incorrectly too.

She slams me live on the show, so I wanted her to mess your name up.

Nailed it.

Rami Aligil and his wife Elizabeth are the owners of Poplar Financial, a provider of integrated automated HR processes. His book, based on his podcast, People Processes, is coming out right now. And when we say right now, like September 10th, is the release of this episode. Right now this book is being released. Rami and his team work with hundreds of companies across the entire us helping them learn how to stop pushing paper and start prioritizing people. Rami, welcome to our show.

Welcome.

Thank you for having me. I'm excited.

Yeah, no, it's a pleasure to have you. Hey, you started your first company when you were only 22, didn't you?

This very company. It's been through a few iterations, but yeah, Liz and I put it together right as we got out of undergrad and started our graduate school. We said, let's get MBAs and start a company. Same time. It'll go great.

And get married too, right?

Yeah. Yeah. Well, we delayed our marriage for two years. We said, we're going to get MBAs instead. It's cheaper. And that worked out. Oh, yeah. But, you know, doing all that at once was a. Was a bit of a booger. The first two years didn't exactly go well, but we. We persevered. That's. That's. That's the story of business, right?

Do you find that most business owners do not prioritize people, Rami?

Well, I think they prioritize their clients to a large degree. Absolutely right there. Who pays the bill? And they, and I would say the vast majority absolutely care about their people. But in terms of their daily priorities, right, where they're putting their effort and their thoughts and their time, they spend more time thinking about the processes around delivering their product than they do around the processes on their biggest investment. Right. Their overhead, their people. And I think you could really achieve that other goal of delivering an amazing product or service and getting a lot of clients by focusing less on that and more on the people who are actually delivering it.

Right, yeah, it's a good point. I don't think of the processes for people, but I also think, do I really need processes for people? I hire them, I tell them what to do, they do it. And if they do well, I pay them. If they don't, I talk with them and say, you need to fix. No pay for you, no, no, no money for you. When I hear process for like for my customers, it's very detailed, step by step. There's even these big checklists we have, they sound like two different kind of things, two different fields. Do I really need processes for people? That's the question.

Oh, absolutely. That's the great question. And then that's what, that's why I wrote the book, because I was in the same boat. You know, I built a business too. And I spent the first six, seven years thinking always about like, you know, I bring a client on. Here's our onboarding steps, 144 steps, by the way, all the different pieces, the things they could have and the software set up and the back end and the training and you know, when we, if you, if you lose a client, oh my gosh, I mean, does that wakes you up and you go back and you're looking through every step. What did we do wrong? What did we over promise? What did we, you know, not quite deliver on? And how can we make the processes right to fix that client or, you know, fix it so this never happens again. And most people, most successful business owners absolutely understand the need for that. But on the other hand, the people that you hire are often, if not often, almost exclusively the way that you deliver that service and the amount of effort and time you're putting into delivering your product, it's harmed by the lack of time you're putting in to onboarding rapidly correctly developing the processes over time to improve your people. Those kind of things have an outsized impact on your success. And I want to bring business owners around to taking a look at that. I think they're missing a huge return in investing that time, that same organizational mindset onto their people operations as much as they do on their client operations.

What triggers this? Why do we small businesses in particular ignore the people part in the beginning? I guess?

Yeah, Well, I think the first thing is that people are so complicated and so anything that pops up as a problem, I think the vast majority of business owners attribute to that person. I don't know if you've ever done this, but maybe you've made a bad hire in the past once or twice, Mike, and you brought somebody on, you thought they'd be great. You did an interview three months in, you realized this probably wasn't going to work and, and maybe at some point they decided that you decided that and you let them go. The question is, what sort of review did you do at that point to go, man, where did I just like, if you had a client who you brought on that wasn't a great fit, where did I go wrong in my selection, in my qualification, in my onboarding, in my promises? Did I, did I bring them all on like I do a new client and give them everything and then ignore them and expect them to figure it out?

Right.

Those same problems and costs are the same. The same mentality that goes into attracting great clients that fit your business and your lifestyle and, and, and grow with you. That same mentality can be applied to people, but it normally isn't because it's much easier if you work day in and out with somebody after they quit unexpectedly to go work for your competitor or drop the ball 16 times in a row. So you just say, hey, this isn't going to work. You got to go find somewhere else, man. It's so much easier to say, well, that's because that person wasn't a good fit for us.

Right?

Yeah, yeah. And there is some degree to that. I mean, obviously. I mean, I'm sure you've had a client in the past that you just went. In fact, your pumpkin plan, right, Is all about there are clients that do not fit you, right?

That's right.

Just get rid of them. And you can say that on one side of that, you can say, well, they're just bad clients. But on the other hand, you then turn around in the pumpkin plan and say, look at your processes, look at how you select your clients. Look at the clients that are going to grow and be the best with you in the long run and revise every time to put more and More effort into taking care of those clients and getting new ones just like them. And that same iterative process can be applied to your hires and it will make a huge difference in the long run success of your business.

So, okay, so I need processes. Can you give us a basic outline for our listeners right now of some of the basic stuff they can get in place to have a people process?

Well, in the book coming up, we actually break out a roadmap covering 100 days to really revolutionize how all this works. But the general steps are first to kind of recognize that there are four big life cycles that your employees deal with. There's their onboarding, right? Just like a new client, the implementation onboarding. There's annual review work, which can be performance appraisals, but also the whole benefits renewal and that annual interaction that they have with their compensation in terms of pay raises and anniversaries, that stuff that comes up every year that you can plan for, you can think of that like a renewal, right? Maybe if you bill your clients monthly, it's like, hey, you got to have a renewal. That's the same thing. Yeah, there's the ad hoc stuff. That's your, that's like your FAQs, the stuff that just pops up. You can't plan for it. But man, you know, people are going to move out of state, people are going to get married or divorced and that's going to change their relationship with your company and the compensation. They're going to need to be disciplined, they're going to need to be promoted. Those kind of ad hoc events. And then. And the one that most people forget about and is most important is off boarding, right?

When someone interesting, right?

Just like if you're looking at your operations and a client leaves for your competitor, you need to know why. And it may be because, you know, that was, you know, you don't want to compete with that business. If they like that business better go, go to it could be. But you need to really understand that when an employee leaves, it should be just, if not more so you have what, 10 employees or 20 employees for your 500 CL clients. When an employee leaves, that should be a red flag just as big and entail just as much, if not more introspection and review of your company to figure out where it is you're losing, right? Are you overpriced, underpriced? Are you messing up on certain pieces in terms of your promises and your goals in the long run, those kind of things. So offboarding is a huge part in general the steps for that, once you kind of break your thinking into those four pieces, is to start with data gathering, right. Just like if you're building an operations plan, your first step is to write down what you do now. And you'll find in many businesses that's hard, right? How do you actually do these things? How do you onboard, how do you handle your annual renewal, that is Benefits or pay obligations, pay raises, promotions, how do you off board people and write all that down. Now if you're the business owner and this is a, you know, a 10 man company and you're the, you're the guy, it may all be in your head. And that alone should tell you that there's an issue. Just like as you hit on, on Clockwork, right. It's all about writing that stuff down so that it can scale. You gotta be able to, to push these things out. Same exact thing where we really, where most companies start to really hurt from this, although small businesses do it is somewhere in that 20 employee mark, 20 to 60, they really start hurting because of these lack of people processes. The number of businesses I've seen that the office manager lady who or guy who handles paying the bills, who orders the office supplies over time grows to handle the payroll and then also looks at the insurance renewal. And then eventually when someone quits, they're the ones who ask them why, if they do that at all. That role is super important and those people may not be prepared for it without a good track to run on. So getting the information out of her head or his head out of the business owner's head, out of some of the managers who really take the lead on recruiting. And getting all that down is really the first step. And it's a huge step. Just like writing down what you eat, if you examine it, you're going to immediately see some major flaws pretty quickly. Like oh, that's actually how we do this. Oh man, what a. Yeah, we should fix that. So I think the first step again, break it into those four components. Onboarding, annual review, ad hoc, you know, the stuff that pops up here and there and off boarding. And write down how you handle it and take a look from there.

Ram, if Rami's system was applied to Don's Sandwich Shop down the street there, they could actually get people making good sandwiches there. Yeah, just for example. So what about people being treated as a process? I mean I'm a human human being. I work for your company. I don't, I don't want to be a part of a system. I want the Freedom of flexibility. I want to be treated like an individual. Do employees resist this system?

You know, I've never. I've never had the pushback directly. When I. When we named the book People Processes and launched the podcast, a few people immediately said, you know, that's a weird name. You know, people on a conveyor belt getting, you know, by a claw and, like, moved around. It's. And I don't know, you know, maybe our marketing didn't quite hit right there. I don't know. But I will say processes are how we make sure that you're delivering consistent and quality products. Right. Without processes, it's just at the whim of whether or not that guy's in a good mood that day. So when I say people processes, I'm not actually asking your individual employees to do really a process. I'm asking your company to lay out a process for the employees. Right. To run on. And we can talk about what it kind of looks like, but in general, it gives the employee. It's about giving the employee more freedom, more information, more accessibility, more control, and having a process around which to make sure all that information gets out to them. Because a lot of companies. Yes, I'm sorry, go ahead. Yeah.

Well, I think it might give them more confidence, too. When a situation comes up, you say, oh, we have a system. This is exactly how we handle that.

Oh, yeah. The number of times, you know, and it'll happen in every business as you grow and scale. When is the first maternity leave question gonna pop up? Right.

Yeah. When you're about to lose employee to maternity leave.

Right. And isn't that a great time to tell this expectant mother, oh, yeah, we're not sure how we handle that. I'm sure she'll be real stressless. Don't worry about it. You'll figure it out one day. Right?

Yeah. You may or may not have your job.

When you have to leave, we think it'll be fine. Or how about when someone leaves and that's when they need to decide. That's when they learn about, do I get to keep my insurance for a little while until I find a new job? Is that when you want to be figuring that out? No, no, no, no. My wife and I joke about this. We're working on getting. Getting pregnant. Getting a baby. So there's some personal information. Going to get one of those things. You know, we've put it off a few years.

Yeah.

Yeah. And some of our friends have recently had children, and some of them put off choosing the baby name. Right. They Kept putting it off, putting it off, putting it off. And then they made the decision after the wife had the epidural. Don't wait that long. Same for business processes. Don't wait until the moment is there. It may not be.

It end up being a horrible name, Is that what you're saying?

Well, I'm not gonna say their name is horrible, but I don't know that it's what they would have chosen had they not been under the effects of an epidural. That's all I'm saying. Right.

Yeah.

If you have to make the decision about how a employee, what an employee should learn, and after you hire the employee, right. If you're like, I know I need someone to do whatever, and then so I'm going to find that person to do that thing, say, it's bookkeeping. You recently had an episode about hiring bookkeepers, right? And it's like, I'm going to hire bookkeepers. I know I've got my bookkeeping out of order. And you hire them on. You found the great person and then they come in, first day and you go, okay, well, our bookkeeping systems over there, best of luck. They don't know anything about your company, your culture, about your previous efforts. You know, not just processes about bookkeeping, but processes about the company, about how, how they're supposed to interact with you. It's a stressful thing. And if you have to decide that after you hire them, the clock is ticking. Right. It's just like, get that, get that person going.

So there's a million contingencies. I don't know if that's the right word. But pregnancy you talked about someone maybe goes on disability insurance questions. How do I know all the things I need to prepare for before I experience them? Is there a downloadable source? Maybe it's your book.

Well, let me direct you to peopleprocesses.com so we have a podcast on there. We have subscriber only content, including a lot of checklists. I will say it's of course designing an entire HR department to be ready for every eventuality is going to take a lot of. It's a lot of work. But that's just like launching a product, right? You don't. Most companies aren't afraid to launch a product before it's perfect. Right. And it's a good idea to do so. What I would say is where HR or small businesses have this problem with their people is that they don't do the iterative thinking when something new pops up. Just solve it once, solve it once. And make sure to communicate that there are a few things you can obviously plan for hiring someone, you know, terminating someone, renegotiating their pay, getting the request for some. Some sort of leave some general structures around those things. What are. How do you request time off? You know, and most companies eventually get those filled in. The problem is, is that they don't. They don't. Then make them into a process that's communicated on day one or earlier to your new hires, so they don't know what happens. If there's institutional knowledge, let's just make sure it's written down and explainable and communicated well to the employees so that they can then interact inside that system without fear.

Let's talk about how this drives profitability. I mean, that's what the show's about, people. Process sounds good because they're giving predictability. But this has improved my business's bottom line in any way?

Oh, yeah, sure. Well, of course, just like, you know, you can. You can say that getting a client is all that matters about profitability, but of course, that would be wrong. Right. It'd be about keeping the client, too. So, yeah, yeah, you can put that into the same thing with your employees. Right. Your ability to recruit matters, but your ability to keep good talent and have them grow with your organization and stick around and enjoy their life and not hate every single time they have to interact with your company outside of doing their specific job, that kind of stuff is expensive. It's expensive in terms of turnover, it's expensive in terms of morale, and it's very expensive in terms of productivity. You know, a great example of this, we have a relatively new client. It's got about 60 employees. Kind of a legacy nonprofit, been around forever. And even very simple things like timekeeping are a weekly drain. Huge drain on their employees. In terms of. We did a kind of basic survey, and we determined that every employee on average spends two hours and every supervisor spends on hours, on average, four hours every week, just keeping their timekeeping record straight, which includes requesting time off, but also just keeping track. Oh, I came in at this time. Let me write it on my sheet. And I worked in this department. That's huge. That's your margin. That's your. That's 5%, right? The profitability, you should be at 25. There's your 5% right there. So it's, It's. It can be very expensive when the processes around your biggest expense are. Are mediocre or worse, even bad.

Thank God we use automated software. I can't mention the brand because they don't sponsor us anymore, but it's pretty good software. Let me ask you, before we got to start wrapping things up, you mentioned the four lifecycle phases. I love that. Any special tips for doing a good onboarding? Experience the stage, set the stage properly. Is there a process?

Sure, yeah. Well, let's talk about kind of on onboarding that, that very first interaction with the company. I think the easiest way again is to take a look maybe at how the average company does it. So you've put a lot of effort into recruiting. Maybe this is a friend of a friend of a friend or it's a job ad. You've interviewed, you've got somebody finally who's accepted the position. And a traditional company, maybe they send them the offer letter and they're done. They show up to work three weeks later, so excited to come to work. And the first day is a 45 page stack of paper with non disclosure agreements like fill all this stuff out by the way. We're going to walk you around and introduce you to people who you've never met before and you won't remember their names for another two or three weeks after you work with them. Let's just walk you around real quick. And here's your compensation, here's how you, here's your time off, you know all the good things about what we do for you, we pay for you. And here's a 500 page stack of paper, 50 page stack of paper in black and white that talks about your benefits. Fill that out and send it back to HR one day. So we get you enrolled on your benefits. That sort of experience, it checks the boxes, it does the compliance things needed, but it in no way provides an advantage to you. You can think of that like an onboarding experience for a client who comes on and it's like we've worked so hard to get you here, we've spent so much money to bring you to finally signing and then rather than welcome them with glory and beauty and so much excitement, it's like great, you've signed, here's your stack of crap right mailed U.S. postal Service black and white, you know, good job, you made a great purchase. Instead, a modern company would obviously leverage technology. So maybe you utilize a company or you build your own that has a strong mobile application website that allows your employees from the day they accept the hire, even before they start to go on there and start reviewing their information. So of course there's the documentation, your non disclosure agreements, your policies and procedures, your handbook to read through. But Maybe there's a great video from Mike, from the CEO saying, thank you for joining us. We're so excited to have you. Let me tell you what we're all about. Maybe there's a video from their direct manager who says, this is what our department does. I don't. You know, it's a. It's a generic video. It's not made for just Kelsey, but it's made for anyone who hires, who works in their department that says, this is what we do and this is our motivation and here's how our culture works and I'm here to help you. And for those larger companies that have that HR person or that scale, there better be a video from HR saying, here's how things work over here. If you have problems concerning, you know, your boss not treating you right, if a client slaps you on the butt, whatever the issue is, I want you to actually come talk to me and go ahead and open that relationship up so that you can head off issues early. Explain the same way about your benefits and about your compensation. They're so expensive. Explain how they work, what they do so that your employees not only understand them, but appreciate them and give them good walkthroughs on the systems they interact with on a day to day basis, whether that's their timekeeping or their email or whatever software you use. You can put all of that and automate it and make it beautiful and compelling and scalable through technology. You can do that and invest in it.

Yeah, yeah. What I like is they say the first day of a job, there's one question that every employee is asked. How was your first day? Right. They go home, they see family.

Right.

And the first impression usually is, well, I don't know. I sat in the corner stack of paper, had to fill things out. I didn't meet anybody. And what you're sharing, for large companies, you know, you have videos and stuff. But for a small business, we have eight employees here. There's no question that the CEO should be sitting down with that person, having lunch or, you know, and spending time with and celebrating the people. And Kelsey, in our system now we have that big card Amy's leading that balloons when you come, like a little welcome package. You were talking about bringing that bagpipist playing, you know, Sarah Serra. All right, before we let you go, Rami is where can people learn more about your new book and find out about popular financial and people processes?

Yeah. So peopleprocesses.com is our podcast. It's three times a week. It's Pretty technical. It's mainly focused in on HR issues and benefits issues, and we interview some business and thought leaders. But mainly we're focused in on the compliance updates. It's a great way if you're either an experienced HR person or maybe that office manager who's kind of growing into the role to really stay up to date and learn a lot about the best practices around there. You can subscribe@peopleprocesses.com for that. Also on there, we're going to have the book. Peopleprocesses.com Profit first has a special signup for listeners of Profit First. And on there you can sign up. It's just your email address. We're not going to spam you. We just want to keep a copy of it. And when the book comes out, which is in about a month from now, we'll send you an email and you'll be able to order the ebook for $0.99 so that you don't have to. Yeah. So it'll be for three days. It'll be just a little opening period there when the book comes out for people to profit first who can order it for 99 cents. And it's going to go into all those pieces.

You can go to these websites like, you know, legal download or wherever the name of site is and spend $9 a day to get their legal, you know, prototypes and templates. Or for 99 cents, you can get the book that has all of it.

Absolutely. And a real roadmap to get you from, you know, I have a business. I need to scale it. I need to get my people right. It's that. It's that moment when you as a business owner turn around. And I think the trigger in a business owner's mind is when they're afraid their people can't fulfill the promise they just made. Right. That's where it got for me. We grew so fast. We did wonderful. But we started getting more and more clients. And my fear was not that our system wasn't great, our product wasn't amazing, that we couldn't do exactly what we said. It's that my people would be tired that day. Right. Or that they, you know, they just would miss a step. And that fear, that moment when you turn away from the market and you look back at your company and go, okay, how do I get my company, the people inside it, to be as good as the product and the service that we've done or better? That's what this book is all about, to really turn your vision back inside and spend a Month or two as a business owner or as a guide for HR people who this is their full time job to really get all that straight and running. Great.

I love it. I love it, I love it. Rami, thank you so much for joining us today.

Hey, it's an honor. I love you guys. Thank you so much. I look forward to hearing you.

Loving you too, brother. Bazinga. All right, so, Kelsey, we got to talk about what we learned from Rami.

Yes.

And I got a bolt. I have my webinar.

Yeah.

I like when I do things back to back like this. It feels like the day's flying by now, you know, when there's like big pauses and breaks, the day just kind of drags on.

I don't think it ever drags on for you.

No, it doesn't. It doesn't. Just because our name game was such a failure, I'm going to continue it on. What's a. What's a. A drift or a drove or a saunder or a team or a passel. What group of animals is that? They literally go by all those categories.

Team of.

Well, I'll give you a hint. Yeah, I had it for lunch.

Pigs.

Yes. Nailed one. All right, one more.

I didn't nail it. You had to give me a hand.

I did not have a living pig for lunch, by the way. Was it. And then one more. A shrewdness.

Shrewdness. Is that a shrew?

No. Apes. Yeah, that'd be too obvious.

Yeah, Well, I mean, a prickle.

Pricked. What was that, Rami?

Shrewdness of gorillas. Of apes. Yeah.

Oh, you knew that.

That's the only one I knew. I knew one I had to come back on.

Drops it. He drops the microphone. All right, so we're going to discuss what we learned from Rami. We're going to. We don't have any listener mail today because we got to rock and roll. But we'll come back with some listener mail, emails, your question and. And then we're gonna do the big outro. The big musical outro. So here's. Here's our corporate partners, but the show a reality. Oh, and the one thing we learned. So first, our corporate partners, right, Networks, you know their phone number by heart. Now, Kelsey, give me one number besides eight from their phone number.

210201.

Yeah, two, one, zero. Wow. So it's 1-888-210-0237. Call that number. Say profit first. Don't even, don't even worry what they do. Just say profit first. And they'll say 10% off. And you're like, well, what do you guys do? And they'll say, oh, we do like this network stuff. It's amazing. You're like, I get 10% off.

Don't even worry about how much it is. You get 10% off.

Don't even ask them, just take 10% off. So right. Networks, that's our trusted resource for moving legacy apps to the web or anything to the web. Doesn't have to be legacy apps. Also nextiva, Voice over IP phone systems, they now have the Next OS CRM. Could you imagine your CRM when, when you call on your phone that it pops up on your web enabled CRM? It says, here's who you're calling. It shows that their social history says, oh, 10 minutes ago they posted in Twitter that they just had their baby. Right? You're calling, you say hey, how's the baby? Instead of doing the oh, hey, how you doing? You're like, we just had a baby. Oh, I didn't know. It tells you what's going on their lives.

Amazing.

Yeah, well, don't, don't dream about that anymore. It's reality with Next OS and nextiva. And last but certainly not least is Receipt bank. All those receipts you have, you can just scan them in. I don't know why so many restaurants don't email you the receipts. They're not there yet. Receipt banks is the bridge. Every time you get a receipt, scan it in before that invisible ink kicks in. And sure enough, that's what the sound effect it makes on your phone. Every time I scan it goes people like, what was that? I'm like, it was my phone.

Don't worry about doesn't actually doing. He's actually just making that noise. Bodily function noises.

Why roll the dice? Spending money advertising your small business only to have your intern Dylan check his Instagram all day while he waits for your phone calls to come in. Based in the customer service hub of Las Vegas, Abbey Connect provides you with a team of elite receptionists at a fraction of the cost. Your callers get world class service and a lasting impression of your business. And poor Dylan becomes your new summer assistant. Now that's executive decision making. Call 833-ABBEY wow. To experience the difference. What was the one thing you learned today, Kelsey?

One thing.

Hold on, let me hit the sound effect.

So one thing is to prioritize people. I just feel super strongly that as an employer you have an obligation to create a place that people want to come to because people are spending 2/3 of their life with you. And life is more than just like your bottom line or your product. Right. It's about all of these people that you are leading, you are responsible for in one shape. They are your family, even if you don't consider them that. And I think that they can do such great things for you if they feel your support.

Agreed.

Because I think honestly, if you treat somebody like a human, like a person, like a family, they have personal accountability and they do so much more for you.

So much more. Right. But quite frankly, I don't think it's a gift to get thing. I don't think as an employer that you should treat people better so they do more for you. You should treat people better and like family, because that's the right thing to do.

Right.

Right. And then just beautiful things come out of it.

Right.

I. That's the environment we have here. I'm confident of just. I think it's just fun to work here.

Yeah.

And I think, I think the real definition, though, is not the fun times and the playing around per se. I think it's when we have a challenge, when something is really ugly, how do we handle as a family? And yeah, there's some heated moments at times, but there's never personal attacks. There's never actually none of that stuff happens. It's actually much more supportive environment.

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And I think that that ripples out.

It ripples out.

Ripples out to your. To our extended family, our members, and the people that we interact with.

Yeah. Ariel's a great example. Like, she's new to. And I think she's really excelling and growing quickly. And she was terrified. She was, she was saying, she said to us, she goes, I can go to a big corporation and follow the protocol and do data entry, or I can join a little corporation. And I knew I was gonna be exposed to everything, but I was afraid of making mistakes. She's made mistakes that she's brought to our attention. We're like, don't worry about it.

Yeah.

The fact you're seeing it through and now your job is to find the fix to it. And she's like, really? I'm not gonna get yelled at or fired. And the funny thing is Ron and I brought her in to the office, you know, the closed door meeting in the office. And she starts shaking and.

Oh, no.

We're like, well, we kind of gamed it a little bit. Not on purpose, but we said, you know, the last five days of events you've run the first time you've run Events. You really took ownership of it. You struggled at certain parts. Parts. You worked one night till one o' clock in the morning. You were doing huge effort. Because this is new to you. Right? She's like, I know we have to have a discussion about this. And she starts shaking. She's like. And we said, we don't think you're being paid appropriately. We need to adjust your salary.

Oh, that's awesome.

And we took care of that. And she's like, I really thought I was gonna get fired because I made mistakes and that's a shame. Our intention was not to do that. We wanted to have a little drama, build up. It's not to say, hey, congratulations, here's your race. Get out of here, kid. But I think in a large corporation, you actually get fired.

Yeah.

Oh, you made mistakes. Not perfect fired. But you have to have a system like that. So let me get back to the takeaway that I have. Yeah, I'm killing all the time. We have the four life cycles. I thought that was breathtaking. I knew about onboarding, I knew about annual reviews and why this is an important part of life cycle. Ad hoc. I didn't really think so much about. I got that. I never, ever, ever thought about off boarding.

See, I think about off boarding. My issue is when you let somebody go, what I want is to like, do an exit interview with them. But how do you do it? Kind of appropriately. Yes, effectively. And that you're getting the right kind of feedback, you know?

Well, it's in Rami's book, I'm sure.

Yeah.

And I think you determine the outcome you want to have. Why are you having this off boarding meeting? And then you do it. Follow Rami's guidelines and whatever doesn't work, you fix it for the next go around. You make tweaks. So when we off board people here. We've had people leave for multiple reasons. I'm thinking of Christian. Recently he left. We. I think we could have had better clarity in the outcome. We wanted. We wanted him to land well and do very well his life. We knew this office was not a fit for his future. But I think we could have also got some learning of it for ourselves that we didn't do. You know, I'm saying, right.

And that's like, how do we get that learning from him in particular?

I think we say, what. What learning do we want to have? Like, how can we improve the training? I think that was maybe an issue. Like, how can we make the training easier and give them an outlet for them to gain the training easily and quickly and to revisit if they need to without needing other employees.

Right. Maybe, like, management style for me.

Like, maybe.

What do you need? What kind of leadership do you need?

Yeah.

To kind of do well in a situation, you know?

Yeah, I think that would be cool. And I think. But the other tactic, of course, is when you're letting someone go, if you're. If you're. If you're letting them go and discussing how do I improve? That's a little dicey to do that simultaneously. So I think it just needs to be a lot of thought put into it, but then a system develops so it's consistent.

Yeah.

Okay. We want. That's what we took away. We want to know what you took away, and we want to know how much you loved our animal game. I think it was stupid. I think it was a failure. We'll never do it again. But if you loved it, tell us, and then maybe we'll bring it back.

It's just crazy how many different names for groupings that there are. Like, why does every animal have to have a different name for the group of animals?

It just doesn't.

I know.

You can just. Here's a tip. Just add an S at the end.

Yeah.

Oh, that's not an elk. It's elks. That's not an elephant. It's elephants. Like, you know, that's crazy.

All right, peace out, everybody. Please listen to us. Itunes. Probably first.

I'm looking down. I didn't know you were holding me. Okay, okay. You want me to say the rest?

No, no, no.

Google Play, stitcher.

Google Play. Yeah, but please leave us a comment.

And rate us and share it with all your friends.

And you can always email me any.

Questions, Kelsey, at mikemicalowitz.com and pick up the copy of Clockwork if you haven't yet. Listen, seriously, if. If you don't like the book, tell me and I'll make it up to you somehow. I'll send you a bottle there. I don't know. I'll make up to you somehow. I'll be. I'll send you a replacement book or some other book. Maybe Profit first or something. I believe in Clockwork that much. And by now, you know, it's only been out a couple weeks. It's probably used copies up there, frankly, penny each. That's how Amazon works. Get yourself a copy of Clockwork and then do the actions. It's time that your business runs without you, so you have the freedom to do what you want, both in your business and in your life. And also, if you want to drive profitability in your business, we got people that will do that. They're called Profit First Professionals. Someone joined today. Ron hit the big gong during our huddle. We had a guest here for our huddle, and Ron hit the gong. That felt good. Or the guest here.

Yeah.

But go to prop first professionals.com, click on find one, and we'll introduce you to an accountant, a bookkeeper or coach, whoever's appropriate for you to drive profitability in your business. All right. I got a webinar. It starts in five minutes. I'm going to head over there. You got to join in, too, Kel. So.

Yes, indeed.

We'll see you all there. Love, everybody.

Thank you, Sam.