Best Tip for Finding and KEEPING Great Team Members for Your Business!

Hey, everyone, it's Mike Andes, and you're listening to the Business Boot Camp podcast. I'm gonna do another one of these episodes down here next to the water. For those of you that are landlocked in the middle of the United States or someplace out down south, this is the Pacific Ocean. But today I wanted to talk about retaining and attracting really great talent for your team and your. Your business. Before we get into the show, though, a big thank you. Today's sponsor, which is Gusto, if you haven't already, go to gusto.com Boot Camp, you can try out their software completely free for. For 90 days instead of the regular 30. And using their software, you can pay your employees via direct deposit and keep great reporting of all your payroll needs. Check it out. Today you go to gusto.com boot camp. Now, today, I want to talk about something that I've recently been going through at Augusta Lawn Care. And so at our local shop, we're growing quite extensively in terms of the number of people that we have. And at the same time, we are also pulling out a lot of our team to do other things. So, for example, Josh, who is our been at Augusta for the longest period of time, in terms of person in the field, I think it's a little over four years now. He is going to be joining me full time doing video work, doing. Doing what I'm doing now, basically, so I don't have to hold this camera. He's gonna do it full time for me, and we're pulling him out of the field. So we did. We did that. We also pulled out Zeus, who had been working with us for quite some time, pulls him down to the Mount Vernon location. And so at the same time, we've been growing a lot, so we've had to hire a bunch of new people. I think probably.

10. That's about 10 of our people at our local shop. 10 of the team have joined the team this year. So relatively quite a few new folks that are on the team. And so something. Yesterday I had a meeting with our managers from the local shop and command center, where we have all the calls and the estimates being done for the franchisees, and had a meeting with them and just kind of went over some of the cultural things that we're going through. And one of those things is really trying to convey our message to our team that we really do care. This is a hard thing for a lot of employers because I feel like there's kind of this ingrained culture against an employer or like this, this notion that an employer is just there to use you and kind of, they don't care about your career, they don't care about your long term success, they don't care about you really at all. They just want to make money off of you sort of thing. And, and so that notion a lot of times is the reason why employees will act in short term manners. They will do things that you don't like that and a lot of it has to do with trust, right? They don't trust that you have their best wishes, their best interests at heart. And so when you truly do have that, I feel like a lot of business owners struggle with this because you really do care about your employees. You really do care about them improving their livelihood, whether it be financially or in their mindset, in their education. And you really do care about them growing in their career financially and all the rest of it. And so how do we actually convey that? And I think the biggest thing is actions are a whole lot bigger than words. And especially when you get into some of the most annoying thing I think for an employee is when an owner is super vocal about how much they care about the employees and the success of the employees and all the rest of it. And they're doing, talking about it all the time, but yet there's like no action. There's like, okay, you care about us and you want us to make more money. Like, where's the, where's the proof is in the pudding. And like your actions speak louder than your words. And so what we were talking about yesterday, our managers meaning is like, how do we convey to our team that we actually really do care? Like, and we were talking about the things that we do do and then how we can improve. And so like one of the things we're doing at Augusta Lawn Care and tomorrow morning at our team meeting, I'm going to be announcing. And that is basically for anyone that has worked at our team for a year out in the field, they are going to have the opportunity to basically start their own franchise under certain stipulations. And so there's a few things while I'm doing this. So basically the program is this. They're able to start an Augusta longhair franchise for free. So Basically they save $15,000 assuming that they, they follow certain criteria. Number one, they have to give me a full report or analysis as to why they should get this free franchise and they need to do an analysis of the territory that they want. They've got to give me financial information. They got to give up projections in terms of how much they're going to spend on marketing, what type of equipment they're going to get, all the different things that go into starting a business, they need to have those things thought through and lined up if they're going to get this. Then if that gets accepted and I hone down on certain things like the territory and we figure things out and I go over their business plan and their marketing plan and everything checks out, then they actually have to present that to the team at a team meeting themselves and present it to them. And the reason I want to do this, number one, is because I really, truly believe that someone who's worked with us for years going to be a super, super successful franchisee because they have all of the operational side already kind of ingrained to them over the course of a year. And then once we give them the kind of business side from the franchise franchise support, they have command center to answer their calls, they have all the advertising, their websites done for them, everything's set up on their servers, autopilot and CRM. So they'll be in a really good spot to win. But.

The big reason why I want to do is actually for the culture of the business, number one, for people who are new to see that hey, this is not a dead end job and that people do go somewhere, whether it be Josh, you know, starting full time media, whether it be Zeus going down and figuring out Mount Vernon, or whether it be, you know, someone, you know, we have a couple of our current employees that are looking to start their own franchise. And seeing that, and seeing that there's like there's somewhere to go, I think is going to be a huge cultural driver that really proves that we care about their future and that we aren't just interested in trying to get, you know, every dollar that we can of them just working out in the field, we actually care about their long term growth. Whether it be growing into a manager's position, whether it be becoming a general manager at a corporately owned location, or whether it be owning a franchise himself. And so the biggest thing though is what it's going to do is they start to see the relationship between the company succeeding and them succeeding. And that's a big part of, I feel a way to incentivize or motivate your team is like, especially when it comes to money, is like, hey, why are we trying to improve the efficiency of this business? Why are we trying to make more money? Like, is it just for the owners? It just for them to get a nicer car? Go on A longer vacation at the end of the year. Like, what is the. What's in it for me? And so, for example, like we are switching all at Augusta lawn care, we're switching to trailerless setups. What that means is when we do mowing and lawn care, basically what it means is instead of using trailers, we have no trailers, which means we don't have big mowers, which makes it actually a little bit harder on the crew to, to mow. It takes them a little longer and not so much time. Doesn't take them necessarily longer. It's just harder on their body. Honestly, it's a little bit more taxing on their body to be having to do a push mower or smaller mower for a longer period of time. But it's dramatically more efficient, it's dramatically more cost effective, it's dramatically more scalable than having big trailers, big mowers, lots of capital intensive equipment. And so it's a big move for the business to become more efficient, more profitable. But we've got to make that draw the line of like, how is that going to benefit the employee? Because otherwise you're going to lose morale. Because so, for example, like by the time I've posted this video, I've already had a meeting with everyone to explain this. But it's like we have to become efficient and we have to become scalable and we have to become super, super profitable in order for us to. Which will allow us to continue the conveyor belt of people starting off as you know, just learning how to push mower all the way to the point where they can become a general manager, they can become an estimator, they could become a franchisee and an owner of their own business. And in order for that to happen, you can't have a business that is dependent on keeping people for years on end. In other words, if we have a whole bunch of different types of equipment and big equipment and big trailers, and it's really capital intensive, we are going to be dependent on keeping people in the business working for us for years on end. Because it takes a really skilled labor to work at our business. But if we can make it where everything's simplified, everything is systematized, that we, within a week or two people can pick up the systems and be profitable employees. If we can do that.

Then it's much easier to take the people that have worked for three, four years or one or two years even, and pull them out of the business, whether it be them going and starting their own business, whether we want to start Another location and they're going to become a general manager. And so they start to get see the concept, they start seeing the linkages. So for example, a trailerless setup might cost 10 to 15 grand all in with a truck, mowers, the whole bit. Whereas a truck with a trailer and zero turns and all the rest can cost 50, 60 plus thousand dollars easily. If you are getting multiple zero turns in a large enclosed trailer on a bigger sized truck. And so the efficiencies is literally four, five, six times. You can get four or five trailer, four or five setups, four or five crews out mowing for the price. The capital expenditure of having one set up that has a big, you know, a bunch of big mowers and big trailers and big trucks, which again, in the short term for the employee, it's harder to run the trailer, the setups, it's easier for them to have the big mowers and the big trucks. And it's a little bit more even nicer for as an employee to have big trucks, nice trucks, nice equipment, all those things. And so if you don't have. But in their mind, they cannot see the correlation between business doing well, business being successful, business being systematized and profitable. If they don't see that aligning with their paycheck, their career, their success long term, that's when you begin to get fallout. And this is the thing that you got to remember. If you actually care about your team, you actually care about their success, you actually care about them improving their livelihood financially and improving their career. You've got to take actionable steps to prove that to them. Whether that be in the form of a pay for performance system, whether it be some way of educating them. Like for example, I said this at our manager's meeting the other day. I said a lot of lawn care landscaping companies, 80%, 90% of their team meetings are about the equipment maintenance, shop stuff, maybe training around landscaping and lawn care.

And safety. Maybe where I say like 80% of when I'm talking at our team meetings, it's about business, money, finances, numbers of the business and trying to teach them. And this is what I'm trying to improve and do more of is like how do I educate them to become better business people? And you say, well, I don't need my frontline employees to know about the numbers of the business. I promise you they'll work more efficiently, they'll feel like more of a part of what you're trying to do. They'll feel more part of your successes, they'll Feel more part of your failures. And that's what you need if you're going to develop a great team. And so I'd really encourage you. How do you get your employees on the same page as you? You get them to start thinking like you train them in a way where they see the numbers that you see that get you agitated, you see the inefficiencies, you see the breakages, you see the issues in the profitability. If they know those numbers, if you empower them to know those things, you are going to give them a massive amount of education in their life that they can go and apply in some other career, some other job, maybe another business, maybe they don't. Maybe there's people on our team that I'm going to pour time and energy into training about numbers and profitability and efficiencies. And maybe they leave in a year or two and they never even work for Augusta. They don't become an Augusta franchisee, maybe they don't become a general manager, but they learn skills and they go get a better job, make more money someplace else. But if we can start training them now, like the mindset of thinking about equity and profitability instead of dollars per hour, like trying to get them to the point in their mind where in their career they should not be chasing the next dollar or $2 more, they should be chasing a position where they can get a piece of the profit or they can get equity. And I'm going to explain, like, explain to them like, like we've had two zoom calls now this year with our team about finances, personal finances. You know, they have questions about, you know, FHA loans, about the stock market. With everything that's going on now, the past few months, you know, what, you know, how do they invest, how do they build their credit? A lot of first time, you know, first jobs for your employees, building a credit, why is that important? To get a house down the road to, you know, what credit card should they be getting, what scores are normal, what's a FICO score, what's Experian? And like all these things that they don't even, they might not understand. You can empower them, train them, educate them. And again, a lot of times the reason employers don't do that is because, like, well, that doesn't help me. That doesn't help me. And if that is your mindset, they're going to do the same thing to you, that they're going to think, oh, well, if the business owner wants to become more profitable, they want us to work harder well, how does it affect me? Again, there's not that two way relationship. Whereas if you as the business owner, you as the employer are actually invested in their livelihood, invested in their success, invest in their lives, their families, and you want them to succeed in their career, you're going to do things where there is not a linear benefit to you. You know, that is going to be simply to, oh, it's beautiful. Look at that sunset. It's gorgeous out there. See paddle boarders and kayakers, it's awesome. Love it here in the Pacific Northwest. But I encourage you, like if your mindset is, oh, I can't train them to become better people, better, better salespeople, better leaders, I don't have the time and I have the money to train them on that because I don't see the relationship how that's going to benefit me. If that's your mindset, they're thinking the same thing about you and that is, why should I come to work on time? Why should I put in the extra hours, why should I push a little bit harder? Like how's that going to help me? That's what they're thinking. And so I really encourage you, if you really do care about your employees, do something this week that actually proves it to them. Whether it be financially, whether it be educating them when there's no direct short term benefit to you, but trying to improve their lives, improve their careers and showing that, hey, look, I don't care if you're with us in a year or two years, or three years. I just want you to succeed and I want to give you the tools to do it. And I hope that this is a stepping stone. Maybe the industry you're in is, you know, first time jobs. That's where people start, like it's the bottom of the totem pole. And you're like, look, I want to set you up for the next step of your career, whether it be in management or leadership or something down the road. And whether or not it's with us, whether it's not, whether or not it's on the other side of the country, I want you to succeed and I care about your long term success in career, finances, personal life. And they will pick up on that and that team that can do those things together, the team that trains together, wins together. The team that goes through the hard times, that is pulling for each other when there is no benefit for themselves, they, that's the team who wins together. So I just want to encourage you guys, I know most of you, most of you listening to this are employees who do deeply care, genuinely care about your employees. Do something that they really can tell. Your actions speak louder than your words. Mike. Annie's on the Business Bootcamp podcast. Till next time. Be great. Nothing else pays.