How To Hire The BEST Techs in Your Area

In this video, I'm going to talk about why it's so hard to find good employees, whether it be technicians, general managers, operations managers. Why is it so hard to find good talent and keep them inside your organization? And I'm going to talk about what you can do, just a couple small tweaks inside your business to ensure that you get the best talent in your local area and they want to stay working for you. A lot of us as home service business owners understand the concept that we need to have a unique selling proposition When it comes to getting new customers, because inside your market you might have 10, 20, 30 other home service businesses that could do the work similarly to you. They could trim the bushes the same way, they could paint the fence the same way, they could mow the lawn, they could do whatever home service you do. And it's going to be a comparable price, approximately the same type of equipment, and You generally understand that in order to be able to get the bid and get a sale accepted from the customer, you're gonna have to show why you're different than everyone else. And this might be the fact that you answer the phone. This could be that you have a great website. This could be that your trucks are wrapped. This could be that you have uniformed employees. This could be that you offer money-back guarantee. This could be that your prices are lower than everyone else. It could be that you run ads and you're in front of all their customers, but there's some unique selling proposition that you understand if you're gonna stand out from all the other competition, To get that customer, you're gonna have to show why you're different. You might answer your phone 24/7. You might make sure that every single customer gets a personal call from you and make sure that the service was a 10 out of 10. Whatever it is, there's some reason they've chose you. And for most of us, we understand that in order to get a customer, we've gotta show why we're different than the other 5 estimates they got. 'Cause if they're just comparing apples to apples, if they're just comparing price, When it comes to home services, you become a commodity, and this will cause a race to the bottom. Because if the only thing the customer can actually do is compare your price versus someone else's price, they will usually choose the lower price. But if you're able to offer something else that none of your competition can offer, that's when it's hard for them to compare apples to apples. Because if you have really nice trucks, nice equipment, well-trained staff that are uniformed, a great-looking website, it's hard for them to compare you your price to the person that showed up in a truck with a muffler that was falling off and they had no website, they had no online reviews, they've been in business for 2 years, and they took 5 days just to get back to them for the estimate. Pretty hard for them to compare your prices and put you against them. We all understand that. But the next level, as you start getting 5, 6, 10, 15 employees, it's not so much getting new customers that's the hard part. It's about getting great employees that do the work at a high quality standard and as the best technicians in your local market. Especially if you live in a smaller market, you are competing for the best employees, the ones that do the best work, show up on time, take pride in their work. They stick with you for a long period of time. They have experience in the industry. And honestly, if they had enough money and they had a desire to, just the risk tolerance, they'd probably go start their own business. But those technicians that are out there, those managers that are out there, they would rather work for you, usually because they'd rather the consistency of a paycheck. They don't want the stress or the risk associated with owning their own business. So how do you attract these great employees? How do you attract these unicorns into your business? It's the same exact way as how you train, how you bring in the best customers, and that is that you show how you are different. But so many of us do not have a unique retention or a unique recruiting proposition. In other words, why would someone come work for you? What makes you different than everybody else? We kind of understand that that's what customers are thinking when they're comparing us to 5 or 10 other competitors. What we don't understand is the best talent doesn't just have 5 or 10 options. They likely have 20, 50, 100 other businesses that would happily hire them and pay them and employ them At their place of work. And here's the thing, if you're in home services and you have a technician and it's relatively entry-level, meaning they don't need a ton of experience, certification, a diploma, a huge amount of education, it is likely that almost every home service or any labor-based job could be done from a technician that is your best technician. Like, your best technician could probably go do 20 other different types of services, home services, labor-based jobs, etc., and excel in them. So you're not just competing with 5 or 10 of your local competitors for a customer, you're actually competing with hundreds of other local businesses that could also use that same employee in their business. And you've got to prove why you're different. You've got to prove how working for you is going to serve them, be the best job for them, and what makes you different than all these other employers. And I talk about this because so many people in home services complain about how hard it is to find good employees. No one wants to work hard. And I appreciate the sentiment, but we put so much effort into getting new customers and looking different than the competition, but we never think for a minute about the recruitment process as to why would those employees, those great employees, the ones that are out there, I guarantee you that there's some out there. There might be a few of them, but they have options. And why would they work for you? And so I want you to ask yourself, if you were an employee, what makes you and your business different than everybody else? Again, not just your industry, but all home services, all labor-based jobs. Now, if someone has some skill in terms of leadership, if they have some skill that they can do remotely, like work remotely, it's not just even your local area, it's not just your industry, it's not just home services. It could very well You are competing with thousands, tens of thousands of employers if they can work remotely in the position or if they have some sort of management skills. Because, for example, if they can sell, they can sell boats, they can sell life insurance, they could sell real estate. And so why would they want to come sell your service? You are now competing with thousands of other businesses that would love to have that talent. And if you're like, well, I don't really put much time into that, you're probably attracting average employees. And so if you're going to put average levels of effort into your recruitment process, really defining why you're different, don't be surprised when you get average employees showing up on your doorstep, why you get all the best talent leaving and you're stuck with average, because we haven't put as much time and effort into our recruitment strategies, our retention strategies as we do into our marketing strategies, our sales strategies, getting more customers. The next shiny customer is so much more appealing than making sure that we have a recruitment process that consistently brings in the best talent in our market. So what can we do? What can we do to make sure that the best talent, when they are potentially thinking about working for us, can confidently answer the question, why should I work for these folks? What makes them different? If you can't answer that really quickly, you got to think from first principles and ask yourself, well, then why would someone work for me? Like, look, maybe that's why I don't keep good employees. Maybe it's because there's no clear unique proposition that makes me different than everyone else. So what can you do to actually create this? Because we were talking about this in the Home Service Boardroom and discussing this whole idea that it is so easy to get wrapped up in getting new customers and developing strategies like your grand slam offer. And we're going to make an offer so good people feel, feel stupid saying no to. Okay, great. What about your employees? For most home service businesses, as you grow, it's not about getting more leads. It's about getting more laborers and then getting more leadership. That's why we talk about the 4L framework. You get liquidity, you got leads, you got labor, and you got leadership. Those are the constraints and why every home service business stops growing. And when you're first getting started, it's usually liquidity, some money. You don't have enough money to get started. It's leads, getting enough customers. But as you really grow, the biggest companies, they're constantly thinking about recruitment. They're constantly thinking about getting new team members because the constraint is, can we actually get enough labor supply to get the work done, the demand that's coming in. 'Cause there's an infinite amount of demand. There's so much work to be done. And for the vast majority of us, we might have 1, 2, 3, 4% of market share in our area. And if you're like, well, no, I own like 60% of the market. Okay, go into ChatGPT, go into Gemini, go into Claude, ask how many of, how many households in your market, in your area have over $100,000 in income. Household earnings, over $150,000. You'll be surprised. There'll be like 10, 20, 50,000 households in your local market that is inside of your service area that could potentially buy your service. They're a homeowner in your local area that would be happy to pay you. There is a ton of work. It's whether or not you have the team to actually get the work done. And again, I'm talking to someone that's starting to scale and grow and you're beyond the first constraint of liquidity. You're beyond the first constraint of leads. It's all about finding great laborers and finding great leadership. And if someone has management ability, if they have sales ability, if they have leadership abilities and they don't want to be their own boss, they don't want to have their own business, but they want to go find an employer. Trust me, there are so many options because the skill of leadership and management and sales, it can go across home services. It can go outside of home services. It can go into just about every industry possible. So why in the world would they work for you? This could be things like benefits. This could be a 401 plan, healthcare benefits, dental benefits, life insurance. It's gonna be benefits like a gym reimbursement program where maybe you aren't ready to offer full healthcare benefits, but you're gonna offer $80 as a stipend or a refund or reimbursement if they go out to a gym or a healthcare facility that they might get chiropractic or something like that. That'd be at least some sort of a benefit. Okay, maybe you can't afford benefits. Okay, are we going to have our crew have the ability to take the trucks home so they don't have to have their own personal vehicle and spend the gas and the time getting to work or pay for tolls, but rather they can have a company truck? That might be really appealing to some people. Are you going to offer a flexible work schedule? Are you going to have 4 10s? Are you going to have 5 8s? Are you going to require them to work weekends? Are you going to have work year round? Or do they have to find something else for 4 or 5 months out of the year during your offseason? These are all benefits that you can speak to in your hiring process that could separate you from everyone else. If everyone else lays off their team for 4 or 5 months of the year, and then you figure out how to fix your offseason and get recurring revenue, figure out services that are going to keep your crew busy, that could be a differentiating factor that allows you to be able to retain the best talent in your market. If you're gonna offer profit sharing for your managers, if you're gonna give them compensation bands based upon revenue, and as they make more revenue for the business, they make more money, their base pay goes up, they're able to take on more challenges. If you create stages of success for your technicians and for your managers to move up into, that as they do certain things inside the business, they unlock the next stage of their career, they unlock the next license, or like they get credits inside of your business to be able to move up inside the organization so they don't have a dead-end job. These are all things you can think about. How do I make my culture unique? And we were talking about this in the Home Service Boardroom and some people were like, well, we have like a great culture. We have these, these are terms that are very— I want the definition. 'Cause as a new employee, if I have options, I want specifics. I wanna know what's different. Like, don't gimme like, hey, we care about you. Don't gimme a mission statement that is blasé and could be stuck on any home service business in the entire world and saying you care about customers or— Whatever. I want to know what can your business do for me? And at the end of the day, we're hiring our technicians for them to be able to serve the business and be able to serve the customers that we serve. Ultimately, people are going to care for their own goals, and we've got to know what those goals are so we can align the goals of the employee with the goals of the business. And so I want to speak in my recruiting message, in my interview process, in my training messages about How I'm going to be able to help them get to their goals. First off, I gotta know what their goals are. But whether it be stages of success, benefits, compensation, pay for performance, profit sharing— what inside of my business, the things that I can do for my employees, is going to get them closer to their goals? That's what I want to speak to so that when they're looking at 20 different job ads, mine sticks out because it aligns with their goals. It speaks to the fact that they don't want to work on the weekends, or they want 4 10s. They don't want to have to work every single day of the week. These are things we can think about to be able to retain the best employees. And honestly, I believe if you're just thinking this way, you're going to be ahead of 90-95% of home service business owners that just throw an ad up on Indeed, hope and pray, cross their fingers that someone, someone shows up and never puts thought into really what the offer is to their employees. Why would anyone want to work for you? Answer that question and I'd love to know what it is down below.