Scaling Up Without Burning Out (Mike Andes Q&A)

At what point in business did you start thinking about hiring and what was going on?

So last year at Augusta, through our command center where we do all the admin work for the owners, we hired just over a thousand people. And so when we, when we look at when to hire someone, it's a matter of when you can replace that time with something else that's higher leverage and higher skill inside the business. And so when I, when it comes to home services, if you're out doing the work, you're doing doing a task that's potentially 25, $30 an hour task. And so if you can do sales, it's likely that that task, if you were to replace a salesperson, would be a 30 or $40 an hour task. And so the question is, well, which one should I do? I'm going to fill my schedule with a $25 hour task, I doing the work. And then once that is complete, I have my schedule's filled and to everyone's point, like, hey, I got too busy. Then it's like, well, what's the next skill that's highest leverage in the business? And usually that moves to sales or an operations or an admin related role. And then we move into that role and it's like, well, I'm gon schedule doing that. Well now if I move into sales full time, I potentially have six to eight people out in the field doing the work. I'm now being a full time salesperson and then the same thing will occur. Okay, now I'm tapped out. I'm doing sales all day long. I have leads coming in, I'm doing the marketing, I'm gonna go hire a salesperson. I'm gonna move to a higher leverage opportunity inside the business which many times revolves around operations, leadership. Being a CEO now you can have 10, 20, 30, 40 people working underneath you. So you're moving up the ladder of skill. And many times the reason we don't grow is cause we hold on to what we are familiar with. And so we at doing the fences, we are good at doing the pools. Therefore we stay doing that instead of learning the new skill to level up the business, which many times for the vast majority of solopreneurs or small businesses is learning the game of sales. Right.

Little bit of E. Myth and Dan Martell in there.

Right?

I like that. So amazing, Amazing. I can see why Eric is a fanboy over all that stuff.

I like that.

If you could do something all over again, if you can actually prepare to hire your first, second or third person, but put Things in place, system wise, leadership wise, things like that. Think of the mistakes you've made. How would you do it differently this time? What would you prepare for? What systems would you put in place? What leadership skills should you develop?

I would say, just like you said, a system.

Just because it is frustrating, especially in the beginning. You devote so much time and energy training that person and you expect that they're going to do just like you do, just as well as you do. And the truth is, you know, they won't do it like you're showing them. And also, too, there's, you know, slight chance that they won't stick around. And so I think the good, the good idea of having some systems is here's a training manual, here's a guideline. You know.

Go down the guidelines and you, you know, you learn what we expect you to do.

That way it takes a little bit off your plate training someone.

And then as you go through certain people, you can always adjust those guidelines. Okay, this was a mistake. I can. You know, this is maybe too much in the beginning.

You know, let's just stick to A, B and C. And then the following week would go to, you know, the other steps. So, yeah, I think having that standard allows you to kind of compare. Okay, this is what most people, their pace, this is how fast they'll learn. So you can compare. Okay, hey, this guy's doing really good. He's moving through A, B and C within two days as opposed to last guy took a week. And so kind of.

People go different speeds. So it kind of lets you see how they compare with the other ones.

Yeah, their ability to, their skills, their ability to catch on the systems. I like what you said about a system because a lot of times, as solopreneurs to your plan, our systems are floating here. We've been doing it ourselves for so long. How many can relate to that? Like, we know the systems because we're the ones doing it, right? But when it comes to hiring, we get frustrated because it's like, okay, I want you to do this, this, this, this, and this. And the guy's like, okay, great. But then they have their own definition of what this, this, this, and this means, right? So I like that the systems, and systems are actually evolved, right? We write that down and then we see how our team does it. Sometimes we have to adjust it. There's things that we miss when we do that. So I like that. Thank you. Anybody else want to hit that question?

Answer. Yeah. We'll talk a little bit later about creating a system specifically for hiring. However, I think, I don't know how many people are here religious, but I am. So we say, do unto others what you would have them do unto you. And so I think sometimes when it comes to hiring HR related things, the number one question is boil it down to the basics of what looks like a good interview to you. What looks like a good onboarding process to you. And many times we've had other jobs and you know, like, okay, would I want to show up to an interview and then not be ready for me and they not know my name? Would I want to feel welcomed by whoever I walk into the office for for that interview when I come for my first day of work? Like, would I want my office room prepared? Would I want my truck ready to go? Would I want my uniform ready? Would I want already to have my account inside the CRM instead of them fumbling around trying to figure it out? And then that's how you can just create the checklist. It's like, here's what I would like to have on an onboarding process. For example, everyone gets a 30 page handbook of systems because everyone went and said, hey, I have a hiring system. So I'm going to have a 30 page employee handbook. And yes, we have one too. Everything from like lactation breaks to like every little thing you can think of, they've got to sign that. Mostly protecting the company legally, but what's important is no one reads it. And so the question is, well, what is important in that 30 page document that they actually want to know is like, who do I talk to when I'm sick in the morning and I want to call out like, what does late look like here? Is it one minute late? Is it five minutes early? How do I make more money here? Who gets promoted? Like, what's the pecking order here? That's what people actually care about. So what we've done is, yes, we do the 30 page signature on DocuSign. Great first day. It's a four page document and we're gonna read every single line with them. And it's all the thing that you usually figure out from other co workers in the first one to two weeks. All the little things they want to know. So what do we do during the off season? Is there overtime? Can I work on the weekends? Can I take a truck home? All these little things that they want to know. We try to spell it out and then everyone signs on it. But the blocking tactic, creating that system and many times just like, what looks good? What job have you gone to and the interview went well, what happened? Which ones were not good? Oh, don't do those things. I think that's an easy principle to kind of live by.

That's amazing.

I like that.

What I got out of that was a lot of times when we're hiring, we make that whole process about us, about how we want things done, how we want all that kind of stuff. But I really like what Mike said is a lot of times when we're, especially if we want a qualified person, a quality person, a lot of them, they're thinking, what's in it for me?

Right.

And to take the time to have an onboarding process. And even before the onboarding process, the hiring process, finding the right person and then really just making it about them and having them buy into something.

Yeah. Nobody likes to play a game without knowing the rules. And the failures I've had in my first hires is there was no clear.

KPIs, you know, key performance indicators. There were no rules to the game. It was hopefully they're going to follow that 30 page document that I had Chat write up for me just so I didn't get sued in California.

That's right.

And as I hired more and refined my team, there's a very clear 1/2 page set of rules and KPIs for the position that I've hired for. And they get rewarded for playing by the rules and winning at the game. Having a clear set of this is what I expect of you and this is what you can expect of me.

Before you, I had a hand back there. Question.

I think part of the beginning, when you hire somebody, the introduction to the.

Entire team is important.

So if I'm bringing somebody in, I would like to come in and say, okay, this is Kay.

This is what she does in that first day.

I think they're going to feel very valued and then they're going to know when they see, hey, I know how many does this. I know Kate, that's this.

Well, I think that's really important to do that.

Right, right.

And so for those of you maybe online that haven't heard that he was saying it's really important on the first day through the onboarding process to introduce that person to every single member of the team by name. And I like what you said too, like maybe preparing everybody to like greet them by name to make them feel very, very welcomed and accepted into the team. Do you want to tackle the question by hand?

Yeah, it kind of depends on the role you're looking for, in my opinion. If you're looking for someone to.

Compliance will attract B players. And so if I am going to create rigid lines for every little thing they're supposed to do and what they're not supposed to do, you will attract employees and there will be lower paid employees. If you're looking for an all star absolute Crush killer, the 1% unicorn that we all want most of the time compliance drives them away. They could take your job. They have the ability to do that. They are a unicorn. And given the right resources or circumstances, they would probably be a business owner. And if you want to attract that type of person, which again sometimes you don't want this person by the way. So sometimes compliance is actually what you're looking for. And being really clear in terms of like am I trying to hire someone that is going to comply by the rules or am I trying to find the person that's going to run this business for me and take it to the next level? Because the person that the latter, the 1 percenter that's going to sell on every job upsell going to basically operate like this is their own business. They want less rules, they want to be able to know the goal and just run towards it. And so if you're going after that person, what I would say, which again the vast majority of us do need just compliance, let me be clear on that. And so it's a different demographic of person, but the winners in the organizations I built is any rule I give them just slows them down. And I want to say here's the goal, here's the goal posts, here's the ball, which is all resources go. As soon as I start putting definitions on that, it slows them down and makes them frustrated and then you leave the organization. So if you have a lot of churn of your best people because a lot of times if you have a high compliance environment and culture, you will simply attract every B player that wants to be told what to do. A players do not want to be told what to do. And if you're like, well how do you know that? Do you want to be told what to do? Are you an A player? Likely entrepreneurs answer that question. And so if you want and the only way to keep that type of person in your organization is to make it friendly to entrepreneurial people and make intrapreneurs inside the organization. And so I'd just be careful especially as you begin to go above a labor once you go to manager or any sort of level above that or you want a general manager to run the business Essentially. And you're giving them profit sharing. I give them less and less definition as what good looks like. And I simply say, I want this result. And when you're abcto, it's like, I want to make a lot of money, let's be honest. And so here's the goal post. Go.

Yep.

I was going to ask you, what positions do you start with? And you just answer that question. You said something very interesting. You said churn. There's a churn rate. Can you explain what churn means?

Yeah. So when it comes to customers, when we're looking at recurring customers, we're looking at how many customers are leaving every month, usually due to bad quality, bad service, they're frustrated by something, et cetera. The same thing is true when it comes to our employees, because every single day we have to sell them on showing up to work. And so if we, if we lose that customer, quote, unquote, which is now, in this case, a member of the team, that churn cost you a lot of money, and it's something that you can't. It's very difficult to measure the cost of churn, but it is absolutely. It is eating away at your profit margins.

Yes, yes, yes, yes. When you have to rehire, that definitely eats your profit margins. So I asked that question because it leads me to the next question, retention. I mean, when we find that a plan that uniform that, you know, even if it is a compliance person, but they're doing very, very well, sometimes the first couple positions that we hire will.

Be a little bit more of the.

Compliance, the admin, the helper, those type of things.

Right.

Retention is huge because you even said it like it gets frustrating that they don't show up and all that kind of stuff. So how do you create an environment and a culture that really motivates your team to stay with you?

Yeah. So for me, I always ask the question again, like, really try to make this simple. Why do you stay in the business? Well, I make more money. Okay, great. What are their goals? And then how do we align the goals of the business with theirs? Because if they're getting ahead in their life, whether it be financially or achieving their goals, they'll want to stay as long as that aligns with the goals of the business. And so in my opinion, the vast majority of us will hire people. We will be frustrated by them because they don't work as fast as us. They don't think about the customer as much as us. They don't make sure the customer is satisfied. They don't Upsell the customer. They don't treat our tools and equipment correctly. And the reason they don't act like an owner is because they do not have the information of an owner or the compensation of an owner. And so if you can fix those two things, you can get employees to act very closely to how you act. And so the vast majority, when it comes to labor, the owner is usually 40 to 50% faster and more efficient than the laborer that they hire. And then they get very frustrated, they don't make enough profit on the employee, and they go back to being solo because no one else is going to work as hard as me. No, duh. You own 100% of the business. So the only way to do that is either a, do I split the equity?

No, dud. Nobody owns 100%.

Yeah, you operate as an entrepreneur at 100% commission. And so how can I make sure that my employees are compensated like I am? And they have the information I have? Because the reason that you work till 8pm to finish the job is because you have the information that tomorrow you have to be on another job site by 6am and so how do I do this? Is it a matter of pay for performance? So the harder they work, the more money they make, whether that be a percentage of revenue or a bonus structure that incentivizes them to work hard. And I pay them like an owner. And then the second thing is information of an owner, which is open book management. They know my pricing, they know how much things cost. They see my P and L, they see everything in the business. Like, everything. No hiding. Why would you open up your books? Okay, let's play this out. If you were working for somebody again, I just try to go back to like, how would you feel?

Who are you going to work harder for? Someone that you like or someone you don't like?

Somebody you like?

If it's someone I don't like, I'm probably going to actively look for ways to discourage them. I'm going to actively look for ways to tear down their business, make them look bad, et cetera. So we have agreed that I'm going to work harder for someone that I like. Now, what's the number one way to make sure someone does not like me? Hide things from them. And so then we wonder why our employees don't work hard for us. Because they don't like you. And the reason they don't like you is because you're hiding things from them. Because every single day you're trying to hide estimates, you're trying to hide your pricing. You're trying to hide invoices from them. And so if you're gonna hide things for your employees, realize that you're bringing down the level of trust inside the organization. They do not like you. They will not work hard for you. And it is a function of. We are not giving the information of an owner and then we're not paying them. Like ownership. Yeah.

Yeah.

I love that. I love that. Yes.

Got a question from the audience.

That's not a question.

Okay.

So what we did.

Larry and I did not. And we have, we have.

We brought on Wyatt.

But what we did up front was this is where we want to take the company. These are the goals of the company. These are our values. Do you want to join us? And also, it's going to be hard work. And, you know, we can't promise 40 hours a week right now, but I feel like that really helped us as a team. Like, we are all in this together to share that with him up front and bring him on board, like fully open, like you said. And I share my KPIs with you and with him every single week.

Amazing. I like that.

Yeah.

Anybody else?

I think one thing that one of the main reasons why I decided to start my own business was room to grow opportunity. So I think it's important to make that that person. Like Mike was saying.

You'Re investing in this company. You grow as we grow. You know, you probably don't want to be installing forever. As we grow, you can start doing sales and we'll get somebody else to go installs. And I feel like that kind of makes that person feel invested in the business to where one they want to do well because they know the better they do it, you know, a higher chance of growing plus retention wise makes them too invested. Yeah, I'm going to stick around because I know someday I'm not going to be selling forever. Someday I want to be selling. I want a new wedding.

I like what he said. Finding out their goals, what they want. So for one of our team members, I found out that his goal was to buy a brand new truck. And this year he bought himself a brand new Chevy Colorado. And I couldn't have been happier that he showed up in that truck. Maybe I wouldn't have the payments, but that's beside the point. But he was able to achieve his goal.

Josh.

I just had the exact same experience. Can we all congratulate Barnhorn on buying a house?

And Mr. Dave dunkey also is a homeowner.

Now.

We also established that Eric's gonna throw Rolexes at people next.

I'm listening to the panel and I'm getting emotional too, because I remember when I went into business because I was working for a company where everything was hidden. I had no idea. I had to search for the answer. I was like, why don't I just do this myself?

Right.

I was super motivated to just be able to make more money and buy my time back, even though I didn't really understand that concept when I first started. I was a solopreneur for a while. But being very specific, being very open, that's the leadership. If you guys know the name. John C. Maxwell, Anybody? John C. Maxwell. One of my biggest takeaways from his book on leadership was leadership is about influence, how you can really influence. And a lot of that is just through being transparent and helping them see what's in it for them. If you want that unicorn, what's important to that unicorn, More money, act like an owner, all that kind of stuff. Well, okay, cool. Here's the path to success. Here's the path to your goal. So I really like that takeaway.

I'm going to open it up for some general questions from the audience, but I really don't want to hog up the question part of things. And I can see that people want to ask me specific questions. So does anybody want to ask the panel some specific questions? Maybe you're at a certain place, maybe you haven't hired somebody yet and you're looking to do that.

Anybody? Kerry?

Yeah?

Can you stand up?

Yeah. I'm going to pass you the mic.

Okay.

Well, I'm a recruiter by day, so this hiring thing I kind of know. But, you know, we've hired and we've fired, so we do all of those things. He's very good about being transparent, sharing all those things, maybe over sharing sometimes for me, but.

He'S great. He's awesome. How do you get the right person, though? Again, I'm a recruiter. We struggle getting the right person. And you hire somebody, you do all of these things, but it becomes clear they're not the right person. So it's very deflating to have to start that whole process, you know, all over again. So we're kind of. We're in those ebbs and flows right now.

If I may. So I failed my first quite a few hires and I'm not from the south, but my wife, she gets these feelings and so I actually involved near the process of hiring. And I'm telling you, when she got a feeling that he was wrong. Or, you know, then we passed and she got a feeling that one guy was right and he's been a rock star again. He bought himself a brand new truck. I mean, he promotes my business better.

Than I promote it.

Okay.

And the second guy, she got a good feeling about him. I mean, I did my interview process. I did it all my systems for hiring, and I just kind of. For me, that's what I did.

Sometimes you just get that, like, your feeling of desperation, like, I've got to have some help. This guy's willing to do it for that price. He saying all the right things, he's doing all the right things. And then, okay, let's do it. You know, let's partner up. And then. And then it doesn't work. And it's like, okay, fine, we'll just do it ourselves. You know, we tried that. We're just. We're just gonna stay here and.

Yeah.

You know, so you got to get Josh's wife.

I have those feelings. I. I have that intuition as well. And again, I don't know, I think there's also a part of it like, okay, I want to give them the benefit of the doubt, or they're young, they're just getting started, or. I don't know.

Eric's told me several times. Then, you know, he's got it right. You gotta hire and. And fire 10 people before you find a good one. So it's fire fast, fire faster. Yeah, yeah.

I say the goal shouldn't be to.

Hire one person to fire 10.

Sometimes it takes that.

Maybe again, when you need only one solid guy, you're hoping to make a career with what a lot of you are trying to do, it might take 10 people. Casey went through a gang of them before he found one month per person. I'm sure. I'm sure Mike can talk about as bad as I can, but, you know, you murdered people before you find a really quality person. So let's go.

Well, what's the time frame that you typically give somebody to figure out, okay, is this guy going to work or not? Because, you know, it's going to take two or three or four months, you know, for training. At what point should they get to that level where you can kind of let go of the reins? And at what point do you realize, okay, this is not going to work? Is that a after four weeks? Is it after 12 weeks? Is it after, you know, four or five months? I mean, what's typical?

So depending on what level, I mean.

There'S going to be.

If the guy can't hand me a Phillips head screwdriver on day one. We already messed up. So, yeah, there's going to be different levels of our indicators that we're heading in the right direction. Is it malicious? Is it accidental? Is it just that he can't add one plus one? You know, all those little things? But if he's continuing to grow.

Then.

I'm gonna keep going. But in general, I would like to say that we can train a guy and he should be fully able to go out on his own in about two months.

I'm curious.

I want to follow up on that. Is there something that we can all do in our hiring process to kind of, you know, be a little bit better when we select them the right person, so that way you don't have to always burn through 10 to get.

One.

Give them more money.

Why?

Is the answer right?

Yeah. Like, I think the thing for me for hiring is I hate being at the mercy of anything. I hate being at the mercy of the labor market. I hate being at the mercy of a good or bad employee. I hate being at the mercy of anything. And so my question is, like, how do I operationalize getting a better employee? Well, if I can make more money in the business and then be able to pay $10 to $15 more per hour than everyone else in my competition, I will attract a better employee. And so I can control that. I can control the circumstances and grow the business enough to be able to afford $10 to $15 more per hour. You will attract the best laborers in your market. If the average landscaper is getting 20 bucks an hour and you're offering 35, you will get the best. You'll get the people that could literally be an electrician or a plumber. They'll be now working for you. And especially in this industry, in my opinion, where you all can make 300, 400, $500,000 technician, I don't believe that we should be nickel and diming the compensation because the difference between an all star, excellent team member like he has, that makes, can, I guess, 800,000 almost by themselves? 700,000 in terms of revenue annually for the business? Yeah, yeah. Like, if you can make 6, $700,000 a technician, and we're wondering, is it $5 more per hour or $6? That's $10,000 a year. That's like 2%. And that's the difference between an all star and somebody we burned through a bunch of times or maybe just two or three hundred thousand dollars a year. And so the vast majority of all stars, they can produce two to three times more than a B player. And so if you want to attract all stars, pay like they're all stars because you'll attract a completely different demographic. So if I want to have. If I'm tired of people not showing up to interviews, I'm tired of them burning through after one day. They don't know anything about the job. They're completely useless. Build a business and this industry is perfect for it that you can afford to pay them more and then offer that on a hiring ad and you will attract a different type of employee. And so like I've hired everywhere from entry level people out in the field mowing grass or answering the phone at our command center. And those are 20, 25 bucks an hour. I've hired people for $400,000 plus engineers, et cetera. The type of person is just totally different. A great engineer, like a 10x engineer is literally going to produce 10 times more code than an entry level engineer. And an engineer entry level is still going to be 100 grand. So would I pay $400,000 for a 10x return compared to someone else who's $100,000 but produces a tenth of the work? And so I truly believe if you're trying to attract all stars because we all want them, you're going to have to pay for it. And so to think that you're gonna nickel and dime or be competitive in the market and get great employees is asinine. So I genuinely believe, especially in this industry where you all can do really, really high level revenue per technician, I would try to do everything in my power to be paying $10 more per hour than anyone else in the market for general labor. If you do that, you will tap into a completely different marketplace and you will attract all stars.

Yeah.

It's funny, my business coach told me this same thing. I didn't believe her. She's like, just put that out and put that in there. You have no obligation to hire anything like that. And I did it. I was like, holy crap, there are a lot better people. I didn't do the 10. I did that five when I brought it back up to 10. But yeah, he's very right about that.

You got to hand up. Yeah.

So we just hyper focused on the, on the front end.

Basically vetting the.

People that we're going to hire.

Someone looking for social media. We do an in depth phone screen before you bring them in for an in person interview.

And then we hyper focus on character because I feel like I can teach.

Somebody how I'm doing self defense.

I cannot teach them to be a good person.

That's excellent. Carrie, would you. Are you advertising that you pay them per foot? Like, how do you. What is the ad. What is the compensation say in the ad?

I think we just gave a range and it was on.

Indeed.

Per hour.

Per hour range.

I was gonna say.

I think the problem with the hole, if we put out, you know, you can make, you know, two bucks a foot. No one knows what that means, Right? You don't know what that means. $100 an hour, right. Where it would be, right?

Yeah.

80 bucks an hour.

You know, they get shockingly amount.

Right.

Per hour. If you don't break it that way. No one knows that.

Exactly.

And I like what you said is like, we can teach the skill, but I want the character. And that's exactly, you know, how we went through that process. But very quickly. Well, I don't know. Very quickly. I think very quickly we identified they weren't teachable. Not teachable, but it took us a little bit to really make that decision to move forward with.

With letting them know is that you felt bad.

Did we feel bad?

Yeah.

Do you feel bad?

Absolutely.

So here's the thing. You're doing them a favor. They're not meant for you. They're bad at this job, and you're holding them hostage. You need to let them go and find what they're good at. And the longer you torture them for this thing they're bad at, you're doing.

Them a disservice hunger.

You torture them at this thing for.

Something and not.

Well, it was a sigh of relief when it. When we did, you know, it was just biting the bullet to do it, but it definitely was the right decision.

Mark, you're hanging up?

Yeah.

I just got a question as far as, like, the. The hiring things happen to have been nightmares lately. And it's because I have an urgency issue. I'm married to my service route on my poolside. So if I don't have a service.

Guy, I'm doing it.

Which means I'm not doing estimates, I'm not doing leads. I'm not installing fences. Fences are going on weekends only. So I guess what I'm trying to figure out is what am I supposed to do as, like, a good step for initial hiring process?

Because I got.

Indeed, you know, I review the applications, but at that point, it's like I talk to them over the phone, I do a working interview, and I'm like, okay, you're good to go. I'm clearly missing something because I'm jumping into it too quickly. I don't think I'm asking the right questions. Maybe I'm not finding out what they. What they're looking out of the job, and I'm just getting the first capable guy who's ready to go. And it's backfiring and it's like it's been going on six months.

Now.

You're desperate.

Yeah, I'm going back home to fire another person to start over again.

So.

For.

For that guy, just run background checks.

Josh knows the backstory, but is there.

Is it. I mean, is it.

Should I make them like, you know, write me something? Like, give me a response of what.

They'Re looking to get out of the.

Company and, like, trying to find out what their story is before I jump into them working.

Do you have multiple applicants that you wish so, you know, out of, you know, hopefully 10 or 20, 20 that reach out to. You have like three or five that you like, or are you just finding one at a time?

Hopefully that guy's gonna work out five that actually fill out all the questions on there that I'm like, okay, at least they follow instructions.

Maybe I'm.

Now what do I. What's the next step? What do I ask them to do, like a phone interview or send me something that says why they want to be a good fit for the job?

Or.

So what's your. So when you look at like the sales process, you have someone's prospect, they become a lead when they submit information, and then you try to close them and become a customer. Right. There's your sales process, prospect, lead, and then a customer. When it comes to your current position, you have people that are potentially interested applicants, and then you have interviewees, and then you have employees. Where are we dropping off? Are you getting a whole bunch of applicants or is that like, there's not very many applicants coming in, following instructions.

On that, and they're not even filling up all the questions, so it's obviously their no go.

Or. Or let's take extreme ownership of this. Or is the application process hard to follow? Is it cumbersome? Is it meeting them where they're at, technology wise? Like, if you're. I'm attracting a laborer and I'm asking them to make videos and submit the link, for example, not saying you are. That could be very difficult for them. And so there. There's their software to fix some of these problems. It's a matter of talking to people when they come in and ask them for an interview. Where in this process was it a little bit confusing for you? I guarantee you that answer. Well, I couldn't really figure out like on your website, do you want me to submit the resume there? Or indeed, did you want me to submit a PDF or did you want me to just come in with my resume? There's 100 questions that they have that are leading to them in the end. You thinking they're not a good fit when reality, this business doesn't have any stuff together or they made it hard. It's like when you're trying to get. The other day I was trying to pay someone, how hard is it just to pay you? And they're like, I just want to come work for you, have an ad up. I'm not saying this is you, by the way. I'm saying this is their feeling is like you're making it hard to work for you. I have to submit a video, I have to do a PDF, I have to fill all this form. What is the friction in the process that's creating a prospect not to become a lead and a lead not to customer is the same exact reason where there is friction in the process of taking an applicant, turning in them to an interviewee and then turning them into an employee. And so looking at the sales process, most of us are good at it. Like, get back to the customer fast, be happy on the phone, get the price to them on a timely manner, et cetera. The same thing is true with interviewees. And so if applicants is not the constraint and you're like, well, and they're not getting to my interview or like they're not qualified when I get the interview, then it's just like extreme ownership is like, why? And I would be asking myself stepping into your interview process as an interviewee. I would be stepping into your indeed ad as an applicant. Like, why would I even read the second line? Like the vast majority of our job postings stink. Like stink. And so if you actually analyze it from the position of I am a 20, $30 an hour employee, I'm looking for something I think part time, I think is going to be a one year gig max. Okay, how do I hook that person in? You're talking about the philosophy of the business and missions and core values and like I just want a job. Yeah.

And so answer the question like, do you have a clean driving record and are you willing to work weekends? I'm like, you can't even answer those two questions. So why do I want to talk to you if they can't even answer two questions as the basic. Are you going to be at least a fit for that?

Have you ever filled out an Indeed application? No. So maybe I should start with that because even those two questions are ones that are very easy to skip over.

Okay.

Yeah.

You learn that the hard way.

Yeah. Like put on your applicant glasses, put like a 25 year old version of you and then go into your Indeed ad and fill it out and you're like, oh man, that's kind of confusing. Oh, this is a lot of text. Oh, it's not very clear, like what's in it for them. It's all about the company. They don't care about the company. Right. So things like that.

Like I said.

They don't care about the company unless they know that who they're going to work for cares about them. And that's kind of the whole process through that. I did have a question, I know that you had a question about the. But I was going to kind of move into it. The question I wanted to ask is how do you maintain motivation and focus during periods of slower growth setbacks or the seasonality challenges that we have? So we kind of went into that and I would like to kind of get back there because we're all in the service industry and there's a lot of states in here where we have rough winters.

Right.

And it's really, really hard to do anything, pool, fence and even some other stuff. So how do you maintain motivation.

And leadership through those slower or hard setbacks? I'd like to hear from the rest of the panel.

So as far as seasonality.

At least for our area, we're in Dallas. So usually by Thanksgiving it gets colder and people worry about, you know, Christmas and New Year's, they're not going outside as much. So.

Forever things slow it down. It doesn't stop, but it slows it down. And then typically by, you know, February, March, whenever spring comes, starts warming up, starts getting busy again.

We, this is how it's always been.

You know, after Covid, we had a surge and it's getting slow down. We've been going, you know, 247 since then, but this is the first year it's starting to go back to normal.

It's how it's always been, kind of expected, it's kind of nice slowing it down a little bit, you know, recharging, because we know come March it's gonna get really busy again.

And so I think, and I think all the guys too, they also do a lot of the prepping a Lot of the.

It's just improving during the downtime. So that's when I think it's use that little downtime to improve things within the business.

And so we have part of it. It's how it's been. You know, certain things you can't change.

Repeat the question.

Yeah. So how do you maintain motivation for your team even for yourself sometimes, you know, during these setbacks. Seasonalities.

Yeah, I mean I'm so obviously I'm here in South Florida. I don't have much of a season actually if I was to say what is my season? It's actually kind of inverse from literally everywhere else in the country. I kind of slow down in, you know, in the summertime.

And.

Which isn't bad because it's brutal.

It's hot.

So.

But you know.

You know, I'm doing. I'm just doing the math. I mean I'm probably doing in 60, 75, 000ft a year.

Right.

Roughly.

And.

You know, so.

Christian, you know, my lead guy would always kind of freak out a little bit when it would get slow, but I would have to, you know, reminded him and myself that.

Making 200,000 runs a year, you.

Know, give or take.

So it's. It's okay if we're, you know, we, if we slow down a little bit, but I guess to. How do you keep the motivation? It is tough because when it slows down, as you know from some of our conversations. Yeah. It's anxiety. Like, what is Eric doing? Like, we're not getting any leads.

It's always Eric's fault.

But you know, to keep the motivation is hard.

It's.

It's tricky, you know, and so I don't know the answer to that question, but I always just, you know, you kind of got to step back and look at the bigger yearly, monthly.

Yeah.

You know, picture weekly, even like, hey, we just, you know, we had two jobs on the day and this one canceled. This one, I went through three bits. There goes that. So we totally lost money today.

But I.

You can't freak out about that because it's not about the day. It's about the week. It's not about the week.

It's about the month.

It's not about the month.

It's about the.

I don't know. That's how I.

What if the motivation isn't on the owner? Like just like the gentleman from Alabama was saying, like.

I'm losing money, you know, I mean, I'm trying to keep that part that full time guy, you know, I mean, what Are some things that maybe you can do to take extreme ownership right during those moments of negative revenue or negative profit? Are there things that you can do throughout the year to kind of prepare for that? And if so, what do you do? What are some of maybe your tips and tricks to doing that?

Yeah. So I mean, in San Diego, it doesn't get super cold, but it is seasonal. We don't completely shut down or anything in the, in the wintertime, but we have pool service and we have the fence. And pretty much between like October, November through March, April, it's much slower to the point that you start to get worried again when the phone's not ringing and the leads, you know, we're used to X amount of leads per month and it slows down. You start to get a little nervous.

Without getting into too much.

We shift.

So I prepare by shifting for what our winner, what we do for the winter times. So we have other services, other add ons that we promote, and we shift our marketing to do that so that we can keep the guys busy. We cross train each other so that.

If one side of the business gets a little heavier, then the fence technician can go over there or the pool technician can go over to the fence. And so we do have to stay busy for motivation for us and the team. I actually plan all of our events and our trips. This last winter I took them fishing, we went bowling, we went to a baseball game. I tried to fight like I go ahead and spend the money to have fun with these guys because next summer I remind them we're gonna get super busy. We're gonna work 10, 12 hours a day. And that's actually more of a harder motivator for me than when it gets slow because.

They'Re still getting paid.

In the summer. It's 100 degrees outside, can't touch the a bunch of jobs.

And it's humid in Texas too, so it's 100 degrees plus. Can't stop sweating.

And so that kind of in the back of your mind, okay, we'll get a few more months and then we're gonna have a little off season if anything. That's a little. I know from a business standpoint, making less money is not ideal, but at the same time, you can't burn out by, you know, doing.

75,000Ft every year.

I'm ballpark.

It's kind of nice having, you know, a month or two without time. So you can, I don't know, better yourself and just recharge the better.

Interesting to hear from you, sir.

Yeah, in terms of motivation, I don't think about motivation very much so, but in terms of, like, the off season.

My goal is to win and to win any game. A good strategy is to be on the offense when everyone else is playing defense. And because we take it for granted that there is an off season and that we're supposed to slow down for three, four, five, six months out of the year, all the competition is as well. And so if you can figure out a way to be able to advertise when no one else is, to hire people when no one else is, to get customers when no one else can, you will win this game. And that's how you become very big and you dominate a market. And so I know I keep referring to it, but like, today, like, and today, from 4th or 5th, 6th, the presentation I made, it took me six months to make the presentation. It's 500 slides, and it's gonna walk through five ways to do this. So I don't wanna, like, go into it too much. But, like, that is what the presentation's about, and it will solve this problem. And that is off season. We should not again. Off season is a curse word. It is what keeps this industry poor.

I heard this. Your off season is not an emergency. There shouldn't be an emergency.

Right.

Well, we're about 15 minutes out, so really quick, we're just going to close it up. What's one piece of advice everybody on this panel can give to everybody else about scaling their business? The mindset around scaling, what does it mean? And how did you scale your business?

I mean, going back to when I first started, and I mean, yeah, you're just by yourself, and.

Eric's brother was, you know, kind of bailing me out.

And then.

It'S kind of like just jumping on the ledge, which we're all used to that as entrepreneurs. I mean, you kind of jump off a ledge every day.

But, yeah, I mean, just kind of gotta go for it. I don't know. That answers your question. But, you know, I think that's.

That's.

That's the biggest thing for me was just, you know, kind of a leap of faith, if you will, you know, and.

It'S daunting, it's. It's scary, but you just gotta come through it. And what's the worst case?

I guess, you know, I care about the little stuff a lot more than the actual homeowner does. So to me, that was the biggest thing. Telling myself it's okay to let go. You will get done. You'll be Safe. You all work out and. Yeah, that's good.

I was thinking about that last night. Yeah, true.

But if you let go, you can do more jobs and you can scale up and you can be out.

You gotta kind of relinquish a little bit of that to.

Gotta be willing to do that to your guys.

Yeah.

And it's not going to be perfect, you know, but you just gotta kind of, you know, trust that you've set it up properly and, you know.

Yeah, well, that's, that's one thing that kind of stops a lot of solopreneurs from scaling up from growth. And then scaling is the fear that, you know, you hire someone, they're not.

Gonna do it right.

Or the clients are gonna no longer trust your company because they can't generate the five star reviews. So, you know, how did you overcome that, Dennis? When you're like, you know what? I'm already capped out. I'm burning out. I know you have a full time job too.

Right.

So, you know, what was your mindset like? What did you have to do to shift the mindset and say, you know what, I'm gonna go from, I'm gonna go for it and these are the things I have to do.

It's a little both. It's one, you gotta find somebody that you trust. Right. But it's also, you know, people, faith. Hey, let me let go. Let's see how it goes and when it goes well, if that person's good.

Josh.

Josh Parks.

So I'm not as hard headed as you. I only failed four businesses, not you.

And really what it was on this round, working with a coach, I needed systems. And that's. You can't scale anything.

I like home brewing beer. You can't take a home brew beer recipe and go mass produce it for everyone. That beer will not taste the same. So you have to scale the recipe and so the systems have to scale to the size of your goal, of how big you want to create, your organization, your team.

And so that's what I've worked on and been working on for years with you, is what that we begin with. The end in mind of what I envision this to be 10, 15 years from now. And we're working on those systems that can grow with that from systems of sales to systems of hiring to systems of. I learned a new thing. Off season is now a four letter word. I like that. So, you know, creating those systems that are repeatable and easy to. They're not so complicated either that a technician can't really you know, I don't know what to do because this recipe is too complicated. You know, we can go. So that's what I'd say, is make sure you have good systems inside of your business that are scalable to the size that you want. Maybe you don't want to be X big.

Awesome. Mike, you obviously scaled your business pretty big.

So if the 4L framework, which we just talked about is a thing that you have to go through to grow, I think that the reason that most people don't scale their business is because they focus on everything but the constraint that they're actually facing in the moment. And so I actually agree with David that to him, this is actually the hiring thing not relevant. Because that's not his constraint. Right. The constraint in that his growth and his scaling up is leads. And so I like, I just want to. I'm going to preface on the last one here. I don't want anyone to hate on David. All right. I appreciate you speaking up.

Because that fiery passion and the hate for the constraint that you're currently having in the business is a thing that will fuel the change that you need to have in the business to actually overcome the obstacle and that constraint. So in order to fix a hiring problem, you might have to change your. Indeed, ads, Right. To fix the constraint of leadership, you might have to change the way you have your culture set up and to be able to attract managers and all stars. To fix a lead constraint, I might have to change the way I advertise. I might have to change the way I do my branding. I'm going to have to change the way I do my Facebook ads. I might have to change the way I do my website. And so to relinquish control to any other human being or entity outside of yourself based upon the constraint that you have in the business is the reason why we, as small business owners stay small. The reason we do not grow is because we put on the economy, the administration, a franchisor, a dealership, a customer. Someone else has power over us as to why we cannot overcome the current constraint of the business, whether that be liquidity, leads, labor, or leadership. And ultimately, someone has figured this out in every industry. Someone built a 10, 50, $100 million business. It's possible. So once we identify that it is possible, we have to realize the only reason it's not happening for you is because of you. And I talk. I speak here as a franchisor and a franchisee. So it's not Eric's fault. I know what it's like to be Eric, because I have 170 people that point to me, and it's always Mike's fault. I'm also a franchisee. I own Anytime Fitness, and so I know what it's like to also want to point at someone else. And as soon as I give power to someone else based upon the constraint I have in my business, I will not overcome that constraint. And so if you're having trouble with leadership, if you're having trouble with getting labors, if you're having trouble with leads, if you're having trouble with liquidity, to relinquish power to any other human being outside of yourself is asinine, because someone's figured this out. Out. There's a formula to get employees. There's a formula to get leads. There's a formula to be able to attract laborers. And so taking ownership of that is the first step. And then get relentlessly religious about just attacking it and only that. And so that's why it's not a bad idea, to David's point, to not listen about figuring out labor constraints or leadership constraints, because he needs to figure out sales, and he needs to get more leads. And so I would put all my time, energy, passion, and anger towards figuring out that skill.