How To Attract Top Talent To Your Home Service Business Consistently With Clif Savage

Welcome back to the show. I'm your host, Phil Risher. And on today's episode, we're going to be discussing how to attract top talent to your home service business, consistently with Cliff Savage. Cliff, thanks so much for joining us today.

Thanks, Phil. Happy to be here.

Absolutely. So Cliff is the owner of Service Leader System. What his company does is helps contractors and home service businesses build consistent talent acquisition streams, which is why I'm so excited to talk with him because we get this question all the time. So, Cliff, can you tell us a little bit, like, how did you get into the trades? How did you even learn how to do all this stuff?

Yeah, so I got into the trades pretty much like straight out of high school. I didn't know what I wanted to do. I knew I didn't want to go into college and go into a bunch of debt and still not know what I wanted to do. So, yeah, so actually I got into manufacturing. But the cool part was I grew up around the contracting world. My dad's been electrical contractor since I was. Well, he was in it before I was born, but he started his own business when I was 2.

Oh, wow.

And then my best friend from middle school, his mom had a painting company. And so, you know, summers we were in those businesses helping our family. And then as we moved on, my friend, mother actually handed the business over, sold it to her son. And so I got a lot more involved in that business. But, yeah, my journey took me once I got into my own job was manufacturing. And so I learned a lot about processes and systems and streamlining things to make it repeatable, reduce waste, reduce headaches as much as possible. And so it was cool because I was learning both worlds and then found a way to blend them together. And there's other people out there have figured that out too. And so, yeah, I just kind of just made the most of what I dealt with. Going through that world. I didn't know if I wanted to go in business for myself. I didn't know if I was gonna be good at business. You know, not everyone wants to be a business owner, but a lot of people suck at it. Cause a lot. There's a lot to do and just, you know, one step after the other, you know, Started freelance consulting in 2016 just to see, hey, can I really work in someone else's business? Advise on what I know to streamline systems and operations and manage talent and make it work, make it something that I could actually sell and promote, right? Not just be a coach and just talk a bunch of Woo. Woo. But actually provide solutions. Yeah. And so it finally evolved into, you know, officially branding the company in, in 2021.

Yeah, well, that was the perfect time because everyone had a hiring issue in 2021, right?

Yeah, yeah.

So I used to be in the trades director of, of business development, and we had 30 technicians and we were running like 15 routes. And I'm like, okay, I really need more technicians. I need more routes because I'm trying to grow. And you know, the owner would say, okay, we'll go, you know, talk to the technician, see if they have anyone they can refer in, which is, which is good. But then he's like, you know, what about Indeed? Like, we could probably put, you know, two or $3,000 on Indeed and see if we can get some people. Everyone that's listening to this feels the exact same pain that I just explained. And so what, what does that look like as far as you have this five step attraction, blueprint and stuff? But like, what does it look like to build a game plan to attract people to come into your business?

I mean, I think, yeah, one of the biggest things, just like you were saying, you know, everyone was trying to find good talent in 20, 20, 21, and that's because employees realized they actually had options. Now, you know, there's. It just kind of blew the doors wide open for people, obviously. Zoom. And a lot of technology advances over the past 10, 15 years really has made it easier to go into business for yourself, be a freelancer, work remotely, like, whatever. Right. So people had options. That means they didn't have to settle for crappy options anymore. And so a lot of companies, and I experienced it from, from like global Fortune 500 manufacturing companies all the way down to some like, mom and pop startups that I was like, freelance consulting in, they all fail at pretty much like the same thing.

What is that? What do they, yeah, what do they feel at?

They, they don't take care of the people, they don't take care of their current employees. They're mismanaging them and they do a terrible job at taking care of candidates. And you know, I even experienced that, you know, throughout the pandemic, because I was looking at options like, do I need to go back to work? You know, do I need to find another job in manufacturing? What do I need to do? And you know, no one responded. No one even sent a rejection letter. Only like out of, you know, hundreds of applications, only two people actually touched base with me. And even then those options weren't great. So just, just. Companies suck. At taking care of candidates and taking care of their employees. Yeah, that sounds, really came down to.

Yeah, it sounds like if you were to get a lead for a new customer in your business, you would want to reach out to them pretty quickly and be on the ball because it's revenue where if you were to get a lead for a new team member, it might just sit there in a resume pile until you need someone to interact with.

Not as valuable, not as high priority. It's almost because like, oh gosh, well, we're having to spend money rather than make money. Right. It's a, it's a scarcity mentality. It's just backwards. But at the end of the day there's a lot to that. Yeah.

So you have come up with this five steps to attract talent on a consistent basis. Can you walk us through those five steps? I, in preparation for this interview? I know a lot about you because I, I've researched a lot. I have a couple things in there that I want to dig into. But if you could just explain those five steps, please.

Yeah. So, yeah, it's called the attraction blueprint. Reason called that. It's a blueprint and it's about attracting obviously a big issue that, you know, contractors and all employers talk about, but especially contractors, you know, field positions, you know, the specialty positions, they struggle with attracting talent but also retaining it. And so my way of looking at the attraction part is it's also bringing them in and keeping them in that's the biggest thing. Right. It's not quick one offs. Like, let's just bring someone in the door, let's just get warm bodies. No, your current team's going to hate you, you're going to hate you. The new hire is going to hate you. Like just, we can't do that. And so I think you even said it earlier, like, how do we systemize a repeatable flow of candidates coming in the door? Right, yeah, that's where the five steps comes in. Because I found a lot of people struggle with even like employee referral programs. Right. They can't even get their employees to go find people to come work for them because they miss some critical steps when they hire them.

Yeah.

So like essentially it's clarify, connect, compel, screen and onboard, the biggest piece on the front end. Right. Kind of like trying to dig deep on like what's the root cause of these company struggles is like they don't even know who's the best person to hire. You know, I'm not talking just like resume skills, years of experience, consistency In a job with a company. Not even talking about that. I'm talking about what is your ideal person to work in a certain position? Phil, like you're mentioning, it's, it's almost the same mentality of like marketing for clients, but you're kind of reverse engineering it for people to come work for you. But like, if you can identify the right personality for a position, because I've worked in enough people's businesses now, my own included, if you don't have the right personality in a position, I don't care how big their heart is, how, how smart they are, they're going to fail, they're going to suck, they're going to hate their life.

Yes. So do you recommend people do like a disc assessment when they're going to bring someone on or some type of an assessment.

Some type of assessment if they don't use my disc, if they don't use someone else's disc. Some type of personality assessment to analyze. And it's a specific type like ours is called Hiring Insights. Because it's. You ask situational questions based on the position and it spits out the most ideal personality. So you can't manipulate this and skew the results.

So that, and so that will kind of be in the step four that you have for screening. But I think a good, maybe an action item would be take your top employee and have them run through that thing and then you can build your, clarify your ideal candidate off of that.

Sounds like that's a lot of times that's what we have to do. You know, startups are a little different, but current companies are like, hey, I need another superintendent or I need another estimator. It's like, and maybe there's not that person right now. Maybe they got promoted. Right?

Yeah.

But who was the best person in that position that's still in your company. Have them take a benchmark assessment and even have them take a benchmark resume. Like have them redo a resume of where they're at currently, you know, with the company. So you can compare apples to apples in our systems, which we can talk about later. Help with that. So the more benchmark data of like, who you want more of, like, hey, I want to multiply you. Yeah, gotta do that. So, yeah, great suggestion.

Yeah, very cool. Okay, so clarify, then connect. Now this is one that everyone gets hung up on because they connect on. Indeed. But like, where, where, where else should you be connecting and finding these people? Especially for local stuff. Especially with the technician side of things.

Yeah. And that's that's the biggest area that struggle. And so that really challenged us when we came up with this service, what it is today, because that was the hardest problem. Right. It's like, you know, word spreads, good or bad, but most of the times bad spreads a lot faster than good. Right now I will say you need to have all your jobs getting posted on all the major job boards. That's like a basic requirement and that shouldn't take a lot of effort. It's very systemized the way we do it. It's very simplistic, but it's required. Okay. That's the basic step. The big thing though is connecting with them where their attention is at. So we have the attraction blueprint. It's a worksheet. Like you're not just reading me preaching to you. I propose a theory, show you an example, and then you actually have to go and do your research of like, let's say, for example, this, this ideal superintendent. Right. You know, or we'll just say the field tech. We already have a great field tech. Right. We've got him taking the disc assessment now. Let's ask him. Sit him down. If you were to go look for a job tomorrow, where are you going to search? Are you going to Google it? Are you going to go into one of your Facebook groups with like, you know, H vac technicians or, you know, whatever type of technicians? Are you going to go into, you know, your local restaurants or sports bars where you hang out and talk to your buddies with other companies? You know, they're shooting the shit, but they're also looking for better opportunities. We take all that into account. Where are they looking for opportunities?

Yeah.

And then where are they not where are they just living socially too? You want to hit both sides of the spectrum. That's big. That's how you really start connecting with them. And we can talk more about like the messaging that you bring once you know where they're at.

Yeah.

So.

And that, so I'm glad that you hit that part which is like, obviously don't just use indeed these big job boards. I mean it could be as something as like your local Craigslist or some other job, job board for the trades in your local area. I did a call before and they said, just go to chat GPT and ask it. It'll kind of spit out like, you know, 20 places to post your job in your local area or something like that. So, okay, you figure out you, you. I think it's a really great idea. Talk to your top person and say like, where do you hang out. Where would you look for a job? Where did you look for this job? Where did you look for jobs then? Now this is the really big hiccup is that there's not just plumbers sitting at home saying, hey, I need a plumbing job.

Right, Right. Like not the good ones.

Yeah, not the good ones. So then you have to craft a compelling message to get them to leave what they're currently doing and come and work with you and take a risk on your company. What does that look like and sound like? Cause I feel like that's another hurdle to jump over.

Yeah, I think some people will love me for this or hate me for this. I hate companies. Or I just like companies that really focus on things like, well, we have competitive pay, we have competitive benefits. I don't want you to be competitive. I want you to be blowing the ceiling off against your competition. That's the difference. You have to differentiate yourself, right, because people are either going to, you know, as clients, right, they're going to window shop, they're going to look for the lowest bidder and hope it works out. Similar with candidates, right? They're just going to look for the person that's going to give them the most money. Maybe there's some sign on bonuses, right? That was a big push during 2020 and 2021. Everybody was pushing sign on bonuses this and the other and it didn't work out for a lot of people. Why? Because if you just offer, hey, 500 bucks, come work for me. Well, as soon as that three month period or whatever probation is done, they're just gonna go look for the next company is offering another 500 bucks, maybe a thousand bucks. Right. You're attracting the wrong type of candidate. And so you gotta avoid gimmicks like that. They're tempting, but you can't do that, right? So you have to really look at, kind of even talk to your current team, you know, get feedback from maybe their guys, like, hey, go do some homework with your buddies. You know, don't say it's us. But like ask what would make you leave your current employer to go somewhere else and we would brainstorm all those things. Maybe it's more consistent hours, maybe it's more overtime, maybe it's less overtime, maybe it's more opportunities to grow in the company. Like clear opportunities to. If I do this, I, I can make this right, making it as easy as possible for them, whatever those things are, that attracts the right type of person that does want to be a valuable asset of the company. Those are the things that we want to really push in both your job posts, but also social content, which we'll get into later.

Yeah. In preparation, I researched some of the things that you mentioned about those things that candidates choose. So, like work hours, you mentioned like overtime or no overtime, wage expectations, which is maybe a base pay and then room for growth, potentially something like that. Training is a very important one, making sure that they have available training, leadership. So I think there's something to be said about having a leader of a company that has a brand or a personality that people can see and resonate and say like, this is the guy.

Very true.

Right. Is that kind of what you're talking about?

Very true. People are working with people. Right. And yeah, people don't leave companies, they leave people, they leave bad managers, they leave bad team members. Usually it's bad management. Right. Because if they have a bad team member and the management's not taking care of it, it's the management's fault.

Yeah.

So people leave people.

Yeah. Another one I saw on there was clients, which I think a lot of people don't think about this, but like, if you're in, if you're an electrician and you're only doing residential work and you're like, I can't stand residential, I want to go do commercial work.

Yeah.

Then that's an easy switch. That maybe they didn't even think that I could go do all commercial, like, sign me up.

Yeah. It's. It's the nature of the beast. Right. You really got to mentally get in the trenches with them day to day. What excites them to go to the work and what frustrates them or makes them feel, you know, deterred to go to work, what's in our control, what's realistic that we can influence or what's this something that we can't offer? And so we need to focus on a different candidate that would resonate with that instead. That's. Yeah.

So you mentioned about social media. We obviously do marketing consulting for home service businesses. I'm guessing that would be in the connect part and also the compel with the messaging of some sort. But what is that? I have. I have no idea what this would look like. I mean, we've tried some things, but like this is not our expertise as HR or hiring anyone. So what does that look like? Because I'm curious and I'm sure other people are too, man.

At the end of the day, it's really just communicating. Right. It's what I like to tell my clients. It's just proactive branding. Right. You. You obviously know about branding. Yeah, but it's proactive branding from the company side. What is. What's behind the doors, what's the day in the life as an employee at this company. Okay. And really shining the light on them, too. Like, that's the biggest thing is companies are like, okay, let's just slap a generic. We're hiring, post up, and we're good. People are gonna want to come work for us. No, they're not. One, they know you're lazy. Two, they still don't know who you are. And so it's just, you're. You wasted time and you've now actually set yourself backwards. Right. You didn't. It's not a negative. It's, you know, or a neutral. It's negative. You have set yourself back. So really taking the time. One, you got to have a great, healthy culture to begin with. You can't fake it. People are going to see through it either during the interview process or once they walk in. And then you wonder why they didn't stick around through the first week of onboarding. Because they saw through your lies. So don't even try that. And we press that. We press on our clients. We build these, like, onboarding presentations. There's these things that. Interactive presentations that you can send to your candidates. They apply for a job, you get this automatic email says, thanks for applying. We'll get back to you soon. In the meantime, check this out. More information about us. It's got to be authentic. Your mission, your values, who's currently working in the company, what you're doing with your clients, that's going to be in there. We ask those questions. If they don't have that in there, we say, we can't publish this. We can't do this until you get the answers because you're not going to keep the employee on the back end. We might help you bring them in, but they're not going to stay. So all that authenticity needs to be internal. And then it's just simply a sharing it. Like we can share stuff all day. I mean, that's what social media is all about. It's just sharing. Yes, but people need to choose to be proactive to make it good, rather than just letting the negative come out from other people's opinions and voices instead. So that's really all it is.

So. So some takeaways that I think people could do is if you use some messaging system or even if you just have some of your technicians and you're talking with Them say, hey, do you mind if they want to record a video that would be great about their experience of working here and maybe give them like a three questions to answer or something like that. Video is always great, but if not, just ask them, hey, could you just send me a little blurb about your experience working here that I can share and then maybe they give you a testimonial just like you would get a review from a customer. Then if snap a quick picture of them, post that with a review of this. You could put that on your careers page on your website. But then now you have social content that you can share every single month. This same thing over and over again. That's kind of what you're talking about.

Yeah, exactly. And you're banking that content. So then yeah, if you have like someone that does your scheduling for you for social media or you do it yourself, just have it on repeat, Just have it going all the time. It needs to be evergreen. Because when you're ready to hire, people already are warmed up, they already know who's working there, what they're doing, what they like about the company, what's happening inside. It's easier decision to say, let me go apply, let me take the next step. Because you are warmed them up. You've already primed the pump for months and months and months. So yeah, get that going. And it really should even be part of the review process. You know, have one on one performance reviews. That's the chance. All right, let's do a quick video snapshot. Let's get some feedback. Positive or negative, it just, all of it needs to be systemized.

Yeah, it's good. We, we joke with our team and I would ask them for videos. I'm like, and if someone sees this video and applies to work with us, I'll give you 100 bucks. So you better do a good job.

There you go.

But yeah, get fun with it. Okay, so you clarify your ideal candidates Persona so you figure out what that person looks like, how they interact with people. You figure out how I'm going to connect with these people on these different platforms, social media, job boards, whatever. You come up with a compelling message based off of the things that they need and what they're looking for. Now talk to me about, I guess you have a careers page on your website and you drive traffic to that page where people apply and then they come through the door. Is that kind of how that works?

Yeah, so that's, that's one of the cool parts. The applicant tracking system that we set up for our clients that it's they own, it's in their name, it's in their web domain, can very easily be a standalone page within their website or can be embedded within their current website. A lot of people embed it because they already have their nice, beautiful branding and it can just fit right in there to see the job posts. But the sun job posts obviously go to, you know, a lot of free boards. Indeed, ZipRecruiter, Monster, even Google for jobs. Like it will post directly to that aggregate board that pops up. You Google a title for a job position, it'll pop up right on the first page of Google. So it goes there career page, but it all links back to the same click. Apply, fill in some personal information, upload your resume, answer a couple of screening questions, you're done.

Super simple, nice and with indeed. Like if you post a free job after like 30 days, it gets rid of it. Is this something that continually posts it for you or something like that on these?

You would want to refresh it. Yeah. Okay. Yep.

Okay. So you have this running kind of every single month and you're driving traffic. You're going to be getting applicants all the time. Now when they come in, what, what do you do? Like you have to screen them down. What if you're not hiring right now? Like what, what all happens? Because I'm sure that people are like, well, whoa, Cliff, I don't need to do this, I'm not hiring.

Yeah, so, so that's the balancing act. But I mean, you know, some of the things that you'd have to do is you got screening. Right. So there's, there's systems that help with pre screening questions. Obviously the applicant tracking system does have some ranking technology, so when applicants come in for jobs, it'll actually rank them based on the resume, the screening questions, and a lot of the details within their application compared to even your benchmark resume. So like I said earlier, you got some great employees right now you want more of have them upload their resume. You can do that on the back end of the applicant tracking system so they don't have to actually apply. Yeah, yeah, you just upload on the back end. And now it's benchmarking against those. And so it ranks them A through F. And then you have a priority of who to contact first and what questions to drill down deeper on. Like a phone interview, like, hey, talk to me more about this. This really stood out to us. Or hey, this is missing. We're looking for this. Do you have this experience or whatever it Just gives you some order, some organization to manage your time more effectively while you're screening them.

Yeah, okay, that makes sense. And you mentioned about communication being very important. So someone applies, they should get like an automatic email of some sort. Yeah. Okay, so what does that look like?

Man, it's crazy. Like the companies that have these, you know, they're, they're multimillion, multi billion dollar companies. They don't have a simple automated email. Yeah, it's ridiculous. In this day and age we live in, like everyone can buy one, so. But fortunately the applicant tracking system already has that set up. There's some automation, there's some, some rules and automations that you can set up. And so they obviously get the automated emails, but as you move them through a pipeline, just like your CRM, whether it's for project management or for client acquisition. Right. You move them through your pipeline by clicking a different step, like, okay, they pass the pre screening, move them to the phone interview. Every step, every button you click, we create like template emails and automation rules. You click the button, boom, it shoots off the next email. Hey, we, we had a great phone interview with you. We want to go ahead and set up an in person interview with you. Here's the link to go book your time at our office location. That works best for you. And so you, everything's done for you and for the candidate, it's just with the click of a button. Just saves everybody's time and headaches.

Yeah. So do you think that people should be going through this process? Like for example, just like you would be doing sales ongoing and trying to close deals, it should be an ongoing interview process because you might lose a guy next week or tomorrow and now you got to have someone to plug in, I'm guessing.

Exactly, exactly. That's the cool part. And, and you don't have to necessarily have a current job opening for a position you're not hiring for. You don't want to be a misleading, but there is an option to have what's called a talent pool. And so if there's no jobs that they see they're looking for, this is closed. They can upload the resume from there and you still want to contact and nurture them and say, hey, look, right now we're not hiring for this position, but you know, we'll stay in touch. You can nurture them through other campaigns down the road. But either way, here's another part we talked about earlier, right, the cringe of dumping thousands of dollars into. Indeed, yes. When you post through our applicant tracking System to indeed. When they apply, the resume with their personal email, phone number, contact all goes into your database. Every applicant stays there for life. So you could always come back and tap into those people. If they didn't pass the first time, maybe it was like, hey, we can only hire one person. You were number two. Can't make the cut this time. Well, next time you have to hire, contact that person first.

Yeah.

Hey, we're open again.

This actually just happened with my business because we're hiring another consultant and I got two applicants.

But.

And we built this, we built a talent pool and we just put them into our email newsletter with content is we send them, you know, our YouTube videos and stuff. That way they see what's going on with the company. And then now we have a talent pool of people that are interacting with our business. They know what's going on. And then when we want to hire the next person, we just say, hey, you would be a great fit.

Yep.

That's kind of what you're talking about. It's the same thing with, we talk about this in marketing. It's like you have prospects and customers that come through your funnel and turn into a sale, but you have to retarget them to bring them back into your funnel as a prospect or customer again. And this is the kind of same thing. You have all these people sitting here. So I think that's awesome. Through the screening process, what are some of the big hiccups that you see happen on the screening process? Because I think a lot of times, I mean, I know when I was in the trades, the screening process was like, dude, can you fog the mirror? Like, we need you on the truck tomorrow. So like that's like, like, you know, good.

Yeah. I mean, so when we were originally building this whole service out, you know, it started as like, you know, standalone, like one on one consulting within a company. Like just permeating their whole company and just going through every department of all the struggles they had. Right. And that was one of the biggest things was screening.

Yeah.

They knew they needed to hire people. It was like he was the, the director of operations. He knew he needed a superintendents, foreman, service techs, helpers, all this. And he had to be the one to do the interviews, at least the face to face. He's like, dude, I don't know what to ask them. Like, really? Like, I don't know what to ask him. It's like he didn't go to school for this. You know, he hasn't gone through some hr. Like he doesn't know what I'm like, oh my gosh, that sucks. And so we actually created.

Can I just say a funny story? Can I say funny story?

Yeah.

When I got hired in the trades, my screening process was meeting him at lunch. Glory days. And then he, he sent me a text message with the offer after this.

Oh my gosh.

Yeah, that's the screening process that went for his director of business development for 3 to 5 million. Trying to scale his business. So anyways, I'm sorry, what does it look like for a good screening process?

Things like that? I mean, keep it authentic to, you know, I mean, hey, I've connected with some great people and made some deals over lunch. That's not a bad thing. But yeah, it's. You want to kind of flesh that out a little bit more. So. Because the goal too, right. And candidates are going to try and work the system for their benefit. You have to figure out how to protect your flock and keep the bad ones out. People know how to game the system. It's only gotten easier to figure it out. So we have to get better at really screening properly. But one of the biggest pieces of that, they just don't know what questions to ask. They don't know how to drill down on those questions and they don't know what the next question is. So part of the worksheet you'll see which anybody can get the attraction blueprint for free, is a step where we're asking very targeted questions step by step for a phone interview, for a face to face interview. And so what we give them is this whole 65 page menu of questions like, you know, communication questions, troubleshooting questions, business acumen, you know, dealing with emotions, all these different categories that you would want to pick based on the position and environment they'll be working in. And then plug those questions in. That way you're not looking like a fool trying to fumble around for questions. You're not asking the silly canned basic surface level questions. You're getting D. Yeah, but. And they're safe too. Like they're approved by shm, which is a big HR organization. So like you can legally ask these questions and not get in trouble later on. That's the big piece too.

Yeah. Good. In my, I'm in like the D.C. metro area and we work with clients all over. But in my area it's just like, so there's so much legalistic stuff that goes on and I, I, we've had people that get taken advantage of. So that's good that things are screened through that process. All right, so clarify who your ideal can is. Connect with them on different platforms, have a compelling message that would resonate with them, drive them to some type of place that you can manage these leads, screen them through a process, and then once you decide to hire them, what is a good onboarding process look like that is, like, solid to keep these people.

Yep. That's another big step where they drop the ball. Right. Like, I mean, they've done a great job, at least. However they got the candidates into the funnel, they did a great job bringing them in. Right. But a lot of people lose them on the onboarding.

Yeah.

They wonder why they don't show up on day one or by the end of week one.

Yeah. Or they stick. I mean, what we used to do, stick him out on the truck with the lead tech. The lead tech will work with him for a week and say that he's lazy and he's not going to work out, and then you're stuck. So what does a good onboarding look like?

So there's a checklist to help with that. You know, there's some basic documentations that some people don't even realize they need. There's some guides that can really help out with, once again, the communication. Just like communicating expectations to the new hire now that they're being hired before they even start on day one. So, like, the worst feeling ever. You're going to a new company, you're having to prove yourself in a new role fast, and you don't even know what's going to be on the quiz. Like, you're. You're going in blind. Yeah, like, of course I'm going to feel apprehensive and probably even a little pissed off because it's like I'm. I'm ready to fight because I don't know what's going to happen in a survival mode. So it's like we want to take that away. And so part of the process that we help with with our clients is we are building onboarding presentations. We have the ones that, you know, go through the company, which they get when they first apply, but then there's ones for, like, your specific job, what to expect, who are you going to work with? What's the work going to look like? What's a day in the life going to look like? So we can ease you into that. But they get that stuff before they even show up on day one. So they can go through it. It's a nice interactive program so they can really play around with what to expect. And you know, what's expected of them. Maybe it even brings more questions that they can ask. So now they're not feeling like an idiot or feeling like they're lazy because they're just standing around like I don't know what to do. Yeah, so that's a big piece of it, one piece that we don't get too heavy into but we do allude to it in the attraction. Blueprint is the training. So many companies are like kind of like what you're saying, right? Just throw them with the, you know, with the, you know, the leader is like, because we don't know what else to do with them, you know, they just kind of have to shadow you and that's so awkward for everybody. It's wasting your time, it's wasting their time. And so getting the right training in place where you have like documented SOPs, you have trainings that they can go through on their own is going to set them up for success. Well now they see step one, two, three, four, five and this is how you guys do it versus how I might have did it at the last company. So now I'm not feeling like a, you know, a jerk trying to say well this is how I did it. Right. And you're also not wasting your leaders time where they're having to handhold the new hire too and hoping, you know, they, they're actually picking up things. So it's really like marrying those two worlds together through more systems essentially, but just more communication at the end of the day.

Yeah, that makes sense. I think if ye, if they have a roadmap to onboarding, it's going to be a successful onboarding. When, when I first came out of college I worked at Enterprise Rent a Car and this is one of the largest family owned companies in the world. 20 some billion dollars. And I was in their management training program and they had a roadmap to success that was a 12 month long roadmap and they gave it to us on the first day and said if your manager doesn't tell you to do this stuff every month, this is what you should be doing. And you can tell them like hey, meet with me and talk about this stuff.

Love it.

What do you think? Yeah, what do you think is a good like you know, after three weeks, after 90 days you should meet with them. Like is there any like timeframes where you're like okay, they should be good to go?

I mean definitely. Yeah, the check ins like we, you know, we can map out like the one during the recruiting and onboarding is the roles and responsibilities of the current company team. Right. Who's going to get the paperwork going, who's going to welcome them the first day and then the timeline of who are they going to go to next and what are they going to do. So everyone's set up right? So it's nice and fluid, seamless process. But then yeah, setting the expectations on, you know, when they should be good, you know, case by case based on their experience level, what they got hired in to do, the expectations set out and that to itself is not very fixed because that's gonna be different for each person. Right. You can hire for a service tech, you want someone that's got 10 years of experience, but maybe you have to settle for someone that's got five to seven and maybe the next one's only got three. You have to. But that's your only options, right? Because the guy who had 10 or 15 is an asshole. So you don't want to hire them. So like you got to make adjustments to your timeline based on that. How fast do they need to get up to speed? And that's more of a very targeted approach. What do you need from me? Right, so I'm the company asking the new hire, what do you need from me to get you to this place? And so yeah, having all that mapped out so it's clear for both parties is huge. And then we kind of set out the due dates of what needs to be done by certain dates and the check ins that follow for management. So they're not just waiting that okay. By three months you should be good to go and have not checked in in between that time frame.

Yeah, I completely agree. I have two other questions before you wrap this up. So the first one is the higher slow fire fast. Do you agree with that or what does that look like for your processes?

Wouldn't say necessary. Higher slow. Because sometimes that means, well, let's just drag it out for the sake of time sake. So it's like kind of the balls in our court, I think that's kind of. I don't think that's right. I believe it's higher intentionally.

That's good.

And firing is pretty much something on the company side that we missed. We miss it in the screening, we miss it on the onboarding, the expectations, the training, something we have failed employee. Sorry. At the end of the day, unless some magical switch of the personality of that new hire, have amnesia, dementia, they just lose everything. Like it really comes down to the company failed. Somewhere there's some gap, there's some hole that we did not fill along the way that we're now have. We're to the point that we have to terminate this person.

Yeah.

And. And so I believe it's more hiring with intentionality. That's why we want to systemize as much as we can. So we remove operator error, you know, people error. But it does come down to the company at the end of the day. So I say hire with intentionality because you do need to hurry up. You don't want to keep your guys struggling out in the field waiting for that new person. So a lot of times we can get someone, like we said earlier, refresh the ads, you know, every 30 days. If you haven't gotten a good number of applicants within two weeks, something's wrong. Just from our experience, if you post something on, like, Friday and you're not getting someone by that following week, there's something wrong. We did something wrong. Wow.

Okay. Well, that's a very good number that people should, in their mind, say, okay, yeah, I need to. I should know that. And then the last thing I wanted to ask you about, which I would be remiss if I didn't bring this up, is the actual, like, building a corporate culture that people want to stay at and promote and talk about. So what is like building a corporate culture? And we don't want, like, you know, this is all corporate, but more so like building a company that people are excited to work for and people are excited to work at. What does that look like? Do you have, like, a simple blueprint or something that you could say, make sense?

I mean, I think one of the most simplistic ways we approach that, you know, leveraging things like the disk assessment, where everybody in the company ends up taking this so you have a common language of communication to acknowledge your strengths and your weaknesses, but also know someone else has different strengths and weaknesses. And how can you blend that? How can you use that to complement each other, to work together? Whether it's in within the same department, within multiple departments working together. Right. Sales, estimating, production, whatever. Like, there's always some type of interaction we got to figure out to be honest about ourselves and to figure out how to work together, that's a big piece of it. I say if you can work on that, if you can put. If you can lay your pride aside and work constructively, how to improve yourself and others together, that in itself is going to make a constructive culture. It's not forced, it's not canned, it's not fake, and it's not Too, like, you know, corporate either, because it's just like being authentic. Like what do we need to improve on? What do I need to improve on? Okay. And how are we holding each other accountable to those things that we need to improve on in a timely manner? That's one of the biggest things because that's going to make your team feel a lot better. Because if you as management are doing it with each other, then they will be more likely to do it with themselves and the guys they're working with as well. And girls.

Yes. Some cool things I've seen from people in the trades is like, know what your team's dreams are or goals for the next three to five years. Even if you just know them and ask them that question, it's going to seem like you actually care, which we all care. It's just if you don't ask, if you don't ask questions like that, they don't know if you care and then figure out how you can help them reach those goals. So like, if someone wants to pay off debt or something like that, tell them about Dave Ramsey's podcast or if someone wants to do something else, tell them about this book or something like that. Another one I've seen is having a book of the month where anyone who wants to can participate in this. I'll find the book on audio or buy it for the company and you can listen to it while you're going to your routes and stuff. Yeah, and something, some stuff, like simple stuff like that builds a great culture. But I think a lot of times, like when, when I worked at the company, it was like, well, we do an annual, you know, soccer party. We get together and stuff and they bring their kids. It's like, that's great. But also from a professional perspective and like growth minded and building a company that's like growing. I think that's the next layer to it that a lot of people miss.

Absolutely. And I think it's not the big grandiose gesture, one time, you know, year type thing. It's the daily check. Or not even daily, but it's the, it's the regular checking in. Yeah, it's the regular conversation. You know what's. Yeah, like you said, like grounded in their actual goals. How's this going? How's that going? Like really caring. I mean that's really your job as a manager. It's not to be. I'm busy. I can't talk to you right now. It's literally your job is to talk to your team and manage everyone else. How is everyone else doing or your. Your family?

Yeah, I look at it like a coach, like a leader. A coach would know what their players strengths and weaknesses are and what they're working towards to help them build towards that. That's what our job is.

Exactly. You're high level, you see everything. That's your job.

Yeah. Well, Cliff, this has been great, man. So we've been talking about this attraction blueprint and I, I downloaded it in preparation for the call and went through it and it is like almost like a workbook that you can go through and it's free. So. Cliff, where should people get that at?

Just at our website, serviceleader systems.com. you'll find it right there. Just download. It says ebook and you just go there. You can see some more information behind the scenes, but you can just click download and it'll download as a PDF and you start filling it out.

Awesome. And if they want to talk to you about maybe working together, they can go there and schedule some time with you.

Yeah, make it super simple too. There's a book now button. And so they'll just book a video call with me at their earliest convenience and we'll get on a call and just break it down, whatever they're working with and I'll show them what we got and see if it makes sense.

Awesome, Cliff. Well, thanks so much, man. We dove deep on this and some good action items. So thank you so much for sharing everything.

Yeah, no, love the question. Thanks you, Phil.

All right.