How to Build and Scale a Home Service Business by Hiring Better and Leading Smarter with Jonathan Whistman | Ep 102

Welcome back to the show. I'm your host, Phil Risher. And on today's episode, we're diving into how to build and scale a home service business by hiring better and leading smarter with Jonathan. Jonathan Wissman. Thanks so much for joining us today, Jonathan.

Absolutely. Looking forward to our conversation, Phil.

Yeah, me too. So, quick bio. Jonathan is the CEO and founder of who Hire, the AI powered talent intelligence platform built for trades and service businesses. He's also the author of Sales Boss. The with the proven experience, scaling teams and boosting sales performance, he's helped contractors reduce technician turnover from 55% to under 25% and double per person revenue. His mission is to empower home service leaders to build high performing teams with confidence and consistency. So Jonathan, can you give us a little background of how did you get into this space of AI power, talent intelligence and the trades?

Well, yeah, let's start with the trade specifically. Well, I, I, you know, I wrote, I built and sold a couple of companies myself. And my grandfather used to say to me business would be easy if for the people. And I experienced that firsthand myself. Like if you can get the people part of the business right, everything's great, you can scale, it's easy. You know, it feels like this elegant dance that, like magic, everything works. And when you get the people part wrong, it's like nothing can get done. It's a headache every day. You regret going to work, regret getting out of bed some days. So after having built and sold a few companies, I wrote a book called the Sales Boss. Really around how do you build high performing sales teams, which is all about getting the right humans. And I tend to tell business owners whether that's an H vac, contractor, plumber, plumbing, electrical, that they have to forget that they're in the trades and what they have to realize as a leader that their role is about finding and attracting humans and being able to recruit them and keep them and train them and have those humans believe that they can do the best work of their life working for that business owner. Because the minute that's not true, people are going to leave. They'll change for a couple dollars an hour difference. Right. They'll spin out on a dime. And so I was doing the work as a sales boss and I got a call from a guy named Tommy Mello. You probably don't know who he is if you're in the trades. Like he's a little nobody over here in Arizona that has built a billion dollar valuation company doing garage doors.

Yeah.

And anybody that knows Tommy knows he's a people person. He's famous for saying that his dream has to be so big that everyone else's dream will fit inside it.

Yeah.

And on my website for the sales boss at the time I met Tommy, I just had a note on there that said, if you want to work with me, you'll know somebody that knows me and can make an introduction. And so I got an email from Tommy that says, I don't know anybody that knows you that can make an introduction, but you should come down and see me because I'm not your ordinary garage door guy. Like I'm killing it over here. And so I went down and saw him and I was immediately impressed with the kind of human he was, his vision that he had. And so we worked together and helping build out his organization. And during that time I got, I met a gal from Taiwan. A great story. She literally grew up in a rice paddy. No running water, no electricity, first of her family to go to college. She is an amazing data scientist, IO psychologist. But I was speaking at a conference and she came up and said to me, you know, I think, and I talk about like pre hire assessments you're probably familiar with like Myers Briggs Disc Red White and Blue Lion Tiger Bear, all these personality assessments. And she said, I think these companies have it wrong. I don't think that people really care just about extroversion or introversion. What they really care about is when I hire somebody, will they, will they, will one, will they show up? But two, will they, will they be at the top 5% of my organization in terms of performance and will they stay after I've done all the headache and you know, the brain damage of just getting somebody up and integrated into my organization? And she was doing some fascinating work. She was working with Mercedes Benz. She had created an algorithm really deeply based in data and science. So we use the term AI, but she was doing this work seven years ago before people were calling it AI. It's just advanced data. Science is really what it is. And for Mercedes Benz, she was predicting a salesperson would come in, they'll take a 10 minute, 15 minute online questionnaire and she would output a prediction. This person will sell 50 cars a month or 40 or 30 cars a month and give some indication of how long they were likely to stay. Yes, she was doing the same thing with a global cybersecurity company, CrowdStrike. And so she was getting to within 15% pre hire.

Wow.

So when you think about people and you know, people are messy, so to be able to have that sort of insight in the. On the front end. And it really spoke to me. Throughout my career I've had this deep belief around elevating human potential. Like I think it's an amazing thing when you can see people reach their full potential. Anyway, long story short, I ended up investing with that company, moved. She's here in the US now and been building a company together that, you know, really has that impact. But during this time I was working with Tommy so I said, hey, I wonder if we can build a model for your garage door technicians. We did that and that got me looking at the trades. And so I previously we had been working with large enterprise and I was like, you know, here are the companies that really are the fabric of our local communities and if we could improve the quality of the humans they're getting, it would really improve our communities and the stability in our communities and the kinds of families that our communities have. We when people are doing work that's rewarding and they're good at it and their own personal earnings go up. So that's how we got involved in that. We pivoted and now focus exclusively on the trade. So thinks H vac plumbing, electrical, solar, roofing, those types of companies. And we do everything from helping them attract the candidates, pushing it out to job boards, social boards. People come in our system automatically text, interacts with them, sends videos to them that's been custom created, looks just like the owner, but through that process that is automated but feels super personal. We get this idea of is this human that's coming through the funnel going to be a fit for your company and how are they going to perform? So that's the long story of how I got involved in the trades.

I love it. So, so with A one I guess they have a lot of technicians and they're scaling all over the country and they need a predictable way to hire people and find things. And naturally that's a decentralized version of all these home service businesses all over the place. So how.

And obviously they do it, you know, they do a ton of other things outside of the work that we've done together to be successful in hiring. But that's. That that was my entry into the trades.

Yeah, that's. That's what I can imagine. So as far as helping home service businesses, is it like CSRs, technicians, sales.

Leaders, any role within your that you're hiring in your organization? So when we first got into the trades, you know, interested because of the work with A1 but the problem you run into in A lot of home service companies is they don't have enough data.

Yeah, that's what I was asking.

So we partnered with organizations like Nexstar. Nexstar has 1100 members. Many of their members allowed us to assess all of their employees, their CSRs, their dispatchers, their technicians, their selling technicians. So we got this really rich view psychographically of who are the humans that choose to do this work. On the other side, they gave us actual performance data. So what were their sales numbers, what were their call statistics? What was the quality scores like? And we're feeding that into a data engine. It's machine learning, it's advanced pattern recognition, multivariate regression analysis, a lot of data tech that probably most people don't care about. But on the outside we're able to say, here are all the things that science says we can measure reliably about a human and let's just let the data tell us which are important and which aren't. And here's the thing. Most people especially like a, you know, home service guy that just starts a company, maybe he was a technician before, then he runs a company, you know, he grows to a certain size, like, good for him.

Yeah.

They end up with this sort of false belief that they're a great judge of character, that they know who can do the job. Like their gut. They trust their gut.

Yeah.

Well, if that was true, we wouldn't have like a 50% plus divorce rate in this country.

Yeah, right.

Like our gut oftentimes leads us wrong even in the most important decision, like who we marry. Can you imagine how often it leads us wrong with who to hire?

Yeah.

And, and yet companies leave that decision to the gut and intuition. Worse, you think about most home service companies, you got a flood of applicants coming in and they have some young, 25, 24 year old male, female person scanning resumes, sorting them into piles. This person has never done the job. They wouldn't know excellence it if it hit them in the face. And they're trusting the future of their company on the intuition of that person looking at a piece of paper like, it's almost laughable when you really think about it.

I know, right.

And so we want to take that out of an organization and let our engine look deeply at people and, and help the business owner say, these are the sort of people that are typically very high risk. And on the other side, these are the sort of people who end up loving doing the work.

Yeah.

And who, if you invest your time, your money, your energy, are, are bound to do well. They're bound to be loyal to your organization.

Yeah. So it sounds like, okay, I have a H VAC business in Dallas, Texas and I say I want to hire a technician, then I could work with your company. You would post it out and then people would apply. But your tool would help filter down those applicants into people that would maybe be a better fit to get the pool much smaller.

Yeah. So you know, there's a couple of models that people follow in home services. One is, I don't want to deal with this at all. Let me go hire a recruiter. And they're going to recruit for me.

Yes.

Okay, just, just send me people. Right. And then there's people that do it all themselves and they just use gotten intuition and then some that use like very poor, like going to put everything in an expel sell spreadsheet. Those are like the extremes.

Yes.

Here's where I come down on this. If you're going to scale your company, you cannot leave the most important function of your company to an outside recruiter. Even if they know your company well, they're never going to sell the vision like you do. They're never going to know the inside story like you do. It's just an impossibility. And by the way, their objective is sort of at cross purposes. They get paid when they put a human in the seat. You don't get paid until that human shows up and excels at the highest level. They're two different things. Secondly, if you're going to scale, that's a really expensive model on the other side, you can't just leave it to a handful of people inside a home service company to really know what the heck they're looking for. That's right, because they don't have that level of experience. It's limited to the few hundred people that they've done. And by the way, those managers that are doing the interview never have been formally trained how to interview. They probably interview like the couple of managers that interviewed them in the past. Yeah, right. So like in my book, I say things are only good or bad by comparison. So your manager thinks they're great at interviewing because the guy that interviewed him, you know, the job he got out of high school and maybe the one or two jobs since then sucked. So he's, you know, he's a genius by comparison.

Yeah, that's right.

So our philosophy is let's install a technology platform inside of home services. That's our whohire technology platform. So that gives the, the, the business owner and their leadership team data on which to rely upon in making this decision. Got it. Now attached to that, let's teach those business owners how to do great interviews, how to run what I call a stage play put on by a psychologist. Group interview. It's not your ordinary run of the mill group interview. So that, that, that home service company develops the, the muscle memory and the ability to hire at scale. If you wait until you're ready to scale, it's too late. You just, you can't develop the skill level of doing that.

Yeah.

So that's why we see companies, we have some, some of our companies there, you know, they can't hire enough good technicians. Like they're, they're in high demand. Look what's happening. Right. So they get in, they realize if they're going to be successful, they're going to have to train and they're going to have to develop their own. So they build a training school. Got a client out in Des Moines. I'm going to leave their name off, just, you know, so I don't put them on front street here. But they, they're an H vac plumbing company. They can't hire skilled people. So they decide they're going to build a school. They're bringing people into that. They're put, they're training them for 30 days. They're putting them into a $70,000 truck. They have over 200% turnover rate. Inside of 18 months, they're turning over two technicians in that truck before they even have to rotate the tires.

Yeah. That's just crazy.

So we installed our data models into their organization, trained their team on how to do that. They're under 20% turn churn coming out of that class. More importantly, I got a call from them. They, they graduated three months ago. They, they graduated three people out of their class. A quarter later, one, one quarter later that, those people, no experience, no sales experience, no technical experience. They trained it right. Identified through our model. Those, those are the number one, number two and number eight performers in the company of 22 technicians, some of who had a decade's worth of experience.

Wow. Yeah.

But they're, they're, they're developing that skill in house to be able to develop and attract great humans.

Yes. Makes complete sense. It, it's a, it's a technology that now you can feed things into and get models out of to make smart decisions for your business. Yeah.

If you're, if you're hiring like you hired in 2023, you're already really behind.

Yes.

If, if in 2026 you hire like you did in 2025. You're gonna lose.

Yeah, you're gonna lose. I want to ask about this group interview process because I think not enough people utilize that as a hiring method. And they just rely on once and Tuesdays. Yeah.

Well, what do you want to ask? Because I could geek out about this.

I wanted you to geek out because I want to double tap into it because I. I want to hear, like, what the best processes are for this.

I could send you an entire guide on how to do this.

Okay.

Most people. And we do a two day training every month at our facilities here in Phoenix.

Okay.

People fly their leadership team in. We do a live group interview so they can see exactly how it is. We stop and play and tell why we're doing things. Most people think group interview, it's like interviewing one person, but interviewing five at a time. Totally different. This is a stage play put on by a psychologist. What do I mean? If you do a stage play, you go to a stage play, right? Theater. Broadway.

Yeah.

Like, when you walk in, everything has been thought through. So maybe there's a black curtain on the stage and it's up just like six inches and there's a spotlight right in the center stage and there's like steam coming out under the curtain and there's this eerie music playing. That didn't happen by accident.

Yeah.

It happened because there's a stage director that said, I want to put the audience in this mood. Right. And everything in that theater, from the music, the lighting, the. The tone of the actors, the characters they're dressed at, is designed to. To elicit an emotional reaction. So we just. When we design a group interview for an organization, it. The. It's not one staff member doing that. We assign actor roles. So we have our undercover person, we have our introvert, we have our extrovert, we have our leader that are showing up to do this interview. You're bringing people in. The entire thing, from the minute they knock on the front door is the interview.

Wow.

It's not when they're sitting in the thing. We have activities that we involve people in so you get to see how they're. They're working. Stage play put on by a psychologist. Everybody has a role they're playing. They have the thing they're looking for. We have the moment where everybody steps out of the interview so all of the candidates get a chance to talk. And there's an undercover staff member there that came in as a. As an applicant. Why? Because they can see how people interact when they think nobody's watching, they can walk out to the parking lot and shoot the with somebody. Right?

Yeah.

And they're going to get to the truth.

Yeah.

Of what's actually happening.

Wow.

Now some people might think that's extreme, but when you make a mishire in your business, it's a half a million dollar hit to your bottom line.

Wow.

So we have to change the thinking of a leadership team to say when you say yes to somebody moving ahead in your business, you're making a half a million dollar decision. Like how many people feel in your company have the authority to write a half a million dollar check?

Yeah, we have 17 people. And I would say just me.

Yeah, just you. And when you have to write it, do you just go, oh, let me fire that off before lunch?

No, no.

You give it some thought. You like, you agonize over it. And yet when somebody's showing up for an interview, a lot of times they're running like, oh crap, Phil's coming. Who has his resume? Oh, hey Phil. Welcome to XYZ H Vac company. Tell me a little bit about yourself. And then they wonder why they have 70, 80, 200% turnover. It's because they don't know how to do their job. And they treat hiring like this thing that gets bolted on to the rest of their company. So when we work with an organization, who are we looking for? We're looking for leaders who realize they are not in the H Vac business. They're not in the plumbing business. They are in the human business. Finding good humans, developing good humans, keeping good humans. Their humans can be in the H Vac business. Yes. But they are never going to be in that business. A hundred percent of their mindset energy focus is on the humans. And if you can get that right, you can be in any business.

Absolutely. Yeah. That's so good. So with the.

By the way, I have a script for that entire thing.

Yeah.

Which I. For the, for the entire group interview. I almost hate to call it a group interview. I'll share it with you. You can send it to, to your listeners. Second, when people master this, I end up getting calls and they're like, I love hiring. We're having so much fun. My best day in my company is the day we're hiring. We have such a great time. I have people call me, say we went all year. Last two years, couldn't meet our hiring goals. I got all my hiring goals done in the last 90 days and I have a fantastic team.

Yeah, right.

This belief that hiring has to be this dull drudgery hard part of your business is just a belief you have built up over time because you suck at it. And you've been in companies that suck at it. You've been in companies that accept that they can't get a players. That is not the truth. Tommy doesn't accept that truth. Nobody that's an A player company accepts that truth.

That's right.

Right. And you think about two different kinds of companies attracting applicants. If somebody hears Tommy has a job open and they want to be in that business, they'd climb a 40 foot fence.

Yeah.

To get on his team. And that you have another garage door company, they won't walk across the street to turn in a paper application. Why? It's not the candidate, it's the company.

That's right.

It's not that people don't want to work, they don't want to work for you.

Yeah, exactly.

Right. So either decide you're going to win at this game of developing humans or just get out of the business because you're doing your, you're doing your community a disservice when you churn through people. I have a client that I'm working with. I'm angry at them because they actually said to me, our method works. We just hire them. And if they churn out fast, we hire them fast, we fire them fast. Sometimes we fire people within 60 days. That is a miserable way to be as a human being.

Yeah.

You imagine those lives, people got somebody. Think about this though. You get a young kid coming out of trade school, invested his money to put himself through training and we know if they come out of H Vac school, how much do they know when they get in your company? It's like next to nothing. Yeah, but they're plugging them. They're doing, they're doing literally one day of classroom training, plugging them into a truck and then they're wondering, 30 days, why they're not producing on, on day 30, they're putting them on a performance plan. Day 45, they're firing them.

Yeah. It's terrible.

Think about that human. Here's a kid, might be living with his girlfriend, might be newly married, might be thinking about his life, went to school, he's proud of himself, he got his first job, 45 days later he's out on the street, deemed a failure. What does that do to his psyche? You put a hundred of those people out in your community, you can't tell me you haven't damaged families. You can't tell me you haven't driven somebody to drink. You can't tell me you haven't broken up relationships all because you don't want to do your job as a leader. Like, get the out of the business. And you're gonna have to bleep that out. But I'm passionate about that because we're, we're dealing with human beings.

Yeah, it's so true.

Who cares about your business? Your employees don't care about your business. They care about their lives and they're happy to help you build your business, but not if you suck at it. Like, the days of, like, slave labor are over. It used to be people say, oh, thankful to have a job. Guarantee you. This young generation, they watch their parents grow up, they watch their people get laid off from jobs. They know there's not a lot of loyalty. They know when somebody cares about their people, that that's a unique thing that stands out in the marketplace. And they will go to war with that kind of company. But as long as you're just a company, they don't care about you. Yeah, they're not going to give you their best work. They're not going to answer that call in the middle of the night. The only reason they're going to answer because they don't have a job tomorrow, but they're looking for one. And if you get $2 more an hour, they're going to go and then you're going to say, people don't want to work these days. Yeah, they want to work. They just don't want to work for you. You're uninspired.

That's right. I think a lot of times you have to build the business that attracts A players and not say there's no A players out there. And people miss that, that part of it. And I think this group interview, you can set up your company as this amazing company because you can pre script it all out to make sure that it is the message.

Here's what I hear, and I've got videos on my, my, my Facebook and Instagram companies that I've interviewed their executives and they're like, I can't believe it. I call somebody to give them the job and they cry.

Yeah.

And when I call somebody and tell them I'm not going to take the job, like, they go to war with me battling, like, please, like, I want to be on your team. Keep me in mind. What do I have to do? Where did you see I need to improve?

Yeah.

Like, if your interviews aren't getting that kind of reaction from people, you are doing it wrong. You Might think you're a star player and I would suggest you're probably a small town high school player thinking you're going to make it in the NBA. When you see greatness, you'll have like. I think, I think that's actually the problem. Like, you get home service companies, owners that have never been inside of a company that's doing it great. So they have zero clue what greatness looks like.

Yeah.

I challenge them. Go, go through somebody's company like Tommy Mellon. Just walk through the front door, see the energy. You're gonna go, wow, now I know what great looks like.

Yeah. Go do some shop tours and see what great looks like. Yeah.

And I'm not just saying big shops.

Yeah.

I'm saying shops that, you know, people would die to work for.

Yeah.

Because when you have that kind of team, economy can go up and down. You can face challenges. Those people are there with you. And, you know, we. You overuse this term. Like, work is family. I don't actually think that's the right term. I don't need my work mates to be family. I need us to be warriors together.

Yeah.

Like, we're going fighting for the future of our families. And I'll stand shoulder to shoulder with you and do that so you can provide for your family so that I can also get mine.

Yeah.

Let's never forget that you're not in the same family. You're each fighting for your family, your dreams, your hopes. Yep. Right. Doesn't mean I'm not happy to consider you a brother. You're a bro. Right?

Yeah.

But there's a limit to that.

Yeah. I want to ask you about the onboarding process because you alluded to it several times. What is like the best practices that you've seen for this? Obviously, hopefully you get good people coming into that process. But is it 30 days, 60 days? Is there any, like, specific things that you.

Yeah, there's. There's zero. Best practice for onboarding. Every company is different. Every skill level you're hiring is different. What you have to do is you have to treat it like a stage play put on by a psychologist. It can't be accidental. So when I consult with clients, like under my sales boss brand, I have this audit that I have them do. It's called the Think Feel act audit. And we start with, what do you want? And we write it down on paper. What do you want? A candidate, a new employee to think about your business. And people write all sorts of things down. Like, I think I want them to think that we create Champions. I want them to think that this. That. That I can be successful here in my future. And. And what do you want them to feel when they have that? I want them to feel like they can trust us to do that. I want them to feel like they're. They're joining something new. I want to feel like I can grow. And how do you want them to act? Well, I want them to show up, put in the effort. I want it right. Think, feel, act. Now, I want you to audit your business. Take that same sheet of paper. Take your entire leadership. Go stand out in your parking lot and look at the front of your building and say, if I had to judge this just on the outside of my building. Do. Do. Is this think. The think thing. The thing? I want them to think, yes, Champion, we build champions. Does this building tell me that yes or no? Is it a hell yes or a hell no? There's no maybe.

Yes.

Walk up to the front door. Get really close. Look at the logo. Is it clean? Is it sharp? Is the window clean? Champion. Hell yes. Hell no. Walk into the lobby. Walk into a lobby. People have awards that are like five years old and even have a different company name on them than the company they had because they got bought out and nobody's updated the walls. And you laugh, but that's the truth.

I know. I know it's true because I've been in that situation.

Think, feel, act. Walk into your lunchroom, your whole leadership team. Walk into the women's bathroom. All of you, all your executives. Stand in the women's bathroom. Just smell it in, look around. Is a hand soap in the thing? Think, feel, act. Walk in where somebody would sit their first day of work, sit in that chair and say, what am I thinking? Am I feeling. And my acting.

I.

Am I thinking still, this company can create a champion. Am I feeling like I made a right decision with my future and am I going to take action?

Yeah.

Like the minute somebody walks into Tommy's company and there's. And I keep saying Tommy, but there's a lot of them that I can mention. Call Dads is an example. Let me use another example. Love working with the guys over at Call Dads. Love working with the guys over at Waldrop. You walk over into any of their offices, they have it nailed. Think, feel, act. So when you say, what's a good practice for an onboarding? I don't know.

Yeah.

Because I don't know what you want people to think. I don't know what you want them to feel. I don't Know what action? But I'm going to have every bit of that outlined every day for as long as it takes for me to know they have bought into the cult of my company.

Yeah.

That they finally go, I'm going to live or die this next period of my life making this company successful, because I can see I can get the things I want for me and my family here. In my book, I say, people will work for you for as long as they believe they can do the best work of their life working for you.

Yeah.

The minute that's not true, they're looking, of course. So this is not something that can be on autopilot. You have to design it and you get to pick it. And you certainly don't want to leave that to just anyone to pick.

Yeah. Right.

You're bringing somebody in, they're putting your logo on their chest. You're sending them out in the community. Your entire family's future is hinged on the shoulders of this young man or woman that you're sending into the community's home. Are you sure you've done everything you can to equip them with your family name, or were you too busy? Couldn't be bothered. Because you were, you know, busy putting out fires. And who cares anyway? Because if they don't work out, I'll just fire them.

And you're tugging at some heartstrings for a lot of people, and it's. It's uncomfortable. And I really appreciate you sharing that, because that's the truth, that a lot of people have to hear that thing. Yeah.

And I don't want them just hear it. I want them to feel it so hard. I did this with a client. We went and did that audit.

Yeah.

They literally shut down their office, moved locations, rebranded everything, and they got serious.

Yeah.

Because they realized they were fighting a losing fight.

Yeah.

If you have really high turnover, you don't need incremental change. You need to fundamentally shift how you're thinking about your business, and you got to get really serious about it. And that starts with the owner, by the way. Like, you. What. What does your employees do when they look at you standing in front of the company talking? Are you. Like, if you're completely out of shape, you look worn out, like you're like. Like you ran the. You. You know, you. Like, you ran 100 miles last night and slept two.

Yeah.

And your leadership team, you think they go, oh, yeah, let me be like that guy.

Exactly.

Worn out, tired? Put up wet. No. And yet you go, well, I'm just Working hard. I'm building the future for they don't care.

Yep, yep. Man, you're, you're, you're speaking my language. But also, I know, I know my soapbox.

Phil, kick it off.

Yeah, no, no, I appreciate it because, like, it, it, it's so much more than just like, hey, there's this cool AI platform to help you analyze this stuff.

We could put the best AI platform and you'd still fail.

Exactly.

And I would tell you, I would tell people, if you're in our platform and you fail, it's a you failure, not an us failure. Like, it's just the way it is. And I'm not saying we're perfect.

Yeah, yeah.

Well, you know, say software, you get bugs, you get challenges. Sometimes we screw up, sometimes we drop the ball. Guess what? Nobody's going to care as much as we are.

Yeah.

And nobody's going to challenge you to get your business right when it comes to people. And I'm doing that because I'm on a mission. I love human beings. I love it when humans can reach their full potential. And the people that are in the biggest position to change our country are entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurs are used to fixing problems, fixing them in an efficient, elegant way. That's who we need.

That's right.

More than politicians. More. But sometimes we get people just sitting in pretending to be an entrepreneur. You have a vehicle, you have a business license in your community. That means you have a license to create excellence in your community. And if you can't create it inside of your 3,000 or 10,000 or 30,000 square foot building, then I think you're part of the problem.

Yeah, man. I did not expect this from, from talking about the AI stuff, but it's so, I mean, this is so good. This is why, to be honest, this is why I love podcasting, because it's like it, it's relative for home service, but it's relative for my business. Relative for any business that, like, you gotta fix these things in your business and you can get the best AI platform in the world. But if you don't have a good business or a good way to work with people, none of that stuff really matters.

So let me tell you a story because I'm, you know, people know us under the who Hire brand, but people are also going to start hearing under another brand called Elliott Hire.

Okay.

Just coming into the market, many people may or may not know Andy Elliott, one of the fastest growing leadership development companies. He read my book, We've gotten to know each other.

Cool.

You know Some people go, oh, he's extreme because like he, you know, he's sort of hardcore. If you don't, if you don't have that, be on the team.

Yeah.

But when you get inside the door of his building. I remember the first time I walked in his building here in Fountain Hills, Arizona. It's like walking into a real life version of my book. Like, it's fire. Everybody's on fire. Everybody's putting in their best effort. Everybody is, is focused on being physically fit, mentally fit, good fathers, good mothers, and they're and, and genuinely caring about their people. I went with him to an event out at the Vault Conference out in Orlando. So get this. A lot of his guys that work there selling his leadership and course development, they're self employed. They're 1099. He just provides them a vehicle to do that.

Yeah.

These are commission only. I go out to the Vault conference. It's Pat, Ben David puts it on. There's 10,000 people there. It's a $20,000 ticket to go, plus a hotel room. That's like $600 a night, plus your food, all that. He had at least 15 of his commission. Only people pay out of their own pocket. All of their expenses to go. It's not even his conference. They're going to learn. They're going because they're hungry. They're hungry to be better. How many of your commission. Only salespeople would be willing to write a $20,000 check. Yeah. To go get better.

Yeah.

Probably not many. Like, that's a high standard of excellence.

Yes.

So he's been using our hiring platform to hire those people. Like, and we got his data and he's crushing it. Like bringing people in, scaling them quickly. They're doing group interviews, 50 people at a time.

Wow.

He makes one social media post, he'll get a thousand applicants. We, we skinny that down to 50. Get them in, he hires five, they succeed. Ram. He's got individual earners on, on his team that are doing $2 million a year. Oh. Just in commission. Now why do I tell that large story? He loves our data and I love him, of course. And his, the way he's going. Like, do we have a different style? Sure. He's probably not happy with my abs. I get that. But I like him as a human. I like Jackie, his wife. They're good, great kids. So we've actually started a company together, Elliot Hire. And we're taking their data and their culture and the way they're putting those things in our data. And we're going to go to market under this brand Elliot hire and it's already on fire. We don't officially launch it until the 15th of this month but we already have almost 100 companies at the gate ready to get in and go through this boot camp with us. It's going to totally transform their business. So.

Wow.

That, that, you know, that's other. You know, if somebody wants to go, you can go to whohire.com I don't care. Go to elliot-hire. I can't get the Elliott higher without the dash yet but Elliott hire and just check out like the really cool things that we're doing.

Yeah, I love it. Well, it's been really great to. To learn about this, Jonathan and I'm. If you could send me that group hire script thing or I could find it on your website or somewhere else. But I would love to.

It's under lock and key. Normally people pay 30k. No, I'm just kidding. But what I. But what I would encourage you, like when people see that come out and see it in action.

Yeah.

Like get on a plane. Because I don't think people know what they're trying to build. I was talking to a roofing contractor, young kid, you know, great salesperson, went out on his own. He's built this company. It's, you know, I call it a small company but for some of your listeners, they might think, wow, that's a great company. Right. But he's just churning through people and he calls, he actually calls on a Saturday. I have a demo because we're backed up. So like everybody's on the phone taking these calls. So I'm working Saturday. He's booked on my calendar. I have a conversation with him and I go like, I'm not going to sell you anything because I don't think you know what you're even trying to build. Like, you're a great sales guy but you're not an executive. And you just like, that's why you're burning through people. Like you're treating it like this is a human resource. Like we have that term, human resource, which means like wood is a resource. You burn in it. It's gone. Does it make sense?

Yes.

These are humans. I said I'm not going to sell you anything. And he gets to the end of college. Like, man, I really appreciate this, that even this coaching's been great. What can I do for you? I'm like, you really can't do anything for me, but you should do for yourself. You need to get in a room you're smart enough that if you can see it, I know you can build it. You've just never seen it. So if I were you, I would get on a plane, I'd book it right now. I would be down here at Andy Elliott's office at 8:15 Monday morning and walk in and see his sales meeting. And then you'll know what you're trying to build. And if you do that, let's talk about selling you something. I hang up. I don't think he's coming. I, you know, it's just like, yeah, at this point I'm tired, so I probably get way too hard. He got like, he got, he didn't get this soapbox, Jonathan. He got like the fire hose punch you in the face. Jonathan. I pull into Andy Elliott's parking lot at 8 o' clock on Monday morning. The kid's there.

Oh my gosh.

Flew in from the East Coast.

Wow.

And he said, I don't know why I'm here, I got a six month old baby at home. But I'm here because I'm ready.

Wow. Wow.

He sat through his, his sales meeting and he's like, now I get it. I can see what I'm trying to build.

Wow.

So that's a long answer to yes, I'll send you the script. Yes, but you can see the script. And if you don't have a vision for what you're trying to build, get in front, take the opportunity to go in and see it. Because I think you don't build a three million dollar company without being smart. Your listeners aren't stupid.

Yeah, of course.

Right. They just haven't seen it. So they got to go out, see it. And then I'm positive once they see it and if they're committed to doing the work on themselves, everything else will happen for them.

Yeah.

And maybe they'll buy my software, which would be really nice because, you know, I'm trying to build a company too.

Yeah. Well, I think that's the whole thing is you got to get a good business in place and good systems. So then you get the software and then you plug it in and it all works perfectly.

Yeah. So somebody gets on our platform, they're probably gonna spend like 22k a year, like, and they'll be like, wow, that's a lot of money. I'm like, it's a, it's a lot of money. And yet you've churned through 10 technicians who each cost you 50, half a million dollars.

Yeah.

And by the way, you're paying somebody $28 an hour to look at resumes. So, like that money goes away. Yeah, but we get. So you have to disconnect yourself from the money and go, what am I, what am I actually trying to build?

Yeah.

The problem is your. For your contractor, that churn number. The cost of the churn doesn't show up anywhere on the p. L. That's right. So nobody gets held account. I guarantee you, if you had a half a million, a million dollar loss coming out of your parts department, like somebody would be like, getting taken to task for it.

Yes.

Yeah, but we hire somebody, they're gone 30 days later. No, like, nobody's taking the test. Nobody says, hey, what, what the happened to the last, you know, the 50K that we just invested in getting this person into our team?

It's deep.

I try not to curse. I'm getting too passionate. That starts to come out. It's early in the morning.

No, I appreciate that. Well, Jonathan, thanks so much, man. It's been great getting to know you and hopefully we'll link up sometime. I'm going to be out on the west coast in a little bit, so I would love to stop by.

Yeah, well, I'm from washington state, so when you say west coast, I'm thinking like near ocean. Arizona.

I'm going to be in Vegas. I'm going to be in Vegas.

When are you going to be in vegas?

In like two weeks probably.

So am I right at the end of the month? Yeah.

Okay, hit me up.

We'll go do something in Vegas.

All right, cool, man. Thanks.

Yes. See you.