Ep 5 - Part 1 Why Would Anyone Want To Work For You

0:02 Welcome back to another episode of the MRM Podcast. I'm Chris. And I'm Brandon. Join us as we discuss business, life, and legacy. It's business time. Yo. Yo. How you doing? Good. Good. Good. Are you on fire? Not your groin, but just in general. That chili sauce was something else. So... I hope it doesn't come back to haunt me while we're like mid episode. Be like, Hey Joel, we have a 10 minute delay. Yeah. Something happened and it was ugly. It was. Let's not talk about it. That was not user friendly. Okay. All right, man. What are we, what are we rapping about today?

0:43 Well, what is the most common pervasive problem in the entire industry across all of the service sector? Labor, right? Like recruiting. It's painful. Yeah, it makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up thinking about it. It's a challenge. Yeah, well, you know, I'm thinking back to that conversation we had with Brianna this last week and just the insight she gave us around... current events and what's happening with stimulus and what's happening with unemployment and how it's, I mean, it was frankly, I mean, we kind of knew 80% of it, 90% of it, but the way she broke it down for us, I'm like, okay, this, this makes a lot more sense.

1:24 You connect all the dots. It also is a little bit scary because we don't know exactly when it's going to end. Yeah, that's fair. You know, so I don't know if it makes sense for us to kind of review some of those things that she brought up, but it was very fascinating to me. I think we should. And mainly because I think what you're kind of alluding to is that... We know that these factors were contributing, that they were having a negative effect on our business's ability to recruit good talent. And I think in a large part, we're talking about entry to lower mid-level positions, not by capacity or competency or values. value. Just wage level. Just wage level, right? These are more frontline personnel.

2:05 Yeah. We're talking what we have a lot of in our industry, you know, when it comes to labor and demolition help and stuff like that. And, you know, some of our entry-level office staff, that $12 to $15 an hour range. Yeah. Or even, well, based on our conversation, maybe all the way up to $20 an hour range, right? Yeah. So to me, the standout thing that I just, I don't know, I didn't fully connect with is, She said that the national average that people on unemployment are making is $17 an hour. Isn't that what she said? Yeah, I think it was $17. I would have to go back and listen to the specific number, but I remember it being, give or take, right? In that $17 an hour rate. So when you consider that, and that potentially a very large portion of your workforce...

2:50 depending on where your business is at and size and all of that stuff, you could have a fairly lengthy list on your payroll that's in that 12 to 16 range. And how hard is it going to be to get people back to work in our industry? We're not talking about... a barista making coffee. We're not talking about even somebody cleaning carpets or washing windows. We're talking about mitigation work and bio and crawling in crawl spaces under houses. It's hard work. Let's be honest. It's dirty work. Why would your average person come back to work for $15 or $16 an hour and...

3:31 to do hard work. Yeah. Meaningful work. And we try to build meaning around it, right? And all the things that we do to sort of make the work satisfying, right? As a team and all the stuff we do, right? Like we're helping people, we're changing lives. Okay, yeah. And it's hard work. And when they can be at home, With their kids, by the way, been out of school for the last year. Right. And in their summer break now. Right. And let's face it, anybody who's making 13 to 16 or even more per hour, they can afford childcare. Right. They can afford a nanny. So the unemployment has solved some pretty major problems for them. And then what we find out about health insurance. Yeah, this kind of just dumbfounded me.

4:14 And again, the details, we'll have to go back and present some of these notes, I think, even in a module. But we're talking sub a dollar a month. Yeah, like a sliding scale, right? Yeah. I don't know what exactly the factors are, but Brianna has learned firsthand examples of people that are only charged a dollar a month. For full-on medical coverage. Like full on major medical with a $500 deductible. Yeah. Crazy. $2,000 maximum out of pocket. And so for those of us owners and leaders who've like put health insurance plans in place, like that's just ridiculous. Yeah. Like comparatively for a family of five, you'd otherwise be looking at like a thousand, 1200, 1500 bucks a month.

4:58 Yeah. Right. For a plan like that. Right. And there's federal programs right now that are subsidizing it to where it might be a simple signup online to get that same coverage for a dollar. Yeah. Yeah. And so then on top of that, the most recent thing, right, or one of the more current things that we're seeing is this kind of front loaded tax credit for children. Coming online. Right. Yesterday it started rolling out. Yeah. So now, okay, so we have someone that just in compensations receiving somewhere in the $17 an hour range. Right. They do not have costs associated with childcare. They're potentially getting full-on medical coverage for themselves and their families for less than a few bucks a month.

5:41 And then on top of that, they're getting $300 per child front-loaded tax credit. Like we're talking about someone that's being compensated north of what? 22, 23, even 25 bucks an hour potentially when you add up. And I don't know how the 17 bucks figures in, if that's including the stimulus checks and everything else, but it doesn't matter, right? It's like... Is a big problem. Yeah, it is affecting us. So, okay, now here's the old part that we all grew accustomed to being challenged by, right? Like this was the first hurdle, was the fact that we've spent, what, since 2008 at least... Oh, yeah.

6:21 in a place where culture... So this happened before 2008. But as a community, as a culture, Americans, for whatever reason, of course, looking back now, I'm sure hindsight's 2020 is, we just thought it was a good idea to preach to an entire generation that blue collar work was not valuable. Yeah, get a degree or you won't be anything. Or you're going to be worthless, right? And then 08 hits and just crushes the economy. And so we see this mass exodus, essentially, of people that are retiring out of trades and those kind of skilled labor environments. And then we really have done nothing, I would say, at least nationally, to create any kind of supporting mechanism or infrastructure to put these folks back into the workforce.

7:05 And so... So our industry essentially has been dried up of young blood coming into the industry with trade skills, right? With a focus on developing a career path within an environment, blue collar environment. And then now on top of this, these post-COVID scenarios that are just, I mean, making it. very difficult. Let's be honest. Let's take the owner operator hats off and just go, if I was in their shoes, that would be pretty difficult to make the decision on principle that I'm going to come back to work. Yeah. When I'm being compensated that well to not work and I'm getting some of these really base level things taken care of in terms of my family, my children, whatever. Yeah.

7:45 It's huge. It's huge. Yeah. There's no new people entering the industry. And so... What we've been doing as an industry for the last 12 plus years is... I mean, really, it's even before 2008. Oh, yeah. The decline of the trades. But we've just been stealing from one another. Yeah. We've been taking talent, right? Yeah. It's the person that steals the most talent that wins right now in this market, you know? And so, a lot of what happens in the restoration industry is we're taking techs from one another. And I mean, the best man still wins. But it's just... It's been this real insular game of just moving people around the industry. Yeah. We're not getting new people in. No. So here's...

8:26 I know you and I have been having these conversations in the background. And of course, they started a long time ago. I mean, the reality of it is that in some of the organizations that we participated in and played roles in, we were conscientious about this idea of developing... a company culture. And we've seen some really powerful companies over the last few decades mirror these kinds of focuses. I think tech was probably some of the biggest industries to see. And of course, I think we swung the pendulum all the way over to foosball tables and keg machines or whatever else. But... But they were some of the first folks that said our work environment, the culture that we're breeding within our organization has value.

9:07 Not only does it have value, but it affects the bottom line. It affects recruiting. It affects all these things, right? So you and I were, I don't know, I don't want to necessarily say early adopters, but that vibed with us. Let's put it that way. Well, yeah, because they were, I think, technology companies, and they got it more right than wrong, is they said, how do we make it so people want to be at work? Man. Instead of wanting to be at home, which is the norm in, frankly, most industries, most corporate and job environments, is we're just doing our role to get home and get paid. Yep. And tech companies said, well, wait, if we want to get the best product out of our people, right? we're in a creative business, which I would argue the restoration business is a creative business.

9:50 We could talk more about that. Yeah. I think all service work is creative work. Yep. If tech companies said, if we want to get the best out of our people, we want to compete at the highest level, we have to create an environment where people want to be at work, where they, it's both convenient and at least to some degree desirable to stay at work and put in that extra time. No, you're right. And that's the key part. And I think that this is what kind of got lost in translation a bit is that I think a lot of people saw and heard organizations investing tons of money into this kind of culture, environmental focus. And I think they looked at it more as a recruiting gimmick. But what I think has gotten lost on some of us is the fact that no...

10:34 these companies were looking at mass production and efficiency. They wanted to milk. Okay, let's take the sexy out of it. We get the most out of their talent. They literally want to squeeze every drop out of their workforce that they could because they have these crazy product timelines. They're trying to bring stuff to market before competitors. So don't get it twisted. These folks were thinking about it from a market... Return on investment. Return on investment. straight up return on investment. And we have kind of lost focus on that. And I think it's part of one of the reasons why, at least from my perspective, and we've talked about this, that the industry seems a little slow on adopting this prioritization of how do we make people feel when they work for a company.

11:22 But guys, again, not only I think does it have a legacy impact, which you and I know, we love that stuff and we focus on it. We believe it's got merit. But man, this is straight up bottom line affecting competitiveness. I mean, this is real stuff. This is measurable, tangible on your companies. And I'd say this, man. So understanding our current work environment and how difficult it is, compounding matters, compounding variables are making it harder for us to recruit. Do we really have a choice anymore to act as if culture is not an important thing for us to understand, grow, learn, develop?

12:03 I mean, do we really have a choice as operators? No. I mean, of course not. And I think one of the things that holds all businesses back, including me, like I think all of us are subject to this is this... the other side of success, right? We get to a point, whatever success means to you or me, for some people that's getting your restoration business to a million bucks, you got, let's just say 200 grand, 250 grand in profit at the end of the year. You're like, Hey, got a boat, got a house, this is good. I got a good gig. That can quickly become a barrier to improvement because we think we're doing just fine. Our people are happy enough.

12:44 I got a crew. They've been pretty loyal. It's just enough. I think that attitude has really shaped... not just our industry, but I think it's just, it's the natural default. We reach a point where we aren't, we just aren't as hungry and we have our business in a certain place where it's doing what we always wanted it to do and we can rest on our laurels. And I think it's as much success as it is at fault for this culture in our, in the industry, as it is becoming a failure in the sense of more and more we're starting to hear, you know, from clients and otherwise that, you know, the competition for talent is like it's never, ever been before.

13:26 Right. And we're seeing it in little and big ways. One of the most obvious ways is just the wages are getting ratcheted up. You go into Indeed and you look at a listing of water mitigation technician postings and every single contractor in the market is posted on Indeed. Right. Virtually. Yeah. Yeah. And you've also got huge wage disparity. But what we've been noticing over time is that it's all starting to float up. Right. So now that $14 or $15 new technician that's not IICRC certified might have historically started at $13 an hour.

14:06 Yeah. Until they get to a tech two and they get some certs and get some skills built and whatever. But now you're seeing companies putting out $16, $17 an hour as a starting wage. Yeah. Without experience, without certification. Yeah. And then people with certs, we're seeing ranges from 18 to 28 bucks an hour. Yeah. Yeah. It's wild. It is wild. And I think part of that is because, and we saw a lot of this in the past where we're trying to add benefits and kind of these environmental conditions that make things more attractive. You can't do that in place of, I think that's the thing. It's like, we just need to remember, and we're going to dive into some of these tactics a little bit, but we have to remember that the pay piece has to be competitive.

14:53 That's not, you don't have a choice there. You can't be grossly under your competitors and think that you're going to even get someone in the door to start the conversation. You're going to make it up by being nice. You're going to be right. Right. But The key takeaway there is that you're saying you pull up the listings in a market on Indeed. Everyone's in that place. That is not a game changer. That's not a differentiator that no way separates you from the pack. That just allows you to at least keep up. And so I think one of the opportunities that we have here is, and you can correct me if I'm wrong, I'm spitballing here a little bit, but there is kind of two different conversations that could potentially come out of here. One is a bigger look at culture, defining that.

15:37 understanding what it means, understanding how a business operator identifies what they want to create in their own business as their culture, right? And I think that that's a big conversation. And so what I'm kind of hearing from this, and I think the direction I want to hang in is that I kind of want to focus more on, okay, let's keep this more of a recruiting conversation But let's be super diligent about talking about those cultural aspects or the focus on how we're making people feel as they enter our system and participate in our business. How that's affecting our choice making and some of the things that we can do to continue to recruit people.

16:18 And then at some point in the near future, I want to have a full-blown culture conversation because I just think it's so important. Well, like you say, there's just so many different directions we go. But I'll tell you what's popping in my head right now. is when we talk about how we make people feel, I think we can hang there for a little while. Yeah. And that's just a limitless conversation, right? But when we think about how we onboard people, one of my buddies, he's a tech guy. He got, not all tech companies are awesome, by the way. There's Google's and then there's others, right? Yeah. So it's not that the whole tech industry just has this all figured out, but I think they've led the pack in terms of culture, awareness, and development, stuff like that.

17:00 he went from one company that was kind of okay, made good money, the competitive, whatever, but he started with this new business and he was blown away by the onboarding experience. It was actually a remote job and he'd had other remote jobs as a programmer and whatnot, but he was blown away by the onboarding experience. So once he got his offer letter, uh, And he accepted. There was a sequence of events that just happened like clockwork afterwards. He had an email he received that told him he has an ergonomics allowance for setting up his home office the way he sees fit.

17:43 And it was an allowance. I don't know. I'm just going to spitball here. But it was like, you've got $500 to put towards whatever office chair you want. you've got $800 toward a standing desk or any other kind of desk that you prefer. You get to choose a MacBook Pro. You can outfit it however you want up to $2,500 or $3,000 or something like that. Now, mind you, again, context is important, right? Obviously, we're not going to do this kind of stuff for your typical restoration worker. But for a computer programmer, this was not normal. This was not customary. This was like a new experience. And he was a highly compensated person.

18:23 And so in the grand scheme of things, this wasn't... super, what's the word I'm looking for? Wasn't super wild and audacious to do this. Yeah. But so few companies even bothered to do it in a systematic way, right? Instead, how it might've happened is he'd be like, like in a typical onboarding and company, What is an employee doing? They're like, do I get a name badge? Where do I show up on the first day? Do I get a laptop or do I use my own? Like it's usually chaos in our businesses. Right, right, right. And probably even for us, it's like early in the early days, like we were probably guilty of that too.

19:04 Oh, hey, let's be honest. Hey, just show up here on Monday. Totally. Yeah. OJT on Monday, hop in the truck with Johnny, right? And that's our onboarding process. And I feel like it's really important to contrast like what could happen. Yeah. And so we had this allowance for setting up his office. And then he was invited to an introduction meeting with his team intentionally to like introduce him and for them to introduce like basically a little networking mixer in his very first week. And let me think what else I was just so blown away by it too. God was really inspired by it. In fact, I don't know, we may have stolen some of these ideas in different ways at our companies, but I think the intentionality is what really got my attention and how unintentional we generally are in the service sector.

19:53 And I think this probably runs the gamut, even amongst the single trades of, you know, HVAC and plumbing and electrical is that it's just like, hey, they should be happy. I'm cutting a check. Yeah. I'm writing a paycheck. Yeah. I'm paying their, you know. We're going to get them hours. Yeah. We're going to give them a living. Yeah. Yeah. And I think what technology companies have figured out is, hey, these are people that have the same dreams and aspirations and fears and concerns and ailments as we do. Absolutely. These same people don't like sitting in a crummy office chair for six hours any more than I do. Yeah. Right? And they just really said, okay, how do we help an employee start out on the right foot in the best...

20:34 healthiest, most positive, energizing way? How do we give them the best start possible? Dude, I love that. Can we... So I'm going to put you on that. Take us wherever you want to go. I'm putting you on the spot here, man. Let's break that example down. Yeah. Let's you and I shoot the shit a little bit on what that might look like. in a restoration business. Okay. So, so key part here is a proactively designed sequence of events that like your team can know is going to happen, meaning that the right players are going to help initiate. They're going to put those things into motion. And then the experience that's being received then by this new hire is, wow, the company's thinking about this proactively.

21:18 They value me, right? They've got a plan. I'm excited about to go working with a team that's got a plan, right? Like all these things, man, what a tone setter. What a difference maker. So let's walk through this. What can we do as a restoration company to create that same event without buying $1,000 chairs and $3,000 MacBooks? Okay. Can I, before I die, cause this sounds fun. Okay. You know, this sounds fun to me. Let's talk about the why really fast because you and I were just listening to the Danny Meyer podcast on knowledge projects. Okay. So if you haven't heard this podcast, you need to Google it right now and go listen to it. It's 50 minutes of the best time you'll spend probably this week.

21:58 That's probably true. So Danny Meyer is the founder and CEO of Union Square Ventures. So Union Square Ventures owns Shake Shack, or at least did. Now Shake Shack is public and in multiple countries. But they own Gramercy Tavern and a handful of other... high-end iconic restaurants, most of them in New York City. Anyway, Danny Meyer is renowned for his culture. First of all, his company culture, his training systems, his internal language that their employees use across all their companies and ultimately for their guest experience they create in the restaurants. Yep.

22:38 Absolutely. And we heard him talk at Global Leadership Summit years ago, and we were enamored then. We're like, oh, this is so in line with what we're trying to do in our restoration company. He has this phrase he uses. It's kind of the mantra of their business is, the power of the virtuous cycle of enlightened hospitality. That's wild. The virtuous cycle of enlightened hospitality. And the way he describes that is that the first audience... the first customer that we have to be diligent in the hospitality we're giving them is our people. Yeah. So he has a deep belief that when he's hiring that server, that line cook, that maitre d', the wine steward, whatever roles he's hiring for, frontline, entry level, all of it, table bussers.

23:32 is that I need to model the experience that we want to create for guests. I need to model that for them. I need to create an experience. I need to create a certain feeling, a certain culture, a workplace environment for my team where they feel valued. They feel special in order for them to be able to deliver that to my customer. I'm like, I heard that. I'm like, oh man, this is the essence of, of what company culture is to me. Like if you had to sum company culture up into one thing, it's you modeling to your people how you want them to take care of your customer.

24:12 Yeah. And it seems so obvious when you say it out loud. And yet it's hard to deliver on. Oh, absolutely. You think about the conversations that we frequently have with our clients. They're in growth mode. That's one of the reasons why they bring us on, help them grow. Yeah. Right. So there, there's a certain amount of hair on fire happening in every area of their business. Right. We're trying to implement new systems and processes to help them grow and to make them more efficient and all that kind of stuff. And well, they're having to do business while they're changing gears and learning how to do things. And so sometimes it just feels overwhelming, the idea of creating an experience for people. Okay, so now I'm back to your question. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It is hard.

24:53 It is. Which I think is one of the reasons why the onboarding experience is our low-hanging fruit as a business. Yeah, yeah. Because it really truly does set the tone. Yep. for what you're going to try to model in all the other areas of your business. And you may struggle in. But it's like what we talk about all the time with customer experience, but it's true of management leadership too. It's like filling the bank account, the love account. Yeah. Right. Making those deposits. And that's, to me, that's the power of a really awesome onboarding experience is you just fill up that new employee's love tank. Right. You really bolster their confidence, right?

25:34 You connect them with the other people in the company all during that period. And you're filling the love tank because inevitably in the restoration business, we're going to make withdrawals. Oh man. On the regular. Yeah. The industry is going to require it. The work pace is going to require it. Reality is going to require it. Right? Yeah. So no. And Hey, before you jump on, like I got, I just want to like affirm something you just understand and it plays out in their ridiculously huge company successes. Little company Virgin Air might have just shown up on some people's radar as a full-on, fully manned space flight to include the man himself.

26:22 Richard Branson, the way that he looks at Virgin Air, Virgin Atlantic, the million companies he owns, same thing. How I treat my people will then create the experience that my clients have. So as a leader, he's so focused on what is the work environment? What's the company environment? What's the badge of honor? What do my people feel about our brand? Because that intern will give and lead the customer experience that they have. And so we're going to end up staying on this topic too long, I think, but I love it. There's a reality that we spend too much time. And maybe it's not too much time, but we put so much weight on protecting these quasi in quotations trade secrets.

27:09 And the reality of it is, I hate to break this to everyone. All the brand names. Okay. Do the mental inventory all the way from the largest gorilla in the room to the smallest mom-pa. 80% of what we're doing is all the same. It's all the same. There's a reason that the IICRC has a training manual of standards that we all follow. Guess what that means? Yeah. We're not doing it that different from each other. We're all doing the same shit. We're doing the same shit, man. The differentiator is how do your clients and your referral partners feel and experience doing business with you. Besides saying, I dry it out. Good.

27:49 I dry good. Yes. Okay. Awesome. Yeah. But how did your client experience your company, your people? Your communication, your process. Put them at ease. Did you help settle the anxiety and the disruption to their business? Did you find a way to help them navigate that process? Did you tweak your process a little bit to meet them where they were? Right? Like the million things. Like these are the differentiators. Your team will not have the bandwidth to do those things well if they're spending all of their energy caught up in the chaos that you've allowed to exist inside your organization, under quotation marks, the banner that you're a restoration company and you're busy.

28:30 So when we take up all the human capital, all their creativity, all their energy, all their free brain space, and you make them adapt and overcome to every stinking variable they can possibly face throughout the day, that means your client gets absolutely the bare minimum from your employee. I almost feel like we could shut the episode down right there because I cannot stand how many times a month I hear, well, we were going to, we coulda, we shoulda, we wanted to, but we've been busy this week. Yeah, we had 20 calls come in and then, yeah. We'll get on that next week. Right. All the much more to be prepared with process.

29:12 Okay, sorry. That's my soapbox. And we've been that. Oh, I'm going to probably do some version of it this week. That's the ridiculous part, right? We get it. We get it. But I think there's some... Well, we just confronted the reality, man. I feel like we have struggled. We've had this ebb and flow with our recruiting and our retention. And I feel like it's taught us that it's just a non-negotiable. It is. It was a negotiable for a long time. Yeah. It was like, hey, wouldn't this be cool? Yeah. Wouldn't it be great? Yeah. And then I think in the process, we discovered it's not, it would be great. It's essential. Yeah. It's no longer... an option. Like we're going to fail in some form if we don't prioritize our people and our culture.

29:57 Okay. So this onboarding thing. Yeah. What does it look like? Let's come up with, and I just want to be clear. I don't think this is a process map opportunity. No, no. We're totally going to be whiffing it. Yeah. Let's just give some ideas. So I've got the, here's the first one. Okay. And guys, what we're going to do intentionally is start very low. Yeah. The bar is low. Like how realistic is it? The average company could put this into place. Now, listen, many of you are already doing this and doing it well. You still don't get this twisted. And we want your ideas, right? If you've got some cool ideas, certainly email them to us. Yeah. Because, you know, many of you are doing it. Awesome. So, okay.

30:37 How about this? How about the next time you hire a technician? Okay. As an example. Before their first working day logging hours, you intentionally set a time for them to come in, meet your team, and the highest person on the chain of command leads this. Now, this can be either your MIT manager, ops manager, GM, or man, even better, owner. If the owner could do this, man, right on, right? But you intentionally set the stage that individual comes and meets you, gets FaceTime with you, and then you walk them through and introduce them to the team. Which means, guys, if our morning AM routine is we've got our teams there between 7.30 and 8 AM or whatever, 7.15 and 8, that means we got to prioritize this to make sure that we actually do it when our teammates are there.

31:29 So we intentionally introduce our new teammate to the team. And in that meeting, we also hand them their swag to... their company branded hat, their company branded polos, their jacket, right? Like we set them up so that the first day, they're part of the inner circle. They get to show up on that Monday, that whatever the day is, branded, swagged out, ready to rock and roll. And they've already been introduced to the team. They've gotten face time with your core staff. How hard would that be to set as a standard? It's a day of labor. It's a day of labor and it's a little intentionality. I mean, I think your point about the owner, when possible.

32:09 When possible. And let's be honest. The average restoration company owner that is listening to this or general manager, right, probably has a company with... Somewhere between six and 15 FTE employees. When you say that's fair. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, certainly a lot bigger ones and then there's a lot of smaller guys in a truck kind of, kind of stuff. But this to me, as somebody who's owned companies, I, would be the absolute highest value and benefit to that employee is having the owner of that company take the time to acknowledge them and show some interest in them. Yeah. Even if that owner is not engaged in the day-to-day activities, which we all hope to at some point get out of the fray, right?

32:51 Yeah. Get out of the weeds. Yeah. But this is not an activity in the weeds. This is developing your people. This is... We all like to talk about a family environment. I hate that term. Oh my gosh. But because I think so often that notion of we're a family business, we're a family work environment is total lip service. Yeah. We do very little to affirm that or to live that out. Very little. What does that mean? And what does that mean if the owner in a family business, the owner doesn't stop in to meet the new guy or the new gal? Yeah. Yeah. No, I'm sorry. You're not a family-oriented business.

33:33 Not at all. So, if you say that about yourself, I think it is quaint. And I think some of us have really positive association with the family idea. Not everybody does, for sure. But I think there's a sense of connectedness in a family. There's a sense of loyalty. in a family. There's a sense of caring in a healthy family. There's a sense of we take care of each other. We look out for each other. There's all these things in a family environment. And I think it's really important if that's how you're promoting yourself or thinking about yourself, just because you're small and a family owns the business, you should ask yourself, do we actually live any of those things out?

34:15 Yeah. Does a healthy family gossip about one another? Is there backbiting? Is there clicks and all that stuff? No, no. But yet, of course, oftentimes in our industry, because of the stressful nature of it, those kinds of things emerge and we tolerate it way too much. Yeah, we tolerate it. We tolerate it way too much. Yep. So I love your idea about owners. And I think it's worth camping out there because I think owners oftentimes do not realize just how powerful their presence is. Mm-hmm. how powerful their focus is of looking a technician, a brand new 20-year-old technician in the eyes and saying, hey, I appreciate you joining our team. Yeah. It is really hard to find good people to build our business with.

34:59 And we're really excited to have you on the team. I'm so excited to see what you're going to do and how you're going to make us better. Yeah. Holy shit. Yeah. It would be a game changer for the average person, what they're normally used to experiencing. Big time. And what are we talking about right now? Honestly, something as simple as that boils down to, here's where it's tough. It's asking, driven, goal-focused, adapt and overcome type people to prioritize a slightly different skill set. And a thing that does not produce an obvious, direct, immediate conversion. Immediate's key. It's delayed gratification time. This is the hard work that we do as key leaders and as business owners that will produce fruit.

35:43 It is a strategic movement. It is... time being spent on the kind of stuff that will pay dividends years and years down the road. And sometimes that's hard to prioritize. It's super hard when we have a million holes in our ship and a bunch of things that aren't going the way we want, blah, blah, blah. But those things just inevitably perpetuate that same cycle. So anyways, let's try to fence ourselves in a bit. So somehow creating an onboarding experience that is, we do it the same. Mm-hmm. It's consistent, right? So this one that we talked about loosely, fairly easy example, doesn't really, there's really not a ton of cost associated with it directly is let's bring them in for a half day, a few hours before the day that we're going to work, introduce them to the team, get them their swag, make sure they're dialed in.

36:29 Where's their locker in the shop? If you do that, uniforms, whatever the case may be. Here's one too to add to that, our personal PPE bag. Right? That technicians tagged, this is their gear bag, right? Now, I know everyone's going to have kind of a different array of priorities or what they do in terms of choices, providing small tools and all that. But at minimum, there's some layer of PPE or personal toolkit that we have for our team members. Man, handing that individual their name badged bag, right? Again, this is stuff we're already providing to our employees. We're not asking people to go out and start buying things that aren't... Yeah, it's about thoughtfulness and coordination.

37:10 That's it. It's about what it is that I think we're trying to create is the reality or the impression that you starting today is important. To all of us. To all of us. We planned it. Yeah. You're intentional. Like we hired you on purpose. Yep. Yep. You're not just plugging a hole. You're becoming a part of our team. Right. And I think oftentimes we make people feel like, yeah, I don't even know what I'm going to do. I guess I'm bringing on... They don't even know necessarily what their role is on the team and where they fit in the vision of things. Right. And it doesn't feel intentional. I think a lot of times it's just like, hey, like I talked about, hey, Monday, I'll hop on the truck with John. Yeah. Yeah. And you're going out and doing crawling spaces, you know, this morning.

37:53 It's just, we throw them into the fray and it just, I don't think it necessarily feels bad. I think it's a missed opportunity and I think it can feel really bad. But the point is, is that what we're communicating with an intentional onboarding is you matter. You're important to the team. You're bigger than just the job you got hired for. And we believe all those things so much that we've actually put thought and preparation into you showing up today. Man, that's huge. Here's two byproducts I think come from that. One is people that experience that, just this one simple idea, this one concept, people that experience that are more likely to refer friends, family, sphere of influence to come work at the company that they're excited to work for.

38:34 Yeah. Okay. Recruitment's hard. Okay. You're indeed job posting. Looks like everyone else is indeed job posting. Right. We already talked about that. What sells is someone on your team that's experienced firsthand the culture and the way that you guys lead your people saying to someone else, hey, come work for our team. Right? It's not lip service. I'm telling you. I'm referring... I'm a warm lead. Right? Yeah. Super powerful stuff. Here's the other thing that happens with that is that it's hard to leave. It is. Right? So if we set the tone on day one, you're a priority. You're important. Right? You're not an afterthought.

39:15 Yeah, granted, to some extent, our hair's on fire, but you are intentional. We value you. We prioritize you. Holy cow. If that doesn't do something to help cement some loyalty to you and your brand, is it a shoe-in? Is it a 100% factor? No, of course not. But if recruiting is hard, let's not leave the back door open and let them come right through, right in one end and out the other. So huge. It just sets the tone for massive long-term benefits and makes them sticky. And I understand why it happens. But we are talking about effort have all the swag ready for that person on day one.

39:56 How many people are rolling around in a t-shirt they borrowed from somebody else who happens to be the same size or they're rolling around in a regular shirt and they're borrowing somebody's jacket to throw over it or some cobbled together existence for their first week. The t-shirt from the pile that we use for our temp teams. And every time they go to clock back in in the office at the end of the day, they're like, hey, when will my stuff be here? Oh, pretty soon. And it just, it feels crummy. It totally does. To be the odd person out or to be the FNG, the new guy. Yeah. Right? And not have all the gear and just to be known as the new person. Yeah. And all of that can be handled by just a little bit of planning. Totally.

40:36 A little bit of effort. I have another one. Okay. I have another one. We started to tiptoe in this idea, but my recollection is that we did not execute with 100% certainty. So I'm just diming myself out. I can't say that I did this. What if part of our onboarding process is that our team members, our existing team members, super loyal, happy to work for you, team members. What if we assigned a battle buddy? Yeah, we did play with this. We did play with this. I don't believe we actually... We got busy. Yeah, our hair started on fire and then we immediately dropped the priority.

41:16 But what if, right? What if we set the tone that we give you a battle buddy on day one, right? And that's part of the relationship that you are introduced to right out of the gate. And here's some things to think about with the battle buddy piece. Now, we can probably take this... Pendulum all the way from very little prep to advanced coaching culture prep, which we're not going to go in today. But this idea is that this teammate, this team member understands their role is to be available for questions, to help... Indoctrinate the new person on the little nuances about your shop, yard locations, where stuff is, standard protocols at the end of the day, if we're dumping trash, what does that look like?

42:00 Like, just the little things. Here's a fun one. What if that individual was part of the team that helped take you around and introduce you to the other team members? Yeah. Right? Like, and I know some of you, there's like your immediate response. This is a little cheesy. Well, then don't make it cheesy. Yeah. Make it pro. Yeah. Right? There's nothing wrong. What are apprentice programs? What are all these other things? You've got someone on your team, understands your culture, is loyal to you, believes in the company, is a good warrior. They're out there kicking butt for your brand. Why would you not want the very first thing a new employee is to be exposed to is one of your core employees? One of your best.

42:40 that are bought in. And let them also sell the culture. Because I tell you what speaks really loud and clear, when there's no bosses around and a downline employee still talks highly of the company, guess what? People believe it. It's real. It's real. So what do you think of that one? It's so good, man. I can hear some of the naysayers now in my head saying, you don't understand. The people we're talking about, I think sometimes we can take the people we have on our team and we form an opinion. We form a view of these people as just kind of worker bees that are never going to aspire to anything more.

43:23 They can't keep their shit together. They got chaos at home in their personal lives. They're doing just about two draws a month on their check because their finances are shamed. We have this picture that forms where we almost, I think if we're not careful, we just kind of pity or look down upon our, a lot of our frontline staff, you know, that they are what they are. It is what it is. And we just have a little bit of a jaded perspective on the labor force in our industry. And I think what we've seen and what we've grown to sort of understand in our experience is, is that, yeah, a lot of people are starting there. And virtually every single one has a desire to move beyond that, especially if they're given a path, if they're shown an example, a model.

44:11 And I think part of how you can do that is by getting them connected to some of the best people on your team, like you talked about. Absolutely. Getting them around the people that are thriving in your business, that understand the mission, that understand the bigger picture, that think strategically. are performing well in their role, like a little bit of intentionality can really spark a vision for some of our frontline people. But I think oftentimes they're kind of siloed in their own little world. Their supervisor is just that, you know, their supervisor is just kind of checking their work, holding the standard, There's no exposure to the why behind things, explaining the process, helping coach and develop them on what the next step is, etc.

44:55 I mean, dude, we're going way downfield in the culture department. But when it comes to the onboarding, this is the first moment where we're setting the tone. And I think if we just throw people into OJT, we throw them on a truck day one. We may or may not get them their uniform day one. We may or may not have their name badge ready day one, but we throw them out in the truck. I think sometimes I'm sure I've been this way. I'm sure we've been this way where we just justify our behavior with, oh, it's good for them. Just get them out there experiencing it right out of the gates. That's the best way to learn. Just get them out there. I'm sure I've said some version of that.

45:36 Yeah, I've done it and been in the seat. We're busy. All right, you're coming with me today. I think, unfortunately, what we're modeling for them is that this kind of chaos and that sort of chaotic, constantly flitting from one urgent matter to the next, when we do that right out of the gates with people, we're just setting the tone that this is how we roll. Yeah. Yeah. So then two weeks, two months, you know, you're working on some initiative to really settle the team and get a system in place to start to build some deep grooves and some normality in your business and some efficiencies. And you're starting to implement these things and everybody's like, the moment five jobs come in, all of that's abandoned because that's what you've taught them.

46:20 Yeah. Yeah. We have a brand new person coming on our team. There aren't many more things in your business that are more important, man, than that person that day. Dude, can we hang in there for a second? Yeah. So you and I, we actually just went through this exercise with a client recently. Yeah. And what we asked that client to do was, was to take some time prior to... This was a week and a half, I think, prior to a new person, hotshot. They were pumped about getting this person on the team. In fact, we were excited. We said, Hey, what we want you to do is, in light of your mitigation process map, that process outline, in light of the environment that you're intentionally creating with your company, the stage that you want to set with your employees, map out in writing, intentionally lay out the next...

47:11 I think we did 45 days with this particular individual. 45 to 60 days of what OJT is actually going to look like. And just for some reason, if you missed it, OJT on the job training, right? Yeah. Throw them in. Throw them in. Service businesses, look. Yeah, you can kind of Q&A about some stuff. It's a big part of the training. But you learn a lot doing it, right? But map out what those first 45, 60 days were going to look like. And I'm not going to go into the back and forth about what that conversation looked like. Anyways, the individual did it, did a great job, was super intentional. And then we just walked alongside them as they actually took that employee through that onboarding process. And they stuck to it. They stuck to it like a champ.

47:51 And here's what happened. Okay, now granted, it was a good hire. Okay. So granted, that does make or break. But what they did is they did not leave to assumption what we may have the opportunity to get done. And or in that, with that action, they drastically reduced how long it took to get an individual to the point where they were actually providing operational value to the team. Yeah. Okay. Don't get me wrong. Paying for themselves. They were producing work. So I don't have time to do that. Turns into 180 days of half-ass training someone.

48:33 And then at the end of that six months, you're still struggling to know if they were a good fit, a bad fit. Should I hire them? They don't know if they're in or out, whatever. So this exercise, probably a couple hours, mapped out a 45-day plan. And I think we were only 10 or two weeks into it. Yeah. And clearly confident that that 45-day timeline was going to get hit with a gold medal. Yeah. So that's another one of our things here. Yeah. Okay. Is... We touched on this creating an onboarding experience. Those first few days, what does that look like? Being proactive, introducing them to this idea of a battle buddy, right? Again, we're not talking about bleeding money here, folks.

49:14 Introduce them to a battle buddy, get them extremely exposed to the right players on your team right away, and then plan out. what the first 45 to 60 days of OJT is going to look like. Meaning, be clear on what things they'll be going over, right? Be clear on the phases of training. You and I talk about this a lot of establishing your protocol, this idea that someone needs to watch you do it while you talk about the why behind what you're doing. They need to move into this place where they begin to try it and you're walking them through the steps, coaching them through the steps. And then eventually they move into this area of they're now responsible for executing and there's an opportunity for quality control and accountability.

49:55 So build that in to what you do with this new employee. Now, whether you're assigning them to that battle buddy as their trainer, if they're getting assigned to a mitigation lead, whatever the case may be. Be intentional. Hand the person the roadmap so that they know what they're focusing on. Allow them to be the one that sits in the cab and says, hey, I feel really strong about X, Y, and Z. What do you think? What's your feedback on how you're doing? And check it off and give it some signatures. This is not rocket science, but it changes everything. In a particular case like this, we're setting the tone to that individual again. Mm-hmm. we're a professional business.

50:37 We care about what we do. We've proactively thought about what we do. We want to share and teach you what to do so that you're extremely confident in your own skill set and you can grow more independent and be a contributing member of our team. All of that is being said and mirrored by you just proactively laying out the first 60 days of work. Yeah. Right. I think one of the barriers to us doing this goes back to our assumptions about our people. Oh, man. And particularly assumptions when we're talking about our frontline laborers. Yeah. You know, they're swinging hammers, they're doing demo, they're doing dry outs, they're carrying equipment, right? This is our labor force to get the real work done, right?

51:18 We have these assumptions about what they do or don't care about. And I think in a lot of cases, we believe that they just want to put their head down do their time and go home. And what we're discovering is that when you lead them, into the trade, you are deliberately scheduling time to talk about certain principles, standards, values, tradecraft, specific items with intentionality that they eat it up. Oh, yeah. Most of them. If it's the right hire, they will. If it's the right hire, they will. And so... If they don't give a shit, you hired wrong. Exactly. It's not a system problem.

51:58 You started out of the gate with the wrong foot. Exactly right. So what do I mean more specifically? Well, like one of the things we talked about this 45 day onboarding plan was specific topics every day, because again, they are busy and like they hired and they had a bunch of influx of jobs and they lost somebody because of some move out of state. And, and so they were in, they were in a desperate mode when they brought these people in, but, but he took the two hours to map it out. And what it looks like is, Hey, on Monday, At the end of the day, at 4 o'clock, before we're starting to go back to the shop and load out and everything else, I'm going to talk with them about our greeting process.

52:38 When we respond to a water loss, we're going to specifically chat through the initial greeting of the customer, the explanation of the work authorization form, and our rapport building with that customer. That's it. And it's going to be a 20-minute conversation. And I'm going to model it. I'm going to say it out loud. I'm going to ask what questions they have. And we're going to have a dialogue about it for 20 minutes on Monday. We're not spending three hours. We're not pulling the laptop out of the truck to watch some fancy training video or something like that. It's just the intentionality of me as the owner-operator, the GM, the mitigation manager, whomever has a plan and executes the plan.

53:19 Then on Tuesday... we're going to talk about how to scope a loss, or we're gonna talk, even smaller nugget, we're gonna talk about how to take great photos of a loss. 20-minute conversation, a little bit of modeling, go into a room either at the shop or at the last customer job or the first customer job. But it's intentional. It's not haphazard. It's today at some point or at 3 o'clock or first thing in the morning before we go to the first job, we're going to talk about taking quality photos on every job we do. And we're going to teach them that part. And then on Wednesday, right? So every day of this 45-day plan, there was a topic.

54:00 And one of the topics he talked about was our culture. And one of the tools we help owners define culture with is, what are the things that we always do? And what are the things that we never do? You can get as big and wide as you want on that or as specific, hey, on collections, when we're doing collections, We always do this. We never do that. And you can really teach people what your culture is by the standards you allow. Man, talking in terms of standards. Because not everything in our business is black and white, but some things are. And that's what makes us unique. And so he had a bullet on there. One of the calendar days was to talk about those standards and what is our culture? What are we trying to make it feel like? And how are we trying to make customers feel? What's our target here?

54:41 And on and on for 45 days. And the idea feels overwhelming. It was overwhelming to him. At first. Yeah, exactly. He's like, oh, wow. Okay, what do you mean exactly? And we refined it. And he's like, okay. But then I think he found out it was a couple hours of thinking. A couple hours of thinking of outlining it. He sent us the outline. It was great. It was a single Google Doc that he then put into his calendar with reminders. Well, and here's what was so beautiful about that. Does he really need to reinvent that now every time? No, he's got a process for every future. He's got a process. Yeah. onboarding. So now all of a sudden he could delegate an onboarding of a new team member to someone else. That's right. Right. It's amazing.

55:22 Okay. So, and again, guys, I know we make jokes and we're, we're kind of smart asses in regards to, I don't have time. Look, I, we get it. I get it. We've made the mistakes. I'm going to make the mistake later this week. I'll probably make it this evening. Yeah. As many times as we cannot make the mistakes that perpetuate the same problems that we're fighting, the closer we get to a sustainable business that can actually manage itself, right? And that we enjoy. That we enjoy. No amount of money in the world compensates for how chaotic this industry can be. Yeah. How demanding and how much it can take from us. Yep. Yep.

56:02 But it is possible to reduce that. It is. No doubt. Yeah. And this is part of it. We like to call it stress-less leadership, not stress-less. Because anybody who cares is always going to carry the weight of their people and their business. But yeah, so other onboarding stuff. I think in general, we really fail to connect new people to the rest of the team. So I have a buddy who runs a technology company up in Portland. And it's actually, it's a marketing firm, a marketing agency. They do graph design websites, all that kind of stuff. And whenever they have a new employee that week, there's a little reception. Now... I'm not advocating for giving alcohol to your team and all that kind of stuff.

56:46 In fact, I'm probably more of a naysayer when it comes to alcohol in your business and giving it to your employees. But... They have a bar in their little staff room and they have sodas in their fridge and they're kind of set up for it. And everybody meets at the end of the day on either Thursday or Friday of that week when they have a new person and everybody shows up and pops in. It's kind of a little drop in deal. You know, as people are coming in from meetings with clients and whatever, they're there and they're mingling and they're getting to know in a social setting this new employee. And I'm like, that is a great idea. Could you do a version of that in restoration? Absolutely, you could do a version of that. Go get a box of pastries and a jug of decent coffee.

57:27 Yeah. Something out of the ordinary. Yep. Go spend 50 bucks. Yeah. On that new hire and get a box of pastries and a good jug of coffee and bring it to your morning stand too. Yep. On that person's first day. Yep. Hey guys, we got somebody new joining our team. Yep. I want you all to meet Sally. I want you all to meet John. Yep. You can thank them for the pastries this morning. Right. Love it. And have a process for introducing and making people feel special and feel good. It's not that hard. Yeah, I think everything about what we're talking about, it's not easy, but it's simple. It just needs to be planned. It just needs to be planned out. It really is. Instead of... I mean, it's not unlike calendar management, right?

58:09 But we won't go into that right now. So here's one of the themes that I think is standing out to me, or I guess, without covering every what-if scenario, every possible scenario... I think an element, and you mentioned this a little bit earlier, is... Okay. So an onboarding process is an outstanding way to set the stage and the tone for someone new coming onto your team. It's an outstanding way to create stickiness, to create an environment where those who went through that process and then experienced other ongoing... good culture interaction. They want to promote and advertise these opportunities to other team members.

58:54 There's this idea that beyond that, then what do we do next? Well, we have to maximize... those that we have, those who we have on the team already. And you kind of touched on this a little bit. And I actually thought you were about to take off down that direction. So I wanted to hold on to it. But it's this idea of, okay, hiring new is hard means retention is vital. Retention is vital. Not holding on dirtbags, but holding on to good employees is vital. And so part of the ways that we create that stickiness or that we get the good people to stick around, that's part of this too. That's part of this bigger conversation. One of the first things that stands out to me is we make jokes about not hiring demo donkeys.

59:39 And sometimes when I say it out loud like that, I'm like, oh, maybe I shouldn't use that term. But here's the point. is hiring people right out of the gate with this expectation that they're no more than someone that can show up, beat some shit up, and throw it in a bag, a black trash bag. We've allowed an industry... to really like that's common, like that we have an organization full of folks that the day we hired them, the highest bar of expectation we ever even started with was the idea that this person could fog a mirror show up on a job, and with micro-level management, be able to tear some crap apart and throw it in a bag.

1:00:22 Okay, so if you start out the relationship with that level of expectation, what on God's earth makes you think that that individual will ever do anything to go beyond that level of expectation? Well, and I think the sad thing or the reality behind that is there's a good chance that no one's ever asked them for anything more than that either. Right. So we take people at face value versus what they could become. You know, not to get too woo-woo, but there's an opportunity there. That we're all... generally overlooking, right, is when you expect more out of people, some people are going to rise up to what you expect. Right. We've all seen it. Yeah.

1:01:02 Everybody listening to this has experienced that. And yet we fail to really build that into our system of how we take care of people, how we frame job descriptions, the expectations and standards that we set up in our company. Yeah, you just got general labor. Yeah. You just tear stuff up and carry equipment. And then there's this other level where they're able to collect a work authorization. Yeah. They're able to talk to a customer. And I think a big part of it is, is that... Some of these people, we judge the book by its cover and we just think they're not capable. Yeah.

1:01:43 We just make the judgment in our own head. You know, this person, they're demo. Yeah. They're one of the demo guys. Yeah. Yep. They're okay. Hey, how's that new hire? Well, you know, demo guy. He'll be all right. Yeah. So let's unpack this scenario that we're all really good at creating for ourselves. So I'm a mitigation manager. I'm a owner, whatever the case may be. So I'm going to have... Because hiring is hard and hiring skilled labor is hard. I'm going to take and accept two, three, four people that I've already deemed can't do anything more than basically maybe controlled demo under tight supervision. Yeah. And somehow in my mind, that seems like a better course of action to somehow stop the chaos in my business and give me the opportunity to get out of the weeds than it is, of course, because cost, right?

1:02:36 The cost of labor. So these are $14 an hour people. I can't expect a whole bunch. So it's smarter to hire four people, three or four people at $14 an hour that you can't leave alone for more than 10 minutes than it is for you to hire two people and pay them $28 an hour. And they're actually competent enough to lead a standard mitigation job on their own. So I think what we're talking about here is this idea when we hire right, when we set the correct level of expectation... we again take a step closer to the business model that we want to have versus being stuck in this self-perpetuating cycle of, I'm never going to get out of the weeds. I'm never going to be able to accomplish this.

1:03:17 I don't have the time to train anybody. So think about that. Think about from the perspective, are my team members force multipliers or are they just bodies? And here's what I mean by that. We talk a lot with our companies about raising the bar in terms of the level of expectation they have for their mitigation tax, as an example. Because the reality of it is, if you have three experienced, trained, invested in, certified, competent mitigation technicians, and they're actually following the sequential steps that should be identified in your process outline... those three people at any given moment in time based on workload can split up and become three different jobs starting at the exact same time.

1:04:05 Because then that's when we come in and supplement with our relationship with a temp labor staffing solution or something like that. Independent of an estimator or project manager. Completely independent. Or mitigation manager or sales guy that needs to go collect the work authorization. Nonsense. Nonsense. And that's what we're talking about is you're not going to have a staff of 10 maybe. Right. Of a staff of 10 of underperforming, undervalued, not paid very well workers. Those days are not in the near future for us any longer, which thank God for my book. But that's another preaching scenario. But you can create an environment and pay in such a way and value people in such a way that differentiates your company from someone else that allows you to attract someone that's skilled.

1:04:52 And then it's your job to invest in them and make them a force multiplier for your team. get them certifications, get them extra training, invest in them in terms of your time and what you're sharing, get them engaged with the why, teach them about the systems and the processes, right? Because when we do that, we can have a smaller staff. They're paid a little bit more, right? Because it's required. But then what that team can get accomplished is massive, right? It's massive when compared to its higher numbered counterparts of people that don't really give a crap. So, you know, I follow like, thank you. I follow a lot of industry people on LinkedIn. Oh, yeah, sure.

1:05:32 And... I love, I've been following Andrew Dobson. He's a CERPRO owner in, I'm not sure where they're at actually offhand, but he posts these monthly employee appreciation videos. Yeah. You see what I'm following? Yeah, free shout out to you, Andrew. He doesn't even know who we are. It's so awesome and it's well done. And I've looked into, if I had to guess, Either they have somebody in house that's, and they have someone helping them edit the video and all this kind of stuff. It's really pro. Like it's cool. Yeah. And it's like a, it's like a four minute video where the employee of the month gets interviewed and it's really classy.

1:06:13 And I thought to myself, why is this not more commonplace? Yeah. And this goes back to the technician thing because I think that's really the growing edge for our industry is learning how to develop and inspire our technician level people. Yeah. You know, a lot of times we're pulling our project managers from they have more sophisticated experience from commercial GCs or they're coming over from some other trades business and they tend to be higher pay, all the things, right? Just for level. But with our technicians, like what would it be like To be a technician in a company making $16, $18 an hour and to be featured in a company video that gets shared out where they talk about all the things they appreciate about you and what you bring to the company, what you contribute to the team, your impact, the way you've affected customers.

1:07:05 As a technician, what is it like to hear somebody else talk about you like that in public? Most technicians, I would assume, have never experienced that kind of affirmation before. And public encouragement in their entire life. Yeah. And what did it cost, Andrew? I mean, I'd love to know, man, because I'd love to find out. But my guess is probably less than $500. But there's different versions of that. Probably less than $500. Yeah. And when you think about it, it's incidental. The cost is just incidental to the impact. whatever it is. Frankly, it could probably be $1,000 to do that every month. And it'd be worth it because of the impact on what it says to that person in a powerful, memorable, I would venture to say maybe even life-changing in a bigger, small way.

1:07:56 Legacy impact. And also for what it says, having a program like that in your business that highlights a different employee every single month or twice a month. I don't even know. It just seems like I'm seeing them every few weeks or so from him. But... what does it tell your whole company about what the employees mean to the company? Man. It's just, we haven't given this stuff enough airtime as an industry. Yeah. And I'm convinced it's not because we don't think it works. I think it's just we don't... it's hard for us to see how it's possible when we're stuck in the chaos. Yeah. It's just, there's this awkward transition you and I experienced more than once as we grew.

1:08:37 Because, you know, from two to three million, totally different ballgame than when you're at six or seven million. And then likewise, you break the 10 million barrier. It's like you have a different business, you know, in some ways. But at every stage, you have a different kind of chaos. Yeah. Yeah. And there's an awkward, really ugly in some ways at times, like process of just trudging through the mud to get that new behavior in place. But once it's in place, it's as though it's always been there. It's like once you're there, it doesn't require the labor. But man, when you're trying to implement new stuff, change the way you've always done things, it is miserable at times.

1:09:20 Yeah. Right? Is that fair to say? Yes. And it almost... Like it doesn't give it the feeling, right? The action from the experience. And it just also feels impossible. You know, it's just like you come up with these good ideas or you hear about another restoration company that's doing X or Y. And you're like, oh, we need to do that. Jeez, they're making tons of money or they're getting more people or whatever the case is. And you try it. You kick it off. You bring it up to your team or your partner or your GM or whatever. And you're like, let's do this. And then you start to get into that trough of sorrow. You know, you get into the mud and you're like, okay, no, let's really, let's do it. And then more resistance. And then 22 jobs come in over a period of 10 days and people are maxed out.

1:10:04 You're like, oh, maybe, you know, I don't think we can do this. I think we'll just have to pick this up in the fall. And we just quit because it's hard. It is. Yeah. Gosh, it's hard. And I think the other thing too is it feels like there's nothing for us in it right now. Those long plays that we try to start. Yeah. It is so hard to keep the value of it front and center when all these competing things start hitting us. It's very true. Yeah. You know? Yeah. But we don't, I think the key piece to that though, is you have to come back around and land on the fact that we don't have a choice. Yeah, you just got it. You're going to burn yourself out. Like these are not options. These are just, this is how you create viable, sustainable, successful businesses.

1:10:47 You don't have a choice. Some of the stuff's very simple. It's just not easy. It's not easy to execute on. Hey, before we inevitably reach this summary wrap-up piece, I wanted to just draw a picture out for folks. And this is really just meant to encourage you guys. When we're focused on the right type of people and we have the correct level of expectation and we invest in them... from the very first day with our mindset, with our thoughts, with our behaviors, with our communication of the whys, with the way that we onboard them. This is the kind of stuff that happens. And I've been able to experience this firsthand multiple times. And then I got to watch most recently an example that was really phenomenal just from a distance.

1:11:32 And so, and it is this, it's when you have someone come into a team and granted, it's not always delivered perfectly. But when we're falling forward with the investment that we're putting into the development of our culture and how the tone that we want to set with our people, you're going to get individuals that buy into that concept. And they become loyal to the concept and they become loyal to the relationship with you as key leaders because they see that. You stand out amongst the noise as someone that actually gives a shit about them. And because regardless if you want to admit it or not, we're all so desperate to be valued that when someone does, we respond in kind.

1:12:17 And I know we had the opportunity to watch two amazing... I had an opportunity to watch tens, if not many people experience this, but we had two rock stars that came up from the ground, frontline technician positions. and became absolute monster key leaders within our organization. And one of them has since moved on and is now an entrepreneur and running his own company. And he's a fierce competitor. And he's still an individual that to this day, when we think about certain initiatives and things that we want to do, his name always comes up and you and I have to spend 10 or 20 minutes going, okay, how is there a way to get him on and whatever.

1:12:58 But it's these watching as people that even though it's not perfect, they see what you're trying to accomplish. That's the key. Right? They see what we're trying to do. What we're trying. And we're talking about it like, hey, we fell short here. But remember, here's the goal. Here's where we're headed. And they get in and they start to perpetuate that mission. And they believe in it so strongly that they become part of the day-to-day driver for it. And they're contagious. Yeah. They create better sales. They create better retention because more people want to work around that person, right? Because it's contagious. And one of the most recent ones that I watched, and this one was so profound from a scale of economy.

1:13:39 Think about this. We had an individual at the last organization I was participating in. And this individual came in as a water technician. Okay, straight mitt, demo guy, all right? And I'm going to describe the individual just because I think from a stereotyping perspective, it helps us kind of gain... perspective. And granted, this actually was me when I came into the industry, but skater shoes, tore up bottom of the pant legs, right? The clothes are kind of half-assed thought through, looks more like we rolled out of a duffel bag than we did actually think about what we were going to look like that day. And I think less than two years later, this individual was writing more than $4 million, $5 million a year in estimates.

1:14:21 I know our commission structure at the time. This person was earning more than most of the folks maybe even listening to this podcast. This was a $14 an hour person that got brought into an organization that is not perfect. Many things are not awesome, but they did have something set in stone and very clear. And one of them was, they did give this individual an opportunity to chase a goal. He was taken under somebody's wing, a regional estimator, a large loss estimator. And this kid was so hungry. He literally just said, tell me what to do and I will do it. And that individual did it. And they're a six-figure, heavy six-figure earner.

1:15:02 And they're kicking ass and taking names in one of the largest companies in our business. And so I want to remind people of that. And the reason I want to remind people is that Your time investment doing this shit that seems like you're too busy to do is the very stuff that will take your company, not just from good to great, but it'll give you an opportunity to be a business owner instead of self-employed. And that's absolutely, absolutely critical. So it's not like this stuff is all about everyone else and you're a servant leader. All that stuff sounds good on paper. But it just makes business sense. It gets you closer to what you want. And wow, it establishes a platform where people can succeed and thrive and be really excited.

1:15:48 And you can build legacy. Man. I think all of us reach a point. We talked about this on one of our recent podcasts. All of us reach a point where the money, it's great. We love it. Buys us nice things. Gives us experiences. It's not the thing that endures though. It's the way that we've impacted other people, clients. I mean, certainly we all have these really wonderful, warm and fuzzy stories, ways of help people at a time of really desperate need. You bet. And that's deeply meaningful, but there's something incredibly meaningful about bringing somebody on and helping them become something different. Yeah. Yeah. In a lot of cases, something they never would have seen for themselves.

1:16:31 I mean, that's the... Dude, how many of your people, their personal life experience is saying the opposite all the time? Oh. Right? Shitty home life, crappy broken marriages, parent failures, whatever environmental conditions. How many of our people are showing up every day at work with a message that's been telling them for years, maybe decades, that they're worthless and not valuable? And all of a sudden they step onto the stage at your company and they realize there's an entire team of people totally dedicated to telling them how valuable they're. Yeah. Wow. Do we do a wrap up? I think you and I now are crying and sniveling in that.

1:17:15 Yes. Wrap us up. Okay. Summarize. We covered a lot of ground. Man, we did. And I kind of, I want to come back to this like 14 more times. Yeah. Here's the boiled down version, guys. Hard to recruit, I know. I think hard to recruit is the understanding of the year. It's very difficult, right? Keeping people is absolutely essential. Getting the one or two great team players that we can, absolutely essential. So what do we got to do? Let's just start with a couple of simple things. Rearrange your onboarding process to ensure that it's proactive, it's thought through, and sets the tone, professional tone, that you've just hired someone that you believe has value and that you believe will contribute great things to the continued success of your team.

1:18:03 let's introduce a battle buddy. Let's introduce someone on the team that has bought into what you're doing, understands where you're going, even if it's not perfectly outlined yet, even if you're a work in progress. Find that one, two people on your team you trust that gets it, that does the right things at the right time. Get them connected with this new employee and help set the tone of introducing them into what is laid out in front of them in terms of their journey and how they'll contribute. The other thing that we say is map out the first 45 to 60 days of OJT. Make it intentional. Be really focused on these ideas of phases of training and make it so clear that this new employee can, in their hand, See the things they'll be working through.

1:18:49 Identify when they've gotten the signature of a supervisor, that they've passed the test, that they understand they're competent in that thing. Make it super public, super obvious. Give them the tools that they can lead and manage and control their success. And then this last thing is more of a global idea. And that is we absolutely have to maximize the team that we already have. Invest in them, prioritize them, raise the bar in terms of your expectations. And for some of you, this means that as you continue to hire people, that maybe we change our practices a little bit on who we bring in on the team.

1:19:31 Let's not bring someone on the team that you know very well, tying the shoes is the limit of their capacity. And if we don't know that, let's not draw that conclusion and let's give them every tool and resource we can to allow them to go from skater shoes to six-figure earner on our team. All right, everybody. Hey, thanks for joining us for another episode of the MRM podcast. And if you got something out of it, share it with a friend, hit subscribe, hit follow, leave us a five-star review. Thanks a lot.