The Site Shed | Systems, Strategy and Growth for Tradies and Contractors

How to hire during a labour shortage | ft. Matt DiBara | Ep.389

• Matt Jones - Trade based business enthusiast • Episode 389

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In this insightful episode of The Site Shed, we tackle the pressing issue of labour shortage and how businesses can effectively hire during these challenging times. We dive deep into innovative hiring strategies, providing practical tips on navigating the labour shortage, attracting skilled employees, and ensuring their retention. Whether you're a small business owner or manage a large corporation, this episode is packed with valuable insights to help you overcome the hiring hurdles presented by the current labour market.

Subscribe for more content on business strategies and workforce management.

#LabourShortage #HiringStrategies #WorkforceDevelopment

Watch the video version of this podcast at https://youtu.be/ZttvJnt3O6Q

Discussion Points:
01:12 Funny meet, virtual model, hiring, motivation, success.
04:16 Liquidated damages led to business life low.
06:55 Four parts to successful hiring process: finding candidates, vetting, hiring, and retention.
11:38 Best marketers make great recruiters: speed matters.
15:13 Deputise team, incentivise and increase applicants x4.
16:33 Money-back guarantee, contractors prove doubters wrong.
20:41 Onboarding: communicate, access, check-ins, raise, success.
24:15 Flexible work hours, monthly company gathering
28:47 Tools lost or broken. Pissed off, proud. Assessing achievements, seeking improvement.
29:51 Growing business: evolving scorecards, better accountability


Resources:

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Matt, welcome back to The Site Shed podcast. It's good to be

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back, mate. We had a bit of a technical glitch in the last episode, so

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we're back doing a re record, but it's all looking fine right now. So fingers

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crossed. I think we're. Think we got it this time. Maybe. We'll

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see. Hopefully. Hopefully we haven't jinxed it. So you were on a recent

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episode back in episode 383, where

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we talked about some virtual estimating techniques and

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things like that. By the way, that was very well received from a lot of

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our clients in the solar space because be

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close to home with what they do, trying to give those estimates before they go

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out to site. It's wasting time and stuff like that. Do you guys did miss

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that? Go and check it out. Super valuable, especially if you're in a situation where

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you're sending sales text out to jobs to

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quote on things. It's a really good conversation on how to pre qualify and make

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sure you're not wasting time. So that was episode

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383.

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Anyway, today, Matt, we're here to talk about how to hire jury a labor

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shortage. And before we jump in this episode, I want you to give us a

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bit of background on this because I know you've certainly got some runs on the

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board in this space so far away. Yeah, it's

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funny. We first met on a topic that I don't think I've ever

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talked about publicly, which is the virtual. We

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built that model pre pandemic

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and had it kind of close to our chest, so we started there. And the

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thing that I always talk about we're talking about now, which is

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hiring, how to recruit a players, how to take control of

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your company, how to motivate this concept

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of filling gaps in the company, right.

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Bringing in the right people and then maximizing their output.

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How do you get things to become full circle where it's like, I got tons

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of people, they're doing the right things and they're motivated

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and maximized in the company. That's where really the

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sweet spot is for a lot of business owners when they can find it. Yeah,

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man, it's one of those things that's just forever relevant, especially

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in my own busiNess. Perhaps the reason I had you on this show was selfishly,

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I don't know, but I'm sure no one else has problems with productive team members.

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Right? Anyway, so, man, I'm keen to hear a little

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bit about. Obviously, you build out a really defined and intricate

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course on how to find candidates and that kind of stuff. Tell us a little

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bit about that journey, how you got to there and what that is. Yeah, my

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stuff is interesting because I don't see myself as a coach. I never

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really set out to consult people. I liked being in my business and kind of

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just having the freedom to do things the way that I wanted to see them

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done with the team and specifically

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hiring. We've been in the industry for four generations,

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so at this point, 104 years, and it seemed

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like, gosh, it would have been about five or six years ago. Everything I

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knew that was like, my tried and true ways of

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staffing projects didn't work. And so

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we're in this huge growth expansion mode. I'm selling

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jobs left and right. We're high fiving at all the sales meetings.

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100 grand, 300 grand. I mean, it was crazy. We

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were getting deposited. What's that, Wolf? Of Wall

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Street? It felt like it was the pinnacle of the company. It

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was like we were doing a couple celebrity homes. We were doing some government work.

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A big government national cemetery that a ribbon

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cutting. Like, I felt like we had made it. And I

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wasn't paying attention to my team saying, hey, look, we're posting on

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Craigslist. We're not finding anybody. We're posting on. Indeed. I'm like, don't worry about it.

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We're selling so much. Are you kidding me? The problem was everyone else was selling

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a lot, too. We weren't the only ones. And so it created this huge

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demand for people. And I got spanked. I got spanked

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in a big way. I lost about a million bucks in the span of three

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weeks. My team had this meeting. Yeah, we had this

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meeting. I still get tight in my stomach when I talk about it, but

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they brought me into this meeting because they had been telling me, and finally, all

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my managers, they pull me in, like site superintendent, project manager,

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OpS manager. They're like, you need to come to this meeting. They had all these

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whiteboards, right? And one whiteboard was, like, hand drawn. Was

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all the clients canceling contracts. The other were all the jobs we were

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going to go over on because we didn't have enough people. The other was

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liquidated damages on commercial. It was like a

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train with so much momentum, and it's like, you got to

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stop it, and you're going, oh, shoot, it's going to take me a mile before

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this thing stops. And every foot that this thing goes is just

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bleeding out. And so I had probably the lowest

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point in my business life was leaving that

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meeting, and it was because I didn't know how to hire. Like, I

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hadn't modernized the hiring side of things,

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and so I made it my mission. In that moment. I said, I'll never,

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ever not know how to hire. And so I just

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went crazy. I mean, I hired recruiters. I read books. I

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traveled the country. I hired mentors, and I spent

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hundreds of thousands of dollars, I think, very quickly, over a

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million in the course of, like, a year and a half. Just being obsessed

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with. I took every interview, I vetted every recruiter.

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I had assistance. But I was like, I got to understand how this works

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because it was, like, what? I called it the Golden

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Prison, because I had millions of dollars of

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backlog work at 25% net margin,

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and it was on a wall, and I literally

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just couldn't get it done. I couldn't subcontract it. I

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couldn't give the jobs away. It was

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simultaneously the best and worst feeling. And so that sparked a

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journey which turned into some things that I had figured

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out over the course of a few years. I

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then went on to help people. I knew local

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contractors that were like, hey, Matt, you don't seem as stressed. And I'm like, no,

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we've hired four or five people this week. We hired another three. We hired another

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two, and we're scaling the team, and we're hiring the right

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people. And then, so it just evolved, like, people I knew to

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trade associations. I was doing presentations. I didn'T really know that I

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had built anything unique until I started going out into the

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world and showing it and being like. I'd be like, all right,

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Geofence, your competitors have a career video.

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Incentivize your team. Do an honest employee audit. And everyone's looking at me like, I

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got three heads. They're like, what is that stuff? And I'm like, well,

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that's the stuff that works. So that's kind of the long and

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the short of it. And then we made it into a course when my wife

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sat me down, and she's like, you can't be, like, doing coffee dinners for

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contractors. Like, we got a daughter. You need to be home. And that was the

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inspiration for making it a course. Sure. So talk us through it. What

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are the different stages? Or how do you want

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to drive this conversation? Well, so I

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think successful hiring, we break it up into four parts, because I'm not the

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brightest guy in the world. So if you get six or seven steps, you lose

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me. So how do you find candidates is the first step. How do you

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build a really big pipeline? Number two is, how do

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you vet them? How do you quickly sift, sort and screen?

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And what I mean by that is how do you take the good ones and

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elevate them right to the front of the line? And how do you take the

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ones that you're questionable about and make sure they're properly vetted? So we had to

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build this kind of double sided system. And then how do you hire,

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like, I'm going to hire someone? Do I just email them the offer letter?

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Well, probably not. In this day and age,

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if you don't want them to get a 10% raise where they're at and never

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leave, you probably want to do it differently. And then how do you

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retain, how do you make sure that they're going to be here 3510

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years from now? What does that look like? And the retention we cover

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in depth. It's not fully. Fully. Like, we don't go into everything. My

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main thing is, like most business owners, if you've got two or

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three employees, you have some ability to

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hire. You just don't have a predictable ability. It's like, kind of like

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saying you've got a project here And a project there. It's like

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you're building it. You got the core components, but if you can't do it

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on demand, there's that feeling of helplessness.

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Interesting. Yeah. And so the big thing we find most people

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struggle is on the find section. So we have 37 different

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ways, proven ways to find candidates, and we built that.

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That's just to find candidates. I thought that was the whole process. No, that's

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just 37. It's just how you find them. Then we go into the vetting. There's

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the informal formal interview. There's certain questions to ask. There's a

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skills assessment. I mean, we can cover as much or as little of all these

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things as you'd like. Sure. Yeah.

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I think one of the 37 ways to find candidates

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is definitely interesting. So I think most people sort of lend

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themselves to just posting an ad on a job board and then be disappointed when

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they either don't find someone great or just getting a bunch of dub

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inquiries or Facebook groups or something like that.

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Yeah, there's a formula to it. Right. So, like,

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let's take a job board. One of the things we found

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is, before you post on a job board, there's two audits that you want to

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do. One of them we call is a competitor audit, and the other is an

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honest employee audit. So if I can understand

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what competitors are doing, and a competitor

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could be in a big city 200 miles away, but if I look at what

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are all of the companies out there that are big and hiring

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successfully? What are they offering? What are they putting their job

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posting? What are the incentives? I can start to see

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patterns and trends and I can bring those to my local workforce. Like, for

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example, we have some clients that will do like 410 hours,

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days. We have some that will do. They're

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leveraging the fact that all of their jobs are very unique or different,

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or the fact that they don't travel further than 30 or 40 minutes.

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We call the exercise, would you work for you? And it's like, what are the

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reasons why somebody might want to come work for you? And one of

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the ways you can figure that out is by interviewing some of

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the people that have been in your company the longest. So it's always fascinating when

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we do this for companies, we'll ask them. We'll say, what makes you great?

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First they have to think about it because they don't know it offhand. Then they

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go, well, we do this or we do that. Very few of them have those

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things on the actual job board. Right. But

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even fewer. I'll ask the same question to everybody. Who's the

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longest tenured person you have at your company? Oh, it's Michael. He's been here 15

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years. Or it's Jane. She's been here nine years. Okay.

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Why is Jane showing up every day? What does Jane love about your company?

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And is what Jane loves the same thing as what you just told me?

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In doing this literally hundreds of times, we found that what

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Jane Loves is not what the company thinks

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Jane loves. Right. And so you expose these

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things that make a company unique, and then you're able to put those on the

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job description. Not to mention if you have a career

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video, a short 92nd to about

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two minute long video that showcases you. It's like,

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compare that job description and job posting

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to just a standard, like top pay. This is a position.

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The five things we want from you. It's night and day, and so you're going

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to get a much higher application rate. Awesome.

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Doing things that are a little bit different, I'm guessing, is the key

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here. There's so much noise out there in the recruitment space. There's so many people

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competing for the team members that you're trying to get as

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well. It's marketing 101, right? If you're saying the same shit, no. One'S going to

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hear, yeah, I would agree with that 100%. And

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a lot of the best marketers make great recruiters because

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they understand the fundamentals, like speed to lead when we do

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this for clients, we guarantee that we're going to respond to the candidate within

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three to five minutes. Most companies are like, how fast are you

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responding to your applicants? They're like, well, sometimes it's

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ten minutes or 15. I'm like, what about the other times? They're like, well, it

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might be a couple of hours. I'm like, well, what do you think they're doing

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after they don't hear back? They're going to line up four or five

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interviews and then they're going to stop for a little bit, see how they go.

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So you want to be the first interview in a perfect world, the

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dream Company. But there's technology now, like words

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like geofencing huge. The ability to put

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an invisible fence around a competitor or

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a supplier. And if they pull out their mobile device and they're

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on know, seeing your hiring mean there's so many tools,

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right? Insta on social media or

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something. So geofencing runs,

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it's like almost like a Facebook ads platform. It's its own

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user interface and basically you can position and place

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ads through. It's geo

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targeted. So it's like if I cross through this building and walk in and I'm

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on my phone or my tablet or my desktop, I will see,

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I can run display ads. And so if you knew

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on what. Platform, though, or just on Google. No. So

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in the US, there's a bunch of them. Like, there's ground truth and there's a

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few others. But yeah. The big thing is

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making sure that whoever's running the ads knows how to do it specifically

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for hiring. A lot of people use it in the event

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space. They'll geofence a big trade show

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with like, maybe they didn't sponsor the event, but they want everyone to see their

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product, so they'll geofence it and blast product ads.

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Kind of a shortcut. It's one of the ways in which I think the technology

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grew quickly, but we've seen great success in the hiring side using

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it. Yeah, it's cool. It's an interesting evolution, for sure.

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I don't even know if we have geofencing in Australia, but that's such a cool

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idea. I'm guessing, though, it only really worked if you're logged into the platform though,

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right? Just internet. So anything

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browsing on your phone, it's the same way you'd see like a display ad, but

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there's a lot of old school things. So we have another

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example that works really well is really targeted

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incentives. So we took a company when we were building out

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the course, and we were doing a lot of beta testing on how to make

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things really digestible. I took a company that I

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knew. Two companies were very similar. I went to one of them,

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and I convinced the owner. I said, we're going to offer everyone

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$500 for anybody that they refer,

240
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right? And I said, I'll pay out of pocket. I said, I want to run

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an experiment. So we brought everyone together. It was generic. It was like $500.

242
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People were excited. We got, I think, one or two hires from

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that. My friend ended up not taking my money. He's like, man, I'm

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so happy. He's like, don't pay. He's like, I'll pay. He just got me two

245
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hires. But on the other company, similar size.

246
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What we did is we sat one on one with each person for about

247
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five or ten minutes. We brought up the program. We said, hey, we want

248
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to hire and grow and find more people like you.

249
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And so we personalized each incentive so we knew that

250
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this person really loves to travel with his wife. So we say, hey, we're doing

251
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a $500 weekend getaway with you and your wife. If you find somebody, then the

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next person is a sports fan. We sit them down, we're like, hey, if you

253
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happen to find somebody, we're going to get you great seats to this sports team.

254
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Next one really enjoyed whiskey. We're like, hey, we're going to get you to this

255
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whiskey tasting event if you find somebody. So we did that experiment over

256
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ten times. What we found was almost a four

257
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X in the number of applicants and people brought in

258
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because we did two things. Number one, we deputized or

259
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incentivized the current team, which everyone should do. But then we took it

260
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a step further and we made it personal to what they wanted. So now

261
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they're doing it for the big payoff that is for them. So

262
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that's kind of the theme when it comes to hiring, is it's

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like half the stuff. If you just do it, you're going to get a good

264
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result. But then if you do it at the highest level

265
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and you really understand the psychology behind it, you're going to blow everybody else

266
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out of the water. How do you address the lack of talent in the overall

267
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pool? I see this incentive model

268
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working great for people that have friends and colleagues

269
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and things like that that might be within a similar industry to them or profession

270
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or whatever it is. But then if you're, like, looking for

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candidates in the current climate where there isn't a lot of

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them in some industries. How do you address that? Well, we get this question

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all the time. They're like, really? Is there people out there? When we do this

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for people, we have a 60 day money back guarantee, and people think we're

275
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crazy. They're like, can you really do this in this small town in the Midwest

276
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or in this big city, whatever it may be? And

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one of the things we've done

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is we look at the number of licensed contractors in that area.

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Right? So I could take a small town and I can show somebody, look, you

280
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have just in your small town, you have 73

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licensed contractors that are actively doing what you're doing.

282
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So at some point at

283
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scale, you'll find that you might run into this. We've never seen it.

284
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One of the things we've done, we did this with somebody who had an issue.

285
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They were really struggling to find people. I said, all right. So

286
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we built out a strategy for them. We said, we took the list of

287
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all the newly licensed contractors that year that fit

288
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the criteria. This was a concrete contractor. So basically, these are people who are

289
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year one out on their own. I said, we're going to run a campaign. We're

290
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going to call them after the end of the year, after they've paid

291
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taxes. We're going to call all of these people and just see

292
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if they're open to a conversation about joining a company. He hired

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two people. Do you want to know why he hired two people? Because they had

294
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paid their taxes. Their wives, both of them exactly the same. They were

295
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pissed. They went, man, by the time I paid my taxes, by

296
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the time I looked at how many hours I worked, and my wife was

297
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complaining the whole time, you've never worked this much. You're never home.

298
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They said, screw it. I just want to go work for somebody. Now, those are

299
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two people that were prime candidatEs. They were qualified, they had their own

300
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licenses, and they did really well. But it was like, because we knew the

301
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strategy, we knew where to find them. So you're right. At some point, all

302
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of these tricks won't work. But the good news is, hardly

303
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anybody's even doing it remotely close to what we're talking about. So

304
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the runway you have is massive.

305
00:18:32,710 --> 00:18:35,330
So then how does the conversation look? I suppose

306
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beyond recruitment, onboarding,

307
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success, journey, retention, et cetera? Well, it's pretty

308
00:18:44,792 --> 00:18:48,146
simple. So you get to the lead quickly. So you have a bunch of ways

309
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to find candidates, right? 37 is what we have right now. It's actually more than

310
00:18:51,852 --> 00:18:55,558
that. But you fill your pipeline, and then you quickly sort

311
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and sift and screen right. Good ones go right to the top, mid level

312
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ones. And so you've got the informal, informal interview. Informal

313
00:19:02,998 --> 00:19:06,726
is just asking a few basic questions, getting to them quickly. Formal interviews

314
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a little longer. You got to have a skills assessment. So I don't care if

315
00:19:10,528 --> 00:19:14,378
it's a COO, office manager, anybody

316
00:19:14,544 --> 00:19:18,174
that's hands on, you need a skills assessment. They need to come to your

317
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yard, your office. If you don't have that, they need to come to a job

318
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site, one that's preferably quiet. We got a client, and he's like,

319
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I'm too small. I'm a plumber with two techs. I was like, great,

320
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have them come on your job site from the hours of four to 06:00 p.m.

321
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And just sweat and bend pipe in the back of your truck for 2 hours.

322
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You got to see if they show up. They know what they're doing. But once

323
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you have that skills assessment and you know how to hire, the

324
00:19:42,028 --> 00:19:45,846
best way to hire is like you're closing a sales deal, right? So you

325
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bring them into your office, you show them the offer letter, you go over everything,

326
00:19:49,644 --> 00:19:52,460
and you say, how's this sound? Oh, it sounds good.

327
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Ideally, they've already talked to their husband or wife beforehand,

328
00:19:56,470 --> 00:20:00,122
right. You've sent them the terms bulleted out, not the formal offer

329
00:20:00,176 --> 00:20:03,466
letter. So they can talk to their family or whatever. They come to

330
00:20:03,488 --> 00:20:07,246
you, and you ask them. At the end of it, you say, great, this

331
00:20:07,268 --> 00:20:09,598
sounds so good. All right, so you're going to join the team. They say, yeah,

332
00:20:09,684 --> 00:20:13,086
just let me get this home. You shake their hand and you stop and you

333
00:20:13,108 --> 00:20:16,206
say, is there any reason that you might change your mind? And you pause while

334
00:20:16,228 --> 00:20:19,954
you have their hands shaking, you wait. If there is

335
00:20:19,992 --> 00:20:23,586
something that you might lose out on this

336
00:20:23,608 --> 00:20:27,362
hiring deal, you're going to know in that moment, I've done this 40 times,

337
00:20:27,416 --> 00:20:30,886
and I've literally handled objections. They'll pause and they'll be

338
00:20:30,908 --> 00:20:34,438
like, no. And I'm like, is there anything else that you want to talk about?

339
00:20:34,444 --> 00:20:37,814
And then it opens up another round of like, oh, I'm nervous about this, or,

340
00:20:37,852 --> 00:20:41,686
this wasn't clear. So let's say you've closed that deal. Well,

341
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then the next thing you want to do is you want to onboard them. Well,

342
00:20:44,240 --> 00:20:47,674
and there's a bunch of ways to do this, but the most important thing

343
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is communicate early and communicate often. The easiest framework to

344
00:20:51,424 --> 00:20:55,274
adopt is they come in. Some people do the buddy

345
00:20:55,322 --> 00:20:59,166
system, some people. But in essence, what they got to have is access to all

346
00:20:59,188 --> 00:21:03,022
of their logins, email, all of that stuff,

347
00:21:03,076 --> 00:21:06,322
they need to have a good baseline for

348
00:21:06,376 --> 00:21:10,066
onboarding. But if you schedule a check in the

349
00:21:10,088 --> 00:21:13,714
first two weeks, then the first 30 days, and then after that, three

350
00:21:13,752 --> 00:21:17,454
months, two weeks, 30 days, three months, that's

351
00:21:17,502 --> 00:21:21,186
three check ins in the span of almost four months. Make all of them eligible

352
00:21:21,218 --> 00:21:24,966
for a raise. You will inevitably find that you're going to get

353
00:21:24,988 --> 00:21:28,214
ahead of almost every shortcoming in the company that you might

354
00:21:28,252 --> 00:21:31,880
have. Wow.

355
00:21:32,330 --> 00:21:36,134
So two weeks, 30 days, three months, all eligible

356
00:21:36,182 --> 00:21:39,820
for a raise. All eligible for a raise. Because

357
00:21:40,190 --> 00:21:43,946
what happens is you're motivating them. We've had people in

358
00:21:43,968 --> 00:21:47,166
my company, it was upwards of 70% of people would get a raise at all

359
00:21:47,188 --> 00:21:50,734
of these junctures. Now, they wouldn't be huge, but it would be like, because

360
00:21:50,852 --> 00:21:52,958
we would set out and we'd be like, hey, these are the things you know

361
00:21:52,964 --> 00:21:56,766
how to do. Now when you learn these things and demonstrate this, your pay

362
00:21:56,788 --> 00:22:00,322
will increase. And you'd find people out of the gate, like taking

363
00:22:00,376 --> 00:22:03,794
class. We had somebody who didn't know how to use, they were real entry level.

364
00:22:03,832 --> 00:22:06,066
They didn't know how to use a mortar mixer, didn't know how to use any

365
00:22:06,088 --> 00:22:09,746
of the cutoff saws. He took classes. He literally,

366
00:22:09,778 --> 00:22:13,174
within the first two weeks, started taking classes at tool

367
00:22:13,212 --> 00:22:16,886
yards to learn this stuff. Comes back after two weeks. He's like, I can do

368
00:22:16,908 --> 00:22:20,154
these six things. We're like, all right, well, you get a raise and then did

369
00:22:20,192 --> 00:22:23,580
it again in 30 days. But

370
00:22:24,510 --> 00:22:27,898
when you have that kind of culture where somebody walks in, they know how to

371
00:22:27,904 --> 00:22:31,166
get an A, they know that they've got plenty of opportunities for

372
00:22:31,188 --> 00:22:34,910
communication, and you've given somebody a raise three times

373
00:22:34,980 --> 00:22:38,602
in four months. It's a game changer. Family, wives,

374
00:22:38,666 --> 00:22:42,238
husbands, kids. It creates a different. But you have to

375
00:22:42,244 --> 00:22:45,530
clearly define the goals and the outcomes. It has to be measurable. It's not like,

376
00:22:45,620 --> 00:22:49,106
oh, yeah, you had a good few days, here's a quarter. It needs to be

377
00:22:49,128 --> 00:22:52,180
like, hey, this is our pay plan. That's got to be in place.

378
00:22:52,710 --> 00:22:56,402
Totally. Yeah. You say that because we

379
00:22:56,456 --> 00:22:59,950
run a scorecard system within the business, and it's amazing how many people come to

380
00:22:59,960 --> 00:23:03,734
us asking for pay rises when they haven't achieved anything on the scorecard. Or maybe

381
00:23:03,772 --> 00:23:07,506
they have and the department's been failing or whatever it might be. And it's just

382
00:23:07,548 --> 00:23:11,194
like that conversation, making sure they understand that

383
00:23:11,232 --> 00:23:14,666
dynamic, that there's a business there as well. It's not just

384
00:23:14,688 --> 00:23:17,820
like an individual 100%.

385
00:23:18,270 --> 00:23:21,702
And then it's great communication.

386
00:23:21,846 --> 00:23:25,546
It's finding things that are unique. So one of the things we do that we've

387
00:23:25,578 --> 00:23:29,150
rolled out across the country is we have

388
00:23:29,300 --> 00:23:33,086
a spinning wheel. So basically it's a wheel. And on the

389
00:23:33,108 --> 00:23:36,826
wheel are different prizes, and every company does differently.

390
00:23:36,858 --> 00:23:40,354
But it could be $100 gift card for work

391
00:23:40,392 --> 00:23:43,906
boots. It could be a free car wash. We had one in my company. It

392
00:23:43,928 --> 00:23:47,138
was a $2 an hour raise for a year. It was this real skinny lion,

393
00:23:47,234 --> 00:23:47,880
right?

394
00:23:51,050 --> 00:23:54,562
It was like 30 different prizes, I think. And so anytime

395
00:23:54,626 --> 00:23:57,906
somebody did something good, management, ownership, didn't

396
00:23:57,938 --> 00:24:01,706
matter. We have these company branded poker chips, and so we hand them

397
00:24:01,728 --> 00:24:05,226
out. If a team stayed late, if they got a good review, we built out

398
00:24:05,248 --> 00:24:08,874
the criteria on the sales team. If they hit

399
00:24:08,912 --> 00:24:12,698
quota, whatever it was, all these different things. And then once a month, we

400
00:24:12,704 --> 00:24:15,610
do a team. Either we do a breakfast or we do, like, a late lunch.

401
00:24:15,690 --> 00:24:19,326
So they either start late or finish early. And we do a

402
00:24:19,348 --> 00:24:22,746
whole company get together once a month and we redeem

403
00:24:22,938 --> 00:24:26,738
these poker chips. So we bring the wheel out. And it

404
00:24:26,744 --> 00:24:30,546
was so interesting because one of the prizes, when

405
00:24:30,568 --> 00:24:33,938
we first did this wheel, this was like five years ago when we

406
00:24:34,024 --> 00:24:37,826
spaced it all out. We had one extra space, and we

407
00:24:37,848 --> 00:24:41,638
had already calculated the cost of all of these and whatnot. So I

408
00:24:41,644 --> 00:24:44,866
was like, I don't want monetary because it's going to mess up my cash flow

409
00:24:44,898 --> 00:24:48,486
projections. So I said something cheap that we can do. And one of the guys

410
00:24:48,508 --> 00:24:51,738
was like, give away a rubber chicken. So I was like, okay, so one of

411
00:24:51,744 --> 00:24:55,498
these things you can win is a rubber chicken. I went to one of

412
00:24:55,504 --> 00:24:59,226
these events. It was about six months later. We

413
00:24:59,248 --> 00:25:02,746
still had the $2 an hour raise that was on there. I had nine of

414
00:25:02,768 --> 00:25:06,398
my ten foremen. There's like 55, 60 people in the

415
00:25:06,404 --> 00:25:10,206
field at my company, right? And then the rest of the company, too. And

416
00:25:10,228 --> 00:25:14,014
there's, like, all these rubber chickens, they're squeezing them. And

417
00:25:14,052 --> 00:25:17,826
the guy, he's one of the only guys in the field who doesn't have one.

418
00:25:17,848 --> 00:25:21,566
He slams this thing down. He's like, rubber chicken. And he goes to spin

419
00:25:21,598 --> 00:25:25,278
this thing. And in that moment, I was like, wow, it's

420
00:25:25,294 --> 00:25:28,678
so interesting. I got a $250 Airbnb gift card. I got a

421
00:25:28,684 --> 00:25:32,534
$200 work boot gift card. I'm like, and this guy wants

422
00:25:32,572 --> 00:25:36,326
a $2 rubber chicken. And so it reminded me how important

423
00:25:36,428 --> 00:25:40,058
fun is in construction now everybody's fun is different. Maybe the

424
00:25:40,064 --> 00:25:43,866
rubber chicken doesn't work for you. I don't know. But it

425
00:25:43,888 --> 00:25:46,890
was interesting in that moment to go, shoot.

426
00:25:47,710 --> 00:25:51,290
When you do have the right people, the right culture, and they're paid well,

427
00:25:51,440 --> 00:25:55,054
the last piece is fun. What makes

428
00:25:55,092 --> 00:25:58,766
it working there truly fun. And so it was really interesting when I

429
00:25:58,788 --> 00:26:02,398
sat back and watched, I was like, wow. People say, oh, it's all about the

430
00:26:02,404 --> 00:26:05,978
money, or you got to pay more. Literally

431
00:26:06,074 --> 00:26:09,874
$2 an hour raise. I think that got spun twice. Cost me like two

432
00:26:09,912 --> 00:26:13,186
grand or whatever the math is. Every time I'm like, I'm clenching my. You know,

433
00:26:13,208 --> 00:26:15,490
I'm clenching my butt every time they spin the wheel.

434
00:26:19,990 --> 00:26:23,378
That's hilarious. That's the culture side of it. It's

435
00:26:23,394 --> 00:26:25,510
like, what's your culture?

436
00:26:26,890 --> 00:26:30,474
On the back of that, I would say, how are you making things fun? Yeah,

437
00:26:30,512 --> 00:26:34,154
man. Even

438
00:26:34,192 --> 00:26:37,526
within my own business, I found lately it's been such, like a stressful, busy

439
00:26:37,638 --> 00:26:40,886
period where there's just that engagement, that culture has just dropped. I mean, I've dropped

440
00:26:40,918 --> 00:26:44,698
it totally, but it's something that's going to try and get back. Yeah, it's

441
00:26:44,714 --> 00:26:47,120
not easy. And that's why the wheel for us,

442
00:26:50,210 --> 00:26:53,822
as I was coming more out of the company, we built

443
00:26:53,876 --> 00:26:57,586
this as a system that just makes it so you have to

444
00:26:57,608 --> 00:27:01,442
have fun once a month. Everyone's getting together. Doesn't matter if the month's great,

445
00:27:01,496 --> 00:27:05,330
if it's hard, if it's not, and we're giving out the poker chips,

446
00:27:05,750 --> 00:27:09,382
we have our criteria. It doesn't cease to amaze me.

447
00:27:09,436 --> 00:27:13,174
These barbecues and stuff grew to the families, their

448
00:27:13,212 --> 00:27:16,774
wives, their husbands, their kids, their aunts, their uncle. Now it's this

449
00:27:16,812 --> 00:27:20,614
huge thing. And then in front of all of that, they're celebrating. And

450
00:27:20,732 --> 00:27:24,394
here's what else is interesting. I got a few people who don't get any

451
00:27:24,432 --> 00:27:28,154
spins. And when they're there with their significant other, and they go, hey,

452
00:27:28,192 --> 00:27:31,918
why aren't you up there? That lasts only usually

453
00:27:32,004 --> 00:27:35,854
one month. And then magically, they start to do

454
00:27:35,892 --> 00:27:38,800
some standout stuff. I don't think anybody,

455
00:27:39,410 --> 00:27:42,762
you're an outsider if you're not getting at least one or two spins. And so

456
00:27:42,916 --> 00:27:45,906
the wife and the husband's, like, looking like, hey, when's your turn? And he's going,

457
00:27:45,928 --> 00:27:46,820
I didn't get.

458
00:27:49,430 --> 00:27:53,118
Gamify. Shame. Yeah, it's hilarious. That's

459
00:27:53,134 --> 00:27:56,100
so good. And so go back to a little bit, to the.

460
00:27:57,030 --> 00:28:00,866
I know you mentioned before, like, making sure that people understand what they're accountable

461
00:28:00,898 --> 00:28:04,726
for, what their KPIs are. How do you set those up? Define those.

462
00:28:04,748 --> 00:28:07,640
And at what stage in the process and how do you evolve them?

463
00:28:09,130 --> 00:28:12,858
This is an area of weakness for me. I'm glad you asked this, because

464
00:28:12,864 --> 00:28:14,540
this is where I was weak for a while.

465
00:28:16,510 --> 00:28:20,342
For me, it started off slow. It was literally

466
00:28:20,406 --> 00:28:24,142
just being like, what are the things that I can measure that have to get

467
00:28:24,196 --> 00:28:27,534
done? And we started very crude. And then when I started looking

468
00:28:27,572 --> 00:28:31,120
at Al's stuff, for example, or

469
00:28:32,290 --> 00:28:35,822
there's a bunch of great books on this, then things became more sophisticated.

470
00:28:35,886 --> 00:28:39,262
But really, what you're trying to do is you're trying to align

471
00:28:39,326 --> 00:28:42,946
goals. And so we started very crude. It was

472
00:28:42,968 --> 00:28:46,706
like, we want jobs to be finished on time or ahead of

473
00:28:46,728 --> 00:28:50,546
schedule. We don't want tools lost or broken. I literally just had

474
00:28:50,568 --> 00:28:54,006
to write down the things that pissed me off, anything that pissed me off that

475
00:28:54,028 --> 00:28:56,758
I would get news of. I'm like, these are the things that end up on

476
00:28:56,764 --> 00:29:00,294
the scorecard in one form or another. And so

477
00:29:00,492 --> 00:29:03,978
we just started with the, basically, it was like the Matt pissed off list. It

478
00:29:03,984 --> 00:29:06,506
was like, what are all the things that I'm like, what the heck? Why did

479
00:29:06,528 --> 00:29:10,266
this happen again? Those were the things that. And then

480
00:29:10,288 --> 00:29:13,226
also the things that made me really proud. So I looked at like, what are

481
00:29:13,248 --> 00:29:16,526
the things that in a month, I go, wow, the team did that. And I

482
00:29:16,548 --> 00:29:18,926
went, how do I get more of these? And how do I get less of

483
00:29:18,948 --> 00:29:22,638
these? And that was mean. That was the birth of. So a

484
00:29:22,644 --> 00:29:25,680
Matt pissed off Liv and a mat not pissed off. Pretty much

485
00:29:26,450 --> 00:29:30,162
simple. That was the early know. That was how it really

486
00:29:30,216 --> 00:29:33,746
kind of just boiled down. Yeah. Interesting. I know. That's like,

487
00:29:33,768 --> 00:29:37,300
when it's so easy for team members to get caught up

488
00:29:37,670 --> 00:29:41,426
doing things that aren't, like, what they should

489
00:29:41,448 --> 00:29:45,238
be doing, and they justify it because they're busy, but it's like, okay, but this

490
00:29:45,244 --> 00:29:49,094
is the outcome you're responsible for and you're not doing it. All that other

491
00:29:49,132 --> 00:29:52,700
stuff. Cool, but not at the cost of what's important. Yeah.

492
00:29:53,710 --> 00:29:57,066
As we grew. As we grew, and there were more and more layers of

493
00:29:57,088 --> 00:30:00,906
communication, more and more reports, more and more spreadsheets.

494
00:30:01,018 --> 00:30:03,934
As we became like a real business, those

495
00:30:03,972 --> 00:30:07,134
scorecards had to evolve to become much more

496
00:30:07,172 --> 00:30:10,446
sophisticated because it was like you didn't have the

497
00:30:10,468 --> 00:30:14,270
oversight, the management, the kind of

498
00:30:14,340 --> 00:30:17,922
sloppy, just like you were going to the job. Or that

499
00:30:17,976 --> 00:30:21,522
stuff existed when we were a certain size. And then when we really started

500
00:30:21,576 --> 00:30:25,166
tracking everything, well, it was like, wait a minute. We don't need to be stopping

501
00:30:25,198 --> 00:30:29,014
in on these job sites from a site super perspective, but

502
00:30:29,052 --> 00:30:32,326
we do need to do a better job of keeping our foreman accountable. Yeah,

503
00:30:32,428 --> 00:30:35,910
totally. And is that all tracked through technology?

504
00:30:35,980 --> 00:30:39,158
Typically for you guys, I suppose that's really important. As long as it's tracked. Yeah,

505
00:30:39,164 --> 00:30:41,722
I mean, we have a dashboard, and I have certain things that I look at.

506
00:30:41,776 --> 00:30:45,242
So for me, it's like, I kind of have, like the four hour

507
00:30:45,376 --> 00:30:49,194
business work week where it's like, I listen to my two

508
00:30:49,232 --> 00:30:53,050
production meetings. They're recorded. I get a financial report

509
00:30:53,200 --> 00:30:56,830
on how much work we did. Billable. I like tracking things,

510
00:30:56,900 --> 00:31:00,746
and it's very abnormal. But I do things Weekly, so it's like, people hate

511
00:31:00,778 --> 00:31:03,806
it, but I want to know weekly. I'm like, how much this week did we

512
00:31:03,828 --> 00:31:06,640
bill? How much this week did we. Even though I know

513
00:31:08,210 --> 00:31:11,966
it's not perfectly aggregated because of the short duration, I'm the type

514
00:31:11,988 --> 00:31:15,120
of person, if it's important to me, we,

515
00:31:15,690 --> 00:31:19,426
my team, thought I was crazy to do stuff Weekly. I started daily knowing

516
00:31:19,458 --> 00:31:21,766
that I wanted to get weekly. I was like, we're going to track how much

517
00:31:21,788 --> 00:31:24,806
we do daily. Like, I want to know this and this daily. And then they

518
00:31:24,828 --> 00:31:27,078
were like, oh, this is impossible. I was like, all right, let's just track it

519
00:31:27,084 --> 00:31:30,214
once a week. They're like, okay, we could do that. So that's how I got

520
00:31:30,252 --> 00:31:34,090
to the weekly stuff. But, yeah, I mean, all those optics are super

521
00:31:34,160 --> 00:31:37,674
important. Sure. Yeah. I think that's the thing that most business

522
00:31:37,712 --> 00:31:40,922
owners don't do enough, is tracking those metrics. Because if you let it go too

523
00:31:40,976 --> 00:31:44,400
long, inevitably you find yourself in a situation where

524
00:31:46,770 --> 00:31:49,662
it's too hard to reel it back in. It's too hard to make the change.

525
00:31:49,716 --> 00:31:53,118
Like, if it's a weekly and if it's all biweekly or whatever, but then

526
00:31:53,284 --> 00:31:57,054
if something obvious is tripping up here, you can kind of reposition

527
00:31:57,102 --> 00:32:00,606
and get it fixed. But if it's months quarters yearly, forget

528
00:32:00,638 --> 00:32:04,398
it. No, a lot of the stuff I get is daily. I mean, what's

529
00:32:04,414 --> 00:32:08,166
my answer rate? What's my booking rate on the marketing side, what are

530
00:32:08,188 --> 00:32:11,542
we spending? I have two marketing meetings a week. All that stuff

531
00:32:11,596 --> 00:32:14,040
is we try and manage.

532
00:32:15,450 --> 00:32:19,130
There's so much freedom and data that fear

533
00:32:19,470 --> 00:32:23,050
target that you have. Anybody listening

534
00:32:23,870 --> 00:32:27,580
that high, low, like, oh, shoot, this happened. And then, oh, no, that happened.

535
00:32:28,990 --> 00:32:32,714
I can't tell you when it came time to make big investments in the business,

536
00:32:32,832 --> 00:32:36,586
how comfortable I felt knowing I'm like, okay, this is

537
00:32:36,608 --> 00:32:39,118
what we're doing on the marketing side. This is our cost per customer. This is

538
00:32:39,124 --> 00:32:41,678
our booking rate. This is our close rate. This is how much we're doing in

539
00:32:41,684 --> 00:32:44,718
billable. This is our backlog of work. When I could see all that, I was

540
00:32:44,724 --> 00:32:48,322
like, oh, of course it makes sense to upgrade the office or to do this

541
00:32:48,376 --> 00:32:52,162
or to try take a certain amount of money and just

542
00:32:52,216 --> 00:32:56,062
trial it in marketing campaigns. That confidence

543
00:32:56,126 --> 00:32:59,902
came from that rather than this. I think it'll work. And then

544
00:32:59,976 --> 00:33:02,806
you're kind of, like, running around, which I did for years. I mean, I'm so

545
00:33:02,828 --> 00:33:06,646
guilty of that. I had no business background, so I was the good

546
00:33:06,668 --> 00:33:10,486
enough guy for so many years. I'm like, is the phone being answered? I

547
00:33:10,508 --> 00:33:13,370
would literally walk up to my team, like, hey, we answered all the calls today.

548
00:33:13,440 --> 00:33:16,794
Oh, yeah, Matt, we're good. I'm like, all right, cool. It just made me feel

549
00:33:16,832 --> 00:33:20,342
good to do that. How do you go addressing the conversation

550
00:33:20,406 --> 00:33:24,074
around, and do you do it this way where you say

551
00:33:24,112 --> 00:33:27,646
your team members, like, this is what I want to track. I don't care how

552
00:33:27,668 --> 00:33:30,458
you report it to me. Just give me the report. Or do you have structure

553
00:33:30,474 --> 00:33:34,286
of them. To follow so the team has structure? I'm a what guy? I'm not

554
00:33:34,308 --> 00:33:37,874
a how guy, and I've learned this. And for a lot of people

555
00:33:37,912 --> 00:33:41,154
listening, I don't know, you might be that same person.

556
00:33:41,352 --> 00:33:44,546
I'm very good at knowing. I'm like, these are the things that I need to

557
00:33:44,568 --> 00:33:48,258
know, but how to get there? I was the

558
00:33:48,264 --> 00:33:51,526
worst person for that. I'd be like, well, you could do it this way or

559
00:33:51,548 --> 00:33:54,630
you could do it that way. And my ops manager would be like, hey, Matt,

560
00:33:54,970 --> 00:33:58,166
why don't you go get a coffee? We'll figure this thing out. We'll present it

561
00:33:58,188 --> 00:34:01,334
and see if you like it. I'm like, all right, cool. So I think finding

562
00:34:01,382 --> 00:34:05,194
somebody the what versus the how I think is a really big

563
00:34:05,232 --> 00:34:09,034
thing, because I find

564
00:34:09,072 --> 00:34:12,810
that we end up on one camp or the other. We're really good at

565
00:34:12,880 --> 00:34:16,334
understanding how to do something, or we're really good at the high level. What of,

566
00:34:16,372 --> 00:34:18,606
like, I'm trying to do this, and then I'm trying to do that, and they

567
00:34:18,628 --> 00:34:22,254
can see it and figuring out which one you

568
00:34:22,292 --> 00:34:26,046
are and then building out a relationship with somebody who fills the

569
00:34:26,068 --> 00:34:29,738
other side of it, honestly, was one of the biggest cheat

570
00:34:29,754 --> 00:34:33,342
codes for me in business. Yeah. Cool. So, Maddie, I suppose, all in all, this

571
00:34:33,396 --> 00:34:37,078
process, essentially, what I'm getting is, it's a

572
00:34:37,084 --> 00:34:40,786
process. It's not something you can just wake up one morning and rub

573
00:34:40,818 --> 00:34:43,046
two sticks together and hope that it plays out for you. You got to put

574
00:34:43,068 --> 00:34:45,926
the time in. You can put the effort in. There's a structure, and luckily for

575
00:34:45,948 --> 00:34:49,306
the listeners out there, you've got that structure and you've got it documented in a

576
00:34:49,328 --> 00:34:53,178
course, right? Yeah, exactly. Cool. Where can

577
00:34:53,184 --> 00:34:56,566
people get hold of that? On the website? The contractor

578
00:34:56,598 --> 00:35:00,378
consultants, plural. All right, sweet. We'll post some links to that

579
00:35:00,384 --> 00:35:03,834
over the show notes and things like that. Man, it's been very good

580
00:35:03,872 --> 00:35:07,354
conversation. Honestly, there's so many things there. I've pulled out this and implement

581
00:35:07,402 --> 00:35:10,698
myself. So I thank you once again for coming along and sharing your expertise.

582
00:35:10,794 --> 00:35:13,680
Yeah, you teased it out. I mean, you did the hard part.

583
00:35:15,650 --> 00:35:19,390
Yeah, I guess years of school of hard knocks.

584
00:35:19,970 --> 00:35:22,862
If you listen to some viewers out there, if you've got any questions or anything

585
00:35:22,916 --> 00:35:26,600
that you think we haven't answered properly or we need address further, let us know.

586
00:35:27,050 --> 00:35:29,366
I'm sure if I ask Matt to come back on the show, he'll be able

587
00:35:29,388 --> 00:35:32,820
to jump into some of these things. So, Maddie, thanks once again.

Head Shot

Matt Jones

Host