In the Loupe
In the Loupe
Streamlining Jewelry Recruitment: Transform Your Hiring Process with JewelLink ft. William Jones IV
Join Michael as he speaks with William Jones IV from Sissy's Log Cabin as we explore JewelLink, a cutting-edge recruiting tool revolutionizing how jewelry stores find the perfect candidates. Whether you're an entrepreneur looking to expand or a jeweler seeking top talent, you'll gain valuable insights into refining your hiring process, focusing on skills and entrepreneurial potential.
Learn more about JewelLink here: https://www.jewellink.com/
Send feedback or learn more about the podcast: punchmark.com/loupe
Learn about Punchmark's website platform: punchmark.com
Inquire about sponsoring In the Loupe and showcase your business on our next episode: podcast@punchmark.com
Welcome to In the Loop and we're talking about Sissy's Log Cabin, but this time I specifically wanted to talk about their kind of like recruiting platform, jewel Link, and what's so cool about it is it works with their academy education system and this Jewel Link provides a great way that solves a problem they were having with hiring and Sissy's Log Cabin. They're in the process of opening, I think, their seventh and eighth store. And Stacy's Law Cabin they're in the process of opening, I think, their seventh and eighth store. So, as a result, they need to have a way to interview and hire smartly if that's even a word but in a way that makes sense and they're not just sifting through thousands of applicants. It's more about you know, situational awareness, aptitude and understanding so that they can hire people who are good fits. It's a really cool conversation. I am very impressed by this guy and I think he's very aware of some of the important things that you should be paying attention to when hiring. I hope you enjoy and we're back next week, tuesday, with another episode. Cheers, bye.
Speaker 2:This episode is brought to you by Punchmark, the jewelry industry's favorite website platform and digital growth agency. Our mission reaches way beyond technology. With decades of experience and long-lasting industry relationships, punchmark enables jewelry businesses to flourish in any marketplace. We consider our clients our friends, as many of them have been friends way before becoming clients. Punchmark's own success comes from the fact that we have a much deeper need and obligation to help our friends succeed. Whether you're looking for better e-commerce performance, business growth or campaigns that drive traffic and sales, punchmark's website and marketing services were made just for you. It's never too late to transform your business and stitch together your digital and physical worlds in a way that achieves tremendous growth and results. Schedule a guided demo today at punchmarkcom. Slash go.
Speaker 1:And now back to the show. Welcome back everybody. I'm joined by William Jones IV from Sissy's Log Cabin Actually the second time I've gotten a chance to speak with you. How are you doing today, william?
Speaker 3:I'm doing very well, enjoyed our last conversation and it's funny because people can't see you're in a hat and it looks like a cold area and I'm sitting in Arkansas and it's about to snow.
Speaker 1:It's definitely. I'm dealing with some sub-zero weather, so when it's negative zero, I allow myself to wear a hat on my Zoom calls, because otherwise, oh my goodness, it gets a little frosty. But what I wanted to talk about is your new product, or one of your products, I guess, jewel Link, and I was reading and watching some of the content that you've been putting out and it seems so exciting. It's so different than what a lot of people have out there. I was hoping to have you on to talk about it a little bit more. So could you set up what Jewelink is, in case people don't know what it is for the listeners?
Speaker 3:Yeah for sure. So Jewelink, in the form that it is now, is a filtering tool for existing applications or interviewees you might have, and so the way this thing functions now is that in jewelry the majority of us now the hiring pool has gotten so small. In jewelry is that the majority of us the easiest way to get applications is through Indeed, through ZipRecruiter, through LinkedIn, through all these different avenues. And so the real game in recruiting is how many applicants you go through to pick your best ones. And so before we had more recruiting help, one of the things you would do is like a manager would go through there and post a job and then interview. He had time for about three or four interviewees and pick the best one from there.
Speaker 3:And so what we started doing when we got better and better recruiting at Sissy's was going through more and more applications. We've got someone who's really, really good at recruiting and kind of just listening to her about what she did and kind of going through there and figured out like, oh God, we you know there's way more talent out there. It's just the amount of time it takes to sort through that is difficult, and then so we wanted to build a tool that helped you understand that person's aptitude, their skills, how they transition into jewelry, how they fit into your sales team and then also give them some exposure if they've never been in Jory before.
Speaker 1:Wow, what an awesome tool. Because you're totally right, I handle actually all of the interviewing and hiring at Punchmark and at this point it's kind of weird, I've hired like a quarter or a third of the company at this point and one time I was talking with my boss about what was I looking for and then I asked him what were you looking for when it came to hiring me? And he's like well, you know, this stood out. I previously owned an apparel company. He's like well, this stood out because it showed that you have this, the entrepreneurial spirit, which was important, because Punchmark was very small at the time, there was only eight or nine of us and he said entrepreneurs have this understanding of what it's like to grind.
Speaker 1:But what I've always found interesting when it comes to resumes and applications is I didn't put entrepreneurial spirit, I put something else, and a lot of the times there you have to make this jump, and I can only imagine what that's like in jewelry, where you know, oh, I am into fashion jewelry or I'm into fashion. That could mean one thing what is it that you're sort of looking for or have found a lot of success with when it comes to, like you know, talking about people. Are you looking for people that have worked in other jewelry stores or are you looking for people that have a you know a history in retail sales Like?
Speaker 3:what is it that you're always looking for generally? So it's really funny is because this was like a big, big thing for us, cause we we've done you know, we have the jewelry sales Academy, we've built all this training. We and I've gone through and personally trained, probably at this point, hundreds of new associates. And the thing about it to me is what I used to really think, like if it were just me staffing a store, what I'm looking for are resilience and how extra like an extroverted person for sales, because they've got to be able to put themselves out there and they've got to be able to fail a lot. So like one of the things that we did was such a big deal for us was we started doing improv coaching in our training, like in the first month that somebody would go there and it would be so embarrassing. You'd have to sing and dance and clap your hands and like do all this stuff. But I remember thinking the first time thing you have to sing and dance and clap your hands and like do all this stuff. But I remember thinking the first time I was like, oh my God, the people who are really good at this are like really good at sales. I was like okay, so we're going to just do this for everything and this is going to filter out who we do and don't need.
Speaker 3:Well then, when you're running multiple different locations, those that type of personality has certain advantages and disadvantages, like. So for me, in trying to drive sales, I can deal with those things pretty well because I look at that, I know how to train. Everything to me is about growing the people that are around me and building a team. The difference in that is what your manager's like and you know, for a lot of people there's no specific like I'm not the same as another one of our managers. I've been over the last year really trying to recruit in people that were more similar to me, because that just makes the whole business easier, especially when you're at seven and eight locations, because if we're all closer in a personality range for that driving sales, it makes everything easier, and a personality range for that driving sales, it makes everything easier. But outside of that, what we learned was that it was more important to build a store and then coach that individual manager and then pick people out for that. And so, like I'll say, it'll depend completely is that you've got guys in jewelry who.
Speaker 3:Some people, some managers in a smaller store can go out there and they are like the big seller. They're out there, they're out there closing every single sale. They're living on the floor, they're doing these things like that. So that type of person might be looking for somebody who's more support-based, like a person who can help them operationally with inventory accounts etc. They don't need a staff that's so built for sales.
Speaker 3:Then again you've got somebody else who's operationally minded. They need people that have that big sell drive to them, and so it really depends on that manager and how that floor looks. And that was one of the things that there's other systems out there for staffing that start with the manager and go through and say, hey, based on this management profile, this is the team that goes through there and then understanding how you hire each person, how that fits into that staffing matrix. And that's the second phase that we're doing through this is actually trying to understand what that person's personality traits are, how they're going to impact into your store and if that's the type of personality you need or want in your store as well too.
Speaker 1:Wow, there's so many moving parts to it and there is no one size fits all kind of approach when it comes to staffing or building out teams.
Speaker 3:Well, that's not. That is when you have a single location it is. It's simple, and especially if you've got a manager who can drive sales or you've got a lot of experience or you've got something like that. If you have a really strong central leader, you can do that. But from what we've seen, it's hard to keep that. It's hard to keep that in retail, and so it can be simple, but for the majority of people it's not.
Speaker 1:We all make mistakes. We all make mistakes in staffing and hiring etc. It's just figuring that out faster.
Speaker 1:While at Punchmark, again, we would probably be considered a single store because for a long time we were all under one roof and it was sort of like we were trying to concoct a culture with culture fit and things like that.
Speaker 1:But then eventually I kind of realized while we were hiring that it's not always about having a culture fit, it's about having a role, that the person needs to fit the role, cause there are some roles that, um, you know, by nature are actually not, uh, always going to fit, like a wider persona or wider um culture. For example, you know salespeople you mentioned, uh, salespeople tend to just be extroverted and willing to fail and move fast. And on the flip side of things, I deal with a lot of developers and in hiring our developers, a lot of the times they are more introverted and a lot more safe and things like that, and I learned that if you're trying to meet in the middle or skew one way or the other, you're not going to be able to find the best at either of those roles. So I can only imagine, especially with dealing with, for example, back of house people for your multiple locations Is that also? Are you using Juul Link for like back of house positions as well?
Speaker 3:Yeah, we do it with everything. So what we do is, like you know, there's countless different books, studies, programs out there that use like the 12 essential hiring traits. They go through like passion, resilience, all these different things. So what we want to do is we want to figure out we give a blanket I don't even like calling it an aptitude test, because if you ever have to see how we actually built it, it took about nine months to go through test, because if you ever have to see how we actually built it, it took about nine months to go through. But one of the consultant that worked with Delta Airlines on building their aptitude test, he's like I don't want to call him that coach, but he's like the guy that works with me once a month and basically tells me what I could do better, and so this was a system that he kind of helped direct me of how he'd done it before. And so what we're looking for is like this is jewelry specific for traits, and so what this allows you to do is just in those 12 traits, every one of those questions is weighted, and so you can see that and send it to every single person. It's unlimited to send it. That's the cool thing about it. So, no matter who you're hiring, you can do that and like that's what people ask me. Like, well, is this tested? I'm like, well, the best thing to do is send it to your best people, figure out how they test on there in those positions and then just go from there, because right now it's in beta testing, we're doing all that.
Speaker 3:But you said a couple things like a developer versus like a salesperson and this is what we hear all the time is like people go well, you know my best salesperson oh my God, if I had 10 of those, I would do. You know X number of dollars, a million dollars, yeah, yeah, yeah, no, you're probably more than likely your store would burn down. Yeah, you know, what we've seen is like really identifying. What we're trying to really help with is what do you really need help with? Because you've got a certain turnover and basis of time, because you've got a certain turnover and basis of time.
Speaker 3:But then in jewelry it takes about two years for a person to get set up in jewelry on the sales floor to really work, even if you bring somebody in with great experience to build a clientele, because the majority of jewelry store sales happen from existing customers coming back in.
Speaker 3:That's why, like, if you use the Edge POS, you can run like your top 100 report and it's like 30 to 60% of the stores overall sales.
Speaker 3:So you've got a big risk in hiring somebody and so you also you've got to. When you roll the dice hiring somebody, you got to really understand what you're trying to get, because what we found is, like the people who become top salespeople that type of personality, if you actually find it, like if you say I want to hire a top salesperson and you actually correctly pick that personality and those traits and that knowledge of that top salesperson, they come online really really quick, like they sell really fast, quick, like they sell really fast. But then on the other side if you were to tell me you were like, hey, I want to hire somebody in sales management or management or for something like this, and you actually hired somebody who was very good at that, it takes a lot longer to get them there Because the traits that make them great at that also make it to where it takes them longer to establish like that leadership.
Speaker 1:Yeah, more like an emerging thing. Yeah, it's fascinating.
Speaker 3:A lot of people get frustrated because you're like I need a top seller and then you hire somebody who has the potential to be a great manager and then you get frustrated with them because you know it takes them longer to come online. Or you're like I need somebody in management and you're a great salesperson, or the owner's a great salesperson, so they say this person's like me, they'll be great at management. I hire that person. They're great at sales and they suck at management, and so it's really hard because jewelry's all it's an emotional business. It's not really tied to any hardly any economic factors except for, like, the wealth effect. Outside of that, it's pretty much how good you are building a team at your store.
Speaker 1:Man. What a really cool observation, though, about you know quick to emerge versus slow to emerge kind of personality traits. What's really fascinating is, for myself, is I actually. I always say like when I got hired I was not great at my job and I still maintain I was. I got hired to be a web designer and I was pretty middling, maybe even slightly below average, when it came to what I was expected to do, and for the first year of my employment at Punchmark, I was actually. I was definitely struggling, but as they gave me more specialized roles or leadership roles, that's when I started to kind of come online a little bit more.
Speaker 1:And you know, I've been here for eight years at this point, and I think that those types of traits, though, do develop, or maybe not even develop, they showcase themselves much slower. But at the same time, we also have some people that are the individual contributor. For the people that are listening, this is such a tech kind of, or like such a corporate kind of term. There's individual contributors versus management positions, and the IC individual contributor those people you can just get like some studs. You know some all-stars that are just they take that role and they smash.
Speaker 3:But yeah, think about that. Okay, so what makes and what did you say? I went to school in South Arkansas, so you got to. So what's an IC? It's an independent contributor.
Speaker 1:Yeah, an individual contributor.
Speaker 3:Okay, so like, what, like. What do you want out of that person?
Speaker 1:It probably needs to be a self-starter. Someone who is self-motivated, self-driven, is quick to learn and able to focus on themselves is pretty much what I would call an IC.
Speaker 3:Okay, so who you're just talking about is massively resilient, very risk, tolerant, quick to make decisions and is very, like, driven and passionate. What you just described is somebody who's like, think about that in sales, that's great. But then you take that same personality and you put them in a management position where they're having to manage 15 people and you're like, hey, this guy's quick to make decisions, he's not afraid of messing up, he will take really risky decisions and he's really passionate about his own performance. And you're like, no wonder he's not. He wouldn't be a good manager, yeah, and so you see, and then you look at that, but no wonder that person comes online so quick, like that's a great person in sales. That person comes online so quick, like that's a great person in sales.
Speaker 3:And not to say that you can't get that person to be great in management, but like who you want in management, you want somebody who's calm, you want somebody who's understanding, who doesn't make brash decisions, who takes others into account, who builds other people up. Like you take those traits and you're like, god, no wonder it takes so long for somebody to get in that position, because it takes longer for them to build respect on the team, to learn the different things, and they're not. Typically a person like that person is going to feel like an imposter if they try and go in their first week of work and act like they're number one.
Speaker 1:Yeah, definitely. I mean, the imposter syndrome is definitely a real part of it. I guess I kind of wanted to tag that into these certs and aptitude tests which are related to Juul Inc. I think that they're interesting in that. I think that they can measure that kind of initial ability to jump in. What is it that you're looking for when it comes to, for example, like an aptitude test? How do you make it specific enough that someone from a jewelry store coming into your jewelry store is going to do well, but also maybe someone who doesn't have experience at a jewelry store is still able to kind of make a mark enough that you'd be willing to give them a chance?
Speaker 3:That's the thing and like you've got to understand that I like to say this I'm not very educated. I mean, I went to a public school in South Arkansas, so we're like just above Mississippi. So like that's when I talk about people with, like I talk about things to people and and they get frustrated with me and I'm like maybe my definitions aren't right, like maybe I don't use the same words, so I don't really like to use like aptitude test, maybe like a traits test would be a better way of explaining that. Because think about it this way what you're really looking for is you've got to have experience in a massive population of sales associates and then you break that down into traits and you say, okay, I've looked at X number of people and I'm going to identify these 12 things, because that's pretty synonymous with every.
Speaker 3:If you read a recruiting book, they're going to talk about the 12 traits. So the thing is is like, okay, that's pretty common language from everybody. And then like, let's take a trait like customer focused, all right, so in jewelry, let's rate that. So how most of these tests work is that every answer is weighted that goes to that points total. So what we're looking at is like, okay, what would be the least? And I'll just ask you, if you were trying to judge somebody customer-focused in jewelry specifically for retail, what would be the least, what would be the worst answer that they could have for that?
Speaker 1:If they're customer-focused. I guess if they didn't care. They were only. They only wanted the commission. They were only focused on making their own money.
Speaker 3:Yeah, okay, so that that goes into it. That would be like more what drives you, like passion or not, but like, like, let's say, and you word the question like this, like you've got an upset customer in front of you, out of the following situations, what best describes the action that you would take? And then you try and make it to where it seems like a real world situation, and the answers range from number one being like I would just go upon, I would let the customer know company policy and that would be the end. Okay, that shows right there, when you put this all together, that this person's more focused on operational strategy than they are customer relationships. Does that make sense? Yeah, I know. But then in the top question would be like I take the customer's side, no matter what, and, you know, do something from there. And so you create these situations.
Speaker 3:And the tricky part about this is is you have to make it and write it in a way to where it's real, to where somebody who goes and has experience in retail that goes oh my God. You know customers lie all the time. They pick a real answer versus somebody who goes well, this is my customer and these are who pay my bills, like, although there's risk assigned with this answer, I'm going to answer it this way, and so it's really just how do you write these questions? And then how do you make them jewelry specific, so like you're actually trying to figure out how this person's going to interact in here, because a resume can't show that, a resume can't say you know, people can say that in keywords, but when they have to pick a real situation and all four or five of them seem like the right answer and they actually have to pick the right one for them, and then every single person like that's where it gets difficult.
Speaker 1:Definitely. All right, everybody, we're going to take a quick break and hear a word from our sponsor. And hear a word from our sponsor. Punchmark is so excited to announce the launch of our email marketing campaigns crafted specifically for jewelers. Take your jewelry store's marketing to the next level with Punchmark's email marketing service. We created tailored data-driven campaigns that will not only engage your customers, but also boost your sales. Whether you want to be hands-on or prefer a fully managed service, we're a team of entrepreneurs. Again, that's punchmarkcom slash email-marketing. And now back to the show, and we're back. And so when you took this test and handed it to your own employees and you were, like you know, essentially retrofitting it and handed it to your own employees and you were, like you know, essentially retrofitting it, what did you? Did you find that your employees did tend to fall into the categories that you were sort of expecting them to, or were there surprises or what? Did you find anything as a result?
Speaker 3:I went into this and I was like God, this is going to be a problem, like this is going to take forever to do and I don't know if I can actually do this. And then, as I went through it, I was like this is actually way easier than I thought it was, because you know, everything you do is constantly being tested and again, this is in beta testing too. So we're going through, we're testing against other tests, we're going through and we're doing all this and we're finding it more and more. But, um, not really, you know, uh it.
Speaker 3:It's very like when you put real world situations out and say, hey, take this test the best of your abilities and you got. You know, give it back to me as fast you can, like I don't know what. When a person they're biased, they think they're right in the way they act, and so when you put it out there and you word these questions correctly, like it does it. The tricky part of it, the hard part of it, was actually writing it in a way where each question carried enough weight to where you could shorten the test to where somebody could take it in 15 minutes.
Speaker 1:That was the hard part.
Speaker 3:Wow it's easy because originally and probably why I said it's going to be so easy is because I tried like 60 questions at one time. Yeah, and that's not usable when you're just sending it to an Indeed application or applicant Like they're going to say, well, I don't really want to do this or I'm going to get bored with it and go from here. So the hardest part about it is making it very non-time consuming.
Speaker 1:Wow, what a cool, really cool experiment. This is like background in psychology. Would have like a field day with this. It sounds fascinating. Oh they would probably pick me apart. No way, no way. So if it worked for you and who's to say that you're wrong? But I wanted to ask, so you said it's in beta. But I wanted to ask, so you said it's in beta, Do you plan to make this available to the wider jewelry industry or will this stay as an internal tool?
Speaker 3:What do you hope to use it for? We've already got probably 30 stores using this right now.
Speaker 3:Wow that's amazing Messing around with it, because I mean you tell people like, hey, you can use this for free and you know, et cetera, and just mess around People in jewelry love this, you know, et cetera, and just mess around People in jewelry love this. That was the weirdest thing, is that? And my favorite thing was when you're a retailer and you go to these shows, it's weird because other people don't want to talk to you and things like that. But then once you start on the vendor side of things like everybody wants to know a different thing, like people love messing with it and some cool things on here too as well it's like like it's not just traits tests and skills tests, like there's a product knowledge test so you can send somebody a product knowledge test.
Speaker 3:It's like 24 questions and it breaks it down in the categories of what they're going to know, so you can send somebody this and see, okay, this person has no knowledge in jewelry, or they know a little bit about diamonds, they know a little bit about gemstones and things like that. And then also from the academy, we've got probably around 12 different courses on here so you can actually send somebody a course and get, and they're all short courses so somebody can get a really good idea of how you want to sell or what to expect when they come work on your sales floor. And that's going to be the. The original portion of this was a business recruiting funnel. It wasn't the filtering tool, and I can get into some of that too.
Speaker 1:I mean, that was really my cool thing I wanted to make.
Speaker 1:It's such an exact fit for a problem I could definitely see I wish I had. On the one hand, I do think it would be effective for hiring, for example, developers and designers and stuff like that, for us, just for the traits and the situational kind of understanding of stuff. But at the same time I do kind of I'm fascinated to hear how it would like take someone from a different industry. Because, again, one of the things I'm always curious about is like jewelry is sometimes feels so insulated and so kind of siloed into itself. You know, the people who are jewelers have been jewelers their entire lives and they a lot of the times, like yourself, starts at a very young age in a jewelry store and they just continue to stay at the jewelry store. So they this comes second nature. But for jewelry to continue to exist and stay healthy, it does also need to take from other industries. So I guess, uh, man, I wish, would you ever like consider publishing, like and I don't know any of like the the findings that you get from from having these people?
Speaker 3:every and like we were talking about this on the uh color, there's like I don't make, like I had the academy out. It does a lot of revenue a year. I reinvest every dollar of that like we hadn't taken a dollar out of anything. Wow, it all just gets reinvested to build the tools because, like I said, we're this is. I hate to sound like a nerd on this, but like I look at it, like this is okay. If you're a single, if I manage a store and I do two and a half million dollars a year, all right, there's only so much you learn from that, all right. So then, once you manage eight stores, you're learning 10 times as much a day. Then, when you go into other things like it's almost like a language model, like what they're training, the more they expose it to, the smarter it gets, the better it gets, and so that's why I look at that and that's why I'm not afraid to get into some of these things. Uh, but as we're going through here I'm sorry I've got people walking in, that's quite all right. Everything on here like that was one of my dad's biggest things is like there are no secrets, like it's just how can you get better at it, and especially when it gets into hiring is because the better we are at hiring, like, in all honesty, other stores go and recruit from other stores, and then the pool that you have in jewelry like if you lose somebody and you're a retailer, they're probably just going to go work for somebody else on the road, and so if that's all we feed off of, like we're in bad shape. And the thing that it's funny because about a year ago I was in dinner in Chicago. We had this great dinner with this uh waiter and we all gave him business cards and we're like, we're sitting there and we're like, oh yeah, you can work for us, you can work for this guy, etc. And I remember thinking I was like how could we get that guy to come in jewelry? Because he has no experience, his resume probably wouldn't look very great. Uh, that's a great great thought experiment. He, I mean, and he's probably making pretty good money because, uh, he's good at his job and so the chances to get him to jump industries are very, very small. And so that's where we started thinking.
Speaker 3:I started thinking about this and I hate to say this, I could, could not quit thinking about it, and so my idea was like all right, we needed more time to recruit this guy, because time's a big factor, so I don't need six minutes in this guy to throw away my business card. I need his information for six months, or even years if possible. The next thing is I've got to do a better job of giving this guy expectations of what it's going to look like in jewelry and then giving him enough knowledge because it's a confident guy to confidently come in here and feel like I can make a living doing this. Wow. And so I went back and we built like a business careers portal for sissies where it was just like it showed videos, it brought in resumes and like it just kind of sold coming to work for us.
Speaker 3:And then, with Jewel Link, that was what I really wanted to do.
Speaker 3:It wasn't so much the filtering tool made it to where people would actually want to sign up and use it, but the whole idea was to create a portal for a business. Like, think about they don't. Most jewelers don't have a recruiting page. No, and if they do, it's never up to date because they've got to call their IT guy or they've got to do something like that, and then they lose their applications and they never keep up with them, and those people just fall through the cracks. And so what Jewel Link was really designed to do was create a business profile page for a store, allow them to put that as their career portal on their website, update everything they wanted to do and advertise coming to work in their store, show benefits, videos etc. Collect that person's information and then give that person information to training and preparation for, you know, a future interview or just to be exposed to jewelry sales in general, and then keep that information and then hopefully continually advertise working in the jewelry industry to people.
Speaker 1:Wow, what a fascinating thought experiment of. First of all, did you ever hear anyone? Ever hear back from the waiter?
Speaker 3:No, of course not. Oh God man. No, absolutely not. As a matter of fact, I'm going to have to go back there. It wasn't like Morton's or something like that. It wouldn't like.
Speaker 1:I forgot, hey man, just so you know, we built an entire product because of you. You know that's so cool because I think you're right on. They always say that there's, you know, all these highest echelon type of careers, whether it's Navy SEALs or NFL quarterbacks, that a lot of the times it's the, sometimes the skills can be well, not quarterbacks, but SEALs and some of these higher impact positions. The skills are secondary. A lot of times it's the mindset or the soft skills or things like that. The hard skills can be taught, but if you have all the rest of the package, the hard skills are, you know, pretty secondary. You can just go in and teach them.
Speaker 3:So what a really fascinating experiment, though, and so in all honesty, like most stores you know, most stores that we work with it's a single store owner operator, or maybe two stores. Like that guy knows what he's hiring for, he doesn't need aptitude tests, he doesn't need all this other stuff like that, but what he needs is to be able to be able to access more applications to hire that position. Like, instead of just taking three applicants out of 10, you need to be able to take five applicants out of 100. And if you do that, it gets better. The problem is the time aspect of it.
Speaker 3:That's where the search status comes in, is it sorts everything. It's like having a recruiter at your office where it sorts it out automatically. A large percentage of the people you send this to won't even fill out, won't even take a 20-question test, won't even go through a 15-minute course, and so first level, second level is actually results and then third level is interview process. So you've got a whole recruiting team of like what's as good as signets right at your fingertips, and then all you're trying to do is, instead of letting every one of those people fall through the cracks because maybe one of those people didn't get the job, but like they get a login and they tell their buddy like dude, you got to check this out. Like they've got jewelry training out there, you could go work there. And so it's just a network and it's just a snowball just trying to push it down the hill.
Speaker 1:So this is very cool, william, if people are listening to this and they want to give it a shot. I know it's um. Uh, you said that you have ambitions for it in the future. Um, if people wanted to try it out right now, uh, is there a spot that they could contact you or sign up for this for their own store?
Speaker 3:Yeah, they can just go to as of right now. They can just go to joelingcom. Uh, every signup comes with a six month free trial, so that's 180 days on the payment processor. You you put a card in there but it's not going to charge you for six months. We're set.
Speaker 3:The idea is to, because what you get so many tools as a business owner, at some point we are going to make it to where it is a charge model. But the whole idea is like it's for a smaller store. It's got so much training and so many tools in it. It's going to be like a hundred and something bucks a month and you basically get basic training for all your new hires. Uh, we don't know when we're actually going to charge. Start charging people.
Speaker 3:Uh, and I hate to say this, I might even Zach was making fun of me the other day because he's like God is January, just like your free month or what. And uh, we're just trying to get as many users as we can because something like this, it's going to grow over time, but really using it and getting feedback at the first end, because software is really difficult, like somebody's first opinion of it. It's not great, like you know. That's. All you have to do with software is make great software and make it work, and so the whole goal is get as many people as we can, get as much feedback as we can, and build it out as quickly as possible to what people want to use, and then just go from there.
Speaker 1:Wow, it sounds so exciting. I'll make sure I include that link in the show notes below because I'd love for some In the Loop listeners to give it a shot. And then let me know how that goes, because it sounds like it's solving a problem that you're going from, a real problem that you experience, and finding a result that you had already identified as what the ideal result would be, and then finding ways to connect the two, and I think that that is such a successful and resounding way to approach something, whereas just being like hey, do what. People want more education, so we're going to just throw more education out there. It's finding education for a store, a single store, or finding education to, or ways to recruit people for your own businesses, the people that you want to hire. I think when you start with the end goal in mind and then connect it to a real life problem, I think that you're you're finding a lot of stuff along the way, so major claps to you.
Speaker 3:That sounds awesome. That's how. That's how we turn and think of things like I'm just mad, something like this didn't already exist. So I feel, yeah, just had to start building it.
Speaker 1:Well, william, um, is there anything else? Before we wrap this thing up? I've got a lot I want to try out, juulink, at this point I'm probably going to see if I can give that aptitude test or sorry, the traits test to some of my other employees as well, to see if we'd all kind of think alike. But it sounds like a really great time.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I was about to say get on there and more than likely you're going to find some bugs and issues with it. As a matter of fact, I've just got a message right now saying that there's something wrong with one of the questions. So that's what we're here for. We're putting something out there that is it's malleable. We're wanting to put something out there that jewelers use, that people use and that people want, and we're honestly asking and we're not going to charge for this at all we just want feedback coming back from it.
Speaker 1:Heck, yeah. Well, thank you so much for joining me again on In the Loop. We'll have to do another one to talk about your academy as well, because, it's crazy, we haven't even gotten to that yet. But everybody, thank you so much for listening. We'll be back next week, tuesday, with another episode. Cheers Bye, all righty, everybody. That's the end of the show. Thanks so much for listening. This week my guest was William Jones IV from Sissy's Log Cabin and we were talking about his product, jewelink. It's a really cool one. Give it a shot. It's Jewelinkcom. It's going to be in the show. Thank you on Spotify and Apple Podcasts and leave us feedback on punchmarkcom slash loop. That's L-O-U-P. Thanks, and we'll be back next week, tuesday, with another episode. Cheers Bye.
