EP109: How To Hire People You Won't Want To Fire With Ryan Englin

to college to major in HR. I just love the people side of business. And I graduated in 2001. And I thought... you know, I'm gonna take summer off. And in September of 2001, I'm gonna go get a job. And then, you know, the terrorist things happen and everybody laid off and the market changed and nobody wanted to hire anybody in HR. So got into sales, did that for almost a decade in banking. And I cut my teeth in corporate and I was like, this is awful. I'm not a corporate guy. I'm not cut out for this. So I ended up starting a digital marketing agency. I wanted to work with small businesses and helping them retain customers. Because there's so much effort on the sales side of got to get a new customer, got to get a new customer. It's like, well, what about the repeat customer? And I saw an opportunity, so I took it. And I just gravitated towards the trades. Home service contractors, mostly. Some commercial contractors. And I was helping them generate business, helping them generate leads. And it was a couple of years into that. And I got a phone call from more than one client that said, hey, turn the leads off. I don't need them anymore. And when I dug into it, I found out it wasn't that they didn't need leads. It was they didn't have people to service the leads. And I remember one client in particular, HVAC plumbing contractor, they had four trucks empty in their lot. And if I could just put technicians in those four trucks, you could turn all the leads back on. I could take more leads. And in an act of desperation, I said, sure. I got a background in HR. I've hired people before. This is easy. And sure enough, it was easy for me. Three weeks later, they call me. They say, we got four trucks filled. We got two more trucks on order. We hired six techs. I don't know how you did it, but turn the leads back on. And so I started calling my other clients and said, hey, are you struggling to get technicians? Because I think I might have a process to help you with this. And so we did that for a while. And what we realized was it was one thing to help them find the technician. It was another thing to help them hire, onboard, and retain them. And so they would come back and they're like, oh, I just lost three technicians. I need three more. It became this vicious cycle of if we don't solve the root problem, which is making sure we're hiring the right people that fit our company culture, that fit our leadership style, that actually want to do this work and take care of our customers, they fit our culture, we're going to keep dealing with this. So I set out to fix the problems as they kept coming up. And a few years later, we had the CoreFit hiring system. And that's all we do now.

Oh, if I had to pick one, I would say that if you don't know who it is that you want to hire, like if you haven't defined the ideal employee, the right person, you're probably not going to hire them. And so it's getting really clear on who you want. Just like we do in marketing, when we're looking for customers, we have a customer avatar and we like, who's our ideal customer? Who has the budget? Who has the pain? Whose problem can we solve? We need to have some of those similar questions when it comes to employees. Like who's looking for another opportunity in a career? Who wants to do the work that we do? Who aligns to our values? Who is actually going to behave in a way that... creates a great experience for our customers and gives us five-star reviews. Like who is the person that we can send out into the field to do the work that is going to generate the results that we want for our clients?

Well, I think step one, and this is something we guide everybody through in our program, is get really clear on who you are. Understand what behaviors are important to you. What values do you carry? What is the purpose? Why do you get out of bed to do the work that you do every morning? Most people, especially in the trades, will tell me like, oh, there's got to be easier way. Like I'm exhausted. I'm burned out. There's got to be an easier way. And there probably is an easier way to make money. But unless you are personally connected to why you do what you do, it's gonna be really hard to find people that align to that. And then finally, figuring out where you're going. Have a plan, have a vision. You probably heard the analogy of getting the right people on the bus. Well, the only way you're gonna get people on the bus and get them to stay on the bus is if everybody knows where the bus is going. And they're all excited about where the bus is going. And that's your vision. So if you don't have a solid vision, you don't know where you're going, it's going to be really difficult for you to attract the right people.

You know, we. subscribe to this idea. You've probably heard this before. People don't leave jobs. They leave

They leave bosses and managers. And the reality is, is that looking for work is very stressful. It's one of life's most stressful events. It's right up there with death of a loved one, relocation, finance problems. It's very stressful looking for a job. If you put yourself in the job seekers position for a second, they're quitting a job that they has created some security for their family. They're leaving that for a job that may not be secure. It may not be better. It may not last forever. It might even be worse than the job they're at. So if we don't make sure that they understand who we are as people and who they're going to be working for, because remember, they don't leave jobs, they leave people. They're looking for a better boss. They're looking for a better company culture. This is what people want out of a new job. Most entrepreneurs will tell me they want to hire someone who's already employed. They don't want the kid that's living in grandma's basement playing Xbox all day. That's not who they want to come work for them. They want someone who's already employed. So that means that you have to be more attractive than the company they're currently working for. And I think that's one of the biggest mistakes entrepreneurs make is they forget, like you said, recruiting is marketing. And if you take nothing else from this show, just think about this for a while. If you're not attracting good people, it's most likely because you're not attractive to good people.

Sure, sure.

Well, the first thing I just want to point out is that most people come to me thinking they have a hiring problem when they don't. They have a retention problem. And if you want to do a quick check on that, ask your accountant. how many people you had employed at the end of last year, and then ask them how many W-2s you issued. And you're often going to find that the number of W-2s you issued for last year was much higher than the people you had employed at the end of the year. I've seen some that it's five to one. Like they'll have 10 people employed at the end of the year, they'll have 50 W-2s they issued. You don't have a hiring problem. You have a retention problem. And once you've identified that the problem is retention, what we've found is you'll solve about half of your retention problems. If you change your hiring practices and start looking for quality people that fit your company culture, that fit your team, that want to service your customers, that actually care about your product or your service, you'll actually solve about half your retention problems just by hiring better. So you mentioned the interview process. That's probably one of the parts that I geek out the most on is the interview because that's where we get to build a relationship. Think of the interview like dating. You're not going to go on a first date. and ask the person to marry you, especially if the first date's only 15 minutes long. But we'll have a 15-minute interview all day long and ask someone to come work for us. And then three weeks later, be surprised because, oh, they're not who we thought they were. How much can you really learn in 15 minutes? And so spending the time getting to know them and building a relationship during the interview will help you uncover a whole bunch of issues that you'll have later when it comes to retaining people.

So I'm going to give the answer that your listeners aren't going to like, which is it depends. Right now, there are more employers looking for people than there are people looking for jobs. For sure. So when you're in this period where it's definitely a job seekers market, I would say that the barriers to entry, you want to minimize as much as possible. So if you are going to phone screen someone. you're really only screening out the non-negotiables, which for some is, can they make it to an interview on time? Like if they can't show up to the interview on time, they're not going to show up to the job site on time. That's that simple. But for our process, we do think that you need to slow down the interview and spend more time getting to know the person. Now the phone screen, two, three questions maybe, the things are non-negotiable. Can you physically do the work? Is one that we're off. Are you authorized to work in the United States? Depending on what state you're in, right? Are you authorized to work here? And then maybe one or two questions around company culture, like something around, you know, why do you want to work for us? And when someone says, because I need a job or because rents do, they're not going to stick around. So those are some things that you can knock out in the screening process. But beyond that, the in-person interview should be a combination of culture fit. Do they fit your culture? And can they do the work? Can they do the work? Just to be clear, does not mean can they do the work your way? Because you need to train them to do that. It's can they physically do the work? We have some clients that'll do mechanical aptitude assessments, which is basically, here's a bucket and here's water. How much, you know, which is too much water to fit in the bucket? It's just spatial reasoning and some stuff like that. Or they'll say, like, which screwdriver will actually tighten this screw? And they've got to be able to tell that kind of stuff, which in anything is really silly, but there are people that can't pass that.

I'm a huge fan of pre-hire assessments, which is what you're talking about. Huge fan of them. However... I'm a fan of them in the sense that it aligns with the type of work the person's going to be doing. So for example, you know, we get general labor is a big one. Like everybody wants people that will do general labor. It's the grunt work, you know, the demo stuff, the cleanup stuff, all that. And they'll give them a typing test. I'm just like, help me understand how your brain connected swinging a sledgehammer and digging ditches to typing. And it's not that anybody ever thought about it. It's just that that's the test they give everybody. Think about it. Same thing with the grammar. So like I wouldn't fault a technician for not finding grammar issues. Now, if I was hiring a controller or I was hiring a copywriter or something like that and they didn't find that stuff, that would be an issue. Another one that we see a lot of is they'll do an assessment around using a computer. Well, is the technician going to be using a computer? If not, then don't assess them on that. Now, is your customer service rep going to be using your computer? Then assess them on it. It really depends. One of the easiest examples I see all the time, and I don't know how many of your listeners are hiring customer service or people that are going to be on the phone a lot, but they'll bring someone in for a customer service role and they'll sit them across the table in the conference room and they'll have this great conversation and they'll love them. And they're like, this person's amazing. They're going to take such great care of our customers. And then a couple of weeks later, they quit or the performance wasn't there. And I'm like, I don't know what happened. They were great in person. Yeah. They spend 99% of their time talking to customers on the phone. Why are you doing an in-person interview? You need to be doing a phone interview with that person. Even if you're in different offices, like bring them to the office, meet and greet, put them in one room. You go into another room and say, call me when you're ready. Like let's assess people in a way that's consistent with the work we need them to do. Because otherwise. We're going to really struggle to find the right people.

So the reality is people that use their gut to make decisions, usually that feeling comes from past experiences. So they made this decision this way 10 years ago, and this was the outcome. And they just kind of learned and adapted and said, okay, my gut's pretty good because they've had lots of practice over time. And I think when you're making decisions off of gut feeling, there are ways to document it. There are ways to systematize it. One of the things I would encourage everybody to do is stop asking questions during the interview and start developing processes during the interview. Get people to show up the way that they're going to work. So for example, You might have some people that do this, but we see this a lot in HVAC where they'll actually have a broken down piece of equipment in the shop and they'll say, okay, for the next 30 minutes, I want you to diagnose this equipment. Tell me what's wrong with it. It's way easier to do that and find out if they actually can do the work than it is to ask them if they can do the work because people know what you want to hear. When you go with your gut, you want to make sure you're not being biased. I can't tell you how many times we've talked to entrepreneurs that hired someone because they went to the same school or they rooted for the same sports team or they lived in the same neighborhood or their kids went to karate together or whatever. Those aren't good reasons to hire people.

One of the things that we recommend for, Plumbers is, I mean, because this is super easy to set up in a corner of an office, is have them replace a toilet. Have them take off an old toilet, put a new toilet on. Yeah, it might take them 20,30 minutes, but you don't want to sit there and watch them the whole time. You just keep checking in on them, but you want to see, can they do it? And are they going to do it in a way that's to code and is not going to cause any issues later on? It also helps you with speed. Like, for example, window tint install. We worked with one. long time ago. And they, they basically said, Hey, if you can't tent a whole car in an hour, like I can't, I don't need you because I'm not going to make any money if you can't do that whole thing in an hour. So you got to be fast and meticulous. So you can have those conversations all day long, but if you, if you don't get to see them in action, you're never going to know.

So here's the disclaimer my attorney will tell me to give. I don't know. Check with your local state and city. However, I'm not a big fan of spec work. And that's where I think a lot of people get in trouble, whereas they bring someone in to do work that they don't pay them for. But then they resell that work to the customer. Like, that's a problem.

You know, we had, I tell this story a lot. We worked with a roofer once and I'm like, you know, the scared of heights thing is driving me nuts. They all say they're not scared of heights, but the first time we put them on a two-story roof, they freak out. So I said, well, that's easy. Start having the interview on the roof. And so they did. So when they got there, they're like, oh, come on up, you know? And they're like, come on up. Like, yeah, yeah, no, we're going to do the interview on the roof. You find out real fast. They're scared of heights.

But you know, I tell that story and every insurance agent on the planet cringes because they're like, what if they get hurt? You know? So that's my disclaimer, like check locally. But no, I don't think there's any issues. We used to have a client that would do what they called a demo day. Like they want to demo the employee for half a day. They'd bring them in for four hours. They'd give them 50 bucks and they'd say, hey, I want you to work for the next four hours for me. And they had a very strict process that they followed. Everybody went through the same process in that four hours. It was really a good way for them to tell, is this someone that's going to make it or not?

Yeah.

It saved you a ton of money and headache later. Yeah. For

Yeah. I, I, yes, there are tricks and hacks and no, you don't have to do that. We're working with a new client right now. They do quick oil changes. So drive your car in 10 minutes later, your oils changed and you're out. And one of their, someone in another region, they hired, I think they have 180 people on staff right now. And they went through like 4,000 to get there. Wow. I guess it's insane. And. We don't have to duplicate those numbers, but you do have to slow down the process. One of the biggest places I get pushback is people are like, I don't have time to spend an hour interviewing a $15 or $18 an hour person. I don't have time for that. And my question to them always is, well, do you have time to continually interview people? I would rather you spend an hour with one person and find out that they're good to go or not than spend 15 minutes with four people and have to do that a couple hundred times. So slowing down the process is huge. Spending more time getting to know them. Like I said, no one gets married after 15 minutes on a first date. We shouldn't be making offers either. But as far as tricks and hacks, I would say one of the first thing I already said this, if you want to become, if you want good people, you got to be attractive to good people. Take a look at your brand. Take a look at, go online because that's where people are looking for jobs. They're looking online. So go online, Google your company. From an employee's perspective, what do you see? You're probably going to see Yelp that is maybe three and a half stars. And you're going to see, and if you dig into Yelp and you start seeing all these reviews like, oh, they didn't clean up the job site. Oh, the employee wasn't happy. They were yelling at me and all this stuff. And you see all these mentions of your team not being thrilled. What do you think is going through the mind of a job seeker? Well, they don't treat their people well. People aren't happy working there. Why would I want to go work for a place where the employees are so unhappy, they're making customers unhappy? Or... go online and find out how easy it is to find out about your company. We just talked to someone, their Instagram account is full of pictures. And I asked them, like, are these customers? They're like, no, these are all our employees. But there's nothing on here that says they're employees. If you're going to brag about your employees or you're going to put testimonials up for your employees or something like that. Let people know this is our team. They're having a great time. I think another thing too, that is a big miss for most people is they don't think of their job posting as an advertisement. And that thing you post on Indeed or on your website or on Facebook, that's an ad. And I think it's really important that you understand that's an advertisement and you should treat it as such. You would never see a car company post an ad. with or have a commercial and up pops on the screen is just a bulleted list of the maintenance schedule and how to take care and what you have to do to own this vehicle. You would never see that. Instead, you see the top down, attractive young couple driving down the Pacific Coast Highway enjoying life. And that's how they sell cars. You're selling your company and you're selling that job to a prospective job seeker. Stop with the bulleted list of how much they have to lift and how much work they have to do and how they have to bend and stoop and crawl and they're going to get dirty. Sell the position. Sell it and market it and promote it in a way that people go, I want to do that and I want to do it for that employer. I know those aren't quick hit tips and hacks, but I think those are two big things that they can do.

Yeah. Well, don't do that. Let's start there. The last thing you want to do is make people feel alienated. Yeah. You know, I'm a huge fan of second chance programs. So if you're a felon and you've done your time and you've cleaned up your act and I'm not sending you in to be alone with a homeowner, like, who cares? Like if the homeowner is not there and there's a crew there and they've cleaned up their act, give them a second chance. Like I'm a huge fan of that stuff. So the last thing I want to do is alienate people that are working to better themselves and create a better life. Beyond that, I think that the most important thing that people forget in a job ad is nobody cares about the work you're going to ask me to do. If I'm a roofer and I've been roofing and I've been doing, you know, whether it's commercial, residential, tile, shingle, whatever, if I've been doing roofing for the last couple of years, you don't need to tell me how much I need to lift. You don't need to tell me how I need to prep the job site. You don't need to tell me all the work that I have to do. I know what's involved. I'm not looking for a new job. I'm looking for a new boss. So tell me why you're a better boss. And that's gold right there. A whole bunch of people is not the way to do it.

You know, when we write job ads, most people freak out at the length of our job ads, but you got a story to tell, tell it. Why are you a better place to work? Why are you a better boss? Why is this a better team? How's my life going to be better? Those are the things that people want to see in a job ad.

Employee testimonials, for starters. Go interview your team that likes you and ask them why. Ask them why. And post it on social media. You do it with your customers all the time. Do it with your employees. And what's crazy is, we actually have some data to show this. If you take an employee testimonial, it'll have more views than a customer testimonial will. And you will close more business because customers want to do business with companies that have happy employees.

It'll do more for you than a customer testimonial ever will. Another thing we encourage people to do is to build a bench, build a pipeline. I don't know how many of your listeners have an email marketing list of customers, but they do a proposal and the customer's like, oh, it's outside of budget right now. Let me save. I'll be back in a year. Do they go on a list that you keep them? let them know what's going on. Why don't we do that with job seekers? How powerful would it be if you had a list of 100 or even 200 people that have expressed interest in working at your company and you have a company party, Christmas party, New Year's party, birthday party, whatever. And they got an email and the subject was, wish you were here. And it's a picture of your team having a great time and a quick little caption of what they missed out on. And then at the bottom, the call to action is join our team.

Depends.

Do they know people that might have passed? Oh, sure. Is it possible that they went and got the experience and now they could pass? Sure. We work with a lot of companies that do apprenticeship programs and whether they're formal or accredited or not. And they'll get all these people applying for these entry-level apprenticeship programs because some apprenticeship programs pay really well and they won't hire them all. And then what will happen is they'll put them on this list. And in two years, if that person really wanted to be in that industry, maybe they went and got an apprenticeship somewhere else. And now they come out a journeyman. And now you could hire them at higher wages and everything else. Like you never know what's happened between the time that they applied and you didn't hire them. And now, and how often have you, and I don't know if this happens a lot with your listeners, but we see it happen a lot with our clients is they get all these applications. They never get ahold of the people. I think it ghosted. They don't get them scheduled for an interview. They never get a phone call back. Why not drip on those people? It costs you nothing.

You meet that with our customers all the time, right? Like we have customer lists and we're like, oh my gosh, I am not hiring that. I'm not going to work with that Karen. You're just like, I'm done. You're going to remove them from your list because you don't want it back. So you do the same thing here. But I would say majority of people probably never even talk to the people that should be on that list. because they got ghosted or they never scheduled the interview or anything like that.

absolutely. The other thing we do is email marketing lists. So when someone's on your careers page, have a place to capture their email address, even if they don't apply for a job and start a careers newsletter or a jobs newsletter for your company. You're already probably doing a newsletter. So just do one that talks a little bit about what it's like to work there. We've got some clients that they'll set up a six month onboarding in their email campaign. And we've got 20 or 30 different emails that'll go out and it's all automated. So when someone signs up, they learn all about your company. You do the work once it's done. And you got a whole new funnel for getting people that... want to come join your team.

Yeah. So there's a couple of things to go into building an employee referral program, which by the way, I'm a huge fan, advocate of them. Everybody should have one. Most people will tell me I've got one, but I don't get a lot of results from it. And I want to help break that piece down. So I don't want to spend too much time how to build it and all that. A couple of things to keep in mind though. It's an employee referral program, not an employee retention program. There's a distinction here because what do most companies do? when it comes to rewarding someone for an employee referral. They say, well, you both got to be here in 90 days or you both got to be here in six months to get the reward. Well, so what you've done is you've basically taken the behavior that you wanted, which was the referral, and that's how you sold it. But then when it shows up, it really becomes a retention issue. And I'm sorry, but if you've got a tech and... their job is not recruiting or retention specialist? How is it their responsibility to make sure the person that you chose to hire is still there in six months? Right. So if you're going to do an employee referral program, make sure you reward for the referral. Now, if you want to reward on top of that for retention, awesome. But reward for the referral. The thing to keep in mind with employee referral programs is only 6% of your employees will refer for money or recognition. So this idea of paying a $250 or a $500 bounty for a referral, they don't work. That's why you never get anybody. Give them something that they really want. So I'll describe this situation for a second. Let's pretend that I work for you and I'm overworked. I'm burning out. I'm working crazy hours because you're short-staffed. And I'm like, I want to help you hire somebody. Do you want me to pick up the phone and call my deadbeat brother who's unemployed and playing Xbox all day? Or do you want me to call my buddy Jimmy, who's gainfully employed, got some kids at home. And so there's some risk if he's unemployed. I think everybody's going to want me to call Jimmy. So I called Jimmy and I say, Hey, Jimmy, it's Ryan. You know, I've got this opportunity for you. I know your wife isn't super happy with me for the last guy's trip, but I got a great idea. Like, hear me out. Hear me out. This is an awesome idea. Can you go to your wife and tell her that you're going to quit your job because you're going to come work for me? You come work with me. And if you do, my boss, check this out. This is the coolest part. My boss is going to give me 250 bucks. If you can go to your wife and convince her to let you quit your job and come work for some place that you know nothing about. That's what we're asking our people to do. We don't equip them. We don't rehearse it with them. We would never send a salesperson out without doing role-playing, getting them some training. We would never send them out into the market to go find customers. without equipping them. But we take our people all the time. We give them no tools. We give them no training. We say, go find me people. And they're just like, yeah, I'm not going to take that risk. Like Jimmy may not be my friend in six months if it doesn't work out here. I'm not willing to take that risk for 250 bucks.

I mean, that's what we're asking them to do. I mean, help me understand what we're not.

You know, we do a lot of work in the trades. And one of the things that I will never understand is why we don't give PTO to technicians. I'll never understand why we don't give them paid time off. I know there's some companies that are making that shift, but for the most part, there's no paid time off unless you've been there five years or something crazy like that. So imagine the conversation with something like this and said, Hey, Jimmy, you know, I know your wife's not crazy with me right now. Cause you know, we had that guy's weekend, but. I also know that she's been on you to go visit her parents for the last year, but you just haven't been able to pull it off because you got no paid time off and your boss isn't going to give you any paid leave. So you're going to have to sacrifice some income in order to go do this. And it's been wearing on you guys a little bit. Well, here's the deal. If you come talk to my employer about coming over here, they're actually going to give you five days paid time off after you've been here 90 days. They're going to give that to you just because you came over here as an incentive. They're also going to give me some paid time off too to help with me getting to spend more time with my family. Or maybe, heck, you and I can go to another guy's weekend. I don't know. Think about that for a second. Giving them something that's of value to the person that you're asking to quit their job and come over here. Take some of that risk away from them. Now when Jimmy goes and tells his wife, hey, got a crazy idea. It was Ryan's idea, but hear me out. You know that trip you've been wanting to take? If I switch jobs, we can go take that and I get paid time off. I got to be there 90 days. That's it. What do you think? Way different conversation. And hey, if I quit my job and I risk the livelihood of our family, Ryan's going to win. Now both people are winning. And PTO is cheap. PTO is way cheaper than the signing bonuses you've been giving and the referral bonuses or heck, even worse, the thousands of dollars a month you give to Indeed because you think that's the better way to recruit.

We like that one, especially if it's commonplace in your industry that people don't get PTO. We like that one. It's funny. I had a client a few years ago and family was one of their core values. I'm like, well, help me understand this for a second because not everybody likes their family. Help me understand it. Like, no, family is one of our core values. We want everybody to be able to spend time with their family and put their family first. I said, okay, I get that. So help me understand something. Do you ever have overtime? I'm like, well, yeah, we've been short staffed for years. Everybody works overtime. Is it ever mandatory? And I'm like, oh no, we would never make it mandatory because we want them to spend time with their family. It's important to us. And I said, okay, okay. Now, if I choose to never accept overtime because I want to spend time with my family, Does that affect my career prospects? And the owner looks me square in the face and he goes, Ryan, we want team players. I'm like, got it. So it is mandatory or I get passed over for a promotion. So the idea being here is if it's not normal to have paid time off or it's not normal to not work overtime or to select your own shift, I go for it. But whatever your incentive is for a referral program, make sure it aligns to who you are as an organization. Make sure it aligns to your values system. Make sure it aligns the behaviors. Make sure it attracts the right kind of people. Because here's the truth. People that you attract with a signing bonus or more wages or more money are the same exact people that are going to leave you for a signing bonus, more wages, more money. So make sure that you're attracting the right kind of people with whatever your incentive is.

One point of clarity I want to make about that though, Hungry, humble, and smart. I see so many people. They're like, oh, we got to do hungry, humble, and smart for how we interview people. But one point of clarity is in that book, hungry, humble, and smart were the core values of the company. So don't think that hungry, humble, and smart is right for your organization. What's right for your organization is your core values. So sure, we all want people that are hungry, humble, and smart. But if those aren't my core values, I shouldn't be hiring based on them. It should be hiring based off the core values. And I think that's the lesson that a lot of people miss in that book.

Yeah. But I mean, we had one roofing company that like, we got six core values. I'm like, I thought you only had three. They're like, no, we added Hungry, Humble and Smart. I'm like, okay. All right. Well played.

right? How to Hire the Ones You Won't Want to Fire. It's a short book. It's about 60 pages, short read. It's all about interviewing. And particularly the interview process. How do you get people to take their mask off and stop faking it through the interview? Because everybody can fake it for half an hour. They can tell you what you want them to hear. How do you break that down and get through them and get them to be authentic during the interview process so you know who you're actually going to be hiring?

that on my website. Absolutely. Or you can get it on Amazon if you want the print copy. Yeah.

Yeah, I think that the one thing that I think you should be asking is, is it really possible to hire good people right now? I think that so many people in the trades, are almost numb to this problem. It's been dealing with it for so long. There's this belief that it can't be fixed, that there's nothing I can do, that no one wants to work, that everyone's entitled, that it's only about pay. And we don't have time to get into it, but I can shatter every single one of those with not only the data, but with tons of examples of clients that have broken down those myths and found out that it is possible. You know, there are 150 million plus people employed in this country. And most people I talk to, they need to hire 20 or 30 or even less. Is it possible that there are that many people out there that if they knew you existed and they knew what it would be like to work for you, would jump ship in a heartbeat? And the absolute answer is yes.

You know, I love the interview process. And if you haven't read Chris Foss's book, Never Split the Difference, amazing book on negotiating and getting people to show up authentically. But one of the books that I'm a huge fan of, I'm going to give two if that's okay. Yeah, go ahead. We actually use a lot of principles in this book. It's called The Advantage by Patrick Lencioni. It's one of the few books that he's written that is not a business fable. And it walks you through how to create an advantage by having a really solid, well-defined culture.

It's how do you as a leadership team really... develop the process for identifying who you are, communicating it to your team, reinforcing it to your team, all of those things. It's a really good book. It is a book that I know a lot of coaches use in their business to help people get through the core values process and building culture and creating that intentionally.

It's a longer, thicker, bigger book. So I know a lot of entrepreneurs are like, wait a minute. It's a tough one.

But I do have another book coming out too later on this year called Hire Better People Faster. I like it. And I'll make sure to let you know when that does land. We're locking the manuscript any day now. So excited. But it explains our whole process. Like we're giving away everything. This is how we do it. This is how you build it. This is how you set it up.

If you want to learn more about me, you can Google Ryan England, and that's E-N-G-L-I-N, or you can go to corematters. com, which is our website, and learn all about us. But we work with contractors and construction companies, and we help them build a process. So if you want a better process for attracting, hiring, retaining the best people, that's what we're going to help you build. And we come in, we build everything for your team, and then we teach you and your team how to use it. So unlike a traditional recruiter or staffing agency who keeps all their secrets close to the vest, because they want you to come back every time you need people, we actually build a better mousetrap for you. And we teach you the tools. We teach you the ins and outs. We make sure that you have all the information you need to go out there and start attracting the right people to your business.