EP268: Paul Sanneman shares how contractors can avoid these costly hiring mistakes

Thank you. I appreciate being here.

Contractor Staffing Source. There you go. You got it.

Okay, that sounds good.

Okay, well, I'm an old guy. I mean, I just said I've actually been coaching for 50 years. That's a scary thought, isn't it? I've worked personally over 2,000 clients myself as a coach. I think I have like, I don't know,100,000, some stupid number of hours, right, in doing that. And I was a coach for a long, long, long time. I basically focused on contractors because I liked them as people. I did other kinds of businesses, but I finally settled on just working with contractors. And believe it or not, Brad, the first, God knows,30 years, some crazy number, I did it in person. I drove around to every client and met them in person. And then somebody said, you can do this on the phone. I go, no, no, I need to be there. I said, I'm really stubborn. Finally, I said, okay, I'll try it. And then finally, so it took me a long time to learn that I could do what I did, coaching over the phone. And then after coaching all these years, most of my clients were small. They were between a million and probably 20 million. And the problem that kept coming up is I could bill them, but they couldn't find the employees. I can tell you, because I was good at marketing, how to get work with architects. I was really good at how to get more business. But more business doesn't do any good unless you have employees. So seven years ago, I decided, well, tell what I'm going to do. I'll find some really killer software and I'll give you the software. I gave them the software and they totally messed it up. So this isn't going to work. So I put a guy in my garage and I said, I want you to recruit for my coaching clients because they're not really good at using the software. So fast forward to today, I think there's almost 50 people on the team. We've recruited 4,000 or 5,000 people in the last several years. We have a really good success rate. The industry success rate is 50. Ours is 92, which is amazing

And our typical week now, we run through 5,000 or 6,000 resumes a week. We generally do about 1,000 assessments a week. And we generally run about 500 video interviews a week. And we generally hire 10 to 40 people a week, usually 20,30 people a week. So the reality is you've got to kiss a lot of frogs. You've got to go through a lot of people to find any qualified people. It just takes time.

to figure it out. I can tell you know, I will tell you, I've got a little list here just in case people want to do it themselves. I figured this out. I knew exactly what you need to do if you need it yourself. Okay. Do you want to hear?

This is after doing this many years. I know exactly if you're going to recruit for a construction. We've hired four or 5,000 people with a 94% success rate. So I can talk from a point of credibility, right? We know how to do it. Yes. So if you want to do it yourself, there's only 10 AC steps. First, you've got to write a killer job ad, right? Now that's way easier than it used to be because you just go to chat GPT and say, hey, this is my position, this is what I'm doing. And AI is actually pretty good at that. It'll write you a good, you gotta say, I want somebody, write an ad so somebody will quit their job and come to work for me. Because you do not want to hire anybody that's not working. So that's the first part, all right? Then you need to post this job on like 100 job boards. You can go to Chatsuby and say, what job board should I post this on? I'll give you 100 job boards. Now, the problem is some cost money and some don't. And some, like Indeed, used to be free, but if you free out, it's going to go to the bottom. Now they're charging money for everything. And you've got, you know, whatever, like there's a bunch of zip recruiters, a bunch of different things out there you can use. So you've got to figure out where am I going to spend the money to get the people I need. So you've got to, and that costs. Yep. Nobody does it for free anymore to speak of. So you got to figure out where you're going to spend the money and what job ads. And ChatGPD will not do that for you. Okay?

You get all that. She's at her job boards. Next, this is where you got a real problem. All right? You've got to respond in real time. Then the minute somebody applies, we're back to them in less than a minute. It's speed delete. Now. If the job boards were hard, how are you going to respond to 100 people in real time? It's just not going to happen. You know, we have a system to do that. And so we've got to respond to people in real time. Now, what's become really interesting in the last couple of years, technology has made it way harder to recruit.

I'm curious to hear about this. Yeah, there's two things that why it made it hard to recruit. One is... Remember way, way, way back in the days, when you wanted a job, you actually had to go to the office and apply for the job, right? Yep. Had to show up and knock on the door and say, I want the job. Now it's a click on a mouse, right? And you can apply for all these jobs and you don't have to have any qualifications in anything. You go click, click, click, click, click. So you can apply for 100 jobs in 10 minutes, right? So the applicant pool is insane. 90% of it's garbage.

All right. Now, the next one where technology has messed stuff up, Brad, is resumes. You should ask at least to be able to look at a resume and actually know, oh, I can look at the resume and decide where this person's in or out. Yeah. No longer. Because two things. AI can write your resume for you and just say, this is the company I'm applying for. Make me look good. Write me a resume. And it can even dock your photo if you want to look good. So there's no way.

Yeah, you can't tell anymore by looking at resumes and photos because it's all fake or it can be fake, right? And the ones that fake it are the ones you definitely don't want to hire because they're lying, all right? So go ahead.

It could be, you know, they would happen as you'd have, like, I know how that would work. I mean, they probably work really 24 hours a day in chief for sure. All right. Keep going. The next one is our secret sauce, right? Why we get 94%. You've got to do a detailed behavioral assessment. We've done like hundreds of thousands of them. And ours is some of the best industry because literally, Brad, I've done so many, like, it's called disc profiles. I can tell you the exact personality you need to do any specific job, whether it's a salesperson or it's a carpenter. I know what your personality needs to be, and I can match your disc profile against exactly what your personality needs to be knowing you're going to be good at the job. So through my assessment, I can tell whether you have the exact personality for this job, which you can't do without, you know. statistics and analysis, right?

It's called a DI, driver DI, right? Because they have to have being driven and have a lot of initiative. You cannot hire a conscientious person. They will not do a good job.

And then the next thing, talking about salespeople, the next thing we look at is integrity and attitude, right? Mm-hmm. So I can tell you if and when you lie, I can tell everything from if you're critical, if you're honest, if you're supportive. I can tell all about your personality, who you are as a human being. I have an assessment for that. Now, the problem is you can't change that. You can't make an honest person dishonest. I mean, one of the honesty questions, which is, how would you answer this, Brad? Okay, the question is. Your boss, who you really like, has told the client the product will be here in four weeks, right? You know it's two weeks. The boss knows it's two weeks. I mean, excuse me, the boss, you tell me, everybody knows it's four weeks, excuse me, and then he wants you to tell the client that it's going to be here in two weeks. You're going to lie and protect the boss or tell the truth?

Right. That's the right answer. But there's a lot. And then there's a question. Brad, do you ever tell white lies?

Right. OK. So if you say I never tell white lies, then you're lying. Right. So there's these assessments that have been literally hundreds of thousands. I can tell you all about your honesty, your integrity, which is really important because you can't fix it. You can change what people know, but you can't change who they are. So the assessment does that also. So you've got to do a really good assessment. And then we have an IQ test of the assessment, and it measures your mechanical skills, your intelligence, and all that kind of stuff. So by the time we're done with the assessment, we have the right personality, the right integrity, and the right intelligence to do that specific job. Some things I cannot tell. What do you look like? How is your English? So we have people do a video interview. Now, it's really getting weird as some people are using AI prompts for their video interviews.

They go, oh. Well, I don't know. I mean, we ask you questions and we try to get your answer, but sometimes people are sort of cheating. In fact, I had one company that said, look, you cannot use AI to help you with this interview, right? We have to state it. It's

12 years to connect you up with your idea, but that's where everybody does it, right? Okay. So now, then you do an initial video screening where you do a video screening because that way you can tell what you couldn't tell in the assessment, all right? So you need to do that. And then you eventually do an in-person interview. Then you conduct background checks. That's crucial. You call the references. I mean, literally, I had somebody who hired a bookkeeper who embezzled him. He called the DA. The DA said, don't you realize you got fired from her embezzled on the last three jobs? Oops. Oops. Yep. And instead, you've got to make a competitive job offer. Now, AI is good at that. You can go and say, this is the job. This is my location. Look at all the websites. What is a competitive? Write the job offer. Write the job description. Write the KPIs. It's good at all that stuff, right? And then you've got to make, this is really important. People forget this all the time. You've got to give them a successful onboarding experience. And people miss that one. So, Brad, let's say you've had a job for five years. And you've been a carpenter or a project manager. And you're going to quit your job and go to work for the new company, right? So that evening, you're going to go home to your spouse and it's going to go one of two directions. You're going to go, hey, honey, this is the best decision I've ever made. I'm so excited. Or I think I made a mistake, right? Yeah. You've got to make sure when they go home that they go, this is amazing. I love this place. And IAI is really good at developing a successful onboarding experience. So that's all you have to do. If you do all this stuff, Brad, you'll be good. Easy peasy. Easy peasy. No problem.

I haven't read that one.

Right. And like we at our company, we have 100% retention. And we have like out of the 45,50 people work for us,45 rough short. But we go through 600 people to find one. Yeah. But when they find one, they kill it. Right. But a lot of people go, oh, offshore doesn't work. They went through 10 people and hired the first one and it didn't work out. They don't have the right process. So we figured out, and offshore for contractors is good for like marketing, accounting. If we've done on a computer, that interesting story, I have one contractor goes, I don't trust those people in the Philippines. You know, I'm not going to do that. And then he said, but I really like this company, right, that does just contractors. All their employees are in the Philippines. Yeah.

The owner lives in the States. I'm going, dude. And, you know, you can find, like I hired a content marketing person. After the book, you know, what they ask you answer kind of thing. I said, I need some content marketing. And she's got a degree in marketing. A great, I mean, she's just amazing. Her English is perfect. She's killing it. And it's eight, I think it's seven bucks an hour. She's doing an amazing job. You know, a housekeeper for a day in the Philippines is a buck a day. It's a whole different system, right? Yeah, yeah. And so offshore works for things they don't like, a call center or a accounting, something you don't have to have the person here estimating. Offshore's great. So we can do either for you, but, you know, not a contractor's knowing, wow, I can have a full-time marketing person for what I'm paying my marketing company. Yeah.

No, we do a lot of offshore. Okay. But again, you got to go through, here we go through a couple hundred offshore, we go through 600. Because if we're advertising for position offshore, we get 50,60 applicants a day. And you got to go through hundreds. But when you find one, they're amazing. Their work ethic is killer. They do a great job. They're incredibly intelligent. I mean, the key to our success is offshore and AI. Because I'm using the best technology. with the best people on the planet at the most reasonable rates. That's why I can offer like full-time four-people team all in five positions for like two grand a month because that's the secret. So that was all you need to do if you're into it, but most people do not do that. And that's why they have a terrible, you know, that's why they've changed just 50% in the industry.

are. I mean, it's amazing. And they, you know. My VA works from 11 at night to 6 in the morning. She's fine with it. 7 in the morning, she's great with it. Most of them do. Because she gets to stay at home. She's making a lot of money for theirs. In fact, interesting, we just had somebody move from us. And in Colombia, I was paying them an equivalent of $100,000 a year, American, whatever that is in Colombia, right? They moved to the Philippines in the same salaries, $150,000 a year for the same amount of dollars. I think it's like $20 an hour or something like that. So it depends on where you live. In different countries, a lot of people make a mistake because they don't understand actually what you should pay people. They go, oh, I'll pay the person $20 an hour. I mean, in Columbia for a VA. That's insane. That's like saying you're paying a VA $200 an hour. It makes no sense.

Any kind of admin, marketing, bookkeeping, design. They're really good for that. So you should consider that. I think that's all you need to do. Now, I do have something I've talked about in the past, which you might understand, is I call it the sixth myth. These are what people believe, but they're not true that screw up hiring entirely in this industry. Okay? Let's do it. First myth, only recruit when you need someone. Most contractors think that. They go, oh, I need somebody this month. I think I'll put an ad in Indeed or Zip. Way too late. Right?

Yeah. Most of what you should do, and clients don't, I'm still fighting this battle with a lot of contractors, you should have a recruiting budget just like you've got a marketing budget. Yes. You should recruit all the time because you never know who's out there. And nothing's more important than your team, right? That's what your whole company's built on is your team. And one bad person can screw up the entire team. I'm sure you've seen that happen. Oh, yeah. So you need to recruit all the time. Do not just recruit when you need somebody. The next one, employees are expensive. I can't afford that. Well, you can't make money without employees. The more employees you have, the more money you make if you're running any kind of well-run business. So they're not expensive. They're an asset. This is the one, I tell you, probably my biggest fight. We can do this ourselves. Yeah. How hard is this, right? I mean, do you do your own accounting? Probably not. You fix your own car? Probably not. I mean... It just doesn't make any sense because it's a very complicated, complex thing. And to think you can do it yourself is just not true unless you've got an HR department.

Okay. And then there's another one, which I find an interesting myth, is recruit within the construction industry.

It's not true. Yeah. Because skill sets you can hire outside the industry. So I'll give you an example. Let's say you're looking for selections coordinator, right? To work on, you know, what, like you have a home building company or whatever, and you want somebody to do selection design, all that kind of stuff, right? I'll tell you who kills it. Wedding planners. They just kill it.

Because a wedding planner, think what the wedding planner has to do. They have to get all these sort of, I'd say flaky groups, like the band, the venue, the flower person, the cater. They've all got to be at the right place at the right time. It's got to look awesome and everybody has to be happy. Pretty much sounds like a remodel to me. Yeah. And that industry doesn't pay very well.

So we've gotten some killer people that were wedding planners. Also, some guys are running 10 hotels. You can probably run your business.

So don't look outside the industry. Who they are is more important than what they know. You can teach them stuff, right? It doesn't take, construction is not that complicated, especially from an accountant. Maybe learning how to do a slab correctly or learning how to, you know, hang a door or whatever. It takes some time. Most stuff in construction, you can learn if you have the right personality. So who they are is more important than what they know.

I mean, who people are is way more important than what they know. And you can change what they know, but you can change who they are. And a lot of people hire off resumes that are probably mostly BS, and they hire people and they don't work out. So, you know, that's why the personality system is so important. This is the one that kills a lot of organizations. People think I should hire fast and fire slow. And it's not true. Just the opposite is true. People think, oh, I need a project manager. I'll hire this project manager next week. I'll hire fast. Then he becomes the world's worst employee. Not bad enough to fire, not good enough to keep. So then he drags down your entire organization. And when I was a coach, my biggest problem was getting people to fire people they know they should fire.

As a coach, it happened all the time. I'm like, dude, you know, I mean, I literally have one guy didn't fire him until two of the employees were intoxicated and ran to each other at an intersection. I mean, it got that bad.

You know, you hire slow. That's why you recruit all the time. You be very picky. You don't, you know, if you need somebody in the summer, start in the winter, right? You look and look. The longer you have to look, the better shot you have to find the right person. And then I've had a lot of contractors say, well, I don't really need a project manager. Let's say they're a high-end residential builder, right? I say, well, what if I came along, I had a guy who had worked for all the architects in town. Knows all the architects, has a lot of subcontractors. For what reason, his boss did not treat him fairly, has a perfectly legitimate quitting. He could bring millions of dollars to the work the day he starts along with about a killer subcontractor. Did you hire him? Duh. Absolutely. Right. Yeah. But you don't know if that guy's out there unless you're looking. You got to be there the day he gets pissed at his boss. Yep.

Do the recruiting all the time. Yeah, do the recruiting. And again, hire, you hire slow and fire fast. And then we all have those employees. And why don't we let them go? Because we haven't got anybody better than they are.

It's like I don't want to do it. I mean, I've seen it happen and that kind of person can like kill a culture. I mean, you never estimate how much damage one bad hire can do.

And what happens, for example, is if you spend a whole integrity, honesty, showing up time, you have this whole corporate values and reputation you've built over years, right? Internally and externally. Internally, the people that work for you, they know and trust you. And externally, you've got a great reputation community. One guy shows up. He trashes the company. He's late for work. He might drink occasionally. Pick one. Can wipe that out in six months. It could take you 10 years to build it. Yeah.

And now it's even worse because he gives you a trashy Google review, right? Yeah, it was

Fired him on the spot. You should have like, so I'm going to correct. How come you didn't fire him on the spot when you knew he was the wrong guy?

That's good. But most people go the opposite. They don't want to go through the emotional trauma or whatever of finding somebody else. They don't have a system. There's sort of two kinds of companies, Brett. One kind of company I'm going to call a football team. Okay. You know, you've got to perform. You're only as good as your last season. There's scouts always looking for people, and you know you're there because you're good, right? That's a football team. Then there's the federal government.

So unless you do something horrible, and even then you may be fired, you stay on forever, right? So you got to decide what your corporate culture is going to be. Is it the federal government or is it a football team? And that's a cultural decision.

Well, I used to have when I was a coach. There's a fine line between being a nice guy and being codependent. And a lot of people define codependence as being a nice guy. They're not willing to go through the emotional or psychological pain to do what they need to do. So they're codependent. So they let this, you know, like my husband only beats me once a week. I'm good. So it's codependence. And they redefine it as being a nice guy. And it's not. It's their stuff. And they're just codependent on their employee. And they need to just deal with it.

Right?

Right. And so, you know, think about it. It's in your best interest. I mean, I have a rule, Brad. This is a good rule. And I'll ask you right now, and I'm sure I know the answer. If you started your company over right now, right, or a company's your own, is there anybody that you wouldn't immediately be hired because they're awesome?

Is there anybody working for you that you wouldn't hire immediately without a question?

I mean, you start your company over. Is there anybody who would go hire them without a question? You just hire them right back. Yeah, yeah.

Do you have anybody you wouldn't hire that works for you like that?

You need to fire them. Yeah. That's the truth. Yeah. And that's... That's what people do not want to deal with. Anybody that you wouldn't rehire immediately should fire because you already know they're not the right person. Yep. But you have all these, you know, excuses. You have what you want in life for an excuse. And so, yeah, but they're a nice guy. They worked out last week. I mean, my biggest problem in coaching was getting people to do what they know they need to do. I need one of the exercises I had in coaching, which was sort of funny. I said, give me five things you're doing to sabotage your business and five things you're doing to make it work. Everybody could list five and five, right? I say, now you're paying me the big bucks, so you'll stop doing those five. You already know what they are. It's not a surprise. You just keep doing them. Yeah.

I mean, like, you know, I mean, we have a fat country. It's not because people don't know how they should eat, right? Yeah. I mean, intuitively, people know, but they just don't want to deal with it.

B or C.

Well, they anticipate before you when they need they know what you need to do. I mean, I've got a team and they you don't have to tell them what to do because they already know what to do and they go do it. And so. If you build a team on eight players, it's a whole lot easier to run a business when you think about it. The most important thing you've got in any business is your team. That's it. And when you think about it, most contractors don't even have a recruiting budget. It's the most important thing in their entire thing. They just don't get it.

And the thing is, they're out there. You just got to go through two or three hundred people to find one, right? And so, but unless you have a process to do it, you won't find your A players. Right. Because A players are already working, guaranteed, and something comes up, their wife says you're working too many hours. It could be a lot of reasons. They decide, you know what? I think I really need to look, right? Sometimes they'll go to Indeed. Sometimes they'll go to LinkedIn. They just sort of check it out. If you're not, boom, right there, you lose it. You don't find A players by running, because you never know when the A player is going to be available. It's like there's no sports team that doesn't have scouts.

Absolutely. Right. Because they're out there, but most people have not sent up their business to find and hire a player. They set up their business to deal with mediocrity.

I mean, how many go, I can't find. It's interesting, too. It's sort of an urban myth, but you're disappointed across. There's two contractors, right? And they're maybe three blocks apart. Same market, same, say they're remodeling, same business, same everything, same market, everything. Go to one, he goes, I have so many amazing people. They're just killing it. I love these guys. I mean, I got people, I can't get jobs. They're amazing. Go to the guy down the street. All employees suck. They're terrible.

And obviously it's not where they're located. It's not the economy. It is not anything but them.

And you care about your yellow pad and a pencil. Go for it.

No, it's not going to happen. And I think, you know, leadership, think about it. How many contractors actually work on leadership? It's available. You can watch tapes. Now information is free. It's all free. You don't have to go anywhere. You can just look on your phone. It's all there, right? But instead of scrolling through TikTok, why don't you watch, I mean, I used to watch Jim Rohn, Brian Tracy, Jim Rohn, some amazing people. And one of the things Jim Rohn said is work harder on yourself than you do on your job. I think that's a great idea.

And so it's, but it's now there's no excuse. It's all free and it's all on your phone. But you have a choice, right, of what you can either work on yourself or, you know, do something else. And when I was coaching people, I say, look, it's all about you. I remember one time I was sitting in a guy's living room and I'm going, you know what, we were working on strategic planning and some, you know, like budgets and all that kind of stuff. I said, John, you don't really value what we're doing here. He goes, bullshit, I took off work to do this.

And most people are too busy making a living to earn any money. I've sure heard that before, but it's true. And so all these things apply to building a team as well as yourself. Leadership is an internal thing. You've got to be a good leader. You have to build a good culture. And then you've got to attract good people. And that all, you know, amplifies it like compounds, right? But it compounds the other way too.

Right. Well, I mean, and it's interesting because, I mean, there's no lack of information. You can't say, well, I didn't know that anymore. Let me go to AI and find anything. So ignorance is no longer an excuse or access to information is no, it's gone. And it's hopefully people understand it's all you. So if you want to have a better marketing plan, go to A &E and write me a marketing plan. I mean, it's free and it's accessible to everybody. And yet we still have a lot of failing contractors, a lot of overweight people, a lot of issues that are self-created.

I appreciate that.

Because it's the solution that's out there. It's frustrating for me because hiring is totally, I mean, if you have a problem hiring, it's all you. It's not the market. It's not the economy. It's not, you know, it's, we're a harper, so you have what you want or excuse, right? Those are your two options. So you can have any excuse you want, but it's a myth. There's plenty of high-quality, great people that would love to come to work for you tomorrow if you're just willing to be the person that create the system to do it. Yeah.

The biggest thing is we have a 94% success rate, and that's huge in this industry.

And, you know, it's their little button. They can just push it and make an appointment with me, right? Now, Brett, I'm going to ask you, this is a turnaround a little bit. This is an interesting question. So we are, if you go to AI, we're the best in the industry. If you go to, you can look at it. We are the best in the industry at what we do. Any kind of social media. We're the best. I get approximately, do you ever take 30 to 50 new clients a month? Every month, right? How many think you come from social media or people that find us on Google or places like that?

None. It's none. It's crazy, right? I mean, all comes from people like you. Because people do not go, if they believe in doing it themselves, they do not go to the internet. to find a recruiting company. And we're still there. I like being, it makes me feel good. That's really good. But the reality is it all comes from people like you, the referring people. And that's, I wish I could figure a way around that. I mean, it's frustrating for me because I go, well, is there something I could just, and I've tried, I probably spent, pick a number, two or 300,000 on marketing. Oh, we'll do emails. We'll do this. We'll do that. We'll go with the client. I mean, maybe if you're like, have a call center of like 50 people, it might work. That's fine. But you love a company like mine. It basically, you totally count on referrals. And I wish I had a better idea, but that's sort of what happens. It's all referred business.

I love construction. I've done it my whole life. And to me, what's really interesting is there's a million contractors, give or take, out there. We work with like a thousand of them, maybe, on it. Market penetration is non-existent. You're the best kept secret. And I keep trying. You know, I'm a marketing guy. I go, what can I do to get it out there? Because there's a solution and it's not expensive. But in a way, you're trying to change a culture. Like as Matthew talked about, it's a cultural bias that... One, recruiting companies are not worth the money, the traditional percentage of salary. And secondly, that I can do it myself. What's the big deal? I can put an ad in deed. I'll find somebody. We're good. And that's prevalent in the industry. It's just the way contractors think. And I've been trying to change that for a while. But hopefully, podcasts like this will make a difference, I hope.

we go. That works for sure.

I actually, the latest I read, they ask you answers on a bad book. I like that one. Because everybody should have somebody working on that stuff. And the whole, everything is changing with digital and that kind of thing. And if you don't get on board. that you're in trouble. And then the other thing, it's a little aside I'm covering now, but just take a second. Private equity is changing a lot of stuff. Because, you know, it used to be that, and I think it's due to AI. What AI is disrupting, I mean, if you want medical information, you're an attorney, you go to your damn phone, right? I say, you're an attorney. I just, my friend and I were having this, you know, we're trying to get a contract together, and he had his AI fighting my AI to come up with a contract. It was crazy, right? Way cheaper than attorneys. If I have a medical issue, I go to my phone, right? I mean, I just say I've got – and I literally – one of my people went to the doctor, and the doctor went to AI and asked a question like – That's not a good sign. So, I mean, and what's happening, all those industries, they're not investing in them because they know AI is just going to totally disrupt them, right? So what do you – if you've got hundreds of millions of dollars, what do you do with it? Well, plumbers, electricians, you know, the skills. They're not going to go away. I mean, they tried robots for painting and they've tried, you know, whatever, you know, it's just not there yet. But yet. Yeah. I'm saying eventually I've seen some, you know, with some, what is it, some drone painting machines, but it's not there yet. So all this money is coming in to this industry and it's sort of changing things. I say, you know, private equity is going to put you out of business or buy you. I mean, because they have cash and Google ads, it used to be. $10 are now $100 because they're just throwing money at it, right? They've got personnel departments. They've got all kinds of stuff. Now, that's the bad news. The good news is five years ago, you couldn't get three times your EBITDA. Now, you can get eight times your EBITDA because there's a lot of money and not a lot of people selling. So you've got to look at that if you're a contractor, especially if you're a trades contractor, electrician, you might want to build and sell in two years, three years because... There's an opportunity here I've never seen before. People are getting crazy multiples.

sure you see that with people you work with. I mean, they're just, it's crazy. Yeah.

you go. That's true. For right now. It still takes people. And so if it's information-based, do it offshore. Way better, cheaper, faster. If it's physically based, high here. But again, if I had one final thing to say to this guy, create a recruiting budget.

Spend money and time. And your budget should be, if you have a $300,000 company, you should have a $20,000 recruiting budget. Easy.

It's not something that you ignore and hope magically happens. So my thing is have a recruiting budget and use it.

Basically anything. In fact, we hired a babysitter the other day.

But as long as you're in construction, we hire, I would say a third of our clients are tradespeople, electricians, plumbers, HVAC, that kind of stuff. A third of them are remodeling companies. And a third of them are home builders. So if it's in construction, we even work for companies that are like, we're tangential. Like they have, they build, they do, they build, they do framing for, you know, they build trusses and that kind of stuff. If it's construction related and we'll find them. And also if it's basic, I mean, if they just need a laborer, we know how to find those people.

We do sales. There's nothing. I would say if you look at a typical, let's rest, it's sales. estimating, project management, any of the trades, anything in a construction company, we can find, period.

Well, it's like, I'd say three months, but it depends on where you are and what you pay. I mean, if you are in Mountain Home, Arkansas, There's nobody for like 500 miles in any direction. You want a commission-only roofing sales guy.

If you're in any kind of a market where there's people anywhere around you, you're paying reasonably. We'll find you the people because our job is to get somebody to quit their job and come to work for you.

I appreciate having me.

Let's go to Contractor Staffing Source, ContractorStaffingSource. com, and there's a little button there that says, Appointing with Paul, and you'll talk to me. I'm still doing sales. Otherwise, I'd be bored. So you're going to actually talk to me.

Thank you. I appreciate you having me.