Hiring & Retaining Top Talent in Your Home Service Business

22-06-15 Ryan Englin

Tersh Blissett: [00:00:00] Doing that I wish I could. Hello everyone out there in podcast world. I hope you’re having a wonderful day. You were listening to, or watching the service business mastery podcast. I’m one of your hosts, Tersh Blissett sitting virtually next to my co-host Joshua crouch. Today we have Ryan England back on the show and we’re talking, hiring Ryan kind of found a pain point within his clients that he was working with his digital marketing and his marketing.

That hiring was a really big pain point. And as we all know, and we mentioned in the last episode, if you haven’t checked out the last episode check that one out for sure. I’ll link it in the show notes, but hiring is marketing like marketing. You have to market constantly to, to get hiring to be hiring good, to be the goodest at hiring you, you have to be marketing that you’re hiring constantly.

Ryan found, figured that out and really started focusing on that aspect in the business. And we’re gonna talk about several different things. Talk a little bit about core values and why they matter whether you’re leaving the core values, you can just print ’em out and put ’em on a wall and not live the core values.

Or for me, like people don’t come here and see it printed out on my walls. But we talk about core values a lot. And we talk about our core values at the beginning of every single meeting. But if you don’t live and die by the core values, then that’s completely useless. We’re also gonna talk a little bit about ATCs.

I had to think about that for a second applicant track. It’s not at

Josh Crouch: yeah, it’s ATS, but that’s okay.

Tersh Blissett: ATT ATS, tomato, tomato applicant tracking systems. And Brian, [00:01:30] Ryan mentioned a little bit about that last episode and we got a lot of questions about that. So we wanna bring him back on and talk about a little bit about that.

The core matters.com is Ryan’s website. So make sure if you have any questions, reach out to him there Josh, you got anything to add to that?

Josh Crouch: Yeah, Ryan said he may be getting, by the time he listened to this, the site may be new. So make sure you’re really difficult on him and tell him everything that’s wrong with his site.

Yeah. We’ll give you his email. You can send it to him personally. but no no we did touch on applicant tracking systems last time, which it’s a fancy term for a CRM for. Employees or pro prospective employees. It’s a, like a lead nurturing system where they come in. Even if you don’t hire them immediately, you stay in front of them and you have a bench.

Yeah. And it’s a super interesting topic because I think for the home service space it’s fairly new, unless you’re a really large company that maybe has, some corporate money and they showed us how to do some of this stuff. This is something I wasn’t. I didn’t even realize existed.

Tersh Blissett: That’s okay. Josh, we all learn something new.

Josh Crouch: You didn’t know it existed either.

Tersh Blissett: Yeah it is a really cool concept. One thing that, that Ryan did mention though, is that it’s not something that you’re gonna set it and forget it. You’re not gonna set it up like instantly, and then just let it roll. It’s something that you’re gonna have to pay attention to and mess with a lot.

Also, excuse me if I ha if I sound weird today I’ve had this kind of dry cough for the past couple days and I’m trying to get rid of it, but yeah, it happens. Some are colds, yeah, with that being said, I’d like to get started with a show before we get started. We [00:03:00] have to pay homage to our sponsors and the people, our partners who make this possible.

Josh, you wanna start us off

Ryan Englin: with Sarah?

Josh Crouch: Yeah. Sarah is a CRM. Program that really focuses on the things that matter in your business. It may not have all the bells and whistles of other CRMs, but it literally focuses on job time efficiency automat, automated, dispatching dashboards that give you the KPIs that are the most important to your business.

Instead of loading you with a ton of data, they gave you the data that matters so you can move your business. Sarah was one of our first sponsors and Billy is such. He’s such a great partner. He’s constantly bringing super valuable nuggets to the show and stuff like that. We’ll have a new episode coming out with him again shortly.

Yeah. But if you guys haven’t checked it out, I would absolutely check it out. Just see what it’s about, see how it could help your business. I’m not saying, just move and switch,

Tersh Blissett: but at least check it out. Yeah, 800%. And then I’ll talk about company cam company. Cam’s great because you are able to snapshot a photo, no matter what device you have.

The challenge that I have with my guys is some of ’em have Androids and some of ’em have iPhones. And then. You get that compressed photo being sent to me, to my iPhone or to, to teams from a, from an Android. And it’s what potato did you use to upload this? And so it using company cam it, it keeps all the metadata and all that good jazz and it can go across different platforms and you can share a lot of photos [00:04:30] with the client, or you.

Take some photos out and you can share a whole album with the client after you finish it, finish the job, but yeah, company camp.

Josh Crouch: Great. And you can connect that to social platforms you can do before and afters. There’s a lot of different things that you can do to help your marketing efforts too, which is which is really cool.

Tersh Blissett: And connecting it to your website, the carousel on your homepage. You can do that too, but yeah, company Cam’s great. And I challenge you to to give ’em a shot give ’em a shout and see see if they’re a good fit for you. But yeah, with that being said, let’s get started with your day show.

Ryan Englin: Are you looking for valuable business advice to reach that seven figure revenue mark, do you want actionable tips to properly navigate through every business challenge you encounter along the way? Let ter BLIS and Josh crouch be your guide in getting you to the top here at service business mastery tune in as they sit down with world renowned authors in business leadership and personal growth.

Who share valuable insights about management, marketing, pricing, human resources, and so much more. Let their nuggets of wisdom, gold guide you in owning a thriving, profitable, and ever growing business. Cure your hosts and Josh.

Tersh Blissett: Hey Ryan. Welcome to the show. Welcome back.

Ryan Englin: Yeah, thanks having me back. [00:06:00] Awesome.

Josh Crouch: We we had a great time talking with you last time. You’re a wealth of knowledge when it comes, especially this space where it’s a never ending cycle of needing people and questions and concerns, especially, with the latest where the economy, everyone’s trying to predict where it’s gonna go, and everyone makes they know where it’s going. Hopefully it doesn’t go that way. but that being said, we’re always gonna need people for. Our service businesses. It’s never gonna stop regardless of what happens with the economy. Even if it shrinks a little bit or expands, it doesn’t matter. And I think we’ve learned that through before the pandemic, during the pandemic, we’re always gonna need good people.

Yeah. And the struggle is finding them and attracting them. So that way we don’t have to go and spend tens of thousands of dollars on all these D. Ad platforms to try to bring them in, like, how do we get it? Where people are talking about us outside of outside of those ad platforms, like in their social circles, in Facebook groups and stuff like that.

How do we get them talking about our company?

Tersh Blissett: Let me interject something really fast here and gimme your thoughts on this, Ryan. So I I’m I have a guy that’s starting next week or yeah, the next week. And it’s the weirdest thing in the world because two months ago I was like, all right, I’m done hiring for the year.

I’ve got my crew. I’m not gonna hire anymore. And then one guy put in a two day notice, I would almost call it a week notice, but it was like the Memorial day weekend or whatever it was. And he was like, yeah, Thursday, I’m gonna be, this is gonna be my last day. And I’m like, oh, great.

Okay. Now this is a guy that I nurtured all winter [00:07:30] long, and I was like, Drug him through and lost money on him. And it was like, whatever, he moved

back home, but then all of a sudden, two new people fell in my lap right after that. And one guy that’s gonna be coming on at next week or two. I just.

Thought he was gone because I’ve been talking to him for a month and a half, two months now. And it was one of those things where it was like, we’re just constantly having communication with each other. And then all of a sudden he’s like, all right, I put in my notice and I’ll be there on this such and such date.

And I was like, oh, okay, cool. I thought that you weren’t even doing that anymore because it was so like, he was so not wishy washy, but it was more of a, like just a uncertainty there, but we were still talking a lot, but not necessarily about him coming on board with us. He was he was asking lots of questions in general, and I was just trying to answer ’em to the best of ability.

But I’ve never thought that I would hire anybody this time of year, because typically I say, if somebody’s looking for a job this time of year, it’s BEC it is because they suck. . And for him, I, it was one of those things where he was frustrated because he’s running maintenances all summer long and then having to run service calls.

And I was like, ah, I didn’t really think about that. There’s people that are just irritated with having to do certain things and. What’s your thoughts on that kind of stuff?

Ryan Englin: It’s I’ll back up and I’ll tell this, I run into [00:09:00] a lot of people that look at re resumes, for example, I know we don’t get a lot of ’em in the trades, but when we do, we see people leaving and there’s still a technician and they’re bouncing from one company to the next and they’re one company, the next people like, oh, I don’t want those job hoppers.

And I was like, you have to remember that from the employees perspective, they have to really enjoy the work they go do. Yeah. Job hopping. It’s because they’re looking for a good place to work. It’s not, they’re looking for, figuring out what they wanna be when they grow up. That’s not the case.

They know what they wanna do. They just wanna find the people, they wanna do it with. And I think that, especially in the summertime if you’ve got some marketing, some branding happening around recruiting, you can really find great people because what a lot of employers do right now in the trades is they burn their guys out.

Everybody’s short staffed. That’s a great point. They’re working. ’em crazy hours. The wife’s at home saying I’m tired of this. You need to find a new place to work. You’re never home anymore. More. They get to a point where they’re like I don’t have time to look for something new. It’s so stressful.

Just look for a job. They don’t have time to do it, but if they’ve got a relationship, they’ve been talking to somebody for a couple of months, they’re like, this is where I’m gonna go. It’s almost no effort at that point. That’s why it’s so important to always be recruiting and always be thinking about this is marketing activity.

Cause you never know when someone’s gonna hit that, that breaking point and say I’m done.

Josh Crouch: Yeah, that’s a great point. I I think that’s something that we forget, cuz like church said that was the common theme that I always thought too do we really want someone in June or July? That’s usually the [00:10:30] guys we don’t want.

Yeah. But in the same regard there is a shift. I actually talked to someone yesterday who last year completely went away from on call and he said he has not lost an employee since. And it was because they’ve started saing shifts and they started doing these other things.

Increase or enhance their culture. , it’s enhanced the work life balance. People don’t hate coming into work anymore because it’s like Hey, I know I’m gonna be done by such and such time. Anything after this time, we have someone else to take the calls. Yeah. And I do think that there, it gets talked about a lot, but I think there’s people that are scared to move into that because they’ve been doing on call for so long and it’s just ingrained like what about Mrs.

Mrs. Smith? That calls at 10 o’clock at night, like how we’re not gonna be able to get to her. And it’s if you think about it from a perspective of. Revenue and options. How many options do you think you’re gonna be able to give Mrs. Smith at 10:00 PM. Do you think she’s gonna give two shits about your options at that point she’s cheapest option.

Get me fixed. I’ll worry about everything else later. Or technic technician

Tersh Blissett: providing options at that time.

Josh Crouch: It’s and then that, yeah. If they start providing options, the customers, they’re gonna get. I would be pissed if someone was doing that at 10 o’clock at night and I’m ready to go to bed.

Like I just

Ryan Englin: fix it. I don’t care. How often do you get that 10 o’clock call and it’s truly an emergency, right? That’s the other thing like it’s emergency, but is it really an emergency Uhhuh?

Josh Crouch: I would say in Wisconsin, in a cold market like us like air conditioning, obviously there’s things [00:12:00] you can do fans and, whatnot, but when it’s really cold and your heat completely goes out, a fireplace, isn’t gonna keep the house completely warm, especially with pipes.

I would say there’s probably two weeks a year in Wisconsin where it’s like total emergency. We’re gonna have to have all hands on deck because it’s 10 below. So if your furnace goes out or your boiler goes out, somebody needs to get there. Otherwise you’re gonna have frozen pipes, something like that.

10 below that’s 50

Tersh Blissett: 10 below. 90 for you. Yeah,

Ryan Englin: I was gonna say, maybe you should think about relocating, but anyways.

Josh Crouch: Yeah. I haven’t thought about that at

Ryan Englin: all. No,

Josh Crouch: Stuff like that. And I think, Ryan, what are you seeing? You work with a lot of different tradesmen and contracting companies.

What are, what kind of shifts are you seeing when it comes to What employees are looking for the employers that are successful, what are they doing?

Ryan Englin: Yeah. It’s interesting. The pandemics really changed the way people think about work. We all know that, and I don’t wanna get too much into that, but yeah.

Job seekers have options now. They have options. It used to be in the trades. It was really cool. I could go to work. I could be out in the field and didn’t know my boss breathing down my neck. Like a lot of people like that. They don’t like that sitting in the office being micromanaged, all that stuff.

The pandemic made it so that a lot of people that a lot of employers that were used to that said, Hey, you know what? We can let people work remote. The trades have been doing this for . Yeah. Like it’s working for them. We can do the same thing. And so now we’ve created these extra options and when you’re the [00:13:30] job seeker you’re looking at, wait a minute, do I stay in the trade?

Do I go somewhere else? Cause now some of the things I really like about the work I do, I can do elsewhere and what we’re seeing it’s really slow. And this is the unfortunate part. So for those people listening that are open to doing something new now is the time to do it. Cuz you’re gonna be in the top 2% of employers out there doing it.

I don’t know what it is about the trades, but it seems like these companies are really slow to move and to. To make these kind of changes. And I know it’s all BR out of fear. That’s really, that’s a lot of what our coaching is like, why are you acting this way? And they’re like I’m scared.

Let’s talk about what’s really gonna happen. But I would say the things like PTO is a big one. We’re starting to see more people get flexible with paid time off. We’re seeing people get more flexible with shift schedules. Like you had said, instead of doing on call Hey, we’re just gonna stagger some things.

So that we all know things are covered. Ryan on that.

Josh Crouch: So flexible shifts, cause this is something I try. I was, I ran a branch. This is back in 2018. I opened a branch and I love this idea. I don’t, I probably heard it on a podcast or somewhere. I

Tersh Blissett: probably heard it on

Josh Crouch: my, on, probably on your podcast without even know it was you

Tersh Blissett: back in the day, back in

Josh Crouch: the day.

But I love I immediately love the concept. I tried some variations of it. Now. I only had three guys at the time. So it was a little more difficult. Are there some things that people can start preparing for to start turning their company into shifts or conversations they can start having with their [00:15:00] employees to see if who’s, who’s open to work, maybe working a Saturday or something like that.

Is there things that you. that we can help

Ryan Englin: facilitate that. I think you said it conversations, but my experience is a lot of these employers. They’re just, they’re not comfortable with having the conversation. They’re like, what if they say something I don’t like, okay. Would you rather ’em quit?

So I think having that conversation, but one of the things that I’ll warn you about is if you don’t have the conversation and you Don. Really plan for this. You’re gonna lose people because people don’t like change. Period. Doesn’t matter if you own the company or if you’re an office manager, a CSR or a field tech, it doesn’t matter.

People don’t like chain. So you’re saying

Tersh Blissett: if you just do implement it without talking to ’em, then there’s gonna be an issue. Okay. Okay. Okay. Yeah. I was thinking, okay. Yeah, that I agree.

Ryan Englin: But even talking to them, they may not like it. You might even talk to ’em and say, Hey, we’re gonna make this shift. And they’re like, I don’t like this.

Yeah. but at least now you get to have the conversation. Okay. Why don’t you like it? Maybe there’s a blind spot for me. Maybe I’m not seeing something or maybe they don’t

Josh Crouch: understand. Yeah. It’s probably more so they don’t understand. They like I just wanna keep doing what I’m doing. But I don’t understand how this could benefit that employee

Ryan Englin: down the line.

How many people have you had on your show that have talked about the tech selling from their own pocket? Oh

Tersh Blissett: all the time.

Ryan Englin: Yeah. It’s and it’s the mindset. They don’t understand what goes into all this they have no idea why it, [00:16:30] why you charge $150 just to drive the truck there. yeah. They’re like what? That makes no sense to me. So I think having those conversations and talking to ’em about it and being okay with the fact that it might not be a fit for every. Yeah,

Tersh Blissett: but, and if you had that conversation, like I have a technician that came on board and one of his things was he needed to take his kids to school and he needed to be able to take his kids to school in the morning.

And Instantly I’m thinking, oh, those would be perfect. We can start you off at the, at 10 o’clock or, that’s when your day would start is at 10 o’clock. And he was like, I’m perfectly fine with working late. I have no problem with that. My wife just has to go into work at 6:00 AM and so we don’t have anybody to take kids to school and I’m like, word.

Perfect. And yeah but then the summer,

Ryan Englin: That’s different for people, right?

Tersh Blissett: Exactly. A hundred percent. But you have to have that conversation, like you said, if you just assume that, okay, he’s late every day and I’m gonna fire him. It’s that’s, doesn’t make any sense.

That’s asinine. Let’s have a conversation as to why you can’t come in early or why you can’t be here at eight o’clock in the morning or.

Ryan Englin: Yeah, it’s so funny. I have a story. I tell in a lot of my workshops about, oh, when I was in corporate, I had this gal transferred, but to my team, because her manager couldn’t deal with her anymore.

She’s I can’t deal with her low performance, such a mess. I’m gonna send her to you. You either shape her up or ship her out. Like you choose. I’m like, all right.

I said down with her and I said, what’s the problem. She goes, I’m supposed to be here at eight. [00:18:00] I can’t make it till 8 30, 8 45. Cuz my kid’s school doesn’t open till eight.

My boss doesn’t care and they just ream me every morning for being late. To make an example out of me, that’s crazy. And she’s and it messes up my, it messes me up in the head. and it takes till lunchtime before I’m actually okay. Calm. I can go work now and then she’s gotta leave and go pick her kids up at five o’clock.

And so I was like, all right, we’ll tell you what your day starts at eight 30. She’s you can’t do that. And goes, says who? She goes, my old boss. I’m like, no that’s it. Your day starts at eight 30. She became a number one performer in the entire. Operations.

Josh Crouch: That’s crazy. That’s it’s crazy. How just get removing those tiny barriers will.

Cause not only that you’re working with that person’s schedule, they’re gonna be that much more grateful to you. Oh yeah. Like with ter she’s example. He, they get to, he gets to take care of his kids in the morning. Have a great morning. He doesn’t have to rush. He can take his time and get ready for work.

Then come in, then do his job still feel good about it. It works for his family. His wife’s happy. Like you make so many different little things in their life happy. So they don’t have to worry about all these little stressful things during their day that are gonna cause them to rush through a call.

Have the wife calling or the husband calling during the day back and forth because they have issues, because yeah. They constantly have to try to figure out who’s picking up the kids, who’s dropping ’em off, all that stuff. It’s very stressful stuff. So I think the more flexible

Ryan Englin: employers and now church has a guy [00:19:30] that can take some later calls.

Exactly. Yeah. People get home from work and the heat’s not on. They’re like

Josh Crouch: Ter actually and if any of his employees listen to this, he opened a babysitting service. he is actually gonna watch your kids for free during the day.

So you guys can make money for the company

Tersh Blissett: Hey, no joke.

We were talking to Danielle, putting him with the new flat rate at the AHR expo. And she mentioned that the state of Georgia has a tax write off for. Paying for daycares. So if you’re as an employee or an employer, if you pay for the daycare for your employees, then you can write off that amount on your taxes.

Nice. Yeah, it’s a benefit a win-win for everybody there. I’m not walking kids because. I don’t even like my own kids. I definitely don’t like your kids, but no, I’m just kidding.

Josh Crouch: so that’s a good point though. Make sure check with your state. Maybe there is something that you can help your it’s.

It’s a great benefit. Like instead of the traditional benefits, something that is unique. That actually helps more than say, health insurance when, the one time out of every eight years you needed or whatever. Yeah. Brian, are there other speaking of this stuff, like you obviously work in this every day, what kind of things are you seeing as far as just other things to attract employees with benefits?

Ryan Englin: Remember it’s never about money. This is rule number one. It’s never about. People use money as an excuse. It’s easy. It’s never about money people. All the studies show people don’t switch jobs for money. People don’t stay with jobs for money. You have [00:21:00] to ask why is that person open to talking to someone else about more money?

I just read a stat the other day that says, if you have a solid culture, if the employee is engaged right in your company, you got a good culture. They’re engaged. It takes a minimum of a 20% pay increase for them to be open to looking elsewhere. If they’re not engaged, if you don’t have a solid culture, it, people will actually take a pay cut to leave.

Tersh Blissett: Really. Okay. That’s a great point. That’s wild. That’s do you think so, because inflation is so new here, do you think that’s still the case that could possibly still be the case? Because like I have guys that are coming to me saying, Hey, I don’t know what to do about, I, I hear on talk radio about

inflation and it’s gonna blah, blah, blah.

We should be asking for pay raises and stuff like that. And what do you say to, what’s your thoughts on, cause I don’t wanna lose guys over yeah. Fear mongering. That’s going on the media. At the same time, asking for a 30% pay raise, that’s ridiculous, so what’s your thoughts there?

Ryan Englin: Long term. We have to understand that when we have these inflationary pressures like we do right now, it’s gonna change the game for us a lot. You’re gonna have to eventually raise prices that you can afford. To hire and keep decent people so that they can afford to live.

And that’s just the reality [00:22:30] of it. When you look at a lot of hourly employees, especially maybe not necessarily your techs, if they’re six figure earners or anything, a lot of ’em don’t own homes. . So when rents go up, that impacts their bottom line, everything else true. So from an employer’s perspective, it is something you should be talking about.

If you’re not talking about it is how do you keep up with this? Now? You don’t have to keep up with it. If every month they come out and they say, oh, it went up 8%. It went up 8%. It doesn’t mean you give an 8% raise every time. Cause cuz the way they track all that ISN. What’s gonna hit your employee, but you do wanna be thinking about it and you do want to be able to adjust.

If you like out here in Phoenix, for example, where I’m at, I go to a, we eat out a lot and we go to restaurants and I’m like, I don’t remember it being this much last time. I don’t remember being this house last time. Guess what? I still eat there. And so don’t be afraid to raise your prices.

I think that’s a big thing that a lot of people forget is oh, I can’t raise my prices. I’ll lose people. The people the customers that you lose might be the okay. Ones to let go of, and then you can afford to pay your guys more. I realized

Josh Crouch: the price. So we went grocery shopping last week. I’m going through the cereal aisle.

and a box of cereal, normal box of cereals. Like normally it was like three bucks, three 50, it was $7 and it wasn’t even the big box and I’m like

Ryan Englin: $7. What the hell is going

Josh Crouch: on? Got cereal. You’re eating,

Tersh Blissett: man. That’s some gold food there.

Josh Crouch: I know. I figured it was gonna shed all this extra weight that I need to get rid of.

No

Ryan Englin: [00:24:00] But on the other side, I wanted to say, so I talked a lot about the employers and how they need to be thinking about on the other. I think having the conversation with your employees is good because ter you got a company, you bring a guy in, that’s making a premium because that’s what the market demands right now.

Yeah. And this recession that everybody’s talking about hits and you gotta let go of somebody who you letting go of first, the

Tersh Blissett: guy that’s the costing me the most. That’s the least productive.

Ryan Englin: So but really what it comes down to though. Yeah. There you go. That’s what we all wanna do. But my point is that these people leave and if they’re gonna be making a premium working for someone else.

Yeah. Soon as that recession hits and someone’s gotta let go, who’s gonna be the first one to have a job. And the last thing you wanna do is be looking for a job in the middle of So educate your team on, Hey I get, I can’t maybe pay what that guy’s paying, but I’m here. I’m loyal. I want you to be loyal the same way and when things get tough, we’ll figure it out versus, okay.

Now I got too many people and I gotta let go of some. So I’m gonna let go of the guys I’m paying the most to yeah.

Tersh Blissett: The, so what do you say? How, like, how do you have the conversation? I know what happened with my guy. But say you have a scenario. What I, I went through this year where all winter long, I was bringing a guy long and he was basically training throughout the winter.

So he was an overhead expense for me. And then here we come, the first week of the hottest part of the year, he puts in a notice. and I know he’s moving back

home to Alabama, but for [00:25:30] me it’s are you serious right now? Like I could have been training someone else all winter long or I could have been training, bringing on someone who was more productive instead of having someone who, constantly had callbacks, but I gave grace to, because he was learning.

What do you, how do you prevent that? Something like that from

Ryan Englin: happen. I don’t think you’re gonna prevent it all the time. I think that, I think you’re better off training the people and losing ’em than training, not training and keeping ’em right. You’ve heard that before. Oh yeah. Also, there’ll be some loyalty there.

If he ever moves back, maybe he comes back. There are some opportunities there, but I. When it comes to those situations, you’re not gonna win ’em all, but there are some things you can do to prevent them early on. We teach a process called the pullback offer during the interview. And during that process, you sit down and you have all these, what if questions you get to ask?

And you have a conversation about the, oh, that’s cool. What if you decide to move? What would happen? Oh, I’m not moving anywhere. My wife’s family’s here. We’re sticking around. Cool. But what if something happened? How would that look? What would that work? Yeah. How would you come to me and say, Hey boss, we’re having some conversations at home.

What can we do? Yeah. And then at least you’re not blindsided by it. Cause I think that’s what hurts the most. Yeah. You pour into this guy and then he gives you two days notice and you’re like, what the heck? I thought we were building something here. Yeah. Whereas you’d be able to come to you three months ago and said, Hey boss, I know we’ve been training all winter.

I hate doing this to you in three [00:27:00] months. I’m moving back. You would’ve made totally different decisions and you would’ve had a totally different reaction to that. That’s

Tersh Blissett: true. That’s that is very true. In this particular instance I knew something was happening because he was going through a separation and she moved back and I was like, oh, she’s gone back.

He’s it won’t be long before he’s gone back as well. And so mentally I knew, but

every time I asked a question, it was like, oh yeah, we’re good. I’m good. I’m solid. I’m golden.

Ryan Englin: And it was like, let’s pretend for a moment that you’re not. Yeah. What’s that

Tersh Blissett: look like? And that’s what I didn’t do.

That’s where I failed. I didn’t continue that conversation on and say what happened. That it wasn’t the case. Where would you be at there? That’s what, I’ll definitely do that in the future for sure. Because that could have saved me a little bit of anxiety and frustration. Especially cuz the following week I was out of town for almost the whole week.

And so I was like, oh my gosh. Like it always happens at the worst time. Yeah. And it

Ryan Englin: was hot. And the thing I have to remember is the reason it’s such a big deal for you is because of the reason let’s say he came to you and says, Hey boss, I got cancer. I can’t work anymore. I gotta get better.

You’d being like, dude, go

Tersh Blissett: get better. Exactly.

Ryan Englin: Exactly. It’s the reason why and the fact that we get blindsided, that it’s such an issue. That’s true. And so if we’re having more of that conversation and I tell people to have a conversation in the interview, have that conversation.

What if in a year you [00:28:30] decide, you know what? I don’t like you here anymore. I wanna move. And then just to have that conversation. If someone asked me that if I was playing for a job in Phoenix, I’d be like, oh yeah, I’m outta here. It’s gonna happen. It was 117 on my back porch. This last this is stupid.

For me, I’d be like, oh yeah, I’ve already thinking about it. We’re already talking about it. Whereas might be other people like, Hey, all my, I been just talked to a buddy of mine yesterday is like, ah, my in-laws are here. And they are so close to the kids. They love it. We love them. We’re never leaving unless we leave together.

What,

Tersh Blissett: tell me this then what happens? Because we’ve had that conversation before. Like I try to have, I don’t have that conversation, but I have the. Hey, what do you wanna do in the future conversation? Because I try to pull out of ’em. Do you want to own your own business? Because if you do, then I wanna teach you how to do it properly.

I don’t want you to become a competitor of mine and then not understand what it is to mess it up for everybody. Yeah. And so if that’s what you want, then let me know and I’ll teach you how to do it. And then you’re almost like an apprentice of mine. And then you can go on and do your own business.

And every time I’ve ever. Gotten that as an honest answer, and I’ve had someone shadow me. They’re like, nah, not worth it. I can make so much more money being a technician or a salesman or something else. Trust, keep at night. . Yeah, exactly. Yeah, but then I have other people who are like no, I wanna be a technician forever.

I wanna be a technician forever. And then it is after the fact. Doing side work or they’re doing X, Y, and Z. And they’re like wanting to [00:30:00] get their own business or to create their own business. And I’m like, why not just tell me that? And I get it. I understand the fear of, oh, my boss is gonna fire me.

If I tell ’em that I wanna be as competitor, I get that a hundred percent. Do you. Do you think that someone would be honest with you? If they said if you asked, like what happens if you decided to move in a year or something, what happens if you didn’t wanna be here in a unhappy, do you not think since they’re interviewing, they’re putting on their best show?

They’re gonna give an honest answer at that exact moment.

Ryan Englin: I think as the interviewer, it’s your job or your responsibility to get that out of them. And that’s what we talk about in my first book, how to hire the ones you won’t wanna fire. We talk about all these different interview techniques and ways to get people, to basically take their mask off and show up authentically.

That’s what we really. We want people to be their authentic selves. We have a client that does a electrical contractor and he does a similar thing where he

brings guys in that want to start their own business. He’s I want that entrepreneurial mindset. Yeah. And I, you know what? You come work for me for three years.

I’ll teach you everything. Guess what happens at the end of three years? They’re like, no stay board.

Tersh Blissett: Yeah, exactly.

Ryan Englin: I’ll sticking around. I’m gonna do it your way and that’s it. And and even if they

Josh Crouch: do stick around, they generally will get, because they have that mindset to move things forward and they want to make things better.

They generally will give the company a lot of effort. Absolutely. Because they’re fully in because they, it, those are [00:31:30] the people that will actually end up doing their own businesses. The ones that really have. drive outside of working hours and like weekends, those are the ones that will eventually actually own their own business, but they’re gonna give you in three years, they can make your business awesome.

Like they can really help you solve a lot of

Ryan Englin: problems. And that’s why that culture component we alluded to a little bit earlier in the show is so important. because you have to remember that these people are giving up time with their friends and their family and the things they do for fun to come work for you.

That’s what they do. Yeah. They either giving that up and as employers, we often think we’re writing them a check. Yeah. But is that really, can you really put a value on the time with your kids or value on time with your hobbies and your family? You can’t really put a value on.

And it’s typically not what we’re paying them in wages, right? So we have to offer more than just the pay. And this is where values, purpose, and vision come into. Values are, that’s how we make decisions. That’s how we choose to live. It’s basically the rules, like our moral code. Like we don’t violate these things.

These are so important to us. Purpose is what gets people outta bed in the morning. Whether it’s they wanna make a difference. They wanna impact the community. They wanna serve people. That’s purpose. That’s what gets ’em out of bed in the morning, but what keeps them on the bus is the vision of the company.

Where are we going? And I think that’s what we’re really talking about here is this vision component. Because when we sit down with a new [00:33:00] candidate and we’re talking to them, most people are thinking, how do I pay rent this weekend? I’m either unemployed or I’m looking for a new job. How do I pay rent this weekend?

They’re not thinking a year or two years, five years down the road. True. Like entrepreneurs do. They’re just not. And so when we sit down at that conversation, they’ve never been asked those questions. Just go into it, knowing that they’ve never been asked this. So when they come back and they’re like, I’ve never really thought about that.

I don’t have an answer. Yep. That sounds good. It’s our job to say no let’s work on this a little bit. Let me invest in you for 20 minutes during the interview. And let’s have this conversation of the vision you want for your life, because here’s where we’re going as a company. This is the company’s vision.

The destination. I don’t know if I mentioned on the last show, but Jim, Collins’s good to great. Getting the right people on the bus. Like where’s this bus going? And do you want to go where this bus is going? And the bus is the company in this analogy here. If you’re saying, Hey, we’re going here and.

I, I wanna make entrepreneurs and I want to basically grow like home, grow my future competition. If that’s my vision for the company. And that’s what we’re doing is building a system and organization where we take techs and we teach them how to become their own companies. For people that don’t align to that, they’re like, no, I just wanna be a tech forever.

Great. You can do that here, but our vision is we’re gonna be growing our competition. We’re gonna take over the whole community and maybe it doesn’t mean you become a competitor. Maybe you become a branch manager, [00:34:30] or maybe you become a service manager. Maybe you become a field manager. Like you, all of a sudden are getting more.

An equitable position inside the company versus becoming a competition. If that’s the vision you have for your company, you’re gonna hire a completely different type of person than the one says, Hey, my vision is to put food on the table by the end of the week and pay the pay rent at the end of the month, which is employers are thinking right now.

Tersh Blissett: Oh yeah. But do you still hire those people who are. Looking to get rent paid by the end of the month or end of the week or whatever, if you

Ryan Englin: like high turnover, you bet.

Tersh Blissett: Okay. Yeah. But unless that’s the only people that are applying, like what if you’re, what if you’re getting a challenge of not getting people to apply who have the vision of becoming their own

Ryan Englin: boss or whatever?

That’s a Mar that’s a communications and marketing issue. Okay. But remember the important piece here is that needs to be the vision of the company. So if your vision is to grow entrepreneurs, you future competi. You put that out there and you live by that and you make decisions around that if your vision, which for a lot of people in the trades right now is how do I pay rent at the end of the month?

Or how do I make payroll this week? Yeah. If that’s their vision, if that’s their limited vision, that’s fine. There’s nothing wrong with that. If that’s the kind of company you want to build, where it’s month to month, we’ll figure it out. For some entrepreneurs that works, just realize that the technicians that you’re gonna attract with that kind of vision are different than the kind of technicians you’re gonna attract with the other.

Tersh Blissett: That’s a good point. Yeah. That’s a great point.

Josh Crouch: That’s a great point. Ryan, I know we’re running up on time here. I did want to like [00:36:00] briefly touch again on applicant tracking systems. Yeah. And maybe we’ll have to do another segment where we that’s all we focus on, like how to operate that, but can you just go over again?

The, just what it is, how it helps. And maybe anything else that you can add that you’ve seen help other contractors.

Ryan Englin: Yeah, I wanna start by saying an applicant tracking system is just like any other piece of software in your business. It’s only gonna work as well as you work the tool. So I always use the analogy of the hammer and you’ll give a hammer to my five year old and it costs me a lot of money, give a hammer to a master carpenter and it makes a lot of money.

It’s still same tool. Yep. ATS is the exact same thing. It’s the same tool. And I get asked a lot. What’s the best one. I say the same thing every time. The best one is the one your company uses. I just got access to a client’s ATS. And I’m like, this thing is so lacking of features. It doesn’t, they’re like, yeah, but we love it.

We know how to use it. It works for us. I’m like, it’s the best one out there then. Yeah, for me, cuz I know what these things can do and this one can’t do it. But if it, if you use it and it’s getting you results. Awesome. So I say that say the best one. We have a couple, we recommend for people that go through our coaching program, our training program.

But we help them find the right one. And it’s not always one of those couple but I would say the thing that they there’s two things that an ATS really does. That is a game changer. Number one is it allows you to post your jobs [00:37:30] in one place in the ATS, and then the ATS distributes it to the job boards for you.

So instead of going to indeed and posting a job and going to career builder and going to Craigslist and going to monster and going to zip recruiter and doing all and going to LinkedIn and posting ’em there, instead of doing those all manually, you post it one time in the ATS and the ATS sends it out to all of ’em.

Tersh Blissett: Does it does that information come back to ATS so you can reply. Yep through there. So you don’t have to go through Indeed’s replying, correct? That is a nuisance man. I’ll get it sometimes on my phone or on my desktop and it’s always in a different place and man, it takes me 15 minutes

Ryan Englin: and you always get the indeed email address.

That’s not the real email address. So you don’t really know how to email the guy. Yeah, so that’s the second thing it does actually. So the first one, it pushes all the information out to the job board. It’s the second one. It brings all your applications into one place so that you can manage ’em from one place and not just you manage ’em, but your team can manage ’em.

Like I know a lot of people are like, no, we set up a Excel sheet on the share drive. So we all have the same information, right? Or when we schedule one, we have to make sure we invite all the right people. These ATSs are set up so that they can actually schedule themselves the job seekers can schedule themselves and puts it on everybody’s calendar.

Automat. Oh these applicant tracking systems are set up so that when an application comes in, they automatically get an email that says, Hey, thanks for applying. We’re reviewing your application right now. If you wanna expedite things, [00:39:00] here’s our number to call. Now you can see the go getters are when you decide you want to talk to the person, you can just literally just drag and drop to the next stage, just like a CRM would be.

And it sends out an email or a text message. Even these are doing text messages now. So that text message says, Hey, we really like your application. We would love to talk to you. Here’s a link to schedule a time to. and they get to do all of that. There’s one system out there. It’s not the best system for everybody.

So I usually don’t talk about it a lot. but for the right employer, it makes sense. We have a couple of clients that are going from applications. So the time the application comes in all the way to scheduling the in person interview completely hands off the system takes care of everything, even.

Sending a text message says, Hey, we sent you an email yesterday to schedule. We haven’t heard from you. Oh yeah. It’s that automated like that process. I like that. It’s cool. It’s cool. But that’s a, system’s not, you gotta be a tech savvy. Yeah. I I was gonna say

Josh Crouch: You gotta know how to set up the triggers in the automations and stuff like that for that to happen.

Ryan Englin: Right. somebody on your, team’s gotta be a techie. And really into that, most of the people we set up, we help them set it up in our program. We help them set that up. And then nine months later we’ll be like, how’s it going? They’re like, we haven’t changed a thing, but it’s working. It’s like I said, it’s not for everybody, but that’s one that the, but most of the good systems these days are doing.

Text messaging, which is really helpful for people in the field. Cause you gotta

remember [00:40:30] your texts are not sitting behind a computer all day, right? So they’re not checking emails all day. Exactly. That’s not what they do. But a text message comes in. They’re on it. How do we,

Tersh Blissett: how does someone join that program that you mentioned?

Which one? I don’t know. The one that you did you talked about setting up the ATS.

Ryan Englin: Oh, so that’s our coaching and training program. Okay. How did what we do is we work with the employer for 90 days, Uhhuh and we train them on our entire process, the corporate hiring system, and we teach ’em everything from, how do you develop your culture, your core values, your vision, your purpose.

We do that with them, so it’s not just training. We’re walking through that with them. How do you find the right people always talk about, if you go to lake indeed with your rod and reel and go fishing yeah. Over fished. And the fish that are left, aren’t the ones you wanna take home.

true. So we need to find different lake to go fishing from. So we talk about that from marketing activities, like how do you identify who the right people are and where they are? And then we can move into automation. Cause what I’ve learned is that if I can automate this just by automating it, I can get you better results.

You do nothing else,

Josh Crouch: but you’re speaking our language now

Ryan Englin: we had one client went and I asked them, I said so how are things going? They go we’re getting about the same number of applicants that we used to get before we met you. I’m like, oh, really? Yeah. But we’re not spending 600 bucks a week on applicant on indeed anymore.

Like that all went away. The 600 bucks a week went away. I said, anything else? We spend [00:42:00] 20 hours less a week processing applications. Whew. Yeah. So

Tersh Blissett: that’s, so

Ryan Englin: I’ll take big number of applications, but save 20 hours a week all day. Yeah. And then finally we dig deep into this interview process. How do you have these conversations?

Like I talked about the pullback offer and the what ifs and these scenarios, guide them through, how do you have this interview conversation versus, we just had a coaching client the other day and he’s oh yeah, we have a conversation. I go. Let’s role play it real quick. It’s like a three minute monologue.

I’m like, let me define conversation.

Tersh Blissett: So how do we how do we get more information on that

Ryan Englin: easiest way to go to my website, top my website. There’s a banner that says register for my free. We do training in that. So you get a sense of what our, how our training works, but then we also talk a little bit about our program.

Okay, cool. So by far the best way to do that, but, and we dig into vision and values and purpose. And these, what if scenario, all this stuff, it’s I enjoy it. I geek out about it, but incredibly valuable. And I would say the clients that come in and do the work, the results they get are some of ’em are just silly, like almost hard to believe.

Okay, cool. But it’s all about doing the work.

Tersh Blissett: Yeah. You it’s all useless if you don’t actually put it into practice. So

Ryan Englin: I tell people all the time, I can’t wait for the day that a personal trainer is gonna charge me a hundred bucks an hour to eat broccoli and hit the treadmill for me.

and I lose weight. Exactly. Figure that out I’m in. But that’s what we do when it comes to looking for people. Yeah, we think we can outsource the solution, but you can’t.

Tersh Blissett: [00:43:30] Exactly. Ryan man, we appreciate you being here and sharing everything with us. As all way, can you, Hey,

Josh Crouch: real quick, can you drop the name of your book?

You mentioned it earlier, but it was said quick. Can you drop the name of that again? Just in case anyone wants

Ryan Englin: to read that? Yeah. How to hire the ones you won’t wanna fire. I like that. And for people that want a free download of it, you can get it from my. Or you can get it on Amazon book sellers anywhere else.

It’s a short read too. It’s only 60 pages. I know who my target market is. They don’t like to read long books. Th

Tersh Blissett: no, I don’t mind reading. I have long books. I like listening to long books.

Ryan Englin: This one’s not on audio book. My, my next book will be on audio, so

Josh Crouch: sweet. Gotcha, Ryan. I appreciate it, man.

This was

Ryan Englin: great information. Yeah. Thanks for having me. I really enjoy.

Tersh Blissett: I was just reading a comment from Facebook. I’m gonna throw this up there really fast right before we end this show. And I don’t know who it is that said it. Share your thoughts on that real fast.

Ryan Englin: I absolutely agree. The thing is when this is why values alignment is so important.

We talk a lot about values alignment. Their core values, the employees core values don’t have to necessarily be your core values. Like the deep, yeah, I agree. Core values be, but they have to align. Yep. Like one of our core values is always improving. We are always asking people for feedback. How do we do this better?

How do we get you more value that came from me? Cuz that’s one of my core values. But I don’t expect that my team has the same deep seated sense of, I’ve [00:45:00] always gotta be improving reading books, listening to podcasts. But

when I do say, Hey, I’m sending you to training because I want to improve what you’re doing.

Yep. Then they’re open to it. We have a client right now. They don’t have a core value of always improving. But one of theirs is we’re better because we can be like, that’s just it. And they’re actually launching Is it simple dollar Dave Ramsey’s course. He’s got a, he’s got a few of them. Yeah.

And offering it to all of their employees to better improve themselves. Yeah. To better improve themselves. I love that because they’re like if our people are better at home, they’ll be better at

Tersh Blissett: work. That’s true. Cool man. We appreciate it. Yeah, I know we’re at the end of our time. I, no worries.

Thank you again, Ryan, for everything. Thank you guys. Thank you, Ryan. I definitely, if anybody has any questions, I’ll put every, all this information in the show notes and definitely reach out to Ryan, go to the visit the core matters.com and sign up for his free free training course.

But yeah, with that being set up, you have a wonderful and safe week until we talk again, next time. See you.

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