How Owner Operators Can Hire Better

Speaker A: People don't want to work anymore. Like, the pool of candidates you have today is different than the pool of candidates you'll have in six months.

Speaker B: And in order to save yourself time as a business owner, we need to have a filtering mechanism.

Speaker A: You got to go to where your applicants are going to be. It's like you got to define who you want on your team and then you got to go work your butt off to go find them.

Speaker B: Your job are to go and put a compelling offer in front of the people who you want to attract.

Speaker A: So as soon as I hire someone, I'm like, that is potential revenue opportunity for me. It's like six figures.

Speaker B: If we tell ourselves that there are great people out there who want to do a great job, then we will go find those people. We've got Patrick Murphy on with Cascade Home Cleaning and qualified hires. Patrick, what are people going to learn today?

Speaker A: You're going to learn how to hire folks who are going to work for you in a blue collar business or a home service business.

Speaker B: This is awesome. So we met, I guess it's been about a year ago, and you came on the podcast, you talked about building cleaning business and then you got into the hiring portion. Then we did another one where you talked about your hiring process. And then since then we've worked together and you've come on, you've helped us out with the, uh, bear claw hiring process, which has been awesome. You helped me out with the hiring process down in, down in Texas, which is awesome. You helped me out. I think you've helped Colby out too, up there in Washington with his hiring process. So how did you get into this?

Speaker A: Well, it was a happy accident. So, you know, I was in the corporate world for like over a decade because I started out of school, I went to university, just a state school, and got my accounting degree. Then I got my cpa. I was working as an accountant for a few years and I realized that it was a safe job and being a bit of a risk adverse person. And I was, you know, I was coming out of, I was going into school and kind of in the time of like that 08 housing crisis. And I wanted to make sure I got a degree that was going to be business oriented because I want to make sure I had money like that my college degree wasn't getting thrown away. But then pretty quickly I realized like, accounting wasn't really playing to my strong suits. You know, I don't know if you've ever heard this, but there's kind of like two trains of thought there's like, you can round out your weaknesses or you can play to your strengths. For me, like, accounting was playing to my weaknesses and like, trying to round them out. But that being said, like, it was a bit miserable for me because I'm a bit more of a people person. Accountants are not known to be like, people, uh, you know, all the, all the time, like, people people. But with that, like, I ended up changing careers and going to Amazon. And that's where I got into more product management. And I was building out software and working with like, software engineers. And while I was there, I was able to think about, like, should I start something on the side? And so that's when I started Cascade Home Cleaning. It. It was, uh, a. It's a house cleaning service. It's in Bellingham, Washington, which is a tiny little market, like a hundred thousand people. But I've grown. I grew that team and I've grown that team. I still have it to like 15 or 20 people, all W2 employees, which is a little bit more rare in the cleaning space. And I'll tell you why I did that. But ultimately, like, after I did a couple of those things with growing Cascade Home Cleaning and coming from Amazon, I realized, like, hey, I don't have to work this corporate job anymore. I can just go all in on Cascade Home Cleaning. And. And that was about a year ago I quit my corporate job and started Cascade. Started doing like, Cascade Home Cleaning kind of more full time. Yeah, man, that was a long winded answer.

Speaker B: Well, you immediately, as you got into Cascade Home Cleaning, I remember from our last podcast, you told me you saw something and that was, man, if I can hire a cleaner, then that will equate to a good outcome for you. Could you share a little bit about that?

Speaker A: Yeah. Okay. So when I first got into the cleaning business, I was looking a lot of content online and. And I knew there was like a lot of good content around the marketing and sales side. And that effectively led me to this idea that I don't really run a cleaning business. What I really run is this kind of marketing firm. And by the way, we do cleaning. And so I think a lot of my business was kind of set up around that. Like, I'm going to optimize my Google, my business. I think it's changed since then to like, Google Business profile. And I'm going to make sure I have LSA dialed in and I have a good Facebook page and all that stuff for sales and marketing, but I have a tiny little market. And so ultimately, like, I The company I have, like, it's now effectively the top dog because it has the most reviews, it has the best reviews. Like we don't really sell or market as much as when people find us, they just call us and we'll book. So my real constraint became how do I have good people to go fulfill those jobs? At first I was running ten 99s, the contractors, and in a tiny town, like, you know, a hundred thousand people, I had effectively tried to talk to just about everyone already in that town. And so at some point it's like, there's no one else to clean for me. I gotta be able to train people, like, build them from the ground up. And it's not like cleaning's like super complicated, right? It's a, uh, very, very simple business. Doesn't make it easy, but it's a pretty simple business. So at that point I'm like, I, I got to like 30k a month. And I was like, I don't have enough people to grow this thing to the next level. And I'm getting enough demand and I can see through the competitors out there that this is like a couple million dollar total addressable market. And it's a small town. So I think guys out there who are in big cities, like, they got lots of room to run. I didn't have that much room to run, but I also was like capping myself out at 30k a month because I'm like, there's no one left to hire, you know, at least from a 1099 perspective. So I was like, I'm switching over to W2. And so I switched over my people. Um, I was able to like hire new people as W2s. And then from that point I was like, I set up a training program immediately. And then every single person I hire, it's like, I know I can sell their time through. So as soon as I hire someone, I'm like, that is potential revenue opportunity for me. It's like six figures, it's like a hundred thousand plus. Because all I, all I know is like, if they work 30 hours a week or 40 hours a week or whatever, I can take that, multiply that by their billable rate. For us, we charge roughly $65 per hour per cleaner. So if I take someone who works 2,000 hours a year, $65 per hour, that's $130,000 of revenue. So when I hire one person, I'm like, over the next year, $130,000. I can't say I can put that in the bank. But like uh, it's pretty, I have a high confidence in it.

Speaker B: Can you repeat that piece of here for the listeners?

Speaker A: Yeah, for every person I hire, I can take their hours, they're gonna work the billable rate that I, that I bill them out at. Multiply those together and that's the top line revenue that I can grow the business. I'm no longer constrained by that. So for me that was someone who works 2,000 hours a year, that's 52 weeks at 40 hours a week. But I, I haircut two weeks off. Cause typically people get sick, they take vacation. So 50, 50 weeks, 2,000 hours. And then you take that, you multiply that by their billable rate. For me, it's $65 per hour. And that is the number that I was able to grow the business for each hire.

Speaker B: So yesterday jumped on a live stream and I've been really trying to think about these businesses. Blue collar home service. You and I are both in a similar stage. What does it actually look like going from 0 to 1 million? That's all I'm super focused on right now. In its simplest form, what does it look like going from 0 to 1 million? And so yesterday I did the live stream on. It can really be broken down to assuming that you have your pricing model figured out and assuming that you have your ducks in a row on your equipment whether, no matter what business you're in. Right. If you've got your, you know, your back end business set up for, uh, cleaning, for land clearing, forestry mulching guys, if they've got their equipment, ducks in a row, it can be boiled down into leads, sales, hiring. If we don't have leads, let's go get the leads. Once we check that bark, uh, check that box. Let's go do sales. And if we're closing jobs, then we're in the equipment operating the machine. Leads are coming in, sales are coming in. And if we're solo owner operator in the machine, then we're quickly bottlenecked by hiring. And this is where I see a lot of guys drop off. It's like the people who stay at solo owner operator convince themselves that there are no good people out there. And you have radically just proven all of that wrong, uh, with working together over the last year.

Speaker A: That's an easy thought to have, don't you think?

Speaker B: Oh, yeah, yeah.

Speaker A: You see a lot of, a lot of people out there that just don't have the same drive as what you have. You're next level obviously, because you're starting the business and you're taking it from zero to one. Uh, before we work together, you did. You did interviews, and you did indeed. Hiring. Right. Was that all you, or do you. Did you have your, like, remote employees, uh, help you out with that?

Speaker B: I did have remote.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Help me out with, but. But the process was pretty broken. It's like everything else. You just go and you figure out the next thing, and as a founder, you're like, okay, I need to figure this out. I'm gonna piecemeal it together. And before you know it, you're just taking on everything because you have to first go do it to figure out what needs to be done before you hire the other person to train them. So, yeah, like, before you came on, mine was pretty broken. Like, I didn't have a. Another straightforward process for it.

Speaker A: Did you talk with a lot of people, like, interview a lot of folks, where you were like, there are no good people out there?

Speaker B: No, I've been convinced, Like, I'm a firm believer that we. We experience what we tell ourselves. And so from the very beginning, personally, I made it a point just not to let myself fall into the trap of, oh, there are no good people out there. I can see how other people fall into that trap. So when you ask that question, yes, I do see how other people do it. I just didn't let myself go down that negative rabbit hole, because I firmly believe if we tell ourselves that there are great people out there who want to do a great job, then we will go find those people.

Speaker A: Yeah, dude, I agree with that wholeheartedly. Uh, there's this saying out there that people don't want to work anymore. People just don't want to work anymore. And I hear that a lot now. It'd be easy to fall in that trap. But, man, that thing they. People have been saying that. They said that in the 90s. They said that in the 50s. They said that during, you know, the early 1900s. So it's like, well, if that has always been said and yet somehow we're a country of builders, it can't be true. It's just impossible for that to be true. You know this. But it's like, I just treat recruiting and hiring like a, uh, like sales and marketing. You have to. Well, one, you got to take it as seriously. Two, it's a numbers game. You have to go find the people that you want to join your company. You can't sell to every lead because there are some customers you don't want. Right. They're not going to pay enough. Their scope of what they want is a little bit outside your service. So you could do it, but you're going to bend over backwards for them. And I think recruiting is the exact same way. It's like you got to define who you want on your team and then you got to go work your butt off to go find them. Um, it's not magic, but it is harder. It's hard work.

Speaker B: So whenever you talk to blue collar business owners, home service guys, like, what's broken about the process? Like what's the first thing that you normally see?

Speaker A: Well, like you said, man, it's like sometimes there just is no process. It's like you're doing it ad hoc and, and as an entrepreneur, like we're really good at fighting fires and like seeing what's not working and going out and fixing it. So it's like, I absolutely need someone today or this person quit and that's the next fire to fight. So you just like scramble, you do whatever you can. You throw up the indeed post, you go talk to your friends and family as much as you can and you get it solved for like that one moment in time and then you like push it to the side and move on. Cause you're back to operating in sales and marketing. So that's, that's a big one. But there was a guy I was talking with who he basically he did, um, entrepreneur through acquisition. So that eta and he just inherited the team and inherited the old process. And the old process is like basically referrals. That's definitely a lever to pull. But if that's the only bullet you have in your six shooter for recruiting, it's like you're not doing yourself the service. And so for that it was like, well, it's not no process, but it was like you don't have much ammunition to grow and to get your, you know, your, your business grow through hiring more folks. So that was another one I saw.

Speaker B: Why do you think people don't have a process in place?

Speaker A: I think people don't have the process in place because it's more fun to think about sales and marketing for one. It's the more exciting part of entrepreneurship is like, I remember when I made my very first sale, I did like a, a, a fist pump in the air and I was just like, I felt so freaking good. And I don't know if I felt that way necessarily about the first hire I made. I don't know that I was fist pumping. I was excited because I knew what it meant long term, but I got that instant Gratification from like sale number one. I was like credit card number over the phone. I was like so stoked about that. You know, I think if you focus mostly on sales and marketing, you're gonna maybe ignore a little bit about the long term hiring that you do. I also think we have like a lot of good tools out there. Like indeed is a great tool out there. There's like LinkedIn but like a lot of this stuff isn't necessarily tailored to blue collar and home service business owners. You know, I think when I first went through the process, I basically set up like zaps hooked up to Google sheets, hooked up to. And we did this together, man. It's like you do the zaps, you do the Google sheets, you do the Google forms, you have all that like strung together, then you go paste it in. Indeed. Or Facebook or Craigslist. And it's like that is, that's the best we, that's the best we got so far. Like the industry, the recruiting industry, the talent acquisition industry, like it's very profitable, but it's profitable because they're taking like 30% of the first year salary on software engineers or lawyers or like even CPAs where it's like those guys are making mid six figures. And so it's um, it's just makes more sense that as a recruiting agency or recruiting tooling, talent acquisition, it's like they're going to focus in like the upstream of where blue collar owners are. You know what I mean by that?

Speaker B: Yeah, I do. So basically what, what you're saying is the recruiting business model. The reason like blue collar business owners or home service business owners at this point did not have a solution for this is because the majority of recruiting agencies out there or talent acquisition firms focus on higher level, like filling higher level roles, I guess like a software engineer at a tech company. That's how a recruiting company is going to make money.

Speaker A: Yes, I saw it all the time, dude. When I was a CPA, my LinkedIn inbox was just like every day three to four recruiters, hey, are you thinking about leaving the big four, which is effectively this like accounting firm, they work you like 60, 70, 80 hours a week, um, you know, in an office doing auditing or tax or whatever. But every day, are you interested to leave the Big Four? I got a role I can put you in at an, at a company. You're going to make more money and work less, dude, that's a compelling offer. You're going to make more money and you're going to work less it didn't take me long to take that offer, by the way. I was like, hell, yeah, that sounds great. But it's like. And then they got paid 30% on my salary and I'm like, wow, that was really easy for them. Like, they're making a lot of money for not doing that much work and they have a sick offer. Like, of course they're going to go focus on those people.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, of course. Okay, I want to talk about. Let's get straight to the meat and potatoes here. Whenever you came on to start helping Bear call, even whenever you saw the opportunity with Cascade Home Cleaning inside your own business, it's like, what the heck did you do? Like, where do you even start building a recruiting process here? Can you walk us, uh, through what you've built in the funnel in the process?

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, for sure. Okay. So probably the first couple of things is like, you got to go to where your applicants are going to be. So when I had cast, I'll talk through Cascade Home Cleaning, the overall iteration, but ultimately, like, probably by the end of this, you. What you should understand is like, there's people out there that you want to go have join your company and then there's like a regimented set of steps, like a, like a hiring funnel. It's a marketing funnel, but we'll just use it as recruiting or a hiring funnel. You should have this funnel set up and I'll just talk through what that funnel is. So. Okay, so Cascade Home Cleaning, it was like I knew they were on Indeed. Because that's your more blue collar home service employee job board. I think there's a lot of job boards out there and there are probably a lot of great ones that you could use. But dude, uh, if it's like 8020 rule, indeed is the easiest one for

Speaker B: most of the results to find. I want to be specific. There Indeed is the 8024.

Speaker A: Specifically what finding employees for home service business owners and blue collar businesses.

Speaker C: I recently got back from launching a land clearing business down in Austin. And this last winter, I launched a snow shoveling business alongside Bear Claw. And in both businesses, I've implemented Jobber as a way for us to efficiently manage quoting job schedules and invoicing and even collecting online payment. Why? Because it's worked so well for us in Bearclaw and it's saved us a ton of time and headache. So if you are looking for a software that can help you manage the back end of your business, look no further than Jobber. You can visit go getjober.com ownerops or o w N R O P s

Speaker A: And then so you get a job post on Indeed. And if you go on indeed. And you look at most job posts, they suck. They're really bad. Like they're not writing it like a, uh, marketing or a sales copy. They're writing it like, here's my job, here's what you're gonna do. And it's like, dude, these other recruiters in accounting. Accounting recruiters, their offer is you're gonna make more money and you're gonna work less. It's like that's the bar that most of these guys should actually have in the, in the blue collar world is like, how good can you make selling your job to prospective candidates? And so if you just say, here's my job, here's what you're going to do, okay, good, I'll move on to the next as a candidate. But if the job offer is like, hey, most guys who have their CDL are on the road. But if you have your CDL and you want to stay here, local. Hey, uh, I got a job for you. You should keep reading. And that's kind of, uh, okay, whoa. If I'm a cdl, if I have a cdl and I see that, I'm like, okay, this is kind of interesting. Let me read on. And you know, these people are not, they're not. A lot of these people are wicked smart. Like, they're just as smart as anything. They've chosen a different career path, but they're going to read on. And they want to be hooked. They want to be sold to the job. And so you need to put like benefits first. So write, uh, a writing a very good job. Ad copy is pretty important. And that, what that looks like is here's what I'm offering you. And it's all the benefits and it's the pay and it's like anything unique about that job here is who you are. So we're defining like the ideal customer profile. It's like, I want someone who has the values that I have. And so you want to hire those people and they're going to self select in or self select out based on what they're reading in your job post. Then you're going to talk about like who you are. You know, overall, like, this is why I started this company. This is what I'm hoping to build. Like people want to get on rocket ships and ride. And so if you put yourself out there as like a company that's growing and you're going to Take them with, uh, for the ride, like they want to join that. And then finally, at the very bottom, you bury it. But it's like, here's what I need from you to get in on this opportunity, and that's a way more compelling ad copy. All right, I'll pause there. You got any comments on that?

Speaker B: Well, you've already said it. It's sales and marketing again. So your job listeners are to go and put a compelling offer in front of the people who you want to attract to come work at your company. And notice what Patrick did there. He used a very similar framework, which we talk about on the podcast consistently whenever we're talking about running ads. What's the hook? What is that? First three seconds to grab their attention. People are just endless scrolling. Doesn't matter if it's consumers, doesn't matter if it's people who are looking for a job. They're scrolling subconsciously. They're looking for something to grab their attention. What Patrick does a really good job of, and I was blown away at this. Whenever you jumped into our industry, you know, sort of on the land clearing and forestry side, without having specific experience, the questions you asked early on to me whenever we were crafting those job descriptions are the reason that I believe that you're really good at what you do. Patrick M. Made a point to get to know who was on the other side of that screen for our business, because the person who's scrolling in my industry is probably a bit different than the person who's scrolling in his industry. And so if he can think about what the customer is thinking, what is ideal for the customer, AKA the. The future employee who's scrolling, indeed, then he has a chance at writing a hook that can grab that person's attention. And it all comes back to this. What does that person want?

Speaker A: It's not that hard, man. But you got to put a little time and effort into thinking about it. You know, as a business owner myself, I was like, I like. I, uh, like the sales and marketing side a lot more. But, dude, I was personally constrained and, like, forced into realizing that I'm not actually a marketing firm that happens to clean. I'm actually really more of a staffing business that happens to clean. And that was like. That was my game changer.

Speaker B: So you craft this job description. What next?

Speaker A: And then you're going to get either a lot of applicants or not very many. And if you get a lot, awesome. But you're probably going to get a lot of, like, tire kickers in there. So you're going to get people who apply. They're scrolling. They're just like literally applying for every job as they scroll. I, hey, I cleaned my house at home one time. I think I could be a house cleaner. Applied, applied, applied. Or you get like, no one and you're like, my offer sucks. Like, maybe I need to change and craft my offer because I'm not finding the right person. Can I tell the story about the one we had?

Speaker B: Sure, yeah.

Speaker A: For. Okay, so you were, you were trying to get someone and I was looking around at some of the competitors nearby. Do you remember this?

Speaker B: I don't specifically, but go ahead.

Speaker A: Okay, so they were just like offering a signing bonus, a pretty big size signing bonus to join. And we went through the process and I was like, hey man, we're not getting very many applicants on this job post. It's crafted in the way that I think is going to be the best way to craft this job. Posting, like offer up front. But when you are the candidate and you see these two side by side offers, it was like, man, that other company, when they have that signing bonus, it's not that they were in your market, but they were nearby. It was like, man, that is, I'm willing to move to that town for that signing bonus. And like that is another level. So, you know, if you're not getting enough candidates, you might have to reevaluate what your offer is on the table.

Speaker B: That makes complete sense. And that was, if I remember correctly, that one was for a specific, specific role that we were looking for. Correct? Like higher level leadership on the crew.

Speaker A: Yes, very specific role.

Speaker B: Now I do remember, heck, dude, I

Speaker A: offer signing bonuses for house cleaners. So you can do it at any level. You can make it up as you go. And that is absolutely okay to do. Okay, so then you've got, so you've got this pool of candidates. This is another like framework thing that I think everyone should think about and realize. But like the pool of candidates you have today is different than the pool of candidates you'll have in six months. People are looking for jobs for one of three reasons. They're unhappy probably with their current situation. So they're probably unhappy with their pay. They're probably unhappy with their performance. Meaning, let me say this, their performance at that company, meaning, hey, someone else got promoted and now I'm not, I'm, I'm okay with my pay, but that person got the title over me and that makes me unhappy. They got the promotion over me. You know, whatever it is, they're not happy with the management. So they're unhappy with their pay, they're unhappy with their management for making some decision. Maybe the management management changed or they're unhappy with the location. And so that pool of candidates sitting there at that moment in time is going to be different than the pool of candidates in six months. So when you have this job, when you have a business, you always need to have a button seat to do the work and actually go fulfill the job. So my philosophy is always on recruiting. I don't know when the best talent is going to get unhappy in their current situation and want to look for a job. So I am like, I will always have this job posted because if a, a player comes around, they're not here in six months. So I need to make sure I am tapped into the market at all points in time because their window of looking and my window of having a job up need to overlap perfectly. The smaller I have my job up, the less advantageous it is for me to find that person. They, they might be looking here, but my job app is here and then I turn it off and it goes away and then I never find them.

Speaker B: So simply put or stated differently, your recommendation is once you get a job posting that's has a good offer, it's recruiting people. We should be recruiting all the time because we never know when that a player is going to come on.

Speaker A: Yeah, stolen from Amazon. They call it evergreen recruiting. An evergreen job post. And you may have heard about this even in the news. Like they'll say like fake job posts are out there where it's like not really actively, there's not actually a role open. But they have this job out there that does happen and I do it at my company because I will actually hire those people. I always have the job open and I actually will hire those people. The reason I uh, the reason that that is an awesome strategy is because if you ever lose someone, you have a pipeline of candidates still inbound if you want to grow your business, if some big job comes your way. We just did a quote for a um, apartment complex move out. It's 160 units. I did the math, it was going to be like 40,000 hours worth of work, which is like a lot of people. But they want it done in a three week time span. Like I need people today if I want to bid on that job. Like I can't dial up a hiring funnel that quickly. You know how it is. It's like in sales and marketing or in anything, you can turn it on, but you got to get some momentum behind it. You got to, like, start the people in the top of the funnel and then you got to work them through. And so that takes a little bit of time. So always on. It helps in that way as well. Okay, so you got this pool of people. Let me talk through the first step then. If you've got the people, you've got them all. Uh, actually with a good offer now you've got the tire kickers. And so to me, it's like we are going to. I'm going to like, give them the test with the answers and make it easy for them and I'm going to make it as straightforward as possible. I want them to succeed. There's no trick questions in the recruiting process. So I am like, here are the steps you're going to follow. You have to set up these interviews, you have to do this stuff. If you can do all of these things, like, amazing, come join the team. And so it's effectively, I would call it not a qualification process, like sales. I would call it a disqualification process. And it's not a. It's nothing but unforced errors. If they have an unforced error on their side, then that's when they get disqualified. So for all these people that are like tire kickers, the very first thing I do is I say, hey, if you really want the job, come to my website and apply on my career form. And like, you do that on your site as well. But it basically pulls the people off of Indeed who are just scrolling and if they're really interested, they're going to come through to your job, post on or your job form on your website and like, go through there. Indeed is great, but like 90% of the people are not really all that interested in your specific job. They're just interested in a job. So to get the 10% of people who are, like, more interested, you can disqualify all those other people. Just take one extra step. One step. Come to my website. You can disqualify all these people who are not really that interested. Then once you get there, you know, we do some screener questions. You can, you can hit them with like the interview link and just say, self schedule the interview. And that's what I do at Cascade. It's like self schedule an interview. So I used a calendar. There's Cal. I know you have something through. Remind me the name. What is it called?

Speaker B: Go High Level.

Speaker A: Is it Go High Level? Okay, so through High Level, you like got your interview form and all people have to do is show up on time and talk. That's all they got to do. They got to show up on time, chat for 10 to 15 minutes, and then we'll like, figure out is it a good fit. Here's what we're looking for. We're building this puzzle. Are you that type of puzzle piece that fits? Is this really what you want? And for, uh, me, I'm like going into some specific interview questions, but you got to at least get that filter down there to disqualify the people who are like, tire kicking.

Speaker B: And this is big.

Speaker A: Yeah, this is. I mean, you're going to save yourself a lot of time if you. Dude, uh, when I first was doing Cascade, I was on indeed every night after 10pm Just like looking through hundreds of these people and I'm like, man, why are there so many applicants that are just like pressing apply on this? And it was really tiresome. It made hiring a lot harder than it had to be.

Speaker B: So for the listeners out there, just to recap what Patrick is saying, indeed is a great spot to go find talent for hiring field crew or, uh, people who are going to work for blue collar or home service business. When you get your offer right, an attractive offer, you're going to have a lot of people who apply. And in order to save yourself time as a business owner, we need to have a filtering mechanism. And what Patrick is saying, I'll repeat this back, make sure I have it correct. You're recommending that at the very bottom of the interview. Excuse me, at the very bottom of the job posting, we have some sort of piece writing that makes them take a next step on their own to show them that they're interested. And what you're recommending is, hey, go to this website, fill out this form and apply there. And just by doing that, let's say you had 100 applicants on Indeed. What would be a rough percentage of people who are actually going to, to go do that?

Speaker A: Depends on how compelling the offer is and like, kind of who's in the market at the time. But like, honestly, 10 to 15%.

Speaker B: Okay, so you just saved yourself. You're now only interviewing 10 to 15% of 100 people or 10 or 10 or 15 screen. Now we have a step two on that qualification process which you and I have talked about before. But what are some other filtering mechanisms that you can do to get people to make sure that you're only spending time with the qualified piece?

Speaker A: Yeah, dude. And, uh, just to, uh, hammer in on that point, it's not 10 to 15 random people out of that a hundred, it's the 10 to 15 people who want the job because it's your company and, like, are really, really interested. So these are like, these would be called hot leads, you know what I mean? It's like they are ready and you're not getting like 80 of people who are like, which job was this again? Are we working at Safeway? It's like, no, no, this is, you know, this is bear claw. So it's like, you know, you do filter out a lot of the people who are not really interested. Okay, so when I do the questions then on the first round, and this is like, dude, the thing about this is like, I am just trying to bring the Amazon process, the rigor behind what big tech companies do to blue collar business and home service business owners. So these are a lot of these things I've taken from my time at Amazon. And, uh, there, you know, I'm hiring for highly skilled workers, people who have advanced degrees from college and have been in the corporate working world. But even those people, they're doing things called phone screens. A 15 minute call just to understand is this even a viable path forward. And so that very first phone screen, it's like, I want to push on them. Why do you want this job? Why are you leaving your last job? And again, I'm coming back to three things. Like, are you happy with your pay? Is that your problem? You don't like your management right now, the location is bad. What's going on with them? You get stories, but they generally fall into those three buckets. And if they don't fall in those three buckets, you might have red flags or like warning signs of like, what is actually going on here. Like, do they really want this job or are they kind of like, you know, uh, a tourist looking, you know, not window shopping for a job, but people will come to you and they'll, and they'll tell you, like, I'm really unhappy with my pay, I think I'm worth more. You go, okay, great. What are you looking for? What's your wage expectation? Why do you, what do you think you're worth? Whatever you want to say. And they'll tell you right off the bat you have to come in with like, what am I willing to pay? And so at Amazon, they have pay bands. I don't know that a lot of, like cleaning business owners have pay bands, but I have a pay band. It effectively means I have a cleaner starting at, let's call it $19.50. But I'm willing to go up to, to $21 to get someone who says, hey my, I really think I should be making 21. So am I willing to turn down that candidate just because I think my starting pay is 1950 but they want 21. No, no. I built myself in the flexibility to be able to do that. Most like blue collar roles, I think they have this idea of like everyone at this role gets paid 25 an hour and you're going to come in 25 and when someone asks for 28 now you've like kind of backed yourself into a corner. So when you talk about pay, you should have a pay band coming in. But they're going to tell you what they think they're worth. So that's like number one. But those other screener questions is of course like bad management. And you got to drill into that, well, what does bad management mean? Because maybe I'm doing something that you don't like and we should talk about it. And they go, well the hours are really variable. You go hey, I hate to say this but in house cleaning it's variable hours. Like we have clients, we don't have clients. If your client cancels on a Tuesday, like I may not be able to get you out still. And so you should talk about that and just be straightforward about all the things that they may not like about the job because, because those are the disqualifications you're trying to find people self select in.

Speaker C: Stryker Digital specializes in SEO services specifically for local service businesses. Bod and Andy, the two co founders have helped me get Bearclaw Land services to the number one search result on Google inside my state for my specific search term. If you want to learn more visit strykerdigital.com that's s t r y k

Speaker B: e r-digital.com we've got job description offer self select for the disqualification by getting them to go to the website and uh fill out a form. Then we have a self select schedule a time for a first round phone screen. Is that correct?

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: And then process wise after the first round phone screen let's zoom back out to the high level. We'll take people through the process and then we'll come back to first round phone screen here.

Speaker A: So what are we asking the first round phone screen?

Speaker B: So uh, what happens after the first round phone screen?

Speaker A: We are going to ask them screener questions. So that is the first round phone screen. And then if we're happy with them, we are, we are inclined to move them forward in the process. We are going to move them To a second round interview. If we are not inclined, we are going to tell them, hey, best of luck in your search. It's not a good fit at this time. If we move them forward in the process, we basically ask them to self schedule a second round interview. So again they have to take the effort to press the button to go show up on time to a meeting that they've put on their own calendar.

Speaker B: See this is something that you've, I've heard you say multiple times. I want you to repeat that like which part? What, what do they have to do?

Speaker A: They have to self select in to actually show up on time for that meeting.

Speaker B: What are you, what are you paying attention to at that point?

Speaker A: Well, at that point it's like our second round folks, if they are late, if they're not ready for that call, like you know that, you know you get on these phone calls sometimes and they're like at the grocery store and you can hear like clean up in aisle seven. And you're like, do you want this job? Like why are you grocery shopping? You put this on your calendar for this day at this time. Like you should take this a little bit more seriously. And so for me that I'm looking for stuff like as simple as what are, what is their environment, how seriously are they taking this? And then the second round interview is typically going to be at a high level, like more technical based questions. So before if we're asking screener questions which are around, um, like let's match our opportunity to what they want and make sure that they can move forward. Like do they have the proficiency that we're looking for at a high level. Then we move them to the second round which is like technical details, like harder questions. In my world, a hard question looks like, tell me the last time you cleaned deep cleaned an oven, what products did you use and how did you do it? So they have to be able to name the products, talk through their process. It's like if you've never cleaned an oven, you don't have the answer to that question. And so in your world it's a different question, but it's like still a technical based question. And then typically it's like uh, behavioral based questions. So like tell me about a time and it's like you want to hear what they've done in the past. Generally past performance is the best predictor for future success. So if you've done it before, awesome. I want to hear about that experience. I don't know how you're going to act in the field. But if you've got a time that you could tell me about that's specific, like I've got a pretty good idea about what you're going to do in the field.

Speaker B: Okay, what's next in um, the process after that?

Speaker A: We typically do like reference checks and background checks. So that is like do you have people that will vouch for you that are the best current or former co workers you've ever worked with? Because if you don't have anyone to vouch for you, it's like that's a little bit of a warning side red flag. These people are not always like easy to get on the phone. So it's not like a deal breaker by any means. But it's like if they can't come up with a couple of names, it's like did you burn all your bridges at your last companies like that that should be something that you have. And then the background check, it's like, you know, we're going into homes, um, if you have company vehicles and you need it for making sure they don't have a DUI or anything and can get them on your insurance, it's like you got to run these background checks checks to make sure that they're actually um, going to be able to like go into folks homes comfortably or drive the vehicles at your company.

Speaker B: And then from there, after that, from

Speaker A: there I do an on the job test. And so basically that's a test clean. And so we send, I send them into my buddy's house, he gets his house cleaned for free at least once every other week. We're hiring so many people.

Speaker B: That's a great idea.

Speaker A: Yeah. Uh, and so they go in and they do the test clean and we actually see like okay, great, you've talked the talk but can you walk the walk? You've. And so I still, even at that point, man, not very long ago, I still had someone no show to their test clean. They've gone through a first round, they went through all those friction steps you know, they make. They jumped all the hoops and they still didn't show up for the test clean. And to me, dude, that's a blessing in disguise. That might feel frustrating at the moment. How could they not show up? They've done all this other work. But that's a blessing in disguise because what if I hired them and, and told this client Julie that hey, your cleaner is going to be out there at 9:00am and then Julie calls me at 9:05, where's the cleaner? No show, no call. I Don't know what is going on. You know, it's better that I get that addressed during a test clean than having that actually in the field ruining our reputation. I do an on the job test. I know another guy who like has coffee with them and brings them out to the machine to make sure they know how to operate it, but effectively, like, you know, a little bit of a, of a final check there. And then once that's done, the level of confidence you should have should be so high that you're going to give them the offer letter to actually go through and have them join the team. What that offer looks like is actually a two part thing. The first is a verbal offer. Here's what I'm going to offer you. I'm going to offer you this role at this pay start date on this date. And at that moment I'm looking for verbal cues or physical cues about why they might not take that job. So if I say I'm going to offer you a lead, a uh, lead cleaner position at 26 an hour starting on the 15th, and they look at me like this, it's like, oh, okay, something's not right there. You know, why aren't they going to take the job? So I call it out. Don't. You can't shy away from that stuff. You got to say like, what's going on? Like, why are you not so excited to have this job offer in hand? And they go, I a vacation planned, Is it okay if I Start the 21st? No problem. Start the 21st, you know, but you got to figure out, is it the pay, is the title, is it the start date, what's going on with them? And once you get that verbal offer all figured out and they're excited, you get them the written offer as fast as you can and you have them sign the piece of paper. Because once they sign the piece of paper, like you're mentally locked in. Not like they could always back out, but you're basically mentally locked down if you've signed the paper. I'm joining this company at this pay with this title on this date. That's going to happen. It's going to happen at that point.

Speaker B: I love it. I heard this last week because I know that you are. You're helping some of the guys in our accelerator program, uh, with their hiring. And I heard one of the guys say, yeah, Patrick recommended that I get the offer out as soon as I can. And I love it because we literally just talked about this yesterday in relation to sales and marketing. And I've tried to simplify our sales process. Whenever we're talking about it, it's like, if we just call leads fast books, fast site visits, and send fast quotes, we will get more than the other people in the market. And so I love your recommendation of send fast quotes. Now, we've got a couple more minutes here. Let's. Let's put a cap on five so that we have enough time. What I want to do here is for, uh, any other people who are listening to this podcast who are like, oh, my gosh, you're so right. I need to take my hiring process serious, but it also feels like a lot of work to do here. Uh, that's exactly how I felt when I interviewed on the podcast first. I don't know if you remember this. I'm sure you do, but I called you right after, and I was like, how much can I pay you to just come do this for my business right now? Because I don't want to do it. Um, I like sales and marketing. I'm like, what you said, I'm the typical person. Like, I get excited about that. Right? But I knew we needed to take it serious. And so if somebody else is listening to this and they're like, man, this feels a little overwhelming. Patrick knows his stuff. What would you tell them next?

Speaker A: I'd say, if you're a solo guy, just at least go get an Indeed account. You do have to, like, verify it. So it takes five minutes to do. Go get the Indeed account, get a good ad copy going, and just put it up and sponsor it. You need to sponsor your job post. You know, marketing is pay to play. You know that, like, you can go on Facebook and rip off some ads and get some really good leads. Recruiting is pay to play. Like, you don't have to, but it makes the game a lot easier when you pay to play. So go sponsor a, uh, job post and go talk to 10 guys. Even if you're not, like, serious about hiring in that moment, you need to at least understand what you want and what you don't want. And the hardest way to do that is, like, with this conceptual idea of, like, who's good for your company. Go talk to 10 real guys, and you'll figure out really quick, here's people who have good qualities, and here's people who have qualities that I don't like and, like, figure out your ideal profile, and then you can start to change your job post and, like, craft it to find more of the people who are good. Talk to a couple of those guys and get on the phone with them. And you don't have to like make it rocket science or anything like that to start doing that today. Like that would be very, very easy to do. Sweet. Yeah, that's, that's what I'm thinking.

Speaker B: Okay, Rock and roll. And if I want to hire you to come do this for me, how can I get in touch with you?

Speaker A: Qualified hires dot com. I have a website and in there is a button to set up a call with me. The kinds of guys that I'm typically talking to are like building their business in systems, you know, so it's like very much like you and all the stuff you're doing, man, it's like you build it in systems because you are setting it uh, up for either some sort of exit, you want to pass it down to your kids at some point. But like, ultimately you don't want to be the only person running that business at some point. So you have to have like bigger ambitions and bigger growth ideas. It's typically guys who already have their hiring and sales dialed in and maybe the next lever of growth it, it is more ad spend, but it's also another lever is pulling in for growing the team. And in blue collar and home service businesses, you cannot grow without incremental headcount. Software companies, you could sell more and have the same technology. Our business, we have to have more people to grow. And typically like I would say honestly like anywhere up to $10 million is probably the right size company. Like once uh, I start seeing companies that are 10, 20 million in revenue, they probably are going to in house some of their recruiting and talent acquisition.

Speaker B: Fantastic. And so that whole process you talked about, man, I've been incredibly happy with it so far. It's been super easy for me as the owner. Patrick has worked directly with my team and we have filled all the roles that we wanted to fill for this year going into busy season. And so it's been a great experience for you, man.

Speaker A: Can I, can I tout it a little bit? Because I, uh, you're, you're selling it, but it's like, dude, three people hired. You have people on the bench where I talked to some of the guys where it's like we, you didn't have necessarily the uh, the role for them this year, but I got on the phone with a guy and he's on the bench for next year. Like you don't even have to go through the whole process necessarily next year that you've got a guy who's ready to join your team and Lead a crew, already pre vetted. Josh has talked to him and everything. Is that amazing? Yeah.

Speaker B: And I mean, I'm looking at my Slack channel right now and it's. I mean, you're talking about running Evergreen. I mean, I've got, I'm just scrolling, scrolling, scrolling all the way back through. Uh, there's gotta be hundreds in here at this point.

Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, you have a lot of good candidates that have come through and you've been able to be really selective on like the best people. And if something goes sideways with any of the guys that you bring on, you've already got a bench of people who want to come join with you because they love it.

Speaker B: This is our always be hiring bottom that sends names and all the details. All the details. Mhm.

Speaker A: So it's good. So I mean, you've rejected a lot of candidates because they weren't the right fit. But like, you know what, that's the part of the process you gotta do. You gotta do the work. It's not complicated, but uh, you do gotta put in the work.

Speaker B: I'm still scrolling. So I just want to break people's false belief of like, there are no good people out there. There are plenty of people who want to do great work and work for great companies. And so, uh, if that's you, if your hiring process has been, uh, challenging. Look, you guys know, and Patrick doesn't pay me anything on sponsorship or anything like that yet. Yet. Right. Like it's gonna be like Jacob, I told Jacob the other day, I'm like, you gotta hire me as a sales rep at this point. Um, no, but, but I'm serious. Like for me, the value here is for recommended other people who I have used and other vendors and service providers is that I know that if you get a great experience by working with other people who I recommend here on the podcast, that's a direct reflection of the owner Ops brand. And so I've said this from the beginning. You will hear me recommend people only if I have worked with them, vetted them, and trust that they provide a great service. And Patrick has knocked it out of the park, like absolutely knocked it out of park. And check the box of something that I just wanted to continually avoid as a business owner.

Speaker C: Now the possibilities are endless.

Speaker B: What was former a constraint for me is now we can hire whenever and we're getting great people coming through the funnel. So hats off to you. We do need to wrap this one up because we've got, uh, we got to jump over here to accelerator training three minutes. So, Patrick, uh, thanks so much for being on another episode of the ownerhouse podcast. We will absolutely have you on again and go deeper on the process. I appreciate you being on.

Speaker A: This was the 101, but we get to take this into your private course and go to the 201, which is cool. So all your members get the, uh, the more detailed hiring process and get to ask questions and stuff, which is cool. So thanks for having me, man.

Speaker B: Yeah, of course. Listeners, thanks again for listening to another episode of the owner Ops podcast. I'm your host, Austin Gray. You got Patrick Murphy with qualified hires. If you want to, uh, reach out to him, you can go to qualifiedhires.com and book a call with him to set up, uh, a time to see what he can do to help you with your hiring process. Hey, if you're looking to grow your land clearing or forestry mulching business, consider joining our school group where we offer

Speaker C: a free Kickstarter training to show you how to put together a crew, day price, how to make the phone ring, and how to put together a simple

Speaker B: operating system to help your business grow.

Speaker C: You can join school.com ownerops that's s

Speaker B: k o o l.com owps ops. See you over there. Don't forget, guys, work hard, do your best, never settle for less. We'll see you next week.