[00:00:07.390] - Chris
Welcome back to the Head, Heart, and Boots podcast. I'm Chris.
[00:00:10.830] - Brandon
And I'm Brandon. Join us as we wrestle with what it takes to transform ourselves and the businesses we lead.
[00:00:17.870] - Chris
I don't know what you think.
[00:00:19.230] - Brandon
It was kind of serious.
[00:00:21.170] - Chris
Should we laugh?
[00:00:26.010] - Brandon
Dude, you're killing me. You guys can't see this.
[00:00:30.280] - Chris
Why does this bother you? i don't understand.
[00:00:31.860] - Brandon
Oh, gosh.
[00:00:32.940] - Brandon
So we're in an airport. Let's see, what day was last week sometime returning from a little road trip to meet up with a client and their team, and I'm like, wore out. I'm pretty tired. I'm at the end of my weeks gas limit, and dude offers me liver chips. In a moment, I'm like, I'm hungry. I'm tired. I'm in an airport. Like, I'll take whatever it is that you're selling. Dude, I almost freaking threw up in the middle of the airport floor. That was the grossest crap that I've ever tasted in my life. The texture is disgusting. The smell is disgusting, and the flavor matched both the texture and the smell. How do you do it? Liver chips. It's so gross.
[00:01:21.850] - Chris
Listen to me, man.
[00:01:22.940] - Brandon
Yeah. I don't know. It made me question our relationship. I'm not going to kid you.
[00:01:26.970] - Chris
Listen, I'm just trying to take care of my body.
[00:01:30.570] - Brandon
Oh, my gosh.
[00:01:31.720] - Chris
And liver has lots of vitamins in it, and I don't like the way it tastes either. In fact, now I have some stuck in my teeth, and I'm not enjoying it.
[00:01:40.370] - Brandon
Oh, jeez. I'm glad we don't get any closer, man. You know what I'm afraid you're going to do? I'm afraid that we're going to be here hanging out at floodlight world headquarters, all 150. You're going to nuke something for lunch, and it's going to be a big old hunk of liver.
[00:01:57.680] - Chris
You know, this reminds me of a story. In my freshman year of college, I had a roommate, and I would eat. I'd go to the cafeteria, and I worked out. I got to know the ladies in the cafeteria that cooks. And I said, hey, just every morning, could you make me a dozen hard boiled eggs? I was trying to get all, like I was working out, trying to get jacked. Trying to so every morning, I pick up a baggie, and they would peel them for me. They were the sweetest. Yeah, they would say, here's your eggs for the day, Chris. Actually, no, they didn't peel them for me at first. And so I would take this thing and I would peel them in my dorm. I was the worst roommate, dude. I was such an asshole. I wasn't doing it on purpose, but it was pragmatic, right? I'm just eating my eggs throughout the day, and I'm dropping the peel. And usually, like every other one, I throw the yolk in the basket. It's just too filling. I just want the protein. It would smell like eggs in our room.
[00:02:50.330] - Brandon
Constant, let's be honest.
[00:02:51.870] - Chris
And my roommate oh, my gosh, my roommate scott, if you're listening. Anyway, I'm sorry.
[00:02:57.900] - Brandon
You're like, I was matured. I was a terrible roommate, dude.
[00:03:02.770] - Chris
Now it's Liverman. It's a little more sophisticated.
[00:03:04.970] - Brandon
I love you, but I have a feeling you probably weren't really super diligent getting that trash out on a regular basis either, were you? I'm totally diving you out.
[00:03:15.630] - Chris
Oh, my goodness.
[00:03:16.710] - Brandon
All right, let's move on. Oh, gosh. Liver chips. All right.
[00:03:22.230] - Chris
Okay.
[00:03:22.490] - Brandon
Dude, where are we going? Where are we going?
[00:03:24.360] - Chris
I don't know. Get us back on track here. Hurry up. I'm feeling spotlighted.
[00:03:30.850] - Brandon
Oh, my goodness. Okay, man. So a couple of weeks back a few weeks back, we were talking about personnel. We were talking about people coming and going, some proper onboarding, some other things like that. Anyways, it made me start kind of thinking a little bit interviewing process. So not necessarily the specific questions, so we might get into some examples, but we're not going to get silly.
[00:03:54.170] - Chris
Major process here.
[00:03:56.050] - Brandon
We're not going to give you 15 questions to ask in your next interview, but I think it's more for our suggestion, our perspective on what we're looking for. And this is pretty universal. Like, obviously there's some tasking, there's some competency levels that are specific for each role, but I think there are some general things, let's call them, that we're looking for when we're trying to hire someone. And so even if we don't necessarily present the specific questions to ask, I think our hope here is that we equip you with what you're looking for.
[00:04:30.690] - Chris
Mindset to approach that interview exactly.
[00:04:33.220] - Brandon
And then that should help guide your search for or the kinds of questions that you're asking during the interview. So that's where we're going to go today and get off the topic of liverships. Gross. Okay.
[00:04:49.690] - Chris
Don't hate it until you try it, and then it's fair for you to hate it for the vitamins and the protein.
[00:04:56.590] - Brandon
Come on, man.
[00:04:57.790] - Chris
Give me a break.
[00:04:58.830] - Brandon
I'd rather take a multiple. All right. Okay, man. Where do we want to start on this again? We're trying to identify that prospect we're looking for. What is it that we're trying to identify? Where do you want to start?
[00:05:15.520] - Chris
Well, you know, in our last podcast episode, we talked about truth. One of the comments we made is what we're trying to do is we're trying to just get to the truth. We're trying to get to what is real about our business right now, or what is real about our prospects, experience with the restoration industry or the last damage of it they had or whatever. What is the truth? That's essentially what we're trying to do with these interviews. We're not witch hunting. Well, we kind of are, but we don't want it to feel like it's not like we're trying to get them to say something that's going to get you yes. Okay, well, you're not the one. No, but it's like we just want to understand the truth. About what their experience has been with other jobs, what their perspective is potentially coming onto our team, what are their normal attitudes and biases and preferences that potentially will create an advantage for us or be a positive addition to the team or something we're going to need to manage or work around or could be a real unhealthy addition to the team. We're just trying to understand as much of the truth as we can.
[00:06:14.690] - Chris
And the interviewee, their objective is in total opposition. Oftentimes they want the job.
[00:06:23.470] - Brandon
Right.
[00:06:23.840] - Chris
And so our inclination and all of us have been in the interview, we see at some point most of us in our life, we're tuned to put our best foot forward and we're tuned, even subconsciously, to gloss over or ignore the negative bits. We've been educated to leave out the bad stuff. And what we're trying to churn up is just a complete picture. We're not trying to have got you moments. We're just trying at the end of the interview when we sit around and we talk with our other leaders, the people that are co interviewing with us, is that we want to have a complete picture to look at together, to be like, okay, well, I love this part. I'm a little concerned about this. How would we deal with this? How do we make this thing work that they said or they don't like or they're not good at? Like, is there a way for us to address that or not? Right. And just to have a complete picture. So how do we go about that?
[00:07:12.980] - Brandon
I don't know.
[00:07:13.360] - Chris
I mean, we were chit chatting about some of those topics. Yeah.
[00:07:17.290] - Brandon
I think they're in and of themselves kind of questions, but at minimum, at least they're going to drive the kind of questions that you're asking.
[00:07:23.890] - Chris
Yeah.
[00:07:24.490] - Brandon
So I think one of the first things you and I were contemplating when it came to this was getting it out of the way of asking and identifying why they're even looking, especially right now. I think there's a reality that all of us have probably been faced. Like if somebody's knocking on your door, there's a chance that there's some broken baggage there. There's some kind of performance issues. So again, we need to know what it is that they're looking for. Why are they even interested in talking to us about our business, about what we're doing? And I think this goes back to this concept of pain and solution selling. Before we start pitching all the things and asking all the questions about the specifics to the role and technical competencies and past experience, I think we need to identify if we've even got something of value for this individual. That's a great point. What are they looking for specifically? And I think you're going to see a rhythm in this is ask more questions, get beyond yeah.
[00:08:29.560] - Chris
The generalized answer yes.
[00:08:30.960] - Brandon
The general answer right. So let's find out from our prospect. Why are they even interested in having the conversation?
[00:08:39.850] - Chris
Which is funny because when we were chatting about this I have felt in the past butterflies in my stomach. I want to ask that question. But at times when you're hiring goes to the desperation brain concept that we talk about a lot. You're in that desperation brain and you desperately need that PM or you need that tech or you need that office manager, you need that AR person or you need that sales rep. We can just get so locked in the desperate need based mindset to where we're inclined to overlook all things and we kind of don't want to know because for example, if they say well I'm just looking for more money, the last thing any of us wants to hear about the why? Because then we know and then we get overtaken by that and we're like okay, are we going to be able to afford this person? And then oftentimes we short circuit and we shortcut through the rest of the interview knowing that money is the top thing and it's like well so we're afraid to ask. Yeah where instead we just hope they'll kind of mentioned it at some point in the thing and we may never really know what's driving their desire for the job.
[00:09:46.180] - Brandon
Right. And there's a reality right. Because we're kind of going to summarize the profile, the most generic profile we can and what we're looking for I think by the end of the show but this goes to that fact of if we really kind of identify that this person the only thing that's motivating their engagement or loyalty is just strictly another dollar an hour, well then that's a flat. Like we need to understand that right now, I'm not saying you don't hire them because they're driven by money but.
[00:10:16.900] - Chris
It may be exactly the right choice to have a money motivated person in that role assuming there's values and there's principles that are attached to that. But it's important because I think even if we don't like the answer it gives us more clarity.
[00:10:29.520] - Brandon
Absolutely right. It's the truth. It goes back to what you're saying.
[00:10:32.130] - Chris
I know what I was going to say. I totally like how to brain fart there so I was trying to just fill space. No, it's supposed to be good for your brain. It's happening. So what I was going to say is when we ask that question sometimes money is the answer, other times it's the culture and often people will give generalized answer. And this is where we kind of walk a little bit of a line because I think most of us that have interviewed a lot of people and that's part of our role is you definitely don't want somebody that's bad mouthing their current company or most recent company. That's generally a red flag for all of us if they're complaining about their past boss or there's this real complaining kind of posture that they take, but that's different than when we asked them, hey, why are we even here? Like, maybe it's a competitor coming from that we even respect or we see as a really strong competitor. It's like, okay, you're with such and such, they're a worthy competitor of ours. Why are you coming to us? What's the deal? And if they say something about the culture, well, that could be a really legitimate driver, right.
[00:11:30.220] - Chris
Whether it's the work environment, it's something about there's never any rest, there's never any care for the employee, and their lifestyle is way out of whack because of just whatever the pressure or something that they we want to hear all of that, but we want to hear specifically. So I think just one caution around that question is don't stop at the generalized answer.
[00:11:52.060] - Brandon
Yes, like you said, get the specific.
[00:11:55.050] - Chris
Almost especially when it comes to culture, and, hey, I just don't like the work environment in place. Well, double click on that. Tell me more. You have kind of a toxic relationship with your supervisor manager. Well, what does that look like and sound like? Because here's where we get so sideways in a lot of ways in our industry, is people will tell us their first answer, and we make all kinds of assumptions about what they mean when they say, oh, it's a terrible culture. And of course, too, we know little bits and pieces about our competitors, and so our ego on the inside would be like, well, yeah, of course I knew this. Of course it's a shitty place to work. We already knew that. And our ego just fills in all the gaps. Well, the reality that I think most of us come to understand is that most of the time, our competitors are no better or worse than us. They may have different struggles, but look, we're all in the same business.
[00:12:43.270] - Brandon
Yeah.
[00:12:43.760] - Chris
It's a hard business. We all have things that we're struggling with. So it's really important for us to uncover what they mean by that because, frankly, they may have the same dang experience in our company. Totally true. If we're honest with ourselves.
[00:12:57.280] - Brandon
Yeah. No, as soon as you start talking about that, the first thing that came to my mind was, like, I've had experiences in the past where someone didn't want the level of engagement and culture that we had built.
[00:13:08.360] - Chris
Yeah.
[00:13:09.080] - Brandon
So, like, my assumption if I'm in the same shoes and I ask somebody and they say, yeah, I just hated the work environment, I thought the culture sucked. In my mind, I'm going, Oh, they're going to be a perfect fit, because they want because we care about age and all the things. And we may find out they're just this very utilitarian in nature. They want to come eight to five. They do not want raw raw. They don't want to be a part of a larger mission.
[00:13:35.070] - Chris
I don't need patch on my back. Just let me do my work my way.
[00:13:38.050] - Brandon
I'm going to clock in, I'm going to clock out, and I'm going to go home and look, if that's the culture you're creating and that makes sense, awesome, hire them. But I think to your point is we need to know the specifics because I would have launched into assumptions and been like, oh sweet, I hired this person, and find out. They don't want to do anything to engage our culture. They don't want to be at all.
[00:14:00.550] - Chris
They want to be left alone.
[00:14:01.500] - Brandon
They just want to be left alone and siloed and all the things in the kind of company that I personally would be building, that would not be the right person on the bus. So again, maybe it is for yours. We're not here to tell you what's right or wrong.
[00:14:14.350] - Chris
Totally.
[00:14:14.870] - Brandon
It's just ask the right question, get in below the surface so that you don't fill in the gaps with your own assumptions. Gosh, that's so funny. And I can remember a specific hire that not long after we brought him on the team, I realized this person wants nothing to do with counterparts in the company. They could care less. They want to come to this thing and go away. And for some of us, we go, thank God, but it has to anyway.
[00:14:44.480] - Chris
It all depends, right? It all depends. And it's about the truth. It's like, okay, what does that actually look like? Because some people just want to do their work. They may mean, I just don't like drama. I like to stay out of it. I don't like to get in the middle. Well, that's great. That fits.
[00:14:57.950] - Brandon
Yeah, exactly.
[00:14:58.740] - Chris
But if you don't want to come to the happy hour at the end of the day, the barbecue we're having at the shop, you don't want to be connected to your other fellow employees. You don't want to talk to anybody. Okay, well, that's the problem.
[00:15:09.130] - Brandon
Yeah. At least for us, for what we would be building.
[00:15:12.200] - Chris
Exactly.
[00:15:12.640] - Brandon
Right. But one shoe kind of scenario. All right? So I think another layer to that then is diving into what they want. So it's not enough to stop with why are you here? Why are you talking to us? And this probably goes to what you're talking about. It's just digging in deeper and we start identifying specifically what they want, what are they looking for. And some of these kinds of categories that we're talking about here are one to three year goals in twelve months on a new team, whether it be us or Jim shop down the street or Lucy shop, whatever. What do you want to see happen in that first year and give them an opportunity to unpack? And as they're giving you answers, it's the whole, tell me more about that. What do you mean specifically by that? Can you give me some examples? Keep them talking peeling back some of those layers of the onion, right?
[00:16:06.360] - Chris
Yeah. Why is that your goal? What would that do for you? How would that change things for you?
[00:16:10.380] - Brandon
Yeah, why is that important?
[00:16:11.630] - Chris
You can also get at some of the compensation goals to make sure they're in line. Right. So I was in a meeting with a potential sales leader for one of our clients first interview and might have been second interview, but that was one of the questions I said, hey, just look three years out because that's a time frame that most people can relate to. You start to get out five years, like, holy cow, everything changes grandkids by that .3 years out. What do you want your role to look like? What kind of role do you want to be in? What sort of income range? And what is that income doing for you? Is there a title that comes to your mind, a certain type of role where you want to get to and have them paint a picture and like you say, keep kind of double clicking on it to get clarity? Well, okay, what is that income range do for you?
[00:16:57.380] - Brandon
The HR bug just fired off in the back of my head, so I'm going to throw a disclaimer in here. What I'm advising you guys to do is when you start designing your questions, and I would say from just a tactical perspective, you should legitimately line out 15 to 20 open ended questions that specifically help you look for this.
[00:17:18.010] - Chris
Have your HR manager or partner ready to go.
[00:17:20.530] - Brandon
Have your HR manager or in the industry or an HR partner.
[00:17:25.440] - Chris
And if you need a suggestion, we have a partner we can refer you to. But, yeah, it is really important, especially as you grow in size, you just see take on more and more and more litigation risk.
[00:17:35.770] - Brandon
And I think there's this weird space that we can get caught into that smaller businesses are still operating like small businesses. We're all friends and family. We're really engaged in our personal lives in a lot of ways. And I think what a lot of HR professionals are going to warn us about is, hey, watch crossing that line and your questions and what we're asking, because there are things that are significantly off limits that could get you in trouble. So, again, we are not HR professionals, so please verify your questions against a pro that can help preserve you. All right, so another couple of items. The subcategories that I feel like fall into this is like levels of support. You actually have a really perfect example that we just witnessed just this week. Right? Yeah.
[00:18:19.940] - Chris
So this is something that's really important to take into account because there's a broad spectrum of people that listen to the show. And some of you are working in really large scale environments, like the first sun size, the ATI, the blue skies, these really large networks of companies and then many of you are working with three or four other people in the company or ten or 15 or 20 and you're in a smaller business. Well, people's expectation on how much training and development and onboarding and what that's going to look like feel like potentially is very different because if they're coming from Jim Bob's Cleaning and Restoration down the street where it's a guy and his two kids and a construction guy, well, their ability to train and really provide, like equip people with training and resources and all of that kind of stuff is going to look vastly different from your large organizations like the Blue Skies and Belfours entire university and frankly, even like large franchises, establish franchises like a surf bro. Somebody coming from there who has all of these resources and training modules and stuff available to them. And so it's important that we understand what people's needs are or their expectations.
[00:19:34.350] - Chris
Yeah, that is a common problem. Somebody's coming from a larger company and they're accustomed to having two weeks or four weeks of ride alongs and shadowing other people and not really being required to produce until a month or six weeks later. And you may not have that environment available.
[00:19:53.130] - Brandon
It's not right or wrong.
[00:19:54.250] - Chris
It's not right or wrong. Again, it's what is real.
[00:19:56.830] - Brandon
Like, what is real, what can I provide?
[00:19:59.030] - Chris
We have a client recently that's expanding and but they have limited resources at their branch for training and doing those ride alongs and job shadows and all that kind of stuff. Yes. And so this person came in and was expecting a lot of hand holding, and that just isn't in the cards. They don't have the scale to provide a ton of hand holding to somebody new. And if we can tease that out ahead of time, then we know this person might otherwise be a really great fit. But it's just that they're going to need or expect or want two months of kind of ramp up and going to this training and doing these online modules at home on their couch. It's like, wait, that's not our environment.
[00:20:38.030] - Brandon
It just isn't going to happen.
[00:20:38.840] - Chris
It's a misfit, wrong timing, whatever.
[00:20:40.680] - Brandon
And it might be later.
[00:20:42.620] - Chris
Yeah.
[00:20:43.310] - Brandon
So we don't want to burn that prospect. No connection. Let's keep them in the Rolodex. Let's remain connected on LinkedIn, but right now may not be the time.
[00:20:52.520] - Chris
Yes. We got to be realistic about what we can provide and we don't want to oversell it because again, it's the truth. We want to share the truth with these people before we hire them so they're not smacked in the face by, oh, man, I've just got to figure this out myself. So how do you ask that? How do you frame that in a question? I think you just simply ask, last time you were working at XYZ Company, what did your training and onboarding look like?
[00:21:13.760] - Brandon
Yeah, that's great because then you can say, what if you're in an environment where that wasn't available? What role would that player? How would it affect your position on the team? Is that our door?
[00:21:25.620] - Chris
No, there's just some shootings happening outside World Headquarters now. It's a backfiring truck or something.
[00:21:30.920] - Brandon
Okay. It sounded like a machine gun or somebody knocking on a door. It's easy to get those two confused.
[00:21:37.650] - Chris
All right, let's take a minute to recognize and thank our MIT Rest O Mastery sponsor, accelerate Restoration Software. And I'm fully aware, by the way, that when I say those last two words, restoration software, that instantly creates heartburn for some of you out there.
[00:21:54.620] - Brandon
Right?
[00:21:54.850] - Chris
Because we probably all fall into one of two camps when it comes to software. We've either cobbled together kind of a version of free website tools and spreadsheets just to make our business work, or we're in the camp where we've adopted one of these existing restoration platforms, one that has all the bells and whistles and supposedly does it all, but we can't get our team to consistently adopt it and input information to it.
[00:22:22.490] - Brandon
Yeah, and that's really where Accelerate has honed their focus. They've created a system that's simple, right? It's intuitive, and it focuses on the most mission critical information. I e. Guys, your team will actually use it.
[00:22:37.460] - Chris
Let's talk about sales. Right. After years of leading sales and marketing teams, the biggest trick is getting them to consistently update notes about their interactions with referral partners and clients. And the essential piece there is there's got to be a mobile app experience. And in our experience, the solutions that were previously out there were just too cumbersome and tricky to use.
[00:23:00.960] - Brandon
Yes. Imagine, guys, how your business would change if your entire team was actually consistently using the system. Do yourself a favor. Go check these guys [email protected] MRM, and check out the special offers they're providing to MRM listeners.
[00:23:20.730] - Chris
All right, let's talk about Actionable Insights owners. GMs, you can't be your business expert on all things estimated you might have been three years ago when you're writing sheets in the field. But the industry is always changing, and so are the tools. If you're the smartest person in the room when it comes to exactimate matterport, how does that scale you're the bottleneck? I know I'm preaching to the choir, but this is where actual Insights comes in. They're a technical partner that can equip your team with the latest bleeding edge information and best practices and then update them with webinars and training resources when the game inevitably changes again. For this reason, we recommend actual insights to all of our clients.
[00:24:00.960] - Brandon
Yeah, three of the kind of big things that stuck out to me when being introduced to AI and their team. First off, is this consistently updated training. I mean, at the end of the day, these guys are the experts. They're out front all the time. They're constantly learning new trade secrets and ensuring that your team's got access to those things. A 3700 plus page database of exact amount templates. I don't know what else to say here other than don't reinvent the wheel, it's already available. Download it, copy it, use it. Bam database of commonly missed items. I think this is huge. So many of us can change the numbers by just moving the needle a couple of points and those commonly missed items can make all the difference in the world. So go check them out at Value gitinsights.org, I think we talked about motivation as another one, can we get into the types of things that motivate that individual? So again, what do they want? Our goal in that questioning is we're looking for award elements, bonus elements. We're looking for Employee of the Month kind of scenarios. We're looking for the kind of communication that we have on a regular basis.
[00:25:19.020] - Brandon
Is it going to provide enough kudos? Are we going to be able to give them either the level of support that they want not just in the training and things like that, but the kinds of things that motivate them as an individual? Because we may identify that this particular role, an example would be maybe in your particular business a role is more siloed then maybe that role is at other operations. I can think of some of the administrative tasking. A lot of people have roles called file coordinator or a project coordinator. Well, those two titles can mean very different things depending on the company. Are they commonly crossover? Yes, but that doesn't mean I don't see an operation where a file coordinator has very little interaction with other peers. And we may be all excited because somebody has had that title before or supported a team in a certain way. But again, the expectation that our company might be slightly different. So again, it's just getting to that. What motivates this individual? Are they I need to be around people or do they want to be left alone?
[00:26:19.090] - Chris
What is their best yes, what is their best case scenario? Essentially? How do they function the best? So another really important thing with regard to this is salespeople. And this is a huge deal. Everybody's recruiting salespeople right now. It feels like you're hiring a salesperson away from a team of salespeople and they're going to be your solo salesperson. That is a massive, massive difference in job experience and team experience. Because let's face it, if you're of the size where you're just getting ready to hire your first sales professional or maybe you've had a single salesperson they rotated off for whatever reason and you don't have a sales manager. It's a smallish team. They don't have a team manager, they don't have other colleagues that are selling. That's a very different experience and it demands something very different from them than if they're coming from a team where they had two or three other colleagues selling and or they had a sales manager there, you know what I mean? So it's important for us to tease that out and not to discount that that's a big deal. In fact, we were encountering this with another. This person said to me, they're like, I'm just so used to having a team, and we talk to each other and we collaborate and swap ideas and problem solve, and they really that environment energizes them.
[00:27:32.780] - Chris
And then I also think of an old sales buddy of mine, Jeff Martini. Jeff Martin is like a medical sales rep now, very successful. But I remember he was just a loan ranger.
[00:27:41.890] - Brandon
Yeah, he liked it.
[00:27:42.960] - Chris
Yeah, he's just kind of a salty guy, and he had his way with customers. He's such a good sales guy. He could take or leave. Like, I did most of my ride alongs with him as a training. When I first started as a sales rep, I could just tell he was mildly annoyed that he sort of had me tagging along because he's just a lone ranger and he would show up to sales meetings fully prepared and like, he did his thing, but he didn't need the whole team thing. Some people do, right. Better to find that out. You got it.
[00:28:11.130] - Brandon
We're going to keep beating the same drum of the goal in our interviewing process is to get to the truth. Be honest with yourself about what you are legitimately capable of offering, and be very clear on what it is that this individual wants, and do not leave it up to guess or assumption. Right? Okay. So another layer to this is kind of, again, digging beyond those first answers is when we start to dig into performance and experience. Let's get as measurably black and white as possible with the kind of information that we're looking for. Here's what I mean by that. We're kind of hammering a lot on salespeople, but this is legit for operational stuff. Here's an example. You're talking to somebody and they use language like, oh, yeah, I've been in the industry for ten years. I've led everything from large, complex commercial jobs to residential jobs. I can run teams. I understand TNM. Yeah, all the things. Well, my gut reaction is right on. Like, I've got my person right. He or she is designed specifically, you're hired. Like, this is my new MIT manager. Let's actually start digging into the specifics about them being, in quotes, responsible for these jobs.
[00:29:22.150] - Brandon
What did that mean? Let's identify. Did you establish the scope or did you execute on a scope of work that was built by somebody else? Well, that's pretty specific. We need to know because if I just launch and put somebody because they've got ten years experience into running my Mitigation process, I'm going to need them to teach and equip and understand how to create a scope of work from a loss review. Like, that's critical. And if I don't ask a measurable specific question. Where the data? The answer can be very specific. Again, I can make assumptions. I could be all excited about this person's general experience and identified the whole is a critical one. Right. I think about this for sales teams. We get all the time. We'll hear folks say, yeah, I've been selling for 20 years. I've done X, Y and Z. Okay, great. Let's talk about specific numbers from your last place or your current employer.
[00:30:18.120] - Chris
Let's talk about where the business is coming from. Why is it coming from?
[00:30:21.960] - Brandon
What was the goal? How did you perform against that goal? Right, because we've seen scenarios where someone talks in general about a team's performance. We produced 5 million, 6 million, this million millions. And then it took some extra questions and we identified, well, that individual actually never sold any of it or a leadership position only. I need someone that's going to go whale hunt. Right.
[00:30:46.180] - Chris
Yeah. And I mean, there's all kinds of things we can find out by double clicking. Right. So you did 5 million in top line revenue. You manage 25 files at a time and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. You start to dig in and you asked about talk about the gross profit margin on your jobs and you realize either they don't know would really bad sign or they worked at a company where it was acceptable to have 25% GP. Right. When you're thinking, whoa, that is way below standard, this is not going to work, or they're going to struggle in our environment where we have much higher standards. And one other thing too, just about on the ops leader side, was that business storm operations or local operations?
[00:31:27.180] - Brandon
Right.
[00:31:27.830] - Chris
Two entirely different work environments.
[00:31:30.210] - Brandon
Did an event, a specific event affect those numbers or is that normal business as usual numbers?
[00:31:35.980] - Chris
Yeah. So you've done everything from large loss to residential. Great. Were we talking storm operations? We talking localized. How much of your experience is storm versus local? Because I mean, different parts of the country, right? It is a major component of people's revenue.
[00:31:48.770] - Brandon
Oh, yeah.
[00:31:49.210] - Chris
And it's very different. It's a different operating system.
[00:31:52.950] - Brandon
Again, it's like the whole point of this is when you hear a first response and your excitement bill starts firing off. I'm going to actually say this for both because I've been in interviewing scenarios where I have shut off and already disconnected because some answer was given that I've already written the person off. And I've been with good leaders and they continue to press and they were right. We identified that this person actually is a solid candidate and I had written them off too early. So again, the adverse dig. Right, dig in. Because if you start to close off immediately from someone's response, grab yourself.
[00:32:30.040] - Chris
Yeah, you might grab yourself.
[00:32:31.950] - Brandon
I take that back. Don't eat liver chips and don't grab yourself. At any point during the interview, stop yourself and pause and say, okay, I'm checking out on this person's answer, or I'm totally fired up and excited about the answer. Don't stop digging. Let's get more specifics.
[00:32:51.150] - Chris
Yeah. We don't want to leave talent on the table, and we don't want to compromise our team by bringing in the wrong person.
[00:32:55.780] - Brandon
Right? Yeah, completely.
[00:32:57.170] - Chris
Okay, so one of the questions that I love to ask is and I don't know, maybe it's just totally generic and everybody asks the version of this, but to kind of tease out preferences is applicant look back over your whole career. And sometimes if I've got a younger person, they've got four or five jobs on their resume. So you are this, you did that, you did this, you did this. When you think back over all of those roles, what were your favorite tasks in job assignments and roles and what were your least favorite and why? And that opens up a whole dialogue and other opportunities for follow up questions. Why was that your least favorite thing to do? Totally. Was it about that man? And again, you're just trying to get to the truth because then at the end, the conclusion that interview and you should always, whenever possible, have multiple people that are interviewing this candidate. Right. And so you sit down and you debrief that interview you want is complete of a picture to sit back together and be like, okay, I really liked this when they said this. I have concern about that.
[00:34:01.430] - Chris
Is there a way for us to work around that? Is it even really an issue or did I just have a knee jerk reaction to it? How important are those things that were not quite right and you can really have enough data, a fuller picture of that person.
[00:34:15.780] - Brandon
Right. I totally agree. All right, now this one is kind of a little blurry, okay. But it's come up a lot. And that is I think you need to ask yourself the question, do I like this?
[00:34:27.070] - Chris
Oh, dude, I knew you were going to say that's what came out?
[00:34:29.500] - Brandon
And I know it's hard for us to be like because some of us well, I've got plenty of employees that don't necessarily like but they do a great job. Okay, but do they have the kind of personality that just literally feels like oil and water? Because if that's the case, there's a strong possibility that every client, every peer, every subcontractor that they interact with is going to feel the same way you do. And I've seen lots of scenarios. In fact, we just recently experienced one where at the end of the day, maybe there was potential there. It was so difficult to get over the personality conflict that it made momentum for both people completely impossible. One person probably just felt disliked and judged and a misfit, and the other individual was just constantly frustrated by the interaction. And so I think to some extent, we have to ask ourselves do I like them? Would I want to be around them? And if the answer is no, think about that. Push pause for a minute.
[00:35:36.490] - Chris
This is really an emerging value. I think you hear tech industry tends to lead a lot of things because it's super high margin. There's a lot of wealth in there.
[00:35:46.320] - Brandon
Well, and their valuations have nothing to do with property.
[00:35:49.650] - Chris
We were talking about that yesterday, right? Yeah. It's a multiple of top line.
[00:35:55.070] - Brandon
Yes.
[00:35:55.920] - Chris
So anyway, they tend to kind of be leading the pack in terms of business ideas and so forth, but they've been talking about this for a while. It might be the most important it might be the most important thing is, does this person fit the general personality and culture and attitude of the rest of our team? Because if they're abrasive or they come off as just like they're weird to connect with, and the chances are right, their co workers are going to feel that same. You got to trust that.
[00:36:20.820] - Brandon
And we're not speaking against diversity.
[00:36:22.850] - Chris
No.
[00:36:23.540] - Brandon
I think some of the most brilliant teams are very different in terms of the makeup of personnel on the team. Everything from sex, culture, religious beliefs, I mean, you name it. But there is a general sense of commitment to a mission, to an idea, to a concept. And those individuals, although they bring different natural wiring and different communication standards, different experiences, there's still this general I kind of just like my coworkers. And at the end of the day, that's important for performance, man. When we're adapting and overcoming, when we're asking people to do hard things, when we're trying to keep enough energy to take care of our clients, you can't be spending all that energy at homebase dealing with drama and just social misfit. It's important. Right now, again, I'm going to refer you to the HR rep because I'm not sure exactly what questions we can get away with, but here's some kinds of things that we're trying to identify. Could I spend time around them? Right. Do they give me a sense of trust? Right. Do they give me a sense of confidence?
[00:37:29.500] - Chris
How would I feel about this? How would my wife feel? The person coming into the home and then interacting with my wife, my spouse, my kids?
[00:37:36.490] - Brandon
Right. Place yourself in the shoes of your referral partners for a client and say, what is the presentation from this individual? What kind of body language are they using? What signals are they sending?
[00:37:48.170] - Chris
I would go so far as to ask yourself if this individual is the only person that our client or prospect has to gain an impression of our business, what will that be? What will that be? Oh, man. Because we discount this, we overlook this so much with tax. We let people onto the team that when you ask them that question, what if they are the only impression? They often are. Our technicians are probably 80% of the time and trade that somebody has with our brand.
[00:38:20.440] - Brandon
Totally. Period.
[00:38:22.230] - Chris
I think we forget that desperation brand again. We need somebody to just tear stuff out and carry equipment.
[00:38:29.910] - Brandon
So dig into that. I think at the end of the day that is just a mission critical element that you're trying to identify and there's going to be a series of questions that can get you to that point. But that's what you're looking for. You need to know with confidence. Is this the kind of person that reads trust breeds confidence? I have faith in this individual. I like the way they carry themselves. I could spend time with them. Could you have a beer with them? Not telling you you have to. Yeah, maybe on Friday. Okay, here's some. In general, I would say some things that we're trying to identify throughout the interviewing process. Coachability. Right? We had an example today. Had a conversation with an individual from experience, time and grade all the things, spot on, excited about it. And at one point I literally just asked him point blank like, hey, your background is rich. You've been doing this a long time, you've been successful, you've made plenty of money, your systems are working for you. There's a strong chance when you come onto this team because of the dynamics and because of goals and where it's going, it's going to ask of you to make adaptations to that.
[00:39:41.290] - Brandon
You're going to learn new systems and new processes. What's your perspective on that? How does that affect you when I say that right, we're looking for Coachability, right? If we start hearing things like, well, we hear generic responses like, I mean, whatever works best is fine with me. Okay, let's get into that. Now what do you mean by that? Is that your perspective of what works best or it works best for the team based on the current circumstances. Right. We got to get into that. And I'm not telling you to get confrontational here, but we're trying to figure out if this individual still has stuff to learn. Because if we're honest with ourselves, when we have a team that's coachable, we're winning. It means that we're open to hear new ideas, techniques. It means we're open to hearing criticism on our performance. Being coachable is probably one of the most brilliant superpowers that someone can possess because there's so many things in regards to their ego and how they feel about themselves and their performance. Blaze. Blaze. So we got to find that out. We got to identify if this person still believes they've got things to learn, right?
[00:40:49.520] - Chris
Yeah, for sure.
[00:40:50.900] - Brandon
Trauma, the way that people interact with drama. These can be difficult questions to ask. But essentially what we're looking for is set up a scenario and ask them how they would respond to that kind of scenario. Right. And I think there's perfect positions here to identify some conflict management capacity. You could say, hey, this thing happens. And you set up a stage where somebody comes to you and complains about XYZ, what would you do if you're in that position? Right? And here are some things I would encourage you that you're looking for direct to the individual that harm them, caused them pain, caused them grievance action. Well, actually, what I would probably do is I'd probably meet with that individual and just tell them, hey, this is kind of what I experienced in that situation. Just wanted to let you know, and blah, blah, blah. Awesome. Right? If you hear, I just ignore that and move on because I can't give a crap about someone's opinion. Red flag, right? So we can ask questions. You can set scenarios and ask somebody how they would respond to that, and then, based on their answer, try to dig in a little deeper.
[00:41:57.510] - Brandon
But what we're looking for in those kinds of scenarios is conflict management skills. We're looking for drama. We're looking for maturity. Right? And there's a reality that when we're hiring young people we talked about this a couple of weeks ago, that we may have some work to do as a leader to help coach them through soft skills. Because they're young, right? They're new to the workforce. That's okay as long as you know it going in. And so one of the things that you could do with that is set the stage with that. Hey, I wanted to just give you an idea of how we run conflict management here at XYZ Company. We use the story in my head, too. Here's what it is. Have you ever heard of something like that? And again, we're looking, what is their body posturing when you're saying stuff like, a lot of our employees have found that pretty uncomfortable when we first started it. Oh, man, I totally right. Like, we're engaging the conversation. But here's the point of the outcome. You either a need to identify that this person is mature enough to hold a role on your team, or you identify what pieces are missing because of a lack of life experience.
[00:43:01.260] - Brandon
And do you have the capacity to help invest in that and coach through that? Because if the answer is no, don't hire them. If the answer is yes, well, then you may have a prospect on your hands. Right?
[00:43:09.590] - Chris
What do we say to the person listening? Gosh dang. For the last six months, we've been trying and trying to fill three, four roles. And if we held this standard that you're talking about, we wouldn't have the people we need.
[00:43:21.570] - Brandon
I think you really need to analyze the performance that you're getting. And again, I think we looked at this, we talked about this a couple of episodes ago. If your top line is banging because you've got all this production capacity with a half a team, what is it doing with your margin? Are you doing another third times number of jobs to produce the same EBITDA. Well then maybe it would just be better to have four technicians instead of eight do the correct amount of work at the profit margin.
[00:43:49.370] - Chris
I was just going to say I feel like when I look back over the different teams that we've worked with, when you have a healthy team that's communicating well, that likes each other, you can do a lot with a little ton of work. You can do a lot with a little and amazingly, when the team is healthy and the drama is absent and it's like you've got a team of A players and they're not constantly annoyed or frustrated because they're C players or.
[00:44:16.570] - Brandon
D players, they're not creating internal friction.
[00:44:19.020] - Chris
On creating additional baggage and making the lift heavier.
[00:44:25.590] - Brandon
Small teams can accomplish a a lot lot. Dude, one of the things that reminds me of we actually used to do this as part of our orientation is I would do a section that just basically describe the relationship that elite operating military teams have with one another. Right. And it's this idea, it speaks exactly to what you're talking about. A lot of you may not have any experience with or exposure to it, but if we think about some of the missions that let's say, for instance, a special forces team happens on a deployment, they are responsible for massive environments, massive areas of operations with a very small group of people because they're so talented, they're so gifted, they're so loyal, they're so engaged that they're able to maximize their competency and use the resources at hand to get a lot done with a little. And I think we just need to realize that that it's true. When teams are firing on all cylinders, they're engaged, they believe in each other, they trust each other, we don't have drama. It's amazing when two people are back to back what they can deal with. Oh yeah, right.
[00:45:31.490] - Brandon
But when people are infighting and there's drag and friction internally, then yeah, you need two times the workforce to get anything done. Right? No, I think that's a great question, dude. I think that's it is there any kind of summary or is there any kind of like reminder wrap up?
[00:45:51.450] - Chris
It's a reminder and none of this is rocket science, but I think the theme here that we've been bouncing around is just we need to do a better job of getting to the truth. The truth is what we're after. The higher is secondary to getting to the truth. Whereas I think a lot of times we fall in the trap because of desperation brain and all of us have some version of it right now because our industry, the work keeps coming in and the workers aren't coming in as quite as fast as the work. And so the desperation brain takes over and we compromise on the truth. We get pieces of the truth, we get some of the truth and also, I think, too, whether it's intentional or not, we can often give off just a version of the truth about what it's like to be on our team and what they're being hired for and what's going to be expected to them. Because we're so desperate to get them in, we hold back some of the truth. That's the ugly details of what it's actually like to work here. And so it's just, hey, let's get to the truth on both sides of it.
[00:46:53.110] - Chris
Everybody wins.
[00:46:53.870] - Brandon
Yeah. I love it. Okay. Hang in the guys. Good luck. All right, everybody.
[00:46:58.610] - Chris
Heath.
[00:46:58.930] - Brandon
Thanks for joining us for another episode of Head, Heart and Boot.
[00:47:02.230] - Chris
And if you enjoyed the show but you love this episode, please hit Follow. Formerly known as subscribe. Write us a review or share this episode with a friend. Share it on LinkedIn. LinkedIn. Share it via text, whatever. It all helps. Thanks for listening.