Piranha Jaws | The 4 Things We Look for Hiring & Firing – Part 1
This episode is going to be the first in a two series podcasts about how we hire, how we find good people. The four things that we look for when we hire people in, how did we start to change the culture of a machine shop that is over 40 years old after my dad passed away,
Basically sounds like if you guys didn’t do this, start this plan, your business was going to collapse from the inside, out from the family alone.
Yes. Yes, yes. And yes, we are back, back in the studio today. We got my six foot, two brother from another mother with blonde hair, blue eyes, and a beard of a Viking with piranha jaws over there. Go ahead and introduce yourself. Hello there folks, man, I need it. I need it. And his name is Brandon. Yeah, be right. Yeah. I want to talk about something real quick. Let’s let everybody introduce themselves. I know where you’re going and we’ll do it in just a second. Cause I’m sure everybody’s feeling the same, the same way. Cause Oh my and then I have my brother to the left from the same mother. Yep. Five, 10 and a half scene with the thickest beard I’ve ever seen and nice abs. Oh, Oh. And his name is what? Laser? No. Hey, no, wait. Let’s just, let’s take let’s detour for one second. That is his Uber name. So whenever he calls an Uber, they’re go, they pull up and they go and it’s like, it’s always like the mom minivan, the minivan minivan. Yeah. They, they slide in here. Yeah. They, they do one of those riffs. They drift into the parking lot. Hey, I’m going to, I’m going to introduce the other guy on the phone all the way in Florida. His name is Donnie,
The Florida man himself. [inaudible]
All right, Donnie. So last week we had talked about, I think we maybe ended I’d have to listen to our last podcast, but we’d talked about what do we look for when we’re going to hire someone? So you go ahead and lead the way and we will follow up
Back to the topic. Last time we were on, I talked about what are the characteristics? When you have somebody walking into your shop? Yeah. They gotta be that in your guys’ shop. They gotta be sexy, no dark and gotta be sexy
Beard beard.
But there was four things that I talked about that I felt were critical. If I was to hire someone and there was the, they were the, you only can pick one of them. It’s hardworking. You can be skilled. You could be an eager potential candidate or you can be a content candidate.
What? Okay. So why don’t you know my answer? Oh, you know yours already. Oh, I know mine. Um, w why don’t you just break down, break it down.
I can break that. That’s I can do it. I can do it.
Break it down. Break, break down each individual. One of those of what that means to you.
All right. So my reasoning for the four reasons were hardworking, skilled, eager content. The hardworking one is somebody that just buses, but he may not be the most skilled. He may not be like, you know, have that eager drive to just want to do better. And he’s also not content with piranha jaws. He just, he just, he just works really hard, no matter what he does. He just sweats all day long. It’s just all day long. Just, just hammering away, whatever he’s got to do. He’s just, he’s doing it. All right. Then you’ve got the guy that’s just super skilled. I mean, it doesn’t matter what he does. It could be deep burning parts. It’s the most beautiful, deeper part you could see. He just, he’s just super skilled.
Is he slightly annoying?
But he could. Yeah, he, yeah, he could be annoying. He could be. He could, he, he won’t have that eagerness to he’s really good. He’s really skilled, but he’s just not eager. He’s he’s he, he’s not a hard worker. He’s just very good at what he does. He’s if he, when he does it
And his teeth. Yeah. Hmm. So he might not have good hygiene.
Oh, might not have good. He might show up to work smelling like straight booty hole every day. It’s just, I think we could do
Just a straight 30 minutes about hygiene and no lie. I thought you were going to say booty holes. Oh, it’s a booty hole. That’s probably a tube podcast long.
It’s the episode. How do you manage your, your booty hole anyways? Um,
Yeah.
All right. The next one is eager. The guys, like it doesn’t matter what you throw at them. It doesn’t matter if it’s the worst job in the world. He could be sitting sandblasting parts all day. He’s eager to get at it. He shows up to work every day. Excited. He may not be skilled. He may not be like the hardest worker, but he’s just, he’s just there to, to, to do it, you know, he’s just there to,
Right. So, so, so, so when I, when I hear you describe this guy, this guy to me has the best attitude and piranha jaws in the shop.
Yeah. And that, and everyone’s going to be diversified in this. Right. Everyone’s going to have their own diverse, uh, you know, diversified answer to it. I don’t even, is that a word? Diversified?
I believe it. You believe it, but is it I’ve heard it? I mean, I can’t concur. I mean, but I believe feels right. It does very wrong. I don’t want to be right.
I’m like, my mind is telling me no, but my body’s telling me yes.
Can you sing it to us so that we can fill it in our bones?
Yeah. I mean, can we do it? [inaudible] my mind is telling me no, but my body, my, I mean, yeah.
I felt that
Then you got the guy, the last, you got the guy that’s content. He is just, he’s got a, he’s got a little bit of a hybrid. He’s got a little bit of this. He’s just he’s there. He shows that to work, but he’s, he’s not, he’s not there any sooner than he needs to be. And he doesn’t stay any later than he has to be. He’ll never go above and beyond. He’s just content. He will do what he’s there to do. And then he, he, he goes home. He just never, he does his job, whatever you tell him specifically, he just does that. And that’s it no more, no more, no less. You get whatever you say. And maybe
Even leaning on the left side, sometimes,
Most likely they lean on the less, but if you had a perfect content person, he would do just what you told them to do. And that would be it, but it would be done. It would just be that’s it. He’s not going to go anymore.
Nice. So, so let, let’s all go around the circle here of the, the bearded circle do us, we’ll be on the next segment. I have something that, this reminds me. We had a conversation the other day, um, Jordan and I about not this step, but kind of like this stuff. You have a client, you get picked two out of three things. They can pick the delivery, time, their price, but they cannot pick the quality of the part, or we can pick the price and the quality, but they pick the delivery time. You can only pick two out of three, same thing with your house or where you live. You can pick where you live or how much money you make or your occupation. That is not a word. It was close, but you get like, so it’s almost kind of the same thing,
But yeah, this is definitely, definitely falls into that diagram of, you know, you can only have, if there’s three, you can only have two out of the three, you know, you can’t have all there’s, it’s just going to be, you’re going to, what is, I want to know what your qualities that you look for in somebody. Cause I know what I like. And so you guys have different opinions, so go for it. I want to, I want to hear you guys as well.
I’m going to, I’m going to say, can this, can this be categorized as amputation? This citation? His segment. Yeah. Yeah. I’m sure that your words is. Sure. Um, yeah. So I looked at your words, I would say I’m actually not looking for any of those necessarily, but let’s just say those were my only options. And I’m going to go into how we hire in what our hiring process looks like. Um, in here in just a second after, um, I think let’s all pick one from his, if we only could choose that, um, I would say, I would say almost it’s hard. So either hardworking or eager. I think I would do eager. I don’t like it. Oh, okay. Nice. You’re so, so eager. We had, this was so we do, so Jordan will go into the hiring process, but we had a guy reach out to us for six months. She was very eager to, and maybe I wrong. And then during the night I looked at each other like, dude, he’s been calling about piranha jaws for six months. He wants us. Nobody ever calls us much, but he’s eager. But what happened? He almost ended up being the worst employee. Once he got here, this is true. It just,
Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Those guys have all the momentum in the world. Like it’s, that’s the thought drives them to be there. They want to be there. But as soon as it happens, it’s that’s it? Yeah. They’re there they’re there. They accomplished the goal of getting there, but did they lose the luster? They lose that drive and it just kind of dissipates. Okay.
Okay. Be right. Oh. Who would you look for? You? You got hardworking, skilled, eager, eager, or content. It’s a toss up. Okay.
Gotta pick one. You gotta pick one. What
Would you classify yourself? Brandon. That’s a toss up to, Oh no. I know how to, I know how to classify. You I’ll do it. I ain’t tell you right now, Thomas. You okay. Hard working hundred percent. No. Yeah, because you sweat all day long. Yeah.
He’s not even working. He’s just sweating. They’re like, this is our best employee.
I know. But it’s just like, even though I have cameras, like he, I always look whenever, look at the cameras. He’s always doing something, but he’s probably actually setting down a lot. And then when I come out there, he’s never caught off guard. He’s still working. So he’s probably got a camera on me knowing when I’m watching him, I think. Is that true, Brandon? Yeah. Sure. And so I can’t get around the fact that like the, the cystic show and the facts show that he’s a hard worker because every time I see him, he’s sweating. So I would say Brandon probably classifies as a one in a, for hardworking in content. Yeah. Yeah. Not he’s probably 95% content. He has his, no, he has his days. I mean, he’s content, but he’s, he’s always hardworking,
But you gotta be honest with it though. I mean, this can you can’t sugar coat. It he’s vested in the company. He’s posted all over. You’re fricking jaws. He’s not going to,
He’s been fired. And then twice
You guys walked in there, like, listen, dude, your, your performance. It’s it’s crappy. You’re w we can’t have you working for us anymore, but you better be at our dinner, but dinner tonight at the house. Yeah.
Hey, we are still friends. Just so you know it, it didn’t ever hurt our friendship because he’s a, he’s a, he’s a good guy. So
He’s content in your relationship,
The firing wasn’t because of stuff that happened at work, it was more because emotional and stuff, dad passing emotional stuff. Wasn’t great. I mean, we can have machining guys. This was a whole nother podcast of why Brandon’s gotten fired twice.
I got a phone. You guys, you haven’t got a funnel. You guys. Yeah.
You have anything to say, Brandon? No, I agree. Okay, cool. I agree. So
We’re, we’re going to go over. What is it? Brain pick though? Did you pick it? Oh, no, he didn’t pick. Oh, we skipped it. Pick it. It’s either hardworking. I’m going to have to go with that. Okay. Gotcha. I like it. Okay. Wait, wait, Donnie, what is yours? What is mine? Yeah. What’s your body telling you? My body,
My body is telling me number one, hard working. That’s what my body’s tells me. And then I think about it. And my mind is like, yeah, definitely hard working. The reason why is no matter what situation they’re going to be in, they’re going to put 100% of their effort into it. They may not be the best, but hardworking. Person’s always going to, uh, surpass anybody that, you know, may be eager to do something. Or even if they’re skilled, I’ve worked with really skilled people before, but they didn’t have, they had, they just didn’t have initiative. They didn’t want to teach you anything. They were those content skilled workers that just were there to be there to go home, you know? Right. If you’re a hard worker, you’re going to show up, you’re going to do whether it’s salt, cutting, whether it’s mopping a floor, whether it’s filling coolant tanks or scraping sludge out of it. I mean, you’re gonna, you’re gonna work hard at it. So the hard worker was, was my choice.
Nice. So, so my, my, our, our strategies, I think they kind of align the same with yours, but a little bit, the verbiage is a little different. And so we are going to, I’m going to ask the question, how do you hire in, what do I look for? Or what do you look for? Right. So do you know that Forbes okay. Says 75%. That’s right. 75% of employees are still in from the work. Did you know that anybody Donny,
Brandon, I mean, I’m not going to make a comment cause are you one of the 75? Um, I feel like I fall, I feel like I fall into this category.
You ever stole a piece of carbide? Like it was broken, but you were proud that it broke and you put it in your pocket?
Yeah. Yeah. I, I definitely took, I’ve taken broken tools home for sure. Like, I cut them. I, you know, I did, uh, yeah, it was, it was like a program that I decided that I did myself and I broke it. It was just like a, it’s like a reminder. I would set it up on my bench and I’d be like, yo right. You know, focus if I did it. Yeah, for sure. I had kept like carbide, but I definitely would say, ah, I’ve still, I’ve borrowed you borrowed I’ve borrowed from the employees before.
Okay. So something that a lot of people don’t think about, especially, you know, business owners that have started their own business. This is like a huge thing. So some people thinks like I’m literally taking something from you that, you know, like has some type of like, you know, that it’s like a cash thing. Like maybe I took cash from you. And so this isn’t necessarily what we’re saying. So sometimes it could be, yeah. It could be that car that they could recycle. Correct. Yeah. Um, it could be the pencils or the pins that they pay for. It could be the paper. It could be, it could be a lot, like the list goes on and on and on and on the phone. That’s where I was going to go. Not just time on the phone time. So being a machinist, and I know there’s a podcast about this that I listened to, but if you’re, it’s called making ships, okay. I’m a big fan. But if you aren’t making ships, you aren’t making money. So
God that classic saying, bro, I think I’m going to get that piranha jaws tattooed on my chest. Let’s all do it. Ooh. Tramp stamps. Oh, Oh,
Oh no. But if we aren’t making chips, we aren’t making money. And so something we actually implemented into our company a while back was, Hey, you know what? We haven’t ever had breaks. Let’s add a, a couple 10 minute break segments that way in theory. Right. Theory, um, that they work harder while they’re actually working because they know in a little while, they’ll get a 10 minute break and they can check their phone or they can call the misses or whatever. Correct.
In theory. Yes.
Let’s just say theory. Doesn’t always work.
Yeah. I, I, I just agree with, I disagree with the break thing. I disagree with the brakes.
So every time Brandon can attest to this, every I would cuss right now, but I don’t have a beeper. Oh, Oh. Every freaking time. Oh, if I would’ve known, you’re going to beep I would’ve did it
Give me a little bit of a pause right before you do it. Yeah. I’ll be
Nice. And I think your Bieber’s better than mine. I tried to beat NACE and mine didn’t sound quite as high as that, but every time I go to find somebody it’s every time he’s on, I’m like Brandon, because Brandon doesn’t take that many breaks. Cause he’s like, he’s a hard worker. Right. And so Brandon’s working with me and me and NACE never take a break ever. And in fact, our desks are actually stand up desks. So we never sat down. So we always started stay productive. And every time I go out to their defined, it’s at least this one guy, if not several guys, I go to find I’m like where where’s so-and-so and he’s like, it’s break time. I’m like, Oh gosh. Every, every time, Oh, I got to pause. Was there a delay? I did a pause.
The pause only works. If you’re in the middle of [inaudible] only works. If you’re talking, I don’t know if you didn’t sit there for three minutes. Not saying anything dumb. It’s like, Whoa,
Sound like a horn out of nowhere. Sounded like a big shoot. You Tracy, you sound like a big to-do dream. Um, I don’t even know where I was going now. Cause I know. I mean, that’s how, I mean
My last shop I was at, it was always when I needed something, it was every, every time I needed to do something wrong, if I was in crunch time, everyone was on break or everyone was gone or someone was on a smoke break.
Hey wait, wait, wait. Every time everybody was gone on break, Donnie was filling carbide. Oh
Yeah. That’s fair. No, I was changed that stealing [inaudible] I was borrowing guys. No, at this time I was selling carbide. I was, I wasn’t, I wasn’t. I was trying to make quotes happen. I was, I had people on the phone with me like that, you know, someone buying something there. They don’t have, they need something like yesterday. Hey,
So this, so this is part of your introduction. Okay. I think we have to build it up. But you used to sell tools for GW Schultz, which is now GW tooling group. Right? So now they’re like a big,
I want to, I want to clarify it was GW Schultz. Yes. And they are now under, they’re under the one large conglomerate, which is now a GWS tool group. Oh. So they’ve got, they’ve got places all over the country. Now they’re basically service the whole country at the time.
So you were actually, instead of stealing carbide, like whenever your machine is because you were proud of, of, uh, pushing something harder than it’s ever been pushed before. I’m going to put that in my pocket as a reminder that I can do anything. Right.
Basically I went from, I went from pushing tools to loving it, to sell it, to selling them because I basically ran nothing but tool, group tools. So I just kind of adapted into just, I pushed everything as hard as I could go, whether that was, and I think you’re like across the street or something, right. It’s it’s walking distance. I could fart into Moscow. Could smell it if you want it to. Yeah. If you want it to,
Yeah. You had them at Tomas do some arts. Oh, Hey, one day we’ll actually get to a Moss. The man, the carbide piranha jaws man on here. So we can like reminisce about some of this stuff, Dale.
Oh, I guarantee you. You want me to ask him?
Yes. Yes, absolutely. So Donnie, I have a question for you. Yeah, yeah. Go for it. So we’re talking about the four things that you like as a, um, or what we look for, who might you look for? So when you’re working at, uh, selling carbide and you can’t find anybody because everybody’s on breaks, were you working like on a commission or performance-based or how, what, what was your pay that drove you to actually work harder and sell more tools during your breaks than other people?
I wasn’t. So the start I was an hourly employee. I wasn’t, I didn’t get commission. I was actually, my official title was, um, applications or applications, engineer, um, tech support basically. So I was at the central headquarters. I received phone calls. My job was to basically, uh, test tools that didn’t work well for a customer or R and D things or make stuff for the shop. It was just kind of like a, an in-house machine is sort of thing for, uh, the tooling company. Yeah.
I was under the assumption that you were just the guy that had the big knife.
No, see, I borrowed that. Nice. Okay. So you didn’t yeah, I didn’t steal it. I just borrowed it. Yeah. I mean, I just borrowed it. Like I didn’t steal it from him. I like to borrow things. Cause I’m just, you know, I’m that guy I like to, I like to borrow stuff anyways. Yeah man. Yeah.
You know, I had this friend one time, Donny, just, just take us down this trail. Some people think that once you borrow something for, let’s just say an extended amount of time because you didn’t ask for it back. They think it’s theirs. Yeah. So is that knife now? Like at your house?
No, it’s not. No, it’s not nice. Yeah. No. Uh, so at the time my mentor, uh, my CAD mentor, he, uh, he, he had made that knife and so it was more or less. I, I was waiting for my tuck, Xcel from Brad, a shadow tactical Q trains. I was waiting for that to get in and it was supposed to be here and it was delayed on shipping. So I didn’t have it to open. And then he let me borrow that big that now that’s a nice knife and uh, that’s not a knife. That’s a big, big knife.
So Hey, whenever, whenever I saw that video of you posting it, we had just sent you a set or a couple of sets of some cerated jaws. And when you went to open that box, because we take pride in everything we do. So we, we, we packed that sucker to where they can’t get damaged. Hopefully ever, when the ups guys are throwing them into the trucks, I felt like Dani was coming into this, like a, like a samurai. Like he knew he was winning this war when he was an open hit. Yes. And then it goes, boom. So he goes, he goes up, up, up, up, and he’s like, Oh man, they said that knife is dull. And he tries to pry it open.
Yeah. I, I was shaming. I was shaming the guy who made it, I’m like, dude, this knife sucks, bro. You can’t even cut a box open with this thing. And he’s like, he’s starting to look like he’s got this look of shame. Oh, you guys might hear this. Yeah. Um, Oh, Oh, I just cracked a Bush open. Sorry I do that. Um, but yeah, he, he, he looked depressed because I insulted his knife. But what it came down to was you literally had like eight inch thick copper staples box that there’s
Like eight in the box. Yeah.
There was literally, I was fully expecting it to be like eight inch staples all the way down. Then the whole thing wrapped in duct tape and then saran wrap and the like, it was insane packaging, but honestly it was one of the best packaged products I’ve seen. Oh yeah.
So we’ll talk about how to brand. Yes, for sure. For sure. So let’s, let’s just talk about the package in incarcerated jaws. Just real quick. I had this one guy that I talked to, I remember exactly where I was. I was at a baseball practice with my son and I got this phone call. Cause I always have my cell phone as an owner and it always gets forwarded to me and he was calling me and he had just, he had had like a really expensive InMail from like his car or something like that. And he just blew it as a five eights in mil and he just blew it up. He was making putters. Okay. And uh, this wasn’t American putter company. This is a different putter company. He was making putters, blew it up and that, you know why it blew up parts slipped.
Now, why did it blow up part slippage? Ooh, that was all right. And so I was like, why? And so he called with questions about our shredded piranha jaws. So I was like, get these, these will help. They’ll save your life, save your barrier marriage. That’s what I was going to say. They’ll save your marriage. It’s going to make your life so much easier. So I finally talked him into getting them. I think he got either the one eighth. I’m pretty sure it was the one eighth, but I could be wrong. And uh, he got them and whenever he got his box, he referenced our packaging. As if you go back. I know not everybody knows this movie because it was probably on VHS. Um, but ACE been sure that’s, that’s this, this sound effects of hitting a box, kicking the box. So he AC insurers like some type of delivery driver and he’s going, going through and just crashing all these fragile things, throwing them, kicking them, like he’s a soccer player. He’s like, we’re going downtown. And he just smokes it right. And lands at the doorway. Uh, but he was like, and so I didn’t know, like if his reference was like, our stuff showed up broken and I was like, Oh no, but he was saying like, our boss could have withstand a spinner was what he was saying.
Yeah. Oh yeah. So back on that, saving the marriage thing, I’m just going to, I think I got to do my own little segment on fun facts, insert catchy theme song. You know what I mean? But did you know that, uh, the thrive time business consultants, they say that 78% of husbands have, or will cheat on their spouse. Okay.
I absolutely actually did know that, but that’s awesome. Did you guys, Brandon? Oh, that’s awesome. I mean, the fact that I knew a chance, so the fact that I knew it was awesome, but I I’m glad that me and Dani know the same facts.
Yeah. We’re I mean, we already, I think we discussed it as the first episode that we’re like fact bros. We’re bros,
8% of husbands cheat on their wives mind. Okay. So I’m going to, I’m going to tie this in here in a second. It’s this guy, guy, guy, girl, girl, girl. What does this mean? They didn’t say it’s just, that’s a fact. This is 78%. Yeah. Hmm. Okay. That makes sense.
So if you’re the husband in the relationship, 78% of your, your criteria has cheated on their spouse. Yes.
Yup. Absolutely. Well, I got my Joel’s locked down.
Fun fact. So does my wife’s anyways, moving on anyways.
Um, so when we hired Ani, we’re going to take it back to how we hire and what we’re looking for, the us chamber of commerce says, right. That 30% of business failures may be as a result to employment theft.
That’s crazy. Cause that means 70% succeed from not having employee Fest.
Yeah. I mean, when, whenever you’re, whenever you’re pricing your product,
Whatever you’re. Yeah.
I don’t think those stats are right. Because all like it’s like, what does it nice? Like 90% of businesses fell within this year, this year, but between seven years. And it’s crazy, like 90% of small businesses fail within the first seven years. Okay. It had 90% of franchises succeed. That’s right. Because they’ve got systems. You’ve got systems. Yeah. They’ve got, Oh Donny, where’s your beep. I didn’t.
And pause. That was mine. He didn’t pause his guy, this guy, I don’t, you know what? I don’t get paid enough for this guys. I’m just, you’re just hourly an hourly guy. Just trying to be the best there is.
It says, uh, did you know that the thrive time show business consultants say that 85% of, of employees lie on the resume that 85% of all employees resumes are fiction. Donny, what is,
What is I feel attacked right now?
What is, what is fiction mean? What is fiction?
What is fiction? Um,
It’s like a story it’s just a made up story.
Yeah. It’s it’s just, it’s it’s, it’s fake. It’s false. It’s not true. Um,
So, so, so, so Dani, have you ever been a part of the hiring process? Have you ever hired anybody?
Yeah. Yeah. I have hired people and I, I agree with this. Like I, I do agree. I mean, numbers are numbers and that’s, you know, that’s facts, but I do agree that I’m a nine times out of 10. I feel like that’s a good ratio. You are getting lied to on a resume
For sure. So how does, um, I’m gonna, I’m gonna let you guys on a secret of how master machine, how M dash USA hires you. You ready? I am
Background checks. No, it always
Goes back to your saying of the
One out of the four. Well, actually there should probably be a five. Okay. The fifth one, I would say on the fifth one
Assistant. Yeah. Yeah. That could be
Resumes to how consistent they are. So consistency.
So let let’s go all the way to the beginning interview process due Tuesday at 4:00 PM. That’s later. Oh, one-on-one or group interviews. Donny. Did you do one-on-one or group?
Um, I would do a one-on-one first and then once I did a one-on-one interview, I would then do a group interview after that. So I did two interviews.
Nice. So we do group interviews. Do you want to know why?
Um, cause you put big, scary blonde beard man in front of them and
Absolutely no. So
Touch base on this. Okay. Because some companies will look at this and we were in the same boat three years ago. You have to know the you’re trying to, people are worried about finding good people. Right? I think would with what Dani asked as a company, you have to know where the company is going. So you have to know where and what your trajectory is as a company is 100% and then you’re going to know what people you need behind them.
Can I add, can I jump in real quick? Do it? Absolutely. All right. I’m John I’m diving in. So I’m going to base this. I am the first shop I worked at, which was equal quality components. Um, that shop after working there, I, I see, I had got the opportunity to see many people come in and I watched a lot of people leave very quickly and the shop had its own vibe. It had its own sort of workflow and the, and the people that work there all had the same, um, somewhat same mentality of, um, succeeding. They all wanted to be good at what they were doing. And so the, the, just the general atmosphere of the shop would actually weed out bad employees, culture, culture.
Yeah, because you’re because apparently their culture was so dynamic that either one, they wanted to be there, no matter what or two, it was going to drive them away because they couldn’t do it. Yeah. Right. Yeah.
So we have something that Jordan was talking about the group interview. Right. And I’ll let you lead into that. But before the group interview, this is what we do. Casting couch. Ooh. She sounds hideous. Anyways,
We do it.
We do a process on the, on the inner web. And our job post is to have a little sense of humor, a little bit integrity. That way we filter out 95, 98% of people that we don’t want right away. So through the job post, they’re not looking, how much can I make, how quick they’re looking for an investment, kind of like a Roth IRA, something that you put in and then you get return. Um, not like a with burger King. It’s horrible. Horrible. So burger King right now. Oh, it won’t be good. So when you send out our ads on indeed and Craigslist as right now yes. As sponsor ads, and then we get 95% of people that were, that won’t respond.
Yes. Right? Yes. If then
We win and I’ll let Jordan tying into this, then all the people that respond, I sent another flyer to see who will actually make it to a Tuesday group interview
4:00 PM. So let, let’s just tie into this real quick. So he is actually in charge of sending all that stuff and, piranha jaws and, and getting people to come to me. And then I’m in charge of actually the process, like the interview process. But he, he actually made, uh, like a system. So he, he systemized his job to make it faster to where he already has like a template, uh, email already made up with our address and with everything in there describing what you need to do to make it to the interview, how you need to be prepared and what you need to wear. Okay. So it says dress to impress, bring a pencil or a pen and some paper. Yep. So, and if they show up late and it says four o’clock sharp. If they show up late, the doors will not open for them. Dani not open.
So that, that kind of, we’re looking for that.
Yeah. Consistent, just a dedicated person. That’s actually going to show up on time. Yeah.
They’re going their pen and paper. Was it like a trick? Like there’s not actually a large group interview? No. So this is the next point. So probably there’s probably one week where we had probably 15
Do people. Yes. Send emails. Yes.
You wrote them all back and out of those 50, probably 15 said they would be there. Yes. And so we said, come on.
How many showed up? Probably three, three, three out of 50 that were apparently needing jobs that didn’t show up. And then
There’s three. We will probably hire zero because they’re not process the next step
Hiring process right. Of his steps.
But if you did, one-on-one with 50 people, that’s over 50 hours of somebody’s time. Right. So if we did this
Two hours. Yeah. So before we used to do a one-on-one, I would spend an hour with each person, which as a business owner with, as a person that has limited amount of time, that took a lot of time. Doesn’t it?
Yeah. Your entire, your entire day is dedicated to just yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. I mean, it takes a long time. So I can’t, I can’t dedicate all these hours one day. So it would literally
Take a week to, to just see if I could interview people the best part. This is what’s gets a little weird during a group interview. Everything seems good. Like it’s going good. Right. And then you have that one guy will end up saying a question, just kind of weird. Yeah. And the other guy that looked normal, he feeds off of that. Insists on that. Even crazier. Oh, Billy. Oh, bill. That’s what you say. Yeah. In your mind, you don’t actually say it out loud when you do one-on-one how do you get hired? You answer your questions. Don’t say nothing. Right. But when you have other people and you have, you know, Brandy in the corner and she goes, so what about, um, paid time off or breaks? Or you have time for social media time. And then Bobby goes, hell yeah. Social media time. Where’s that at?
And then you have Joe, Joe buggy in the middle. Not saying nothing. Cause he has no, I think it’s a Joe blow. Oh, we’ll both. But that happens. And then it gets weird and then Jordan and front I’m in the back and I’m like doing like that, kill it. And let’s go, let’s get him, cut it out. Yeah. So, so, okay. So, so one, we do a group interview process, which saves us time. Right. And money to, to, because time is money too. We have a script. So it says, what day actually do we do the interview process? Which they talked about that’s Tuesday at four o’clock it never changes. So for some reason I can’t do it on Tuesday, either one, I have a manager doing a script for the manager to do because it’s already, I’ve already proved it. I’ve already edited it several it’s like on rev, light, Z Dani short and sweet, like a jolly rancher. That’s true. Um, so
I was going to say nice, but Ooh,
He’s not that short. He is sweet. Hmm. Hmm. Is an huge fan. A lot of companies think that’s more like it. Oh, sorry. A huge fact. A huge fan. Huge. Huge.
Can you say it’s pronounced huge. Yeah.
Huge, huge. That a lot of companies think that once they have like a good team, that they stopped this process, that’s the wrong approach because you always have to have good people in the pipeline. So we always keep on sending out the indeed and the Craigslist. And we filter through that, that like, it’s probably like one in a hundred candidates will probably actually be hired. Yeah. I know. I know that sounds like a, like a bummer, like a bad deal. But because our culture is a big deal. One out of a hundred might be considered.
Yeah, no you have. So the key key factor, number one, you’ve already assessed. The sharp has established it’s successful. You’ve established a culture within that shop. You can’t change it because once you change it, things are falling apart and it, it loses you lose control. Absolutely. Uh, and another thing, if you’re not hiring, or if you’re not interviewing are not looking for somebody else that, that continues that culture on that, you know, that hardworking guy that you, you, you’ve got, um, you’ve had for 15 years, 10 years, whatever, eventually we’ll turn content. Like all of those, those, the four or five, um, characteristics that I talked about in the beginning, those all are, have a shelf life. Um, the hardworking guy can’t eventually become content. Um, the eager guy could eventually become skilled or he could be a hard worker, but it, it, it, they all have a shelf life. They’re all at a, you know, I’m gonna use a metal, uh, metallurgy term here, but they’ll have a decay rate at this point and it’s going to happen. Inevitably. You have to continue to, um, feed that culture. Yeah. You got keep it. You have to feed the culture. I’m going to, I don’t know why this is turning into like a, um, a micro organism speech. You have to feed the, you have to feed the culture to keep, keep it alive, keep it alive. But yeah,
If you don’t keep feeding it every single day with everything we do, if we’re not intentional, it will start shifting and start changing. And all of a sudden you’re like, wow. So I’m going to have a real quick, before we go into the script, what does our script look like? Um, I’m going to have NACE talk about what our culture looked like. So, so dad actually started this company. We’ve been in business for almost 40 years now. And our culture was different when he was here. Not necessarily good or bad but different, but when we decided where we wanted to go, what we wanted to do, we decided, Oh, this isn’t going to happen with this culture. And so Nate is just talk about a little bit about the culture, how we started to change it. What, what the reactions were in, how long it took.
Um, so what our culture was, how we started to change it, what the reactions were and how long it took. So that’s a lot, and this is great because Brian was here for part of it, most of it. But, and so, so dad came from a place where he had, he had two, he had two jobs. He was a manager at both of those. Yes. And the managers, um, were jackasses and dad said, I will never work under somebody again. And so dad created his own, this massive machine in 81 working out of his garage in the back. Yep. And so when he did that, he was like, I’m going to make it fun. So when Jordan and I started in into this, um, dad’s goal was to get a TV at every machine. So he wants TV. Why we machine it, wasn’t a flat screen TV.
There were some, some flat screens and some big boxes. There was like those 32 inch big tubes, two TVs that weighed 500 pounds to TVs are the way to go though. So that, so that was, so that was one thing. So that was that. Yeah. And so when dad passed, yeah, we decided that was costing us a lot of calculating how many people push the cycle button to watch TV. And when we, we, we literally took out every TV, gave it away, burned it, shot it. Yeah. All of the above. And we probably saved about $45,000 in one year, at least. And, but because that had been part of our culture for so long that you can imagine there wasn’t very nice reactions about it. Like people were kind of upset a little bit. And so with that, Jordan and I and our mom got a business coach and we started seeing the really cool culture, like culture.
It was fun at thrive, ten.com because I think there’s times where you’d come to work and Jordan and I, who was ever there earlier, they, they got the, they got to the crown and the person that was late just got stared down, Oh, crown and stare down. Nice. And so we were a team. We weren’t really a really a team. But when we, when we started hanging out with the thrive team that Nicole cer we knew things had to change. And so we made a pact, no matter how, late, early, whatever. Cause we work we’re we’re owners. So we may work from 10:00 AM to 4:00 AM. Right. And people don’t see that, no, we may have to wake up. And you know, Jordan might show up a little bit, a couple of hours late because he just went to bed and vice versa. So we just said, Hey, let’s make a pact.
And it starts with us within us. It starts with us. So every morning we say, good morning, fist bumps, whatever. So that was the start of the culture. And uh, we added new lights. You, we spent about $20,000 on new lightning because our lights, our lights were really like a yellow light. Donnie, Brendan, Brandon remembers this. Could you, you might or might not, not be able to see your calipers to see if you’re, if you have the right dimensions. Let’s just say the change. I thought I was blinded blinded by the light. When you, when you walked out, right? Yeah. In the nuts. Oh, sorry. Go on. If you walked in on a summer day at 12:00 PM from outside to inside, you couldn’t tell a difference after. And the guys weren’t used to it. They’re like, Oh, guess what was next? What security cameras? Oh, well that could be a whole box yesterday. Everybody has put peeking over. What are you doing? What are you doing? You don’t look at me. That’s illegal. Hey Donna, look at me. Hey, Donnie, Donny, Donny, everyone would come to the office just to see what we can see.
Oh yeah. You know what the best part, you know, the best part about the security cameras was the entire country got to see a fricking forklift, dry through a Bay door.
[inaudible] whiskey throttle. Whew. You know, Donnie, if you wouldn’t have had that, we did the security cameras for lots of reasons. Number one, just to know people, just, just to let people know that number one, we are watching it’s recorded into it’s for safety. I mean, if something were to happen, that was really bad. And say me and NACE in the office or whatever, dealing with something, dealing with a client, dealing with phone call didn’t want the email, whatever it is, um, that we can go back and review that footage to see if that person was following protocol, following systems, being safe, wearing their, uh steel-toed shoes. Um, and so that hat, yeah, that was part of the reason was to keep our people safe. Right. Yeah. But it was also part of changing the culture because we knew if we wanted to scale our positions, we may not be here as much because we’re in business meetings. We’re growing the company. Yep. Lane deals flying in airplanes, which I hate. But yeah, but we had to change it whole
I’ll I’ll fly for you, bro. Like I’ll fly for
You. I’ll pay you to do it.
Nice. You don’t know, you just gotta get me. Get me. I don’t I’ll advocate wherever. If you just need me to go to somebody’s place to be like, listen, you need to buy these, these jaws. You don’t got to pay me. Just put me on a plane. Tell me I need to go to this place. I’ll show up in a red, white and blue M M USA. T-shirt yes. With my beard all oiled up smelling like high biscuits and tea tree oil and just straight up sell the crap out of some jaws. Ooh. Oh.
If, if you could sell cerated jaws, I might even be willing to, um, even give you a commission Donnie. Oh yeah. So, okay. So, uh, from that, when we started changing the, uh, culture days, like one day, did it take years? So Jordan, I, when we’re changing the culture, cause we went from one extreme. I felt like to the next, um, man, we played like three or four things a year that we could do. And we had a planning out. We had to be intentional. We had a plan. If it doesn’t get planned, does it get done? Oh, knowledge bomb. And so basically we plan a few things and then our whole goal was where we want to go financially as a team. And then what do we want as a culture of employees? Because everybody was separated. Yes. The way they clocked in was separated.
Now everybody’s uniform. So let’s just take that back, even deeper. So even me, you and mom deep, even me, you and mom were little bit distant, correct? Yes. So sadly, but yes. One of the things that we changed was, you know, after dad passed away, you know, mom was gone for six months, you know? So you mean you were more focused on working then caring about how are you doing? So, so to be honest, I ain’t crying to about probably a year later after dad passed away, once it soak in. Cause we were, we jumped in head over Hills learning the whole business. Yeah. So I cried about a year later. Yeah.
I don’t want to, I don’t want to interrupt, but I’m going to, because I feel like I’m going to, if I don’t say this now, I want to know because it sounds what, you’re everything you’re saying. It basically sounds like if you guys didn’t do this, if you didn’t, uh, start this plan, your business was going to collapse from the inside, out from the family alone.
Uh, actually it very well could have. Um, honestly, and so one of the things that me and nays did, actually, we did a couple of things. Uh, but one of the things we’re like, Hey, no matter what time you show up, because you worked late, uh, NACE does a lot of stuff on his computer in the morning. Um, so he might show up a little bit late. I might, I might be working until one or 2:00 AM in the morning. I mean, I pulled up pulled light 48 hour shifts before NACES pulled some crazy hours. And so it was like, no matter what happens when we come into the office, we say, good morning and we give each other high five. And that just starts your day, no matter what, give each other a high five. And that took out into the shop to where no matter what happens to me and NACE right now with the, uh, all the craziness going on in the world, we give air high fives or we give like elbow bumps. Right. Uh, but no matter what I, well, I, I crossed the boundary today, got a little spicy. I did a tiger claw, high five. Oh, I did that to Dylan. You saw it. And he was confused. He goes, you can’t do that. I said, it’s not high five it’s tire claw. [inaudible]
Carol Baskins has a piranha jaws tear running down her face right now from that tiger claw, literally.
Hi, Hey, you know what, but they both immediately sanitize their hands afterwards. So we’re all good. Yeah. So it probably took about a good three to five years before stuff started becoming solid. This is a great notable quotable for a lot of people. You’re going to have a breakdown before you have a breakthrough. Say it again, a break down before you have a breakthrough, say it again, a break down before, pray through it. Yeah. So, so what, what does, what does that saying is that you’re probably going to have some hard times before you learn how to change. And after that we were like, dad did the break breakdown, right? Yeah. But we were getting the culture, the trajectory, all that stuff. We felt the pressure for sure. We felt the pressure, I guess
What’s even, what’s even more impressive is that you had an, your dad established a culture within that shop. He had already gone through that process and you guys very well could have just continued on with it. So it could have been lazy and not changed anything or not progressed for the better. And you guys decided we have to do this. You broke it down. You went through that, that hurdle to, to elevate yourself higher. Yes. And it was not.
So this is w is very, very weird and very, very good, but it’s also awesome that we know our strengths and our weaknesses, but Jordan has basically what Jordan’s kryptonite is, is my strength and what my kryptonite is history. So, and vice versa and same thing with mom. And we’re like, if in right before dad passed, she’s like, if we can get through this recession, we can do anything in Jordan. And I, and mom took the same thing. We we’re like, if we can get through this, dad just passed. We have no idea what we’re doing. We can get through this. And then along came the way we, we started, you know, hearing some good notable quotas from people. So a couple of things is your network is your net worth or show me your friends and I’ll show you your future. And so one thing was, if you’re not growing, you’re dying. And we never really knew what that meant until a couple of recessions, 2001, 2008 and 2016 when we felt it. But we knew if we didn’t grow or adapt somewhat, we would die.
We could take all like, very like just this subject itself and do have tons of content to help our listeners, um, start implementing some stuff in their shops and their small businesses. Um, but we’re going to move forward, but we could talk about all day about, um, working with your family, working with your friends because we’re doing
It. So
This marks, the end of the first part in our two series podcasts, what are the four ways that we hire? If you guys enjoyed this, if you guys were entertained, hopefully you laughed a little bit. Maybe you learn something. Hopefully we would love it. If you share this with your friends and your family, we’ll see you next time.