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I mean we’ve got over two hundred and twenty episodes now of the pest geek podcast and a lot of you have no idea who I am or where I come from but I’ve been silent for a year. The podcast has been going thank you to Jeff McGovern and Stephen Vantassel and Adam Malanga for helping out and contributing what they have. They’ve done a phenomenal job and they will continue to do this. And I really do appreciate all of the work they’ve put into this to make sure and they you know they they’ve captured the vision of what I want to do where I want to go with this. They have embraced the vision have supported me have consulted me have given me great advice. They’ve been there for me so I am surrounded by excellent people who actually have been doing this all of them probably longer than I have and have in their own right their own expertise. And that’s why I appreciate that they’re totally different from me. They’re not me. They’re a totally different people with different backgrounds different skill sets different abilities and I think that’s what makes a very very successful team. His not having people who are a copy of me but experts in their own right. So I am so grateful for that.
But yes I took a year off from the doing an actual producing a podcast. I’ve been just behind the scenes doing the the distribution and production work but not doing the actual content creation for the podcast because my business blew up and I could not handle it anymore to the point where I had my wife for a year doing preventive service while I was managing the business doing sales marketing and doing initials and doing the lawn and garden work that is very extensive.
And I went from working six hours a day in the field to eight hours a day in the field to 10 hours a day in the field to 12 and 14 hours. I mean I would be out at 7 o’clock in the morning and I’d still be doing a restaurant at 12:00 midnight. That’s how crazy it got and I had to build a buffer in order for me to start hiring because it requires a lot of preparation and knowing that the numbers are gonna be there so that you can make payroll and for so I you know I took on everything else and put all the GHB preventive maintenance which is our growing part of our business and handed that over to her and had her in the field for about six hours a day doing that until I building a business to start recruiting.The problem here I had was Listen guys.
I didn’t know how to recruit and the way I had done it in the past
In my previous part of this business which you know this is this is a brand new rebrand of my old company where we were a landscape company we were a pull service company we were a property maintenance company we did anything that the customer needed us to do on that property. And when you know three years after I launched that company the market was taken I mean I launched it in 2009 which I’ll tell you what happened in 2009 some other time. But you know you all know the economy crashed and I lost a lot of my clients that I initially guided six months later I had lost about 40 percent of the business when that happened and that was a huge blow. And then so we got into competitiveness with the people who were dropping our business. I mean you know landscapers decided they were going to do pest control because their business was dropping so they weren’t recommending us anymore. You know in a period of six months I lost ten thousand dollars worth of business overnight.
Loosing You Vision Will Cost You
So we got into landscaping and we started you know we know you do when you’re when you’re a solo producer and you’re threatened and I want to talk about vision and there and there’s a verse in the Bible that I know and it says basically without a vision the people perish. And I had a vision when I started my pest control business of what I wanted it to be five years down the line and too many things happened in between both you know both in the business in the economy and personally that I took a huge hit in that same year. And most people if they didn’t have a vision they would have quit. And I’ll give you an example. One of them was the the economy took a dive. The year I started my company in January well by May June July we were hurting. I mean it was bad. It was really hard to bring in clients especially when you’re selling lawn or ornamental. Services which is a luxury ticket item.
We weren’t selling GHP at the time I was not into GHP I was into lawn ornamental purely and these were high ticket clients and when one of these kinds dropped you felt it when you lose one hundred and twenty hundred and sixty dollars a month two hundred dollar a month client and you lose three of them at the same time you’re like Oh my God what am I going to do. And I got into reactionary mode. I lost my vision and I went into what most people do is they start adding on services. And so I started adding on landscaping I said OK fine if they’re going to take my land my my lawn customers I’m going to take their landscape customer and customers were wanting a one stop shop to do everything together and it worked. And for about two to three years that was on the up and up. The problem is once the economy’s better and then people start shopping around and then other people start lowering their prices to compete it started dwindling and we were doing pool service.
And while that’s not something that you can retain because there’s just too much competition in it and you know when we started bundling everything for a client and they were spending three to five hundred dollars a month with me now they were expecting a discount like if they were buying Comcast you know and their Internet and their phone and thinking well we should get a discount we shouldn’t be paying all this money and now we started negotiating all this and everybody got into that mindset and people were coming in now and doing a lot of this stuff much cheaper.
Things Happen Along The Way When Your Building Your Business
And this is where I was you know three years into my business in the same year that I started my company. The economy took a dive. My daughter was being born. I was buying my new house. And within six months after that we were filing for divorce. And you talk about taking a hit personally with you know the all the investments you made everything. If I wouldn’t have had a vision to keep going where I wanted this business to go which is where it is today it just took me nine years to get it there because of all the personal setbacks. I mean it was horrible. And for those of you that are listening to me you know this has happened more often than you think to a lot of people. And this is the power of having a vision. I mean when I went back in 2009 I was already making plans. How was going to grow through franchising. And I had to put it on hold. After all this happened you know my daughter was born the same year lost a house you know got a divorce and you know my business is going in the tank. So I went into reactionary mode lost my vision and said Oh fine I’ll compete on anything I can. So I was selling like this one thing I know how to do is I know how to sell.
And I’ve been selling since I was 16 and I’m 48 years old. So I know how to sell I know I have to go after market. I know how to be aggressive I know how to cutthroat and I did that. I competed against everybody to take everything away and put it under one roof. The problem is that I couldn’t find people that were quality to take care of these clients. And I was working with subcontractors on a lot of these things pull service and you know we just couldn’t manage it it was just out of my hands. And about three years of doing this and working 16 hours a day in the field I pretty much got burned out. And then I started looking at the numbers and the numbers weren’t even there anymore. I mean I’m taking you through a history so you can understand because a lot of people haven’t heard my story and I. Went ahead and then just ran one day and I said I’m running racket you know the numbers are going down in these areas. And the only thing that was profitable was pest control. I mean pest control was carrying the company pretty much when all the other businesses were out 30 percent margin anymore. And I said you know I made a hard decision in 2013.
Getting out of a bad business before its too late
I said you know I’m shutting down this company. This makes no sense. I’m getting out of all of this. I’m going to refocus on what I really wanted to do in the beginning and and it was about 50 percent of our business was you know doing maintenance work and doing the landscaping doing pool service. I’m going to shut it down. And that was a hard decision because I had to realize that unless I shut it down all I couldn’t progressively do it or else I’d never get out of it and never be able to refocus my vision about the same time I was already dreaming about doing a podcast on pest control because by nature I’m a teacher and I’m an educator and I’m a trainer and that’s what I’ve done for you know 30 years. So I said you know I’m shutting all this down and for a year basically I lived off of until I can build my pest control sales which though this allowed me to refocus focus on one thing and saying lets me get pest control clients and that’s it. And only we’re only selling to serve as a GHB and lawn and ornamental. And we can bundle those together and be competitive. And so I did that and for a year I lived off of all the all the equipment.
I basically was selling everything off piece by piece. You know I had four trucks on the road I had several warehouses full of equipment and I basically started selling it all off and I was able to sell all my used equipment at the same price that I had bought it originally used three years later. And you know that’s what I did. I shut everything and I did a rebrand and I’ve been dreaming about doing an eco friendly pest control business since the second year was in the industry. So by 2006 I get into the industry 2007 I thought I knew something I realized I didn’t know anything. And I started training myself and by 2000 an eight I was already talking to everybody about converting and doing organics because I did so many lawn and garden and there was a lot of organic products available. The problem is they weren’t available to us and the market wasn’t even ready for that. Nobody wanted it. People would laugh me out of their home when I talk them about it. So I realized the market wasn’t right and when. And in 2013 there was about a 4 percent acceptance in the market to a 7 percent acceptance in the market of organics. Then we started growing very quickly in about 2014.
It skyrocketed to about 13 percent and that was the time to really make that conversion. And so I did the started the conversion in 2014 and now here we are four years later and we’ve got two technicians working for me right now. And but I had to do and I had to deal with the you know if I go into groups and I was in groups asking questions asking questions and I would get a myriad of answers primarily from people who have not never even done it but they thought that this is how they would do it if they were to do it so I started consulting the experts in the field of what it really takes to attract higher and trained people. And I basically got an in. And everything works together for good. I mean I’m one of those guys that just believe everything works together for good. You know and you know because of what I believe and I said you know when I started listening to them I said oh OK it’s no different than what we. I learned from churches that were growing in churches that were failing. And what I learned is that the churches that were growing and I had 20 years about 24 years of experience in ministry mostly youth ministry and I I said OK I get it.
Creating New Opportunities With A Renewed Vision
You basically have to create an evangelism program you’ve got to have a vision created evangelism program and then create a process to create disciples. Simple process. I got it and I apply it to my business. So I had to create a recruiting program I had never recruited the way I used to recruit remember with subcontractors and I had one full time guy working for me and it just happened to work out. And when I decided to make this change he says I really don’t want to go in that direction I’m going to go do something else. And I lost them and I had to go and run my own company again.
So I had to learn and I kept failing at trying to hire people because I kept using what everybody kept telling me to do who had never had really actually done it. So I created an a three step process for recruiting now. Mind you I’ve been quiet for a year. Because for a whole entire year for about six months I was doing nothing but research and learning how to do this and the only thing I could compare it to if anybody’s ever passed a kidney stone. Ok what I want you to do is you’re passing broken glass.
I mean that’s how painful this process was to learn and to implement and to do and this is why so many people in the industry choose to stay single operators because the process is people.
I had a meeting just a couple of months ago from a one of the listeners and you know he’s in New Jersey. He’s coming down to Miami for some four. He came down for Expo and he says Man I want to meet with you. You know let’s have lunch and I said Sure bro let’s go have lunch. Well it turned into a four hour lunch and we were discussing all of the pain that he’s been going through because he had ended up with back surgery and then he had to hire. And it’s been a nightmare I’ve been dealing with guys that have been growing their business talking to them about their process and pain and what they’ve been going through hiring and the people that they have now they have two and three and four techs and the nightmare they’ve gone through.
And I actually sat down and talked to people like that that actually have been doing it and know what the pain is. And I ignored everybody else. I mean I got out of every group I haven’t been active on any group for a year haven’t had the time and this is where I’ve been and what I learned to do and then put it into practice and I learned that. You know I hear all the time people criticize the larger companies that they’re always hiring. You know I just had the comcast guy come to my mom’s house in the back of the van says we’re hiring. The reality is that you have to take the same approach in ministry. And when I learned about people who had an effective growth program was a pastor who had a vision who created an evangelism program for the entire body the church not in evangelism group made everybody into evangelists and then cast a vision of everybody is also a discipleship and have. And what I’ve learned is that a bad evangelism program and a bad. Discipleship program is better than none of all an imperfect program is better than none. And what happens to a lot of people is they get caught in paralysis by analysis until it’s absolutely perfect and I know how to do it. Guess what you’re not going to unless you go through it you’re not going to grow unless you go through the pain. I can’t save you. I can save you some of the pain if you listen but I can’t save you if you decide you think you know better and you’re not going to listen because what I’m telling you makes no sense.
And what happens is that I learn I have a client who’s actually a recruiter for a software development company and I would sit there while I was servicing his home how he was managing and talking and go into it. And it’s basically a never ending process if you’re growing. It’s gonna be a never ending process. You can’t decide to recruit and hire only when you’re needing because you’re always going to be needing and here’s why. So we created three things that we needed to do. We needed to create. I needed to create I had been working by the way on my employee manual
If you are not working on your Vision you don’t have one
For four years. Why because you know I and I’m gonna get real personal with you here on this because you know I look at everything through scriptural lenses you know I have a a biblical world view I don’t have a religious worldview I don’t have a denominational worldview
I have a biblical worldview so everything that I look at I look at through and through the lens of scripture because Scripture teaches me a lot of wisdom you know and what I had to do was say you know I had to create a process and I had a vision and because I believe faith without works is dead. If you’re telling me that you believe something but you’re not working on it actively you don’t believe your own rhetoric
You’re just talking in a lot of people are talking but they’re not doing you got a plan. So four years before. In 2009 I was already working on my employee menu because I wanted to grow a company fast and build it and have employees and not do other work myself is just so happens that. I had to do it.
So I began working so progressively I kept asking questions of what should be in a manual and I built it and built built in to the point where I had a manual ready that I had to just touch up when the time came. What I didn’t have was a process I was gonna get that employee. That’s what I didn’t do because every employee that I ever hired for all of the companies that I worked for I had an H.R. department I had a recruiting department. All I was given were two to three prospects to choose from with their profiles already drawn with their app with their background check and I had to choose which one I wanted and they would do everything else for me. That was the extent of my hiring experience. I thought I knew how to hire because that’s what I did. I realized I didn’t know the first thing about H.R. and I didn’t know the first thing about recruiting by the way H.R. recruiting are two different things think about recruiting as prospecting and H.R. as customer service and managing all that you still need a sales. And what I learned about hiring and recruiting in the last year is that I got to take the same process that I have for getting clients and applying it to
Actively Be Prospecting all The Time
The hiring process. I need to actively be prospecting. I need to be selling. Interviewing and I need to be prepared to close the deal and hire and take a process where I have an onboarding process and then an initial training process and simplifying all that is what I spent six months learning how to do before I even practiced it and that’s what I did because I’ve learned it.
You have to have a foundation to build upon. If you don’t you will have chaos if you start having hiring people with three different programs in three different commissions and three different hiring pretty soon people are gonna say Hey this is not fair. I mean he’s making this I’m making that you’ve got to have a system and everything and if you listen to good to great it’s about getting the right people on the bus. Not getting a warm body on the bus with a heartbeat and where most people fall apart if they settle for the warm body versus the right person that they need and since we are such a highly niche company what we do is it requires a skill set and what I did a year ago is I started figuring out what those skill sets were. By talking to people who were actually in the business testing myself testing other people and then creating a profile of what it would take to really do this job and I started building that.
So I’d been building the whole throughout the whole process. I have a vision and I have my wall of all the ideas that we have in all the processes we’re going through and I have everything on sticky notes I have of about a hundred sticky notes on my wall of things that we’re working on that we can pull from and say this is the right time to do this one you always have to have ideas you always have to have processes and the three things that I hear three people complain about is I can’t find anyone.
The ones that are out there are no good. And then I hire them and six months later they’re gone. If they last six months if they do stay with me they’re with me for a year and then they go out or work for my competitor or they go startup. And the reason is you have no vision you have no plan. You have no process
And when people see that you’re not going anywhere that you just wanted them to fill a position so that you wouldn’t be frustrated anymore. But now that you’re comfortable you’re not moving forward and they are looking at themselves saying do I want to do this for the next four years while this guy makes up his mind where he wants to go. And they move on quickly because this generation isn’t going to sit around for you to make up your mind because they have bigger aspirations than you when your people have bigger dreams and bigger aspirations than you do you’re in trouble your vision and your plans have to be so great that they can feel that they’re never gonna outgrow that and they’re always going to be challenged and that I already understood. So you got to have a vision
After you have a vision. You got to write the vision down and make it plain so that anyone who sees that vision can run with it. And if your vision isn’t plain it’s complicated it’s convoluted. You’re not going to go anywhere.
And this is why so the majority of people who are solar pioneers don’t have experience in recruiting don’t have experience in onboarding don’t have experience and training individuals they never done this. And if they don’t they only done one capacity of it. They’re missing the other three components so you know what does it cost realistically.
Let’s talk about my process the painful process of hiring and the process of hiring basically you.
It costs you about 4000 dollars to hire a person between running ads the time you invest in interviewing. I mean if you’re making one hundred and twenty five dollars an hour which is the average pest control company in America. And you’re making one hundred and twenty five an hour and you’ve got to stop one hour to interview a guy you lost one hundred and twenty five dollars if you interview just 10 people for that position that’s fifteen hundred dollars.
So just ten people that aren’t qualified because you’re wasting your time with people who aren’t qualified and because you don’t understand that there’s an attitude and an aptitude that you absolutely need to get this job done.
Some people have this innate ability. The majority of us don’t. I don’t have it. I have to rely on a process and protocol and procedure to put people through that. So here’s what I did. I said OK how do I for this. OK. What are good let’s say we’re going to use indeed. So I put out an ad and indeed and I only get 20 applicants. 20 of them have never held a job for more than a year to they’ve been warehouse people they’ve been people who work at you know a barista their security guards and I get all kinds of people that want to do better in life but they don’t have the aptitude for what I need.
I look at their resume and I said I can’t even talk to this guy so what I did is I said OK I’m going to cast a wider net. I didn’t post one job. In one city because I was only getting one I learned I needed to post in every city. So I posted in all ninety nine zip codes then I got a tsunami about a hundred people a day applying. How the heck do you manage a hundred people a day applying. How do you look through one hundred resumes. You go nuts so I said OK.
This is not working what do I need to do to streamline this.
And I was talking to people that tell me Look you need to have you need to have a way to Sift through everybody and basically let them disqualify themselves. So you only deal with about 10 percent of that that you have to manage. You can’t manage the 100. So what I did was I automated the hiring process the interviewing process the initial interview they go through about three interviews I put people through three interviews and the first initial interview I do it online through video by the way if you’re looking at this there’s a company called Easy hire which is what we use.
You can look at that and you can create the questions and what it allowed me to do was something miraculous I learned how to create an ad because what the majority of people are doing are not creating ads or creating job descriptions that nobody is reading and nobody cares to read. And you have to create an ad that is appealing based upon what you have to offer and what the people are wanting and you create a perfect match. And people are afraid of this. But if I don’t create you know the right one you know then I won’t get the right guy. And you you’ve got to think and reverse engineer the whole process. If you have a vision if you have a good offer you need to sell it stopped putting out a 10 page job description that nobody is going to read sell the ad
Write a compelling ad that’s going to make people want to apply.
So what we did was It’s okay we’re going to do an elimination process if people can’t read because this is another complaint that I got from listening to people’s as I’m getting these people who can’t even read who don’t read the job description applying for a job they can’t do. Don’t know how to do it never gonna do so I said let me eliminate 99 90 percent of these people right off the bat. So what I did is I created an ad and in the ad is a very short headline and right underneath the headline there’s a link to this is how you get an instant interview and there’s a link to the video.
Well guess what. If you applied for the job and you didn’t just immediately go to that link and apply there I automatically disqualify because you can’t even read. You’re not even interested you’re just applying blindly to every job that’s out there hoping you can get a job. Well if you can’t read. How are you going to read a label
If you don’t read and you don’t pay attention to detail how the heck are you going to do this job because here’s what most people have and what I found out and most people think our job is based on what I talk to customers and build us on talking to one hundred several hundred prospects I employ and I now have enough data with several thousand to two to have enough data after a year to make certain calls. But you’ve got to do the data you’ve got to have the hard data or if. If I can mix you know three different types seven different types of coffees and make twenty three different drinks I surely can mix a chemical in a sprayer and spray baseboard. I mean how hard can this be. That’s the mentality. How hard can this be. This is an easy job.
I mean that guy because he lives in an apartment he sees the manager come in every month with a b and g spray the baseboards in the kitchen and in the bathrooms and leave with a guy. And that’s all they did. And I still have roaches. How hard can this be. That’s the mentality they don’t realize what we do that you know I have a mobile chemical factory that I’m going to entrust to you with 30 to six different products that you’ve got to learn that label on and it’s much harder than mixing drinks. Hey look. No disparaging I mean everybody has to start somewhere and I would rather hire a kid who’s 18 years old who’s actually had a job than a kid who hasn’t had a job. There is no job that is beneath anybody. I went from making fifty thousand dollars a year one time two down to making seventy thousand seven dollars an hour loading trucks. I’ve been up and I’ve been down so I know what that’s like but I’m saying is that there requires a certain attitude and a certain aptitude so the so the process allowed me to automatically weed out everybody who isn’t gonna follow protocol policy procedure because I need people to follow. I need people in my business to follow protocol policy procedure. If you can’t follow protocol policy procedure you automatically disqualified yourself. The second e-mail I got was hey I applied for a job and I would get tons of mail and people saying I applied and I haven’t heard from you and I wouldn’t even respond. I mean I don’t have the time so my whole idea is I need to find the right guy for this job.
I didn’t need to go through a hundred people who aren’t the right people.
I’m not gonna do speed dating I would get an email saying you know the link doesn’t work well right there you got disqualified because if you’re in 20 what year we are now 20 19 in 2019 if you can’t figure out how to copy and paste off somewhere and paste it into a browser I can’t hire you because we’re so technologically advanced you’ve got to use an iPad and iPhone in the field you’ve got to learn to fill out forms you need to learn to do all this.
There’s a lot of paperwork involved if you can’t figure out a simple tax you automatically disqualified yourself and that’s how I sifted through the first three months of posting it took me three months to find the right guy three months seven hundred applicants seven of which applied to the video. So the actual application rate that I got was 10 percent. I needed to cast a wide enough net always be. Always be closing. So always be prospecting and now at a 10.
That took on the video interviews on average is about 10 percent so I got enough data with several thousand to get a good number. I know what I’m expecting now I know the realization in the market we’re in because here’s what people don’t understand. You’re in a 3 percent unemployment market in most cases three and a half 4 percent. Anybody who’s worth anything is already working. How are you going to. You’re gonna basically have to poach them. They’re gonna have to want to quit where they’re at and come over to where you’re at is your offer gonna be appealing enough to bring somebody over when they’re already making 13 14 dollars an hour in an office. Why would they go out into the field and deal with roaches. Deal with the heat. Deal with all the customer service issues work longer hours not to make much more. It’s not worth their time. And that’s what you have to understand this is what you’re not understanding as a business owner is that you’re not making an offer appealing enough for anybody to come won’t work for you. You’re going to have to up the ante. Well the thing is I’m not going to hire somebody and then I’m going to make more than me. Well guess what. You might have to take a pay cut.
Why. Because you will if you focus on your business within six months you will. Or less than that. You will Reback back where you were. Or even better because now you’re no longer doing the work somebody else is doing the work you’re doing the sales you’re doing the marketing you’re doing the administration you’re a manager now and you transition. The problem is people a lot of people want to go in this business and put a CEO on their title and go from employee to CEO technician to CEO because it’s in the title of a book. That’s not the reality. You’re going to have to be a manager somewhere in between. You’re going to manage for several years and you can hire a manager and that’s then their job and then you can’t take the B.S. from them saying I can’t get my people to do this. If a guy can’t get his technicians to do something he’s a total failure and I’ve learned that from being in management for twenty five years I was already an assistant manager. By the time I was 19 I’ve been managing stores and restaurants and all kinds of business and territories for 20 something years. I know how to manage people I know how to lead them to but it’s much harder when you have to do it for yourself because you don’t have 15 departments behind you and unlimited funding. Like I said it’s like passing glass instead of passing kidney stones.
So what I learned through the process is that 10 percent are going to apply.
Those are the numbers. That’s the reality guys. And see that’s what most people don’t want to hear they want to hear well. If I put an ad out in zip recruiter and in monster and you know and you’re going to spend four hundred dollars in ads a month. You know 200 to four hundred dollars a month in ads that automatically you’re just going to get it. I mean the way they brand this stuff and they sell it to me is like it’s miraculous if you just get on our platform you’re gonna have the right guy within 24 hours. Baloney. It’s not going to happen. You still got to do the work. You still have to do the weeding and you still have to go sift through all that data and interpret the data that you’re getting back from them and how you’re going to apply it and how does it apply to your company so my suggestion is start working on the plan.
Now a year before you’re actually going to need to hire somebody so you can learn to do this and invest the time in learning because that’s going to be the learning curve to some people it’s gonna be less to some people it’s gonna be more. Some people are more adapted to that skill and other people are. I mean it’s just that’s the way it is. And the average time it takes to hire across America right now is about 52 days. So you’ve got about 4000 dollars. I mean by the time you put the ads together and you pay for ads you pay for the software that you need to hire the interview software to the sifting software. I mean if you start looking at if you start calling around guys you’re going to get sticker shock. You start calling Red says I want an H.R. platform that is ready for me to go it’s eight to ten thousand a year period for a real H.R. platform. You think you’re paying you know four for the software using now to manage routs when you’re crying about ninety nine dollars a month. Wait until you get sticker shock because I spent right now as it is between five and seven thousand dollars a year on software to run my business between all the pieces of software we’re using for marketing for advertising for social media for recruiting for hiring for routing for sales for design for everything that we’re doing in-house.
You know this idea that you’re going to get a ninety nine dollars software to pull off miracles for you and you’re crazy it’s not going to happen.
You Some of you who are going to grow a company are going to realize you’re going to have to spend a lot of money to grow it a growing company is a cash hog it eats cash like it’s going out of style so you know what happens is if you have no onboarding program and you have no initial training and you don’t have a really good solid onboarding program the average person leaves in six months. That’s the reality. Well why are people I mean I hire people I find them and then they turn around in two three months and they quit because you didn’t have an onboarding program before to determine whether they were even going to stick onboard. So now I got a video interview and I asked 20 questions. Here’s the advantage of that I can sit for 10 minutes if I’m getting a hundred prospects a day and maybe I get one to two people who went through the process and actually figured out how to do this collected put it in there because of what I’m doing is by default is weeding out everybody else that isn’t qualified for us by the process. The whole process is designed to weed out everybody. This is counterintuitive people but you’ve got to give people an opportunity. There’s good people out there that you know if you gave them a chance OK you go do that and you go spend the money and you go tell me how that works for you and after you almost put a gun to your head and shoot yourself because of this you come and talk to me about it and then I’ll tell you the reality.
And you’ll know what the reality is. But if you have a good onboarding process and you got a good vision. The Irish guy is going to stick with you between one and three years. Oh my God. But I want somebody is going to be with me long term. It’s not going to happen. You need to get over it. I’m. I’m busting your bubble right now and letting you know it’s not going to happen. The average life of a pest control technician. By every standard is one to three years. Turnover is part of growing it’s part of running a business. This is why you always have to be cutting. You’re not going to keep everyone for five years. If you have 10 people you might keep one or two of those for five years no matter how good your salary is no matter how good you treat people no matter how your benefits are no matter how raises you give them. If their vision for themselves is no longer in line with the vision you have for your company they’re going to go do something else if you’re not growing and a person has a desire to be in management which everybody does eventually think or they think you’re qualified to be in management or they’re looking at being a lead tech and you’re not growing fast enough for them. They’re going to move on to another company that will give them that opportunity.
That’s the reality the problem is this is not what you want. You want me to sit here and do a. After you have you follow my three steps you’re going to have success. And in 24 hours you’ll have a miraculous employee and I’m going to blow sunshine up your butt all day long and sell you a ton of products you don’t need. And it’s not going to happen for you. This is where I’ve been for the last year. This is the pain I’ve gone through. I went through so much stress in the last year that I was gaining weight even if I wasn’t eating because of my cortisol levels were so high. I mean that’s the reality but if you have a good onboarding process they’re going to stay with you longer. So the video software which is easy higher than I’m I’m not I’m not promoting it because I’m using it. It’s worked for me. I love it. They’re not a sponsor. Okay I’m not getting anything for the referral. Many of you tell them hey you know I heard you on the pesky piling of the pest. Who. Yeah. Because you know nobody listens to this podcast by the way you know but it’s one of those things where it works because if they’re willing to submit themselves to a process they’re the kind of people you want. So you’re creating an environment that goes along with the culture of your company and the vision you have for your company and the kind of people that you want to attract and you want to bring over so they can watch the video.
I can now see them. I can see what they look like. I mean if the guys show up in a nice you know is he sitting down is he wearing nice clothes. I’ve had people do it with no shirt on in bed and I’m saying do I really want to hire this guy. Think about that. You get to see people who they really are because they’re in a relaxed environment. The questions I ask. I get to see their responses. I get to see if they can even read. You’ll be surprised me by giving a review. And the question is right there in front of me they can’t read it they can’t read I weeded out. It’s a weeding process and an automated weeding process then the guys will say man this guy impressed me. I don’t look at their resume. And here’s why I don’t want to be influenced by the resume. I have a second process.
So after they taken the video interview if I decide I’m gonna hire them I let them know I sent him an automated email and it has a link for them to take a testing and what this is is a complete profile of that person. Mind you I spend about twelve hundred dollars on the software to do this OK. So now I hire.
I want him to take the next step I say hey you know we want you to take the next step in the process. This is all automated. I don’t touch a darn thing I don’t talk to anybody. I don’t waste my time. I don’t have the time. I’m already putting in between 60 and 80 hours a week continuously still doing this.
I’m just doing different things but I’m still putting in the hours and I say you know and then it gives them a link to go take this profile and fill out an online application. The application is pretty extensive that profile a battery of testing test system for reading. I want to know how good of a reader they are. I want to know if they can do math. If the guy can’t do math and we and he can’t figure out how many ounces per thousand he needs to calculate how many gallons per thousand of water he needs to apply how is he going to do this job.
That’s another weeding process. So a test is among math reading mechanical aptitude you’ve got a guy who’s never ever done anything with his hands and he’s applying for this job because he’s thinking all I gotta do is put a chemical in a can and spread.
How hard can this be so mechanical aptitude.
How is he going to fix that being G in the field. How is he going to repair that broken hose. How is he going to figure out that the tank is clogged and the strainer needs to be cleaned. I mean you teach all this anyway in your initial training. But can you do it. Can is he is he is he is he good with his hands. Mechanical aptitude testing tells me that then the next thing it puts them to three different psychological profiles personality profiles where it measures different things because you can cheat on one if you just give a person a disc exam. You’re just going to get what personality group is in. You can’t just make a decision off of that by the way these are all diagnostic tools to get you to the end to the best qualified candidate so that then you can choose from two or three.
It isn’t an end all solution because it’s not going to replace the personal interview and we’re gonna get to that is what it’s going to do is get me a complete in the best picture that I can weed out the ninety nine percent that can stick with the one percent that’s worth it because that’s the reality of where you’re going.
So a test is on what their attitude is to working in an environment there. Their attitude about theft and the attitude about you know and then a test some on twenty nine different personality profiles of things that we’re looking specifically for this job and that’s what I can’t tell you because that is our secret sauce.
We already did enough testing and I worked many years ago actually before I did this with a company to help me develop the right personality profile for a person who is in a highly technical like electricians AC repairman. You know they look at what profile and what you find is the guy who can do air conditioning wheel can do pest control. The guy who can do electrical work or work on systems or work on cables or work on Internet doing installation can do pest control.
So we figured out what this profile looked like and I was able to have a picture then what I did was I tested it in groups I bought the software and I said Hey guys I’m giving you 10 and you know I had 10 technicians do the test and they look at their profiles and then I had a baseline. So I started already with a baseline of what I understood I needed but after doing several of these you know a dozen you learn to get better at it. Initially you’re going to stumble a bit but you get better at it and everything is about learning and testing and going through the process. And now I get a complete picture. I’ve got an employment application that is very complete because if they don’t answer it won’t allow them to continue on the employees not like you have a paper one where they can put. If they start putting not available not avail on everything you know I look at the data. Usually the data will coincide with what I saw on the video and it will coincide on what I’m seeing on the application and it’ll coincide with I’m getting a picture of this guy you say I’m building a picture if they go through the process the video they do it on their own they go through the profiling the profiling says this guy qualify. Some are higher some are lower but you know he’s within the ranges of acceptable ranges of what we can work with. He scores really well on the top 40 percent of most things then I and they filled out a complete application then I tell them Okay guys I’m here to the next step the next step is coming in and spending about two to four hours with me in the field.
Most of these guys are already employed means I got to work around their schedule and what I do is I use that to my advantage because I say OK you get out at work at four or five can you hang with me from six to eight or tonight or on Saturday. Let’s say from ten till two o’clock if I start getting well I’m not. I don’t I can’t do anything late at night because I’m already committed. I can’t use you. You’re already disqualified yourself. Why. Because we’re in the sixth largest market in the country when it comes to population 20 percent of the pest control is done in Florida. It takes the average client that we have two hours a day commuting now about an hour and a half to two hours a commute to go to work they’re not going to sit there at noon while we do pest control we have to service I’m usually initials have to be done either before they go to work or they have to go after very few people unless they have maids and nannies then we can do it today but we get a lot of people who work and they’re not gonna take the time off.
We decided that we are in the service industry we are not in the pest control industry we are in the service when the customer service business. So when when people are used to getting services when they need them then we have to be there for them. So we need people that are going to be able to work after hours past six o’clock while nobody works past 5:00 in our company. What’s your market that’s your business but here if we want to get the business we have to do it we have to do Saturday work because people are home on Saturdays the only day they have and it’s not an option. So we have to service on. So if you can’t work Saturdays and you can’t we’re going you just qualify yourself you can’t even work for us if you show up and then I show you what it is that you really have to do versus what you thought you have to do then.
Now you can decide and say Do you want to do this and get out of where you’re at to do this and you have to deal with those hard realities as an employer because no I’m not going to leave my twelve thirteen dollar an hour job to do this. This is way much harder than I thought. I rather know that now than three months in because I’m going to take you to a very difficult and nasty job so that you can see what you’re gonna have to do at it’s worse not at its best. I’m not going to sell you a dream.
I’m going to sell you a vision and where you can go if you do this and I then I sit down with him and I talk to them if they’re qualified about the training they’re going to have to go through how they’re gonna have to study on their own every night and how they’re gonna have to go through testing every night because my training program and we were using a third party and now I’m creating my own which by the way I’m going to share with the pesky society but it’s gonna be a seven week training where you’re gonna do it at home on your own and you’re going to test on it because I need you to get the academic part and then what I do with the academic Park is I can have it practice it in the field immediately.
It’s all practical linked together so that they can immediate put it into practice. But I need him to get the academic because if they don’t it’s gonna teach me that they’re not gonna be willing to learn if you’re not gonna be able to sit there and read through a label and read through all of your labels and be responsible for reading your labels. I can’t trust you that I’m going to put you in a truck when you don’t know what that labels because I can put you in a class but I can’t spend it right 20 labels and teach a 20 hours worth of labels. I need you to read those on your own. I have questions I’m going to ask you about those labels because there’s about 20 things on the label.
I need you to know I’m going to do a podcast on that soon. Twenty things there on the label that you need to know and I need you to do so I have an entire process from start to finish to ensure that they don’t fail that they have success. And then every raise that they get in their first 90 days is linked to what they’re learning. So if you’re doing your testing you’re passing your classes you’re learning you’re going to start getting milestones along the way so they may start out at 13 an hour and then you end up about 15 or 16 an hour when they’re done in 90 days whatever it is for you. I got some people here they’re starting at ten dollars now which is ridiculous so that’s been my process what I’ve been through what I’ve had to go through in the last year.
This is why I’ve been quiet this why I haven’t balled myself in anything I haven’t had the time because I’ve had to invest in all this so that I can get to do the things that I really want to do. I got to do the hard things that I have to do in order to get to the point that I can do the things I want to do.
So that I can have people working for me working with me versus me having to do this my next My goal is to work myself out of a job to where my company doesn’t need me to where people are. I have managers and people working here where I don’t have to do that work my job then become to three simple things continue with the vision communicate the vision sell the vision I need to be a leader I but that’s going to take years that’s not going to happen in the next two to three years that’s you know the next five to 10 because I have a long term vision I have a long term plan. Things are going to happen along the way I’m going to fail I’m going to stumble I’m going to fall but if I get back up and I start getting back to what our original vision is and not to the problem with the problem with a lot of business owners is they change their mind like the way they change their underwear daily. You know the people don’t know what to expect. Everyday you’re changing something every day you’re doing something new. You need to keep it consistent have a vision without a vision the people perish and write the vision make it plain so that everybody can run with it. Folks I hope this edition of the pesky podcast helps you if it has. Do me a favor. Hey guys go ahead and subscribe to the channel. Go ahead and share it. Go ahead and share it on groups. We’re gone. We’re producing a lot of things and I’m keeping to my promise of what I started in the beginning.
We are gonna be the world’s number one pest control training podcast that has been the vision to train people who are otherwise nobody is training. And this is where we’re going after and this is why we stuck to what we’ve stuck to for so long. And I hope you can appreciate this. I’ve missed you guys I’ve missed being on the microphone. I missed doing what I do because this stuff is the stuff that energizes me as a person. It isn’t how big my business is getting. It’s always been in my life in my life of service in my life of ministry is to see other people grow. And this is my calling in life whether I do it from a biblical or whether I do it from a business. This is why I train so many of my competitors locally because I this is my calling in life. When I combine what I’ve learned in business what I’ve learned in this business what I’ve learned in helping people grow I found something that challenged me challenges me on a daily basis and makes me grow. And what I’m I haven’t arrived. All I’m doing with you guys is documenting my journey and going along the way because I don’t have all the answers I’m getting into bigger groups now with bigger people that are more successful than me I never want to sit down with talk to somebody who hasn’t done it. I want to help the guy up who hasn’t done it to get to a level where I am. And then he might need somebody else later to help him get to the next level.
But you if you are not outgrowing your people and your people are outgrowing you you’re gonna be in a very very difficult situation as far as as far as your business goes. So I hope it has been helpful and I will see you next time.
We hope you have enjoyed this edition of the pesky podcast. Until next time
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