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The Mistake of Hiring, The Compassion of Firing, And Why I Won’t Do SMB Consulting.
Get ready for a boot in the ass rant.
The compassionate thing to do is fire a wrong hire
Firing is the result of a bad hire
Very little thought goes into the hiring process
You have a business where you have spent 2 to 5 years building up on your own and now you need to hire.
Now I would dare to say that 90% or more solo operator have never hired nor fired anyone in their life.
90% are winging it.
You are now making between 150K and 250K and need to hire your first tech that you are planning to pay between 27k and 36K per year
You first instinct is going to be hire a tech with experience because you don’t know how to hire and you have no training program in place. Nor do you have the time nor patience to create one and train a person from zero because you are up to ears in alligators and need a person that can hit the ground running.
Since you also have no experience training nor managing you want a person that will manage themselves so you pay production because if they are motivated you wont have to mange them you will begin to manage by abdication rather than by delegation.
Here are the potential pitfall 3 techs in and you have a motley crew. And I hear an owner say they are running me ragged and I can’t get them to do what I want. Your monkeys your zoo.
Here is the problem with techs with experience.
If they have worked for a crappy company for 1 to 3 years, you will inherit all the bad training and bad habits.
If they have worked for a bad company for more than 3 years and are good they are burned out working 12 hour a day and want to slow down but because they are making 5k per month they want you to pay them the 5k on half the production.
You wont pay for a coach or consultant to help you in this area, you won’t take a course on how to do this properly you wont allow anyone to tell you ho to to run a business which you have no idea how to run because you have never done it and your ego is in the way.
#2 is you won’t spend the money to do it right because you say you can’t afford it.
You are about to make the single most important decision to hire a tech, to entrust your good name and hard work a single person could cost you 50k between salaries and mistakes and you tell me I cant invest $2000.00 make a good hire, train and develop. But you will spend that every month or more on marketing to acquire more customers.
You are penny wise and pound foolish.
You think that a free ad on indeed is going to produce a quality candidate and that you will get a flood of resumes from qualified candidates that are drooling to work for you. Your delusional.
With a right process you will have to spend a minimum of $500 per month on ads for the next 2 to 6 months in some markets to get a qualified applicant that you will interview.
Hiring is like dating
I cant spend that and you will get impatient with the process. Most business owners behave like men that just got separated and need a woman right now not misses right just miss right now and make the wrong selection over and over again and say there just aren’t any good employees out there. You cant sleep around and expect to find a good one.
On top of that you want to offer them what amounts to just over minimum wage because you can’t fathom a tech making xxx amount off of you. You will strain the gnat and swallow the camel.
This is the reason why I don’t do SMB Consulting most will not pay for it, won’t listen, are not willing to change, nor implement. So I will become a free business Insultant. I will tell you what you need to hear not what you want to hear.
So hire a professional head hunter wait he’s going to want a minimum of 10% of first years salary 50% upfront 50% when he delivers. So that’s going to cost you 2700 to 3700 for one tech. you will say I cant afford that so I will just have to take my chances.
Once you decide to grow you are in the HR business, The advertising business, the marketing business, the fleet management business, the inventory business, the training business. The pest control is the commodity and you think that’s what you are selling. You are in the people acquisition business.
What I learned from Franchise models
The Right People + The Right Process = The Right Product X Profits
If you are thinking of starting up or growing I highly recommend you read
The Emyth Revisited
Clock Works by Mike Michalowicz
Profit First by Mike Michalowicz I would read every book by Mike Michalowicz
These books are a kick in the teeth
That failure is the lack of a process that guides all the other business decisions the system is key and you wont invest in a system because you are too impatient and don’t want to sit down and design one so you will wing it. A bad system 80% is better than no system at all.
The 50% of people get into pest control between 18 to 25 the average age of a pest control person right now is 41.
Pest control requires a set of soft skills that are innate and learned through work, if people are entering the workforce at 21 vs 16 for baby boomers that is 4 to 5 years less of work experience and work ethic that has not been developed.
Do to a lack of systematic recruiting, vetting, hiring, onboarding, training program which includes Education with a hands on training in the field, evaluation, compensation, and retention program. You will be in constant game of hiring the wrong person.
Here is the problem no one will teach you this for free because everyone knows this is the single most hardest part of growing the business.
The art and science requires skill and time
Second when most coaches tell you what you need to do 99% will not implement it because it requires time, money and patience which you don’t have.
Hiring is guessing firing is knowing
The best system 1s going to be 50% effective at determining the right candidate but that is better than 10% you got now.
With a system you will be able to determine if that hire is a fit right away.
