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Episode transcript from the Close It Now podcast with Sam Wakefield.
Well, all right everybody, welcome back. Sam Wakefield here, Close It Now. I am on the episode today. This is another interview episode and I am grateful and blessed to have this guest today. He is just without further ado, he is the HR guy.
He is basically the only HR professional that focuses on the trades. So if you're HVAC, plumbing, electrical, solar, any trades, home services, this is your go to guy. Right? And so I'm excited to hear how he landed there because that's such a unique position. But also I have heard from some high level people in the industry that this is that not only is he just the HR guy, but he's saved some people's bacon on some massive things which is what we're going to talk about today.
There's so many things going on in your business that you don't even know about that could be gotchas that we don't want to, you know, want to help you grow and overcome these things. And more importantly, it's just good to get to know somebody like this and have them in your corner when you need them and even more importantly, get them in your corner when you don't need it to prevent the things from being needed. So super excited to have this person on this gentleman on the show today. This is Ian. Let me see if I get it right.
Scotanus. Perfect. All right. Ian's got two episodes in a row. I nailed the last name red one.
So cool. Well, thanks for joining us, man. How's, how's it going? It's my pleasure to be here. Thanks for having me on.
I mean things are going great on the regulation side. C. so that, you know, gives everybody breathing room. It's when everybody can lock step one side or the other that you end up seeing a all a bunch of new regulations that just throw chaos. But yeah, in the HR front things are, you know, things Are always interesting because it's people dealing with people.
In today's society, we really suck at dealing with each other. Right. Emotional maturity is something that sadly is not taught, educated nearly as much as it should be. Kind of a low value proposition in schools and in a lot of the workforce. But.
And that, that actually leads to what you were, you know, talking about how I ended up in the HR for the trades. Yeah, yeah. Give us your story, man. How'd you end up here? So my first job was in the Navy.
17 years old. Skipped the first three days of my second semester of senior year of high school joining the navy. And then right after school, two weeks out, I was in boot camp. Advanced electronics. I was a technician, small ship.
I did HVAC, I did plumbing, I did mechanical, I did electrical. I was wiring the first PC networks on the ships, doing all that hardcore stuff, obviously nothing to do with HR. Got out of the Navy four months before 9 11. Did a stint at Gateway Country Computers, while that was a thing, did customer service, some more tech work. Relocated to, you know, from Florida to Colorado.
Worked at Best Buy at retail day after Thanksgiving's no joke, still did that. Worked on a couple of business degrees while working there. Then transitioned from sales into geek squad. Had a service center, more hands on technical work. And 15 years ago, I got fired for yelling at a senior tech who was being paid more than me on hourly rate and I had to fix all of his mistakes.
And a CSR that wasn't involved got scared because I dared raise my voice to somebody else. And I'm a big dude, I get it. Yeah. But I was fired the next day. It didn't matter that I was the best quantifiable, best tech on there on the floor.
I scared somebody. So I was gone. Period. That's corporate for you. No prospects, no, no anything.
Brand new baby, you know, which led to my stress and yelling at somebody, sure. But I didn't like being on that side of the table. So an opportunity presented itself to move my family to California and start working on building out this HR and safety program for the trades. And me being coming from a technical background, I already had safety. My wife was more the traditional HR and already established.
And so it was a perfect fit for my family. And we went out there, started working and I grew it over 10 years working with the trades. Hundreds of companies, thousands of documents, thousands of on calls. You know, my employee just did this crazy thing. And then four years ago, again because of an HR situation, somebody flipped their lid because of how we Dared to announce that we were expecting number five, our fifth child, and the owner didn't want to do anything about it.
It was unacceptable. So we quit and we started big Picture Consulting. So doing the exact same thing. And really over the last four years, all through Covid, helping companies in the trades. And the funny thing is, is that most HR professionals won't go near these guys.
They won't go near the residential service providers. Why? Because they're technically minded. They're not social engineering minded. They're not, you know, warm and fluffy.
You know, it's. There's a problem, I want to fix it. I don't want distractions or people telling me what to do. They, they hate regulations. So HR is pretty universally disliked by the owners because, well, we're telling them you have to follow these rules or you're getting sued.
I can't tell people whatever I want to tell them. Yeah, I don't have a license to just be a jackass to people. And they have to take it because. On the gas rate has to be kept to a minimum. And then employees don't trust HR out of principle because we're just there to protect the employer.
So they both think that we're protecting each other when we're just trying to get everybody to work together. That's what a true HR professional. Can't we all just get along? Exactly. Yeah.
So that, that's really where this all evolved. And over, you know, 15 years now, I've been doing this and working near exclusively with the trades. We can provide HR to anybody. Our safety program is developed specifically for residential service providers pseudo construction because none of the rules were really written with this type of business model in mind. Right.
Everything from safety requirements to payroll compensation plans. You know, you get into incentive pay and overtime regulations and all that. It's. This is a unique industry. And so you have to be a special kind of crazy to dive in there on the HR side and one try to sell it.
Right. But to actually do it effectively. And that's what we've done. And as the HR guy, I'm out there helping people, answering questions all the time, but I can only scratch the surface there. Sure, sure.
Oh my gosh, I love this. So that. Thank you for that history too because you know, you're so right that there's so much going on with the trades and contracting that's so really nuanced and unique relative to any type of maybe office, you know, type of company or, you know, just a straight digital company or something like that. A Sales organization or that kind of thing. Think about just the one, this one factor.
You're sending somebody out in a fully loaded branded truck out to a customer home. You're sending somebody to somebody's personal home to represent your brand and to do professional work, right. All the trust that has to go into that. You have to have clear expectations, you have to provide the training, you have to provide all the safety gear. The financial liability alone is staggering.
One truck and you know, you've got companies with 150 trucks, right, trying to organize. And not all technicians are wired the same mentally. They focus on different things, they have different personalities, but they're all going out there individually and they have to represent the brand. And you know, that's one of the struggles of the trades. And what I try to help with is using, using techniques to focus everybody's attention to get best results.
So let's dive in a little bit because one of the things that you and I talked about is, you know, one, everybody knows when, you know, everybody jokes about hr like, oh, don't call HR on that one. So everybody knows those obvious things, right. We can't be racist. We can't, you know, talk about men or women specifically, like degrading all those things, which really just equates to being a genuinely nice human being and not being a jerk. But the biggest things that I've seen working with companies, and I know you see all the time, are the things that no one even really knows is an issue, that are the hidden things that can really damage a company or really take them down.
And they didn't even know it was a thing. So I would love for you to cover what are maybe short list of those top things that you see that people can really work on right away. Things that we know we would fix if we even knew it was an issue. What are some of those things? So, number one, the biggest vulnerability and the biggest thing that you know, really hits just blindsides contractors is payroll compliance.
Anybody using incentive pay plans, you have to know absolutely what the rules are for clocking in, clocking out, and paying overtime correctly. Now, there's a lot of myths out there. It could be an entire podcast just on that. Sure. But you have to have it dialed in.
And I'm perfectly comfortable declaring myself the foremost expert in this area. I've invented two different compensation plans for the trades to incentivize the entire team and be 100 compliant and have it work towards your budgets. I love it. That's, that's a lot of pieces to put together that actually work together. Absolutely, yeah.
You have to have that dialed in or else it's not sustainable, it's not scalable and you're going to limit your options. And ultimately if you're not doing it compliantly, you're just waiting for somebody to come in and kick your sandcastle over. Right. So that's, that's the biggest, number one vulnerability. I could walk into any company and walk out with tens of thousands of dollars in fines, fees and back wages, even for a small shop.
Bigger the shop, the bigger the target. Sure. The other one other big common thing that happens and I'm going to kind of backtrack a little bit here. Most of the trades, most companies in the trades are started by ex technicians. They're disgruntled with their current boss.
I'm out there, I'm busting my butt. I make them a dollar and I'm getting a penny off of it. I'm getting screwed, I'm being exploited. Whatever the, you know, whatever terms wrap, they wrap their head around. So they leave.
Yep. Entrepreneurial seizure. They slap a sticker on the side of their truck and they're running their own business, they're running calls, they're doing good, they're making decent money and then, okay, I need help. This is where they screw up. They start hiring people and they start having to face all of these things that they didn't know anything about.
Most business owners have no history in business, in running businesses. Some of them do and they ask and they grow incredibly well very quickly, but others don't. And when you bring on employees, it's one employee immediately gives you huge, huge liabilities that you have to be aware of. And as you're building out, okay, these are my expectations, this is what I need you to do. You keep learning more normally by missteps.
So when you're setting these expectations, you know, it's like, okay, well, how do I get them to do this? How do I get them to clock in? How do I get them to take lunch when the state says I have to give them lunch? Right. You know, though, all those types of policies.
But ultimately the biggest risk is people deciding they know more than you and they're going to do their own thing. They're going to do their own thing once they're out of eye shot. Sure. If you're not looking over their shoulder, you know, you're sending people out there in fully loaded, very valuable trucks to represent how you want business to be done. And you have to trust that when you find out that they're not.
How do you deal with it? True. Yeah. Whole slew of things that people can do on the sly, slide side. Work improper, taking shortcuts, even just leaving messes, you know, leaving fire hazards oftentimes, things like that that, you know, it takes one bad incident and it flames up.
And you have to know how to respond. Right. And funny enough, the answer to all of those things is accountability. How people are driving. If you're, if you're tracking, you know, you have gps, if you have monitoring systems, when it, it triggers, when somebody goes over X amount, you know, X miles per hour over the limit, it sends a report that you follow up on.
But these are all systems, these are all administrative burdens that you have to build into your operation. So understanding that and growing with it is very important. Sure. Compliance wise, you know, so we got payroll. How do I get my employee to do this?
Or most of my days are filled with responding to emails or phone calls. My employee just did this ridiculous thing. How do I respond? How do I fire this guy and not get sued? This person just reported, he's on his second week and he reported he needs to go to rehab.
What are my options? That's a kick in the head. He goes through the interview process, he passes the pre employment drug screen and then comes to you on week two and says, yeah, I need to go to rehab. Yeah, I'll be gone for who knows how long. Yeah.
What am I legally required to do? And we help guide on that. That's. We have to look it up based on your state, based on sometimes your local city or town may have its own ordinances that we have to look up, being prepared to question what, you know, is the biggest thing to do. Oh, I bet.
And it's so crazy too because there's no standardization whatsoever. Right. So like you just alluded to, it's like every, I mean, to a degree, but then like the nuances of like state to state for workforce commission and all the different things is like where it's okay in one state, it's not the next and you know, just whatever it is. So there are some misconceptions about that as well. There is, you know, on the payroll front, 99 of the rules and regulations that impact are at the federal level.
Good. There's a couple of individual states in California that, that they've gone above and beyond to make it difficult for employers to do other things. Sure. But it's the same basis, you know, knowing when you have to clock in, when you have to clock out. You have to know when you're allowed to have them clock in or clock out if you don't want to pay.
From doorstep to doorstep. Sure. Combating the myths spread by unions. Just because unions, any given union can negotiate whatever they want. And if it's negotiated through a union, it's actually exempt from flsa, from the federal laws.
Wow. Because that, that's the power they gave unions to say, even if you're not technically compliant, that everybody else has to follow. You negotiate. It's a collective bargaining agreement. That's, that is the law of the land.
In, in the walls of that company. Wow. So, yeah, I've, I've seen some stuff that's like, yeah, company A would get sued out of oblivion, but because it's a union, it's legit and you got it. That's what you got to do. It's just what it is.
Yeah. But there's more variation because of unions than because of different states, at least. Interesting. Yeah. That's wild.
All of the red flags, you know, all the discriminatory or harassment or wrongful termination type things are all set at the federal level. It's. It is that nuance. So raising the red flag is very, is very simple, you know, and a very simple takeaway for the listeners here. Just try to put yourself in the shoes of your employee when you're confronted with something that's a hassle.
What would I feel if this was ignored? Right. If you can remember that you're going to avoid a lot of pitfalls just by stopping and thinking about it. Now you put yourself too much in their shoes, you're going to say, well, I just have to give them everything. And then we're back to California.
But employers do have rights. But you have to stop and consider that it's not just about you. It is about the team. It is about your brand. My entire HR philosophy, you know, gets people, gets everybody in a company focusing on two things.
Represent the brand in a positive manner. Provide solutions to the, to the customer. That's it. Sure. If you can get the team focusing on that, excluding all the crap that's going on outside of your walls.
Forget what you're seeing on social media. Forget the 24. 7 news cycle. Forget all that nonsense. Represent the brand.
Provide solutions to the customer. If you manage between those two goal posts, you're going to win. Now, that means that you have to actually put forth some effort on building that brand and identifying that, you know, that item, what, what everybody's aspiring to sure. And then, you know, the technical work is. The technical work.
You're solving problems. Do it right. That's. That's what you're here. Yeah, that's the easy part.
One piece. Yeah, that's the easy piece. That's the, that's the control group. Yeah, we do it with a smile. You know, that's a viable basis for that, for that other goal post.
And then you're just managing the team between those two goalposts. Love it. I love it. Let's circle back a little bit because I am, I'm super intrigued when we started talking about payroll compliance because that one being the number one thing that is always an issue. But two, especially in the last.
I mean, me and my companies, we've been doing performance pay for way over a decade, but really within the last five to 10 years, that's been the biggest thing that has. One of the biggest things that's come around is, man, you got to pay your guys on performance. Stop paying them hourly. Pay them on performance. Well, yes, and that's awesome and I love the theory and the concept, but how do we do that within compliance in a way that actually works?
So since you've invented two comp plans and written them, we're clearly talking to the expert here. What are some of helpful hints and tips along with that? And how do we slide into, I guess part two to that or the other side of it would be where do we slide into getting into trouble and not realize it because, you know, I've been. The 1099 mentality is definitely something that is. I mean, it's awesome.
And that inspires the people to drive harder and, and that kind of thing. But also there's so many, you know, the curvy roads in between there. So talk to that a little bit. So I'm going to start right at the. I'm going to start with the last thing first.
1099, don't do it unless you are a legitimate general contractor and you're hiring established companies, you know, to do xyz. If you're an HVAC service repair replace company, you need to have employees that are doing that work. Sales is a little bit different. You're. You can get away with 1099 sales.
With a straight sales organization. I, I don't like that just from the fact that you can't control your brand representation with 1099. You can't slap a logo on their truck. You can't make them wear your uniform. You can't do any of that with a 1099.
Sure. Actually, by definition that makes them an employee. Right. So yeah, I was going to say for before we move on, if you could take it, because again, I know the answer to this one, but most people don't. If you could take a second and define for us the difference between an employee and a 1099 and when that.
Because I know this is really common in say solar and pest control and alarms and especially we're getting into any kind of door knocking type of environment. Everybody is 1099, but they also. Everybody wears uniforms and does exactly what the company says and all the things. Where is the gray area and where does that actually bleed over into? Well, you're really an employee.
Where do we get in trouble with that? It. Well, they are, they are actively working on making 1099 basically illegal. I mean, you know, you contract with somebody like me to support your HR, your HR systems. You're not an HR company.
I am. That's a legitimate 1099 subcontractor. Sure. You know, type of arrangement. The basically, if you are giving them material support, if you're giving them a vehicle, you're giving them technology, you're giving them a uniform, that, that blurs the line that gets you closer.
The more you give them to support their work for you, the closer they are to employee. If you are controlling their work hours, if you're saying you need to be available from this time to this time and we're going to tell you when your appointments are, that's bringing you really close. What the current administration is doing and trying to push through is a. If I am your only client, if you are the. If I am your, your primary or your primary benefactor, if I'm.
If I'm your paycheck, I'm your meal ticket. Sure. That by itself is working towards forcing them into an employee situation. Right. So all these companies that are like you're 1099, you work for me.
Here's, you know, you have to buy the uniform, we don't give it to you. You got to buy your own computer, we don't give it to you. Use your own stuff. However, here's our non compete. So you can't work for anyone else.
Nope. And that's where most companies are. That's what they're doing. But they're also doing it illegally, Right? Yep.
It, it takes one of those. Now it normally only becomes an issue when somebody makes it an issue. Sure. Problem is you never know when somebody's going to get a burr up their backside and make it an Issue, especially. When you have hundreds or thousands of representatives like that.
The bigger you get, the bigger the target. So yeah, that's, that's where. Just keep it simple. With employees, you've got the protections, you got the insurance, you got the workers comp. You got general liability.
You can control your brand messaging, you can build those relationships as a company with your customers. I mean that's, that's really the only sustainable way to do it, you know. So just keep it simple. Stick with the employees. Love it.
So once you establish that they're employees, you need to classify them as either exempt employees or non exempt employees. This is hurdle one that a lot of service company, service companies trip over. Now HVAC, plumbing, electrical, these are not retail and service establishments. They call themselves service providers, but everything else says that they're construction. That's why I classified them earlier as pseudo construction.
Sure. It. But that's what OSHA sees you as. That's what workers comp. See you as.
That's what the government sees you as. Your NAICS code. What you're classified as is construction. Doesn't matter what you call yourself. Sure.
That concept doesn't matter. What you call it is going to come into play later too. So you mean I can't just think something and it becomes that? Not as far as this goes. We got examples that are playing out in social, but again, exactly.
Focused inside the wall. Yep. These laws don't change. Yeah. So you have to classify them as exempt or non exempt.
So you know, your exempt are your managers, your, you know, maybe your bookkeeper or your HR manager. If they're not, if you're not big enough to have multiple people underneath them, there's classifications for them. Your traditional white collar, you know, business people, your non exempt employees are everybody else. CSRs, service techs, installers, you know, those that are doing the, the actual work. Salespeople have their own exemption.
If they are true salespeople, it's that if they're selling packages and services and they're not turning the wrenches, great. You can classify them as exempt. Exemption means no overtime and in the case of sales people, no minimum wage either. Sure. For everybody else, commission only.
It's a thing and all that. Which again is also being. They're trying to up those currently. Sure. So now you know who's exempt and non exempt and who you have to pay overtime to.
Great. So we're going to ignore the exempt employees for now. We're going to focus on the non exempt. Right now you got to figure out how you're paying them what you're paying. This breaks down into discretionary, non discretionary pay.
Discretionary pay is your bonuses. These are. You did a great job. Thank you. Here you go.
Here's an extra 100 bucks. Non discretionary is any form of payment that an employee can say, because I did this on the job, you owe me that much money. Right. So that is your hourly rate. That is a spiff for selling a specific item.
That is commission based on net or gross revenue, however you define it within your company task pay. You do X jobs, you're going to get X money for each job, regardless of how long it takes. You. Sure, that's all fine. An hourly rate.
Of course you're working X amount of time. However much you get done during that time, you're going to get paid for the time. In this lovely business, in this industry, we mix them all up. Yeah, we do. We do hourly plus hourly versus we do straight commission.
We do task pay. We do. Okay. We're doing taxpayer commission out in the field, but we got these training and meeting hours that we're paying at an hourly rate. And it all plays havoc, especially when you get into states that have mandatory sick time.
What rate of pay you have to give them? Things like that. So lots of rules and lots of caveats that you have to, you know, adjust for. But the key component is, is understanding what overtime actually is. Sure.
Overtime is a premium that you owe for daring to work your employees more than X amount of time, either per day in California or per week everywhere else. Sure. So eight hours a day, 40 hours a week is. Is the standard work hours. California.
Anything over eight hours, you have to pay overtime on. It does not matter when you. When the work is actually done or what they're doing during those overtime hours. It's an average. You owe overtime.
It's a 50% premium on the average rate of pay earned during that period. Not comparing minimum wage against. Against how much they earned. It's not that you okay with overtime, you would have earned $600 because your commission is a thousand dollars. I'm good.
I'm just giving you the thousand dollars, right? No, you owe overtime premium on that thousand dollars because you paid them a thousand dollars, not minimum wage. Sure. So we would run into this in here in Austin when we first really rolled out our. I know this very, very well because when we first rolled out our performance pay for our installation cruise, it was awesome.
They loved it because they incentivized them to get done faster, get more work done, and they were fine with that. And then we got to the busy season and they were loving it again because now they're like, oh, you mean I can get, I'll take another job on the weekend and, or I'll work Saturday and Sunday. And now I'm getting paid basically for a couple extra days. But then all of a sudden we're like, wait a minute, we didn't even think about overtime. And so like, what do we do with that?
And so, so can. Because I know that is the biggest model that most people have is, okay, we're paying our guys. Here's an upflow install. It's going to pay, for example, 600 bucks. Today you got it done.
Half a day you took on a second one. Cool. Now you get 1200 bucks instead of 6. How many times can you do that in a week? And they're like super jazzed about it.
But as the business owner, talk about what happens the second they slide past that 40 hour mark and maybe give a little insight in how they should be thinking about this. Absolutely. So whatever they are owed. So they're working, they're cranking out systems, they're earning their 600 bucks a pop and they're going all week. At the end of the week, you total up, you say, okay, we worked, we earned this much money in performance pay.
So 600 times, you know, we'll call it $3,000. You know, sure. They just knocked. They knocked out one a day, five days, $3,000. Keep it pretty consistent then.
But for those $600 a pop, they actually worked, say, you know, 10 hours a day. So they're at 50 hours. At the end of the week, they've earned $3,000. Still not a bad payday for 50 hours worth of work. But this is where the overtime equation comes in.
Obviously they're above minimum wage. That's the first calculation you have to do. Make sure that they earned at least that minimum wage based on your state. Then you look at overtime. I like 50 hours because it's the one place where the math is clean.
At 50 hours, it means you owe an extra 10% on your labor cost. So that $3,000 becomes 3300. You owe an extra $300 because there's 10 hours of overtime premium owed. Sure. Does the average rate of pay just.
That's how it works out. 55%. Sure. So 10 hours, 10%. You have to budget, you have to know or expect.
Okay, I'm building out my pricing, I'm building Out my labor model, how much money I'm allocating to pay the tax. I know they're going to work X amount of overtime. So you add that in, that's part of the budget. So if you're shooting for 20% labor budget and you know that they're working 10% or they're working 10 over overtime hours a week, you need to make it okay, I'm going to pay you directly 18% and I'm going to keep that 2% buffer to cover the overtime expense. That's, that's really the only way you can do it because overtime is always a variable.
Sure. You can't be 100% sure unless you're cutting them off at 40 hours. Right. Anything up until 40 hours, it doesn't matter. Pay them whatever you want as long as it's above minimum wage.
But you have to track the hours and you have to pay, calculate and pay the overtime due. Right. I love this and thanks for going through that with us because. So everybody listening. The other pitfall that I've seen people fall into is I don't have to worry about tracking the hours as long as we stay below that limit.
But that's not true. You do have to. Even if you're paying strictly on performance based pay up until 40, you still got to track the hours because you have to know when that threshold is. And in reporting, we've got to be able to put in still for putting in hours anyway because we have to know how many, I mean truly to run a business you had it got to know how many man hours your each task takes and all that anyway. Even besides, even besides the compliance piece and tracking for overtime, I even like, for salespeople, I like keeping a general track of their hours.
Why? Because I'm going to gauge effectiveness. I'm very, I'm very much about efficiency in the system. So if you have a salesperson out there earning, you know, $100,000 a year in commissions, great sales, great. How long is it taking them to do that?
Your salesman that's doing it in 40 hours a week average versus another salesman earning 100 grand doing it in 60 hours, who's going to burn out first? Sure, of course. Yeah. The guy didn't been there, have the T shirts to prove it, you know, 60, that's, that's low end when we're talking about our industry and the business. I'm trying to be nice, you know.
Yeah. Everybody complains that people don't want to work these days. So I'm, I'm playing to the crowd. Well, it's okay because everybody on this, the, the cool part with my podcast is not only does every are everybody high achievers that want to work their face off, they also come here because we, we do a lot of things about let's make more and work less because I want you to be able to make it through a few years and one still have your health, not have a heart attack, still have your wife, still have your kids and they have it all left because you're never around. So let's work hard, let's work hard when we're working and balance it some.
Absolutely. And that's what I built. You know, my latest compensation plan is based on driving efficiency. So your budgets are protected. You're, you know, you know, you have instant knowledge when somebody is not being effective against, you know, their workflow, they're not being efficient and they're burning more hours than they're earning in commission.
Yeah. But then also accidental byproduct. I've also minimized how much overtime premium you owe. So you know, somebody working, you know, gets 15. That three thousand dollar example, under my system, you're paying 300 in overtime for that 50 hours.
Well, in my system that may actually only be like $50 in overtime. Oh wow. Because they're going to get hourly plus the difference in commission. Okay. So.
And there's multiple benefits of doing it this way for the employee, banks, loans, you know, things like that. They like to see an hourly rate. Yeah. Consistency is important to them. The nebulous commission or piece rate, they want to know that you have consistent pay.
So that's an hourly rate. So you give them an hourly rate, you build your pricing and everything off of those budgets and you're getting that commission credit. Well, end of the period, we combine the two, you pay out any positive difference as an efficiency bonus. So now your hourly plus efficiency, you can tell customers, I'm not a commission, I'm not working on commission. As a homeowner, I prefer that it sounds, I, I don't like being sold when I'm being sold.
So that's, you know, it's all about the efficiency and taking real time action. This goes back to accountability. When you see somebody not meeting it, you need to find out why is it a problem with them? Are they just bad at the job? Do they need more training?
Is there something wrong with the system or are they slacking off or are they trying to game the system and not representing the brand? Right. Oh, I love this. I heard a quote Just actually yesterday, my business coach that was, I've been working with for a good while, a quote he told me is like, people don't fail. It actually comes from a guy named Tim Francis who does a lot of financial coaching and stuff.
He's like, people don't fail, systems fail. It's almost never a problem in your people, it's a problem in your system. So build better systems and then we can of course manage and take care of people. To as somebody who deals with the pretty much the worst of humanity, sometimes people fail. Well, sure, of course it, you can.
Have a great system. It may not be the right system for that person. Yeah. That doesn't mean that it's a bad system. Sure.
That's why you have to put effort into those goal posts and what it means to hit these targets. Right. And be willing to reassess. You know, part of I, I teach on a management cycle, you know, employee management cycle. Set expectations, provide the tools and training to make it possible, hold people accountable and then be willing to reassess as necessary.
Yeah. Inspect what you expect. Right. I love this. This is so good.
So when say a company right now is, you know, we'll call it your XYZ size company, that is the most common one that comes to you. And they have really never had much of a say employee handbook. They don't have a lot of in the way of onboarding when it comes to that kind of stuff. They're just like, hey, let's get you in the truck and teach you how to fix stuff or teach you how to sell or teach you how to whatever, teach you how to install or sit in the office and you know, we'll teach you how to answer phones. Very common.
But there's no actual employee process. And actually I'm very familiar with this right now because a really, really, really good friend of mine, she started with a company just kind of in a kitchen. But she was hired on and they said, oh yeah, you're going to make 17 to 19 an hour. And she gets her first check and it's for 14. And they're like, well that's because we get tips too.
So it usually averages out somewhere in there. And then she's like, well when do we get paid? And like. And so she's every single step of information about the company and her position. She's having to learn from the other people around her when she's asking, hey, what do we do here?
Well, they told me before we do this, but let's ask again. How does that help represent the brand? Oh, it's awful. Yeah. How does leaving your employees in the dark about your expectations help represent the brand?
Yeah. So many companies do the same thing, right. So when a company is in that spot, Right. They, they know how to train the technical stuff, but none of this other thing really actually came to mind, or they're like, oh, no, I should get employee handbook and onboard people, but I just don't know how. Where do they start?
What are some things that they can do? And also, you know, now's a great time to tell us what your company does. Right. What does big picture consulting do and how can you help that company? Well, that, that type of situation is exactly what my company is designed to deal with.
So what we do is we're a plug and play HR and safety compliance department. So we charge a setup fee and that gets you a complete custom employee handbook. Whether we're converting what you have or we're building something completely new and specialized for you, full OSHA safety manual, so that you're. You have all the rules and policies expected there. And then what we call the life cycle review, where we walk through everything from recruitment through termination of an employee.
Whether you're an owner, operator, looking to hire your first people, or you already have several hundred employees, we're shining a light around the foundation of your operation to see how solid it is. That employee handbook is critical. That handles all of your interpersonal relationships within the company, how you're expected to work with each other and interface with the team and the brand. You go to Al Levy for operations manuals and, you know, organizing the structure, those are the walls that you're building your company on. HR support is kind of like the security system.
Yeah. When somebody goes off script, you need somebody to call to, to make sure that you're handling it correctly. So getting those documents in place, that's just a bare minimum. You have to have that employee handbook, you have to have that safety program. You have to have compensation sorted out.
So. Because the worst thing is employee like what you were talking about, expecting one thing and then reality, something different. Right. In places like California, that's an instant lawsuit. That.
And they will win and you will end up owing them all sorts of stuff. Yeah. They will win and you will lose. Yeah, yeah. It, it is, it is ugly when that happens.
That's why you have to be very clear. Yeah. Oh, yeah. So we, we provide all the tools to set that foundation up and then start integrating it into whatever you have built. Or if you're Built.
You know, I love it when companies come to us saying, hey, I'm launching March 1st. Great. This is the perfect time. Yeah. Get on board and start working towards that.
So you're ready to go. And you can present yourself as a professional employer representing your brand. Even if you don't have a clear vision, statement, mission statement, things like that, that really help crystallize it. You want to have an idea of where you're going because it's always fluid. It's always evolving.
Right. You go from one employee to 10 employees. There's a big difference because you're dealing with different personalities. And every person coming in is. Is shifting the balance of your company culture some.
Yeah. You know, company culture. Another thing that could be. Interview everything. Yeah.
I feel. I feel a series of podcasts coming up. That's for sure. Literally making notes of every time we say, hey, we could do a whole episode on that. Maybe we'll do a whole episode on that.
Maybe we'll do a whole episode. But, yeah, that. But I'm the HR guy. I have a full team that handles different aspects of things. So I don't write employee handbooks myself.
I'm more of the hair on fire. My guy just did this. My guys are revolting against this policy. How do I get them on board? I'll tell them it's illegal to do it, otherwise you don't have a choice in the matter.
Yeah. Or sometimes it's selling to them. You know, that's another aspect of having employees that most employers in the trades don't fully grasp. Yeah. Is that you're fine with selling to your external customers.
Well, you need to sell your policies to your internal customers. Yes. Yes. And if you skip that step, it's wild west and you're going to get shot. Oh, yeah.
I mean, I did a whole episode on this exact thing of don't surprise your company with ch policy changes that you haven't set it up. Right. And that. I did that because that week. It's back when I was still in the field.
That week, the owner introduces this crazy new compensation plan change with zero contact, zero setup about it. Here's the new comp plan. Everybody signed this, and the entire sales team lost their minds. And I'm like, hey, I'm the sales manager. You didn't even tell me that you were making this change.
We've got a problem here. And so I want to help companies avoid that situation because we lost half of our team that day. Yep. And that. And that's really what it comes down to.
Here's the kicker. They quit after you say, here's your new compensation plan. They all get unemployment because they're quitting under duress. Yeah, yeah. It's wild too.
Thankfully, I mean, you know, in the, it was middle mid summer in their environment, they instantly were working right away. But what they didn't know is what you went over. It should have done it like this. So quick side note for everybody, pitch it like this. Literally get the whiteboard, have everybody on your team grab their calculators and help you with the math.
You already know the math and say here, this is what we currently have. Let's have a fun exercise. Let me show you this new math and let me show you how you're going to earn more, the same or more. And then go through it and have everyone else own the numbers and then say, okay, this is what I'm like. I would like to convert to.
What are your thoughts? Let's brainstorm this. And so when everybody feels like they're on a team together adopting it, didn't we have accepted change? Right. Absolutely.
Team engagement is the best tool that you have available. Everybody's just as opinionated as you were when you left your last employer to start your own company. You want to minimize the risk of your top guys thinking they know more than you or you know that you're not going to change that you're just going to run yourself into the ground and they're jumping ship. That's what every employee who leaves disgruntled to start their own business, that's what they think is they're going to die without me or they're, they're, they're just on the downtrend and, you know, I don't want to hang out for that. Yeah.
You know, I can't say everyone because, you know, hr, you can never deal with absolutes. Of course, there's never an ever one. There's never an always a high percentage of them. This, this is the path that it goes. Yeah.
And you have to communicate, you have to sell it to them. Doesn't mean that their input is going to actually change anything. But if you know what their arguments are, you can manage to them. Sure. Well, and the, I mean the other thing is this basic sales philosophy we, we talk about all the time is everyone has just wants to be heard.
So if we just let, we hear them and say, I hear you, here's in order to, you know, for whatever reason, we've got to shift to this or whatever the conversation is. But just Hearing people out so many times is perfect. I'll make a note of that. Thank you for sharing your opinion. Man.
That is that valuable piece right there in management and leadership is incredible. Psychologically it's hugely valuable. It's really what separates leaders from bosses is getting that engagement with the team. Even when you're going against the group or the will of the group, right. You're.
You're still doing it in a way that it's still a win for them. They have that, that surge of satisfaction that they were involved in the process even if it's not spiked by. Yeah, I got my way. Yeah, I didn't get to make the decision. But they still included us in the conversation.
Yep. Absolutely and absolutely critical for a sustained and scaled team. Sure. Oh, love this. That so for everybody.
Listen, that was definitely a massive golden nugget here right at the end. It is about time to land this plane here pretty quick. But that is for all of you leaders, managers or aspiring leaders and managers out there, business owners definitely think about that. Anytime you introduce new policy, get everybody on the conversation is adoption is just as important as coming up with an incredible compensation plan. You know, people have to want to work in under that compensation plan.
They have to want it and if they don't, they will go somewhere else and then you're starting all over again. And even if you like your current compensation plan, please just let me take a look at it to make sure that you're compliant. And if it. If overtime is going to break the budget, you need to look at a shift anyway and selling any shift is going to be just as problematic for sure. So how can everybody get in touch with you is really the next question.
So you can find me predominantly on Facebook, H R Guy. com that is, you know, I'm able to be reached direct either. Either direction. We. One of our, one of our core deliverables is insanely quick responses.
So whether people are looking for information or they have a hair on fire employee situation, we treat it. We treat everything as an emergency. Love it. Love it. Also everybody, Ian is the HR guy.
He is in the close it now Facebook group group. So make sure to go join the close it now Facebook group and you can connect with him there as well. That's a really good clearinghouse and good catch all. And I'm going to, as soon as this goes live I'm going to create a post and we'll make sure that you're tagged in there. So everybody can easily find you, if nothing else, through that avenue.
So this, everybody listen. This is something that is so crucial, but it's also this piece and branding are the two pieces that are foundational to every company. It's one of those. It's literally baking a cake and leaving out the eggs if you don't have this piece in there. But too many companies don't put it in and they wonder why their cake never rises, why the business never grows past a certain point.
Or if it does, it keeps getting smashed back down to that upper limit. It's because you don't have a scalable system for your people. And this is a huge component of it. It's one of the number one drivers. Years ago, I had the privilege of getting to see Sir Richard Branson in person.
He spoke 30 minute session. He was paid $200,000 for 30 minutes to come and talk to our group. And the entire thing, no matter what question was asked of him, he absolutely every time turned it around. The answer was something about how he loves his employees, how he takes care of his employees, how his number one focus is making sure his employees have an incredible work experience and they're the ones that build the business. He focuses on taking care of the employees and making sure they're happy and have a great culture and are taken care of properly.
And so it's the same thing with our companies. We just get things so screwed up. The external customer is not the number one customer. Your internal customer, which is the employee, is the number one person to take care of and they will take care of the external customers for you. So that's my personal opinion.
I heard it from Richard Branson. So I'm not going to argue that. One can't really get much better of a source than that. That would have been an amazing talk to be in. Right?
It was incredible. And you in the moment I was like, this wasn't really all that groundbreaking, but as years have passed and the more I've thought about it, the more I thought about it, I was like that. He was just, he's absolutely has broken down. The simple way to grow and scale anything is take care of the people first that are doing the work. And from there then everybody comes together.
It's incredible. Absolutely. So. Well, awesome. So everybody find Ian in the HR guy.
He's in the close it now group, Big picture consulting. Find him there and man, he is. Thank you for being here today. Wealth of knowledge. We've barely scratched the surface.
I know there's a Lot more that we're going to do together. But everybody out there with the company, make sure you're in compliance. It doesn't. The cost of getting into compliance is a fraction of the cost of, you know, here's. Here's an example, actually, for real life example for my company.
Years ago, we had a gentleman as a service technician who was a larger guy. He started. He actually read the, you know, instruction manuals, found out his fiberglass ladder was not rated for his weight when he had his tool belt on. Well, he asked for a ladder. He put in a written request for a ladder.
And it wasn't that. It was neglect of just like, well, you know, we're in a kind of a remote area. We'll get one the next time we're in the city. Well, sure enough, what happens? He falls off his ladder, hurts himself.
And the Texas Workforce Commission was very happy to talk to the owner of the company about that situation. And it turned out to be just this whole debacle that we had to go through as a company. And how easy would it have been solved by, I don't know, just, oh, wow, you're right. Let's just hang on. Let's dispatch you in calls where you don't have to get on a ladder.
Send somebody to town to grab a ladder right now. Easy fix, right? 300 bucks for a new ladder and everybody listen. There's so many companies all over the country that you're in the same boat. Let's protect you.
Get in touch with HR guy. Get in touch with Ian and have him. Let him review what you got, work with him to come up with some more stuff for you, because there's no reason for being out of compliance in this. If we're truly running a business that is worth growing, this is a key element that's got to be there. So that's enough of my soapbox.
I'm sure. I'm preaching your soapbox. Absolutely. And it. I mean, it's a good soapbox.
The one last point that I will make, because this is what I hear a lot. Please, is I have hr, or I'm given HR through my payroll company, or, you know, my CPA handles that stuff for me. One, they're not familiar with your industry and the type of personalities HR has to be about the people, not just searching Google for an answer to a question. That's what you get with adp paychecks and the payroll type. Generalist.
The trades only account for about 2% of payroll that's run across the country. Out of all industries. So there's not a focus there and there's a reason why I'm the only professional HR person that focuses on the trades. My experience is unique, makes me uniquely qualified to deal with tradesmen and contractors and translating it all the legalese into usable, actionable information for the business. So you know, please take advantage of it but make sure that you got what you actually need for your type of business.
Right? True. Love it. Well thank you everybody for listening today. I just appreciate you so much.
If you have ever gotten value from this podcast, I would love, love, love if you left me a five star review on wherever platform you listen. That is huge. And don't forget the March event that is happening 21st and 22nd of March here in Austin, Texas. I'm doing a two day sales masterclass that is going to blow the doors off and we it will sell out. So make sure that you get your ticket and register really soon.
Everyone who registers in the month of February for 2024 you will get entered into a drawing for some cool free gifts. So that is going to be exciting and also we can guarantee that you have a spot that way. We're about to lock in the room blocks so that info will be out. But make sure to go to the Close It Now Facebook group to get the info there. net or text me 512-364-8559 and I can get the info to you there.
Or just shoot me a message over social media, Instagram at thereal Close it now and Facebook at Close It Now. Branding is insanely consistent. So thanks for joining us today Ian, it has been a pleasure and everybody go save the world one frostbite at a time. Go save the world one heat stroke at a time. A time.
Thanks for listening to Close it now with Sam Wakefield. Subscribe to the podcast now so you're first to hear new episodes jam packed with actionable tools and tips to make you the top HVAC professional in your market. If you have friends and colleagues who would like this show, share it with them and send them to our Facebook community for more in depth discussion about the challenges we all face and how to overcome them on the Close It now now podcast.