That concludes the debate on petition 1865, suspend all surgical mesh and fixation devices, it's now time to move on to the next item of business, which is an urgent question, and I call Monica Lennon. Thank you, Presiding Officer, to ask the Scottish Government what its response is to the Secretary of State for Scotland making an order under section 35 of the Scotland Act 1998, preventing the Scottish Parliament's gender recognition reform Scotland bill from proceeding to royal assent. Cabinet Secretary, Shona Robison. The decision by the UK Government to make an order under section 35 of the Scotland Act 1998 preventing the gender recognition reform bill, which was passed with an overwhelming majority from proceeding to royal assent, is a dark day for trans rights and a dark day for democracy. I question why the UK Government has chosen for the very first time a section 35 order against the clear will of this Parliament on an issue within this Parliament's competence, rather than, for example, a section 33 if there were issues with reference to reserve matters, and I question what the implications are for future legislation of this Parliament. The Secretary of State says that he wants to find a constructive way forward, but the UK Government had multiple opportunities to provide constructive comments during the extensive consultation on the bill and during its passage, and it did not do so. It does not agree with the bill, so it has blocked it. The decision that it has taken is political and it is a sad day for democracy and for devolution. However, I want to be very clear to all trans people that I know will be incredibly upset by that decision. This Government will seek to uphold the democratic will of this Parliament. As the statement of reasons was only made available just over an hour ago, we will now take time to consider it fully and I will return to Parliament to update on the next steps. I thank the cabinet secretary for her response. She is correct, the Scottish Parliament passed the GRR bill by a significant majority, and we did so because we believe that trans people should be able to live, work and die with dignity. That is what this bill is about—it is about dignity, fairness and equality for a marginalised group of trans citizens. The Secretary of State may hide behind legal advice, but the truth is that the Tories at Westminster have proven that they are no friends to trans people. As the architects of the rape clause, we know that they are no friends to women and girls. Does the cabinet secretary agree with me that this is a cynical and dangerous power move by an out-of-control UK Government that is determined to wreck the bill at any cost? I agree with that. The strength of the legislation was the fact that it had support from members of all parties. Members from all parties came together to provide and support and improve the bill through the amendments that were made at both stages 2 and 3 of the bill. The truth is that, whether or not the Parliament had passed the legislation in December, this month or February, I fear that we would have always ended up here with a section 35 order. The UK Tory Government does not like this bill, does not want this bill and will do everything to block this bill, but I want to be clear that we will do what we can to uphold the democratic will of this Parliament. I hope that those who supported this bill will work with us and work together in order to achieve that. Monica Lennon Thank you. I was pleased in her original response, the cabinet secretary said out that trans people are at the centre of this and need our support and our friendship at this time. We are seeing political reaction across the UK. Our Labour colleague, the First Minister of Wales, Mark Drakeford, rightly today said that this is dangerous, and he has said that this could be a slippery slope in terms of devolution. Many of us are concerned that the UK Government, who are a bad actor in this process, could strike again in terms of other legislation that we seek to pass. It is a direct attack on self-id for trans people, but also on Scottish devolution. What discussions can the Scottish Government have with the UK Government and with other Governments to make sure that we defend our democracy and we defend devolution in Scotland and also defend people's human rights? Monica Lennon Monica Lennon is right to point out that at the centre of this is one of the most marginalised groups in society and this bill was designed in order to make their lives that bit better. That was all. I think that it is quite telling that Mark Drakeford has made the comments that he has about the dangers of this step and the slippery slope that could come from it. Whether it is the setting aside of the Sule convention or other attacks on the devolution and powers of this Parliament and indeed that of Wales, there is clearly a pattern of behaviour here that is there for all to see. And when we hear one of the defences put forward by the Secretary of State for Scotland that you cannot have divergent systems in the UK, well that does rather question all of the other divergent systems that this Parliament has put in place to make the lives of people here in Scotland better. So I think that it is very much a slippery slope and as for working with others absolutely I want us to work together across this Parliament but also to reach out and we work with Mark Drakeford and the Welsh Government on a number of issues and I would be pleased to work with him and indeed members within the UK Parliament. I thought that there were some very probing questions to what was a very thin statement with a very late rushed out statement of reasons which actually is also very thin. So I think that we want to work across all those who want to uphold democracy and importantly want to improve the rights for transgender people. Thank you. There are many requests and I'd like to get through as many as possible so concise questions and responses would be helpful in that regard. I call Jo Fitzpatrick. Thank you, Presiding Officer. Presiding Officer, this bill was passed overwhelmingly with a two thirds majority by this Parliament with the support of members from all parties and after months of extensive scrutiny. Six years ago, when the process of the bill started, all parties agreed reform of the Gender Recognition Act was needed, as did the UK Government up until a couple of months ago. At the Equalities and Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee, we heard lots and lots of evidence but we did not hear from the UK Government regarding its views on the bill or what changes it wanted. To be clear, in response to Jo Fitzpatrick, the UK Government at no point has raised its concerns with me until a reply was finally received months later to my letter of October last year when I wrote to the UK Government seeking further discussions about cross-border issues. In reply to my letter, there was finally a meeting that was established with Kimmy Badenog the day before stage 3. At that meeting, no mention was made of section 33 or section 35 order being considered. Those are the facts and I think that Parliament will judge for itself whether or not the UK Government has made any efforts to be constructive or not around this bill. The Secretary of State for Scotland has acted on legal advice, taken on the cross-border implications on the Gender Recognition Reform Bill. Legal experts arrived at the conclusion that this bill would have consequences for the operation of the UK-wide Equalities Protections. That is a reserved matter that falls outside this Parliament's devolved competence. We have also heard in Westminster Monica Lennon's Labour counterparts agreeing with the Secretary of State for Scotland. However, the Secretary of State has recognised that the intention of this bill is to respect, support and understand the needs of transgender people going through the process of changing their legal sex and has offered to work with the Scottish Government to create a bill that is legally competent and falls within the devolved powers of this Scottish Parliament. Will the cabinet secretary accept his offer? Let's hear Ms Hamilton. Ms Hamilton, I could not hear your question and would be grateful if you could repeat your question. Will the cabinet secretary accept the secretary's offer to work with him? It would have been better had the Secretary of State made contact perhaps at the start of the process rather than through a section 35 order. As I said this morning, I am always up for discussions with the Secretary of State or anyone else, but I thought that it was quite telling that in answer to one of the questions during his statement, the Secretary of State said that there cannot be two different regimes for gender recognition in the UK. Therefore, I am struggling to understand what amendments would need to be brought to the bill and what amendments would be allowed to the bill in order to avoid two different regimes for gender recognition. Does that mean that, essentially, we would have to revert to the 2004 process? He was unable to answer any of the questions from across the chamber asking for specifics on what amendments would be required. I am all up for discussion, but I think that the onus is on the Secretary of State to make his position clear and explain what he means by that. Pam Duncan-Glancy. Thank you, Presiding Officer. Let me be clear. I am proud of reform and the work that many of us did across this chamber on this bill. I continue to support the bill and I hope that it gets royal assent as soon as possible, because at the heart of that is trans people's lives. In response to a letter that I sent raising concerns about potential cross-border issues, the cabinet secretary confirmed to me that the Scottish Government had committed to working with the UK Government on a section 104 order. Can the cabinet secretary give the Parliament an update on those discussions? Does she admit that the Scottish Government knew there could be potential cross-border issues with the bill prior to stage 3, and that she reassured Opposition parties that that was in hand? First of all, let me say to Pam Duncan-Glancy, I think that it is really important that we come together over this issue and we work together to make sure that the bill that we all passed collectively and work together to amend is the bill that is finally enacted. With reference to the section 104 order, every piece of legislation has cross-border issues and making sure that those issues are resolved often involves the section 104 order. Officials have been talking to officials in the UK Government about those issues for many months. Despite all that work going on behind the scenes, there were plans afoot, obviously, for a section 35 order. Let's put the blame where it lies. We have done this in good faith in order to improve the lives of trans people. I do not think that that is the motivation of the UK Government here. Let's work together to make sure that the expectations that this legislation has enacted go ahead and let's work together to make sure that we achieve that. Alex Cole-Hamilton Thank you very much. The cabinet secretary will share my confusion at Rachael Hamilton's line of questioning. Given that the reasoning published this afternoon would suggest that no amendment to the bill would satisfy the UK Government's concerns and that no divergence in a process for obtaining a GRC would ever be legally competent. Yet Conservative MSPs were still offered a free vote on the bill. Conservative members in both parliaments have said throughout that the bill is a danger and is riddled with holes, and yet their health spokesperson, their justice spokesperson and respected former leader Jackson Carlaw all voted for the bill. Does the cabinet secretary agree with me that the free vote, the division in their own benches, would suggest that those legal arguments do not carry any weight at all and that a swift application for judicial review in the United Kingdom Supreme Court will both demonstrate that and offer reassurance to the general public and deliver much-needed reforms for our trans constituents? Yes, I agree with that. Alex Cole-Hamilton is right to suggest that the idea that there can be some simple amendments brought that if we just amended around the fringes of the bill, that it would be acceptable to the UK Government. None of the statements made today by the secretary of state would give me any confidence in that whatsoever. I think that it is a smoke screen, a fig leaf, whatever you want to call it, that they have no intention whatsoever of allowing this bill to proceed. That leaves us with really no option other than to take the action that we need to take in order to make sure that that happens. Alex Cole-Hamilton actually made an important point that this bill was supported by members of all parties in the chamber. I would pay tribute to the Conservative members who voted for the bill, because it was against a very large pushback that I am sure is from the powers that be in the Conservative party. Let's go forward on the basis that this Parliament has spoken. It has made its position very clear, and we now need to work together to make sure that we can enact this legislation that, as I say, will make a difference to a small number of people but an important difference to their lives. That the UK Government has chosen an equality issue to use section 35 powers for the first time speaks volumes. The Scottish Government has, rightly in my view, said that no nuclear energy power will be developed in Scotland, and the UK Government confirmed it would not impose nuclear reactors on Scotland. Energy is reserved. The Scottish decision about this does impact the energy market of the whole of the UK. It is therefore interesting that it is an equality issue that the UK Government uses to attack Scottish Parliament powers. Does the cabinet secretary believe that this is part of a cynical and despicable culture war on trans people and other minorities? What does she think that it means for other equalities and human rights issues in Scotland? I thought that one of the points made by a number of MPs across the chamber at Westminster today was about that very point. That this is a Government in its death throws was one of the comments made, and that they were looking to distract attention perhaps from some of those serious issues and that this culture war is a convenient way of doing that. That is what others have said. I think that there is a lot of evidence to support that contention. Maggie Chapman also makes an important point about a pattern of behaviour. What we are saying is increasingly draconian behaviour from the UK Government, whether it is on this issue or indeed undermining the right of people to take strike action, for example, or threatening to roll back on human rights protections. There is a pattern of behaviour here, which is fundamentally attacking the rights of people. We need to be really clear here that this is the thin edge of the wedge in terms of the powers of this Parliament, and we need to stand united to push back on any attempt to undermine the powers of this Parliament and the powers of devolution, and we stand united to do that. Thank you very much, Presiding Officer. According to the UK Government website, as of 21 December 2022, there were 41 countries on the list where the UK does not require medical reports when applying for gender recognition in the UK. Presumably, that does not impact on the Equalities Act. Can the cabinet secretary advise why, apparently, breaching the Equalities Act only applies when the Scottish Parliament, by an overwhelming cross-party majority, merely does what many other countries have done, or will this result in the UK removing 41 countries from that list? Christine Grahame is a good point that, for some time now, for years, the UK Government has been recognising the gender recognition certificates from countries that have got a similar system to the system that we were seeking to introduce. That, I think, speaks volumes that we have not seen any evidence that has caused any difficulties within the United Kingdom, and, indeed, the processes that are under way in terms of the self-declaration system in so many other countries show that there is no evidence of any of the harms that have been alluded to by the UK Government. Donald Cameron I refer to my register of interests as an advocate. Prior to the bill passing, many people, most notably the Equality and Human Rights Committee, raised the specific issue of the bill's cross-border implications and the impact on UK equality law with the Scottish Government. Can I ask the cabinet secretary if the Scottish Government obtained legal advice on those particular matters, and if so, was that advice followed? We have taken legal advice through the passage of the bill in various aspects, but let me say two things about that. I have already said in response to Pam Duncan Glancy that we accepted, like many pieces of legislation, that there would be some practical issues that would need to be resolved, and that a section 104 order would be the settled way of doing that, and that officials have been working in good faith to make that happen. On the Equality and Human Rights Commission, it has given a view on a number of aspects of the bill. However, I would point out that it was the Equality and Human Rights Commission that there were biggest advocates for the change to the process and actively lobbied all parties in advance of the 2021 Scottish Parliament election to make the reform of gender recognition the top priority for parties. We are now delivering on the request from the EHRC at that time. Julian Mackay Thank you, Presiding Officer. This move by the UK Government is as cruel as their reasons are flimsy. It weaponises the lives of trans people as part of a culture war on equalities, but, as many others have said, there are real people at the heart of this. Can the cabinet secretary outline what we can do to ensure that trans people do not face further hate and prejudice, and will she meet with myself and colleagues to discuss what additional support we can provide for trans people in light of the increasing bigotry they are facing? I think that Julian Mackay makes an important point. The work that has been going on, that Christine McElvie has been leading around tackling hate crime, is very important in this regard, because we know that the levels of hate crime towards trans community have been increasing. Partly, that is down to some of the media discourse around those issues. I do not think that that has helped at all. Of course, they are one of the most marginalised groups in society. Importantly, we need to reassure them that this piece of legislation is a piece of legislation that we will collectively fight for and that we will work together in order to do that. As the cabinet secretary knows, I was opposed to this bill and I remain opposed to this bill. However, a democratic decision has been made by this Parliament, and does she agree that Westminster is effectively telling Scotland that we are second rate and that we should just get back in our box? John Mason makes an important point here, because I have seen quite a lot of commentary from people who are not in favour of this bill and have made their position clear, but they are in favour of Scottish democracy and the right of this Parliament to decide. When this Parliament was established, it was not established on the basis of that you could only legislate if you happened to agree with the legislation. People elected to this Parliament from all the different parties come to conclusions about legislation and whether or not we agree with every single aspect of it. Once a decision is made, the democratic decision of this Parliament should be respected, and that is why it is so important that we draw a line and say to the UK Government this far and no further. The First Minister told the BBC that the Scottish Government will inevitably end up in court over the gender recognition reform bill, and that it will vigorously defend the legislation. If the situation ends up in court, will she commit to respecting the court's decision regardless of any outcome? Perhaps the member should have respected the outcome of this Parliament, and the UK Government should have respected the outcome of this Parliament. That is where respect starts, but we will vigorously defend the legislation. In our democratic process, of course, it would be a democratic outrage not to. Perhaps there are questions for the Tory members about the position that they now find themselves in, because they are being told to come and have warm words about amending the bill and we can bring it back, whereas the reality of what Alistair Jack said in the statement to the Westminster Parliament was clearly that that could not be on the cards, because there could not be two different systems of gender recognition within the UK. It is a very cynical approach and, as I said earlier, a fig leaf and very disingenuous in its entirety. I will come back to Parliament with the next steps in due course, given that we only saw the section 35 order details this afternoon. I will also be happy to meet Opposition members who are in support of the legislation to work together to make sure that we can ensure that the democratic will of this Parliament is what prevails.


Hey, good afternoon everybody Tom Stewart here. Our guest today is Dan Plata and this is smart business moves Dan how in the heck are you? Tom if I was any better man, I'd be twins actually. I don't I say that because it sounds funny I don't I don't I don't even understand it, but I don't know what that means. Do we know? No, I don't know what it means But it sounds cool. So Google out one Ask chat GPT what that means and get a chat would know Yeah, I would know. Oh, thank you. It's been a while since I've been on the show hanging out with you Again, I think Liz is afraid of me. She ditched you again when I'm on the show. Yeah, you wait Liz isn't here is Yeah, you know chief said, you know Dan's gonna be there. I need to find something else to do No, I'm just kidding. She has she has a lot of training event that she's doing in Phoenix and I she's like in transit, you know, she's been a lot of time traveling doing training and Coaching and yeah, she's moving and grooving.  I got everything on tap back here. What are you thirsty for? Yeah, I got water in my mug right here, but I do I do I'm starting a new podcast Which we'll get into all this stuff I'm starting a new podcast called home service happy hour that I'm starting tonight tonight will be the first recording and This left to change from water to bushlight or something, you know Is that a requirement in order to participate in that you have to be drinking something? Um Not for anybody, but me like the guest doesn't need to it The guest is you know, whatever they want to do they can drink whatever they want. I had a Curt Kempton on from responsibid and he's a milkshake connoisseur. So he was drinking milkshakes and I'm on my previous show. He was drinking milkshakes and I just threw I put some brandy in my mind It was more like a brandy Alexander.   It's you know, we're all adults here, right? Well, it's happy hour It's happy hour. That's the late-night happy hour. So it's even a little more loosey-goosey, but we we work hard We we deserve we deserve that right. That's right So what's what's been going on in your world? It has been a while and I heard some rumors that Some things have been shaken and bacon and there's some some some positive change Yeah, I've been over your way. We've been moving and grooving so For those that well, I guess maybe I like can do a little intro of myself So for people that don't know who I am and what I do and what I'm all about Get caught up on on the damn plot of saga and then I'll kind of give some history and talk about what I'm up to now. So And I met you in my in my my foray into the home service world pretty early on Like right when you were even starting build made central I think like we came down and took a look at it even That was like 2016 2017. So for Five six years. I had my head down running made-service businesses running window cleaning companies and By accident that was at a company called blue skies and I'm still partners in some businesses with that with those folks By accident we started a pretty sweet bookkeeping business and a recruiting company that my boy Shawn Day runs And we started doing some marketing for some people kind of like we built these skill sets for ourselves at one point We had 10 different companies. We were running and then we start I don't think we even realized that other people needed it Just other people started saying like hey, Dan, how do you guys do the bookkeeping for this stuff? And I was like well, I do because I like finance.  We built a recruiting company And then it started to to grow up and I Realized I was the minority owner in it.  I didn't think about that If I were in your shoes, I'd be a little nervous about that too like who am I really getting in business with? Man, I need to like if this is gonna be my thing and it's my thing It's like I gotta I gotta own this thing, right? It's got to I gotta do it for me and my family and I can't have a ton of partners in it And the part the partners were you know me coming in and then this business was an accidental boom You're talking about the accounting the bookkeeping business. Yeah, I mean the bookkeeping and the recruiting both like I wanted I wanted to add marketing to it So we kind of had like the full admin package and I wanted to bring the CPA services and specifically for the bookkeeping side of it But I just couldn't find a good way to get it done I tried to buy the business, but monetarily it just was too expensive. It didn't make any sense for me to buy the business He did stupid a job of building it. I did. I made it way too valuable And so my business partners didn't want to give it up and I said hey well if that's the case Can you guys buy me out, right? And they said yep, we'll buy you out. We totally get it You know appreciate everything and we'll exit you so that was kind of what happened. So I'm no longer at blue skies I'm still partners with them and they have a great relationship working on other businesses that we're still affiliated in But they let me kind of spin off to do my own thing and and so I started a new bookkeeping business called best damn bookkeeping Which I get asked now a lot a lot of times people like is it best Dan bookkeeping?   You're like is it 3b? How many bees is it? How do you spell that?  I don't even have a website. I don't have a logo I don't have a website I'm busier than I can handle already because Because people just know me for doing bookkeeping, so I'm still I'm often running with that And obviously if you guys are watching and need bookkeeping nerdy help or CFO help hit me up We can drop my link in there Love helping home service companies with that stuff And so that's gonna be like my main jam, but then I really Love our recruiting business and Sean day who's been at that with me for a long time He really was like spearheads that What we were missing and part of the reason what's up Molly? That's Dan bookkeeping. It's right up right up there right in there One thing we were missing with our recruiting business and we realized it and why I wanted to partner with a marketing company Is our recruiting is very much like a pay-per-click marketing company We're doing digital ads right trying to get as many applicants and candidates and filter them and convert them It's just marketing And so we were good at the job ad writing and the filtering but we're not like pay-per-click experts and so Realizing that all these businesses out there like obviously over the last three to four years finding employees has been harder and harder and harder and harder They need some help People are used to paying somebody else to do their google ads Or their facebook ads or whatever else the case is But they weren't really used to hiring somebody else to help them with this on recruiting But now recruiting's got more and more and more intense and complicated and harder And so it looks a lot like marketing if you really stop back for you know, it's just about if you're looking for customers Are you looking for cleaners? It's same thing. Yep. Absolutely. Absolutely. So so That was where I was like, man, we got a The skill set between recruiting and marketing is so similar.   We need to be able to pair Good marketing with it so that it's not just a oh, we can help you with like driving one side of your car But the other side of your car can't go anywhere. So what's the point? um And so a guy that I had a really good relationship with Michael Gregory at click call sell He builds websites paper click marketing We've used him for a long time in our blue sky services cleaning companies and he's been awesome and so He and I had looked at Partnering everything together and he and he and I ended up buying The the blue skies recruiting also known now as higher lead chill We bought that from blue skies So we're actually just we're like that that happened in the last week here So we're just getting The bank account set up and the payroll set up and holy shit time I forgot how much of a pain in the ass it is starting new businesses Even when you buy an existing one It's a momentary slice in time though and you'll power through that and then you'll start having having the real fun Yeah, I have a question here. Christie wants to know can you help with hiring contractors as well? Yep, we sure do we sure do and actually that ends up being even a little bit easier you because you have a little more flexibility in it um Obviously you have contractor law that comes into play, but yeah, it's the process is very similar so But but you're right, you know, you we've we've talked about this for years that you Either have too many customers and not enough cleaning professionals or too many cleaning professionals and not enough customers and You know, it's either like this or it's like this and the only time that it's like this is when it's shifting in the other direction You know, you know Oh, there goes a bunch of employees or here comes a bunch of clients and if I There's an analogy and I don't know if I've if I've given this analogy before and if I have it's been long enough Since I gave it so I'm gonna give it again Yeah, yeah, so it'll just act like it's brand new if I've already done it before but um The way I view it You've got a vehicle right with with tires on the right side tires on the left side Now most of the time when we're driving a vehicle like today, you know Your it's front wheel drive or whatever the case is and then the steering wheel turns both sets of vehicles The the vehicle that we drive in our business is made a little bit differently though Uh We're in the vehicle and all of our employees and all of our customers are in the vehicle too I guess maybe they're on the outside of it But the the right side of your vehicle Is your marketing And those tires work independently of the left side of your vehicle, which is your recruiting So your your marketing is your demand and it's got its own gas tank and its own gas pedal What it doesn't have is a steering wheel Okay, like it can go forward and backward and the only way to turn the car is to speed up one side or the other side More or less So marketing has its gas tank you put money in there to run ads and as the ads convert that side of the car speeds up faster The left side of your car is your capacity It's your recruiting you can put some more money into there more effort into there get that side of the car going And if you're driving this car perfectly, it goes straight, right? Your your marketing and your recruiting is happening at the same time So literally every time you get another 15 to 20 clients You have a magical a player employee that shows up and never quits or never turns over on you And this car just keeps going perfectly down the road and you run the best recurring home service, you know home cleaning business in the world I see where you're going with this though. If you're out of balance, you're just going in circles Yeah, and if you and a lot of times people push that marketing pedal down and won't take their foot off the gas Right because you don't want to give up the sales team in the left side of their car The the tires are bald and their leadership sucks, right and employees keep turning over and so the car just goes Right because the right side of the car keeps moving the left side of cars not going anywhere And the the same thing can happen, right if you hire too many people And you can't give them enough work to do All that happens is the left side of the car starts going really fast And then three cleaners quit because they don't have enough hours And then right that side of the car jerks back and you end up spinning out And so the the home cleaning businesses that are the most successful are the ones that balance capacity and demand the best And it's not necessarily Not now some can go really fast and do that, right? I've heard of people growing multi-million dollar home cleaning companies in like a couple of years I was never that good at growing it that fast and keeping capacity and demand in check that whole way But the ones that are the best at it can market really fast and can recruit really fast And at the same speed so the car keeps going straight when the speed starts to get off If you're going fast like you just get more off course, right And so one of the one of the goofy things that I see over and over again Is people are generally really willing to put gas in the marketing tank And they're generally unwilling to put gas in the recruiting tank They'll spend thousands of dollars a month on google ads or or facebook ads or whatever marketing and flyers and this and that But spending 500 bucks a month on indeed ads like scares them Right and they're and part of it's just we're not used to having to do that I think we're starting to get more used to having to do that over the last couple years But historically we didn't have to do that And the the math is the finance nerd the mathematical conundrum to me and I've and I've made this mistake too So I'm not saying I'm immune to it um A client is worth three to four thousand bucks a year On average A home cleaner is worth Sixty to a hundred thousand bucks a year depending on how fast they are and what your business model is So We're sitting here spending thousands of bucks a month on marketing for something That's worth a few grand and then we like skimp out on the thing that makes us You know somewhere between 50 and a hundred thousand bucks a year in revenue um Now obviously it's not apples and apples. That's such a simplification But we do tend to short change ourselves on finding the best players It's easier to complain about shitty employees And just go get the customers that are coming in the door than it is to solve the employee thing Right, so we tend to like not necessarily solve it We just like to to stew in our own demise of oh, nobody wants to work anymore Which you know, we can say that but that definitely doesn't solve our employee problem You know, oh, nobody's reliable anymore.  Yeah, you know any other part of that I guess is is the conversion process you certainly Aren't doing yourself any favors if you're you know only have three candidates to talk to and You're picking between three bad alternatives in terms of you know your next hire Um, but you need to have a process in place if you're going to be spending more on the on the advertising Presumably you're going to be getting more candidates Presumably some of them are going to be really great They're kind of sifting through all of that and finding the right candidates. Do you do you help with that as well? Yeah, a couple of things that we do on hire lead chill. Um, and actually we're revamping this a little bit I'm super pumped for some new automations And again, this is like stuff coming out of our new partnership that I'm really excited about because The Michael who we're bringing in is is really good at creating the automations um People can basically like sign up to use our funnel.  The system can do a lot of the weeding out for you and I think that's that's super important because The amount of applicants we need to find one good employee is significant. Usually it's somewhere between 50 and 100 applications to find a good employee And if you're the one looking at 50 to 100 applications a you're going to be miserable And b you're probably going to get bored and and not actually do the due diligence and not pick the best one Um, I and I find the same thing in interviewing like I feel like I'm a pretty good judge of character. I am a perpetual optimist So I do tend to think everybody's gonna be awesome and I've hired so many shitty people tom Hired I've hired I've hired a lot of great people But I've hired at least as many shitty people because I'm just like no everybody's awesome. They're gonna be so good here um, and so part of having a good process can protect you from yourself in that case where You're either gonna not be critical enough or you're gonna be too critical People are great at bullshitting their way through interviews We some actually like one of the best home cleaners I ever hired was maybe the worst interview I ever had And I totally just dumpster hired her. I just needed a body with a pulse and I was like Erica You're here and I need somebody tomorrow and you said you can work tomorrow and and so you're hired She can you start can you start today like right now? Can you?  What's up, sal? So I a is that different than a I I don't know. I think maybe sally just got a backwards Maybe she started happy hour a little too early. Yeah, she uh hit the tap early Yeah, which hey, you know Get me one sale But but so so one of the things that we found we can do a bunch of like weeding out early What's up, Michael Gregory in the house? Um, shout out my god, it's my new business partner and highly chill right there. Um One of the things that we do is you know, we we We help get a bunch of applicants and that's doing labor market research That's doing keyword research The job you post on indeed has to be way different than the job you post on zip recruiter or facebook Like those algorithms are different So figuring out what those algorithms are looking for is part of what hire league chill would do Getting the right questions to expedite Getting somebody through that funnel and getting them to a business owner is really important And then making it easy for the business owner to like access that data in interview now one thing that This this can go like two different ways here and I'll tell you the way I like to do it It depends on the role you're hiring for but especially for hiring technicians, right? It's like a speed game It's a it's a It's a quantity I won't say quantity over quality But it's definitely like a focus on quantity You just got to get as many applications as you can and you got to get through as many as you can as fast as possible The more you get the way better chance you have of hiring somebody good if you're trying to hire a general manager Obviously, it's quality over quantity then right like you really need to find the right person and you're almost doing more That's important I mean every you you don't want to make a bad hire, but the cost Of making a bad hire in a leveraged position like a manager You could pay for that for months and months. Yeah, I mean that can that can erode your business massively right So so when we look at hiring technicians or even like office managers are a pretty common role that we end up helping people hire um A lot of what I have found Is to take us as the business owner out of it a little bit like we insert ourselves at the beginning as like the culture person and the You know the the you rah rah who like the hype man if you will But I like to exclude myself from the decision-making again I'm the optimist right so i'm a freaking hire everybody that shows up But one of the ways that we have found that this works and we did this In our Minneapolis window cleaning business first and we We did it. I won't say by accident, but out of necessity We were getting enough applicants that we were having like 20 people that wanted to interview And a we all know you get 20 interviews. You're gonna actually have five of them Right, maybe 10 of them So that sucks having all the no shows And that's frustrating and debilitating in a huge waste of your time And it's just a ton to get through Um, and and we were hiring 10 technicians at a time sometimes here So we started doing group interviews and again, we did it out of necessity And then we realized how much better we did by doing group interviews And I'll talk a little bit about our process because I think there's some like secret sauce to To how to do a group interview well and get the right result um There's a few reasons to do group interviews though, especially with technicians or for our office people I wouldn't do them for your general managers And so let's back up just a second. How does a group interview work? Do you just invite a whole bunch of people to your office at the same time? Yeah, so this is our process tweak it however you want, but I'll I'll kind of go like step, you know a through z here so We don't tell them it's going to be a group interview We just say hey four o'clock Tuesdays and Thursdays. Let us know what works for you Maybe they can read between the lines and tell that that's going to be a group interview But we have a couple open standing spots So the beauty of that is it saves us a shitload of time, right instead of a bunch of interviews all week long It's this time or it's that time Here's when we do interviews and if we're if we're trying to bring in a lot of people Maybe we'll do one every day at four or five o'clock Let's see Dan is asking about he wants to know about using zoom for group interviews I don't I don't like it because I'll tell I'll get into why I don't like it when I talk about why I do like doing in person group interviews, okay, not not to say it won't work But there's some drawbacks to it for sure that I think are the main benefit of doing group interviews So We don't really tell them it's going to be a group interview We're trying to catch them off guard a little bit and to see how they react because chances are if they're going to work For you they're going to get caught off guard going into somebody's home And you know grandma's walking through naked or you know the the house is a freaking hoarder's house, right?  Yep. Yep Yep, we asked them to to confirm a time let us know, you know Is it this day? Is it that day? Is it this time? Is it that time? But we give them the options instead of just like an open book I'm coming on tuesday then if they don't show up on tuesday. I assume they're no longer a candidate Yep, they're out unless they Unless they reach out with a great reason as to hey, I can't make it today Can I come back thursday during the next time slot or whatever the case is like obviously if they're if they communicate? Well, we can work with that. We know people have lives But if they don't communicate they're out not to say now not to say we won't retarget them Right, and that's why I think having a crm. That's housing all your application information is super important Just because they didn't show up to your interview doesn't make doesn't mean they're a shitty person There's a good chance. They applied to 30 jobs in two seconds Right, and so by the time your interview happened, they might already be working somewhere That doesn't mean they suck. They applied to 30 jobs They're not going to get back to the other 29 jobs to tell them they're not showing up to their interview Right, the world the world happens too fast and and we see that there's all the no shows and the non-communication stuff I'm not going to write somebody off just because they didn't show up or just because they didn't communicate Now the system will keep weeding them out every time they don't but i'm not going to totally like say never talk to that person again It's it it's there's no harm in me just assuming they got a job somewhere else. I wasn't fast enough Right because a lot of the times people know show us or don't communicate with us. It's because we sucked Right, it's not necessarily because they sucked. We didn't we didn't have the best sexiest opportunity for them They took a different opportunity. We were either too slow.  We weren't the sexiest gal at the bar. So we didn't get the date so We do the group interview we invite them to one of those time slots. We have them confirm it When they come in and and Sean talks about this a lot Going back to the value of this person Our clients are worth a few thousand bucks Our home cleaners are worth up to a hundred thousand bucks or maybe even more if you're charging a lot This is the biggest sale. This is the biggest customer you're gonna have It's your biggest sale So many of us like rush people through an interview And we don't give them the time of day and we kind of treat them like livestock Unless until they're an employee of ours and then we try to love on them later But when they come in for that group interview, it's can I get you some water? If it was me, I've got can I get you a beer, you know But we try to we try to treat them like it's the biggest sale of our lives, right? What can we do for them? How can we make them comfortable? It's our opportunity to impress them We don't bring them to an interview to get them to impress us How many people would you invite to a group interview? We would invite like 20 knowing that only five or 10 are going to show up. Wow So There's you don't want too many that you like have No space for them, right? Is that it's super uncomfortable for about one in one in four show up I'd say between one and two and one and four and it kind of fluctuates in there And I and it might be different Some of that depends on how hard you vet them in advance in our Minneapolis location We don't even vet them in advance. It's just we invite them And that's about the show up rate and we get everything we need from doing the group interview So we don't even show up that's Saying something about you because you're already better than Some you know 75 percent of the people who apply Yeah, and generally it's like we can teach anybody to do the job that we have So so interviewing them doesn't tell us if they're going to be a better cleaner, right? Which is why I said earlier. It's like I've hired terrible You know great people that interviewed terribly and hired terrible people that interviewed greatly The interview doesn't tell us crap about are they going to be a good employee of ours or not It just tells us are they good at interviewing which is not a skill set that my cleaners need So what I do need to know is like can they show up? Well went to wendy's comment. No, we don't tell them. It's a group interview ahead of time They can be surprised Yeah, we want to cut you hold on do you think if you told them you would have less You know less than 25 percent of the people showing up I don't know But we'd have to like ab tested to get some data on it. I don't know Because it would be like well, what are the chances of me getting it if all these other people are going to be showing up Why am I even bothering? Yeah? Yeah? I don't know. Yeah, that's a good question. I never thought about Um But so so we get them in again. It's like it's our biggest sale, right? This is the most important piece of our business This is the the thing that our customer is going to experience is sitting right here and they're going to generate $100,000 a year for us So we treat it like that Like we're we're trying to make it as comfortable for them Food, you know snacks drinks, whatever we want them to to enjoy themselves But when they get there they're going to realize like oh, I'm not the only one Now they could get they could walk out and leave, right?  There's no way they're going to hire me Yeah, so so like the competitive juices start flowing a little bit and now you like They're going to try to impress you from that rather than impress you with answering your crappy interview questions Which are again aren't going to tell you if they're a better cleaner or not Five people show up. Do you like have them all in the room at the same time or do you talk to them one at a time? How does that work? So so we'll have them all in the room at once and I like to The first move for me is to like make them feel comfortable and then for them to let their guard down And I do that by saying something along the lines of like hey if you're here I already like you right you've done everything you need to do to impress me and Now, you know like any relationship.  I'm gonna love you If you are not gonna love this job You and I are gonna be miserable and it's not gonna work So the point of this interview is not for you to impress me It's for me You know, maybe impress you but to make sure you're gonna love it here If you're gonna love it here, there's a really good chance you're gonna show up every day There's a really good chance you're gonna work hard and make a lot of money if you're not gonna love it here Just don't take the job Like nope. Nobody's holding the gun to your head. You don't have to take this job I don't want you to take this job if you're not gonna love it here The next 30 minutes to an hour is is me giving you everything you need to know if you're gonna love it here And then you get to decide if you want this job So I try to let their guard down to almost make them feel like they've already got the job Okay, so that's almost a head fake. They don't but you are just You're you're selling at that point. Is it just like Yeah, it's just it's your biggest sale. It's your biggest sale Um and the fact of the matter is like you probably are gonna hire them if they want the job, right? Like they already Generally, you've scored them and so you only invited them if they scored good Like I said, Minneapolis, we don't even score them because we're just like just bring them in We'll know enough from doing the group interview Um, but they showed up if they were interested enough from your job at again Your job ad has to be good or nobody's gonna show up If your job Discussion or everything is done in this group everything is done in the group setting because we we kind of want to see How they interact like that's what's actually gonna tell us if they're interested in the job Are you asking them questions like you would normally ask on an interview? Nope, we ask them zero questions Um, and I think that's part of the secret sauce We we just watch them you can tell if they're interested and generally again, we can teach anybody to do this job It's not there's no interview question. We can ask them. That's gonna tell us. Are they gonna be good at cleaning What's gonna tell us if they're gonna be good at cleaning is are they interested? Are they sitting forward? Are they are they giving you their attention? Are they Interacting with you what what's Sean have to say application for screening behaviors Interview match your culture and core values. Yeah, baby um So so I think what's really important is we get their guard down To make them feel like they've already got it that way As they're interacting with us They're just being them their true selves and their nonverbals will tell you everything about whether they actually want your job or not That's what you're reading I know a guy that does this and he literally plants somebody in the room To watch everybody else's nonverbals And so there's a plant in there and there's an interviewee as a candidate. Yep. Yep They'll be sitting there acting like an interviewee and they'll be taking notes on what everybody else is doing Because if the if you're asked if you start talking about your core values and somebody's sitting there with their arms crossed leaning back You're not gonna hire them. They don't want to work for you. They're just looking for a paycheck, right? They're not interested in in what you're all about So so does this plant like like have a have a script? Are they supposed to act like they're a good candidate? Are they supposed to act like they're a bad candidate? Did they show up? No, I've never used the plant yet I've never you're pouring up jeans and the you know Make it whatever you want make it whatever you want. I've never used one I just know that this is something one of one of my buddies does Um and and he says he gets good info from it because nobody Knows that they're sitting there like taking notes on the entire room like they got a clipboard. They're taking notes The need has another question you hear about having them read about your company or do you suggest talking to them?  And so that's another way you can tell who's actually interested in working for you is Are they gonna interact with you? Are they gonna speak up? So when we go through our And I call it like a sales presentation again, we're we're selling them on working for us We need to make sure they're gonna love it here So the first thing that we do is we start telling stories Stories sell We're not gonna like read bullet points and show a bunch of slides. We're gonna start telling stories The first story we tell is how we got started. Here's our origin story. Here's what we're all about Here's why we're passionate about this And we weave that into our core values Core values are super important because that's why somebody's gonna stay and the whole point of this is to hire people that are gonna stay, right?    He could clean windows like the dickens.  He broke a freaking screen over his leg at a customer's house. He was having trouble with her screens He took the screen out of the window broken over his leg through it in the woods And that customer was a maid service client of ours was a window cleaning client was a holiday light client And she thank god she had my cell number. She called me. She's like damn Can you tell your technician to leave like and couldn't send somebody else out here?  That's the person that wants to bleed your blood and do the thing with you because they believe in what you're saying So when you're telling these stories People that are interested in what you have to sell Want to tell you a story back and that's what you're looking for. Are they sitting forward? Are they nodding their head? Are they trying to communicate with you or say like, oh my god, I worked with a guy like that Because they're gonna now I'm not saying you're this is going to be bulletproof And you're never going to hire somebody that sucks and you're never going to miss out on somebody that would be good but You're you're finding out the people that believe what you believe And those are the most likely people to love working for you And are going to stick around the longest because they love working for you and that's what you're trying to find Right, you don't you can train anybody to clean a house Anybody so you're just trying to find the people that are going to stick around the longest And if they love working for you, they're going to clean houses better.   We try to route them as efficiently as possible We don't get to choose what time of day they want us We try to route them as efficiently as possible But you're gonna have a crappy day and then you're gonna have a good day And can you handle the ups and downs of that or do you need an eight to five schedule? Because we go to people's homes and we don't know exactly what we're gonna get when we get there And if you need an eight to five schedule, you're not gonna love this job So don't take this job.  What else I have to say Um, so so I want to like paint the negative, right? We can't hire them if they're not okay with that and then we want to get to the positive, right?    We might pop open maid central show them what a day in the life looks like Here's what she cleaned yesterday. Here's what he was out doing yesterday Here's how our pay structure works and how you make more money and you get to decide, right? If assume you're paying commission if you're not you should think about it um We get to like show them how the inner workings of the company work and we can just throw it right up on the screen We're we're presenting right?  Here's what training looks like Here's how we get you through that And then we open it up for questions, right? And again the people that are interested in what you're selling are gonna interact they're gonna ask more questions They're gonna be way more engaged So at this point at this point you're watching body language and you're watching You know you're listening for what questions are being asked and All of that is is it's how the competition works and if you're looking to hire You know one person out of those five whoever asked the best questions and you know Came across with the best body language. They win I mean Some answers questions about introverts, right introverts probably aren't gonna ask you a lot of questions back They're gonna they're gonna try to ask them in private. That's cool. They're body language I mean if somebody's doing this, I don't care if they're introverted and extroverted. They're not interested in what you're selling right introverts don't Don't have a resting bitch face Introverts just maybe are less vocal, but they would they would still be sitting forward interested in what you're saying So you're reading the nonverbals you're an extrovert. That's They're sitting there on their phone, you know watching tiktok videos. Yeah. Yeah and even an extrovert That's disinterested isn't gonna ask questions an extrovert that's interested is just gonna dominate the questions, right? Now you might based on them being extroverts You might decide not to hire them if you're like wow this We've all had this employee that you're like Yeah, they're a great cleaner, but they might start talking politics and religion to that customer The minute they walk into the house, right? We had a we had a sales guy like that in our window cleaning business He's so good at sales But we literally had to subcontract him We're like Dave you can't you can't be an employee of this business anymore. You can go sell high-rise But like he eroded employee relationships and and some customers loved him But some customers hated him because he had no filter He just and so like an extrovert like him Like he's so good at what he does, but but he might not be the right home cleaner Um, he was great commercial sales for us, but wasn't a good window cleaner for us for for various reasons so You know you might get that from an extrovert that speaks up That's a thing that you're looking for right if if you can't send him into somebody's house without having to worry about the Shit they're gonna say to the customer But and by all means like the first time you do this It's it you're not gonna have it all figured out right like the more you do these group interviews You're gonna know what to look for that's a match for you right you're reading their non-verbals you're reading how they're interacting and what we found And again, it's not as much about you picking them I want to like keep getting back to that is we think we're the ones that need to pick them We need them to pick us That's why there's so many no shows. That's why we have a hard time retaining people is we're not the sexiest one there's always A segment of the market out there though that you know, I just need a paycheck wins wins pay day and You know, they're thinking maybe maybe they're only planning for for working three days. I don't know but it's like I will this will be the Sixth job I've had in the last, you know, a month and a half But I just need some money and if you hire me I will be there But I'm not going to be here very long. You know, you know the type I'm talking about they will they will pick you But they are far from committed. They're just Looking for a check. Yep. And and generally that person will look disinterested during the interview, right?  Like you'll you'll read their face Um, and and again, you're gonna get it wrong But you're gonna get it wrong less than you would if you're just interviewing them and asking them questions about the same questions You asked the last person that came in um, the the The thing that we found that was really interesting to me is When I would do one-on-one interviews Like yeah, I could hire enough people they wasted a bunch of my time Waiting for people that didn't show up be I tried to hire everybody that showed up because I'm the eternal optimist and there are a few people that didn't offer jobs too But I have like a hard time not hiring somebody in a one-on-one interview. Like I just I see the best in everybody um But but what would eventually happen is I would offer a job to somebody that was great And I knew they were great And I got the confirmation that they would have been great because they were the person that when they turned me down they had enough Decency to actually reach out and say hey dan.  It's like we're missing out on the best people It's not that yeah, like we're hiring some duds because they fool us in an interview What's worse is that we're not getting a players. They're choosing something else We're we don't have the sexiest proposition here. That's the problem And so that's where I said it's like you need them to choose you It can't be you interviewing them and you expecting them to impress you They have any job they want out there. So how does that work like towards how how long does this whole process take? I mean it depends on the interaction from them, right? So it might take a half hour.  Who who wants a job or how do you know? Especially with the introverts that would make them so uncomfortable, right? As they like don't want to have that that pick and choose so we basically say That's it.  You're cool Like I'm not gonna do that right here and right now And I don't expect you, you know, you can come up to me if you've got a question That's more private come up to me afterwards ask me the question or you've got my number Go out to your car. Shoot me a text Let let us know if you're interested in the job or not If it's if you're gonna love it like only text to me if you're gonna love it here if if if One out of these 10 things you're not gonna love. Don't buy the text to me I only want you if you're gonna love it here. That's the only way it's gonna work So only text me if you're gonna love it here get out to your car Let me know and if we think it's a good fit. We'll start working on a start date And and so you kind of take the pressure off nobody needs to like raise their hand right then but you give them an opportunity to ask private questions You give them an opportunity to like opt in once they get out to their car and You've got your notes, right of who was good and who you want and who you don't want And then you just start working on a on a higher date The the thing that was interesting to me is again when I did one-on-one interviews We didn't get all the people we wanted We lost people that we thought would be really good. They didn't end up working for us When we do it this way a we have a really sexy job ad to try to make sure people show up but b This interview to them Is way more appealing than if they come on to an uncomfortable one-on-one situation Like when they leave this interview, they're like, holy shit They didn't ask me a single question They wind and dine me the whole time and they told me all the reasons that i'm going to love it here And they told me not to pick this job if i'm not going to love it here like they actually care About if i'm going to like working here versus am I going to make them more money? Right because that's the employee's worst nightmare is that they're going to work for somebody who who only wants them to Go make them money Right, so when you can frame it in a way that I want to make sure you're going to love it here And and you're the one interviewing this way and your competitors are and all the other job offers that they got We're not done this way. You're the memorable one. You're the sexiest gal at the bar. You're getting the date And that's what we found is when there was somebody that we wanted in that room We got them almost every time versus when we did one-on-one interviews We didn't get all the people we wanted and I think that was the biggest like aha to us is like, holy shit Like if there's a if there's a person sitting in that room that we want We're going to get them almost every damn time Yeah And you know the whole idea of like planting somebody in there If they you plant somebody that's a really strong candidate and if they act like it They're really like interested in the job You might be able to create some fomo with the other people and it's like well This person here is awesome. And if they think this is a great job You know, I trust their judgment more than my own. This does sound like a great job I want this job too.  It's hard for people when it's not face to face To keep their attention span, right? I mean like I've been on a zoom call for an hour before You guys have been watching this for up, you know 50 minutes and you've probably checked out and done other stuff while you while you were listening to us talk So it's hard to read their nonverbals. It's hard to like see how they interact I'm not saying don't try it. You might do it and it might be super efficient for you and work really well For me, I mean, I am extroverted. So I like that personal interaction. So so it would it would be easier for me to do it in person um I'm not saying it's got a very important question here then Do you see shit in interviews? I I don't have a filter tom and I wouldn't want I wouldn't want to hire people that expected me to had a filter because then they'd be Severely disappointed later. So I don't you think shah knew the answer to that question before answering it or before asking I think he did. I think he did But I think I mean that's where like you you need um The a guy gave me this feedback when I first started doing my radio show on my podcast Because I was trying to like find my voice and figure out what what's my What's my shtick, right?   Geez. I love it. You gotta love it.  Yeah, we're uh, we're approaching the top of the hour here So in a few minutes that we have left. Let's uh, at least do a quick flyby on that Tell us about the bookkeeping side of the business Man, so I I mean i'm a broken record about finance stuff But even even this recruiting stuff It's all still a math problem, right? And I talked about it earlier about how the number one thing I see with recruiting is people don't invest enough in it And from a financial perspective, it's the biggest sale we make It's like the number especially in maid service. Our business is literally only as good as our worst cleaner That's that's what we're sending out there every day. So when we look at our financials There's two different things that happen The first thing that happens is your true expenses We call it cost of good sold you go out and clean something and cost you x pretty much your labor Maybe you add supplies in there because you usually need some supplies to clean something Everything else on in your financials is an investment Your recruiting is an investment. It has to generate a return your admin person that answers the phone is an investment They have to generate a return your marketing is an investment your rent. That's an investment The the cost to go clean the thing we try to keep that lock tight And that's why I said earlier like I'm a big proponent of commission-based pay It locks in your cost of good sold it makes it so that you know every time you go out and clean You make x amount of money Super super important because it's hard to make a bunch of investments to grow your business If you don't how much if you don't know how much money you're gonna make When you go out to clean we're we're big fans of that as well Really big fans, you know, you're you're creating incentive for people to be productive and Out of all of the things that you need to manage worrying about your cost of good sold is one of them If you're paying commission, you know what your cost to get sold is and and and then it helps you focus on culture right if you're not worried about the The financial productivity of the person because you're well aligned right you win when they win they win when you win when you pay commission Then your focus isn't on the money I mean, it's you're still focused on the investments, right? You're still focused on their productivity But you know they are too because they make more when they're more productive But then you get to focus on culture And especially in maid service. We are an army of people That is our business model. We're a friggin army of people And so the better your culture is the better your businesses So like You've got several things that you're doing here. You're helping with the recruiting. You're helping with bookkeeping and 90 seconds give us a thumbnail of the services you offer and If anybody in our audience could use help in those areas, you know, how they can contact you So there's three things that i'm involved with that can be helpful to a home service company I'm a bookkeeping nerd So if you need help getting your quickbooks dialed in so that you can make these decisions That's like can I can I add something to that if I may dan and if i'm off based on the straighten me out We all have somebody doing our taxes off, you know, I hope it's a cpa and that is not business accounting They're basically wanting to make sure that you're giving the irs what you owe them You're doing something that looks like business accounting You're hoping companies actually be more profitable rather than paying their taxes. Am I right on that? Exactly and and bookkeeping still is like helpful to pay your taxes But that's not the point of doing bookkeeping the point of doing bookkeeping is so that you know your cost of good Solder's dialed in so that you know if your marketing is working or not So if you know if your recruiting is working or not, it's a financial There's a lot of us out there running home service businesses though that all we have are numbers that are cpa's giving us And we think that we have what we need and really what we have is what we need to pay the irs That would be like playing a football game and not knowing the score of the game until the game's over You do business accounting from You know bookkeeping from a business accounting standpoint. You help companies be more profitable nailed it. You nailed it tom So what are the other what are the other legs on this? This business stool that you're offering So um, these are separate entities by the way, we we carved them up separately So they're they're they're their own little animals the the second thing and obviously what we talked a whole bunch about today Was the recruiting side of it higher lead chill is designed to help you get and keep more employees And there's a re there's a reason why it's higher lead and then chill and it's not just higher Right because you can hire all you want, but if you can't keep them because your culture sucks or your leadership sucks That's not that's not going to go well for you or for them Which is why I talked a lot about the group interview You got to find a way to be the sexiest business owner out there So they want to come work for you and you got to keep them, right? You have to build a great culture to keep them so you can you know grow a cool business Um, so higher lead chill is all about that helping you find great people and helping you keep great people And then the third business is click call sell. That's with michael gregery He's he's the marketing partner in higher lead chill. And so it's websites. It's google ads Uh starting to do some facebook ad management stuff And so that's the other side of that vehicle, right? If you're if you're putting all your money into recruiting, but you're not getting more customers You're gonna have a shitty business if you're putting all your money into marketing, but you're not getting more employees You're gonna have a problem as well. So I think click call sell and higher lead chill There's a reason why their names sound really similar. They have the same cadence They can drive that car forward for you and make sure that uh, you grow a sweet business Okay, so the contact, uh, we dropped that in chat earlier It is your calendly link at the moment. Is that right, Dan? Yep, that's the easiest way to get a hold of me is to there's like a 15 minute grab time with me whenever you want it Okay, so we just dropped that in chat again. So if you want to talk to dan schedule some time in calendly and you know when you uh get your website up and and and Want to come back and share a little bit more about what you're doing I like it because it's kind of like one-stop shopping for you know home service businesses and It's it's a heck of an idea I love it. It's it's the fun stuff. It's the fun stuff You know like bookkeeping doesn't get any more fun than that. Oh, it's uh life's a party. Hey, Dan Thanks for joining us today. It's uh, it's been too long. We're gonna have to uh do this again We can't I mean we did have it on the schedule a couple times and like I think I had like two different conflicts and Sarah kept being like Come on, Dan. Come on, Dan. So I'm glad I was able to to appease her once and For all and actually stick to a time that I committed to so it's cool to see sam on here Your checkout was I think she's out in phoenix, uh This week. That's my understanding Sam's uh in phoenix as well Christie, thanks. Thanks everybody for joining us. Dan. Thanks for your help, ma'am. You're awesome. Good luck in the new venture. Okay Heck yeah, I appreciate it. Thanks everybody hit me up. See you. See you soon. Bye. Bye


How do we do? Hi guys, Shalva from Life is No Yoke. So you've got the 20 ounce or the 8 ounce container attachments for your scent series and you love the idea of them But they're a little bit frustrating or you're looking into purchasing them because they're awesome But you've read some reviews that say that they're the bases having a hard time reading it I totally understand when these first came out I was so so excited and then when we got them in the mail, I Was flustered. It was hard to get my machine to detect the containers and that was annoying to me But I figured out the trick and with a little bit of practice It's no problem at all So I'm gonna teach you this really quick trick on how to make sure that your a scent series Vitamix Actually detects your 20 and your 8 ounce containers ready? Okay, so We'll show you some close-ups here But the trick is that both the base and the containers have a little arrow So you've got to find the arrow On the base. It's right here. You might need your readers for it But it is right here on the base and then you need to find the arrow on the corresponding container Now I was looking on this side. It's not there.  So it is Right here On the container and we'll show you a close-up But you need to match up those arrows as best you can it just needs to be within the range So if you have things in this container here, you're gonna hold it this way You've got an arrow right here and you're gonna match it up with this arrow And you're gonna spin it now It's pretty easy to over or under tighten these if you don't use this trick We've definitely made that mistake before but if you line up the arrows correctly It's a pretty much a no-fail trick. So let's see if my machine detects the 8 ounce container here Do you know I'm here? All right, so it knows I'm here, which is awesome. So you see when I take it off It has the X When I put it on it knows it's there. Let's quickly do it with the 20 ounce we've got our arrow here and Our arrow here the easiest thing is that it's in between the silver There's an arrow on either side. So it's in between the two silver things. You just want to make sure That you match them up Which sometimes is easier said than done All right, so let's see if it reads my 20 ounce container right now It says there's nothing on it and now it says there is which is like actually really exciting These are like the first two times I've gotten it to work in a row But if you do it correctly it works So just to be really really clear the goal is to end with the arrows in the same range But the trick to actually get you there is to start with the arrows in the same range So it took me a while to figure that out But you start with the two arrows in the same range and you spin it on Then it will also end within the correct range and work hopefully for you every time Yep All right, so that's the trick for getting your Vitamix Containers the eight and the twenty ounce Containers to be read by your Vitamix ascent machine no matter which of the ascent series machines you have this trick should work for you Thank you so much for watching. Let us know if you have any questions in the comments below like and subscribe Thanks for watching. Bye guys So we've certainly gone through the pain of Trying to figure this out. We used this these attachments several times before we got the trick We have over tightened it and it was impossible to get the base off from the container You got it You got it You got it and we've under tightened it and that was a pretty big disaster But it's really easy once you get the trick and we took the time to figure out the trick for you So hopefully once these arrive for you, it won't be a problem at all Line up the arrows to start line up the arrows to end and it should work every time How do we do So white on a sip From the jug. Yeah The good kind of mustache How is it it's really good. It's good, right? Yeah, especially on sweeten. I like it better than all the milk. It's very good. I Can try and you can make it like a lot of different flavors. Yeah, you can Well, I got a really frothy sip It's is it is it like toasty smoky perhaps Okay, it's so good doing it for a minute for a photo