Here we go. Hey, good afternoon, everybody. Tom Stewart here. I'm with Liz Trotter, our guest today is Jason Coppin. This is Smart Business Moves. Last week of September, three days of the month left. Is that right, Liz? Oh my gosh, it is. Oh, and since you've said three days of the month before we get started on the show, I do want to tell everybody, hey y'all, three days left of the Cleaning Profit Builders Special for the Success for Managers group. If you have managers, you're struggling with them, get them in the Success for Managers group. All right, you said three days, I had to take advantage. So now we can actually, yeah. Oh, you have to put it in for me too, Tom, the link, if you could. So what is the link? Just let's do CleaningProfitBuilders.com and they can just go there and see the special, they can go to Success for Managers and see the specials. So Jason, when I first popped on, you said something about our glasses. Yeah. While we're waiting, I was noticing that I love your glasses too. Very, very cute. Nice, nice style. Thank you tremendously for that. These are old people glasses and I only use them on the computer. And so if I take them out, I have no idea where you guys are. I have so many pairs of glasses that I wear that it's ridiculous. I need to have that surgery to be able to fix my eyesight once in a while. Yeah. If you can get that and it will work, you should. Everybody I know that's had that, swears by it. Yeah. It's like some of the best money they've ever spent. Awesome. Well, Jason, you got to do that. I have to give that some consideration. We're not here to talk about eyesight or cool. Come on in. I just got new glasses last week.  They look the same time. They're a little bit bigger maybe. Little bit. But you know, I don't know why. They basically upsold me and I'm a sucker for that stuff. And I got glasses that like get dark when you go outside. But then I noticed when I went back inside and even my kids were ribbing me, it's like I'm not, you know, I like to think I'm not that old yet to have to go that route. I still have them though, because they're kind of nice. But I went back and I got another pair exactly like those that set these lens don't get dark on me when I I did get those a few years ago. And yeah, they're not good. They're not cool. They're not cool. For sure. There's nothing cool about them. But our guest today is Jason Cop. Jason, this is your first time on smart business modes. It is. And how hard was it to get him? He's so busy. Thank you so much, Jason, for making time for us. I am so excited to be here. I literally think that Liz, you reached out like back in June or July. And then we got that August date and then I couldn't make it. And then now we've got the September. I think we have another date that's scheduled before the end of the year. So I'm excited to hang out with you guys. This is going to be super fun. And to get to know some of the people who are watching us online or on the replay, I just think it's going to be a blast. So thanks for having me. I really appreciate it. Yeah, once you once you get into the ecosystem, we won't let you go. This is like, oh, you're coming back. I'm now busy for like until 2025. There's no no one day four p.m. Central. That's funny. Oh, great. That works really well for us. For those of you, I know a lot of you know Jason, but for those of you who don't, you know, he doesn't.  You wouldn't you in the landscaping business at one time, right? Yeah. So I am a landscape company and I've been out of the contracting business now for gosh, I look at a calendar and I'm always blown away like 13 years. I've been doing that long ago. I was just like yesterday. It feels like a long time ago. And every single year clips another year on to it. But but I've been doing education, consulting, coaching, advising since 2006. So a couple more years on top of that. And so I've been doing what I do now for a long time. 50 years, 16 years, something like that. Well, do you have a link that Tom can throw up? Come here. I actually have two different businesses. One is my consulting and coaching and financial services arm, which is Jason com.com. The other one is my HR company. We do hiring and compliance and handbooks and all that type of stuff. That's Kincaid HR, k-i-n-c-a-i-d-e-h-r.com. And Kincaid is my middle name. So a lot of people ask me that, like, where did that come from? That's a cute middle name. I like it. I know it's not a great word for a man's name, but I like it. It's a good name. That's okay. My grandpa probably wouldn't like you saying that, but that's okay. It's a manly name. It's a different spelling with that e on the end. I like that. Thank you. Yeah. All right. Well, what are we going to? Well, first, we should probably talk about, is there anything in the news that has happened over the last five days, Tom, since we were last live? I'm sure. Tom usually is the news guy. He keeps us up to date on what's happening. No? Nothing big though. I don't know. I wasn't prepared for that trick question.  Every single Monday. It's been one of those days. I can tell you a lot of personal news, but we don't want to just business and whatnot. I've been kind of crazy. You can tell us at least one personal thing. People do love the personal stuff and they don't really think you have a personal life, Tom. I do have one piece of news and it has something to do with work, but I was told to make a confidence and we'll find out soon enough. You'll think it's pretty cool by the way, but no, I don't. I don't have anything. What is going on? Jason? Okay. So was that like a crazy teaser or what? What was that? Oh, I do have one bit of news that I'm not going to tell you, but you're going to think it's cool. But I can't tell you because somebody told me, but they told me, they told me not to tell anybody. If you just drop, I've got a secret that I can't tell you, but it's a secret, but I'm a secret keeper, but I still can't tell you. Did you just drop that? I'm an awesome secret keeper. They told me that I didn't tell anybody, but they didn't tell me that I couldn't tell people that I have a secret. That's cool. Oh my gosh. You're one of those. You're one of those. You probably go on Facebook and say, oh, I can't say why, but everybody please pray for me. Right? Is that, is that your gig there Tom? I got you. No, I have never gone there. It's called big booking. It's called big booking. Oh, is that what that's called? That's good.  Good job. I love it. Good job, Jason. I love that you gave us a new term. That's so amazing. I'm scared with our lexicon. I'm dropping this. It's really struggling right now. He's like, I'm always struggling. Grief about the news and now she's giving me grief about fake booking. Just can't win today. Can you tell? It's been a rough memory. I've been trying to get ready for foundations 11, which is coming up what this weekend? Yeah, I fly out 645 on Friday morning. Yeah. So it's almost here. Have you heard about foundations Jason? No, I just sounds like it's awesome. 645 AM flights and fun weekends away. Sounds fun. Yeah, this is much longer. I'll be gone like almost 10 days. Oh, wow. Yeah. This is foundations 11. When is myself and Derek Christian some time ago started running a beachfront property on Isle of Ponds just here outside of Charleston and we fill it up full of cleaning business owners and it's like a 12 bed, 12 bath. It's called the mansion. It's beachfront. It's got to pull. It's an awesome venue and we're going to be spending the entire next week together all sequestered in this big beachfront property talking about the business side of running a cleaning business. We don't really spend a whole lot of time. We don't spend any time really talking about removing soil from a surface. It's all about the business aspect. That sounds awesome. So kind of like all into a house, share best practices, build relationships, talk about the struggles, talk about the wins, maybe share some marketing ideas or some strategies on hiring since we're all in this labor crisis. I mean, kind of is that what it is?  I don't know that I'm a fan of that terminology, but a lot of people would call it that. Is that similar to what it is? Kind of lock ourselves in a room and just share. But that's what it seems like it should be. But no, it's not. It's kind of, I mean, there are work groups and stuff like that, but there's a lot of re-talking listen type stuff. I bet he's going to get the big binder. I'm guessing. I don't know since we didn't plan on it. This is kind of the material that we got from the course of that week. So it's an education event. Yeah. So basically how it works is class workshop, class, workshop, class, workshop. For everything, every class, there's a workshop so that you go home with, there's 24 different classes and you go home with lots of different things that are already done for you, creative for you. But there's some names in there too. We eat a lot too. We do eat a lot. I was going to try and lose weight because I'm just a little chubbier than I normally am, but I'm like, I'm not losing weight before I go to foundations. I'm just going to put it all right back on again. No way. Forget about that. That's it. You read my mind. 12 days from now, that's when you dial it up. I mean, that's exactly it. Danneet can't wait for foundations. Linda is printing our binders here. She's been printing all day. You rock, Linda. How many have you gotten done, Linda? I think she, earlier today, she had gotten one done. I think we have like 18 people. Wasn't like a copy max or somebody going to like just do all of it? Yeah, for $5,000, they'd be happy to do that for us.  Unbelievable. We never did that. That was a heck of an idea. We never got a quote for that, did we? We did not. We're just like, oh, that's a great idea. Yes, let's do that. And then Linda's like, hey, here's what we need. Wow, that's insane. Wow. Okay. Well, you guys have a lot to actually be in that area in about two weeks. So right when you guys leave, I'll be in Charleston and near Wilmington, North Carolina, I think. So very close to where you all will be. That's super fun. Yeah, what are you doing? What's that? He worked, Tom lives in Charleston. That's where his company is, is in Charleston. So he's always there. But what are you going to be doing there? It's two vacations with work in between. I'll be gone for a couple of weeks myself. So two, two fun kind of hobby type vacation with friends with work in between. So it'll be a blast. Yeah, it does sound nice. Actually, that sounds like the ideal kind of trip for me. Tom, that would probably be good for you too. He's a lot like I am. It's hard to just go away from work and just vacation. But if I could have like a little vacation and then I get a little work again, and that's more, okay, I could probably do that better. If you're only working four or five hours a day, it's really like a day off, right? Vacation. Yeah, it feels like vacation. That's a very good point. That's a very good point. Yeah, part of it is in my business, it's hard to just say, hey, I'm gone for two weeks and you don't have access or something were to happen. And so I have to make myself a little bit more available. So which is completely fine. Well, if you plan it that way, my experience is that it works because that's what I planned for. That's what I wanted to do. Right, right. I hear you. I absolutely hear you. Well, what are we talking about today? Oh, maybe just so that the exact same time. Jake's. So this is September for the last couple of days here, the last three days in September. It's employee retention month, right? Am I right on that? Yeah, you are. You are. And I hope everybody is finalizing their quarters and getting in that last big push, right? We got what we have a total of four days left in the quarter. So hopefully you're going to meet all your revenue goals, everybody. I know we got a bunch of people that are pushing hard for the revenue goals here in the last little bit of the month. So I know that this isn't about financials, but Liz, I have to get on my soapbox and say, I love revenue goals, but I love profit goals so much more. Us too. And I even love cash flow goals even more than profit goals. So a lot of financial metrics and all that kind of stuff in my consulting business. And one of the things that I found is that people get really excited about that top line sale, which I totally understand. It drives everything, but they maybe take their eyes a little bit off the prize about that bottom line. They've been not really watching their efficiency and their costs. And so I know that this is not about financials, but any time I can offer that sense of advice, I try to throw it out there because it's probably been very near and dear to my heart the last 15 years of my life to preach loudly with a megaphone as often as it will be allowed. Profit is the key, cash flow is even more the key when you're trying to build a successful business. So I'm sure you all probably agree with me. I hope you do at least. Well, we can tell that you haven't been on our show because if you had been, you would know that you're just on our soapbox right there. That Tom has been preaching the profit or not preaching, but banging that profit drum for years long before anybody was considering. Oh, did I lose y'all? No, you're good. That's me. That's weird. Well, long before anybody was really talking about profit in this industry, everybody was sort of lulled into this idea. We have such great cash flow in our businesses that you can easily feel like you have money when you don't. So Tom's been teaching that for years and years and years. It's a huge premise of his software, Made Central, is it's about more about profitability. And I heard the name of my group is Cleaning Profit Builders because that's what we're focusing on too is building profit.  We know a lot of people who don't clean as many homes as you would think and have a lot more money to show for it. Money in the bank, yeah. And it's really interesting, Jason, because we're talking about employee retention or we're getting ready to, and profitable businesses have much more of an opportunity to create a work environment where people want to be a part of. You're never going to be able to achieve good employee retention numbers. If you're running a business that's not profitable, not only is it not sustainable, you're eventually going to go away. Even if you're marginally profitable, you're going to be creating really bad jobs. You have to be profitable to make that happen. I couldn't agree more. And by the way, not playing because none of us are operating from a script or at least I'm not, but maybe you all are. Maybe you have it. Wait a minute. You made me laugh. You're totally right because to me, when we were talking about this topic, one of the things I think I threw out there pretty quickly to both of you was is to develop a positive culture for your aim so that you're not trying to put an ad out there and attract an employee to join your team or to retain. They're actually coming to you because you have such a great reputation culturally that they want to work for you. And that does take a budget line on it. And that does take cash. That does take intentional elements. It blows me away when I'm sure that all of the folks that are watching and listening and paying attention to all the great teaching you all are doing, they're probably, they probably have an amazing focus, agenda, itinerary, intentionality, experts to go acquire clients, but they don't necessarily have the same thing in keeping and acquiring employees, right? They focus so much on finding that new client that they don't have that same level of strategy and plan to go and keep and retain and find employees, especially in kind of the weirdness we've been living in the last couple of years and trying to find employees. Yeah, I would say that you're right. That has traditionally really been the struggle. You'll probably find more people in this group that are operating with a different mindset just because we're on that all the time, that you need to be doing more for your employees than you are for your marketing, at least for that retention piece, because some of it's easier than the others. Yeah, you heard my cat, Tom. Yeah, he or she agrees. Yeah. It's like, yeah, focus on the cats. But that is a good point, Jason, because just from the business schools of thought, there's a large body of work on customer service. There are jobs, customer service jobs. You don't hear people talking about employee service in the same way. It's almost an afterthought. It is. Oftentimes, it's way too late. It's after they've lost a key team member or someone has come and raised the bar to say, hey, the grass might be greener on the other side of the fence. That's the part that's so disheartening to me is that a lot of times, that's very avoidable. You probably have people that you know or maybe people that are watching us right now that have that key team member, they say, oh, the grass is greener on the other side of the fence. They go and they work for a competitor. They go to an alternate industry that maybe is a byproduct of what we all do. Then what happens, they realize the grass is truly not greener on the other side of the fence and they might jump back to the company. I had a client recently who lost, my goodness, what was it, 17 or 18-year, 10-year employee in the technician type of a position and left because of the promise of more money, right? But then realized that the owners of the business were, well, let's just say abrasive. We're not great leaders or managers to work for. The coworkers, it was a revolving door. The pay that was promised was paid. There were no other benefits that went into it. They had to work more hours than they wanted to. The hours weren't conducive to their family time. All of those cultural things caught that team member that say, hey, I don't want to do this anymore. Can I come back and get my old job back? Because the grass will not greener on the other side of the fence. Maybe that extra X number of dollars per hour or whatever was, 50 cents per dollar, I don't know what it was, was attractive at the time, but there was no calculation of what the fringe benefits were or the culturalization or the sense of belonging or the things that the company does on a regular basis to make that team member want to come back and work there for such a long tenure. That's, I think, one of the things that might be ignored in today's workplace environment. Yeah, I think you're right. I'm preaching the choir over here, Jason. Yes, yes, all hail what Jason is saying right now. Yes. So what are some of the strategies that you use with your clients or that you suggest to help people in this arena? Well, I think that it's a lot of the small things I think that people can do. It's the acknowledging birthdays and anniversaries. A lot of people are using digital means, obviously, to tell the story of their company. Get some really great photography of those employees and throw it in a newsletter or on a Facebook page or on an Instagram story to say, hey, it's Liz's third anniversary. Congratulations. Thank you so much. It's those small things, those kudos that allow employees to feel like they're part of something bigger, to really recognize that when someone does something great to acknowledge it and not only acknowledge it to the team member, but also acknowledge it to their peers. Because what does that do? When you acknowledge it to the peers like in a huddle meeting or a staff meeting, that makes everybody else want to get that bar high as well so that they can then be acknowledged in that team meeting. But I think that one of the keys to the capital is not only acknowledging some great work to the team member and to their peers, is actually to acknowledge it to their family or their home life. And it's real simple. Get out. I received a card right here today. I recently made a purchase and I received a note in the mail from the owners of the business thanking me for the purchase. And that means a lot.   But the idea that has worked over and over and over again with clients of mine is to write that thank you note and send it to their home and address it to their family. Address it to the cup family because then the spouse or significant other or whoever might open that in the middle of the day. They're proud of their family member that might end up on the refrigerator, but it certainly is going to be acknowledged when mom or dad or brother or sister or whoever comes home from work and say, oh my gosh, we got a note in the mail from your work, from your boss, from your owner, telling congratulating you for work well done. That speaks volumes of cultural equity right there to get that into their world that's not in their work. And I've found that that one small little thing is super, super, super critically important to just making that team member feel like that they're part of something much larger than them. I do a little bit of a twist on that that I like as well. I haven't ever considered doing it that way. And now you've got me thinking. I got my second little card in line there. I usually send a card to either the kids or the wife or the husband saying, you know, thanks, thanks for letting them work here and supporting them while they work here. So it's a little bit of a twist on that, but I really like the idea of just sending it saying, you know how valuable they are and how much we appreciate having them work for us. Oh, I love that. And making the refrigerators a big deal. Yeah, it sure is. I would agree. I would totally agree. And Liz, on that point, you just stole a little bit of another idea that I have. And that is, it amazes me and I'm sure your listeners and your followers probably do something that's really great in this environment, but I see it every day across almost all service industries. You hire a new team member and day one for them is a day like any other, meaning there's no significant investment of time and onboarding. And day one is the most important day of an employee's career. It really is. It sets the standard. It sets the foundation. It sets what's to be expected for as long as they have tenure. And so not only do you have to have a plan for onboarding to introduce them to everybody in the company, depending on how big your company is, of course, you also need to make sure that they know how to do just typical things. So many business owners just say, oh, I'm paying you. Throw you into the wolves. Here's day one. Here's your computer. Here's your email. Here's your phone. Go out and crush it, right? But I think that there's also an investment you can make in family. And maybe that's when you send the note home. Typically in the interview process, we learn things about employees that maybe their passion is tennis, or maybe their passion is cooking, or maybe their passion is watching Netflix, whatever it is. But if you can pick up that small little nugget and be prepared to make sure that a gift and a thank you arrives at the home day one, if they really like after a long day watching a movie on Netflix, great. Go buy them three months at Netflix and send them $39 in a gift card so they can pay for their Netflix subscription. When you really know what value is an employee, they're going to remember that probably a lot more than their paycheck, if I'm honest. And so really what we're talking about is to include others in the employees' culturalization, not only on onboarding, but also when they do something really, really great on that very first day, include their family, include their friends if possible. And that I think does just create a lot of allegiance and commitment and loyalty because at the end of the day, people want to be known and they want to, they don't want to be a number, they don't want to be just another employee. Yes, the almighty dollar does play. We got to pay people right. We got to make sure that pay is appropriate, if not higher than the industry, which I have some strategies on that as well. But we got to make it feel really great, really great about working there. They need to feel excited on a Monday morning, not like, oh, it's Monday morning. I think really important. I love that. Go ahead, Tom. No, it's just, you know, I was thinking about the number of opportunities you have to do that. And like the first day obviously is very important. I mean, so are you writing a note to the family at the end of the first day? Is that part of the strategy? And then, you know, periodically. So what I recommend, and when I was running my service industry company is we, we paid actually a courier service on the first day to run that gift to the home and drop it off. So it was there in the middle of the day on the first day. And that's what I encourage people to do today is to really, I mean, what is a courier service cost? 20 bucks, depending on where they're going. It just is a small investment to drop off flowers or a gift card to a restaurant or whatever it might be that is that gift with a handwritten note from the owner or maybe the executive team, depending on how big the company is, just get it, make it a special experience. And by the way, continue that special experience throughout the life of that employee being there. I'm thinking you could order it the day before through Amazon and just hope they show up for work the first day. You could. There's there's tricks to make sure that, you know, they're showing up though before you before you order it. So I think that could work. You know, Jason, we talk a lot on the show. So what you're talking about right there, we call it matter, making people feel like they matter to the company and to the owner and to the people that they really feel like they matter. But here's a question that we got last. Oh, I got it in group that I thought was a really good question. So we we talk a lot about when everything's going right, everything's going great, we're all happy and we love these people and they're so amazing. It's really kind of easy to make people feel like they matter, tell them nice things, acknowledge them, you know, give them gifts, do all of the things. But her question was, but what do you do when you have an employee that is kind of up and down, up and down, they're really great. And then all of a sudden, maybe like they had a fight with their boyfriend and now they're not so great right now. Today, they don't do a good job. Well, what do you recommend in those cases, Jason? What are some things you can do to make people feel like they matter when things aren't going great? Yeah, so a great question wasn't expecting to talk about this. But I operate from this principle and I teach as many people as I can to operate from a principle of being firm yet compassionate that when a team member is a great team member, but then maybe they're not so great in a moment, you need to be firm because we have a business to run and we also have a standard that we need to uphold and our clients have expectations. And we certainly have a financial matrix that we have to follow. And so you need to be firm. Employees, oftentimes, most people don't want to hold their employees accountable. And they don't want to sit them down, not in a shake your finger at them and get mad at them, but just simply say, hey, we need to be better than this. And what do you need? I love the idea of owners or managers being able to be incredibly communicative and humble in the communication with employees, especially when it doesn't go right and to admit that they've made mistakes. I think the best leader is one who admits things and apologizes for things that maybe because of their title or how long they've owned the business, they feel like they shouldn't have to. It's an amazing opportunity when you have a team member who is not doing as well as you'd like for them to. Kids as are, they're probably not doing as well as they would like for them to be as well. They're not being honest with themselves about that. To sit down and say, you know what, I remember back two years ago when I did this, this and this, and it was a major mistake on my part. And here's what I learned from it. When you start off apologizing and really kind of entering into their world where maybe they've made an error, they've made a mistake or whatever that might be, they're going to respect the conversation that's going to happen after that a lot more. And they're going to be less defensive and more open to change. But we also, if we're going to be firm, we're going to hold them accountable and we're going to have a conversation with them, we also need to be compassionate. We need to understand life happens. Life is messy. Life is messy for a lot of people. Especially now. Right. Oh, absolutely. We need to be concerned about health concerns in the pandemic or concerned about their kids or concerned about money or concerned about anything. And so we need to be compassionate and understand that life does happen. And so I think that the best communicator is a really good listener. And so when we sit down and we say, what's going on?  Let them talk to you, give them permission to share anything and everything. Because sometimes they think that whatever's going on in the world over here cannot intersect with their world over here. But the reality is, it is very much intersecting because we've got a problem or we've got the up and down, like you mentioned Liz. And so I think there's a lot of tactics to address concerns as they're occurring. The worst thing that you can do, not only from a culture building standpoint, but also from a compliance and legality standpoint is to ignore a concern that you have with an employee that can really come back and from an HR compliance standpoint, really come back to haunt you, especially if a harder conversation is in the future and you haven't done anything to hold that employee accountable. They might think they're doing a great job, but in actuality, they haven't because the team leader or the owner hasn't been forthright about what's really going on. And that can be problematic. Yeah, that's something we don't talk probably enough about on this show is that it's not just a nice thing. It's not just that it's cool. It's not just that it builds a great culture, but legally, this is something you need to be doing. It's not really, it's not really optional. Yeah. It really isn't. And you know, and I wish that it weren't the case, but we spend a pretty decent amount of our energy on the HR side of our business coaching people through those when things that don't go right or when you have to have our conversation and then even the harder conversation after that, how you make sure as business owners, you protect yourself and protect the employee. We really do look at it as not only protecting the business, but also protecting the employee that you're having our conversation with. If the employee doesn't know what they need to do to self correct, then that's really on us as business owners. And we say you may be heard of this really nasty three letters called a PIP, a performance improvement program that is a legal HR document that we use when someone's had a little bit of a misstep. My experience is, believe it or not, 80% of the time that you issue a PIP, which is basically, here's what you've done wrong. It's not a write up.  Here's what you've done wrong. Here's the steps that you have to correct. And here's the timeline that you have to correct it. It usually in 80% of the time, it corrects itself because the team member can finally see in black and white, this is what I need to do. Here's the steps. Here's the support that I have. Here's permission for my supervisor. And in 80% of the time, they correct themselves 20% of the time. Unfortunately, they do not. But 80% they do as a pretty large number and in the spirit of employee retention, you took somebody that was like going in the wrong direction and you're basically you're saving the investment that you've made in them and all the corporate knowledge that they have and you're getting them back to being gainfully employed in your organization. Our goal is always to save the employee. Any time you get on the phone or on Zoom or whatever and talk to a client about a concern that they have, it's always about saving people. Unless they've done something illegal, immoral, stolen from the company, lied, cause damage to the client, broke any of the card and the rules. But if it's just, hey, we've got some performance issues are showing up on time or maybe this or that or whatever and we can look past it. Well, let's try to coach them into greatness because Tom, you're right. They have a lot of institutional knowledge, whether they've been there for a month or a year or five years, we want to keep that institutional knowledge there. Clients might know them and like them. You just want to hit that little speed bump in life that happens so often where they're a little bit off and we want to do everything that we can to try to coach them because what's the cost of hiring somebody new and training them and getting them on the ramp to get on the highway of the business. It is costly. It is very costly, both in time and dollars. I really love your answer, Jason, because I think that people don't recognize that if you are coaching people up in this way, you're showing them where the improvements need to be made or you're talking with them. That also makes people feel like they matter.  That also makes people feel like they matter. So I really like that. It's a good answer. I don't disagree. Two other nuggets, if I may, on that topic. Sometimes we come into new clients and we do what we call a culture assessment where we sit down privately with all the employees. It's me, sometimes it's one of my team members, and we ask them a series of questions and one of the things that we ask them after we build up a level of trust with them, which we're able to do through a variety of different means. I won't waste our time on that, but we build up trust and then they'll tell us what's going on. The number one thing that employees wish that they had in the company they work for is a regular and honest employee review. Many, many, many companies are not out there scheduling those reviews, having them be written, giving them good constructive feedback. That would be something that I think is super, super important that if any listeners haven't done a review or don't know what that entails, they probably need to do that because their team member is really, really, really expecting it. The second thing is a little bit more esoteric. It's the idea of giving team members permission. A lot of people feel based on where they are in the organizational chart that they don't feel like they have permission to share something with their supervisor or with an owner. They feel like that might harm their job or cause conflict in their job. We teach the idea of managing up. One of the best stories that I ever have from running my service industry business, which I won't tell, is when a really great team member managed up to me, came into my office, shared something with me that I probably didn't want to hear at the end of the day, but I absolutely needed to hear at the end of the day. That changed me as a leader. That changed me as someone who owned a business in the way that I set my company up culturally. Then we really went into this idea of managing up, which means a lot of people feel like that a supervisor is supposed to manage all of their direct reports. I'm here to tell you that direct reports also should be sharing appropriately and respectfully information with their supervisor about things that they could do better. We instituted 360 reviews. We instituted a sense of confidence where team members felt that they could go to their supervisors and say, hey, that situation, I wish that it was a little bit different. I think that you could have handled it better when you can really get to that level element in terms of your organizational chart. I'll tell you what, it really begins to have a positive impact on that culturalization, which does invite and foster an environment where people just feel comfortable sharing what's going on and it locks in a better cultural experience from everybody from the brand new hire at an entry level position all the way up to the owner of the CEO. I got a question, but I heard your heavy intake. Tom, you have a question. I'm just tying this back. My mind is going to where we started this discussion, maybe at the very beginning, but earlier we were talking about it's not how many homes you clean. It's about your profit and we're talking about employee retention and certainly we don't want to have high turnover, but just showing up every day isn't really going to get us the most success either. With the reviews that you're talking about and the right culture and the right environment, could you argue that not only you're going to have better retention, but you're going to have higher productivity, better quality, all the things that add up to be more profitable as well? I think so because I think that comes to the loyalty and commitment piece. I think that when team members globally understand the impact of them on the rest of the business along what you're saying, they are going to work better. They're going to work smarter. It's not just a paycheck for them. It's a career, it's an investment in an industry and a company in a group of people that collectively they can move the ball forward successfully. Absolutely 100%. So the idea is sending somebody a card to go on their family's refrigerator speaking personally. Every once in a while I found myself in a situation. It's like I'd really like to say something really nice about this person's performance, but I'm struggling finding that at the moment and I have to own that. Maybe that's my fault. If I was a better leader, I could be giving them the direction and the feedback instead of the expectations to make that easier. So just sifting through all of this and these are some of Tiffany's that I've tripped over over the years. If I can't find something good to say about one of my employees, that's really saying something about me. I would agree. Why are they still working there for you if you don't have anything good to say about them? I would agree. So what you're giving is Jason is kind of a playbook on how to fix retention, how to get better performance. It's kind of a virtuous circle here. I think Tom that it's all locked together quite frankly and one of the things that I really try to walk companies through. Let's say there's a business model change that's going to happen or a particular type of client census that's going to change and the owners of the business or the managers of the business have come up with this is the direction that you're going to go. It is so much more worthwhile to include as many team members in that discussion because if they come up with it on their own, even if it's through a well facilitated session by somebody like one of us or an owner or a manager or whatever it might be and they come up with it, they're going to own it, they're going to live it, they're going to play it out, they're going to be more excited about it, they're going to deliver the reasons why the company wants to make that change because they feel like they are part of something that is much larger than what they do 40 or 45 or 50 hours a week. They have a voice, they have permission, they can manage up, they feel culturally connected. There's a lot of different things that play into that and I think that that is key and critical to give a lot all of this in together and to allow team members to have a voice. It doesn't mean that their voice always is going to be action but at least they have a voice that they can go and share and I think that that is really really really important and often overlooked in a lot of businesses especially small business where it's kind of the owner comes in and says this is what we're going to do as a company you guys all figure out how to do it and that's not necessarily the best way to go about it because nobody owns it. You know who owns it? The owner owns it but the owner is it probably going to be the one that ultimately sits down and executes it? Ideally. Right? Ideally. Yeah. Because if you're finding yourself jumping in and doing all of the work you are capping your company out really really quickly and really shallowly so. Totally good. I have another question Jason. You were when you were talking about your 360 reviews. I've always been a huge fan of of them but we are finding ourselves struggling a little bit more with the 360 review with this new you know with this unprecedented event that we have been dealing with for the last year and a half how to really connect in a way that is meaningful give the good feedback give the feed forward information that they need and you know how to even get to know a lot of the information because we're not we're literally not seeing our people right? We see them once a month maybe. Yeah it's a really it's a really good comment and the challenge doesn't come from the employee being able to assess themselves because when I say at 360 one of the things that we do or we encourage is the employee assesses themselves and then the supervisor assesses the employee on the exact same grid the exact same you know numeric value or whatever it is good very good excellent that number value or whatever they they use the exact same tool and then they compare and contrast whether or not the employee thinks oh the employee says they show up on time every single day the supervisor says that they don't well that's something that needs to be talked about in the review yeah I think that most and maybe this is just a lot of the companies that I'm working with yeah they might not be seeing their team members but they certainly have found digital ways to touch base using Slack, Zoom, FaceTime all of the digital things that you know folks like us have done to pivot our businesses I mean I know I used to get on 30 planes a year now I don't I do it all and all digitally and we've been able to pivot and figure out and actually grow our business in all of this great knock on wood business owners need to be able to do that exact same thing as maybe they don't have as much interaction with their team most of the folks that have had to go digital they've just set up regular almost religious Zoom meetings with their staff early in the morning they still do training they just do it virtually they they still check in with clients in terms of quality control and QC visits and all that so all of the stuff is still happy and just through a different medium and so I don't have a lot of people that are telling me right now is that they're having trouble doing the assessments because they're still touching base it just looks and feels a little different than it did before work a little bit harder and be a little bit cutting edge in terms of the technology to stay on top of your team members yeah that's that's nice I think a lot of the reviews and the assessments are kind of benefiting in some ways because you're having to rely more on data right there's just you're going to have to so it's less subjective much more objective with the reviews which I really love when you get the subjective information it's just nowhere near as helpful totally agree and one example I thought of right when you said that about data is I have one client who's relied heavily since the pandemic on GPS data about how long they're at certain properties and then tying that back into the estimate which Tom to your point earlier drives that you know gross profit and then drive bottom line profit and so they've they've really you know kind of amped up using geofencing on their GPS to say here's a client's address and so then they're getting time trials in and out and I'm sure there's probably a software solution or something that you guys are using to be able to do that that you'll probably tell me but I know that some people are going to hardcore data to try to be able to get some additional data that can enter into the employee review employee you know what you're having that annual review on employees so yeah yeah and you were touching earlier about the legal aspects of everything that we're doing here when you're doing this based on hard numbers you're on much firmer ground absolutely I mean we yeah we spend a lot of time defending clients for making probably the right decision from an HR standpoint in terms of you know asking a team member to depart the company but they do not have the follow-up documentation to do so they don't have a handbook they don't have any documentation on your write-ups they don't have any hard line data on GPS data or anything like that and so then there's a subsequent unemployment claim sometimes a wrongful termination claim sometimes you know discrimination claim that occurs and then you're kind of backpedaling because you don't have anything to prove otherwise even though you know the employees showed up late every single day for work but you never talked to them about it and so therefore it becomes an issue yeah I like that piece too about you know that they were late every single day but you never talked to them about it I can't even tell you how many people I know that do that they're like well I didn't want to have them start their day off bad I didn't want to put them in a bad mood they're not going to clean well you know I didn't want to hurt their feelings it's not their fault like every reason under the sun to not just say hey dude you're late you got to stop you got to be undone well and the interesting thing is that this is the thing that we just even though we preach it literally in every single communication that we do I'm going to do it right now is that some people think talking to an employee about being late is sufficient it is not it has to be two-way written documentation meaning you've got to tell them hey you've shown up late four times in the last three weeks and then not only does a superwriter have to sign that even if it's digital it can be via text message or PDF or DocuSign or whatever but the employee has to sign it as well if you don't have that documentation you can tell I call it HRCore you can tell them till you're blue in the face when we talked about it every single morning when they showed up late they're gonna say great where's your written documentation and it can't be an internal one-way documentation like sending an email to another employee saying hey Susie showed up late again today because Susie's not on that email you're telling it to somebody else so it doesn't play so documentation is at least a documentation documentation documentation and one little trick that I'll leave with your viewers if they want to document something and the team member refuses to sign it they all they have to do is get them to right at the bottom I refuse to sign this and then sign it and then the HRCore will at least be proving that you showed it to them okay it's a little bit of a it's a little bit of a it's not a trick but at least you get the document to be proven that you showed it to the employee even though they're refusing to actually put their signature on it yeah that's good one for sure Tom um that's one of the things that I know this isn't about Made Central but that is one of the things that I know a lot of people love about Made Central is that that stuff is tracked regularly and they have to clock in they see it it's you know every single day and back and forth I I do think a lot of people I don't think I know a lot of people love that about Made Central so that just some of the HR clothes yeah yeah and that whole progression you just described Jason like I'm late one day or maybe a couple of days in the week and I guess this is kind of culture within every business you know you you aren't necessarily setting somebody up for disciplinary action with the first discussion right so it's okay just to put them aside and say hey you know you've been late a couple of times you know anything wrong anything we need to know about can you you know work on that really need you to fix it what happens next week okay we'll just sit down with a piece of paper and we're gonna you know start documenting right yeah I mean I think that the first is always a verbal and maybe several verbals are okay but then when it becomes a regular when it becomes a habitual that's what it needs to be documented and I think you can say that I think that people there's there's this I don't know built in fear awareness or mindfulness that when you say hey you know what and again using the firm yet compassionate idea from earlier hey you know what we've tried to work this out verbally you know this is the third time in two weeks the next step is we're gonna have to write this up let's just not even get to that step I mean it's almost like you're doing them a favor right you're investing in the hey let's just not even get to that step and then when you do get to that step boom there it is it's a half page or a page write up that they've been late four times in two weeks and say man I really regret this but I told you last time and then you document that we've had verbal conversations on this date this date this date a warning was given that if there was another time there was going to be a write up here's the write up you know you cannot be late you know any more and then they signed it and not only do you get the verbals inserted into that documentation you get them to acknowledge the fact that you did tell them that a write up was imminent and if you do it and if you do it well like you said earlier 80 percent of the time the situation will they will correct the situation and they'll become the employee that you want them to be yep that's our statistic absolutely and at the same time you're being the leader that they need you to be so it's a win-win and I believe that most people not all people because there's some really crummy employees out there I hate to say that most people want that accountability but if they've got external things in their life that are just forcing this habit to be you know dominant and repetitive they're probably not going to have a change agent in that that's just the way they're going to be but if they need to have that that kind of trickle to get them over the line they actually probably really do want to hear that it is an issue and then if the if the behavior repeats itself then you know that it's just going to be a repeatable behavior and we that's probably going to be a path into that 20% unfortunately there's a couple of other things that you can do to get to that point hopefully get them into the 80% but there is going to be a path to the 20% if it is a repeated offense well we are approaching the top of the hour here we have another one so I have it so fast yeah where did the where did the time go oh we talked about eyeglasses a lot that's what it was it was us uh wasting time all right well actually before we head out Tom I do want to say one more push for uh ties directly into what we've been talking about today uh success for managers a lot of people uh in our industry are not good at managing their managers they don't know how to manage them and so well what what the group does is helps them actually it's under products and programs Tom I think it's the second one down yep there we go um actually helps to get get your people doing the what you want them to do because of one thing because they want to not because you've pushed them to not because you've told them to not because that's how they have to keep their job but because they want to because it will feel good to do the things that they're supposed to be doing it's very much what we've been talking about here today so I go to the web I go to this web page what's the what is the special go down right there if you are already in a strategic success group the special is 1999 a year versus the 2799 and if you're a brand new customer it's 43 96 a year or 439 a month if you want to pay monthly on that in these uh discount prices are good for the next three days yep through the end of the month yep they'll probably they'll probably come back again around november um for the next quarter about we enroll people in this group quarterly so this is the last time for this quarter so we want to jump on those for the end of the month and jason this is uh your website if people want to get all of you is this the best way to do it sure is yeah absolutely email is best jason to jasoncuff.com that's i'm a i'm a slave to my email it seems like not a slave but uh jason jason cuff anybody has any questions by all means shoot them to me in an email an indentured i'm loving your new hair i'm loving your new hair too jason that's it's only because it's uh it it's it's getting grayer these are different glasses too i do those glasses with that hair you look young and hip yeah hip is probably not a word but is this the concave hr that we were referring to it sure is yeah just you get people can put their name and email in there and then we send out information about we don't put you on like a list where you're going to get a whole bunch of different stuff we will just strategically send out information we're still building the website we've been it's so crazy we launched the hr business and we never really realized that small business owners really don't know a lot about hr and we've been like absolutely slammed even though we keep adding staff and expanding our service offerings we literally are so busy which is great it's awesome because it's really fun to be helping people with those questions where they don't know where to turn or if they turn to somebody it's very costly and all that type of stuff so if anybody has any hr questions they can go and and and hit us up there and if you want to know more about jason i'll drop his uh linked in profile as well he won't he'll never see it so don't try to get out there but um we need to get you back to tell us about colby because i've heard so many cool things about it you know we do a lot of work liz does a lot of work with the disk assessments and i know colby has some different assessments and we'll have to learn more about that colby is a great bolt-on to disk we have a lot of clients that use colby and disk at the same time i'm happy to do a session on that it's a super fun hiring tool super fun team building to a tool it can really be used for a lot of different things and we're using it and i don't even know how many companies are using our colby products but it's a lot awesome says in team builder motivational speaker frequent flyer apollatic i'm assuming you're talking about this as opposed to the thing it grows on trees that is cruel i do like apples as a fruit as well but um but yeah i really wish you would have just picked up an apple and taken a bite jason that would have been so awesome i didn't know that was going to be so good but no i yeah so everything in my entire office is apple we're home and they're like and stuff so i'm a i'm a i'm an apple guy because you know he followed it with with wine and coffee lover so i just thought maybe he liked apples a little bit more than one of my coffee the whole time we've been talking me too jason me too this is what i would be traveling with everyone knows they will see this when i am in charleston next week i'm i'm used to seeing that i actually think i have one at tom's place waiting for me you do you do i do yeah all right well thank you so much jason for giving me contact again too you bet yeah happy thank you guys so much really appreciate it it was super fun thank you so much wednesday five o'clock eastern see you guys um we're having some guests no we're having no we're still uh employee engagement but we're having some guests that won some awards from java and it's yeah yeah yeah i think it's going to be kind of cool it's going to be going to be a different uh different a little bit different than the normal fair we won't have the luxury about talking about glasses for the first 15 minutes oh darn tom darn darn all right i'll be there anyway okay thanks guys we'll see you wednesday bye bye everybody