Struggling to find great technicians or keep your best employees around? This episode is your playbook.
We break down battle-tested recruiting strategies that helped scale real home service businesses—from plumbing and HVAC to general trades. You'll learn how to treat recruitment like a sales pipeline, maintain momentum year-round, and create a company culture that people want to be part of.
This episode goes beyond theory. From incentive trips and performance bonuses to sharp branding, upgraded vehicles, and custom dashboards, you'll hear exactly how to build an environment that attracts and retains top-tier talent.
🚨 What You'll Learn:
• Why recruitment should be treated like sales
• How to build a continuous, always-on hiring funnel
• Using CRMs and dashboards to track applicants and team performance
• Incentives that actually work: Trips, bonuses, and peer recognition
• How infrastructure—like trucks, tools, and facilities—sells your company
• Real-world examples of what actually works in blue-collar culture building
Shout Out to FieldPulse 🚀
FieldPulse is an incredible Field Service Management platform that helps you save hours each week while keeping your operations running smoothly. If you're looking to streamline your processes, stay competitive, and focus on what truly matters, FieldPulse is a game-changer!
📅 Book your demo
💼 Shoutout to Quick Staffers LLC
Need trained HVAC & plumbing CSRs at a fraction of the cost? Quick Staffers LLC specializes in placing top-tier global talent with the best SOPs and scripts.
🔥 Get $1,000 off your first placement here
🎙️ Hosts:
🗣️John Wilson
🗣️Jack Carr
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Ep 196 Transcript
John Wilson: [00:00:00] One of the easiest, lowest lift things that you can do as a, as an owner of any
Jack Carr: size is just always be recruiting. You've actually taught me this. The atmosphere starts at the job posting. I'm attracting talent, whereas a lot of people think I need to go headhunt and find the way
John Wilson: anyone can and should think about recruitment Is recruitment is sales like.
If you're not gonna take care of the thing that's keeping them safe on the road every day, how are you gonna take care of them in any other aspect? The amount of new babies that our team has every year, I feel like is one of the coolest vanity metrics for a business like our team feels. So they're, they're building their lives
Jack Carr: here with us.
We're like the top sales person of IAQ or top sales person who sells this or Oh yeah, generates the most revenue. It's a Rolex.
John Wilson: Nobody wants to join the sinking ship. Everybody wants to be at a place that like growing in. Mike,
Jack Carr: welcome back, back. Welcome back to Owned and Operated, owned. [00:01:00] This week we have Jack Carr in studio with John number two. Wilson watching.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Jack Carr: Number one in the number two business. Wilson, what's going on, John? Man, having a good time. I'm having a lot of fun. This, uh, honestly, I, I, for, I get really nervous going into these workshops.
Yeah. Just because, like, I really want, well, historically you've done such a bad job. Ouch. No, everyone has been to workshop one and two. You do a plenty of that job. You do a great job. Um, but solid delivery at all times. I'm hurt, but more so I just really wanna do a good job for people. Yeah. Like, I like this, that people come out of it.
Like, I get, I get a text from guys Yeah. From our first workshop. Shout out Thomas bb. So he, he texted me like two days ago just asking, Hey Jack, well how do you do this, this, and this? Yeah. Like, I just, I'm curious. Yeah. And so there's so much value. Like over a year and a half [00:02:00] that has been delivered from Yeah.
Networking. Yeah. And what they've taken from the workshop and how they're actually implementing that. Like, I really just want to do a good job.
John Wilson: Yeah.
Jack Carr: And uh, and then I get here, I start bullshitting around with everybody and I'm like, oh, this is fucking awesome. It's, I
John Wilson: love this. It's good time. It's fun.
It's a lot of fun. Talk and shop. Talk and shop. Yeah. You get to get 30 people together and just, I. Talk about plumbing and hvac. Uh, what was interesting about this, uh, group this week is, uh, bigger, bigger, a lot of big shops. Biggest one in the room's. 14. Uh, we have a couple sixes, a seven in there. Got another seven this morning.
Um, so, so for breaking five,
Jack Carr: we won. There's a lot of people that we, you did a really good job. If you bring guys to breaking five that have already broken five. Yeah. Yeah. Win.
John Wilson: Yeah, I, I did think it was interesting 'cause I'm like, oh, okay. Like, wow, we're we're delivering some value here for people.
Jack Carr: Well, the more, what I thought was actually really cool, more cool in the sense was we had about three or four people who [00:03:00] sent.
Other team members. Yeah, other team members. Yeah. And I was thinking about something like GM or Ops manager, whatever you wanna call 'em. Yeah. But, um, the people have actually done that. Yeah. Had so much value. The first time they came back and they said, John has a $2,000 average plumbing ticket. We need to get there.
Yeah. And then they're, they can't get, people do seem fancy, they can't get by. It do, because they're like, that's not a real thing. I think it's, and then they send their gm, it's, and their GMs are, and office managers are like, oh, this is a real thing. I, I think it's mainly you that's like, I don't know. I've talked to them.
Like the one Tom Plumber guys, they're like, our average tickets are 600. Like what is a $2,000 average ticket? Yeah. Because if you think about it, right, think about it from a different way. Okay. If you could take your team of four guys. Okay. And you're rocking $600 average tickets. Yeah. And you could say tomo, uh, we do $2 million Yes.
A year. Yes. And my, with my four guys, each of 'em does half a million. Yeah. And you say tomorrow, now each of these guys for the rest of the, this next year is [00:04:00] gonna do $2,000 average tickets. Yeah. I've just increased my business. What? Three x? It's good. It's good even if you don't, so we didn't get, we didn't go from our 400 average ticket to 2000 like you.
We went from 400 to 900.
John Wilson: Okay,
Jack Carr: well that sounds good. And so we doubled
John Wilson: Yeah.
Jack Carr: The average ticket size across the board and our revenue saw that as well. Yeah. And so like that's the key is, is you don't need the no expectation that you're gonna walk out of this making that much. Yeah. But if you could implement some of the right choices Yeah.
To get closer, it feels good. Yeah, it feels real good.
John Wilson: Field Pulse is the all-in-one field management solution for growing home service companies. Field Pulse is designed to simplify your day-to-day operations by combining everything you need into one platform. It also includes integrations to help you save time like QuickBooks Desktop and online.
It has a bunch of advanced tools and features like A CRM estimates and invoicing. Good, better, best options, maintenance plans, a robust price book and [00:05:00] scheduling dispatching. Field pulse will transform the way that you manage your field teams altogether. It will save you time and find revenue that you didn't even know existed, whether you're a small company that's looking to grow or a larger company looking to optimize.
Field Pulse has the tools that you need to do it. And don't just take our words for it. Field Pulse has earned over 580 glow reviews with an average rating of 4.8 stars. That's Field, E-U-L-S-E. Head to their website to learn more. Field pulse.com. We're gonna be talking about hiring today, but when I unpack, like optimizing average ticket and I, I think about it a lot, like especially when doing, like working with, uh, like people up and coming in their business.
I look at us and the stuff that we're doing every day, um, like what are we doing right now? Like, it, it, it's a lot. Like, it's always a lot. It's always a lot. And yeah, I'll talk to, I'll talk to other owners in like my size and some of these peer groups I'm in, [00:06:00] and the way that their team moves and executes and, and thinks about ideas is just so different than how we do it.
I don't know. I don't know that I'm saying that we're right. I just think it's totally different.
Jack Carr: Yeah.
John Wilson: Like. One of the, one of the things, and it's driven by me. 'cause like, that's just the, the personality that I bring and that's the, that's like my, you know, what I bring to the table. But sometimes it can be bad, where it can be kind of distracting and like, Hey, we need to level out.
We need to, we need to chill and like figure out the, so I'm like, I'm not gonna remember to do that. So I'm blessed with the team that does it, but, but we'll work with these teams or with these companies in our peer groups and, and we'll be like, oh yeah, we're trying this, we're trying this, we're trying this.
Uh, like we throw a lot of spaghetti at the wall and then like, you just kill what doesn't work and you just like push really deep into what does work. And when I think about the $2,000 average ticket thing, obviously that totally fascinates people, which, yeah, I mean, that makes sense. It's, it's high for the industry that that makes sense.[00:07:00]
But that is, uh, years of Oh yeah. Throwing spaghetti at the wall and like figuring out what works. You know, I'll look at someone, I'll, I'll look at a company. It's not like, oh, they're, here's one or two things. Like I can, you know, sort of point you in the right direction. But like our entire business is built around delivering that average ticket.
Like the way we think about marketing, the way we think about booking, the way we think about art. Like what does a technician do? What truck do they drive? Yeah. Like it permeates every single decision that we make every day. Yeah, it's a lot. There's a lot to it. Um, and other people can replicate it. It's just like you're not gonna do it tomorrow.
Jack Carr: Yeah.
John Wilson: It takes
Jack Carr: a
John Wilson: while. Takes a long time.
Jack Carr: Mm-hmm. Yeah. And it's model based. A lot of it's based on the specific model you're run. Yeah. And how you train and Yeah. So
John Wilson: what's your or structure? How do you compensate, how do you recruit? What do you say during recruiting? What's the cool part? What's the truck [00:08:00] like?
Literally, what's the truck? Yeah. That actually matters for this. Model is what is the vehicle that they're driving. Yeah. And it, 'cause I was trying to explain this to someone a couple months ago. They're just like, how? Like how are you doing this? And we started, I started like describing it and I was like, holy shit.
I mean, the way we're doing it is 145 people are focused on this every single day. Mm-hmm. And we built our company from 3 million on to do exactly this.
Jack Carr: Mm-hmm. Like we built like this. The cool part though on the backend right, is you were talking about some of the incentives and spiffs Yeah. Like programs you run and I'm going, man, how.
John Wilson: Cool. Is that, yeah, we've got a cool new one where we're giving away a couple Rolexes
Jack Carr: this quarter like that. That's gonna be sweet. Right? If I'm, I mean, if I'm a tech, we are recruiting. We're recruiting, right? If I'm a tech, yeah. And I'm like this company for like the top sales person of IAQ or top sales person who sells this or Oh yeah.
Generates the most revenue. It's a [00:09:00] Rolex. Oh dude. On top
John Wilson: of that. And this isn't like, and that's such a
Jack Carr: status
John Wilson: symbol, especially for like, it's good, it's good trades, like blue collar trades. I'm, I'm flying 50 people to Dominican Republic. Yeah. In like 10 days, like you said, that we're doing our like million dollar club, uh, like literally 50 people.
Yeah. We leave, uh, we
Jack Carr: leave on the 1st of May. None of that's possible though without average, high, average ticket. Right. And that's what I was getting at the end is like you can't offer a $5,000 Milwaukee shopping spree.
John Wilson: Yeah. Yeah.
Jack Carr: That that'll be a fun one if you don't Yeah. Have the cost like most small business Oh.
Kicking things out. I'm so excited. Um, most small business business owners are like, how am I gonna make payroll this week? Yeah. Type of stuff. Yeah. And so, but when they look at their, their average ticket, they go, oh, my average ticket's 300. I'm having trouble making payroll. Yep. Like to think about giving away Rolexes is just like.
It doesn't make sense. And then as a somebody who's working like a technician, you can see why it's so hard to compete as a small company. Yeah. Larger companies who are doing it correctly. Yeah. I can give because like, [00:10:00] who are you gonna work
John Wilson: for? Yeah. Right. Like if you had that option, Hey, do you want to go to do manikin with your wife?
Like. Like, Hey, you wanna, you wanna give, you wanna get, you wanna get tech, speaking of recruitment, you wanna get great field professionals, give their wives a free trip to
Jack Carr: Gulf of America. Yeah, right. It, it's huge. Um, and that's just the incentive side, naty. And I know you pay the guys well as well. Yeah. So.
From a recruitment standpoint, I know I'm like hijacking into recruitment because I know we're supposed to talk about that, but it really is a cool thing. Segue? Segue. Yeah. Really smooth. That was good. It's not, no, I don't think anybody is. I don't actually care because I'm really interested in Yeah, that the way that you guys generate revenue in the way that you built the company Yeah.
Is we are trying to emulate that because Yeah, I can see the back end by coming up to these workshops and, yeah. Seeing a happy Yeah. You've had three very in depth site tours and I'm like, oh my gosh, I want that for, I wanna change the lives of the people around me. Yeah. And be like,
John Wilson: dude,
Jack Carr: dude, it's
John Wilson: that.
That part [00:11:00] is awesome. Like that part is awesome. Like we have 25 year olds buying houses. And I, and I, I know I've said this on the show before, but I, I really need a number for it. The amount of new babies that our team has every year, I feel like is one of the coolest vanity metrics for a business like our team feels.
So they're, they're building their lives. Here with us. I had a guy, um, and he's one of our, uh, top electrical sales guys, and he just bought his first house. He's like 25 years old. He just bought his first house. We have a 19. He, his wife and his, they, he just bought
Jack Carr: a house. He, he's in the process of buying a house.
Dude. He is one of our best HVAC technicians. Yeah. But caveat, he graduated school at 16. Yes. Said I wanna be an HVAC tech. Yeah. Started being an HVAC tech at 16. Yeah. And I'm 19, 20 years old. He's gonna buy his first house because he's doing such an amazing job with this. Yeah. And I'm like, oh my gosh, man.
You, yeah. 19. [00:12:00] Yeah. It's a. It, it feels really cool. Yeah. Um, not that I had a ton to do with like his 16-year-old plus. Yeah. I mean mind. But now we're able to still, you're a part of the, you're part of their story. Yeah. Yeah. We're still, we're still able to guide him and Yeah. Give him training and he's extremely happy.
Yeah. Shout out Jace, if he's never gonna listen to this, but you might. Um,
John Wilson: well, that's actually like what, you know, when you think about recruitment, um, a, a pretty good portion of the team listens to the show of my team and, um, I think if, if we. This, this is back to like average ticket. So like, hey, I would, I'm gonna, I'm gonna give Alex Hermo a shout out, uh, big content creator, how to grow your business.
Probably. He's probably listening to this Yeah. Pro. Oh, totally. Yeah. Totally, totally. Um, but yeah, he and he had this thing the other day and obviously like we're really trying to dial in on, for owned and operated. We're really trying to dial in on YouTube. Well, and for Wilson, like we're really focused on video right now.
Yeah. Huge investment in the video across both these, uh. He, we have like five, between both of [00:13:00] them we have five or six full-time people focus on video. Yeah. Every day. You know, I'm a plumber, right? So like, that's crazy. But, um, and, and he said, look, the people that are ahead of you aren't. Like, Hey, if you're doing one video a day, this is content focused.
So I'm sorry if you're not in content, but if you're doing one video a day, like that's great, but the people that are beating you aren't doing two videos a day or three videos a day. They might be doing a hundred times your output of pieces of content. Mm-hmm. Uh, whether that's like written or audio or video or pictures or whatever it is, they're not doing one to two times more things.
They're doing a hundred times more things. And I think that that resonates with me for our average ticket and for our recruitment. Like if I point to like, Hey, why, why are you guys successful with recruitment? It's a hundred fucking things. Like it's so many things. Like all highly interconnected. Yeah.
And they're all the same thing. Like, yeah. Hey, like part of it's the business [00:14:00] model is attractive to talent. Mm-hmm. Like, hey, I as an installer. If you're just a plumber and you don't wanna sell, which most companies are gonna make you sell, you don't have to sell here. You can just come here and you can actually make $150,000 your just being a freaking plumber.
And just do, just go be a craftsman and just do an amazing job. And we're gonna think you're the coolest rockstar in the world, but be the best. Yeah. Craftsman there is. Yeah. And then you win and that's awesome. And that's our business model. And they're like, there's a hundred different things that went into that.
And then on top of that, yeah, we have a trip to the Dominican installers can go, salespeople can go call takers, like whoever booked the most calls last year, they're going on the trip.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
John Wilson: Um, so like, just high achieving club, I. Yeah, we're giving away Rolexes. We have like, we have a contest going right now for most reviews and like you get a smoker the way we think about benefits, how many people we have doing recruiting.
We have three full-time people doing recruiting.
Jack Carr: Yeah, I think so. It's a hundred things. Yeah. I think what what would make this more valuable though, is rolling it back three steps and saying like, [00:15:00] you are here now, but you weren't always here and so before. No, I came outta the womb, came outta the womb slaying in HVAC U.
Listen, I was born like this. I was being a Lady Gaga. It's born on this way. I hate you. Um, but, but Right. A lot of the, the smaller, yeah. Plumbing and HVAC shops and electrical shops. They're listening to this going, yeah, but I can't offer a,
John Wilson: well, see, I, I think they're wrong. Like our first trip that we did as a reward trip, it was a sacrifice, but I did it at $2 million Dominican Republic.
I bought the business in 2016, which is nine years ago. Yeah. Dominican Republic is our eighth reward. Trip number eight. Yeah. Not number one, not four eight. So I've been doing this since 2017. That's huge. Yeah. And that was a 2 million, I wasn't even $2 million in 2017.
Jack Carr: So when looking at recruiting, um, yes.
There's, there's a million things that go into what I find interesting around [00:16:00] your part of your recruiting strategy. Is that you optimize your recruiting strategy almost as a magnet sales funnel. It's a sales funnel, but it's a magnet. Right. So a lot of what you do and how you design this is I'm attracting talent.
Whereas a lot of people think I need to go headhunt and find Yeah. Yeah. And club over the head and dragging into my business talent. You're saying I'm creating an atmosphere where A, they can make a ton of money. Yeah. They had to be high performing, but they can make a ton of money. They get rewarded really well.
We take care of them. And you mention their spouse, we take care of their spouse too.
John Wilson: Mm-hmm.
Jack Carr: We send birthday carts to their kids. Mm-hmm. You know, whatever the thing may be. And it doesn't always have to be, in my opinion, extremely high value, but it is creating a magnet by designing Yeah. An atmosphere.
And that you've actually taught me this. The atmosphere starts at the job posting.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Jack Carr: It starts at the job posting and it starts offline when they Google your business. Yeah. What are they seeing? Yeah. So I yelled at my [00:17:00] team. Classic super magnet. Right? Classic yell at your team. So I just ripped into 'em.
Yeah. But the reason I did it is 'cause after our, uh, workshop yesterday, I went and I looked up our recruitment a, everything was good except one key thing. It was our parent company. Was the name of who was hiring. Oh, sure. And I'm saying, you know why nobody's showing up. Why they, why they sign up? They sign up because they say, oh, great pay.
Mm-hmm. But then they don't show up because they Google our, our name and it's not a name, it's not a plumber. And as a plumber, as an HVAC guy, as a tradesman, you know, every other tradesman and every other company Yeah. In that area. And you know their reputation. Yeah. It's a very small community and we're in a big city.
John Wilson: Yeah.
Jack Carr: And so. They're Googling us and they're going, this isn't a company, this is a startup. This isn't a thing. There is zero reviews for this company. Yeah. I'm not even gonna go in for the interview. Yeah, yeah. And so it's, it's silly, but it's making sure [00:18:00] that like every point Yeah. Of the recruitment process is leading to almost a magnet style.
Yeah. Like draw, like they should, yeah. The power should be in your hands. Again, whether you want to hire even in a labor shortage. Yeah. The way, the way
John Wilson: we think about recruitment, um, and, and again, it's a hundred things, right? Yeah. But like the way anyone can and should think about recruitment is, recruitment is sales.
That's it. Like full stop. We can spend unlimited amount of time talking about how to create options and how to sell HVAC and how to do all that stuff. And if you take. A fraction of the intentionality that people give towards sales and, you know, the craftsman side of the job. And you put that towards, uh, selling people on the opportunity that we have.
Like you will begin to, um, unlock the hundred things. Yeah, I mean, that, that's everything from like, how do we signal with our trucks? [00:19:00] Like what's the wrap? Are they new trucks? I remember when I was in the field, like I knew who had the shitty trucks. We know who
Jack Carr: has the shitty trucks.
John Wilson: Yeah. Like everybody knows who's got the shitty trucks and like.
Like, man, if you're driving these trucks around all day one, you don't wanna be like, I know that. I'm gonna say the vanity part, then I'm gonna say the rational part. The vanity part is like nobody wants to be in a shitty truck. That's just vanity. Like nobody wants that. The rational part is like if you're not gonna take care of the thing that's keeping them safe on the road every day, how are you gonna take care of them in any other aspect?
Mm-hmm. Like I think that is a real concern. Like definitely we've had people come in and be like, dude, my brakes were bad and they didn't do anything about it. It's freaking crazy. Yeah, that's,
Jack Carr: that's wild. And especially top talent. Yeah. Top talent, you're not, there's very, you have to, you would have to.
Excel in so many other ways to overcome that one. Yeah. Silly little thing. Yeah. Is driving in a nice vehicle 'cause that's your office. Yeah, that's their office. They don't want to show up at their office every day and it be an [00:20:00] absolute dumpster fire. Yeah. That's breaking down the side of the road. Yeah.
And now. If they have any commission as well. They're not making any money sitting on the side of the web either. Yeah. Or high performer. They want to win. Yeah. And you've just stolen their ability to do so by putting them,
John Wilson: yeah, by just being unnecessarily cheap. Yeah. So like signaling, I mean, uniforms is a signal.
Yep. Socials is a signal, you know, radiant, uh, we've said this on here, but Radiant at one point had a 7,000 tech waiting list because of their social media accounts. Uh, and we ex, you know, our goal with, uh, socials between owned and operated and Wilson. To activate that as a recruitment funnel because we think we have a pretty unique advantage.
Uh, we have a really big media platform to start recruiting people and tell 'em how much money they can make. It's great. Yeah. But I don't think that that's, that's signaling,
Jack Carr: that's not necessary though. Like, so. No, no. It's not to be relevant. Like you can signal on a local level without any kind of giant media platform.
Yeah. Right. And that signaling is a clean website. Yeah. Good reviews.
John Wilson: Yeah. Text, read the reviews. They wanna know what it's like to work there. [00:21:00] Nobody wants to join the sinking ship. Everybody wants to be at a place that like people growing and winning. Yeah. And if, and if you're going into like as a, as a tech, I'm just trying to give owners the perspective.
The technician's gonna come in and go inside people's homes and those people are giving that company two star reviews. Like they're signing up for a hard life if they work for you.
Jack Carr: Yeah.
John Wilson: They don't want that. Like they want to go in and they want the customers to be easy. They wanna make money. Like they're not looking for a challenge of like, Ooh, yeah, let's, you know, make this five stars.
Jack Carr: Well, and then I think that also positioning yourself as a company that is focused on what you're focused on. Yeah. I'm not here to say that, hey, if you do a lot more, just you, your company's focused on repair. That's all you wanna do. Load tickets. Yeah. You cut, they cut expenses in other ways to each their own.
That's gonna attract the type of talent Yeah. That likes that. Yeah. And so like, technician, technicians, technician, highly [00:22:00] technical focused. Yeah. Um, we see that a lot like in commercial companies. A hundred percent. Yeah. Right. And so just making sure that your online presence is extremely, it's designed for what you're looking for.
Yeah. And you have to be intentional about that. And then once again, moving into the job, posting your job posting is designed Yeah. With that same intent. Well, and
John Wilson: is it always up? You know, we'll see. One of the easiest, lowest lift things that you can do as a, as an owner of any size is just always be recruiting.
Yep. Like, that's it. Which doesn't sound that hard to me. I. Our managers actually still get pushback on it. It's like, why are we recruiting right now? It's like, because what happens if someone leaves? What happens if we have to term somebody? Or what happens if we're entering busy season and I have to add 30 heads, which is what we're doing right now.
Jack Carr: Yeah.
John Wilson: Like it's a lot Stuff changes a lot pretty fast. So like you always have to be looking and top grading if nothing else.
Jack Carr: Yeah. And so explain for everybody what top grading is, because I think that's a
John Wilson: Yeah. Top grading. Um, top grading is, is when you. [00:23:00] Basically if someone's struggling, you're always looking for, you always wanna coach, you always wanna try to help improve, but some people don't want to be improved.
Yep. Uh, so like, try to, you know, try to avoid the people that don't wanna be improved. Like one of our core values is betterment. That's literally number one, which is the ambitious pursuit of winning individually and as a team. So like, you gotta improve to be here, you gotta want to improve to be here. So if somebody doesn't wanna improve and get better, then like, probably not a fit.
So top grading is when you identify those folks that, that are just like, not really here for it. They're, they don't want to get better, they don't want to improve. They're not like trying to make their own life, uh, situation better. Then you, you replace them with someone that does like every seat. If you have a basketball team, uh, I've used this comparison before.
I don't know sports very well, but you can only have like five or six people on a court. Five mm-hmm. Six. If you're looking at the wrong person. Okay. It's, there's a set amount of people you can have on the court. That part I know. And, um, so who would, who do you want on the court? Yeah, so that, that's the concept behind top grading.[00:24:00]
If you have X number of seats, who can be on that court with you and when is it time to, to switch? Uh, so that's the whole concept behind top grading. Um, but obviously like coach and try to catch that stuff in recruitment beforehand. Like, Hey, is this the type of person that wants to grow individually?
And if not, like, great, like go join one of the, you know, small ticket companies.
Jack Carr: Yeah. And so I, I definitely think that this entire branding atmosphere and, and who you are and what you do, and Yeah, and, and is extremely important. I. And what you can offer and kind of the fun on the backside and yeah, that's all important, but I know a lot of people and always be recruiting.
I think that's a big one. I think that's the, a huge one. And I know like everybody only recruits Yeah. In the on season and then the off, off season, it takes 60
John Wilson: days to like from like job posts to done now. Something that I know I pushed you guys to add, uh, like what I like recruiting folks to quick staffers, but a, a big part of how we can always recruit and constantly be checking resumes.[00:25:00]
Is remote staffing recruiters like they are on top of it and they're amazing members of the team. Um, so I think that's a big part of our win.
Jack Carr: Yeah.
John Wilson: Is like we have three full-time recruiters and Cassandra's the team lead. She's incredible. And then she's got Abby and Krista, and then just every day like we are drowning in interviews, like literally drive, our managers are asking us to stop because
Jack Carr: what I always say right is.
When, when do people, when are the, the highest level of talent, which is what you want in your business? Yeah. When are they looking for a job? April. They're looking for a job. Yeah. It's very specific now. April 20 seconds. It's actually right now. Um, no. Uh, but like, when are they looking for a job? They're looking for a job when it's the slowest.
Yeah. And they're not making any money. Yeah. And so if another company can't keep them busy Yeah. And you're a high performer, you're gonna go look elsewhere. Yeah.
John Wilson: Well actually, so this is, you know, I'm back to the a hundred things mm-hmm. Of like all the dif things that differentiate us, but for HVAC one is [00:26:00] one of our like.
Tactics, uh, not even tactics, but recruitment is sales. Mm-hmm. So when you're selling you, it's always like, what's the objection? How do you handle that? Objection. One of the objections is always how do you keep 'em busy? So yeah, we've talked about our tour through the facility. A really important part of that tour is stopping at the call center and, and talking about it.
Like, Hey, this is our call center. Yeah, we have nine people taking calls every day. They handle a thousand customer contacts a day. So the objection of will you keep us busy is sort of gone. But what we've added on top of that, when I was personally handling the recruitment for HVAC, was here's how many members we have.
And then I give them the, you know, 300 members to every HVAC tech. And also I pulled open our dispatch board and showed them the schedule. Like, Hey, we're actually so busy. Here's the last month I clicked through it, here's the next month. And I clicked through it. Yeah. And just showing that you're, but obviously like our marketing style there, there's a [00:27:00] lot of things that go into that.
There's a thousand things that go into it. Yeah. But like, are, are they gonna keep me busy? Is one of the biggest objections you could handle in an interview process. Yep. Uh, especially HVAC and, 'cause they're so used to booms and busts and layoffs. So the will you keep me busy is like, you gotta know how to handle that inside an interview setting.
Especially in March or February or April. Yeah. Because they're coming from like working two hours a week somewhere. Yep. Like we had a company locally, $20 million shop. And like it was like 45 of their 50 field employees sat for
Jack Carr: weeks. There was a company local to us that they posted something on their social media and they didn't notice.
But in the background of the social media was how many calls they were behind, and this is a 40, $50 million company and they were behind. 45 calls in a certain department in like February, but could you imagine that's multiple people. Yeah. Not running at all. Sitting at home now. Actually, I wanna put that
John Wilson: publicly.
Let's, I'm gonna write that down. That's interesting.
Jack Carr: Just answer the phone. It's one of those phrases that's always [00:28:00] easier said than done. I know it was hard for me and my business 'cause the phone always rings while you're out in the field trying to get something done. Or it's 8:00 PM and you're trying to get your kids to bed.
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John Wilson: Uh, so we talk about call budget every day. Um, but I kind of like the idea of like having that very publicly posted. Okay, that's a solid idea.
I'm gonna do that. Just like little subliminal messaging, like we're up 60 calls to that. Yeah, dashboarding is really interesting. This isn't recruitment focused, but like, you'd be amazed what happens when you start just putting data in front of people and don't say anything.
Jack Carr: Yeah.
John Wilson: Um, like, you'd be [00:29:00] amazed.
We have, we, we ha we started this automations team, so we hired like a custom software dev and then we're bringing out an AI specialist and we're just like churning out web apps, like very hyper specific to my problem web apps, which is like kind of fun. And our first one,
Jack Carr: this is the only reason I want to grow is so I can do.
Stupid
John Wilson: dude. I feel like I've made this joke before when I feel like such a boomer. I remember, I remember people like, I remember people 10 years ago or five years ago, and they'll be like, yeah, we're we're custom making this software to solve. And, and at the time I was like, that is the dumbest shit that I've ever heard in my life.
And I think if you're a two or $3 million shop, you should probably not do this yet. Yeah. Uh, 'cause there's, there's probably an out of the box, like if there's an out of the box, like, stop it, you know? Yeah. I, I know people that are like, we have to custom build our CRM and I'm like, just like, there's so many options.
Just go buy a CRM, please go chill. Like your needs at $3 million are not so fucking custom that you need to build something. Yep. [00:30:00] Like that's, that's a absolutely ridiculous. Yeah, you're, you are being dumb. All right. Off the pedestal. But, so, but I feel like a real boomer because like, we're building this, we're now, I've made fun of people for this for years, but like now we're custom building this, uh, like dev team.
And, uh, and yeah, we're starting to see product, which is pretty fun. That's cool. Um, I, I think, we'll, I mean, maybe we'll like give it away. I, I don't know, like in case other people want 'em, but like it's API into ServiceTitan and then like ripping the data we need. Oh, and like this scraping
Jack Carr: this subsect
John Wilson: of data and getting it, yeah.
So, so the first one is like tasks. Are you guys using ServiceTitan tasks? Not as much as we should. Yeah. And it's because you can't track 'em and you can't report on 'em. Yeah. But like what if you had a dashboard that showed you how behind your accounting team was on tasks? That's pretty funny. That's pretty funny.
I'll show you annoying. I'll too, I'll show you. When we go to the other room, show
Jack Carr: 45 tasks behind
John Wilson: it is. It is. And Brandon was like 10 behind or something. Yeah, he was like, dammit.
Jack Carr: Yeah, but I mean like Right, you post that on some kind of board out there.
John Wilson: Oh yeah. And you're like. But [00:31:00] like calls behind would be really interesting.
I bet we could rip that data. Like not very, not very hard. We, we actually just, we just had another, oh, cash. That was another thing that we started publicly displaying for like one of our accounts, not. Super publicly, but in SLT. Yeah. Interesting to see what behavior happens because it's like, Hey, here's the cash goal for this account.
Um, let's publicly display it. Yeah. Anyways, custom dashboards. Yeah. And I feel like a boomer when I talk about building a software dev team for my plumbing company in Akron
Jack Carr: Oil. We do a media software and we do plumbing. Yeah. But yeah, I mean, super interesting though, at the end of the day is like, Hey, you can bring those technicians in.
Yeah. In the off season. Yeah. If you have the calls or if you're focusing on your marketing in the right way. Are you selling memberships? Yep. Like
John Wilson: what happens when you have no calls? Do you have an outbound team? Do you have an outbound team? Uh, how big's the customer list? What's your like marketing stack look like?
What levers can you pull? You know, we, we started focusing, and I've said this so many times, we started really focusing on un googling the [00:32:00] business last year, and man did it like freaking work. Uh, like Google's still a big part of it, but it used to be all of it. All of it. And now it's like 50% of it. Um, so like we're continuing to drive that down.
So what happens? Yeah. How do you continue to keep the team moving? And that's such a big part of the. Then like, yeah. Calm. I mean, that's obviously a big part of it. And, and what are they doing? What are they driving? What are they gonna do during the day? Are they there to sell and do the work? Are they just there to do the work?
Our ability to create the sales and install position has been really interesting because a lot of people, they're like, they're ready to be out of the field.
Speaker 3: Mm-hmm.
John Wilson: But like they're not yet capable of being a manager and this is a different, uh, path for them. Yeah. They can still win financially. So like what do they do during the day?
Um, are you gonna keep 'em busy? Who's the manager? Yep. Like it's always who's the manager? That's always such a big, big, big part of it. Uh, like a leader really sets the tone, but yeah, comp and how you signal is huge. Is just such a big [00:33:00] part of it. Huge. And like building, you know, we talked about this at the warehouse or in the workshop, but.
Years ago. It's another signaling item. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, yeah. Physically where, where are you located? Are you located like, we're located next to the highest, uh. Pocket of wealth in our county, like right next to it, like five minutes down the road. It's closest we could get for building this size.
That's a great decision. Like one, we're actually drawing talent, uh, from these neighborhoods, which is great, but like people know that we're gonna be serving customers that are gonna be easy to work with. Like techs don't wanna go in houses where they might get a gun pulled on 'em. So like, yeah, where are you located?
And if we were located. In other spots, you'd be dealing with more landlords, you'd be dealing with, uh, more challenging customers. Yeah. And all of this is stuff that makes either recruitment or retaining hard.
Jack Carr: Yeah, definitely. So the, the thousand things there, but I mean, the nice part if, if anyone's listening and like trying to remember them all.
They're not that difficult to remember. If you look at [00:34:00] it from, you're
John Wilson: running a good business.
Jack Carr: Yeah, exactly.
John Wilson: Like if you're running a good business, recruitment comes easier. Easier.
Jack Carr: You should have those leads. If you're running a good business, you should be thinking about your location and how you optimize.
Yeah. If you're running a good business, you should be thinking about all of these things all the time. Yeah. And driving intent on each item. And I,
John Wilson: yeah, if you're intentional, if, if, yeah. If you approach decisions with intent and not like pure
Jack Carr: dollars. And when I say that's what I was just gonna say. So when I say intent though, I mean like we are attacking this issue.
Yeah. From a marketing and a recruitment angle and not a cost angle. 'cause what happens, right? What we fall into the trap of is, oh, this building was $2,000 a month for 2000. It's such a good deal. I, I don't know if I can afford a little bit more, but that affording Yeah. That like cost cutting that you're doing on the front end to get the business that's down by the prison.
Yeah. Um, is cheap for a reason.
John Wilson: Yeah.
Jack Carr: Has terrible marketing
John Wilson: statistics on it. Yeah. We, I've told this story, but like guys would pull into our parking lot to interview and literally turn [00:35:00] around. Yeah. Like
Jack Carr: they used to just leave and not actually interview. And so just, yeah. Making sure that when you're, you're paying for more than just like physical space to hold units.
Yeah. You're paying for recruitment. Yeah. An easier recruitment. You're paying for an easier marketing. Yep. And so that all sets you up for growth.
John Wilson: Yeah. No, I, I agree. Yeah. I think, um, work to run a good business. Invest in the infrastructure. I think that's a lot of what we're talking about here. Are the vans Good?
Is the physical location good? Uh, is the software easy to use? Is the software easy to use? Can you get reporting? 'cause if you actually can't get reporting, like I'm sure there's, there's a bunch of really cheap softwares out there, but if you can't get good reporting, how can you pay your techs really well?
And how do they know if they're winning? How do they know if they're winning? Yeah, I wanna know if I'm winning. Sames. Samesies. Yeah. So like infrastructure is a good, are we marketing well? Do we have good reviews? It's all the same stuff. And then when someone finally is ready for that search. That's all top of funnel.
Yeah. Yeah. So like, that's branding. So I, I always like to compare [00:36:00] it to marketing and sales. 'cause I think that just tracks for people better. So like, hey, my, my reviews and my, uh, vans and all that stuff is signaling to customer, customers and potential team members. And that's like our top of market.
That's our tv, that's our radio. Like they, they, they know we exist. Yeah. And they see us out there and they, they understand what we're about. Uh, but bottom of funnel, when somebody finally needs that water heater or when someone's ready to switch jobs. That's how you show up on Indeed, and that's your benefits.
That's your compensation plan. And when you're finally at that point, that's how you're actively going after those people too.
Jack Carr: Yeah. Right? Yeah. Having a full-time recruiter that's saying, Hey, are you ready? Hey, are you ready? You ready? Hey, I'm following up. Are you ready?
John Wilson: Ready And a CRM to manage it?
Jack Carr: Yeah.
John Wilson: So we have a CRM to manage anyone we've ever talked to
Jack Carr: in recruitment
John Wilson: because it's like these are potential applicants.
Jack Carr: Yeah. And I mean, if you're recruiting all the time too, that makes sense because you're recruiting all the time. You need to have that backlog. Yeah. Otherwise it just falls into abyss.
John Wilson: Yeah, it does. Yeah. So yeah, so we've, we basically turned our, this is one of the a hundred things. I'm sure. It sounds [00:37:00] complicated. It was, I guess. But recruitment is a sales team. Like they're actually commissioned, our recruitment team is a com 'cause it is sales. If you, if this person hires on, here's the commission you get day one, day 90.
Yeah.
Jack Carr: Day 180. I think it's pretty normal for recruiters. Yeah. They're commission based. Yeah. So, so I think that that really covers, we covered a lot. 10 ton of good business. 10 out
John Wilson: of the ton of signaling pay really. Well. Don't yell at your staff like Jack, don't do it. Don't do it. Um, always be recruiting.
Always be closing. Coffee's for closers. Coffee's for closer. I actually brought that mug in today to match my closer sweater. I have a coffee for Coffee's for Closers mug. I was gonna bring it later to the workshop. Well, if you like what you heard today, make sure you like and subscribe so you can hear more stuff exactly like it about how Jack yells at his team and checkout, owned and operated opposite of branding that we want.
Dot com. I hate [00:38:00] you.
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