Episode Transcript
[00:00:05] Speaker A: Welcome to Wayne Scrub for the Superstars.
[00:00:10] Speaker B: Welcome to the Love and Business podcast. My name is Britt Arnold. I am president of Tagler Construction and.
[00:00:15] Speaker A: Supply and I'm Mick Arnold, president of Arnold Packaging and Arnold Automation. And today we are going to bring it home for the audience. So we've talked about identifying candidates and getting them hired.
Unfortunately we had to talk about what to do when it doesn't work out and we're going to talk about onboarding. You know, you've done all the hard work, you found the right candidate and I would say that all of that great work that you've done in selecting what you think is the right person to join your organization can be stunted quite a bit if you don't get the onboarding process right.
[00:00:51] Speaker B: And I would say arguably it's the most challenging part of all of it and it's definitely because we're both going through the bombarding process now. Definitely the most time intensive of it. And you said it, you have to get it right. And if you don't, I would say if you don't get it right in the very beginning and just getting off to a bad start is going to be hard to recover from. So I'm not sure and myself included in the beginning paid enough attention or put enough energy into designing the onboarding process for our new employees. Like that part of it needs to be prepped for because think about it, this person's joining their first impression and like their acclimation and adjustment to the business early on is everything. Not to mention one thing we did touch on.
It may be a situation, especially if you're a small business which a lot of the people we're talking to are either a part of small businesses or running small businesses. You don't have a ton of bandwidth and onboarding takes a lot of time and energy on the training side of things which pulls you and other members of your team from doing your everyday job.
[00:02:08] Speaker A: Right? And I just want to mention too, even for big companies too, because remember a big company is just a collection of small companies, right? It's a 10 person team and a 20 person team or whatever. So if you're doing this, I don't care if it's Procter and Gamble on the shingle outside or TCs, you know, you're a team inside of a, of a team. And you're right. I think, I think one of the biggest traps, and I have really tried to resist it.
[00:02:30] Speaker B: Can I just finish? Yes, the sentences. It's. I was saying it's Going to, you're going to take a lot of time away from you, everybody in your or the people training, getting your job done. And that can seem very daunting and you can shy away from it. I've done it in the past. But I think the key now is leaning into that, leaning into that onboarding and saying yes, it may take, we may have to take a step back and most of the time you'll find you don't actually end up taking a step back. You just figure out how to juggle the balls differently to get a step forward. But when I'm looking at the project manager we just hired, I'm like, listen, let's put all of our energy onto training him to get up to speed because then all of a sudden the quicker he gets up in the running, the better it is for all of us. So you have to look at the long run, not be short sighted to be able to get the onboarding process right.
[00:03:23] Speaker A: Yeah. And I, and also too just a quick aside in and you made a very conscious decision in this hiring endeavor to get a pro. You know, you went, you went away from a greenhorn, you know, the greenhorn mentality and, and, and maybe saving a little dollar and you know, saving some money in compensation on the front end but having to make a huge.
[00:03:44] Speaker B: That's what I did prior.
[00:03:45] Speaker A: Prior.
[00:03:45] Speaker B: Right.
[00:03:46] Speaker A: This one is a pro. So you, you would like to hope or think that your return on investment would come faster if you did spend that time and you collectively committed your team to investing in that time. And I'll tell you the trap, both of our companies and I, I think small companies in general run lean. So you're already person down. Right. You are a project manager down which in your situation had you doing the project management. When we went CFO down it we, we had to call in some outside help. I mean that is not my superpower. So we used an interim CFO in that moment. So it has cost associated with it. You know, it wasn't in some of those moments you are saving some payroll. It sucks. You're working 20 hour days and, and you are banking a couple of nickels in that person's absence. Not the case in the CFO search. So the trap I believe is not interjecting or infusing that person too fast, you know, so fast that they don't get that onboard.
And, and what really called my attention to it, just thinking back to the most recent onboards prior to CFO also in the market for a plant manager, which I've been talking about in the other episodes. The last person I personally onboarded was VP of Sales prior to that. And I was hyper aware of the amount of tribal knowledge that would have to move. And it's because I'm so comfortable with that role. I mean I was the VP of Sales here way, way, way back when. Sales manager, whatever those, those titles were.
And, and I was able to lay out a legitimate menu. It had a menu look to it. And, and you know the first day, super intense. Right. Is hr, finishing paperwork, whatever those things are. But there's just so many things that you don't, you really don't pay attention to because it's so ingrained in your life. Let me give you an example. Our typical meeting schedules, you know, and, and getting that individual Ed in that moment in meeting schedules. And I'm sitting there going through my calendar and getting it to sync with this menu of his, which is really his schedule now. Ed's was pretty intense. I think I built that out a strong six weeks. Like that was long. Probably longer than anything else will be. Just by virtue of all of the introductions. Supplier introductions. When you have a role like that that is. Is outward facing in so many ways, it just compounds the number of introductions that are there. Suppliers and, and professionals and, and those roles.
That one I would say is probably the most intense, you know, versus a CFO or maybe more of an operations type role. And therefore the menu for example that I built out for Rob and you're.
[00:06:32] Speaker B: Saying menu but just if you don't understand what many means. We're talking about a schedule.
[00:06:35] Speaker A: Yeah. So yeah. If you can just envision a, a spreadsheet that says, you know, day and time and task and where it's held and who the subject matter expert is. Here's who you go to if you're lost. And then there's normally a note column out could say like for example, in setting up Rob for this week I was in Chicago, so it said mix in Chicago. Like I won't even be in the building when you're doing this stuff. But here's the subject matter expert in my absence. Go find them and they'll keep you dialed in. So try to keep them as much on a really comfortable, consistent cadence as possible. Which I think there's a lot of comfort in that versus you know, when you, when you make a great hire someone that's really good at what they do. Sitting and spinning sucks. And that's what I really try to avoid is having a really talented person that's Effective feeling like they're sitting and spinning. Even though I've warned them or I've tried to say it's going to happen at times, it's going to be imperfect. I'm hyper aware of not doing that because that would. That would frustrate me a little bit if I was in their situation.
[00:07:35] Speaker B: Yeah. And I know it is. It is happening right. With my new hire at times. And I think that's part of it as we, as we touched on before, just setting the expectation like it's going to happen at times. But I think we can even take a step back. Just the very granular, easy things when we're talking about prep that you need to do. Like, for instance, because I'm thinking about the new hire we have coming in on Monday and I have not done a lot of this besides. Or in addition to creating a schedule for them, it is creating them a email address so you can populate their calendar so that with our recent hire, they were using their email a week or two prior with my team and they were getting the calendar invites. So they knew exactly what their schedule was going to be like. It's getting them whatever equipment they're going to need ahead of time, which is sometimes take some research. What laptop are you going to get them? It's making sure they have access to the fobs and whatever you need to get them in the building. It's. I mean, there are a lot of. It's getting their payroll set up. It's getting, if you have additional benefits, their insurance set up. Like these things take time. They don't just come day one and all of a sudden set up and to be able. So for instance, if you work for my company, you have insurance from day one. So all of this paperwork has to be done prior. And that's something we did where we finished all the paperwork for my new hire, I think two weeks before he came and started. And that was amazing because his first day we were off to the races. We had already finished all the legal, like the, you know, enrollments, registrations. So that was done well in advance. And he also had plenty of time to review it. We, we never have really in this case, had to negotiate because we were both happy. But if you have to go through negotiations, you should put in some, you know, contingency or time for that. So there is a lot that needs to be done. And I've learned this like, you know, I've had people in the beginning start. None of this was done because I didn't know Any better. It's just like anything else. You learn and you get better.
[00:09:35] Speaker A: And I think the documentation, like anything else, the documentation is so important. And listen, I, I started from scratch again and I, you know, I, I firmly believe that things you do very infrequently, you tend to suc. And I did, fortunately, I did go back to some of the prior schedules. I did at least start there and that did jog some memories. Now I was starting with a VP of Sales schedule for a cfo. Lot of. A lot of cutting and pasting and simple elimination. And I think, you know, Rob's onboarding is going to be a couple or a few weeks, not six or seven or eight that maybe even I built out for the VP of Sales role, which is appropriate for that. I mean, that is one good thing about that type of role. Our bean counting looks a lot like somebody else's bean counting. There's certainly some nuances and some things that are unique. But I never kid myself or anybody else. We're not special, you know, I mean, our accounting looks like many other companies accounting. And they're definitely some things that we do or have adopted over the years that we'll have to teach. But I would say that role is easier than some of the others that are hypersensitive to the Arnold way versus whatever the generalist knowledge would look like.
[00:10:48] Speaker B: And that is important. Once you have the process down, you can make just this living folder of. Okay, this is all the onboarding documents that need to be sent. It becomes very easy. I say easy. Streamlined is probably the word. Of course the schedule is going to be tailored to that individual. But there's a lot of things that. Here's our process. We know exactly how to do it. The more you do it. The other thing, talking about folders and living documents, we tried to use every type of portal and different.
What is the word? Ways of like sharing documents. Like what's the best resource or whatever. Share file, essential, repository. That's what I was looking for. And we landed on just like OneDrive. Shared folders have worked really well for us. I mean, we paid for all these memberships. It's too complicated. And as you know, these things are only as good as the input you put in. So it has to be something that's good but also. Also not too hard.
[00:11:48] Speaker A: Right. It's got to be accessible. We talk about, you know, Tommy, who does such, you know, does an awesome job with video documentation around here. Most recently we've been shooting things for the plant. This is a little Bit off topic, but just this idea of we can do all this amazing work and if our users can't find it, they won't use it. And either they just won't, they'll stop. They'll. They'll get fatigue and they'll stop using it or they're going to bother the hell out of you. You got two, you know, two choices. So, so you're right. It's got to be all the quality content in the world. Inaccessible, might as well not even be there. So, yeah, that's. That's huge. Yeah, Simple. But it's not.
[00:12:22] Speaker B: No, no. And honestly, our company just started really using shared folders about a year, year and a half ago. And I will say I'm the biggest offender of not updating my share or even really using them, but I need.
[00:12:37] Speaker A: To do as I say, not as I do.
[00:12:38] Speaker B: But there are two things to add to that. So one, we have what we've called like a shared resources folder. So it has anything that you. It will have like a PO template, a quote template. But then it'll also have here's all the certifications we have, here's our NACE codes, here are our contacts for like our war room. So it's like our banker, our bonding agent. And then it'll be like, here are the licenses, we have license numbers, just pertinent information. Here's our ein. Just anything. If you're a new employee, that's just a. You can look through this resources and it's just an overview, which is a really amazing when you have new employees because I think the first three or four days our new employee just worked through that shared folders and like bought you some time.
But then they don't feel like they're just sitting and spinning. And he came up with just three pages of questions from that. But then the other important thing is on these shared documents, and I'm saying shared folders, whatever you decide to use is that for us, the project manager for each project or each customer, however you decide to split it up, is very diligent in always updating those shared folders. Because when you bring somebody else on, for instance, he's basically taking over a bunch of projects. So if we didn't, if our prior employee, who he's taking their book of business call, it didn't have all the shared folders and all the information, he's starting with a big setback.
[00:13:59] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:14:00] Speaker B: But because our project manager prior was very good. Now I keep saying our new hire, Josh, I'll put a name to him. Yes. He's coming in with. He's got all the projects with all the shared folders and the documents. And they might not be organized to his preference, but they're easily. They're easy to navigate. So I think that's like always thinking ahead like this. This person might not be here forever and nobody from the company will. So let's make sure we have a place where we're housing all this documentation. So not only if we bring in new hires, but if someone's out for a week on vacation or for pto, PTO or they're sick, we can help each other. And the last thing is, and this is what, you know, an idea of Josh, the new hire, as he's putting pieces together in his head. So he wrote down three pages of here's what Tagler's processes look like for us to shoot holes in it and say yes. And he had questions mixed in there, but his thinking was, knowing we have a new hire on Monday and are going to continue to have new hires, this process is going to have to be understood and navigated by all of them. And so let me start the document. So when somebody else comes in, we can just give that to them.
[00:15:13] Speaker A: Right? You can create an FAQ document for you. Frequently asked questions would be all the ones he just asked.
[00:15:17] Speaker B: And he said. And I was like, that's like really forward thinking for someone that's coming in. And another tool I will mention for, like, because I was mentioning this to Josh, we haven't really implemented it to the degree I would like or really at all. We need to. I think it's an amazing tool is the loom video. And there might be another evolution of this called something else at this point. But you can basically, you can. It shows a screenshot of you talking, so it feels very personal. But then it's also a video of you talking, but also has a screenshot of your screen. So if you're showing. For instance, we do work with vdot, which is Virginia Department of Transportation, they have a very particular way that you need to bid their projects. And there's. There are just certain techniques in a portal and certain paperwork. So I was teaching somebody how you specifically bid to V dot and you screenshot, you take them through, you talk. And this loom video shows me talking, shows the screen, shows me pointing everything through. Then it also can convert into transcript, so all of that into a transcript, but they want to read it like visually. And so there could be a library of just these tutorials on how to do anything. So you have a new hire coming and they're like, how do I access this XYZ or how do I create xyz? And all of a sudden they just have to look in the library of loom videos and find it again. We haven't done a good job of doing this, but now when you have a new hire, this is when you should be thinking about it. Because all the things they need to learn. Let's make a Loom video. Let's make a loom video. Let's make a loom video that you just build upon.
[00:16:55] Speaker A: Yeah. And the beauty of now. Yeah, that was good. That was very good. Well done. And the beauty now too. You know, everybody wants to use the word AI and overuse it, but legitimate uses, you know, what is AI going to be when it grows up in converting those transcripts? The beauty of that is you can then search by those words and topics and it'll take you to those video segments and you don't have to listen to a five minute video to find a four second answer. And that's the beauty of AI in those applications.
[00:17:21] Speaker B: Yeah, 100%. And that's a really good point because Josh was saying, he's like, you have so much good information and resources. He said, but I am not having an easy time finding it because you guys haven't titled it or categorized it the way I'm searching for it. It doesn't align. So he even unaccessible accessible. So when he was going through today of like his how the Tagler processes in his head next to it he gave a number to every resource document and he put see document number three. See document number. I mean smart. And it's just things that we. When you have a small team and you're young and you're evolving, you don't do everything at once. You can. So it's just like as you grow and become. Because a lot of this sounds stupid I'm sure to someone listening, but you have a million things to do and not everything's a priority. But now that when you're hiring and we're getting bigger, this stuff is becoming a priority.
[00:18:21] Speaker A: Unfortunately the tools are better than they've ever been. Like loom. You talk about things also too that a lot of time are no cost.
[00:18:27] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean they are. I mean you can, you can free but then you can create X. You know, a minimum amount of videos or only 30 seconds, you know.
[00:18:36] Speaker A: Right.
[00:18:37] Speaker B: They, they figure out a way to have you get some kind of membership. But yes, super cost. Effective.
[00:18:43] Speaker A: Cheap. Cheap by standards, if you think about the time involved. Right.
[00:18:47] Speaker B: Well, you look at the investment, not the cost.
[00:18:48] Speaker A: Sure.
[00:18:49] Speaker B: Right. I mean, the.
[00:18:50] Speaker A: Yeah. What's it cost if somebody makes a mistake or you don't. You don't win a job because you don't bid VDOT correctly because you didn't have time to push that travel knowledge.
[00:18:57] Speaker B: The time.
[00:18:58] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:18:58] Speaker B: That's all you have to look at is like, what kind of time is it saving the rest of the team.
[00:19:02] Speaker A: Yeah. So back to. Back to the onboarding process. I mean, I think, you know, we're both in agreement that you're heavily scripting those first. I like to have a lot of control over those first weeks. And I'll say it. It takes time. I mean, I was at building Rob's schedule for a while, you know, and back over it and back over it and back over it and trying to get it to mesh with my schedule because, you know, you don't have, you know, you're running the business and you don't necessarily know. You know, once you get a start date, it becomes a little more clear and you can start to get out ahead and plan for it. But until then, you know, you're. You're running your business and, and you're stepping into that role, too, and living your life, and it doesn't always perfectly mesh with the person that's coming in. So there was a lot of back and forth. Like, for example, I just returned from Chicago. That trip was on the books for six months before I even knew that we were going to have to fill the role. So as I'm going through and I'm looking at my schedule and I'm looking at putting together Rob's calendar, I'm in Chicago for two days. It's like, holy hell, what am I going to do with Rob? Well, that's when he goes out and he gets to meet customers. So ra. So, you know, when he goes on a truck. Yeah. You, you know, in a nice way, pawn them off to another team member and let them get that valuable information while you're off doing another part of your job, which is what happens in companies our size.
[00:20:18] Speaker B: And then a large part of it, especially, I believe, for the things that are, you would call it proprietary or nuanced to your business, the easiest way to learn is just put them in, like, feet to the fire. Learn it through doing. And as we've told Josh, like, because he said, he said to me today, I've passed a new project to him and it's half A million dollar job. It's big, you know, decent sized job, not nothing.
[00:20:44] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:20:44] Speaker B: And has to go well. And it has, it's, it's has everything. Every challenge you could think of. It's not an easy, it's not an easy job and I think it's great because he's going to be exposed to so many things. And my thing is like for all intents and purposes, for on the vendor side and on the customer side, you're going to be their main point of contact. I am going to be in the background. We're going to be having separate conversations where I'm walking you through everything and making sure that you don't slide outside of the rails. Like I'm keeping you on the rails. I'm still there, but nobody else knows that. Because I want you to be, have the credibility and be the main point of contact. Because he's like, am I taking this job or am I kind of just supporting this job? I was like, no, you're taking it and you're accountable for it. But I'm here.
[00:21:27] Speaker A: Yeah. And let's be very specific about that because I approach the exact same way and it's so important. I immediately enters as quickly as humanly possible. And if that's day one, it's day one. Shift the ownership to the individual and say, listen, I don't want to ever risk that we're doing it twice. You're doing it and I'm doing it, or God forbid, we're not doing it at all. So you have 100% responsibility and ownership and I am in a support role. You're driving and I'm in the passenger seat and the windows are tinted. So sometimes they'll see us, sometimes they won't. But you have ownership. And when an email comes through, there's a question. Whatever that topic happens happens to be of the ownership, whether it's project management like you, sales, the, the number of. We had a number. It just crazy how it happens. We had some HR issues pop up that were one off unusual in this period of time. Well, the second Rob hit the door is the guy that ultimately owns hr. It was, oh, and by the way, we have to provide these documents for somebody in the organization for something.
[00:22:33] Speaker B: Right?
[00:22:33] Speaker A: I mean.
And you own that? Yeah. And you own that. I mean, I know you've been here a day, but this is the ask and I'm happy to help you. Here's your other resources, but those documents need to be over there by next Tuesday. Good, good. And, and that I think that Transfer of ownership is so critical and has to be one of the most intentional things that you do and also done correctly. You've already act. You know, you've already prepared that person through the interview process. The onboarding process is just the actual shift. You've already talked about it. You've already set the expect. Hopefully you've already communicated your style. If we were to work together when you start and we work together, you can expect this would just be the last step of that.
[00:23:16] Speaker B: Yeah, for sure. So how do you. Okay, so how do you approach. We touched on this briefly, and I think it's important to go back to it. We talked about hiring somebody that we're calling a pro who has. And that typically means somebody that's been in our industry for a while knows what they're doing versus somebody who's a little greener. And there is not a. A right way or a wrong way. But in general. But I think there is, as you call it, like the right horse for this leg. What do you say?
[00:23:49] Speaker A: Oh, yeah. Right horse for this leg of the race.
[00:23:51] Speaker B: Yeah. And sometimes that does mean, like, actually it does matter in this particular phase. And like, this is what we need.
When you're bringing on a pro versus somebody who's green, does the training look differently? Like, how does that. Or is it, you know, you're. Because I want to be clear. You're designing meticulously these schedules for your. For executives that are. Right. That are your directs. So in companies that are a little. Your size, a little bit bigger, you're not sitting there creating this schedule. I'm creating it for everybody because our company's small. But in somebody that's coming in that's not directing to you, who is creating their training?
[00:24:33] Speaker A: Whoever. The person directly above them in the org chart, whoever that is. So let's just say. Let's just say it's. It's a production manager and we hire a new production manager, the plant manager. The person directly above them in the org chart would be responsible for the onboarding. Like they will. They would have been the one that did the interview process, probably invited in trusted advisors inside the company, like we talk about. And that seems to go on now for a lot of positions. I don't know that we have that panel look for maybe some of the laborer type roles. But at the same time, I can imagine they'd interview with the production manager and the plant manager. There'd be at least two. It may not be as extensive or expansive as you get higher in the org chart. At our company. But that person would be responsible and would be setting it. They should be.
If you've built your company right, they should be the one that has the most knowledge about what right would look like in getting that person on and in a position to be as effective as they possibly can, as quickly as they can. And to your. I mean, this idea of we got a great candidate, you know, we got, we got the right candidate for the role, I would just say that would have.
Let's call them training wheels, right? You're slapping training wheels on that person's bike while they're getting up to speed. If you've got someone depending on the role, or if they're just an absolute natural. When I hired Paul Appel from Sealed Air years ago, absolute natural, central in the industry, subject matter expert, sales professional. I mean, his training wheels, I'm not even sure if he had training wheels. I think he was going down the big hills very, very quickly. So maybe we just have an indicator on how quickly the training wheels came off, depending on the skill level and how much alignment. If there's a ton of alignment, meaning that came from the same industry, or they're just really dialed in for whatever reason, then I think I'd be taking the training wheels off quicker. Selfishly, for me, the quicker they come off, the quicker I can get back to doing what I do. But there is that fine line because if they, you know, if they get speed wobbles and hit the deck, it's going to suck and you're going to have to put them back together. So got to be smart about it. But I think that's what you're sensing and also too inviting the, Inviting the person into the conversation. Seems to me like you're catching on to this very quickly. But I don't want to overstep. I don't want you to feel pressured or frustrated. How are you feeling about it? You know, you're asking him if you mind if you. You kick one of those training wheels off. And if, if that person, you know, Rob, in this case, if he, if he's worried about speed wobbles, then you'd have a conversation about it.
[00:27:10] Speaker B: Yes. And two, two important points to that. One, as we're talking about the onboarding and them spending time with a bunch of different people, whether it's going to be someone, whether it's going to be a department they directly interact with or even need to know anything about, we think it's important to get that full overview of the company. At the same time, Everyone that that new hire is working with, like, you're also getting buy in, right, from your team members. And that's something we talked about in the hiring process. That's why you invite so many people into the interview process. You want people to be bought in. So I think the more people you also include in onboarding, the same thing goes. You're getting more people involved, engaged, and bought in. And I see no downside of a lot of arms embracing and bringing in somebody.
[00:28:02] Speaker A: Yeah, it does slow the pro. I mean, I remember that.
[00:28:04] Speaker B: Remember the trap?
[00:28:05] Speaker A: I talked about the trap? The trap is, oh, my God, I'm dying over here. Because also, I mean, depending on the CFO search for us, from the time our. Well, gosh, from the time I was given notice that I would need to start the search until the time Rob started was over two months. And the duration from the time my. My former CFO left and Rob started was five, pushing six weeks. So the trap is, you know, you're. It's tough. You know, you're. You're. You're dying on the vine in spots and. And you're tired. And to say, oh, man, you know, do I really. Can I really stand another two weeks of onboarding? Which would have, like, Rob on the trucks, you know, he went out and saw what a delivery looks like and what our truck drivers do and what the back door of a customer looks like. And he spent time in sales today, specifically, he's in the field today with a salesperson. Part of me is like, oh, my God, can I. Can I do the CFO job for another 10 working days? And the answer is, yes, you have to. You've got to.
[00:29:07] Speaker B: You have.
[00:29:08] Speaker A: So, but the trap would be to. To pull back and like, here you go, man. Good luck. It would actually have that feel to it if you did that to that person. Like, all right, good luck. So that's the trap is. Is disengaging too quickly. But I think if as long as you have a good open line of communication, a lot of collaboration, and you're constantly checking back in, then you should be able to get it right. And you're also building, too. Right? I mean, in that. In that conversation process, you're getting tighter and tighter with the person who's now a teammate, not a candidate, and that's huge.
[00:29:36] Speaker B: And I think sharing you should, as a CEO or executive of a company, be a visionary. And I think that vision should be shared with the new hires you have coming on to certain degrees. But in my situation, you know, we brought On a pro and they're going to be very impactful. We have a small business, like in our business, like, I want them to know everything. So today we have something other dimension. We said like hours or however time we need, just like open Q and A. So as they're going through the onboarding process, we have hours set asides where they can just shoot, you know, fire and we just answer. So during that we were very clear, my VP and I of saying, listen, this is, this is the vision we have for ourselves and for the company. And it's like ultimately we want. Like for a while I was doing all that, I was quoting all the big projects I would get. I would work through all the contracts negotiation and then I would pass it on to the project management team. And that was very streamlined. I quote, I work through contract negotiation, passed a project manager and we just were doing it that way. So until I had to get back into project management because we went down a couple men.
And so we were very clear in like our first immediate milestone and vision is that you are up to speed enough to run your own projects. I can get back to just working the contract negotiations. Then we pass off the project management. That's our immediate goal. That's where we need to get you. Our second goal is then we bring in the hire we have now. They start taking some of that load off me. They're doing the upfront quoting, working through contract negotiations, passing the project management team and I'm over here working on our next big initiative which I need to get off the ground. That's phase two. Like, how quickly can we get here? And that's our vision. And so for them to understand, like we are in this, we, we want you to get up to speed and here's why and here's like the strategy and how we like the milestones we need to hit and the quicker the better. So inviting someone in and being like very transparent and honest about that is important. And I think it gives them empower, Empowers them like, wow, they're sharing their, their big picture vision with me and I'm aligned. And also like, I want to help us get there too, because that growth is good for everybody. So I think, you know, like, share, be open, invite your new hires into like the company vision. Right.
[00:32:00] Speaker A: Well, and remember in the interview process which we went through extensively, you were doing a lot of that. I mean, because there is that. We use the two A's, right? Audition and alignment. You mean you're looking for alignment and you're Auditioning each other. So, you know, you're, you're selling the organization to the candidate as much as they're selling themselves to you. If you've got a great candidate, I mean, because they have choices, they can go anywhere they want.
[00:32:23] Speaker B: Okay, so I had a little bit of a debate about that. You know, someone in my organization disagreed. Like we don't have to sell the company at all. I'm like, oh, that, yes, we do. If you're getting a great hire, they have a lot of other options. Like you absolutely have to sell the company. So you're damn right. I'm going to talk some during the interview process too, about who we are and what we do and why you should be here. You have to, in this day and age to get the best talent. If you don't, you're not going to get the best talent.
[00:32:49] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, listen, it's, it's a, I would say there's this, there's this, this push and pull in the land of unemployment. Right. And it's based on how the economy is and we're coming out of a white hot labor market. A, a seller's market for talent. Right. And, and, but I, but I, I still think it's a seller's market for talent. And, and one of the things I know, and I've, I said it multiple times in our other episodes, the, the rate at which people change jobs is exponentially higher, certainly than boomers Xers like me. Da da, da.
I, I think if you're not investing time in, in all of that attraction, right. You spend a hell of a lot of time attracting customers. But I think the same amount of onus and importance and intentionality needs to also be put in attracting your talent and the people that are going to drive and differentiate the business going forward. One could argue it might even be more important than customers and spots because they're the same thing. Those people, their talent, their skill set, the things that will allow you to be more differentiated. They're going to attract the customers too. They are part of that global attraction process in getting people in. Suppliers are another part of that. Like, if you look at our businesses, our suppliers are every bit as critical as our customers and our talent and our talent and our teammates. So, you know, our suppliers, if they are best in class, you know, with the people that I've sat in the room with, you Hardy, you know, Hardy Plank and guys that are, they are the cream of the crop. They are the most differentiated product. They too have a lot of partners that they could choose to give their line to, which is a big deal. I mean, in certain spots it's, it's a license to print money. If you, if you plant your flag, like we planted our flag next to Fanuc, the largest robot manufacturer in the world, you plant your flag next to Hardy, that's pretty legit. And so that whole attraction piece, to think that in 2024, it's not 1950 where, you know, you called the shots as the, you know, you're lucky to have us, that's bullshit. That is not the way that works anymore. And if you think it is, then be prepared to be either underserved in quantity of talent and certainly underserved in quality of talent. That attraction thing is now across all boards, all the time, and it's on 24. 7.
[00:35:09] Speaker B: I agree. The last thing I have to add is in the day and age, our companies are running a little differently. Where your company, for the most part, everybody is in office every day. Where we are hybrid. So we're two days in office, three days out. And from an onboarding perspective, that can you. You would think that could be challenging. And I think to agree it is like, I still don't think anything touches that in person. But I also have real. I think there's a lot of advantages to the hybrid which for what we do, like you guys are making stuff, you have to be here physically. Like we are doing mostly drop ship, so we don't have to be here every single day sometimes. But anyway, my point, no matter what kind of business you have, whether you're physically there in person, whether you're hybrid, whether you're remote, there are so many great tools where you can still make the onboarding process very intimate and very effective. Still takes a lot of planning. But like, you know, the screen sharing capabilities. We were just talking. I mean sometimes you guys are in this, the building together and you decide to do team screen because you. The screen sharing capabilities. Yes. So there is no reason that you cannot, no matter like where you are, what your setup is, that you can't be very effective in your onboarding process. You just have to prepare properly.
[00:36:28] Speaker A: And in general too, I just, I think and that you can even just take that one step further to all processes, you know, I mean, for, for, for. To my way of thinking, if you're going to be sharing information, let's say you're reviewing a quote together. Let's say you're reviewing something. I mean, why would, why the hell would you ever go into a conference room or print a piece of paper or sit there and look at a screen together versus jumping onto teams and each of you looking at your own individual PCs. And we do that a lot, especially in the automation side of our business, where, you know, an applications engineer, Luca, will be at his desk and I'll be on the other side of the building and we'll make a very conscious decision to use that tool versus what, thumbing through a bunch of papers or him printing a second copy? That would be absurd and stupid. And in the time, and sometimes in the time that we would be walking to, to that room that we'd be talking in, we solve the problem. So, yeah, I mean, just in general that, that, you know, picking the right tool for the right job, that's. That's everywhere. But yeah, I think that's a really interesting. And, you know, how do you, I mean, question for you and for everybody to think about, you know, if that is your model and you do have a percentage of your work week, which for you is 60% is not here versus here. You know, how do you create that warmth? Right. You're looking for that culture. How do you ingrain that culture? And I mean, how do you. There's a lot of knowledge that moves through osmosis, you know, being. Being within an earshot, watching it, seeing it, catching a demonstration of it. You know, certainly the challenges of being able to do that when you're physically apart for a percentage of the time.
[00:38:04] Speaker B: Yeah, there is. And then, then there's also a lot of the advantages that you. You know, a lot of my employees are driving really far to the office. And so, like, that productivity of, okay, not spending two hours for most of them would be at least two hours in the car. You get that productivity back. So, like, there we could go on for days. Sure.
[00:38:24] Speaker A: Oh, yeah.
[00:38:25] Speaker B: But that wasn't the point.
[00:38:25] Speaker A: Yeah, I'm not having an Apple versus.
[00:38:28] Speaker B: No, that wasn't the point. But I can say. So we are not in office Mondays, but we have our project meeting like every Monday at 9am Which I love.
And I had initially thought about when, you know, Josh started on a Monday. Audrey starting on a Monday. It's. Should I switch the. Should we be in office on those Monday? And I thought, no, because we are never in office. You know, we're typically not in office on Mondays. We're in office Tuesday. Wednesday. Like, I'm not going to change the schedule because we have, like, this is acclimation to the schedule. We have to figure it out on their onboarding their first day.
[00:39:05] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:39:05] Speaker B: Is going to be remote.
[00:39:06] Speaker A: How can you start work when you're not at work?
[00:39:08] Speaker B: Yeah. So I'm like, if we, if we can do this effectively, Ev, every week we have to be able to do it during the onboarding process. And I don't want to mess with that. I want to be able to prove to everybody that this is possible and that this is like, this is our schedule. I'm like, get, get used to it. So it's just the evolution has come a long way and on. The onboarding process is never going to be the same from maybe even month to month, but certainly not year to year because of all these changing dynamics.
[00:39:37] Speaker A: Well, that's, that's the thing too. And as good as you try, like you. We talked a lot about documenting the process. You're never done like it'll, It'll never. Like you'll pull that thing out. Let's say for. For example now, if I look at the length of tenure, my team is pretty new. You know, I mean my most tenured direct now is Kevin at seven years. And then it drops off pretty quick. You know, I've got, I have, I have two. Two team members. That'll be a week, you know, a week and four weeks apart and then, you know, lard a little over a year. So I would, I really, really hope that I'm going to be out of that mode for, for a period of time now. So let's just say it's a couple years again before I have to go through it. Don't know why I hope I. Not if you're, if you're one of my team members, please don't go anywhere. I miss you when you go.
But it'll look differently. I mean, you won't just be changing the name at the top of the page. Who knows where the hell will be in two years and what the tool will look like. You'll be, you'll be giving that thing a pretty heavy. Might probably at least change 50% of it in the way you go to market, what you've learned, new tools, the types of people, or who knows, maybe the next hire I make will be adding someone to my team. That could be it. Right. We went from five, went from five directs to six as part of our. A very small realignment and reorg might be that I had a seventh and that could have me back. That could have me back to the market at some point in the foreseeable future.
[00:41:04] Speaker B: Right.
[00:41:04] Speaker A: So. And at which point I would probably be whitewashing that even if it's Just a year or two from now.
[00:41:09] Speaker B: But that's all goes back to. What we're talking about is just the prep and keeping up to speed and evolving and adjusting and adapting. And if you don't do that, you'll get crushed.
[00:41:18] Speaker A: Well, it's like, I mean, almost if you, if you, if you picture like merging into traffic, that's how I look, you know, when I'm trying to get all that to come together, it would be merging into traffic at times at pretty high speeds and making sure that there's no pile up. And that's the way it feels is getting all of that to mesh together like one, a really dumb one. But case in point, you know, like you, we provide all the hardware. Somebody comes, one of their, one of the tools they get is they get a brand new laptop. When they come, well, guess what? They don't have until the day they start the laptop. And guess what it has. Their email. So there's this thing that's going on where, you know, you're pinging their Gmail account and then when they finally sit and turn on their laptop and open Outlook here, everything comes, you know, it's got all the contacts in there. Been copied on Outlook before. Yeah, you could, yeah, certainly. I mean, from a security perspective, we don't, we don't do that. We don't, we don't turn them on till we turn them on. But, but yeah, so all that, you know, it has that like synchro mesh feel to it when you're trying to get it all to merge into the same thing, hopefully at high speeds. So you can, you can be moving it. But yeah, that's all part of the magic. And one thing I will tell you, you, I know Rob for sure has really appreciated and has been very vocal about acknowledging the amount of time that I put into his onboarding process and has been very thankful. He called me on Saturday, we were in the car together and that was the first thing. Hey, I just want to thank you for all the time and energy you put into. First he said the interview process, which he said all the way through and then it was my first week was really good, you know, and, and, and he told me he's very honest. He said, you know, I came out of my last role a little beaten up. It's pretty tough over there and, but I feel rejuvenated because of the way this experience has gone. A lot of people sometimes, you know, people get to take a minute or two off between the roles or clear their head. Rob didn't have that benefit. So he was really grateful at the time and energy that was put into that and our relationship is better for it. I mean, all the cool outcomes of that. And because, you know, in the interview process, you're just making a bunch of promises to each other.
[00:43:23] Speaker B: Right.
[00:43:24] Speaker A: I mean, that's what you're doing. And, and so, you know, now when, when he starts and, and my, you know, it's my turn and it's my job and his job to make good on all those promises, all the things that we agreed that we were aligned on and get together. Well, you can't come up light and not. And not make good on all the promises that you. That you made in the interview process and why that individual of great talent elected to join your organization.
[00:43:47] Speaker B: Yeah. Couldn't agree more. I think, I think that's a great, great ending point here.
[00:43:53] Speaker A: Yeah. So the onboarding, man, if our audience can't just hire the hell out of people, Brit, I don't know what to do.
[00:44:00] Speaker B: As always, thank you very much for listening. And that is a wrap on the CEO's playbook series. That was a lot of fun and I think really informational.
[00:44:08] Speaker A: Yeah, I enjoyed it.
I love when we get to recount for our audience what we're working on real time. And if you remember, I think a while ago it started with a rant for me about turnover and being back into the market. And we do follow our own teachings and we've gotten some great people to join our company that are going to be awesome for this next leg of the race as I talk about. So thank you. Please, please subscribe. We're working our butt off for you here and hopefully you're doing some good things in your organization with what we're talking about. So please take a moment, subscribe, drop us some show notes as you learn some things, give us some feedback. We read it, we care about it, and it helps us learn and prepare, which we talk a lot about. Prepare to deliver a better show for you guys. So thank you.
Welcome to H for the Superstars Tonight. Tonight, west guest. Incredible, incredible, incredible.
