Retaining Key Talent in a Job Shop - Panel Discussion

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We've gone super heavy on technology and tools and cyber and dollars and cents and I think it's time we spend a little time talking about the the people and culture I know we've talked touched on it a couple of times but maybe counterintuitively we we see a lot of in our engagement with customers I've gotten asked a question when people are looking at a system like what would when do systems fail how do they fail and and honestly it's it's culture right because

generally the technical problems can be worked past those are the easy problems but when you have trust ISS between the management and the floor the way the the leadership and the the organization runs it it has a huge impact on WE anything's going to be successful as far as change goes so before we dive into that maybe we just go around and retaining key talents in a Job Shop developing talents and culture maybe if you guys could just kick it off and share whatever you guys had in mind before I

was speaking about NADCAP that was a result of an output of a transformation project but I didn't tell you why we transformed we transform for three reasons our customers our brand and our employees and so when we focused on the transformation we made the employees a part of the process of transformation they were part of the planning they were part of the Q&A we asked for their feedback we just didn't arbitrarily transform the shop I give you a good example in the old shop when my lab tech would

say we need to add two gallons of shuric acid to the tank they would argue say okay who's going to do it right because they didn't want to do it they were you get a Home Depot bucket a little pan pump from a 55g suuri barrel and you know that's a hazard it was dangerous they didn't like doing it so in the new shop what did we do we implemented a dosing system fully automated they don't have to touch any chemicals anymore and they love it right so we made them part of that transformation project

but that was one part to me very important about the retention because we wanted them to feel they had ownership in it right that they were a part of it part of our growth part of our change and because of that they are very proud to be in our shop as a result they were they say hey that was my idea right and that was part of the whole process for retention to actually Andre I remember our our first I think the first meeting that I think it was me and chat on a call a couple years ago now and even

just exploring a new software I think there's about eight people in there room must have been half the half the facility shut down for the day yes but you know you understood as such a big change is going to impact all of them so they were heavily involved right out of the gates I actually remember you turning around and asking what do you guys think what do you guys think what do you guys think instead of I've made this decision we're doing it and drive it down so it's yes been very apparent from

the outside absolutely so basically for us as far as retaining key employees benefits is a big thing especially in our industry a lot of people even in the manufacturing at all that's not a big thing on people's minds where you know we do 401K we do profit share we do health insurance for people so I think that kind of sets us apart from a lot of other people and then another big thing I see in manufacturing is especially on the smaller companies like most of us are is just not a real power positive

environment our shop I know before I took over was the most miserable place and never wanted to go there everybody was angry all the time people were yelling all the time and I promised the guys when I took over there you know I prob have three of those guys is all there was back then you know I just said hey if you guys believe in me and you want to follow me down this path one thing I'll guarantee you is I'm never going to yell at you if someone is here that is that bad that I need to yell at

you we're just going to part ways I'm going to send you on your way and that's kind of what we've done ever since if if we have you'll get a a errant manager in and he'll want to you know belittle people or you know manager sometimes can be that way and that's sweetest part ways them it's like no that's you know you need to be firm but you don't need to yell at people or scream at people or tell them they're stupid and that I feel goes a long way it's just that positive environment you know for

us I would say pay benefits bonuses culture one of the things we do is cater lunch every day for all of our employees at company cost it's really appreciated with 60 employees everybody's treated like family we all work together and get along and you have to have a great attitude or we won't keep you so it's it's a fun place to be it's interesting you mentioned that the lunches Daya cuz I think it's a lot about optimization Horizon right if you optimize on a short Horizon you make one set of decisions

if you optimize on a longer Horizon you make it it's a different set of Economics I think a lot about the comments we had made the multiple comments we had made about essentially you know this change isn't optional right this is part of the bigger picture and and whether it's tracking time here or renting an information there or you know doing something that impacts your your team members Downstream it almost feels like you have to earn that right to be able to say that through building building

trust in in the team before you're able to to kind of ask for that reciprocity which is adherence like fanatical adherence to what needs to be done to get the job done right versus I guess what we hear in some shops that have know more poor culture is it's it's a a low trust environment and and when you come down and that you hear a fear of The Operators well they're not going to do what I ask I'm I'm afraid that they're going to essentially Revolt and it seems like it really stems from the very

beginning it's like that Foundation that's being laid from that upfront investment so maybe getting over a little more specific you know Rob we've been watching you know for the last several years our relationship you know Sam specifically has been really stepping up how proactively do you think about developing your leadership well I mean it's pretty much every day especially now that they kind of handle the day today and I'm trying to move more on to more building the company and stuff like that

I look at every one of those guys and it's like well what can I do to make you better cuz the better you are is the better that we can be and now that has tripled down to where now I don't even have to do that that much because now all my managers they're looking at it cuz it always used to be be that thing like I was just talking about like oh that guy is just stupid we need to get rid of him it's like do we really though or can we try to bring this guy up and be and we have a pretty good amount

of people that just that happened where it's like oh man I don't think this guy's going to work out you know it's like well let's try him over here let's do that and then you get him with the right manager and next thing you know three years later that guy's a manager you know it's like wow we're going to fire that guy believe that you know so it's it's one of the probably most important things that took me too long to learn for sure I never used to put a lot of weight in it now it's the most important

thing Rob how many college degrees are help in your company cumulative I don't know if anyone has one other than Sarah actually I think I think Sam was close but never quite finished I think so one one bachelors and one almost yeah know and I say that in a very endearing way one of the things I was thinking about is a lot of leadership in the metal finishing Job Shop space tends to come from folks on the floor that showed up and work their tail off reliably looks like start something the day in

here it's certainly the case in our operation most of our management has worked their way up from the bottom and promoted we have hired a few from outside but we we like to bring as many up that have' started with us and work them in we've got a lot of cross training a lot of backup for everybody so that nobody would shut the place down if they were missed for any amount of time just all work together yeah we have definitely focused on on training opportunities we're very flexible with our employees

who are college students so they have classes during the day that they can go and take those classes we tell them if they wish to make up the hours they can but they don't have to they don't want to so we're very flexible on that we send employees the training as well in their specific area so we've sent many of the linesmen to anodizing classes either through the luminum anodizing Council or through the national associate of service finishing so we give them those opportunities as well mean we

pay for their flights the hotels the whole because that investment in them pays back many times over and then they learned something they didn't know before one of the other things I think it's really important it's not exactly related to training but it's related to feedback to the employees when we bought the business none of the employees in 27 years had gotten performance review none of them they didn't know what a performance review looked like right and so we gave them those reviews but we

also then gave them objectives to focus on and then we gave them things that we were going to focus on them how are we going to help them right and they were stunned by it and then also that provided a method for us to rank our employees when it comes to bonuses right so we just didn't arbitrarily just say here's 50 bucks we gave them a review they got a score we told them what they would be eligible for and if they exceeded expectations they can get more if they didn't they would get less right

it made it fair to everybody but it instilled this motivation with hey I can make 150% of bonus eligibility that's our cap right or the bottom is 60% less than 60% you're terminated I mean we made the rules very clear to everybody but we provide a an annual performance review we do a semiannual for certain individuals we do 90day probation reviews when they're new employees so this kind of continuous feedback helps them improve and they feel like they're part of the process as opposed to another

Cog in the wheel very interesting it's counterintuitive when you say if XYZ is true you're fired but then they say I like that as an employee would you say that's because they they feel that you're creating a team of high performance and you're not going to tolerate exactly when we first bought the team we went through the four stages of team development which is well known for many decades right so we I feel we do have a high performing team now right but because they have a review process they

know what we expect from them what you don't want is an employee failing and they didn't know what the expectations right so you're setting them up to fail so we make sure the employees do know what our expectations are on a regular basis and tell them that if you exceed those expectations you will be rewarded right and so it just created a different TI dynamic in the shop that we had before we were just coming to work doing their job going home coming to work doing their job going that was it and

now we have a very fun environment we joke around the shop we play live music everybody every employee gets a chance every day to pick their channeled music since we have so many varieties you from 23 to 62 so we have a nice variety of Music selections going on on daily but that's part of the fun right so that that that was a big change for the culture of the company when we started doing reviews for the employees and they realized oh wow this is what they need from me and if I do this or do more

from me and if I do this or do more from me and if I do this or do more I can even do better financially right and so that was a big plus Andrew you have a lot of experience in you know big city I'm sure there's an instinct to deploy every knob of of kind of tried and true Corporate America have you had to leave any arrows in the quiver yes coming down to a smaller business yes yes yes my biggest team was over 3,000 people across 57 countries so definitely a different Dynamic you know running a

small shop running well actually running a business right so even though I had a pnl and balance sheet because it was such a large business but this is definitely different for me having my own business right the potential for failure at any moment in the corporate world I all my direct reports were all senior Executives they had master's degrees some of them had phds you know it's just a little bit different right and so all the employees when I took over you know none of them had any education

of any kind that's why we we started saying sending you to school and classes and and opportunities for education but definitely one of the things that because the guys were talking about some of the tangible attributes of retention which have to do with bonuses pay compensation benefits Etc there's these intangibles that I've always used even in the corporate world which have to do with Independence purpose cohesion those are the three things so and I I've applied this as a business owner now we

do a lot of government Parts you know we do a a really specialized Optical component from the M1 ABS tanks for the US Army and you know they were getting parts for 25 years and they had no idea they were for the tank for the US Army right and so we took we've taken our employes regularly to the fabricator where they make the parts so they can see the parts being made they can see it assembled what it's for now they have this sense of purpose you know I realize that I'm making a part that's really

important you know my son is active duty Army I want his parts to work that they get sent out that they're anodized by our team right so that sense of purpose creates retention right that they when they go home the day I'm doing something that's meaningful right then the other part Independence you know I try to and if you guys want to disagree with me for my team go ahead but I let the plant run the plant I let the office run the office I'm focusing on growing my brand that's what I'm focusing

on right so let the plant leadership run the plant let the office leadership run the office I one of the things that you know I did when I was in the military is I had a tendency of taking over right and so I had to relearned that when I went in the corporate world but especially and now that I own a business they know what they're doing so I trust them right and and that's an important part of retention and having that sense of Independence they feel like they're part of the process and not just

being told what to do every day and the cian part and he kind of mentioned a little bit about maybe an individual we had one individual last year there's a character Eeyore from Winnie the Pooh so think of eore 20 times worse right and we just hired the person it was military veteran because I'm I'm very focused on trying to help veterans out there's just way too many veterans on the streets unfortunately this individual was just bringing the entire team down on a daily basis with just personal

issues nothing to do with work just complaining complaining every day I took him for some coaching at the VA as well to try to help him but nothing was getting through until the point where unfortunately he didn't survive as an employee because he was affecting the morale of the team and I had a high performing team so sometimes you got to make the tough decisions right and just and just realize what's for the betterment of the entire team and then individual we' let go yeah very nice Rob maybe

a question for you and and I think Andrew will have a very verbose answer to this in a year or two as well as he kind of the growth shows up in in numbers I I know a lot of it's infrastr structure right now digital and physical but Rob in the last couple years like just the number of people number of Parts number of customers just every number is is going up and up so how do you manage through that because right if you just come in and do the same yesterday as what you did today and it's just steady

state it's a lot easier right so handling the complexity a Job Shop while growing a team while getting leaders to stand up while everything's growing all at the same time how's that been and how much has that growth been a challenge well it pretty much goes back to what I just last thing I said is that you have to bring up the people around you I can't do it all by myself especially that's what I tell my guys all the time now I'm like we are that ship has sailed where it's too big I can't do it

so if you guys can't stop up to the the challenge and help me do this then we either have to shrink or sell or do something else because I have to now move on other things and you guys have to move up we have to bring up the guys below you so once you get past a certain point it almost doesn't really get more difficult I guess it's just the same thing on a bigger scale and I would say maybe the hardest part is just finding those good people because not everybody can be brought up to that level some

people don't even want it so it's picking the right people hiring the right people and doing the best you can to bring them up I mean that's that's how we've done it pretty much excellent Rob maybe you could tell us a little bit more about your personal vacation o o over the years to me that's almost like a little bit of a barometer and I'm I'm guilty as could be of this and maybe I got to test this barometer see what it breaks but you know if you step away for several days in a row how do things

maintain I was talking another shop the other month I went on a 3-we vacation to Costa Rica and everything went like just went normal like nothing nothing broke and that was just a massive Victory for this shop owner because you know years before like the doctor was saying hey stop working so much right got to that point wondering if if you've if you've tested that that that kind of a pressure test yet or I've definitely been able to take a little more time what always sucks me back in is the opportunities

right like okay we're going along we're we're getting some new work in and that's fine and then it seems like every time I get kind of comfortable like we're in a pretty good spot here I got some free time I can do what I want to do then you know someone calls me hey Rob I got all this work I need to do and it's like all right I got to get more equipment I got to get another building now I got to do all these things and then but I enjoy that that's that almost to me is the vacation I love that part

of it dealing with you know Johnny's sick today and whatever's going on over there if I don't have to deal with that I'll work is fine I I absolutely love the rest of it so but yeah definitely to answer your question more time I think it was last year I ended up taking like almost three full Vacations so yeah never never would have jumped with that prior to that so definitely working out very nice Dana how about yourself with h vacation and what happens at what's happening at DNK today right I I

don't know how many phone calls you've made since you've been here or what happens if you don't show up for for a week we've got a great team we just had off 15 days few weeks ago they usually tease us that they set new sales records when we're gone it it runs fine without us great team growing a lot with Steelhead and higher productivity having to do less work and make more money Dana a couple more quick questions for you I mean if I recall correctly I actually didn't have to terminate anyone to

get you know compliance with the the system but there was the expectation that they had to use it how much was that you driving that or are you able to get your leadership team to also drive a unity in the team I was certainly the head of driving it demanding that it will get done but it was it trickled down from the management to implement to the people under them most of the already people do not work directly for me they work for the management so and then earlier today you had mentioned and

to the extent you're you're you're comfortable and like to to discuss it or you can just pass but you mentioned employee ownership how are you thinking about that and then how are you thinking about who's the key parts of the puzzle that should be bought in for the future of DNK powder we are working on potentially selling to seven of our management team that I feel have earned it have built this business and continue to grow it for us they will have some ownership in the growth and be able to benefit

financially I will probably be the be biggest benefit out of that as they continue to grow the business but it's a chance for us to give back and reward those that have been there for us excellent maybe maybe we could open up to the to to the crowd I know there's businesses at all different stages later stages earlier stages how important would you guys say an internal certification system is cuz we're thinking about developing that like if somebody's C forklift certified or they they're certified

a quality control specialist or I feel like that would give some of my employees some like some objectives to kind of go after and maybe get a sense of purpose but do you guys do anything like that internally so we don't really specifically certify people on paper we we do definitely train people for certain things that I guess it's more verbal that they are or aren't able to do I kind of like the idea of what you're talking about for sure I mean other than like forklift operators you know they're

certified and a couple things like that but yeah I think you're on to something with that for sure but yeah like I said we do it more just just verbally like hey you know you've been trained on this and you can do it now but yeah we'll start actually part of the net Gap is we have to require to show proof of of training that people are trained right so in a sense that's certification for us so we have forms that are filled out with the name the date who certify them or we train them but we have

to show that for NCAP we do have other programs that are required U at a legal level for instance we are required annually to do hazardous training right to show certification hazardous training so we have a third party that comes into that we have Rec training I don't know if you guys are familiar with that but it has to do also with the EPA so in order to maintain compliance you have to show that the people can know how to handle hazardous materials so there's an actual certificate for that as

well so yeah but but also NADCAP requires these kind of training proof of training right yeah that would be like more like ex external requirements I'm talking about like yeah internal like just like a basic like Oh I'm a line operator no we we've got yeah we have training for using the PO assembly system training for the passive Bas Sy which is fully automated training for even the forklift or training how to do pH checks as an example so yeah we have a whole list and that's part and we show that

as as a matter of fact NADCAP doesn't tell you what your list should be we just produced our own list and and the list is extensive and we do it some of our are quarterly sum are semiannually some are annually right it depends on what it is and and we bring somebody on board we actually have an onboarding training list what's the basic they need to know when they start within the first 90 days at the end of the 90 days we evaluate how how well they did for that so and it helps with our quality for

sure one thing I wanted to add for because on topic retention I you know if you're not part of what's called an RMA your Regional manufacturing association I highly encourage you to join your Regional manufacturing association they're in all 50 states you know I'm a member of mine which is the Barry manufacturing association why is that important for retention they hold regular events networking events for instance Bay Area twice a year has manufacturing night with the bolts which is our local hockey

team and so we reward our employees by buying them tickets to go to manufacturing and so two hours at the bar and then the and at the the game itself they also do stuff with the Buccaneers and and what's the raay is the Bas I'm a big baseball fan so I'm sorry about that but that but it's part of it they also do many charity events that are for our local youth to help them become the future manufacturers and again I reward my employees by participating those things we we have a annual golf tournament

so we have employees participate in that there's a cornhole tournament but it's all organized by the local RMA and the money that they raise goes to to scholarships right for our youth so there's a win-win the employees get time to socialize have fun have a good time and at the same time you got the local youth having opportunities for scholarships so if you're not a member of your RMA I highly encourage you to find out who is your RMA in your local area and see how how much to join because usually

the small shops is pretty cheap it's for the big players you know have a 100 employees or more where they charge the big bucks but for manufacturers is usually a lot cheaper than than anybody else especially if you're a non-manufacturer want en jooy right and there's usually a ratio for every 10 manufacturers only one non manufacturing it's all controlled right so it's not a bunch of people trying to sell you stuff like Steelhead so I couldn't help I had to throw that in there je so it's not suppliers

it's manufacturers it's manufacturing dream but it's a great opportunity for retention to help your employees have a good time outside of the shop as well yeah maybe retention would be a good one just to you know for maybe all three of you to touch on and maybe over the last couple years I know with the co and labor and everything like that and I know we've had extended conversations about some of the competition for people's time coming from private and public sector how retention rate's been for

kind of the The Operators kind of overtime as well so it seems like the guys that we've had for a while we don't ever lose those it's more the guys that you know we constantly growing so you always need more so it's seems like we never get fully solidified like oh we need 40 people and we'll have 40 for like a year it's no we need 40 and then 3 months later we need two more or two more so it seems like trying to keep that last little bit filled is pretty difficult especially nowadays it is so hard

to find anybody that just even wants to work at all and we've offered and offered and offered so I mean you're paying entry level people so much money and they still just won't come and do it so that's that's been heart you know you got go through you know we used to have a rule we figured about 10 to get one good now I'd say it's probably 25 literally that's oh it's so bad right now it's horrible yeah especially in our area it's it's brutal but you find the ones I mean we probably well just the

guy just hit a year one of those ones came in threw with a group of other guys and was only okay at first but kind of bought in we call it buying into the system like everyone comes in they have this no that you're there to to screw them over in some way and it's us against them and it takes a little bit for them to kind of get comfortable and be like oh wait maybe you're not trying to do that so he finally kind of bought in and then he's like okay well I want to get more involved it's like okay

fine and then within the last few months now he's a manager making way more money and super happy and wants to be involved it's like man if you would have done that when we first hired you where would you be you know so that that's the hard part right there is getting over that stigma that it's us against them even though we have have 35 guys probably that are fully 100% bought in totally on board with the whole system but everyone's still skeptical in the beginning yeah it's interesting it's wonder

how reducible that is it might just be 90 days or 6 months or whatever because they're just trained in right because we we see it as well again I mentioned at the top of the the session about what you know when we interact with some shops I mean and this is three incredible examples of how to run a Job Shop by the way and take care of your people really really impressive and that's from our perspective it was working with with all of you very deeply i''s say the opposite end just to touch on that

is a very low trust environment US versus them they weren't born with that I guess is what I'm saying right there there are there there does exist place of employment where it's it's again short time Horizon you know oh we're going to put iPads on the floor oh we can't they're going they're going to steal them it's like what do you mean they're going to steal them like you know but it's then you go look at the bathroom that that operators have to use and it's you know folder scan right then the

front office is glass and leather right it can be pretty pretty obvious on the outside but it's something that takes a lot of deliberate effort I would have to agree there's issues especially with younger employees and retention there just seems to be not a lot of loyalty if somebody else paying 50 cents or an hour or a dollar an hour more they'll jump ship quick it's difficult we we've been able to get help but it's it's a lot of turn over in our case we me we measure retention based on the individual

themselves decided to leave right I don't measure the people that didn't pass the probationary period right an example we've had the business since September of 2020 two have left on their own and both were because the family was moving to another town right for personal reasons I have hired and fired in the same time since 2020 16 people because they did not fit with our company culture right they came there because they wanted to collect the paycheck they were in it for themselves they didn't

understand there was a bigger picture that if you can contribute as part of the whole we're going to reward you you're going to be part of the success story but if you're there for yourself you're not this is not the frame of mind that we need and we also focus on their attitude on their approach to Quality because if they're in of themselves they don't really care about the part of the job they're doing right and so you see that within 90 days pretty quickly and and usually we take action I had

one person that lasted literally a day and a half that was it and some lasted you know up to the 88th day as well cuz I'm trying to give them an opportunity to succeed and we give them feedback on a 30-day cycle as well that those that are that seem like they're not going to make it but there are others that have made it so we went from four employees to we have 16 active employees now we're going to add eight more in the next six months we have also we're doing our hiring now out of state I just

can't find the talent local and you're going to relocate them yeah so two of these folks that are starting here in the next 30 to 60 days they're coming from a lot huge Metal Finishing facilities we're talking about the facilities that are 150,00 ft or more right and so and that's fine with me I want to bring people with the right attitude right and with the right state of mind and so they're not going to bring any baggage either so they all went through an interview process I had them come with

their families to visit the shop and make sure it's a fit for them because the Grass Is Always Green on the other side so you want to make sure you're not making a mistake right so we had them come out visit and met with my wife and my daughter as well and and and they're coming right and so they're going to bring a new level of perspective you know we're a we were a really small shop now we're a mediumsized shop in terms of Revenue I want to get to a big Revenue right shop right and so I want that

kind of attitude to be brought man PL plant manager Randy here case in point he he's our plan manager but he didn't come from metal finishing he came from the fabric from our customer side 20 years right why cuz I wanted somebody with the the understood our customers pain point right that's why I recruited R so it's all about if you want a high performing team and you want retention it it's about attitude it's about company culture like we've been talking about it's not all about just money or benefits

right yeah and it's not pizza parties on Fridays isn't going to be enough right it's very deliberate campaign right you can tell a lot of thought goes into it it's very expensive like time and energy and effort and having a great culture is something that I would say unlocks the future but has to be earned and comes at at a cost and and it's not something that can be done quick quickly or cheaply and it requires sacrifice essentially so it's really interesting specifics anyone else in the in the

crowd when I think about retention and some some points you guys have brought up it's about like career progression you know development into bigger and better roles for my shop we've got 10 employees myself included two of us are in the office okay so we kind of wear all the administrative hats on the floor we've got really one supervisor so it's it's pretty flat on the floor in terms of employee like differentiation and then there's kind of a a void right of any staff functions and so as I'm looking

ahead at growing or scaling you know identifying you know what are what's the what's the first key hire in the office you know what's the first kind of key position on the floor that I create whether it's quality or you know a more advanced operations manager Etc you know so that then I can develop guys into those roles like maybe you all could touch on any experience just kind of building out those those key functions for the talent to develop into like how you made the decisions to create those

roles which ones have been the most important well I know for me anyways is just more the way my mind works I kind of I don't always have like the the best plan cuz it seems like even when you have one life industry whatever takes a different direction and I used to hold on to my plan to a fault to where it was taking me down so now I usually have some sort of a loose plan but it's always just assessing all the time all day every day what's going on what's going on and eventually those things should

just rise to the top just naturally you should be like oh man like you know we're having trouble keeping track of whatever it might be payroll oh we're going to need someone in the office that can handle this payroll or we're really we're struggling on our quality we're shipping out bad parts we really need a quality manager I I don't to me it seems like it' be hard to almost plan that ahead of time I think you're going to cuz each company is going to grow its own Direction its own even depending

what type of Parts you're doing or things like that so I think you almost have to kind of listen to what the business is telling you and and grow in that direction you know that that's my take on it anyways for you in your experience what was one of those moments where you're like I need that I'm going to do it now this will be almost my first one literally so Joff was talking about Sam he's kind of my right-hand man now we had hired him we probably had about five guys at the time I think we have

about 58 now and was like oh I need a guy to 58 now and was like oh I need a guy to 58 now and was like oh I need a guy to help me out with this you know with basically quality is what I what I started him out but that by that time we probably had closer to 20 employees and I could just see the direction things were headed and I thought man we really took took make this next hurdle I I really need to get some quality you know so I thought yeah he's kind of been the one that's been at the end of

our line packaging inspecting parts so he kind of gets the quality end of it so I basically promoted him up to Quality we didn't really have enough for just a quality manager at the time so he kind of morphed into like basically our production manager from there and then was doing both for a while and then we grew an enough where is like well I can't do all this anymore so then I had to bring up another guy to basically be the quality from there so we stay pretty lean in our office I probably because

it's me and my son and my wife that do a lot of it so I demand a lot of that do a lot of it so I demand a lot of that do a lot of it so I demand a lot of us where we would probably have three more people in there if it wasn't us so that's a little different like we only have really one other person in there now for how many we have in the back we probably should have a few more and probably will but again once it jumps out at me and dictates that hey this is what we need then then that's what it'll

be but we also work off of a a profit share so everybody that works for me they don't want anybody there we don't need because in their mind that person is a taking from The Profit because they're getting a a weekly paycheck and if they're there besides that if we do get profit then they're they're taking from that too so we run kind of lean that way and a lot of people take on a little extra responsibility just to keep our our payroll as lean as it can be basically I have to agree with that I think

you have to find out where your needs are and look at the talents you got and if you get somebody you can move into that role if the need gets bigger than what talent you got you got to look at hiring from outside yeah for for us it's risk reward right so we were looking where were vulnerability and and in our case when I got to business our predecessor was all doing all the chemical titrations and even though I could do it I didn't want to do it right and so that was a loose end it right and so

that was a loose end it right and so that was a loose end that had to be addressed right away so I ended up just by chance running into a retiree from Indiana and doing chemical titrations for 50 years he was well known in the especially in the waste industry and I said hey you would you like to come over twice a week 3 hours each time or six hours a week and help me with the chemical tra these are early days right and then I recruited and we were short in the office staff and my the office staff

unfortunately we did not keep when we did the acquisition primarily because they just did not want to use computers it just it was not where I was going right and they still wanted to use their ledgers and things like that and I said I'm sorry but that's not where we're heading and so we ended up hiring a sophomore out of the local College as as our office staff member and then about two months later I realized she was minoring in chemistry and I say by the way if I had Charlie Mentor you in chemical

trations would you be interested right now mind you this is 6 months after we bought about the business this is early 21 and she say sure now she's our QA lab lead right and no longer work in the office and now I'm recruiting two interns to report to her from the local college right so she's about to graduate from SBC St Petersburg College and she's a QA lab lead so it all worked out in the end what because I identified a risk I didn't it was something I was not passionate about something I didn't

want to do I wanted to focus on on growing my brand that's what I wanted to do right and and so it it all worked out to where I had a chance meeting at a local conference recruited this gentleman he ended up being her mentor and now she's the lead for our QA laboratory right and so that if you're going to do that you need to focus on where your risk are where your vulnerabilities are where your single point failures are and then it turned out she's doing so well I mean it's a wonderful retention

story right if I had kept her in the office she may not have stayed with this right so now now she and now she and she made product finishing 40 under 40 last year right cuz I submit that's another thing you need to recognize your employees right so I did all the paperwork and out of a th000 applicants she made 440 last year right and and so the pride in that just amazing right so if to answer your question look for your vulnerabilities look for your risk look for things that you're not particularly

passionate about or somebody else may not be passionate about and reassign them and have somebody else do but that's how we started one thing I would add is one thing that we've seen as we've been growing is is ask a question who's doing it today because you you definitely as you ident identify the different roles it can be difficult to pre-construct them ahead of time before they're needed but if you just say like who's doing it today naturally then kind of build on top of that that's something

that that we've seen work really well the other one is is once you kind of identify who that person is instead of you know spending a lot of time defining a a big theoretical job description and just say like this metric this is your metric like on time delivery something you mentioned right so I I assume that's maybe something that you own and maybe someone else but like it's no no no this isn't this is your job like this number and then also what you inspect people respect so this is your number

you own it and and we're going to check it every single week every single month you tell me what we have to do to make sure that number gets hit and you tell the rest of the team what to do so it it creates a way to kind of cut through the noise without having to create complex webs of responsibilities it's just like you just own this outcome and the whole team's here to to support andate to help help you including the ownership a huge round of applause gentlemen thank you very much appreciate it.