The Power of a Fresh Set of Eyes

[Music] hello everyone welcome to the 21 hats podcast I'm your host Lauren Feldman this week Jay goz Jackie Russo and William Vander blumen discuss their experiences bringing in outside Consultants to review their business operations before the holidays Lou mosa who runs American management services offered to have his team take a look at any of the businesses owned by the regulars on this podcast Jackie took Lou up on the offer and shares here what she learned Jay declined the offer and he explains why William meanwhile has had two experiences with Consultants that went well and one he won't talk about plus the three owners assess what they think the coming mix of regulatory changes tax cuts increased tariffs and mass deportations might mean for their businesses they also offer their views of the state laws that forbid businesses to ask job candidates about their salary histories I'm sorry Williams says but if you believe what people tell you when you say tell me how much you're making you need to stop even in Good Times owning and running a business can be a lonely Pursuit our hope is that these weekly conversations will let owners know they are not alone in facing challenges in fact that's the whole idea behind the 21 hats Community engaging with other owners to get the kinds of insights only another owner can offer if you're interested in learning more step one is to sign up for a free trial of the Morning Report which highlights the most important news of the day for business owners so you don't have to go looking for it step two is to get on our slack Channel where you can ask questions get vendor recommendations and tap the wisdom of a very impressive crowd just search the 21 hats Morning Report to subscribe joining me this week on the podcast our regulars Jay gos CEO of the gos group whose companies in Chicago include a picture frame business artist frame service and a home furnishing store Jas at home Jackie Russo CEO of brand Russo a marketing agency based in Lafayette Louisiana and William Vander bluman CEO of Vander bluman Search Group the houston-based recruiting firm that works with churches and other faith-based organizations the episode is titled the power of a fresh set of eyes welcome Jay Jackie and William it's great to have you here I want to talk today about what it's like having an outside consultant a fresh set of eyes come in and and take a look at your business all of the regulars on this podcast received an offer from Lou mosa who runs American Management Services a Consulting business that focuses on businesses like yours he reached out and offered to review the inner workings of your business just as he's done for thousands of others uh he's a regular contributor as you may know to the Morning Report the offer was that Lou would would have one of his Consultants take a close look at the way you run your business and see if they have any suggestions Jackie you took Lou up on the offer I'm really eager to hear how did it go I thought it was awesome I immediately thought that he would probably not pick me because I'm the smallest in terms of Revenue of the companies and I you know he gets to travel to cool glamorous cities so I wasn't sure that Lafayette Louisiana was going to be on his bingo card and so we jumped on a call together and had a delightful conversation and I thought I could lure him with attempts of warm weather until he informed me that he was in Florida I was like all right well I don't even have that going for me and we had a great conversation he requested a ton of information that I I knew he would want and I sent it over uh under you know an NDA what kind of information Jackie Financial starting with it was um a p&l three years balance sheet and maybe something else and then a list of organization chart um kind of a detailed organizational chart team members who they are what they do and then I just took the liberty of sending some extra things I don't think I've ever really learned how to read a financial sheet the way that other people probably know how to do it and so in the early years of the company I created these Excel sheets that are now Google Sheets that tell me what I think other people can see when they look at a p&l they can immediately pull out stuff I don't see that I see the numbers but they don't translate for me so I have these Google sheet of projections and forecasting and revenue and a breakdown of sales versus Grace profit so I think it's probably the exact same information it's just translated into a language that makes sense to me and so I sent that to him they did not use that I will say for the record they used all the real information and then they surveyed my team uh they sent out a really nice thorough survey to every employee to ask them some really good uh specific questions what kinds of questions things about uh what's going right and wrong with the company how they're being supported or not what they uh feel is our our strengths where we could improve the things you would want to know and because it was done through an outside third party I think my team was incredibly forthcoming and it was kept Anonymous so I don't really know who said what now a couple people you know outed themselves in the way they phrased answers but I appreciated their cander and their honesty and then I got back a very uh compreh ensive thorough report of the highs and lows of our financials the highs and lows of the team I would tell you of the 17 questions we had incredibly positive like 92% or above responses on 14 of the questions the other three were not yes and NOS they were more detailed you know give me the three things you feel or the three things you want and so those three I thought uh were very thoughtful consider it specific answers to the questions by the team we're having a state of the union on Friday where we'll go through it together as well as some other things we're going to talk about that we do in our regular professional development sessions and um I'm excited for the year I want to ask you a little bit about what you've feel you learn from this um but but as always uh Jay and William if you have questions uh please don't hesitate to jump in I do have a question and I have the utmost respect for what Lou does and I know is very successful with it everything you just said and I just have a problem with what personally just the way I run my company the way I've built you know I've got 130 employees I've got lots of key people with me for 20 30 years the second I hear the word anonymous I cringe because my whole Essence is about work with me tell me what's on your mind be honest and I believe I built a corporate culture like that so I have a i cringe at the idea that people are going to make comments and be anonymous and then you just use the phrase professional development and in my mind professional development is telling people say what's on your mind to me tell me what's going on and if I was in your situation I would in the next meeting you have with this encourage people feel free to take to ownership on I'm going to read you some comments I'd like you to all get to the point in your careers in your relationship with me that you'll feel comfortable saying oh that was me because I got a real problem with having people that at this level that won't just tell you the truth I think that's very fair and I have a much smaller team we're 18 and I have a much younger team I don't have anybody that's been with me 30 years I have some 12 and 14 years and I have some remotes and so we have some differences there what I feel like came through this that would not maybe have because we do twice a year reviews oneon-one and then we do the once a month team Gatherings for whatever reason maybe they didn't think about it until the way this question was prompted so I can own that I'm not asking the right questions to get these answers there's some insight they came through I have a member of my creative team that I have just discovered does not like going on photo shoots I had no idea honestly I've always thought they were kind of a reward you get to travel to cool places you get to go out to eat you get to stay in a hotel she hates them and I don't know that I would have known to ask a question to get that answer so I think you're right and I'm glad I got this information no for sure I just think you can take it and move to the next level of getting them to realize hey there's nothing here that anyone said I don't take any of this personally it's good input I believe that's our job to get people over their fear of the boss right William what do you think to me I mean you can't have a close personal relationship with 135 employees well I certainly don't I don't even know some of their names frankly so not everybody is going to be forthcoming and you can no I'm talking about the top 20 you know years ago back in a previous career when I was a pastor and our church had a lot of corporate leadership in it I mean a lot I had one friend say you've got more CEOs and Coos and You' got some eiie iOS but uh a younger COO of a very large company like Fortune 50 came to me he was being asked to consider a CEO position at a smaller company but a very substantial one and he'd always wanted to be CEO and he asked me my advice and I said first of all you need to better advisers but I said why are you hesitant at all at taking the job and he said something to me that I didn't understand at the time and I get it now here's what he said William have you never heard the first day you're the CEO is the last day you hear the truth that sat with me and I think I understand it better now and I don't I don't think it I think the bigger the organization the more true that is but you know we've got 40 people and I don't hear the truth from all of them uh so I whether I know their name or not so anytime I think I can find someone who is telling me the truth and often times that has to be an outsider what's the old line what's the definition of an expert someone who lives more than 30 miles from here you know even if it takes that even with the pain that comes with that and the awkwardness I find that that third set of eyes is critical to my ability to hear the truth and I I hope that's what we're taking as a value ad to many of our clients no I totally agree that it was a good exercise I'm I'm just saying and and certainly you know what I'm probably wrong it's not 20 it's probably 10 people that I can count on it is 10 people but I think we should all strive to get people who if they don't say it to you at least they'll say it to their supervisor and it can filter its way up because that old expression which I certainly have heard you know the day you become CEO is the last day they hear the truth we should all be working against that I mean that that should be one of our goals that's just that's a horrible thing to accept and to not try to fix all right back to the main show I want to know what Jackie learned from this process what do you want to tell us about first what you heard from the employees or what they made of your financials well let's do the financials first because that's the part where I think I had the most lessons they highlighted for a trending three year some places where some expenses have gotten out of whack and so that was Illuminating it's sort of like I kind of knew it in my gut but it took a big old spotlight shined it right on it and I thought oh yeah labor expenses a little bit under labor expenses uh we we got a little out of whack there and I know that we're a couple clients um down from where I want to be but I also you know I'm enjoying that four-day week and you got to have enough people to get a lot of work done in 32 hours as opposed to a 40 hour 5day week and so but we knew that going in that that was going to have some impact there and and so that was good we did a big remodel of our building and I love it and it's gorgeous but we have more building space than we really need right now but I feel like we're growing into it if the trend keeps going but I have to balance that who's working in the office versus who's working from home do I need a space this big so that was Illuminating and good you know as always I think with an outside consultant they brought a fresh perspective to something that I just take for granted or have glossed over or don't really pay attention to and they held my eyes open and forced me to look at some things and I'm making some choices that are all going to be positive and I think really not impact the team as much but they're going to impact my bottom line and I feel good about that how are you going to do that what are the steps you're considering well we're putting in um a little bit of a double verification on some expenses because there's some things that people are just kind of passing through and not looking at the way they need to so I've got two pairs of eyes now on everything and that's going to clear up some issues we've talked about this actually I think probably two years ago on a podcast um subscriptions we had some subscriptions that we signed up something for a client because they needed it for something they were doing we don't even have the client anymore but the subscription is still ongoing and we paid for it and so we're putting in a new process to stop that from happening again things are better connected to clients now and um there's a third thing that um I'm introducing on Friday around some of our discretionary spending you know we stock the kitchen with food and snacks for people so they because they work through lunch a lot and we cater our um meetings and little things that add up we pay for parking there's a ton of stuff we pay for that we're going to pay for differently that is going to provide some savings so you have 18 employees was it basically 18 people and you got 18 feedbacks or something like that I got 16 okay 16 okay so my question is on any of the feed back that you got did any of it take you back a little bit and think like wow I can't believe they didn't say something I mean were you taking it back on some of it well the the one thing I just said yes and then the other thing that really um kind of threw me and because we've talked about it on the show I was very intentional for an entire year of raising salaries uh we started at the beginning of the year of what do you want to make and then how close can I get you to that realistically for what still works for our budget and I got just about everybody there and so under the last question of what are three things you would change about your job I think of the 16 12 or 14 of them said more pay and I thought okay what a surprise uhhuh but you know I because I thought I had done a really good job of getting us to a really good place and so I was surprised that still made the list when I look at all the other things we provide so I had to take some some soul-searching time of recovering from my emotional reaction to it um Michael had to take some soul-searching time for his emotional reaction to it and then we had to get down to like okay this is how people feel I would always like to make more money too that's not a shock but what's reality and so I pulled numbers on National averages by industry in our industry by job type and then I pulled Regional you know because we're a small market so that makes a difference and then I charted out where everybody here Falls in those numbers and we're mid to on every single one so on Friday at the State of the Union we're going to be discussing yeah we'd all like to make more money but this is reality can I throw this out I just I have to tell you from from what you're telling me and they're working a lot of them are working from home is that true Jackie are a lot of them working from home um so I would tell you that the creative team comes in every day the other half of the company social media strategist PR strategist account managers researchers they do at least one day in the office and the others are optional and then I have four who actually live out of town okay so my question is did they specifically ask how do you feel about what you're making or did that just come up it came up it was what are the three things you would change about your job because I would never I I wouldn't leave myself open for that because I feel comfortable that I'm paying the right Market wages and then all it does is put you in a situation you have to go no I'm right and you're wrong but if it was just an open-ended thing you know what are you going to do and if one or two people had said it I would think H but to have gotten that many okay well we need to have a conversation yeah for sure both things are true we are paying the top and they want to make more and those two things are both accurate and real so now what well it can show that you've at least done your homework your job now obviously and you're doing it is to just illustrate I believe we are paying Market wages and let it lie we're a lies it's not inconceivable that some of those people were asked what would you change and their reaction was I'm happy with my job I'm happy with what I'm paid but if I could change something I'd be paid more yeah I would have written that if I thought that was an option so maybe have to go what would you like to change except for your pay right exactly yeah exactly except for the things I can't control what would you like to change in my wholesale business I've got 18 independent reps and I called every single one of them who I barely know if I know them at all just to follow up how's it going thank him for the year and it was extremely insightful and the most insightful one was one guy just let it all out told me everything that's wrong blah blah blah and I thanked him profusely and I said you know I'm surprised he goes and so and so call me one of the other reps he's a wuss he wouldn't tell you the truth and he's right and then the guy that he said that about sent me another email because he must have talked to and and he apologized to me that I should have spoke up more so I am training all of them please tell me what's on your mind it's it's a really healthy thing and I absolutely appreciate that that one guy gave me more information than the other 17 combined William have you ever gone through the process of bringing in an outside consultant a fresh set of eyes to look over your whole operation um I have twice and how did it go well the the first one I'll tell you guys offline after the podcast because come on no it's a mutual friend that not gonna you don't you had no identifying characteristics so uh the second one um we brought in to try and do there's a process called Strat Ops do you guys know this process say it again Strat Ops so was a fellow named Tom Patterson developed an implementation of vision called Strat Ops Tom was Peter ducker's right hand and so he's developed this hey here's how you go understand what's coming and there and then Tom was smart enough to like certify people in training Strat Ops and so so forth so we had one of their senior people come in and uh it was really helpful I think the most helpful piece to me was hearing what my lead team thought when someone else was asking the questions and uh just just hearing their perspective like uh we were a much younger company then and uh you know we were somewhere between bootstrap and second stage growth and our facilitator Doug said so William what's what's the strategy for new initiatives out here and I said well you know I like to think and I say all the time we're really good at jumping out of the plane and building the parachute on the way down and everybody laughed and and then my director of marketing said hey Doug I think we're actually just pretty good at jumping out of planes and so that was you know that's a microcosm of a longer thing and then then the actually there's a third one that comes to mind that was pretty helpful are you guys familiar with story brand oh yes yeah so Don's a friend of mine for a long long time he's from here in Houston and we're about the same age uh we brought in one of his senior people to do a story brand for us tell us what that is William story brand is a Don Miller is a whole company called story brand in fact I'm I'm not getting there's no affiliate link here or anything but uh his book which I think has sold slightly fewer copies than the Bible only three less just came out with story brand 2.0 I think it just dropped we have the same publisher maybe two or three days ago but it's basically how do you tell a story what are the key elements of stories that resonate Don studied like movies There's a Hero there's a guide there's a Yoda there's a sherpa there there all these key characters and that and the the stories that really resonate with people how do you tell your company's story in a way that's really going to resonate with the public and I won't bore you with all the technical blocking and tackling I will say if you're listening today and you don't know anything about this it probably is worth going to get a copy of story brand because it will open your eyes to it'll ruin every movie you ever go see because five minutes into the movie You're Going To Know How It Ends so it's a it's a pretty pretty scripted thing Jackie's laughing because she knows this is your world right Jackie oh yes I think Donald Miller is brilliant and one of the things that he's done so well is gotten companies to stop talking about themselves and start talking about the problems they solve that's right you're not the hero make the customer the hero and you provide a path toward solving their problems but that was helpful now because we were I've known Don and we're very familiar with the story we we had already done a lot of that leg work so when we brought the consultant in I think it was Aristotle was quoted as saying the greater part of instruction is being reminded of the things you already know right so we we kind of heard things we already knew and oh good we're doing this right I have a friend who's a pretty well-known therapist and uh I said what's what's a good day for you in your job she says oh it's always the same uh people walk out saying so I'm not crazy so when when Don's team came in and reminded us of things that we already knew and we saw that we were doing things congruent with his method we're like oh we're not crazy so th those would be the the two that I'm willing to talk about Jay you could have taken Lou up on this offer and you chose CH not to why is that because I believe I know it's broken and I'm working on fixing it and you know I I just I'm not saying I would never do it but I got triage going on I'm still you know getting my accounting department back to where it needs to be from the transition of you know a 20year CFO retiring and then hiring the wrong person after that I just don't I just think it would take some time and I just don't think he's G to I I think I know what the issues are and I have been doing it 46 years I think I have a handle on it now I would never tell you I would never do it but right now I'm gonna I have to first clean up the obvious stuff that it's that you know I got to take care of and I have PTSD from I've hired consulting firms over the years a couple times and oh my God that's all I can say oh my God back in the early days I was probably 30 the place was out of control I didn't have a mentor I've never had a job my father had one employee I never really you talk about building the parachute on the way down I was completely out of control I hire the accounting firm their Consulting division to come out and back in the day it was always $122,000 so they give me a whole big booklet and they tell me your receivables are out of control so I said I'm a retailer I I I did give credit to some people I go how many accounts do I have obviously I should have known that myself but okay I told you I was out of control how many accounts do I have and he said to me I'll never forget this phrase he goes that's beyond the scope of this audit so $122,000 that was I got it it's funny that you mention that now I mean it's that was a long time ago I got it I got it no no I'm not no no Lou's extremely I I have the utmost respect for what Lou do I'm not saying that he's like that at all I'm just saying it's a fresh set of eyes Jackie he did this free of charge right yes and in a matter of two weeks maybe two and half weeks during a holiday and I will say This brilliant on his part because it gave him access to everything in the company if there was a place where he could come in and help solve a problem or provide another service or do whatever I'm all in on the L mosca train like I will follow that guy off a cliff I'm so appreciative of what he did and the Insight that it gave me and little bitty things but changes we're going to make here that are going to make a significant difference long term I have to ask you one thing Jackie did he have any comment about the 4-day work week he did not interesting thanks for asking Lauren no you know what I have six things that I need to fix here and frankly here's the real truth I don't need three more to weigh my on my head I already got six key things I need to work on my pricing I need to work on the the accounting I've already got six things that I know I need to get on top of and I'm working on m going a fix said I don't need any more on my plate at this point so I'm not saying I would never hire him I'm sure he's got some insight that I don't have cuz he's dealt with you know hundreds of companies but uh yeah I need triage mode I'm still there all right I want to move on to something else there was a a piece in the Wall Street Journal recently that I highlighted in the morning report that talked about the optimism of Business Leaders heading into 2025 and their plans to hire more people let me just read a little bit of it to you it quoted somebody who runs a very big Staffing firm he said that his company has filled twice as many human resources openings for clients in November of 2024 as it did in November of 2023 and why does that matter because he says I look at our HR placement business as a bellweather because if companies are hiring in that department they're generally getting ready to hire in other areas this piece also uh reported more than 3ars of CEOs who run large companies expect the global economy to improve in the first half of the Year partly because they anticipate lower taxes and fewer regulations under the incoming Administration that's way up from the 45% of CEOs who made the same prediction before the start of 2024 and then it reported nearly two-thirds of us employers plan to add permanent roles in the next 6 months according to a Robert Half survey William you've often seen Trends emerging before the rest of us I'm curious does this line up with what you're seeing uh at your firm I don't know that I'm a the right person to ask on this you know we we serve all kinds of organizations that are values driven whether that's kind of the Chick-fil-A of the world or nonprofits but the backbone of our work is U helping churches find a pastor and we've got different verticals that cover all these different things but you saw the great resignation coming I saw the great resignation coming but the thing about religion it's kind of like alcohol it does well in boom or bust I am hearing from clients that are interested in and how taxes are going to be in you know a better spot irrespective of how they vote that they're looking to do a whole lot of things in the next four years I've I heard was just on the phone with uh merg and acquisition company yesterday that said we're going to see a lot of recapitalization over the next four years U I think it just depends on what you're in you know if tariffs are going to hurt you then that's a different thing I I I don't know how to predict it well what about for you I'm very bullish for us very bullish and that's not just dependent on the elction there are a lot of contributing factors coming together at once that would take a whole podcast but uh I I I've read the article I saw some emails going around from the panelists on this uh podcast and kind of depending on what business you're in and what your perspective is it's either what is it the was it The Tale of Two Cities that said it was the best of times it was the worst of times this is out there I believe they say x amount of employees in the world work for small companies what percentage is that what percent very high very high okay you just quoted I think you read it word for word you just said they said 2third of companies of what companies they're only talking about these gigantic companies they're not talking about small business yeah and and and Jay I'll interrupt you since I'm good at that um most of our work if if the definition of small companies is 500 or few employees that's the bulk of our work and they're all pretty excited about what's coming well I can tell you the typical small business according to I believe the SBA or whatever is less than a 100 employees actually the SBA says less than 500 which is dumb oh okay whatever it is they're certainly they're acting as though they've talk to these big companies and that's the entire completely ignoring small business they made the comment two-thirds of businesses no two-thirds of large businesses that's why I read it um and it and it was clear about that that's who I was talking to and you know my point in raising it is that you know these are people who run large companies yes but they're assessing the economic environment and um you know that's why I'm raising it with you guys I'm eager to hear if it uh resonates with you I gather Jay it it it doesn't I don't think what's happening in Fortune 500 companies is absolutely a reflection what's going on at smaller companies so I don't I believe if you were to to do that same survey with smaller businesses I don't think the results would be the same I think that people are very nervous between tariffs and interest rates and the shortage of employees which has been well documented 10,000 uh baby boomers retiring every day I think those three things mixed together are like the perfect storm and like we don't know where it's going to end up and um I don't know that I'm hiring more people this year I'm waiting to see how January February goes frankly so just because Fortune 500 companies are ramping up doesn't mean that I think the small business people are and I will tell you ask Amy this you know not everybody knows who you're talking about Jay Amy casar he's a small business finance expert yeah he he totally is on the he's if you talk to people that are involved in small business nobody's having a parade right now I think that there's a lot of anxiety in the small business world that doesn't necessarily exist in the big business world the idea that oh taxes are going down is not getting small business excited I'd love to pay taxes I'd love to have an unbelievable tax bill next year because I made so much money that is not driving anything in my world regulation same story really oh my God they're going to get rid of regulations on picture framing great business is going to boom I mean so so those big picture things that some of the Fortune 500 companies are salivating over really don't have any um effect in small business so I'm not I think there's a lot of um anxiety for lack of a better word how about you Jackie are you looking to hire this year we are um I think we'll hire two people in the next week or two that we've been interviewing and then we have two more positions that we're hoping to get filled probably into the first quarter and are you generally bullish on the way things are headed yeah we signed some new clients at the end of the year we have some more new clients we're about to sign this year you know for all of the the um opportunities for improvement that Lou and his team presented to me we still had the best year we've ever had and so we you know that's the fifth in a row from what standpoint Jackie profitability uh no Revenue um profitability we were pretty flat but we had had 20% 18% and 23% the three years before that growth and profitability I made the the connection for somebody the other day that most companies look at marketing as an expense and they approach it with kind of the same mindset that people approach Fitness instead of I'm going to be healthy people say I need to lose weight and so they just focus on losing and if we did exactly the same thing they would stop eating the same way they stop spending money on marketing and then you die and so instead we approach it as a whole body Whole Health Fitness and so we look at all of your marketing expenditures and we find ways to pay for ourselves through the money they save and stop doing stupid things where they're wasting it so it's a win-win situation I want to go back to hiring a little bit I want to revisit a topic that we've discussed here in the past uh um and that's the practice of asking job candidates for their salary histories uh apparently according to another piece that I highlighted recently in the morning report a lot of hiring managers are still asking for those salary histories and they're doing it even in states where it's illegal as I recall William when we had this conversation I don't know maybe two years ago you told us that when you do searches at least as of then uh you always follow the laws in the state where you're operating but your preference was definitely too ask for that salary history I'm I'm curious has anything changed for you no I I I'm going to get the number wrong but I think it's 18 states that uh something in that ballpark that uh say that you can't ask these things so we we want to be compliant and uh even though I think it's a stupid rule it's the rule so we'll follow it the purpose of that rule ostensibly is to even the playing field and not punish people uh who haven't had good salaries in the past especially uh women okay here's the thing Lauren I think it's a stupid rule because people lie when you ask them the question yeah well I'm sure that's true I think it's just very difficult to hire it makes hiring more difficult and I understand the intent behind it and I respect that but you know if you're hiring somebody for a job that there's a gigantic bandwidth of what they could be making and you find out that the last employer or the last few employers were paying in that level then they know more than you do about the person then they're probably they might be worth that I think it's valuable information is for an employer and I really really really do not like the fact in Illinois is one of those states where you can't ask I I it puts me at a tremendous disadvantage to assess People Jay I I I'm sorry but um if you believe what people tell you when you say tell me how much you're making you you need to stop well but you can verify it when you call their reference you can verify it when you call the reference that's fair enough but I I just you know we probably got 300,000 salary data points in our database now and it's amazing to me this is what they said they're making and then you get verification later and it's like no it was higher they they reported higher than than what's what you know the the rule I totally get and Laura and I you know I got five daughters so I totally resonate with the idea that people should be paid fairly irrespective of gender what have you I I feel like and I'm going to sound like an old kudin you know the pendulum in the economy the way I read it with my religion and Philosophy degree is it swings back and forth between whether the employers are in charge or the employees are in charge the employer in charge and then all of a sudden we realize we've got kids working in factories in the industrial revolution well that's got to change so you know formation of unions was a swing back toward uh employees being in charge and that pendulum will always swing I just feel like it's swung a little too hard toward the employees right now Jackie before you started your business you had a successful career in Corporate America did this issue uh occur to you back then did you feel as though you were paid fairly I was paid very well because I lied about what I was making when I was being interviewed and use that to continuously scale up my Revenue there's no reason in the world I should have been making six figures at 24 years old that's Insanity did they think so after they hired you no they thought I was awesome okay so then there wasn't sanity they well you know it worked but they could have had me for Less um don't tell them but you know it's the mid 90s and I literally was 24 years old but I fibbed about what I was making at the job before and used it to add a one at the beginning of my salary when I jumped to the next job so now you're on the other side of the table do you think it's a stupid rule I don't ask because I assume people lie is it the law what's the law in Louisiana I have no idea because I've never asked that's interesting have you found other ways to determine how people have valued the the work of the job candidates you're talking to well you know we talk about industry averages we talk about all of the benefits I try to you know sell this place long before we talk about money so they want it and then we have an honest conversation about what I can afford and what they think they're worth Earth and we find something in the middle that makes everybody happy is William and Jay I I got to ask you guys are both really smart you're both especially really smart about hiring and checking references and the whole process I struggle with the idea that there aren't other ways to get the information you need to make the right decision uh irrespective of the salary that someone else has chosen to pay somebody and that might have been a bad call as as Jackie just established I guess one could ask the reference that's not illegal for them to tell you and you know what I haven't been involved in hiring in a long time so I I maybe that's the answer I'm just particularly frustrated at the moment because I did hire someone who's gone now that I'm sure was not anywhere near what what she purported to be and okay I'll do an admission here I wasn't inv I wasn't in charge of HR you're admitting was someone else's fault well which is my fault everything's and I mean it I'm not just being it's my fault I she didn't check the references like she should have and I should have checked them myself and I didn't and I paid a big price for it so I'm you know taking my own ad I should have absolutely checked the references myself it was for a highlevel person and I didn't and maybe I could have gotten it from that person and I didn't so no I screwed up and I'm paying the price for it I'm still standing on my thing when I do business speeches to business owners I tell them you should check references period every single time and people don't I've been in business for 46 years I've been through hundreds of employees do you know how many reference checks I've I've had the people calling me I think twice think about that generally I'm not you know I'm not gonna generally people don't check references they don't William let me ask you this you've kind of been running an interesting AB test if I understand correctly you must have data since you operate in lots of different states in some States you do it one way and some states you do it the other way do you have a sense whether you would do a better job of picking candidates in states where you get to ask for the salary history than you do in those other states fabulous question we our work around has been you know when you interface with us it's very human human experience but there is some paperwork and one's a questionnaire and one is and and I'd like to say we get this right all the time but the Baseline paperwork for every candidate is if you're comfortable please list your current compensation right and then in the states that it's not a uh Taboo it's not if you're comfortable it's just please list I don't know the answer to your question Lauren it's a great question it really hasn't affected our ability to I can't think of a time where we've taken a candidate to a client they've gotten excited about the candidate they've tried to hire him and then find out they're off by $50,000 or whatever the big number is we try and cross check there's Tech out there that that can help some and uh like glass door is worth so if you're an employer subscribed to the premium you can look up previous employers of the person you can see what the median pay is maybe they're a top performer maybe they're bottom but at the end of the day if you're dependent on people self-reporting their income to make an employment decision you're probably going to get let down a lot and and I'm with Jay the reference calling that's hard stuff because again getting into legal requirements Most states have a rule that if you get a reference call really all you can say is yes they were employed here and they're employed from X to Y and that's it there's no they did a great job here's what they made they're just not allowed to say that maybe you can get them to say those things but smart reference people won't give you that kind of information but they're not smart and they do say stuff that they shouldn't say and i' tell me St because the reality is here's my here's a simple don't pray on the people of of that aren't smart sorry oh no I do for a reference all fair and love and hiring uh when you ask them you say is this person eligible to be hired back and then they might say um we we don't we don't hire people but it's against our policy and then I'd say what if it wasn't against your company policy long silence not a good sign I've learned that when someone left a company and left a real bad taste in their mouth these people want to tell you they want to tell you but they some of them do and some of absolutely come out and said oh that guy oh he's a drug dealer I mean I had someone tell me that on the phone I find that people want to tell you the truth and I laugh at companies to send out I love when they send out the form for the reference check like someone's going to really put in print on an email like I say to myself if you're so lazy you don't want to call to get the reference I'll just put whatever or not respond it's just that is a tremendous opportunity for hiring to check references and you know what William you gave me some great advice today this is what partially why I do this podcast I learned from it one I didn't realize most people lie you've got statistics that's interesting I would have guess some but I wouldn't think most and two I didn't know there was such a thing as glass door premium I what is that it's just the upline of glass door it says subscription and you get a little more information I didn't even know that existed great perfect thank you so for everybody listening glass door is a place where employees go and provide a um ranking and their thoughts on employers and so if you're shopping for a job you go there to see what it's like to work at that company you also have to understand the people that are most likely to go on there are the ones that are pissed off at the company so almost always right you got to take that for you know factor that in well well since we're talking about glass door I'm curious how do you guys handle it if I'm sure this never happen but if somebody were to leave a bad review of working at your companies what's the proper procedure do you respond what do you do well I don't know how to respond to Anonymous never leaves an email address no but you you can't respond to them directly but you can respond on glass door right you can respond on glass door I don't know what we've done there that's a great question I hit someone we we had to you know un hire and she went on there it wasn't horrible it was you know oh blah blah blah you know what she said from her perspective was probably true she wasn't a good employee and like it wasn't vicious it wasn't horrible we left it alone because it was kind of obvious if you read it that this was someone who wasn't doing the job it's like it is what it is but I certainly knew who it was because it's not like I got 8,000 employees if you're probably going to know who it is if someone goes on there complaining about you um if it was horrible maybe you should reach out to them and ask them if they think that was a good idea given that would you like to use me for a reference I have never done reach out to them or also just respond on glass door so that other job candidates reading this don't think you don't care yeah I'm sure that would be appropriate at times Jackie have you done anything like that we had someone who it was their experience and we unhired them uh they came in they were very dishonest not about their pay but about their experience level and their ability to do the job literally to turn on the computer and operate theof software for a graphic designer and um we realized they' come from a very large agency where obviously they were able to uh it was like old high school uh group projects they had other people on the the group do the work and they got all the credit and so they left their thoughts on being unhired and the rest of the employees here very kindly kind of rallied around and left their own uh comments to balance it out and so I think that's fair and the current employees said things like oh it's intense oh it's this it's that so I didn't ask them to give us glowing stars I was pleased that they provided a fair analysis of the pros and cons all right my thanks to Jay goz Jackie Russo and William Vander blumen always a pleasure uh thanks for sharing [Music] guys one thing before you go everything we do at 21 hats is created by entrepreneurs for entrepreneurs to help us all learn together if you get something out of listening to these podcasts episodes consider joining the conversation you can do that by joining the 21 hats sounding board a slack Channel where you can tap the wisdom of a very smart crowd or by becoming a founding member and joining our monthly Zoom Forum where you can be part of conversations much like the ones we have on the podcast you can sign up for both by subscribing to the morning report if you have any questions you can email me at Lauren at21 hats.com and if you get something out of this podcast or out of the morning report please tell a friend tell an enemy tell every business owner you know your word of mouth owner to owner will always be the most effective way to build this community for all of us thank you it means a lot this episode was produced by another entrepreneur Jess staron founder of blank word Productions thanks for listening everyone [Music]