313. Getting Rid Of The People Drama!

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Now, here's your host, Amazon Number One Best Selling Author, Dave Melenda.

Well, hey, Dave Melenda here, Positive Polarity Podcast.

Hope things are going awesome for you this week.

I got a really weird question for you, but I think it's going to be a great topic to unpack

today.

It's a term or two words that I never saw put together before.

So the question is super simple.

Do you have people drama?

And I'm like, what the heck is people drama?

I know what people are obviously.

I know what drama is, but I think I know, but I'm like, I got to get this guy on.

So I'm honored to be hanging out with Tom Healy.

How are you today, my friend?

Well, when you said I have a weird, I thought you were going to say guest after that.

And I'm like, what did I do to come across as weird?

No.

Yeah.

So that was good.

You said weird question, not weird person, but being weird is okay.

That just means you're being authentic.

So people drama, it's an interesting phrase, but inside of organizations, in my experience,

the more people drama you have, the more firefighting that leaders and ownership needs to do, the

more personality conflicts you have, the more talking behind people's back, the more

people the quiet quit, or really quit, the people can treat your customers or clients

and not the manner you want.

And ultimately, what does all this create?

Less stuff gets done.

And if I'm a leader or a CEO or an owner of a business, I want people cooperating, working

hard, getting stuff done so we can sell more widgets and people drama prevents us from

doing that.

Wow.

That's pretty cool.

I love the two words together.

So we'll unpack that today.

You're a co-founder of a company called PeopleOpps360.

So why don't you fill in the audience on that, Tom, as to what PeopleOpps360 is?

We do your HR for you, very, very simple.

So we operate as your outsourced HR manager.

That can be everything from onboarding, off-boarding, payroll, compliance, dealing with drama,

being in regulation and compliance in your state or industry, et cetera, et cetera.

So typically, the organizations we're working with are too small to have a full-time HR

person, or even if they could, they would probably not want to go that route because they'd

hire someone that, frankly, wasn't really going to provide that much value.

So allow us to do it at a very, very high level for the same or less than it would cost

a higher full-time person.

Some of the use cases are, my spouse does HR for us.

I do HR even though we have 25 employees and I have more important things to do.

Our office manager kind of does HR and, to me, none of those things are efficient or

effective.

Sure.

No, absolutely.

So I have a question at the beginning because when I think of HR, I think of the H, the

human side, and then are the resource side.

So I think a human day-to-day interaction trying to get people engaged in their world and

things like that.

And then I think of the R, which is the paperwork, you know, the employee handbook, the onboarding,

insurance, 401K, all that.

Do you work on both sides of the HR world then, Tom?

We do.

So it's a human that's going to answer your questions.

So I'm the CEO of a company and I have questions around healthcare regulations and industry

requirements and remote employees in different spaces.

I want to be able to ask a human being that's very, very qualified for answers to those

specific to my company.

If I have an employee on my team and she has some questions about maternity leave or

Cobra or whatever it might be, I want her to be able to speak to a real human being.

So we, you know, we provide that person, Alicia at peopleops360.com or whoever it is on

our team and they get to work with a real person.

And then yes, the resources, the blocking and tackling of crossing our teeth and dotting

our eyes and all that HR crap that frankly, no one wants to do.

But I'd argue just as importantly, don't know how to do.

We just handle it.

You just do worry about marketing and sales and strategy and customer engagement and opening

up a new location.

Worry about that stuff.

You shouldn't be spending your time on HR.

Sure.

Well, that's awesome.

Well, and I think it's funny because small to medium sized businesses that are listening,

they have no problem hiring and attorney.

They have no problem hiring, you know, a CPA, they hire the people like that.

But like you said, when it comes to the HR thing, I always laugh.

I'm like, whoever went to the bathroom when they were voting, probably got voted to be

the HR person because no one wants it.

No one really is good at it in the sense of again, insurance and, you know, maternity leave

and all that stuff is like, it's just such a tough scenario.

And Dave, well, Dave, one other thought on that I want to add to that is I also think

that it's something that gets brushed, brushed aside and isn't viewed as important.

So here's what happens is I go in and I do a three hour workshop for a room full of

CEOs on your people operations, right?

And I'm talking to them and I say, you know, what's causing you to bang your head against

the wall?

Tom, we can't retain good people.

Tom, it takes us too long to get people up to speed.

Tom, you know, we feel like we're not paying enough and we're losing people to our competitors.

And I hear all these sob stories and I'm sitting there going, the things that you're banging

your head against the wall are HR.

So you can say, oh, who cares about HR and it doesn't matter and let's just have the

office manager or COO also kind of do HR, but what has that gotten you?

Well, it's gotten you people that went, it's gotten you people that have sued you.

It's gotten, you know, your inability to recruit high quality people to come into your organization.

It's caused you to take 90 days to onboard someone when it should take 30 days, et cetera,

et cetera, et cetera.

So you can minimize the importance of this yet you're telling me it's causing you all these

problems.

So to your point, if you're going to outsource, you know, legal work or accounting work

or anything else, why wouldn't you outsource this as well?

It's not something you should just throw at a secretary.

Yeah, and it feels like it's one of the electives, like, you know, if we have extra money

we can do it, but again, a lot of times it just is so darn important, especially, you know,

because you are talking about people and like you mentioned before, you know, I mean, bad

team creates and provides a bad customer experience.

So if we're living to try to sell those widgets and we can't sell them and we have a bad

team, it's like, well, probably started from day one on onboarding.

It started on the interview process.

So this is, this is why I think this is such a powerful topic.

I'm just curious.

And I just want to, one other thing I want to add on next, I think you were alluding

to it is it's just so important business to get to the root cause of issues.

So we'll use your example, our customer service, our net promoter score keeps going down

and we can't figure out what it is.

We have a net promoter score problem.

No, Bob, you don't.

You have a training problem or you have a recruiting problem or you have a culture problem.

So let's get to the root cause of what's actually doing that other than attributing

blame to something that isn't the root cause.

And Gallup says that right now, two out of three people in the US workforce aren't even

engaged in their job.

So it's like when you think about that, I love the proverbial 10 people on a team.

That means three people are doing a ton of heavy lifting.

And there's seven people that are just kind of like, it's not my job.

I leave early, I get there late, I don't really care who's on line one.

I got to go to the bathroom rather than answer the phone.

It really does affect that customer experience.

So like you said, and let's tease that out a little bit more.

Those three people do they stay forever or do they get frustrated because the other

seven people can't carry their weight because high performing people want to be with other

high performing people in high performing environments.

And so, yeah, those seven people, not only are they not carrying their weight, not

only are they dragging down our net promoter score, but they're also running away or running

off the other seven.

The other thing that companies do too is they say, oh, okay, well, we have Dave Mary and

Bob, there are three high performers.

Let's just ignore them and focus on these seven that aren't carrying their weight.

So now the three people are like, wait a second, where's my mentorship, where's my one

on one coaching, where's the conversations about my future here?

It's completely ignored me.

So I'm going to quiet quit or I'm going to loudly quit, but I'm out of here.

Yeah, no, out of sight, out of mind is not a good leadership place to be.

So I'm just curious, like what size company do you feel, you know, obviously there's probably

a starting point for where, you know, people have 360 would jump in and at value.

And I'm sure you could add value from a dollar on up, but what do you normally see as kind

of like the sweet spot where an entrepreneur listening might be like, ah, yeah, I'd love

to do it.

But I really, I can't afford it or we don't have that much HR problems.

Where do you normally see, you know, whether size wise, dollar wise, whatever, where do you

normally see a good starting point for you guys?

So all based on head count revenues are relevant and the head counts 10 to 100, if you're

under 10, you set up a gusto account, you do your HR through there.

The owner or leader of the company can handle all that.

Your trainings typically going to be sit down next to me and I'll teach you how to do this.

And that's totally fine.

You get above 10, you need to have someone in place.

Well, again, whether it's us or it's another option, there's plenty of people out there.

And, you know, you start getting up to that 100 and that's when you're thinking, okay,

we need someone to really be a chief people officer.

We need someone that's going to take the culture, the CEO wants and execute it, build out

a recruiting plan, build out all of the internal training, on board people, drive engagement,

drive retention, really be a people strategist.

Now I will tell you that that person is not cheap, okay, obviously different industries,

different markets.

That is a six figure position.

And in my experience, if you're not willing to make that $150,000 or more investment in

that person, then just outsource it because here's where here's, and this is not just

true of HR outsourcing, it's other disciplines too.

But what happens is someone goes, Tom, you know, that chief people officer, VP of HR that

can handle every aspect of the employee life cycle, I want that person.

I am willing to pay $65,000 for that person.

Well, then you're not getting what you want, you're getting an HR manager and you're

not going to be pleased with the output.

You can call that person, VPC, CPO, whatever the heck you want, that title does not make

that person automatically know how to do all this stuff.

So you know, it's like any, it's like so many other things, right?

You get what you pay for.

And you either make the investment do it right or you outsource to experts that can handle

it.

And again, that's true of, you know, fractional marketing people, fractional bookkeepers,

fractional CFOs, it's all of that.

Yeah.

No, and I think it's easy.

Again, like we said, to no one wants to do the CPA part, most people, most people don't

want to do the legal part, but you know, add HR into that.

Why would you want to do that?

I think that's awesome.

Also, as you look at that 10 to 100, I think there's also, you know, people that have

10 people and they grow to 25 or 30 in two years or whatever there's this growth.

And I think trying to attend, you can probably wear a hat that says, you know, HR on it,

pull that off, put your own or hat on, you can probably, you know, interchange those.

But when you get up into the 2030 range, I got to believe all the sudden part of that

guy or girl's week has to be dedicated HR.

And I'm assuming that's the cool part for you is there's a big blind spot.

I'm guessing for a lot of owners that are like, Hey, I've just been doing this for the

last five years.

And now we doubled or tripled our sales.

So we're just going to keep on doing that.

Do you see that a lot where people just kind of keep on, Hey, this is just how we've

always done it around here, type of mentality?

Dave, I'll tell you about a conversation I had this morning.

This is a local business owner that was referred to me by a referral partner, man.

So 15 employees and resistant to grow.

He's talked about opening up new locations and growing.

And he said, you know, I'd love to and I said, well, why haven't you?

And he goes, Oh, well, because it would be, you know, a headache for HR.

I handle all that and it would be, I said, so hold on a second.

I said permission to be direct with you because I'm a direct person.

But I always like to ask permission for somebody I haven't, haven't ever met before.

And I said, so you mean to tell me the only reason that you're not growing in a faster

rate is because of the HR administrative work it would cause you to do.

And he's like, yeah.

And I said, I said, look, man, I said, let me be honest with you.

You can, you can hire us.

You can hire someone else.

I don't, I don't care what you decide to do.

I said, but please hire someone.

Please outsource this and get it off your plate and grow your damn business.

And he's like, I appreciate your honesty.

I just, you know, that's the difference between me and I think a lot of people in the, in the HR space is,

you know, I'm a lifelong entrepreneur.

So I'm going to challenge people and say, well, we'll get to the HR piece of it.

But let's talk about the business.

Let's talk about the strategy.

Let's talk about the growth plans because what, what I'm trying to do from an HR standpoint is designate people

operation strategy to execute on that.

But you, you got to get out of the way of doing that.

Give it to us.

Tell us how you're going to grow the business and we'll recruit the people, we'll train them,

we'll on board them, we'll answer all their questions, we'll keep you in compliance.

We'll, you know, not help you navigate the employee benefits conversations and the payroll software and all of that.

But man, I, I hate when companies are not growing at the optimal rate because they're bogged down by any BS,

whether it's bookkeeping, HR, you know, administrative stuff, whatever it might be.

Well, and it's one thing to not know it again, a blind spot.

It's another thing like he even knew it could articulate that.

And it's just like, wow, so you'd rather save your $65,000 example or your $100,000,

whatever your charge is, you'd rather save that than get a million dollars,

two million, whatever it is, and sales and just, I mean, you should be paying for yourself.

I'm assuming people have three, you're paying for yourself.

Well, I mean, you know, we're generally, we're about $150 per employee per month.

Okay, very, very simple pricing structure.

Our fees go up as your head count goes up.

So, you know, if you have, if you have 20 employees, you're talking about three grand a month.

I mean, this is, this is nothing, right?

This is, this is like a part time person.

So give us the three grand, give us all the file, the paperwork, the logins and go,

go build your business, go network, go open a new location, go do, go golf more.

I mean, do vacation, do something, but this is, this is just ridiculous.

Yeah, wow, that's crazy.

And you don't know anything about snow being from Phoenix, but or Arizona.

I grew up in Pittsburgh.

So I know a little bit about it, but those ski in the winters, those

entrypreneurs would need to think twice about not hiring somebody to plow their driveway

because again, you know, they're, they just outsource as much as they can.

So there are some things that they outsource that are, you know, obviously no

brainers, and then there's some things that are like, oh my gosh, this is, you know,

I can do this.

And do you run into a lot of, I can do this type of people.

Yeah, I run, I run into all kinds of people.

I run into people that don't love outsourcing because I need to hire someone

full time and I need them to be sitting in my office.

And I need to be able to look at them.

Well, you know, you have to figure out a way to reconcile your desire,

for control over everything because that's going to, that's going to hurt you.

So there, there's, there's some people that don't believe that someone can help

them in their business unless they're full time W2, but in seat and they can see it

through the window of their, their private office.

So you have people that just believe on hiring everything.

Some people don't trust.

I don't trust anyone to do my books.

I don't trust anyone to do my HR because they've been burned by a consultant or someone

before, sometimes people are just so new to business.

You know, I love baking cakes.

I decided to open up a cake shop.

Now we have 15 employees, but I'm just a cake baker at heart.

Well, okay, but you need to shift.

Now you need to be a business owner and, and you've got to learn this.

I just, I, I have very little tolerance in this day and age for people

to claim ignorance.

So hey, Tom, I'm, I'm just not a business owner or Tom.

I'm just not a salesperson or Tom.

I'm not good with, I'm not good with finances.

You know, day in my response to that because of AI, because of the internet,

because of YouTube, because of Google, you can learn anything you want very,

very, very quickly.

So go to chat GPT and say, look, I'm just, you know, simple baker.

I opened up a cake shop.

I have 15 employees now.

What don't I know challenge me on what I need to learn that present to me

like you're a McKinsey consultant.

How do I scale my business and get myself out of the day to day?

The answer is right there.

I mean, this, this stuff is so much easier than it was 20 years ago between

information, technology, outsourcing, overseas gig workers running a business

is way easier now than it was 20 years ago when I started.

Yeah, well, and I tell you what, you can't, we're going to take a quick break,

but you can't tell the bank, I'm just a banker or a baker.

And I haven't paid my bills in months and months and months.

And they'd be like, I don't worry about it.

As long as you're a baker, you know, it just doesn't work that way, right?

I mean, it's right.

It's like, you know, there are certain non-negotiables and it's just,

I don't know why HR is a negotiable.

So we're going to take a quick break.

When we come back, I want to kind of unpack some of the things that you guys do.

So that the listener can really maybe uncover some things that either they're

not doing or they're not doing a good job of.

So we'll take a break and we'll be right back.

Hey, Dave here, hope you're enjoying this week's episode of the positive

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then why not grab a copy of my number one Amazon best selling book called growing on purpose?

We list those words.

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Now back to the show.

Welcome back, honored to be hanging out with Tom Healy, co-founder of People Ops 360.

And do you call yourself a fractional HR company?

Is that would you would or how do you determine or define your company when you,

when you tell somebody about it?

Yeah, I, the two things I say one is fractional HR and the other thing I say.

And I, and I just think from a marketing standpoint, it's, you know, you want to make it about them.

Were your HR manager?

So I think there's a lot of power from a marketing standpoint in your.

Sure.

We'll give you this.

So it's not about us.

It's about you.

It's about you having an HR manager in your business.

Well, and I think that brings up a good question.

Cause like you said before, Tom, if I'm an entrepreneur and I'm listening and I'm like, no,

I can't do a fractional.

I got to have meat and a seat because they have to know my business.

I mean, if I came to you as, you know, a screw manufacturer versus a bobsled manufacturer,

whatever, I mean, do you have to get into the particulars of that business?

Or is HR HR in this situation?

So there's a, there's a great question.

And I'll give you two different answers to this.

First of all, no, it's, it's industry agnostic that the role of HR is not to be an expert in your product.

Now, are there basic things that we need to know about a law firm or an accounting firm or a construction company

or a company that uses union employees?

Sure, but we've got that.

We've, we've got a great team of people that can understand that the other thing that I hear and this is going to be, you know,

giving some lack to our CEOs that are listening to this.

So I will hear some CEOs say something along the lines of, well, yeah, we need a full time HR person.

Because, you know, they need to really understand and develop our culture.

It's not HR's responsibility to build your culture.

It's your responsibility is the leader to develop your culture.

HR can understand it and develop a people operation strategy around it.

But it is the CEO owner, leader of the organization to develop,

nurture and own that culture.

It's a big part of their responsibility.

So it's not a matter of, I mean, if you're, if you're going to delegate that to HR,

whether it's full time fractional, whatever, I, I don't love that.

Yeah, no, I get it.

And, you know, you, you had people until you said culture because I, I don't know about you,

but I run into people are like, yeah, we don't have a culture here.

And it's like every company has a culture.

So are you seeing that where people are like, they don't know what it is?

Or they think it's something different than it really is.

Do you see that a lot in people you work with?

Years ago, Tim Teebo, the Florida quarterback who played in the NFL for, for a little bit,

he said, um, athletes argue about whether or not they're role models, you know,

because some, some athletes say, you know, I'm not, you raise your kids.

I'm not, I'm not a role model.

I play football and others, you know, and Tim Teebo's quote was simply that you're,

you're a role model, whether you want to be or not.

So I, I feel that's, I feel that's the same with culture.

You have a culture, whether you believe you do or don't, um, it might be a good one.

It might be a bad one.

You may work hard at it.

You may not work hard at it, but you absolutely do have a culture.

Yeah.

Wow.

And now, and I'll add to this.

So I'll add to this real quick that what, you know, what, what I've seen is in a lot

of organizations, cultures have eroded.

Um, a lot of reasons and theories around that, uh, but a lot of it does have to do with

moving to hybrid, moving to remote work, going fully remote, hiring people from wherever.

So when people aren't together, physically in person, the culture starts to erode.

Um, a lot of companies say we had a culture, COVID hit, our culture's gone.

We lost some people that knew the culture, we picked up some people that we weren't able

to transfer the culture to.

So companies need to be very wise and very tactical and how they transfer the culture to

their people, especially new hires.

And that's, you know, one of my background is training, right?

So going into organizations, building training, delivering training, creating online,

learning is training.

And, you know, your training needs to pound your culture in the ground.

This is our culture.

This is why it's the culture.

This is the history of the organization.

This is training on how to do your job.

This is how the culture fits into that.

When you're dealing with a conflict with an employee, this is how you handle it.

When we're reprimanding you or acknowledging your, your great behavior, we're always going

to tie it back to culture.

But if you don't obsess over culture, it erodes.

And then you go, we don't have a culture.

And yeah, you do.

It's just a very confusing week, uh, one.

And they're, you're not tying your training, your performance, your accountability,

your hiring, firing to it.

Yeah.

Well, and I think you bring up a great point.

I mean, people treat culture like a stapler, like it's something people take

with them when they leave.

It's like, you know what?

People leave and come, they come and go to companies all the time.

If the culture isn't from the top down, it's really challenging for when I run

into people that say, do as I say and not as I do.

And have that as kind of their leadership thought.

So, um, let's, let's talk is when we have a couple minutes here left, what are

some things that, you know, like you guys are really like, we, you know, like

engagement, onboarding, recruiting, what are some things that you guys at people

up 360 are like, what's your flagship?

What are you really good at?

Yeah, I think we're, we're really good at understanding the strategy of the

business and then aligning a people strategy around that.

And I'll, I'll just give you one simple example.

So we work with a insurance agency that is constantly hiring new producers.

And typically you go, oh, okay, you want to hire insurance sales people.

So we'll write up a generic job description and we'll post it on all the

message boards and we'll do interviews and we'll hire people.

That's what happens, okay?

Whether it's an internal hire or outsourced HR.

What I'm going to do and Dave, let's pretend it's your insurance agency.

I'm going to put you in a conference room and I'm going to say, I want to

understand your hot hot five performers.

I want to give me everything.

Where are they from?

How are they raised?

Did they play sports?

Did they get high grades or low grades?

Did they go to college?

When did they start working for you?

Why do you love?

I mean, I'm just going to hammer you with questions and we're going to build a

very, very specific avatar because when I do that, guess what happens?

Well, Dave, here's what you told me.

You told me that your top performers, you brought them in at a high school.

They had no college education.

You taught them the industry.

You helped them get their licensing.

You found guys that had no fear and would walk into any business cold and

give doughnuts and get meetings.

These people are extremely, et cetera, et cetera.

Great.

Then we're going to go find them.

I'm going to write a job description for them.

I'm going to design an interview process around them.

I'm going to disqualify anyone that doesn't hit that and we're going to

get you an army of these go getter hustler out of high school,

gritty kids and we're going to put them into your business.

That's how you win with HR is

when you really get that detail, but you have to understand the

strategy of the business.

You have to really understand what an A player is in that environment

before you can start to do this stuff.

Does everything out there's just Sudam generic.

It's AI written job descriptions.

We don't want to offend anyone.

We don't want to hurt anyone's feelings.

We want to welcome everyone.

We need to write a job description that disqualifies 80 or 90% of the people

reading it, but that 10%.

We need them to come through.

We need to vet them incredibly well during an interview process.

We need to bring the right ones on board.

And that's just one little example or no, absolutely.

I mean, is it wrong to think, Tom, that a good company should have like

a bench full of people waiting to work at that company?

Is that a real issue?

No, it's it's it's it's it's I'll use my college football analogy.

You're you're always recruiting people.

You're you you know who's a junior in high school, a freshman in high school

that's in your area or in an area that you recruit in.

You're following them.

You're nurturing them.

You're talking to them.

You I mean, you treat recruiting like a sales pipeline.

So we're nurturing people and there's some people that used to work for us

that we're staying in touch with.

There's people that you know, I mean, one of my favorite examples is when

a company gets really tied in with a college or a community college.

Or a government program.

I mean, I've worked with companies that have had a tremendous amount of success

recruiting people that were recently incarcerated.

They've got government funds to be able to government grants to be able to hire

them and they've put them out there in the workforce and had tremendous success.

So finding those pipelines, building that bench,

getting that continuous stream people, but but they've what do most companies do?

Oh, Mary just quit abruptly and now we got to fill her role.

So let's either jam someone else from another department in there and say,

good luck or let's scramble to find someone and hire the first warm body

that comes in firm and interview.

And then what do we say?

Why aren't they performing?

They don't align with our culture and it's just how many times can you do

that before you have a more performing company?

And my, my belief is, and I've been called out on this during workshops,

the vote, Tom, you're, you're unrealistic.

I've just said, look, why is it unrealistic that everyone in our

organizations, a high performer?

Now, Dave, I'm not saying everyone should aspire to be CEO.

I'm not saying everyone should, you know, be checking their emails and

slack at 9 p.m. and work seven days a week.

But what I'm saying is I don't think it's an unrealistic expectation to say,

our office manager is going to be really good.

Our receptionist is going to be really good.

Our salespeople are going to really, really good.

Why can't everyone in the company have a good attitude,

align with the culture and be a strong performer?

Yeah, no, I totally agree.

And that then, as you alluded to, to begin with,

the stronger the performer is the less firefighting you're doing,

the less conflict, the less quiet quitting.

So it goes back to that people drama.

The stronger that team is, I'm assuming the less people drama you have,

is that a pretty safe assumption?

Yes, Dave, I work with people that are incredibly successful,

have businesses worth millions and millions of dollars are taking home a million

plus a year.

And they, and I see them and they just look

dejected and I'll say, Tim, what's wrong?

Well, I got this employee that's driving me crazy and she has a lot of drama

with my COO and they've both been, and I hear this whole sob story and here's

what I always ask, just just a little bit of a coaching question.

How many hours do you think you're into this?

Yeah.

Right.

And then, and then it's, and then, you know, then they,

then they really look like they're about to cry and they say, you know,

I probably 60 hours over the last six months.

Nope.

What, what, what is an hour worse to you?

Nope.

Right.

You know, what would you have done with those 60 hours elsewhere?

Nope.

What, what are you doing here?

You know, so, I mean, but that, that's what people issues cause and businesses.

They, they cause waste of time.

And then, and then you play that out and you go, okay, well, so and so have

bad attitude.

So three high performers quit because of her.

And two other high performers are walking around with their head down doing

the bare minimum.

I mean, you know, in a, in a small organization, this could, this could be

catastrophic in a large organization.

It could cost you a million dollars or or more.

I mean, it's these are, yeah, the, the impacts.

Yeah.

And I think Retainage is one of those things that people don't think of.

They just worry about getting them in and think they're always going to stay.

And I think it's funny that like once a person leaves, I rarely find a, a sea,

a sea sweet, you know, person or an owner that's like, man, that's really going

to sting.

They're always like, oh, I'm so glad they're gone.

Like it's some, you know, it's like, no, you're not.

I mean, just be real here.

Let's be real.

This is, this is hurting when you're number one or number two top performers,

bail and it's because, you know, it's one thing if they get their salary tripled

from somebody else, but generally it's an internal reason something happened

within the company.

And that's what I think is so powerful about people at 360 is you can't guarantee

that's never going to happen, but I tell you what, it sure feels like you're

going to do everything you can to make sure that it doesn't happen.

Yeah, I mean, we're two things, right?

We're trying to mitigate your risk of losing people, getting in trouble,

not being compliant, handling a really bad personnel issue.

But then we're also trying to strategically help you grow faster.

So, you know, there's the risk mitigation piece, but then there's also the,

well, if we hire better people and they sell more widgets and you're able to grow

30, 40% year over year, what does that do to the value of your business in five

years when you want to sell it?

I mean, that's the, that's the crazy part, right?

I mean, I like starting with the end in mind.

So, you know, I'm working with a business owner.

What, what do you, where do you want to be in five years?

You know, how long do you want to do this for?

So that's part of it too, where it's like, okay, if you, if you want to sell

the business for 20 million dollars and that means you need to have 10

million of revenue and you're currently at five million, you want to double

the business as fast as you can and get out and go fishing.

Got it.

Okay.

Well, then what do we need to do to get you there?

Do we need to staff up?

Do we need to hire better people?

Do we need to save you some money by outsourcing some things?

I mean, like, let's build a strategy around this.

But, you know, if, if, if someone just wants to put out fires and get through

the day and blame everyone else, then you're, you're just going to stay where

you are.

You have some good years, some bad years and, you know, you'll do this for,

for 20, 30 more years and hopefully, you know, AI doesn't put, yeah,

business and you can sell it for something.

But I don't, I don't like that.

That, that doesn't sound like a good strategy to me.

No, absolutely.

And I think as we start to land the plane today, I think looking at people like

you as a partner versus a cost on their balance sheet, if you're looking

purely at the dollars, it's going to cost.

And I think you're looking at this the wrong way because I feel like this

partnership thing really works because I like our CPA, we give him a pile of

stuff at tax time and he condenses it down and hands me like a 20 page thing.

And it's like, bam, done, right?

That's exactly what I feel like you would do.

And you know what, the cost is kind of secondary.

Number one, I have to do something because if I don't do taxes, I end up in jail.

So I have to do something.

If I do them wrong, I'm going to pay penalties like crazy.

So it's like, why not just do this right?

And especially on the our side of HR with all the compliance things that are going

on, I would know where to even start.

I mean, it's fun to talk human side, but it's really hard to talk on that

compliance side.

So if there's, if there's, if there's, if there's, if there's one thing I've

learned, if someone wants to question your pricing and beat you up on price

and insinuate whether or not you're worth it, I mean, end the call.

I mean, just that is not someone you want to work with.

Yeah, you know what?

You're right.

I'm, you can find someone cheaper.

So, you know, go, go find someone overseas that can do it.

I mean, I, if we're, if we're not going to have this conversation with you.

So as long as I'm sure of Costco and Walmart pretty soon will do, you know,

offer what you and I do.

So you can't wait till it's like, well, I can go to Walmart and there's a little

machine and all pops, whatever.

So one last question, I'm going to let you go.

What would your tip of the day be today, Tom, for somebody listening?

Maybe it's something we covered.

Maybe it's something that we haven't yet.

But what would your tip of the day be today?

All right.

Let, let you can, you can tell me how I do with this one.

And it's something that I've, you already have.

So you're safe.

Okay.

Okay. So this is, this is something that I've operated by for many, many years

now as an entrepreneur, operate paranoid.

Okay.

What, what I mean by that is I, I don't want to be comfortable.

I don't want to assume that my clients will be my clients forever, that my

industry will say, stay the same forever, that everything will always be perfect.

Things change fast and things are continuing to change faster and faster.

Now, do I want you to wake up in a cold sweat in the middle of the night,

worried about your business?

No, but I mean, really think about who could put me out of business?

How could they put me out of business?

How is AI going to disrupt my industry and what I do?

How can I stay ahead of the curve?

How can I learn fast?

How can I move quicker than my competitors?

How can I do this in the leanest, smartest, most efficient way possible?

So I think operating with paranoia in this day and age is really good because

when you see it with legacy software companies, you see it with blue collar

trades businesses, the ones that aren't innovating, modernizing, leveraging

technology, being smarter are either going to go out of business or the

owner is going to sell it for pennies on the dollar.

Yeah.

Well, tell you what, if Kmart blockbuster and radio shack would have operated

paranoid, they might still be around.

But I mean, I mean, but it's, but it's so true.

It's, it's, I mean, you know, take the, I know blockbusters and easy example,

but they could have bought Netflix.

They could have done what Netflix was doing.

That brand had a lot of equity.

They had millions and millions of, you know, people in their database that

could have been subscribers and they just, they didn't do it.

And, and okay, so that's one end of the spectrum.

Well, the other end of the spectrum is I own a local plumbing company and we

still do paper estimates and, you know, our routes really aren't efficient.

And we haven't created, you know, we're not using the best CRM that's out

there. Dude, you know, your competitor that was purchased by private

equity is light years ahead of you.

They're moving faster.

They're writing bids on the spot.

They're automating their workflows.

You're done.

It's over.

Sell the business as fast as you can before it goes completely belly up

because you can't, you're not, you're playing a different sport.

So like, yes, if I owned an HVAC company, I'd be paranoid adding these things

or just say, you know what, I just can't, I can't keep up with some of this

stuff. Let me get out while I can gracefully.

And I'll go do sales for the private equity company that's buying me or,

you know, go, go be a greeter at Walmart or something.

Yeah, nothing wrong with being a car boys at Walmart.

Now you got the machine.

You don't even have to push the carts.

The dang thing does it for you.

So, hey, it's Trump.

If somebody's, if somebody's listening to him and they are like inspired and

intrigued by what we talked about and they want to connect with you,

what's the best way for people to do that?

Well, I probably didn't inspire them.

I've probably terrified them.

But no, I'm always happy to talk and look, there's no sales pitch.

I'm just happy to get on a call.

Tell me what's going on.

If I can give you some advice, if there's a way we can help you, I'm always

happy to Tom people opt 360.com.

Tom at people opt 360.com always happy to chat.

Perfect.

In your websites, people opt 360.com.

If you want to learn more about the company before you jump in an email,

Tom, feel free to look at that.

Tom, thanks for doing this.

Thanks for hanging out.

This is great stuff.

I love when we kind of expose a little kink in the armor that a lot of

people just overlook.

And I know HR is awful, or frequently overlooked, because it's just

awful to talk to someone else to do it.

I'm not a fan of all the paperwork and all the all the stuff on that side.

But it's often overlooked.

That was the word I was looking for.

It's often not awful.

So often overlooked.

And again, it's if you're in that 10 to 100 range, at least consider what

you're doing.

And you may think that you're doing fine.

This is again, a big blind spot that I think a lot of people have.

Ask your team, ask your customers.

Ask around is our HR really where it needs to be?

And if it's not, then maybe consider jumping on peopleops360.com.

Email Tom.

And I just want to say thank you for this.

This was a great, a great adventure here.

And can't wait to keep learning from you.

You got books, you got, you speak all over the place.

So there's a ton of ways to learn more.

So for the listener, rather than jump into the next thing that you have,

just consider what we talked about.

And maybe it's worth jumping on Tom's website, emailing him.

And just to have a conversation and just maybe see how you're doing.

Because again, you never know.

You don't know the blind spots that you have.

Everyone around you knows them.

Unfortunately, you don't.

So thanks Tom for hanging out with us.

And I can't wait to keep watching how this goes for you.

Thanks for having me.

I appreciate the conversation.

Hey Dave here again.

Thanks so much for listening to the Positive Polarity podcast.

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