Wake up, Buy Here, Pay Here people. It's a beautiful day. Go grab yourself another cup of joe and say hello to Jim and Michelle Rhodes on the Buy Here, Pay Here morning show. Take it away, you two. Good morning, everybody. Welcome. Oh, I do have an awful echo for some reason. So we're going to have to kind of test audio on the class this morning. So we apologize. But we've got some technical difficulties, and we are trying to figure it out over here. So stand by. Yes. Am I echoing? No, gone. Okay, great. Yeah, very good. Shall we start? I think that's a great idea. So Michelle is obviously not with me. She's still in Idaho and expecting to return to Utah today. So hope you've had a pleasant stay up there. It's been busy. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, if you end up running over the flowers with the mower, you won't be asked to do it again. So there's that. You know, you're good at complimenting. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But, uh, it's been a little bit busy on my side too. Been, uh, catching up on a few things. And, uh, so it's all good. We, uh, we just are getting prepared today. We've got a topic around, um, hiring. So standby for that. We've got a prerecorded video, our guest, uh, Tim Evans for today, for those who are tuning in to see Tim, uh, live, he was not able to appear live due to a scheduling conflict. So we prerecorded some stuff and, And, uh, so we'll have that to share, but, uh, any other announcements, Michelle, from the, uh, uh, he has, and I, and so, yeah, it'll be a conversation. I was hoping we were just going to be telling fishing stories, but you know. Gotcha. Okay. We'll, we'll accommodate. No, I think I don't have any other announcements. Obviously, we've got a bunch of V8 stuff coming up. We're down to one seat in group two. That's our dealership group that has 500 to 2,000 accounts. If your portfolio is 500 to 2,000 accounts, then we have one seat if you're interested in the V8 spot. So reach out right away. We'd love to have you get in there. And it's still time to get in there for the meetings that are coming up in June. Yeah. So shall we get to our subject of hiring now? I think that's a great idea. Yeah, and I think what folks are going to find about this video that we're going to share, this young man, Tim Evans, is a dealer in York, South Carolina. And the video that we just kind of pulled together this morning is... he touches on some things that are, that you don't hear people talk about very often. And Tim is someone who has engaged coaches and has had some consulting advice to get him to where he is. And they've grown their payroll and their volume and lots of things. And he attributes a lot of that growth to the things that he's learned on the hiring side. So shall we just jump into that video? Yeah, for sure. Let me get that video going. It shows like it's already added to this. It is. Okay. There you go. There you go. And, uh, so, so you're, you're slated to appear about success out there. So, so. You know, are there some tips that you'll be bringing in that session, things that you want to make the dealers aware of to their hiring? You know, I think, so Jim, the biggest thing for me first is that I believe in extreme accountability. And I think a lot of leaders that grow into the leadership role, I don't think they understand extreme accountability. And sometimes you're quick to blame the candidates they interview or hire. And not to say that there isn't more of a problem than there's ever been with recruiting. But I think a lot of it has to start from within and look at what you're doing. To achieve the result you want to achieve. I think we set ourselves up for failure. And so that's a big part of what I'm going to talk about in the session. And it's just how to be more attractive to the candidate than ever and more attractive to the generation that a lot of us are probably hiring. No, I get that. I think, so you mentioned in some of the write-ups I saw, you mentioned kind of a post COVID hiring environment. I'm wondering how much of that is a consideration as you look at your applicant pool. what are you finding that might be different now than than pre-covered so it's tough for me to talk too much pre-covered simply because um you know that's four and a half years ago now and and the business for me I ran this if you look at any of the former podcasts from other folks um I ran the business with one or two employees really wasn't focused on growing never really thought too much about growing I was kind of happy where I was at making what I was making um And at the end of 2019, I went to a conference where I met Sean Bradley with his company's Dealer Synergy. And basically, Sean kind of got me thinking about hiring and growing and expanding, growing the inventory. And it wasn't until the end of 2019 that I said, hey, I'm going to get serious about this thing. And then... started focusing on it real hard, making a real big push the last quarter of 2019, then you know what happened at the beginning of 2020, everything kind of collapsed. So I don't have a whole lot of pre-COVID experience. So all I know in the world of having 10 employees, which we kind of fluctuate between 10, 11, 12, all I know is COVID and post-COVID. I don't really have a whole lot of pre-COVID experience. Yeah. i um I wanted to talk about the you know what you and I see and when I think about dealers tuning in here and hoping to learn how to better attract talent you know get them first of all you got to get an applicant pool right you got to have a pool of applicants and then you hope you can get some quality people in to interview And so part of what he will talk about in the remaining parts of the video is that whole thing about being attractive. But I think the reason I was raising the COVID part is you and I have seen a kind of a paradigm shift that was probably already in motion, but it really sort of accelerated during the COVID years in terms of what employees are looking for. You know, so I think that's part of what, you know, I was trying to get to here in terms of how it is that he does manage to get people to agree to come to work with him, you know? Yeah. So I think, you know, the other part of what we're just seeing, and I think it bears mentioning that, you know, the And this is, we're using broad brushes here. This is certainly not true of every applicant in the pool, but I think it's what I'm going to say is more true of the younger applicants is that they're looking for something a little bit more than a J-O-B. And so, you know, it's more than just the pay. It's more than it's going to be a lot of factors. And so I think when we when we first of all, if we can understand those elements that are attractive to all applicants in the pool, especially that younger set, then I would say we probably want to really work on getting our language right when we go out there and run ahead so that we can attract people who could get excited about what we do. I did a little bit of research in our church and a little bit about the different age groups and what their motivators are. And that's absolutely true in the age group. They're really, really hard to navigate. And I'm right at the kind of beginning of rehearsers. And so a lot of people that are hiring people from their community are going to be likely millennials or Gen Zs. NCs are 20-something-year-olds now, and the stuff that I research about both NCs and NCs is that it's not just about having a lot of NCs. It just isn't. It's a high factor, but there are a lot of factors that employees or applicants are now researching companies. They're looking to be one, you know, what kind of roots they have. They're looking at their youth and communities. You know, there's things that matter to them. And it seems like, especially, it started in the millennial group, but it really has doubled down on those gen Zs, is that they're looking for a place to work that they'd be proud of who that, or why that, who the people are, what it is that they do, what impact that they make, whether it be in their community, in the environment, whatever. Most of these millennial Gen Z's want to make a difference. And they're frequently heading to companies that will do that. Also give them really great guidelines, instruction, training. That's a really big thing as well. Yeah, I think, you know, I'm often cautious about putting people in certain buckets. I mean, obviously, that's generally describes, you know, a set of people and kind of their But I think, you know, obviously you can have people outside of those age groups that have similar interests. They just maybe, you know, they grew up at a time when, you know, we were taught you finish high school, you go to college, you get a job, you work until you're 65. I mean, that was always the thought. And what we're hearing now is. uh you know that that doesn't have to be the the the the mode anymore you don't have to follow that particular model and so I think a lot of people are are recognizing that there's a different way to get there why don't we go back to the video with tim he talks about some more things related to that and so I want to share that's cool I think um you know we just kind of what we see and of course you know in our world we we live 100 in the world to buy here pay here so you know we're And that hiring process and buyer-payer is not going to be too different than an independent retail dealer, right? And maybe even franchise to an extent. But really what we're seeing is that dealers are maybe not as attractive, to use your terminology, like they're not succeeding in attracting you know, the applicant pool that they might like. And then maybe sometimes they're not succeeding in getting those folks hired, you know, that do come forward. So that's the part that I, you know, hope we can kind of help our listeners, you know, have a chance to get some tips on how to, first of all, how to build up the applicant pool. Like what can we do to make ourselves more attractive to get a chance to interview more folks? Yeah, so I think as small business owners, no matter what the industry is, I think most entrepreneurs have a desire to want to try to do everything alone. And I think that's probably one of the very first mistakes that a lot of us make. And in the words of Troy Spring, who is one of my best mentors, he's taught me a lot. And he says a lot of times, flex that muscle one time, and then you know it'll be easier each time after that and um you know I'm a little bit on a tangent here but basically I was doing a workman's comp audit yesterday and you know our payroll when we first had to get workman's comp which was only two years ago because the state mandates you know at what point you need to get it I never thought about it two and a half years ago we were at a hundred thousand dollars in payroll then we went to 300 now we're at 600 and um in the flex that muscle terminology, you know, two, three years ago, I would have never even imagined having that much payroll. And it's hiring people to do things that I used to do. And it's like now I can't imagine doing it any other way. Yes, we're on a bigger playing field. Yes, it's more expensive. It could be more risky depending on how undercapitalized you may be. But if you have the funds, I would say take the risk. and hire some of those things out you're doing. And that might be in the form of a W-2 employee or a 1099 contractor, such as, you know, there are many recruiting agencies out there in the automotive space that will help with that. And that has been single handedly one of the best things that I've done to increase our odds because it's like the sales funnel, you know, NIDA, NADA, they all say, You know, closing percentage should be 10 to 12%. You know, that's acceptable numbers by most standards. And, um. I think that that formula plays into hiring as well. And if you understand the numbers going into the scenario. And then you're not setting yourself up for failure mentally. But, you know, you, you can't just put an indeed out there be lackadaisical in the way that you handle the inbound applicants. You've got to handle them the same way you do sales leads. You've got to jump on them immediately. These people most of the time don't have a desire to work directly for me. Or any other dealer out there, they're most of them are looking for a change of some sort and you've got to seize that opportunity and you've got to keep the excitement up from the very 1st contact all the way to the point of hiring them. And then onboarding them, which I talk a lot about my speech at a lot of people really mess up the onboarding process. Like. You do so much work to get the applicant and the door, and then you just blow it all up. And same thing in sales. All dealers, we work so hard, spend so much money on marketing to get the person in the door, and then we destroy it all when we have the opportunity and the person's sitting in front of us. That's so good. That's important. And then, of course, past the onboarding, you'd move into the training period, right? You want people to be well trained in order to be successful. So, you know, we're, we're trying to hire people to bring experience, but that's not always going to be possible. So, so I'm sure you, you must develop the training process as well, right? The training process. is single-handedly probably the most important part of the entire process. And again, back to the extreme accountability, every time there's a failure within an employee, always look back, look at when we onboarded that person, when we interviewed that person, were there signs? And there were usually always signs or we did something wrong in the onboarding. The people I've had the very best success with, most of the time had little to no experience in the car business or sales at all. And of the four to five hiring rounds I've done over the last three to four years, there's one particular one that always stands out to me. And one of the guys that, you know, he was a wild card in the group and we didn't know how it was gonna turn out. He outlasted everyone from that hiring round he followed the process better than 90% of the people I've hired. And this isn't rocket science. It's really, we provide the shell, we provide the inventory, the finances, the leads. And if you teach them a process and they can follow a process, which most people can, it's really not that difficult of an industry. But that's where we mess it up. We bring them in. We give them a couple of days of training. We get busy. We forget about it. They wash out because they don't know what's expected or what to do. And then we just rinse and repeat and ride that roller coaster again and again and again and again. Yeah, for sure. so I think michelle there's there's a lot there right I mean a lot a lot a lot a lot there yeah yeah go ahead if you your thoughts on well I mean I mean it's like like one of the things you mentioned is there's a lot raining and you know I know I hear a lot of dealers that are extremely successful That hiring someone who has experience, someone that has experience, someone that has experience in other industries, necessarily equates to success, to being the best hire. And when we've talked to dealers, we've been coaching dealers. And they hire someone to help with those pieces. I know that from your experience, what you have encouraged people to do is that you do not have to have any experience. You just have to have someone who can follow a process and be friendly and help someone through this process. But the key to that is Do you have that? And it's written. It's like she said, you know, you chose someone once or twice and then let them go at it and then get to it when they're off the rails in two weeks. But it requires showing something and having something they can review and practice and review as they are continuing their evolution in their positions. So having a process, having a process that is documented and written in as many of the videos that you do to show the actual process as if it's a computer thing or whatever, is so helpful to new people, especially if they are new to self-suggestions, whatever it is. And the struggle that we have with higher people that have a lot of experience in those things, they're not nearly as experienced. Yeah. Yeah. I don't, do you have that other video teed up? Maybe we could stop there. I do want to come back to, you mentioned the training. I also want to come back to Tim's thing about the enthusiasm. So. All right. Right. Let me start. Okay. My other favorite question that is my all-time favorite that I got from a friend a few years ago in the mastermind is, Alan, if we were to bring you on and in 60 days we had to let you go, what's the most likely reason we had to let you go? Yeah, I like that. No, just no. You might have heard us talk about the golden rule of interviewing before. And I want to play this out for you real quick. Imagine if a candidate said to him, in about three to six months from now, I'm going to be talking crap about your management skills to one of my friends. What am I going to be saying to them? Wouldn't that be super weird if a candidate actually asked that in an interview? Yeah. And that means it's super weird for an interviewer to ask a candidate that. I'm real tired of the power dynamics being so unbalanced in interviewing. It doesn't have to be that way anymore. If you're with us, we rethink interviewing and we help companies and interviewers a lot better than that. Yeah, so I just found that to be really intriguing. There were a couple elements like there was just some arrogance being exuded from the employer side in that video. And, you know, that's obviously what she picked up on and why she chose, you know, to react to that particular video. but I think where I was coming from on this michelle and I don't I don't recall how much in the remaining video that we have from tim evans how much he speaks to this part but I just find that um the mentality that we're going to hire people that are obligated to us they need to produce for us and they need to do their job to make me wealthier and you know if they without with very little consideration for my obligation as an employer to them the employee and to help them develop you know themselves and so there I do remember there is uh some some stuff coming up on the video we have remaining with um uh, Mr. Evans, where he talks about, you know, some of that. So we can continue the video and then we can come back and talk about, um, you know, some of the rest of that. You want me to share it for myself? Oh, that's a definitely funny kind of thing. Obviously with our own clients and dealers that we see around. So I'm wondering, um, get a chance to watch the little short video. And if you, if you have an opinion on it, fine, if you don't, we can move past it, but anything there that triggers anything for you? You know, I, I watched it about three times and, um, It did kind of trigger something in me simply because, again, for me, Jim, a lot of things come back to extreme accountability. I believe in treating my people very different than most places treat them. I just, I can't imagine talking to an employee or quoting that line. Yeah, I think for me, you know, when I watch it and we can wrap up because I know you need to get. Yeah, I think. Yeah, no, I think when we watch it, I just my takeaway from that was sort of this mindset of. I feel like sometimes when I hear business owners, you and I could take it outside of the car business for a minute and just say, you know, when you hear business owners, often I hear them function in a way that says. You know, this, this person is responsible and accountable to me. They're here to make me more money. And so I think when we ignore the, the needs of that employee to develop themselves, let me, let me answer differently. If I watch that video, I think if I were the employee that was asked that question, I might say, well, I'll tell you what, if in three months time, I feel like I'm really only working to make you more successful. And it's not helping me advance and improve my own situation. I'm probably not going to be a very good employee. You know, it's kind of the takeaway for me. So I think it's just it's kind of the way I feel about the thing in general. And you may not share that. You know, and just to touch on that, I've got a everything I do at my business is very well scripted, documented. There's. I'm not 100% of where I want to be with how well things are documented and done and followed. But. When it comes to interviews, I believe that every interview should be conducted equally using the same process every single time. For, you know, there's a lot of legal reasons to follow the same process every single time in an interview when it comes to compliance situations with protected classes. And, you know, that's a whole different conversation, but. On the back of my and my screens blurred, so you really can't see it here, but on the back of my interview sheet. I ask myself, there's like eight questions I ask myself at the end of every interview, and it has nothing to do with me necessarily and everything to do with the candidate. And I'll just read them if we have time. Sure, go ahead. So one, I ask myself, does this person walk with intent? Is this person internal or external? How do they handle accountability? So when I'm looking at this person's resume, what is the reason they left the last five jobs or last two or whatever the number is? Did they own any of these things? If they don't own any of it, we're not going to be a good fit for each other because I believe in extreme accountability and I want that of the people that I work around. How does the person speak? Are they enthusiastic? Or is the energy low and monotone? That person's probably not going to translate to someone that I want to be around every day. Not that they're a bad person. They're just not going to get a ticket on my bus. does the person present themselves in a professional and clean manner do they articulate themselves well what are they looking to get out of the job and do I feel that I can provide that what are their goals can I change their lives and can I provide them the growth they need in life that's all the questions I ask myself after the interview is over because if I don't feel that I can change their life In some way, I don't want that person on my team. I don't want to just be checking a box for someone as they go through the motions. And I realize that may not be defined for every person we meet or interview, but that just gives me a general guide on the candidate that I'm looking for. And again, it's like everything in this business, you gotta go into it knowing what you want out of it. And I tell this to people all the time that are looking for help in business, whatever the business may be, determine what the end goal is, And then back into it with your plan. Right. And we can draw on and on here, but a lot of people don't do that. And you just set yourself up for failure. And that's why I say, you know, going back to the original interview process, you've got to fill that funnel with a lot of folks. Because of the way the process washes people out. That's good. Michelle and I talk a lot about a book by a guy named Cameron Herald called Vivid Vision. It kind of ties into what you just mentioned there. That whole idea that if I'm the business owner, I need to be able to get super clear about my vision and I need to get good at articulating it to those who are part of the team and part of the mission. This becomes part of, kind of ties back into what you're saying there. But I think we covered it well, Tim. I hope folks are going to be at the Wynn Hotel in a couple of weeks to be able to sit in on your session. And so I certainly hope to be there myself if the schedule lines up right. But, yeah, look for Michelle and me in the audience as long as the timing is good. Do you know which day you speak? Yeah, so it's going to be on Tuesday, and it is a – I believe it's 11 a.m. session. That should work. So, yeah, we'll – It looks like an idea. Give me 1 of the larger rooms and it just happened. It happens to fall right after the opening. Yeah. So the sessions at 1115, it falls right after the opening. Ceremony, I think. There shouldn't be anybody too sloshed on Tuesday where they can't make it. That's right. That usually happens later in the week. Right. Well, I appreciate you making time to join us. We're glad to have a chance to share some of this stuff with our audience. Looks like it finished off. Oh, maybe so, yeah. Okay, okay. Yeah, so there's obviously a lot of great stuff there, and I do encourage people to attend Tim's session. There were some other things that we didn't get included in the video time with him, but you know a couple things I want to circle back to michelle he talked about the enthusiasm element of the the actual um applicant process you know when we reach out to people and respond he's correlating it to you know he's suggesting that we would bring the same type of enthusiasm we would to a sales lead and it really it makes sense I mean one employee can affect your business a whole lot more than that one sales lead right and so it's like yeah having some enthusiasm for that process and and getting people excited about you know coming to be part of what we do is is going to be important I think you know that's another part of the The actual you know funnel process that he described that I think is important for us to re-examine that and are we are we being Enthusiastic as we you know invite people for interviews and what-have-you and then you know, he talks about this a couple of words I noticed he mentioned in his in the description for his session as an NIA da he used the word intention and You heard him talk about, does this person that I interviewed, do they come with some intent or intention? You know, what is the intention that I'm picking up from them? And then he talked about ownership, which, you know, I really like. I don't hear enough people talk about that. But I think regardless of the age group, because there's a big conversation about, you know, this whole thing. And when people talk about age groups and these, you know, the Gen Z's or whatever, you There's this thing about ownership and there's also, you can kind of wrap that in this conversation about loyalty. People talk about, well, employees aren't loyal anymore. Well, I feel like it's been a long time since employees were really loyal in the way that people think about, you know, from decades ago. And, and isn't it, wouldn't it be our obligation as employers to create an environment to keep the customer or keep the employee with us? I mean, I've always felt like as an employer that it's my job to create an environment, a work situation where that person can can enjoy their work. They can feel like, and now we add the thing about, I want them to feel like they can make a difference that what they're doing is actually has a positive impact, not just showing up and, and grinding in a job. You know, of course they're not going to be loyal. If they're, they're expected to grind and only make somebody else money, then why would we expect that person to be loyal? So it's a very, very important thing. It was actually a great question for a dealer and an employer. If I was negative about you, What would I be seeing? And, you know, the phone, the stage, all of it. And if you, if you, um, uh, If you aren't available to employees, I mean, there's a lot of things that are a big part of right after hiring and standing in an environment. It was an article that I've come up with a couple of different times on my social media where there's a man that... This is a true story. A man that has been in a worker company for the last five years and he has decided to leave and they have this big celebration about this person and at the end of it, at a lawyer in the past, why did he leave? And he said, I already know. And the one of the most interviewed of them, which was really valuable to him, with poise, that's just making him quite perceiving words frequently. During that time, they were there. Because they were just producing, producing. And the employer was looking at them like, this is however you work. And they would receive a reward all the time. The best thing would be the most successful at producing. Well, after that... He said, well, the reason I know was because I saw that we were under cap cap. So I was working 70, 80 hours a week to try up with thought that they would be hiring someone soon. And all we did was report for working 70 hours a week. Never did they hire someone to help with the load. And so it's me that, the moral of that is, it's so essential. Once you've hired someone, especially the first six months, interview them, talk to them. What is it that you need? What is it that you feel like you're doing really well? What is it that you feel like you could do more help with? Are you getting this? and you need them to be able to do your job effectively. So that's one of the things I should ask. I'm like, dealers should try to run around and ask themselves that. Ask themselves that on a very regular basis. Because it really, as long as you let your ego provide it, it's like, You know, what are the things that, you know, your partner or your kids or whoever are thinking the most about you, you're likely to let that work. And if your kids are irritated about it, there's a good chance your employees are too. Yeah, I like it. I think it's just it's an example of, you know, this employee was working all those hours and they didn't want awards. They wanted help. They wanted to be able to go home a little more often. Right. And so we didn't know that about the employee until they were gone. So we lost our most productive person, you know, as a result of just not being plugged in. So, yeah, I think, you know, you and I have talked enough about this, like a couple of things that Tim mentioned in there, too. Remind me like he touched on it with different phrasing, but we've talked about in our own business, we've got some new awareness and we certainly advise our clients to think a lot about who they hire to solve a problem. Like instead of thinking how, like many entrepreneurs are stuck in this place where they think they got to solve all the problems that the business has. Like they get stuck in this routine where they think it's all on me. It's all on me. I feel the pressure to fix it. And so as soon as we can shift from a place of how to fix it and who to fix it, now you start to take a step toward growth. Now, you've got to be able to fund that initial hire or whatever. But this is all the more reason that when we can fund those initial hires, many of us are hiring those people anyway. We're paying folks. It's just are we paying the right folks who can help kind of grow the business and can – Do those people have the intention, to go back to Tim Evans' comment, do they have the intention that is such that we can bring them along for that journey? They can grow, we can grow. Like that's when we got the right who, and those people will figure out the how, right? And so that's part of why I think it's important to think about that in this context. The article he wrote for the New Zealand Magazine was about him hiring an employment manager. So, back in April, April's edition. And, you know, when he made that key hiring decision of who, it just opened up the possibilities for him to have the time. the bandwidth, all of the things to be able to work on as a business. And we found the right tool. to be able to fill that position, and they're doing it very well. So if you're going to be at an NIA, stop on a Tuesday at, what was it? I think it's 11.15, that'd be local time. But I think it's the session right behind the general session. Yeah, it's probably in the main hall there. It's right behind the big one. But, you know, that would be an interesting thing for those before you come and listen. Read that article. Come with good questions. If it doesn't go more into that whole process, that would be a good thing to look at. We're always trying to tell teachers. We're always trying to teach teachers or encourage teachers to... Thank you. But to get off the wheel, find the right people. Find the right who. Yep. Well, maybe we should wrap up there since we've got an echo problem that, you know, for whatever reason, I don't hear it from my side, but it sounded like our audience experienced an echo. I don't know if it was just on your side or the entire broadcast, but, oh, George says, I see it now. This is, here's my audio. Fine. But so it's going to go from your device or whatever reason, but. But, yeah, let's wrap up there. I think we'll see folks back here with Gordy Tormolin on Monday. We'll get a chance to talk to him as we approach the NIADA conference and we wind down his tenure as the board president. So looking forward to seeing Gordy again, as always. And we wish you folks a very productive and enjoyable weekend. Thanks so much for joining us, everybody.
