Stop Bleeding Talent

Suman Cherry shares a no-BS playbook for hiring in construction. We get into the real cost of losing A-players, the first hires that buy back your time, and how SOPs, EOS-style accountability, and regulated leadership create capacity - not chaos. 

https://cherrytalentgroup.com

Show Notes: 

00:00 Intro and who Suman is
 02:02 Headhunter fees versus hourly recruiting
 04:45 Values and EQ over resumes
 07:52 SOPs and onboarding to reduce chaos
 12:29 Why A players quit
 16:49 From many hats to clear roles
 20:46 First three hires: Office Manager, Estimator, Supers or PMs
 24:38 The real cost when your best person leaves
 32:49 Lead with accountability, track activity and results
 45:27 Process over heroics with HR systems and one north star metric
 51:14 Wrap up and where to find Suman

Find Our Hosts:
Reece Barnes
Matt Calvano

Podcast Produced By:
Motif Media

Transcript

0:00

Welcome to builders budgets and beers. I'm Rhys Barnes and I started this podcast to have real conversations about money in the building industry, the wins, the mistakes and everything in between. I believe builders deserve to feel confident about their finances, and that starts by hearing from others who've been through it too. This industry can be slow to change, but the right stories and the right tools can make profitability feel possible. Let's get into it. Right mics are hot, zooming. We're rolling. We're rolling. I love it. You're gonna this is gonna this is gonna be a great episode. I'm super excited, Suman. If you, if you have listened to episodes, you know that I always like to start with giving the audience to listeners a little idea of who they're going to be hearing from today. So if you could give them a little introduction on yourself, what you do your background, just keep it simple. We can start there. Yeah, yeah. Awesome. Well, hi, I'm Suman cherry. I am the CEO and founder of cherry talent group, which is a consulting recruiting company. So my background is in recruiting. I've been doing recruiting for about 25 years. I started off in doctors. I worked with doctors to start with, and I worked in oil and gas for a number of years, and over the last eight years, I've been primarily working in construction. Most of my background was more based in the traditional recruiting contingent, based where you just pay the fee at the end. But during covid, I sort of said, I can't I'm so sick of recruiting, like I got just fed up with the whole up and down. It just didn't feel like it was very transactional. So I took a break, and I did all this work on myself. I started working on my own self and my traumas and all these things. I know it was amazing, and I was going to be a life coach. I, like, went and got all this life coaching certifications. I'm like, This is my new career. And then I had a client that reached out and said, Hey, would you want to help us recruit in a different way, like hourly base. And I was like, Well, I've never done that before, so I did, and it it was a completely different experience. So that was about four years ago, and now I've built a business around that. So it's kind of evolved in a place where we help mostly, we do the most part work in the construction industry, general contracting and luxury home builders all over the country. We help them identify the right people, but we take it a step further. We're very consultative based so we're very direct, we're very honest. There's no fee at the end. You just pay for our time, and that's what I wanted to touch on. So because most traditionally, it's like, there's like, a headhunter fee, right? Or like, like a finder fee, right? And they find the crew finds them, and then they get in front of the client, and then the client and then the client interviews them, and they decide, yes, no. And then at the end, you pay like, what, there's like a month or two months of what their salary would be, probably more than that. You know, you pay like 20 to 25% okay, so, well, $100,000 can and it's typically around$25,000 okay, so, man, I mean getting into recruiting sounds pretty lucrative, but um, so you shifted that, and you're on the hourly side, and that makes a lot of sense, especially with you taking a consultative approach. So what does that? What does that relationship actually mean? And frankly, just for the listeners, Suman and I met at the contractor coalition Summit, which you should all go to. And if you want a 20% discount, you can use the adaptive 25 adaptive 25 promo code. But we met at the show, and Suman is not not lying by any sense of the words, very consultative, very much problem solutions first. So I want to hear a little bit like, what does the actual process look like for you when you start working with a contractor, identifying the role they might need? What does that look like go through what that hourly would look like for them? Yeah, so it is very consultive based, because, I mean, anyone can hire right, anyone could throw a resume up on indeed or LinkedIn, and then screen through those candidates. But our process is very different, because our process starts with that initial profile call, where we're not just looking at a job description, we're looking at what's the pain and who's how is this person going to solve that? Is this a growth pain? Is it a capacity pain? Because it's typically the similar things. And then we work with our clients to really create a marketing piece that actually is going to call out to the right candidates, right? We don't want these pieces that have every bit of information. It's like, what do you really need? And what are those values you need? Our model is based in core value, because our our feeling is, skills are important, abilities important, right? You have to have a basic you know, they have to have certain skills, but you can't teach value in people. So we really focus on when we're interviewing. Our process is all based in emotional EQ. Are they responsive versus reactive? Are they humble? Are they motivated and hungry for your job? Are they just looking for a job, and do they have that ability piece? So our process is we work with we do that profile, call it's four. Very consultive. We create that job description, really highlighting who they are as an organization, and then we obviously post it. But what our other side is, we do a lot of passive so we're very, very head header based as well. We get a list of competitors who want to be in the market, and we spend our time looking for the right talent. Our interview process is a two tier process, so we do an initial screening with every candidate, but we invite everyone in for a zoom interview, so we see people face to face in that Zoom interview, and we're looking for specific things. We're looking for people, can people make eye contact? Do they have good I mean, just really, do they show up on time? Character traits? Like, really, do they show up front? Yeah. I mean, just exactly, character traits. And then once they kind of kind of go through that process, then we can either do an assessment, because we have the ability to do assessments. So some of our clients are asking us to do, like deeper assessments, to kind of match that up, and then the other pieces, we just send them over, and we have a submission form. We record every single conversation as well. We record everything, so everything's transcripted and documented, so there's every discrepancy around the salary, which happens times. We want to make sure that we're truth tellers, like our model is truth. We are not sales people. We are matchmakers. We step in, we give our recommendations. We're honest, direct. If a client is has unrealistic expectations, they want this and they want to pay this, it's not realistic. So we have to have those conversations. Our job is to fill your role with the right person. And sometimes that right person isn't always what you think it's going to be. It tends to be different. And that's one piece that you mentioned at the very beginning, was like setting down with the client and understanding what they actually need and help them put together a job description and help them find that clarity. I want you to touch on that on a couple of different pieces. First, like, could builders just like work with you guys from like, a beginning standpoint on like, structuring job descriptions. But the second, like, how much of a problem do you see that being in the space of builders not having clear job descriptions and understanding of who they need? I ask because I hear it all the time. Like, I hear like, 1015, $20, million a year businesses not have job descriptions. Those be like, I just need to hire a project manager. It's like, well, what are the expectations? Of this role? They're like, well, for them to manage projects, and it's like, but they don't have that level of clarity, and that's where they seem to struggle. So that's where my question is coming from. I guess. Could they actually work with you to build out job descriptions, obviously, with you guys wanting to go through with the full agreement. But the second is, is, how much of a problem do you see that being in the market? Yeah, I mean, we have another side to our business as well. Because what we've realized, and I've realized for myself as well as it is about having the right job description, but there also needs to be SOPs and structure around that as well, right? So we can go into that first, but yes, we will sit down with our clients and we have an imagine session, right? Like, it's like, who is the ideal person? Let's really talk about it, because a lot of times, everyone wants the unicorn and the job description. Like, you were talking about the job descriptions, it's not one position. It's like, five positions all rolled into one. It's like, let's but let's really understand what this is, right? Yes, it's a problem. The job description thing is absolutely a problem you have. It's a marketing piece. It needs to be captivating so someone will look at it and be like, I can do that. I want to do that right, versus this, this very long, three page thing, which is, is it even true? Is it even real? So job descriptions are so important. What's more important is the client that's on board with what they need. And then when we go out and talk to those candidates, we can really this is their pain. This is what there's how can you solve that? How have you solved this with other companies? What expertise are you going to bring in? Because ultimately, you want is a candidate who's better at things than you have at your organization to be able to move up to the next level. That is the only other way. You don't need workers. You need capacity. You need leadership. You need people who can bring in out of the box ideas and have dealt with more complicated things than you've done within your organization, so you can go the next level. And so it is. It is a problem like I see it all the time with companies as well, $20 million companies who don't have any structure, practices, no onboarding, no SOPs, no. They don't even know what they're supposed to be doing when they walk in the door and and it's all in the owner's heads. It's always in the owner's heads. But like, it needs to be actually, can you work with someone? And also, by the way, like you don't need workers. You need capacity that needs on a t shirt that was perfect, and it's on your website if it's not. But like, can you work with someone who's like, yeah, Suman, I need help hiring a project manager. Like, help me find them? And you're like, Okay, we go through the imagination session, and then you're like, you're downloading and understanding their business, and they don't have any standard operating procedures. They don't have any process. Can you work with them? Them, or do you turn them away? Oh, yeah, no, we absolutely can we work with a lot of businesses that are in their first or second years. I mean, you know, that is part of the process. And we have clients that don't have them and they're like in their 10th year, typically, what happens is, is most of those clients, they end up help. We end up helping them because we want to educate like we finding a candidate is one thing, but how do you keep them, how do you keep them engaged, and how do you build trust with that new candidate? How do you bring that employee in? It's so important. So we help a lot of our clients with that and so and because we're we're priced, I don't want to say it's affordable, but we're just priced more in a place that's more attainable. You know, we're not paying $25,000 every time you fill a position, right? We give flexibility to our clients and what they need. And a lot of our clients help. We help with both sides of it, honestly, because it's, it is both sides that are totally, totally, no, I think that's great. Now, in terms of, like, what do you when you So okay, so you work with, like, a lot of $20 million businesses that don't have these recipes. You work with a lot of early businesses that don't have these SOPs. And that's obviously, like, the backbone of, like, understanding what you actually need help with in the business. What do you think keeps builders from having that clarity of the job description, of the process of what they need individuals in their organization to do, or future individuals to do. Honestly, I think it's fear. I think it's the unknown. I think it's fear of change, and I think it's the overwhelming of what they think it's going to take they know. I mean, every single company we talk to is like, I know I need this, I know I need an EOS. I know I need these things, but it's like they don't have the capacity to do it because they don't have the right people to help them do it, and they don't know how to do it. They don't know how to structure, know how to do that with all the other responsibilities they have. They know it's so important, but it's one of those things where they they they just don't prioritize it because, because I think it's overwhelming to imagine, to do it. You know what? I mean? I think it's overwhelming for people, and I think there's so how do they overcome that fear? Or how do they avoid it? Well, I think if you avoid it, you're gonna have your best people are gonna leave. I mean, so when people don't talk about like, Okay, I Why do I need it so badly? You know, avoiding it isn't going to make it go away as a problem. So not having it is going to force the good. The people you have your organization that do have a lot of capacity are amazing. They're going to end up leaving because they're going to feel like they're it's chaotic because you don't have you don't have structure, you have chaos. And then I think the other piece is, is that, what was the other part of the question, I'm sorry, like, how do you, how do you avoid it, or, how do you, how do you prevent the the fear, or overcome the fear? You just take the so it's just, it's waking up on it's having this fear on Monday, waking up on Tuesday and saying, I'm gonna make this a priority. And I think I mean that I totally agree with you. I did a podcast with Victor right back. It's going to be dropping here shortly, and it was kind of like a similar situation for Victor. I mean, Victor started a tile company, and zero process, zero procedure, got to the point to where he wanted to start focusing on remodeling and home building, and he actually ended up selling the tile company to one of his employees that he still uses today. But he's like kind of seen in this last six to eight months, like this awakening in his business journey, because he's taken the process and procedure into consideration. And he's like, every time that I'm trying to do something that I need someone else to do, I just sit down and I do a loom or whatever he does. And he like, go. And he just like, This is how we execute this. This is how we do this. This is how we do that. He has project managers with GoPros on their head, right? And they're like, literally, like, here. This is what we look for in tile work. This is what we look for in finished carpentry. This is what we need it to look like here. So I asked just for more, like validation in the problem and how it really is a mindset. It's a commitment to recognizing the problem and knowing that it's going to take work and move in that right direction. And it's just, it's documentation, it's thinking about, what are my employees doing, and what do I need more individuals doing? Yeah, and it's really those standards, right? You you set everyone has these standards of the company. But like as a leader, you have to live them. And that in your responsibility as a leader is to put structure in, is to have responsibility and to have accountability. I mean, employees do not do well if they don't know what their expectations are, if they don't know what the consequences to those pieces are and what the accountability is, things get lost in the Pro. I always, I always, compare this to Chick fil A, right? Like we love Chick fil A, and we base everything on because, because Chick fil A is amazing, right? And because when we go to Chick fil A, doesn't matter where we go, which Chick fil A we go to, what state we go to, what anywhere we're going to have a good experience. And if we don't have a good experience, Chick fil A is going to fix it within five minutes. So it's not a big deal, right? And the end is always good, like, you know it's going to be versus, I went to water burger the other day, and it was a total mess. Like it took forever. It was chaotic. I didn't even get my whole my food. It was just like they didn't even they seemed completely indifferent. And I think that's the purpose of having this is because if you have some people in your team that know the standards and process and they're following it, but then you don't have people following at the end, or it's inconsistent, your client experience ends up being chaotic, so you might end up getting it done, but the client at the end is like, whoo, I don't know if I want to work with them again. That was messy. That was hard, right? Totally. And if you don't have, if you don't have a process down, you can't be a Chick fil A, you can't have the type of structure, and you can't hire the right people, because you don't know what you need. You don't and that. And I think that's scary too. I've heard this too, like people are scared to put some of these processes and accountability and those things down, because they have a lot of people their company, and they're like, Well, what if these people don't measure up? And it's like, yeah, but that's the whole purpose, because if they don't measure up, that's the reason that your business is here and not here. Like you, one has to be at that standard, and that is scary. I want on that thread. I want to hear your perspective on I'm going to call them like, hybrid employees, meaning, like all you, because, like, we work with, like, a lot of bookkeepers, a lot of administrative a lot of office managers, a lot of people that are like will be titled as a controller, but doing more administrative work. What's your perspective on small companies? I understand the necessity of hiring people that can wear multiple hats, but what is your point of view on the effectiveness with having these hybrid type employees that really don't have, like, a firm outline or expectation of what they need, but they're just there to get stuff done, good or a bad thing. So I think it works when you're when you're beginning, I think when you're a startup company, it's always generalized, right? Like you're gonna, everyone's gonna wear a lot of different hats, but if you want to scale, and you want to be niche and you want to be known, then you have to be able to have like core responsibilities for your people. Your people can't do everything right. And it's the same thing with us. When we first started, everyone was doing everything right, but now we have it pretty bucket out, right? This is your core roles. These are your core roles, or your core roles. I always think it's better to hire the right people for those roles, and have them be very good at very specific things. And really, I mean, obviously they might carry over a little bit. Things happen, but find good people who are specialists and what the problem is, and at what point is that reasonable, right? Because I think, to your point, like, if you're a startup company, you need a lot of generalists. Like you might not have everything predefined. You might not you might be figuring out what needs to be the process. But at what point is it a timeline? Is it a revenue number? Is it a feel in the business? Like at what point should builders be looking at saying I no longer need generous I no longer need jack of all trades, I no longer need someone wearing multiple hats, and I need to start looking at my organization a bit more holistically, and breaking this down into roles, and starting to hire people that are exceptional in those roles. I mean, I think it's all of it. I think it's when your business feels very vulnerable, when you have a lot of business and you have a lot going on, and you the owner, you the leader, are having to not lead. You're having to do all the work, and you're having to manage all those little, small things that are happening we I mean, it's just what it is that's it's time to hire like you as a leader. Your role is to not be in the business, and I know that's so hard, but you should not be project managing. You should not be managing everything. I mean, of course, you're going to in some cases, but you need people who are dedicated those pieces so that you can grow your business, so you can look for other opportunities, so you can deal with the big problems, the client issues. Because when you're having to deal with everything, what happens when the big issues come up? The client issues, the employee issues. When you need to hire people, someone leaves there. I mean, things happen, right? You have to be able to handle that piece. So that's what I would say. I mean, I think it's very dependent on the company. But to be honest with you, most of our clients, when they call us, they should have hired us. And I mean, that's Go ahead, year ago. I mean, that's frankly, like, where I was getting at is like to kind of, my next question is, what is, what is the first role that builders should be looking at hiring for, so that they aren't getting consumed with all of it? Because if you think about it, it's like, I'm a project manager at a custom home building company, right? And I've been a project manager for 10 years, and I finally have the guts. Or make the decision, or whatever, to go out and start my own company. It's going to be you in a truck, getting jobs, remodels, projects, whatever, to start. You're organically going to start it being the person that does everything. When you start to take on more projects, you start to take on more work, or you're just getting time consumed with running the back office and managing projects and winning work and managing client relations. Where should they start? From a role standpoint, start looking at opening up their time. Honestly, I would start with an administrative role, like an office manager role. You need to get all those little things off of your plate that are taking their eating up your time. You need someone that can take on that capacity of all the little things. So an office manager like there is no reason that any leader should be doing administrative work like that is, that's the first thing you have to get off your plate. You should not be managing administrative pieces. You should have someone help you. The next role you really need help with is estimating. You need a good estimator that can estimate your jobs, right, and can, you know, probably have relationships with sub vendors, know, understand sub vendors, and can talk to clients and able to walk through that. That's number one. You need someone who's a very good estimator, because I know that most of the time the owners are doing all the estimating. But, you know, again, things get lost, things get mistaken, and that costs you a lot of money when things aren't estimated correct, totally right. I mean, it just does so an estimator is very, very important, because that's your money. I mean, all the pre construction piece. You need solid superintendents. You need really good superintendents. Are going to be out in the field and making sure that things are being done the way. They need to someone who is your point of contact that can be letting you know proactively what's going on. And you need project managers as well. But priority wise, I would say, get the office stuff off of your list. It's not that expensive to hire a good office manager, so hiring an office manager first, and then kind of moving yourself down, getting that estimating, kind of off your plate, and then, and then hiring project managers and superintendents, honestly, all of it. But I think, like, from like a hierarchical standpoint, I that makes a ton of sense. Like, get the get the administrative stuff off your plate, and most commonly, a business owner is going to be more of a bags on type operator, right? Like they love being in the field. They love building the product. They love delivering that. So that makes sense, right? Get the stuff that you just rack in your mind about to get that off your plate in the office, make sure that that's running smoothly. Then get into the estimating side so that then you can start making sure that your funnel is taken care of, and your funnel is accurately getting taken care of, and you're able to make money on what's coming through the pipeline, and then get your superintendent's project managers on board to make sure that the volume, the byproduct of having the time from an administrator, the work is getting estimated appropriately building your business, and now that product is getting consistently delivered makes a ton of sense, absolutely, but you need that fun part first you really do, because most clients want it the other way around, like, we, I want to super it's like, but you don't have anyone supporting you with estimating. You have no one supporting the office part. Like, who's who's gonna handle that? Like, you're gonna have to handle that so and honestly, I also tell clients, like, what do you hate doing in your business? And almost always it's administrative stuff. Like you said, most of them want to be in the field. They want to be with clients. They want to look at their creations, their artists, you know, they want to see what they're building. They're very it's they're passionate about that, but they administer. And it's the same with me. I hate administrative, right? Like, I don't do it because I hate it, like it's not what I'm good at. I mean, I make jokes with my people all the time. I'm like, oh, sorry. Because, like, I don't know how to send this. Like, I'm like, you send the zoom, like, you know, like, it's like, and that's okay, because I have people that can support that. So, yeah, you got to do things you I mean, obviously you're going to have to do things within a business you don't always love, but the things you really hate, you should try to get off totally okay, that was great, I think, to kind of go back to a comment that you made earlier, of like, you are the business owner that doesn't have clear expectations, doesn't have SOPs, doesn't have a clear outline for what the team needs to be doing. It creates chaos. That chaos creates a culture that is going to drive the people that are keeping the wheels on the track out of the organization. That's like anyone would look at that and be like, oh, like, just dagger to the heart. My best employee just left me, right? And it's like, you might not always get that exit interview where they tell you very directly, right? And it's like, I left because honest answer. I left because it was chaotic. I left because I was tired of doing the work of five different people and no one Right, absolutely. What is the cost of that to a business? Of losing a good employee. And I'm just gonna be variable, right? I mean, they say, like, I mean, I guess it depends. Like, I mean, the truth is, if you bring someone, let's say you bring someone in you and you take the time to, you know, train them properly, and all those kind of things. I mean, you're really not recouping anything. What in 18 months, a year to 18 months, really the cost of them. But like, let's say you're bringing leaving someone to five years. I mean, that can cost you $150,000 for that 18 months that you're not recruiting. And cost 120 550 that is absolutely even more. And then the cost. And we have this all the time. We have candidates who are clients, who have these guys who, like, they were with them for five years, they everything seemed fine, and then one day they just want to resign, and they had no idea they were even upset. That is going to cost you $200,000 plus, because that person is probably doing multiple jobs, and we hear them on the other side, because we talk to the candidates, right? So when we're like, when we're going after candidates, we're like, why do you want to leave? And it's not money. I mean, people think it's money, but it's not, yeah. I mean, of course, there's always an aspect of, I want to make more money, but it's like, I don't feel appreciated. I'm doing the job of three people, so, and so he's getting promoted. He's the loudest in the room. I'm quiet. I do my job and no one even notices. I get no recognition at all. I'm the one holding it all together. All those things could happen. And then, so, yeah, I mean, it ends up, and it's gonna end up costing you more money, because what you paid for that person when they first came in, and what their capacity is, it could be, we have time for clients are like, oh, I want a superintendent for $100,000 we're like, no, that level of superintendent's gonna cost you$150,000 plus. And then, I mean, so it's like the costs are so astronomical of losing people, good people, it is. And not only that, it's when you lose good people, you lose other good people totally. And where do you I again, it's, it's like you could just, like, tie it to, like, the the A players are going to want to associate with a players, and then one, a player leaves, and the other ones, like, they're feeling the burn because that person's gone. And now, is it as simple as that? Or do you think that it's more of like, when a good person leaves the others on the team see the writing on the wall, or that was like, enough of a motivation for them to leave? What do you think really drives that trickle effect? Yeah, I think it's, again, it's fear. And this happens all the time. We see this with like companies that were like, go like, you know, we have a client. Once, you know, we go for their competitors, and then one person leaves, we pull someone and then the next person's like, huh? Is there something going on? Why did that person leave? And then it just creates like this, this momentum around like and it's the same way the other way, if you're a really value based company, and people are really happy, then you're attracting those people as well, right? So it's just, I always say, if it's law of attraction, it's all energy, right? So if the energy in your business is contracting because you don't have the right people, and because you don't have the right process, and the good people are leaving, or the qualified people, then, yeah, other people are going to leave. Why they wouldn't stay? It just gives them for sure, I mean, and that's where, like the I wanted you to get into the cost of it, and, like, the 12 to 18 months of 100$150,000 fully burdened cost employee is, like, that's a really big deal on its own. And then you start to take into consideration, like, how fast you can derail the entire organization. It's like, that, would you say? Like, that's where like, builders start to, like, they start to fail. I mean, we're doing, like, hundreds of 1000s of dollars. He's just like, it, it's so much, and it's not even that. Like, the worst, the scary, and this happened with us to like, I mean, we're not, we're we've had people. I had someone I wasn't the right match for organization that was in a leadership role, and I, you know, and after this person left, like, and it's, and I'm not blaming this person because I wasn't a good leader. So this is in your organization, okay, okay, yes, in our organization, we had someone that was in a leadership role, and they had been with us kind of from the beginning, and then as we expanded it, just they didn't match what our expectations were the standards. So I demoted that person, but it didn't really work out well, but I demoted them, right? So then I ended up having they ended up leaving, and it wasn't a bad ending. But then after this person left, seeing kind of how I had, how messy it was, like, really, how messy everything was underneath the hood. Like, things were not good, and then also, people were not telling me things. There were divisions within my organization with the other leaders. People were upset. I had no idea this person was Yeah, I had no idea. Like, I did not know because I was so busy and just assumed everything was going well, kind of sticking my in the sand. And I like this person on a very personal level, and I think that's another important piece. It's like, but I'm I have to start the business and, like, that's hard, right? So I think it's not just the financial part. It is like the mess that. That has been left behind, that you have, that you shared the story. Because I think that's where you get into the application of it. It's not just construction. It's truly any business. What created that divisive culture? Right? That what? What created the you weren't hearing things and you had no idea how like cluttered and messy it was, because I think your answer there will add a lot of clarity for the listeners to pick up on those things. Because I can only imagine, I actually know for a fact that that's how it works in construction companies too. Yeah. I mean, I think, honestly, I just got very busy and I didn't have processes. I mean, full disclosure, I didn't have the processes down like it was all in my head. Training was terrible. When the person came in, I didn't train them very well. They were kind of thrown into like a shark tank. They did their best, and I didn't have expectations. I didn't have performance reviews. I mean, I know that I'm the reason that this person stayed as long as they did, or wasn't as successful, because I wasn't leading from a place of truth, hiding truth. I was scared to say the truth. I didn't want to upset this person. I was I had too much of a personal feeling around it. I didn't like conflict, and then I also the people in my team didn't feel safe to share that with me, so that's a reflection on me. So it was a big deal. Like, I had to really look at myself and be like, Okay, who am I as a leader? Like, that's not how I want to show up. So ever since then, we had to change everything, like process, structure. We had to have time, realness, truth. I had to listen to everyone. I mean, you know, it was a lot of humility on my part and and the thing is, the person that left, they were not they were a good employee. They had good values. It wasn't like they just weren't ready for that next level, and I hadn't prepared them for it, right? And so that was really on me, ultimately. And so that's on you as the leader. Like you have to create safety for your people. You have to have structure. You have to have handbooks, you have to have standards, and you have to be talking about it all the time. That is part of it. It's just like you have to be talking about your core values. You have to live them. You have to have truth. You can't hide away from hard conversations. And I think that's what I also did. I would do, is that when things would get hard, I would sort of escape like I didn't want to look at it. You also can't be chaotic. You can't be reactive as well. You can't like a problem happens and you're screaming at everyone and you're freaking out and you're changing everything, and that's confusing for people too. So I mean, more than anything else, if you're a leader, you need to do work on your nervous system. You need to work on your service system. You need to work on your emotional relate regulation. How you show up at home is probably how you show up at work too. So you don't know, understand your your attachment styles. I know this sounds crazy, but it really you show like it's not like we do it on purpose. We're human beings. We're messy. We're messy. Sometimes emotions are messy. We get reactive. But you have to be able to stand in the fire and not bring chaos into your organization and whatever that looks like. And you got to make really hard decisions for your business that people may not totally again, I applaud you for the self awareness and the ownership, and I think that that is a part of the small business world, right? The entrepreneur world is like, you start this thing with really strong traits, really strong skills, and everyone wants to be the owner, right? I say like, everyone wants to be the CEO, right? Until, like, until you really understand what that means, right then it's just like, Okay, well, do you want the do you want the status and the upside, or do you actually want what that means and having that reality check, having the self awareness, having the humility to take the ownership, to really sit down and get to learn and own your organization and take the fault for it, the blame for it. I think just another, another piece here, like tactically, like this could be what you advise clients on, what you've seen in your experience, but like, tactically, how do you prevent yourself from being a leader or an owner with your team that creates a I don't get the whole story, culture, or I'm not looking within the business. What have you done? Like, is this, like, weekly check ins? Is this one on ones? Is this? Like, yeah, we do. I mean, we work, yeah, we're very EOS focused. So we don't have Eos, but we use that framework. So we do. We have leadership meetings every week, and it's all self reporting activity. We discuss that as a team, and we look at the trends, just to make sure that we understand that the right activity, and this is the truth with everyone, the right activity is going to create the right results. So we're always looking at that right activity. Ultimately, our goal is to fill positions. I mean, let's be honest, like we have to fill positions or we don't have a business. So what are the right activities that. We're doing that. We talk about problems within that space. We collaborate a lot within that space, and we do it every week. It's and we also have quarterly executive meetings where we kind of talk about things, but there's a lot of accountability. Yeah, there's a lot we and we have an applicant tracking system now that tracks everything, all the data you have to be able to have data, you have to be able to have reporting. So we have to track everything. We track all of our phone calls. I mean, it's not easy to do these things, but the other side of it is like, it's completely chaotic, like, then it's like, everyone's just making something up. And it's like, I think this or but no, it doesn't. We need to know facts. We need truth. I tell everyone if we need truth, like, I want truth, but I want truth, but not on emotion, on facts, on on results. So if you are, if I feel like, if this is like, you have to know what's going on with your people. You have curiosity with your people. You have to be able to ask them really good questions. And this is something I've had to learn as well as I can be bossy. Sure I am. I can be bossy. And so I always think My way is the right way, right and that's something I've had to learn, is that I have to my way is not always the right way, and I have to be able to ask questions and curiosity as to why they want to do a different way. And I and now I feel like we're in a place now where we have such truth, we have such openness, we have positive conflict. I mean, we have conflict, and that's okay too, right? But we do it in a way that's very emotionally mature. I mean, I'm, I'm someone who works with the energetics. I mean, I do meditations with my group. I'm very like. I encourage them to take breaks. I encourage them to get into their like, to move into their body like, because I say like, you client. You know, clients and candidates, it's stressful. Looking for a new job is stressful. Looking for people is stressful. We have to be the calm in the storm, because if the storm is going to bring more chaos in, so that's like a leader has to be. They have to be this calm in the storm. They can't bring more storm into it's got, you've got to be able to, like, protect your team from the storm so that they can do what they need to do. Yeah, and absolutely, just going back to the data piece, like, I mean, that's like, obviously a lot of what we talk about at Adaptive right, is just like, the clarity and the ability for that data. But it's really hard for that data, whether it's an applicant tracking system or it's a financial ops tool, or it's a project management software or a CRM or whatever it is, if you don't have the process, if you don't have the expectations, right, it's like impossible for you to get any meaningful data for your team to report on and be held accountable to. If you don't know what it is, right, and if you don't know why you're need to have that right, like, what you mean, you have to be able to have like my, my business partner always says, is that the data has to be able to create what we're looking for. Like, is it placements? Time for us, right? It's placements. How much activity you know, whatever it might be, but you have to have a structure of what those things you're wanting to accomplish in for the data, if not, you just buy systems. And what does that mean? My There we go. My light went off. I had to win. I mean, and I love y'all system. I mean, I know you, and I definitely spoke about it in Omaha, but I love that you that you're providing that for clients, because that is a huge piece. They it saves them. And I think that's the other piece. Like, why do company, why do leaders, don't they have to do everything. You're not going to do everything. And, like, that's what I don't do everything. Like, we have to, there's some things we don't do in house, right? And that's the other thing. You need to hire experts in those parts that are so important, money and people money and people money and people those are, like, that's a lot of it totally, and that's where, like, I'm seeing, we're seeing an adaptive, like, a huge shift. We were literally just talking about it from a leadership standpoint of like, what is, what do we see on the construction horizon? From a business standpoint, and you see a lot of business owners taking this stuff more seriously, the processes, the systems, the right people, the job descriptions, the data on their business. And it's a huge shift, and it's great to see. And that's, I think this is such a powerful conversation from a from a human resource, human capital recruiting employee conversation, because I'm always trying to find out for the builder that's at the starting block, whether it's someone who's literally just starting, or someone who's been in business for 10 years, who's just been running it by The by a thread that's ready to take it seriously. What are things that you can do as a business owner to start taking a step back and saying, This is step one, like, this is what I need, and it will go back to your point. Like, as around the trend, we're seeing this as well, and I think it's because you're seeing a lot. Lot of businesses being taken over by sons, other people in the organization, and they are different. Like I talked to all the time, they're like, I want to go on vacation. I don't know how many, I don't know how they did this, like, without any structure, you know? I think the first piece is, is that you need to sit down and you need to decide what the standards for your business are. You need to sit down and write down what those standards are, and what are those standards that you that next take company needs to be like. And I mean really feeling it like for us, our standards, I guess we know we have fun, but we have truth. These are us, right? Like, curiosity, what is it that makes your company that first pillar, right? And start building that out first really, start thinking about who you guys really are, and really what those standards really look like, you know, or higher, yes, frankly, like, I just feel like, plug you for sure. Is like, I so at adaptive, so I was the first business hire, okay? So it was like a team of co founders, software engineers, and I got brought in to help them sell this thing. And when we start, there were no core principles, right? There was just like a seed round product that's getting built and people trying to sell it, right? Like it was like, just to empathize with the listener, right? It doesn't. It's not like, before I start my business, we did an exercise at our very first off site, which, like, we got on our entire team together. We were in Dallas, like, we sat in the room and we're like, this is where we stake the flag. This is where we build our principles. This is what we do. And we sat down, we spent probably an hour and a half on this exercise, two hours, and at the end of it, we felt like, all right, these are our principles. Is what and none of it really meant anything. It didn't stick. We weren't like, collectively into it, we went through another exercise. It was more thoughtful, more collaborative with the team, explaining what the brand was, explaining how we operate, what's important to the organization. And it took like weeks to do, thinking, being thoughtful, and now we've got like, bring the sledgehammer. Assists are better than points. Solve for the long term. Care about your customer, right? And those are all things on a weekly basis. When we do our all hands, we're talking about it. We're giving shout outs to individuals that are exemplifying those principles. And that's where I think, whether you hire cherry group, or you sit down with your team, and you start to, like, get this roadmap down with the principles. It's like, what? What makes XYZ home builder or XYZ contractor special and differentiated, and how you're going to be holding people to that standard moving forward? Yeah, what? What really makes you guys unique? What is your unique offering, you know, and, and that's your values. And then, and I, and I always use this verbs, and this is why I was saying for our people, is like, how do we want to operate? Let's talk about, like, not the way we're operating now, because, like, what's the way that we want to operate? What, what would be ideal? And let's build it around that. Yeah, you know, let's build a way that we we ideally feel like and obviously, and I think to your point too recently, I mean, look, this is a moving target. This isn't an absolute, right? And, and there's no you're not far behind the curve either, because we do it because, like, this is what we're people business, right? So I can't be selling people business to people and not doing it myself. So, like, it just doesn't work. That's my standard, right? We're truth based, so I have to be honest and like, this is what we have and and we have to build that for us. But I think a lot of times people think that they're behind and like, they're the only ones experiencing this. But I'm going to tell you, we talked to hundreds and hundreds of companies. You're not, you're not, you're not behind. It's not, it's just it hasn't been the trend, and now we're recognizing this is what has to be 100% 100% and I think that social media has been a really strong player and shifting this trend. I think people like you know, Mark Williams and Nick Schiffer, Brad Leavitt, Morgan, molotar, Tyler, Grace, all those guys that have, like, really strong followings and have, like, really been pioneers in how to run a healthy business, they'll sit down and tell you the same thing, like, their business is not perfect, and they're constantly learning. But I think, like, the more you get involved in, I guess this is a plug for contractor coalition summit, but not really. It's more so to paint the picture that, like, you can be in business for 10 years and be like scraping by and just feeling the stress and literally flip a switch. And if you do need the community, if you do need the support, just look at them. Look at the businesses. Go to these events, get involved, and understand that there's a very large pocket of builders that are looking at running a business, not just monetizing a hobby, as I put it, right? Yeah, no, for sure. And I, and I, I mean, I'm a big believer in the groups as well. I mean, obviously, you know, I was there and just seeing and I work with all of them, you know, they're all of our clients. And so. And they have outstanding companies. Yeah, I mean, they truly do, like Brad's company is Outstanding, outstanding, and they have it down really well. And he follows it to a tee, you know, and he, he does a great job Morgan as well. We're, we've been, we've been helping Morgan with some stuff. She's got a lot of things. We're just helping her kind of put the final touches. And that's the other thing. That's the other thing. I mean, you can have all the things and you still want to go the next level, right? You want to get that hrs system in. You want to get more process in. You want more structure, even just refining it even more. There's never a stopping point to it. It's like you just have to start, totally you have to start, and you have to give yourself the grace to know that it's going to be a constant work in progress. And any, any progress that you make, whether it yields results or not, is good progress, because that's where it creates the fork in the road, and that gives and if, again, if you can hold yourself accountable and have the self awareness to say, like, look, we put this into place. We thought this was our North Star metric, and this is where we were going. It was wrong. But now we know where to pivot and go to, and now we're already thinking in the wavelength of building and documenting and holding people accountable that you can start to see absolutely your execution a lot faster. I mean, you got to make mistakes. I mean, if you don't make mistakes, you can't shift. I mean, and I think that's a very funny thing. What you like, what you said, is so true that you come in as a CEO, I'm the president, and you have this idealistic idea of how it's gonna go. And then before you know, like, what does Elon Musk say? Like, it's like eating, yeah. And it's really like that, right? And you're like, wow. And you're and I you see those funny reels of the time, or like people are the entrepreneurs are like, yeah, traffic, or they're doing checking. And it really is that way sometimes. I mean, that's the truth. It really is. It's it's unknown. You have to make hard decisions. You don't know everything, but that's why it's so. I'm just gonna plug us for a second. You guys, us or whoever you that's why you need support. That's why you shouldn't have to do everything yourself. I know it's scary the investment and having to get that support, but I'm telling you that that is how you grow your business when you have that support of people who can take that off your plate so you could do things you enjoy doing honestly, you want to know what makes that investment more palatable, knowing your numbers, financial clarity, and no stupid little plug, but 100% you should be down. Like, when you're starting like, I don't think as, like, a business owner, you should be looking at this as like, how much of our gross margin can I personally be taking home until you start to get into the position of like, Okay, we're gonna go out and every 100, 150$200,000 that we're netting on this we can dump back into this person. When you have the process, when you have the plan, when you have the vision, that's now what you're working towards, and then you're like, you've got it in place where it's like, okay, we hit our goals. We've got the profit. Let's dump it into this person, because we know that's going to be the most impactful next person. Absolutely, absolutely. And it's, you know, we've, we've moved into executive recruiting, so we have done more like project managers, Superintendent, estimators. It's kind of our bread and butter, and designers, those kind of things. So we've recently, and I know I'm running it, so we recently opened an executive side with the obvious, the price point is higher and but it's a much more consultative experience. It's much more I'm involved. It's a lot more interviews with directors and those kind of things. And it's scary for like, oh, you know, but, but, because it's an investment, a pretty large investment to bring in a COO or, you know, a number two, right, an integrator. But it's like, they're ready for the next level, the clients that we're working with, because they have been growing an incredible business. They have the processes, they have the systems. And now the owners are like, Okay, I don't want to, I'm ready for this not be me anymore. I don't want to be in all the meetings. I don't want to be in every single thing. I want to thing. I want to focus on this part. I want to focus on growing this side and so that then bringing that person in, it is an investment, but, like, it's a capacity. It's it's like, the right investment. But you don't start with that right. Start with Office Manager. Start with the office manager. Get your estimate and then hire your soups. Yeah, yeah. You don't need workers. I need capacity. No, you have to. You have to. Okay, I love it. This has been highly impactful. I think there's a lot of really good tactical takeaways for the audience here, and I think that this is a very applicable conversation to be having, especially with all the labor shortages that happen, how nuanced construction is, how important it is to get the right individuals in the seat, knowing the cost that will hurt your organization if you don't do it the right way. So Suman, I appreciate you. Thank. You for sharing your perspective. Thank you for being on where can the listeners find you? To follow your content, explore what you provide. Maybe get in contact. Where can they where can they find you? Um, my Our website is Cherry challenge.com. I'm all active fruit cherry talent group.com but really, I'm all over LinkedIn, like, I'm all over LinkedIn very, yeah, all of our contents there. You know, our cherry talent group page, we have a lot of the referrals and what we've worked on, the types of positions we're working on, we post most of those out there, and then I think I have, I we're going to be offering something that's going to be coming up soon, where we want to help clients. Want to offer something like around like letting them know kind of what their people think about them, so employee surveys and stuff. We're going to be offering that at no cost, just companies to be able to really understand kind of what their people really think about their business. So that'll be something we'll be rolling out probably the next this year. Huge, huge resource that's really the starting block for this conversation is like, what are we working with today? I love it. I love it. Everybody. You got to check out Suman and the cherry. Cherry group, cherry talent, group, team. Cool. Well, I appreciate thanks for spending the time. I'll let you get back to your week and again the old the old Midwestern goodbye. Thanks. Thanks again for coming. All right. See you so much.