How Top Trades Businesses Use AI and Systems to End Recruiting Pain

Summary

Service Business Mastery for Skilled Trades: HVAC, Plumbing & Electrical Home Service

Episode Title: How Top Trades Businesses Use AI and Systems to End Recruiting Pain
Hosts: Tersh Blissett & Josh Crouch (Skilled Trades Syndicate)
Guest: Paul (Recruiting & Contractor Coach)
Date: June 3, 2026

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Overview

In this episode, Tersh and Josh host Paul, an industry veteran in contractor coaching and recruiting, to reveal the nuts and bolts of using automation, AI, and systems—especially applicant tracking systems (ATS)—to end recruitment woes in home service trades. They deep-dive into longstanding mindsets holding contractors back, share actionable strategies for sourcing and vetting candidates, and explore the emotional realities and financial impacts of hiring and firing decisions. The conversation is packed with real-world tactics and no-nonsense advice on how modernized, always-on recruiting—amplified by technology—raises the bar for trades businesses.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Real Reason for Recruiting Struggles

[04:44]

• Paul asserts: “If you have problem recruiting, it's you. It's not the market. That's… you know.”
  • The biggest barrier to recruitment is often the owner’s limited beliefs and outdated practices.

Limiting Beliefs That Sabotage Recruiting

• Recruit Only When Needed: Big mistake—recruitment must be a continuous process, not a sporadic project.
• “Employees Are Expensive”: This mindset hinders growth. Paul: “You can't make money without employees. The more employees you have, more money you make. So get over it.” [06:43]
• “We Can Do It Ourselves”: Undervaluing recruiting expertise; analogy with car repair and accounting—most don’t DIY.
• Hire Only from Construction: Many of Paul’s successful hires came from outside the industry. He notes that skills like project management transfer well. For instance, “A wedding planner can be an amazing selection coordinator.” [07:29]
• Hire Fast, Fire Slow: Paul strongly advocates reversing this: “If you’re recruiting all the time, you should hire slow…The reason you should fire fast...is a bad [hire] can kill your organization.” [09:10]
• Recruiting is a Project That Ends: Wrong—always be recruiting, just as you should always be marketing.

Memorable Quote:

“If you have a recruiting problem, it’s you. It’s not the market, not the company, it’s your practices.” – Paul [10:12]

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2. Social Proof & Indirect Recruiting

[10:35]

• Josh and Tersh discuss how sharing content about workplace culture attracts quality candidates who research employers.
• Paul acknowledges its value but urges direct, always-on recruiting to keep the pipeline strong.

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3. Building a Modern, Multi-Step Recruiting Funnel

[12:43]

• Writing the Job Ad:

  • Standout ads make candidates want to leave current jobs, not just find any job.
  • “You got to write a killer job because your ad has to get somebody to quit their job and come to work for you.” – Paul [12:43]

• Post Everywhere:

  • Not just Indeed—use 100+ job boards, LinkedIn, Facebook, niche sites, and even build your own talent database.
  • “You gotta be active…there’s 10 or 15 places you should put it, not one.” – Paul [13:52]

• Speed to Lead:

  • Fastest responder wins. Paul describes reviewing 7,000 resumes weekly; 300 applications per hire is typical.
  • “You have to respond to applicants in real time. It's like speed to lead.” – Paul [13:52]

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4. Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS) and Automation

[15:41]

• ATS platforms automate posting jobs, receiving applications, organizing candidate data, and managing communication.
• “It’s like a CRM for recruiting.” — Paul [15:54]
• Real-time response to applicants is crucial for landing top talent.
• “That’s the deal breaker for most contractors—if you have 50 people applying a day, who in hell’s going to come? And yet you’re competing for quality candidates.” – Paul [26:36]

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5. The Multi-Layered Vetting Process

[16:24] – [20:46]

• Assessment is Non-Negotiable:
  • Use personality (DISC), integrity, and IQ assessments.
  • “We have a predicted DISC profile…we know what a good project manager looks like.”
  • Sample integrity scenario: Would you lie to a client if told by your boss?
• Video Interviews:
  • Structured by position, fill in blind spots missed by assessments.
• Background & Reference Checks:
  • Must be thorough and methodical.
• Onboarding:
  • Successful onboarding is the final key to retention and performance.

Memorable Quote:

“You have to do all these steps. You have to write the killer job ad, put it everywhere, get back in real time, do assessments, interviews, background checks, call references, make a compelling offer…and then onboarding!” – Paul [21:09]

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6. The Cost (Financial & Emotional) of Hiring/Firing

Direct Cost:

• Paul’s company automates for ~$1,500/month vs. paying HR staff/agency markups.
• New Indeed rules as of Oct 2025: only recruiting companies or connected ATS users can post jobs without paying for every ad. [24:46]

Hidden & Emotional Cost:

• “What if you hire the wrong person? The average cost of a bad employee, I think, is $50,000.” – Paul [29:01]
• The pain of firing is usually emotional; most endure underperformance because it feels easier.
• “The number one reason people don’t hire people is emotional pain. They don’t want to go through it.” – Paul [30:08]
• “If there isn’t anybody you wouldn’t rehire if you started your company over—you should fire them.” – Paul [32:41]

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7. The Changing Landscape: AI, Private Equity & Survival

[35:08]

• As AI disrupts other industries, private equity is targeting trades for their resilience. Savvy players (with marketing and recruiting systems) will take over markets from those relying only on word-of-mouth or outdated methods.
• “What’s happening now is the Walmartization of construction…you gotta get on board. Use marketing, use the tools, use recruiting so you can effectively compete.” – Paul [35:15]

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Notable Quotes & Moments

| Timestamp | Speaker | Quote | |--------------|--------------|--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| | 04:44 | Paul | “If you have problem recruiting, it's you. It's not the market. That's… you know.” | | 06:43 | Paul | “You can't make money without employees. The more employees you have, more money you make. So get over it.” | | 09:10 | Paul | “If you're recruiting all the time, you should hire slow. The reason you should fire fast...is a bad [hire] can kill your organization.” | | 13:52 | Paul | “You gotta be active…there’s 10 or 15 places you should put it, not one.” | | 21:09 | Paul | “You have to write the killer job ad, put it everywhere, get back in real time, do assessments, interviews, background checks, call references, make a compelling offer…and then onboarding!” | | 29:01 | Paul | “What if you hire the wrong person? The average cost of a bad employee, I think, is $50,000.” | | 30:08 | Paul | “The number one reason people don’t hire people is emotional pain. They don’t want to go through it.” | | 32:41 | Paul | “If there isn’t anybody you wouldn’t rehire if you started your company over—you should fire them.” | | 35:15 | Paul | “What’s happening now is the Walmartization of construction…you gotta get on board. Use marketing, use the tools, use recruiting so you can effectively compete.” |

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Important Timestamps

• [04:44] – The root of recruiting struggles: It’s often the owner, not the market.
• [06:43] – Debunking the “employees are expensive” myth.
• [10:35] – Always be recruiting, always be marketing—why it matters.
• [13:52] – Multi-platform job posting and the importance of speed to lead.
• [16:24] – How ATS and assessments modernize recruitment.
• [20:46] – Detailed explanation of the multi-layered candidate vetting system.
• [29:01] – The huge cost of a bad hire.
• [30:08] – Emotional barriers to firing; mediocre employees drag down teams.
• [35:15] – Industry disruption, the influx of private equity, and the need for tech-driven recruiting.

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Key Takeaways & Action Steps

• Recruitment must be a constant process. Don’t wait until you’re desperate.
• Always post jobs across multiple platforms—don’t rely on just one channel.
• Respond to applicants immediately—speed matters in the digital talent market.
• Use technology: Leverage ATS, AI, and assessment tools to reduce bias and improve hires.
• Vetting is more than resumes: Use integrity and personality assessments, video interviews, and thorough reference/background checks.
• Don’t DIY if you’re stretched: Investing in professional services often saves money and headache.
• Don’t keep “B” players—have the courage to make tough firing decisions for the long-term health of your business.
• Adopt modern systems and marketing or risk being left behind as the industry changes.

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Final Thoughts

Paul’s approach is blunt but insightful: contractor recruiting woes are solvable with the right mindset, systems, and use of technology. "Always be recruiting and always be marketing," he emphasizes, or risk mediocrity—or extinction—in a hyper-competitive, evolving trades landscape.

For demos and more info on these hiring systems, Paul is available for appointments via his company.

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This summary omits promotional breaks, advertisements, and outro remarks for clarity and focus on core content.

Transcript

[Krista]

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[Paul]

So in an applicant tracking system, when somebody applies it goes to 100 job boards, LinkedIn, Facebook, any place you can possibly put the ad. It goes everywhere. Once you get people into the APS respond in real time, the next thing you need to do is do an assessment. So it's a detailed psychological profile and what it does, it tells you who they are as a person. So if you've succeeded at a project manager, we know what your personality should look like. Next thing we do is integrity and attitude. We literally assess their honesty. Then we have an IQ assessment. We do a personality profile, total intelligence profile and integrity profile. So by the time we're done with that, we pretty much know that they're the right personality, intelligence and the right integrity to the job. We do a video interview on top of that and then in the video interview you can find out everything else you didn't find out in the assessment by asking them all the right questions.

[Tersh Blissett]

Today's episode is brought to you by one of our show partners, upfrog.

[Joshua Crou]

Upfrog is the OG when it comes to pricing transparency online. They find system replacement leads through paid ads and have developed an entire system to drive those hard to find system replacement opportunities, nurture the leads and book them into sold systems before your team arrives to help you grow your business.

[Krista]

Hey, I'm Krista with Marketstorm and we work with home service companies across the country. Quick question. If another H Vac or plumbing company in your area starts influencing homeowners before they ever hit Google, who gets the first call? By the time someone searches plumber near me, they've already been researching the problem. We use AI to detect those early intent signals and put your brand in front of them. So when they do search, your name already feels familiar. Visit Marketstorm AI or text us at 213-575-5448.

[Tersh Blissett]

Hello everyone out there in podcast world. Hope you're having a great day. You're listening to or watching the Service Business Mastery podcast. I am one of your hosts, Tersh Blissett, sitting virtually next to my co host, Joshua Crou. We have the pleasure of talking to Paul today about hiring and some best practices. And I think that Paul's going to even give us some examples of how he uses AI in the hiring process. So with that being said, Paul, you want to make an introduction of yourself, who you are, kind of your background.

[Paul]

Okay. So I've been working with contractors and coaching them for 50 years. I think I've worked with over 2,000 plus contractors. So been doing this a long time. About five years ago, the problem was I could get people from 2 to 20 million, but they couldn't find their paper right, which is a problem. So I originally came up with all this really cool software, all the best technology. I gave it to them. They totally screwed you up. Okay. So I put a guy in my garage and I said, I just want you to recruit for my clients. And fast forward four or five years. We now have 35 people on the team. We've recruited over 2500 people. 95% of them worked out, go through six or 7,000 resumes a week. Um, we went through 500,000 resumes to find the 2,500 people we hired. And I've learned a lot of what works and doesn't work. So I hope to convey to your audience what I've Learned after hiring 2,500 people that worked out and what they can do to do it themselves if they want to.

[Tersh Blissett]

That's what's up. Very cool. Josh, you got anything?

[Joshua Crou]

No, actually, I got interested Paul back on his podcast. So, Paul, you have your own podcast. You want to mention the name of that just in case anyone wants to learn more about hiring and stuff like

[Paul]

that in the success tips? It's more of everything. We have like 200 affiliates. They're, you know, software companies, marketing companies, that kind of thing. So I'm always trying to introduce to my client base new pool technology and people and services. So that's what that podcast is about. It's called business success.

[Joshua Crou]

And what Paul didn't say is I was the best interview he's ever had.

[Tersh Blissett]

The. The lowest.

[Paul]

You weren't the best looking, Josh, but you were the best. I didn't say best looking.

[Tersh Blissett]

The best downloaded episode ever.

[Joshua Crou]

The least downloaded yet. 1, 1, 1 download. It was probably myself.

[Tersh Blissett]

It was your mom.

[Paul]

There you go.

[Tersh Blissett]

I'm the number. We are the number one rated podcast according to my mom.

[Paul]

That's right. Absolutely.

[Joshua Crou]

Yours does comment on a lot of our stuff.

[Tersh Blissett]

But my mom does comment.

[Joshua Crou]

I know you know that. Anyway, so, Paul, so obviously, you know, talk us through like the, maybe we can get kind of caught up like the last couple years because it's been such a crazy, well, you know, roller

[Paul]

coaster for hiring in the place first place. I want to tell you that if you have problem recruiting, it's you. It's not the market. That's, you know.

[Joshua Crou]

And what do you think some of the big challenges are? Do you, do you think it's.

[Paul]

Well, the biggest challenge is the owner of the business. That's the biggest challenge. I'm going to tell you some things.

[Joshua Crou]

Church is the biggest problem. Okay, got it. That's what I'm hearing.

[Tersh Blissett]

Josh, I think, I'm pretty sure you own three businesses or four.

[Paul]

This is the problems. I call them limited beliefs. All right? The first one is only recruit when you need somebody. It's not true. You know, the truth is you should recruit all the time, but unfortunately, the way contractors think, they think it's a project, they don't think it's a process. They just recruit when they need people and it really gets them wet. Yeah.

[Joshua Crou]

Can we, can we dig into that for a second, Paul? Because we, Church and I both been part of coaching groups and we, we like, we personally know this very well and it is a difficult, limiting belief to always have some sort of ads up or always be looking for people because what a lot of people say, and a lot of people have the best of intentions, they don't. They want to make sure somebody's got full time work. They don't want to lay them off like they have great intentions when they say, this is why I'm not hiring. But I mean, what, how do they.

[Paul]

Well, it's. Can you think, is it just, is it a belief?

[Joshua Crou]

Is it like stepping over the ledge

[Paul]

and just like think of a sports team that doesn't recruit all the time? I mean, come on, there's always your best and your worst players. And you. It's just part of owning a team. And I'm assuming if you're a contract, we own a team. If you own a team, you're always looking for the best players you can find. You don't want to say I'm done, do you?

[Tersh Blissett]

If you haven't grown your company, it hasn't grown. Do you.

[Paul]

Are.

[Tersh Blissett]

Do you advocate that you release the bottom 10 or 20% every year?

[Paul]

Well, here, here's what I tell people. All right? And that's going to get a little later. If there isn't anybody you would rehire if you started your company over. You should some of that.

[Tersh Blissett]

We've had some of them in the

[Paul]

past and so gets in the way. And I'm going to get the second belief that gets in the way, guys is employees are expensive. Oh, I can't afford that. Always expensive or she's expensive. You can't make money without employees. The more employees you have, more money you make. And so get over it.

[Tersh Blissett]

I mean employees as long as they're not just squatting on the clock.

[Paul]

And you got a farm, right?

[Tersh Blissett]

Yeah.

[Paul]

This is the third what gets in the way. And I fight with this all the time. We can do it ourselves. What's so hard about recruiting? Right? You know, but you fix your own car. Probably not. Do you do your accounting first? Does not.

[Tersh Blissett]

I don't fix my own cars anymore. That's too much of a pain.

[Joshua Crou]

Never mind. Yours is a gear. He's a gearhead. So nobody does this.

[Tersh Blissett]

Those things have gotten so if you

[Paul]

don't have a computer, you can't even talk to your car anymore, Right?

[Tersh Blissett]

Yep.

[Paul]

So you know, and so for some reason people think oh, what's recruiting? I put an ad in, you know. Indeed. And I'm done. It's bullshit. You know, you need to hire somebody that knows what they're doing and that gets in the way. The next one. This, this is a biggie recruit within the construction industry. I will tell you, I've hired over 2,500 people. That's a lot of people. And a lot of them weren't based in construction. For example, think about you're hiring a selection score, right. What about a wedding plan? I mean think about a wedding planner has to do. They've got to get these sort of flaky groups together. The band, the venue, the flower person sort of flaky. All those people have to be together at the right time in the right place. It's got to look good, it's got to work. And the client has to be incredibly happy. Her mother, her mother in law. It sounds like a remodel to me. Right. And so that talent and is what you use for swex. You can always teach people the industry but you can't teach them what you know, who they are as a person. So we hire a lot of people outside the industry that just kill it. So you know, you can put reconstruction preference experience prefer but now required the next one. This is a killer. People believe they should hire fast and fire slow.

[Tersh Blissett]

They hire We've always heard, what's your belief?

[Paul]

Hire slow and fire fast. So hire fast and fire slow so you don't appear all the time. So you.

[Tersh Blissett]

Oh, yeah. No, what you said the second time is what we did. My dyslexia kicked in on that one.

[Joshua Crou]

I was, I, I got confused too. So.

[Tersh Blissett]

Yeah, you're right.

[Joshua Crou]

No, I just want to make sure I, I got your, Your feedback there.

[Paul]

What happens is if you're recruiting all the time, you should hire slow. Right? Don't. Don't hire fast because you probably hired the wrong guy.

[Tersh Blissett]

So you hire mirror foggers when you do that.

[Paul]

Yeah. And. And so you hire slow. The reason you should fire fast, that's even more important, is a bad aid can kill your organization.

[Tersh Blissett]

Right.

[Paul]

One person can come in, you hired, and he doesn't tell the truth quite all the time. He steps on the flowers. He doesn't respect you, blah, blah, blah. You spent years building a culture and he can destroy it in six months or she can destroy it. So that's why you hire slow and you fire fast. And the last one is recruiting is a project that ends. It never ends. You should always be recruiting, always be looking for people. The two things I've been coaching for many years is always be recruiting and always be marketing. Because if you have great clients and you have great employees, this is an awesome industry. But if either one of them sucked, it's horrible.

[Tersh Blissett]

Yes, you are 100% correct on that one. 100%, absolutely. Josh and I have been talking about this.

[Joshua Crou]

Speaking from experience. We literally were just talking about some stuff from, from Tertia's stuff. So, yeah, he's been feeling that pain.

[Paul]

So, you know, that's what gets in the way. So if you have a recruiting problem, it's you. It's not the market, it's not the company, it's your practices. So I'm going to show you how to do it yourself. Okay. I'll tell you what we do, how we pulled it off. There's no big magic to it, but if you don't follow these steps, you're going to be in trouble.

[Joshua Crou]

All right, so before we, before we do the screen share and show and go into some of that stuff. So you mentioned always be recruiting, always be marketing to me. And maybe it's because I like posting on Facebook and doing that stuff. I feel like it's easy to always be like indirectly recruiting, Meaning I'm not necessarily posting a job, but I'm posting about what it's like to work here.

[Tersh Blissett]

Yeah, but Josh you also.

[Joshua Crou]

The team gets her stuff like that.

[Tersh Blissett]

That's not how you always were, though. Like, even when you and I first met, you didn't. You weren't big in making a lot of videos. You know, like, that's. I feel like that's more new for you because now it's like, you educate so much that it's second nature to you to. To keep educating, which in turn turns into, you know, marketing for new hires.

[Joshua Crou]

It's like, it's, it's. It's indirect, essentially, for, like, finding new

[Paul]

employees, because, gosh, do it directly. I mean, I'm gonna go through this process. Don't, you know, you don't want to be sort of shy about it. You want to. You want to put everything you can.

[Joshua Crou]

Yeah, I'm not saying anything like that. Sort of.

[Paul]

Yeah.

[Joshua Crou]

What I'm saying is this. The. The content that you put out is always in like. So we. I'm literally after this. I have two interviews for a. A director of SEO position for us. And the pe, like, the feedback we get when people send us messages and stuff like that is like, they. They candidates today, at least in my opinion, because there's so many things out there about a company that they can learn before they ever get into an interview. Just like we can learn a lot with an applicant tracking system, which we're going to get into, is that they are paying attention. They are looking at LinkedIn, they're looking at Facebook, they're looking at all of these different places. Like, if you are active and you are putting out good content and it's quality, it's not just crap stuff thrown at a wall and hoping something sticks, people pay attention to like, well, I really like all the stuff that you guys put out, and I get that feedback a lot. That's not the reason I'm putting the content. Honestly, the content. A lot of the content we put out is for con, like our contractors, people that we want to bring on as clients. But prospective employees see it and you know, they are the ones that see it, like, wow, this is great. This is the kind of company I want to work at.

[Paul]

Well, building social proof is really important. I think that's a fantastic thing. But at the same time, you still have to have your feet in the line, in the water. Right? You can't, like, not put it out there. And that's why you should be recruiting all the time. So I'm going to this. It's pretty simple. The first thing you do is you got to write. I'll show you how to chat, you keep my debt. But you got to write a killer job because your ad has to get somebody to quit their job and come to work for you. It is not just post position. Looking for a director, we got to say, does you know, you don't like your job, you tired of commuting you, you got to make it an ad. It's not just a description. So you got to get an ad that somebody's going to read and want to quit their job and come to work for you. Okay. That's important.

[Joshua Crou]

Do you have any? Because you mentioned indeed. And obviously that's, that's probably the big, one of the bigger recruiting places people go to. But the thing is now not everyone on Indeed's looking. A lot of people looking on Indeed are looking for a job because they don't have one or they're miserable or whatever. But are there any other places that you're seeing success where good candidates are coming in? Because obviously the best candidates are typically the ones that are gainfully employed.

[Tersh Blissett]

Yeah.

[Joshua Crou]

And their employer is happy with their much harder to find on Indeed.

[Paul]

Well, not necessarily, Jack. If you put it, you know, when we go, we go on a hundred job boards, LinkedIn, Facebook. We put it every way. We search the databases. We have a database of three hundred and fifty thousand of our own. We look for this guy. But you gotta be active. I mean, and when I get later, I'll show you how you all the places you should look. But there's 10 or 15 places you should put it, not one. I mean, so that's the second part is you put it everywhere, including like LinkedIn. Everybody can possibly put it. There's a lot of organic stuff out there you don't have to pay for, but you've got to know where it is. So you put it on every job board you can and the next thing is you. This is the toughest one, Josh. Yeah. You've got to respond to applicants in real time. It's like speed delete. Right. So when someone.

[Joshua Crou]

That is the worst I've, I've done hire. So especially our company is entirely remote. And we used to hire for like client success managers, for instance. It's more of a, it's a position that we take good people and we can train them on the marketing skills. And we would get three or four hundred hundred applications in like 72 hours. Right.

[Paul]

We, we go through seven. We did not have a system when

[Joshua Crou]

originally we're doing this. And it was extraordinarily painful. Like I'm hoping You guys can hear

[Paul]

the pain like it was 7,000 resumes a week in real time. So the minute you know the average person, we have to go through 300 applicants to find one person. That's the app. So how do you respond to 300?

[Joshua Crou]

That's a needle in a haystack.

[Paul]

In real time within, you know, like, that's hard to do most. That's why we. That's why the reason we're in business. People can't do it.

[Tersh Blissett]

You can't respond still run your business

[Paul]

and stuff to a hundred people in real time. If they call you about the same day, you're not going to do it yet. It's for the people that.

[Joshua Crou]

Sorry to interrupt you. But for the people that. So we're talking about Applicant Tracking System, ats, for people that don't know what that is, because a couple years ago, I didn't know what that was. Can you explain to people what that is so they in. In terms maybe they can understand?

[Paul]

Okay. It's an applicant tracking system, sort of like the CRM for recruiting. And I can show you ours as you want to see how it works, but I'll show you that and go through the rest of the details. Okay, so let me show you R A T S. Can you do that?

[Joshua Crou]

Like, yeah, I can pull it up. So for those that are listening to this episode, I do challenge you. We're going to do some screen sharing on this one. So it's a little unique, but try to go to the YouTube link and watch this. It'll be. It's in the show notes.

[Paul]

So just explain and you know what it does. Okay, so in an applicant tracking system, all right, what happens is when somebody applies, we put it. We put it in this ATS. It goes to 100 job boards, LinkedIn, Facebook, any place you can possibly put the ad. It goes every. In real time, responds in real time. You also have people respond in real time. So once people gets put in the ats, it goes everywhere, and then we respond in real time. Now, if you're looking at the ats, it's a bunch of names on. Has a bunch of people that are applying. So once you get people into the APS respond in real time, the next thing you need to do is do an assessment. There's like a bunch of different assessments out there. I'll show you our just the heck of it. So if you click on the ats, I'm clicking on the ATS right now. It's going to a different screen, and it's Showing the people that applied for that job. So I'm going to put somebody that applied for a job with us. You click on them, it goes to he applied to the job. And the next important thing you really need to do if you're recruiting is assessments. Okay, this is our assessment. Oh, this? I have the same call the screen there last time. Okay. So if you go to the assessment, it'll show you the assessment. And then it goes to. Where is it, this particular assessment? I can explain it to you. Where is it when you go to assessments? And I'll explain. So the assessment basically is a detailed psychological profile. Okay. Now I just explain it because sometimes copy this, but I'll just glue it for now. So it's a detailed psychological profile. And what it does, it tells you. We use a disc profile. It explains who they are as a person. And we have a predicted disc profile, which means we've done literally 300,000. So we know what a good project manager looks like. We know what the profile of a good whoever we're looking for looks like. So we've already profiled that position. When they take the assessment, we run their disk assessment against somebody who succeeded at that job. Okay? So if you succeeded at a project manager, we know what your personality should look like, which is really important. So we profile the personality on the disk. Next thing we do is integrity and attitude. This stuff you can't find out in an interview. We literally assess their honesty, their, their, you know, how will they respond if they're a victim, who they are as a person. We have a whole profile. We put a psychological profile. Like one of the ways we assess honesty, we ask questions like. Let me ask you the question, Josh, here. Here's the typical question in an honesty question. So you are a project manager, all right? And you have, you've, you've worked for a boss. And he tells you to tell the client the product is going to be there in two weeks. You know it's four weeks. He knows it's four weeks. So what are you going to do? You're going to support your boss and lie or you're going to tell the truth? You'd fail the test? No, I mean, the point is you, you got, you know, if people say, well, the lie, then that means their truth telling is conditional, which is bad, right? So by asking questions like that, you could get who they are as a person. You can't fix them. You cannot fix who they are as a person. It does not work. So it is important that you do this kind of Assessment and then we have an IQ assessment, how smart they are. Analytical intelligence. But apply that intelligence. We do a total personality profile. We do a total intelligence profile and integrity profile. So by the time we're done with that, we pretty much know that they're the right personality, the right, you know, intelligence and the right integrity of the job. Some things we can't find out. Oh, do you, how old are you? What do you look like, you know, how's your English? So we do a video interview on top of that with a video interview. They're all structured for each different position. We ask these questions and then in the video interview you can find out everything else you didn't find out in the assessment by asking them all the right questions. So you've done a video interview. Once you've done the video interview, then you do background checks, you do reference checks. You know, you do a very thorough job. You call the references. And this is like the way you vet an employee. And if you're going to do it, you can't get around these steps. You have to do them all or you're going to be in trouble. And most contractors don't do that. They literally put an admin deed, see who shows up and they take the first buy. It looks decent and they're in trouble.

[Joshua Crou]

Well, you don't know anything about those candidates. And that was, that was one of the things we scheduling interviews based on a piece of paper and a resume. And you get to talk to people and you realize that they're lying on their resume.

[Paul]

Right.

[Joshua Crou]

Like you don't have that level of experience, otherwise you would know some of these things I'm asking you, right?

[Paul]

Absolutely.

[Joshua Crou]

It's a, it's a big problem because it's just a piece of paper. Like you could literally put whatever you want in there and you can watch enough YouTube videos to be an expert

[Paul]

at something like, right, there's chat GPT. Right. Your resume does a pretty good job. So, so it's like, you know, you can, you have to do all these steps. You have to write the killer job ad, you've got to put it everywhere in the universe. You've got to get back to applicants in real time. You have to do assessments, you have to interviews, you have to do background checks, you got to call references, you got to make job offer they're going to take and then you got to have a sexual successful onboarding process. So all this you need to do in order to do it right. Now, if you can do all this yourself, hallelujah. Go for it. I figured out a way literally to do it for 1500 bucks a month for a company and do five positions all the same time, which is really hard to do about yourself. So that's where we've grown so much

[Joshua Crou]

because that's a lot cheaper than hiring an HR person to manage all this stuff or some kind of supervisor.

[Paul]

People on the team, they get all the software, they get all the assessments, they get everything they need. It's no contest, right? So it's, this is like sometimes doing your marketing doesn't make any sense because you know, you have your kid build your website because he's cheap. Not the best idea. So I think it's important that you follow all these steps. And you know, don't those beliefs you mentioned earlier get in the way? Like, you know, the ones we talked about.

[Tersh Blissett]

Hello, home service professionals. Do you want to maximize your marketing budget? Then you need to be using call tracking from CallRail. Let's say you've noticed a spike in new leads this month. To find out what's driving them, you just log into your CallRail dashboard. Is my new Facebook ad outperforming my other ads or is paid search knocking it out of the park? Or maybe it's time to retire those newspaper ads. Since CallRail assigns a unique phone number to each of my marketing efforts, I know where my best leads come from and which efforts to scrap. CallRail shows you your most cost effective marketing channels so you can get back to business. Go to CallRail.com sbmpod and try it for free.

[Joshua Crou]

Quick question. How many calls did you miss last month? Not how many you answered, how many did you miss? Across the home services industry, about 30% of inbound calls go unanswered. And those aren't just tire kickers. Those are customers ready to give their business to whoever books first. Brizy fixes that with AI agents that answer every call. They book the jobs for you and they follow up instantly. So instead of waking up to missed calls, wake up to book jobs. If you want to see how many jobs you're losing right now, go to get breezyapp.com use code SBM and they'll give you $500 towards Breezy on us. Now back to the episode. Yeah, Paul, let me, let me ask you a question. So doing the setup for this, so all of these things that you're mentioning, like if, if now I know because we use an applicant tracking system for people that have never used one. It sounds like a lot of work. Like I got to do A lot of setup because there's always the cost and then there's like the hidden cost. Right? The hidden cost is the, the time, the investment of my time, which of course is a finite resource. What kind of things do you guys have in place to help facilitate? So these things, it's not that daunting to get going and get started.

[Paul]

You know, you pay us 1500 bucks a month and you're done. We give you the alpha contract assistant, all the assessments, four people to do the work for you. You get a whole team. I mean you can't do it yourself for nearly what we can do it for because we provide all those. We use a lot of hay, a lot of shore labor, but really good. And you know, we can do it a fraction of the cost. You can do it for yourself. So most of our clients are client contractors between you know, five employees and probably 50. You get 50, 100.

[Tersh Blissett]

Does that include the actual ad spend that you have to do?

[Paul]

You know, if you do it right, you don't have to do an ad spend. We hardly ever spend ads because we're really good at occasionally if in the middle of nowhere and we can't find anybody with an ad spend but you normally, if you do it right, of the 2,500 people we've hired, I said we use an ad spend on maybe 50, maybe because. And now NTs get even worse because unless you're connected to a well known ATS and these going to charge you for ads, you can no longer do it as a person. They change that rule in October. So you're gonna have to buy in. Indeed change the rules so you can't go on and place a free ad on Indeed. It won't do that. You have to. You, you unless you have a recruiting company or whatever, you're gonna have to pay for ads or they want no more free ads on Indeed. It doesn't happen. They change the rules in October. So you've got to use one system like that. You're gonna pay for the ads anyway.

[Tersh Blissett]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Paul]

You can do it way better. And you don't have to pay for the ads cause we're already there. So to me it's, it's sort of a no brainer. Find somebody to do it for you who's really good at it because you know when you take your time, you have the ats. How you get back to people when it's real time building assessments, do all the reference follows, all the videos.

[Tersh Blissett]

Try to remember it and not well

[Paul]

and then that's the thing.

[Joshua Crou]

Like, because when we were doing this manually, so we'd send out the first thing and we, you know, we try to put something in the ad that would be like, okay, you got to follow this instruction. It's kind of hidden. It's like an Easter egg, right? It's like hidden in the ad. You, like, put this subject as your thing for the email and then the next step. And as soon as we get that, we send you something else and. But then when they got together, the interview, we would have. We're like trying to piece all this stuff together. Like, okay, where's the resume? Where's the answers to the questions? Where's this thing? Like, it was overwhelming to try to piece the things together. We would. We were using like a Google sheet. I had a VA that was helping us put together this Google sheet of, like, all the links to everything so we could just open it up. But, man, I'm sorry. Consuming like it was right. Again, very painful.

[Paul]

Yes. The ATS is going to cost you 400 bucks anyway. It's any good. And the problem is you still got to get back to people real time. And that's, that's the deal breaker for most contractors, because if you have 50 people applying a day, who in hell's going to come right? And yet you're competing for the quality candidates. So you've got back to. In real time. It's speed to lead. So it makes it really hard. That's the hardest part about yourself. You can go to Chad GPT and I can do it here. You can, you know, you can say, I am a remodeling or I am a roofing contractor in Kansas City. You know, I'm looking for roofers. I'm paying this much money. Please write a job ad that will get people to quit their job. Give me the KPIs. Give me all the places I should put it. You're a great art HR person. Give me the onboarding process and it'll do all that for you. You know, you just, you prompt it and it will write the ad. It will give you the KPIs, it will tell you all the places to put it. It will tell you the key, you know how to do onboard. It does everything for you. Just give it the right comp and you're done. But that's the easy part. Getting it all done is the hard part.

[Tersh Blissett]

Implementing it.

[Paul]

Yeah, implementing it.

[Tersh Blissett]

Yeah.

[Paul]

So, I mean, it's gotten a lot easier because you go to. It'll do all that. It'll write the ad. All that stuff I talked about for you, it does a great job of. But who's going to track people in real time? Who's going to get back, who's going to the interviews? Who the.

[Tersh Blissett]

That's the challenging part. Yeah.

[Paul]

And so that's why it's much if you do it right, much less expensive to hire somebody else to do it. Now a lot of both recruiting companies charge a percent of first year salary which we don't do. We just charge a flat fee which is way less expensive. So I mean you can do it yourself but think about how much time and energy you're going to spend. And my guess is way over 1500 bucks a month. If you're looking for good people, there's no contest.

[Joshua Crou]

Well, just the time. Like it's not even for, for me personally it's not even a monetary thing. It's the time. Because Tertia and I talk about this all the time when, when you have, even if you just have one business you're trying to grow and you got texts and office and trying to wear all the hat like to, to do hiring, you, you can't grow, you can't grow your business by marketing and, and selling and do some of the other things. So something has to take a back seat. So the hidden cost of these things is something else gets removed from your, your activity. So now you maybe, maybe your lead flow slows down because you're not creating content or you're not doing something or checking with whatever it looks like. But there's such a hidden cost of hiring piece.

[Paul]

Huge is what if you hire the wrong person? That's terrible. The average cost of a bad employee I think is 50,000 bucks. It's insane.

[Tersh Blissett]

Or the world something like the hat, it's something like half the year salary.

[Paul]

Yeah, it's huge.

[Joshua Crou]

So Paul, Paul, I want to, I want to go back because I, I have a story that's sticking out in my head because this guy is on our team. Great person, like great personality, a lot of fun. Everybody loved him. We kept him about six months too long into a nine month stint with us. This was like two years ago. He just got a new job on LinkedIn and Britney was like congratulating him and stuff because we really like him. He's like 28, 20, 27, something like that. But we kept him too long and it's, it's such a hard thing to do because one, most business owners care about people. Most do. Not all, but most do where they, they bring someone in they want to take care of them. It's like they're. It's like an extension of their family or their children. And so cutting that is like, it's. It's not just, you know, someone could be performing poorly, but almost like internally, like, we feel like failure.

[Paul]

We didn't hire the right person.

[Joshua Crou]

All these things.

[Paul]

The number one reason people don't hire people is emotional pain. They don't want to go through it. They'd rather endure breakup performance then go. I mean, how many people in a bad marriage for 30 years? I mean, it's because you don't want to go through the emotional pain. So you keep the world's worst employee, one who's not bad enough to fire, good enough to keep, and they stop and they just organization. And unless you have an ongoing recruiting process, it has quality people ready there to take their job. If they leave or you let them go, you're going to put up with mediocrity. And that's not a good idea.

[Tersh Blissett]

You're right.

[Paul]

It's.

[Tersh Blissett]

It. Yeah. B players hurt organizations more than people realize. Right. Because of the fact that you can. Like, I've read different studies on B versus A team members, and it's C and Ds. Like, they're. They're obviously bad choices, so you tend to get rid of them quickly. The bees, they just hover in there. Just good enough, don't make a splash, collect their paycheck and then like. But they don't give. They don't grow things, they don't grow the company.

[Paul]

I was a coach that good forever. I work with those and every. All. Most of the clients I work with would have. I'm gonna call him John Doe. Every week's about, John did great this week. Oh, John sucked this week. John did great. And you know, I say let John go. Well, he's okay. You know, he had dinner with him last night. He's not a bad guy. And then, oh, my God, John, he show up for work. Yeah, you know, showed up. I know he crashed the track. Probably the person's fault. Let me, dude, just fire him. And yet, literally for six months, we're having conversations about John and what he write and what he did wrong. And it's really hard. And so that's why I say fire fast and hire slow. But the fire fast is hard to do because the emotional impact. So people put up with mediocrity, and it makes our life really hard to bring down the standards of the whole team.

[Tersh Blissett]

I've done it.

[Paul]

Oh, that you're still working with John and John shows up late. He doesn't tell the truth all the time. You only trash your company once in a while. Wrong dial. Right. But he's there. And so that tells everybody else what you're willing to tolerate.

[Tersh Blissett]

Yeah, 100%.

[Paul]

It sets the bottom line.

[Tersh Blissett]

You mean guilty.

[Joshua Crou]

Oh, yeah. We're all guilty of that. Like it's just like it's one of those things like you can. I mean, I don't know how many times I've heard that with higher, slow fire, fast. But it's. You have to go through it and live it to realize when it's happening because otherwise you just don't know the signal. Like at some point it's like you just got to do it and just live with it. And so it's a little bit of pain, but long term it so much better when you reflect.

[Paul]

John, that's Josh. That's why I say anybody. The, the question I ask people is if you're going to start your business over tomorrow, right. Everybody's gone. If there isn't anybody you wouldn't rehire, you should fired them.

[Joshua Crou]

That's a good end of your assessment.

[Paul]

To do people know that in their heart.

[Tersh Blissett]

Merry Christmas.

[Paul]

They may not like the answer, but they know. And you can either act on it or suffer. That's your choice. But it's up to you.

[Tersh Blissett]

Yeah, yeah, I agree. I love that, Paul.

[Joshua Crou]

I love the, the no nonsense like this is just the way it is.

[Tersh Blissett]

This emotional side of things though, is, is challenging you. You're right. You're absolutely right. But we appreciate you hanging out with us, Paul.

[Paul]

Yeah.

[Joshua Crou]

Where can people, where can people find more information if they want to do a demo of your applicant tracking system?

[Paul]

All right. They can book an appointment with me. I sold sales in the company and I'll be happy to show if they do it themselves. Or we can do it for you, but not to explore it. There isn't a problem in the construction industry if you've got the right people doing it for you. I've had no problem finding people in every market in the country for every job. There's occasionally myths if you're in the middle, like mountain home, Arkansas. There's no town for 800 miles. You want to project manager not going to pay enough money. It's really hard. But if you're any kind of metro area, you're paying fair wages. You know, I said We've hired 2,500 people. Where the hell they come from? Right. So it is. Doable so if you're having a recruiting problem, you know, I'm sure you should point your figuring at somebody. You got three fingers pointing bad at you. Right. It's you. It is not the industry. It is not what you're doing. It is not the market, it's you. And if you're going to own that, then you can fix it. If you blame other people, you're sort of screwed. I mean, oh, well, it's the economy. There's no good carpenters out there. And just as a quick divergent, what's happening today with a lot of private equity coming into the industry. And so I call it the Walmartization of construction. Remember the old days when there was, you know, like the corner drugstore and a market and all that kind of stuff, right? And they said, we can't find any people, there's no good people want to work here. A Walmart goes outside of town somewhere, they find 300 people to work there from somewhere. Right. Because they're good at it. They do better marketing and they suck all their business out of downtown. Oh, my God, look what happened. Well, what's happening? Construction. Now there's a lot of private equity coming in because AI is disrupting tons of other industries, but it's not going to disrupt construction throughout.

[Joshua Crou]

Like we're.

[Paul]

AI is not going to do the manual labor for a long time.

[Tersh Blissett]

Oh, no.

[Joshua Crou]

Yeah. I don't know. Those Tesla robots are pretty damn impressive.

[Paul]

So they come in and what they're doing is like, if some guy's got 10 million bucks, he goes, I'm going to start a roofing company in Nebraska. Because he knows how to market, he knows how to recruit, he knows how to run a business. It's a good industry. He'll just kill it. And all the guys that are depending on their friends and family to make the business work going to go away. So you've got to get on board. Use good marketing, use the tools. It's all available now. Use recruiting. Use those tools so you can effectively compete in your market. Because it's coming, guys. You can't go, oh, well, I've been doing this for 30 years. It's all good. I use my friends and family. I don't modern recruiting techniques. I don't use my marketing techniques. I just depend on reputation. You're gonna be gone.

[Tersh Blissett]

You're right. You're right.

[Joshua Crou]

Awesome. Paul, this was great. We appreciate you, buddy. You hang now with us today.

[Paul]

Thank you.

[Tersh Blissett]

100%. If anybody has any questions, don't hesitate to reach out to Paul or or Josh or myself. We we'll just direct you to Paul. But I appreciate you hanging out with us and until we talk again next week, hope you have a fun and safe week and profitable week today. See you.

[Paul]

Thank you

[Joshua Crou]

thank you for listening to this episode of Service Business Mastery. Now that you are equipped with essential business advice from this impactful conversation, you are one step closer to becoming the successful owner of your dreams. If this episode has been helpful to your business journey, don't forget to subscribe to the show, leave a rating, and share it with other owners as well. Visit servicebusinessmastery.com to learn more.

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