Ep 171 - Evolution of the Queen Bee & Retaining People

Hello, hello, and welcome back to another episode of Electric Preneur Secrets, the Electricians podcast, where me and my partner, joseph Lucani, go live with you five days a week to help you master sales, simplify pricing and deliver premium level electrical service. Last couple weeks we've been talking a lot about your first hire and your next hire, and this week we're continuing that next hire conversation. But before we jump right into episode 171 on the evolution of your queen B role and the retention of your staff retaining people before we jump right into that, why don't we start by just seeing how you're doing, joe? How's it going today, man?

Man, life is good and actually I wanted to say I loved your post today because I literally saw we had I don't know if you guys were privy to this, but Clay and I had a conversation where he pretty much said Joe, bro, and started coming with names of and starting my name with Bro, with it, bro's it, bro's it, yes, and I was like wait a second, I don't have one for Clay. So I was putting it in the atmosphere. If anyone actually knows something where you can contribute, bro and Clay, that's what I'm looking for, that's the sweet, that's the secret sauce I'm looking for today.

Yeah, it's a tough one. It doesn't have the same, doesn't have that same rhyme, that same flow is like Robot.

I love it, joseph is the Robot Lucani. I love that, by the way, because literally, like, being being robotic has just been one of those things that's followed me. I mean, hey, a lot of people on the spectrum are like this, but it's just really cool because Robot sounds like Robot. I'm like hey tickles the tongue a little bit.

Yeah, you know what. I could deep dive into that. But like, why does it have to be a Robot? What makes you robotic?

Okay. So it's really the adherence to process, like a lot of us on the spectrum are very routine, organized, so we're very, very good at following sequential orders. So if you were to give a process and say this is the framework in which you interact with everything, it's almost like you input a program into a robotic machine. It's like this is the way it's done. This is the way it'll only be done. There are no variations. Anything else is a violation of it. In addition, I used to throw the discus and one of the main things of why I pointed pride was I got into college on a scholarship because I was able to throw the discus really well and I was not a big guy, but because I was so process oriented, I would do what's known as a full spin, which is a very complicated procedure, but because I was able to do it, my team would call me a Robot because it would be the exact same way every single time. You just give me a discus, you could expect the exact amount of turns, the exact speed. Everything was consistent. So robots stuck.

Yeah, just did. There was only one thing I could do consistently at that age, and it was skateboarding.

Not a bad thing to do, man.

Not like a robot, though Not quite like a robot. Do you know what man I got to tell you? I have to say like I don't know, I've got a bit of a dirty secret here. Not a lot of people know this, but we actually live near something called the Okanagan in BC, up here in Northern not Northern Canada, but in the North in Canada, at the southern border, very close to us, just a few hours away, is where a lot of like fruit, apples, orchards are wines, wine country, so a lot of apple juice, et cetera. And we were actually out that way just a couple weeks ago and I grabbed a couple of big bags of apples and I'm not talking cheap small produce store, shriveled up, I'm a burlap sack kind of stuff, aren't you? I'm talking like honey crisp jumbos that are clearly GMO mark. There's some stuff going on Apple ones are really good and it's like the first time you ever felt alive when you bite into this. And we bought a bag like second grade they call them. So there's some, you know, a couple pecks from a bird or wormhole or something. But we also got this device, like, bless you, jeff Bezos, for just having all the devices for your kitchen. It's an apple peeler, cora and slicer in one and it's like a vice to your countertop. And then you just put the apple on and you just you wrench it through like it just poof, and the peel comes off, the core comes out and it's sliced perfect. So the point of this rant, joe. Just before this episode I went upstairs to have a quick break and realized, gosh, it smells good in here. Mariel's had that stuff boiling both the scraps and then the main pot from the good apples were making apple sauce and apple crisp and all the goods and I dipped a soup ladle into that scraps one because it's for apple cider and I put some in my cup. Oh, it's heavenly brother. This time of year there's just like fall apple cider hot on the stove. I don't know if you can beat that.

I can think of one thing that, for me, always trumped anything in the fall the sound of generators being tuned up. Literally I'm weird. I'm weird man. I'm telling you anything from August to November, that's all I did eat, sleep, breathe generators. So, like as soon as the temperature gets down, I'm lacing my boots, like this is what we're doing.

Yeah, and mouth rinse with gasoline.

You know what That'll do? It, I mean kerosene also works, but hey, gasoline will do Mandy's with us.

She says, yeah, she wants some apple cider now or maybe gasoline. I'm not sure which part you're talking about. Either way, how about we get serious and jump into this? So, continuing a pretty in-depth piece of yesterday, the end of the podcast. Getting into this, you know, a, the queen B role, but also retention was a big piece of that, joe, and there's a really important point I want to make here. That queen B role is in itself an evolution.

It doesn't stay one particular thing.

Yeah, it's easy to sit here and say like what's your queen B role in your company, but when we say that we're talking about during this time, during this present moment, to your business. Now, as we discussed, too many electricians who we interact with and even help actually don't want to be on the sales front. They don't want to be the ones meeting customers for the first time. A lot of them actually want to be on the tools, meeting them at the second occasion and the second engagement or third engagement and kind of monitoring the quality and sort of speak, doing their ride alongs at the install stage rather than the sales stage. That makes sense so far.

Yeah, I mean. A lot of us, in a lot of different ways, came up as technicians and installers, so it makes sense that our natural predisposition is to not be salespeople but instead be quality control managers. It lines up, I get it.

It's a huge thing. So for me I know personally in our business the marketing and sales is just something that I really love to do. I'm huge on the marketing side of things. I really enjoyed that. I love trying to help people with their problems, explore problems and then help them solve those problems with our offer, and that's all a piece of the attraction and the conversion of what we've said before ACDC, right, attract, convert, deliver, collect. It's much like that, and so when I think of a queen B role in the business and what I'm supposed to be doing, I like to use that model. You, on the other hand, are the development genius and maybe the best teacher I've ever worked with. Well, thank you. And there's tons of proof in our classes every day, like this morning's class where we get all this feedback and the testimonies from our lovely clients. Thank you, guys very much. If any of you are listening right now, of course, mandy's with us.

Mandy's awesome. Just throwing that out there, mandy, if you're listening, you are awesome.

But there's a couple pieces here now we've broken apart, right. So there's sort of the acquisition and that first sort of funnel into your business, but then there's the delivery and the fulfillment and that back funnel that you handle so wonderfully, you and Reina. So A acknowledging that, but B recognizing like where is your queen B role and recognizing also that it doesn't mean forever, You're not chained to this. What are your thoughts so far on this show? Does it make sense?

No, I mean, I'm picking up what you're putting down and, realistically, wouldn't it make sense to have someone of my talents and predisposition in that position? Like I love doing processes, I love breaking the nitty gritty details. I like figuring out what our customers are going to say and how we can pre write a response prior to the question even coming up. Like that's my jam. I love that. I love being in that space.

And to tie this back into the topic and what we're really advocating for throughout these last couple of weeks is being a systemized and process driven business. I actually got the opportunity to meet with a lovely group of ladies in a nonprofit last night to help show them some of the systems that we've built and how thorough and interconnected they are and how even our access to them has been simplified just through like do doogle, doogle docs. I just want to say that again. Has that happened twice on this podcast?

It has, but I think we should start doing something. Can we start calling it doogle docs?

Do doogle docs. You guys know what I'm saying. That's simple, easy to use. Any house you go into in North America, they know what doogle docs are, they know what Google docs are. Right, it's a very easy, intuitive thing to use and so using them for your SOPs, using them for your programs, using them for your engagements, can be a really helpful tool for your business. To simplify how we do things, if we can acknowledge that, as a business owner, we're all wearing about a dozen hats and and that's roughly, you know, maybe six to eight too many right now for you, we know that there's only three ways to handle those hats you yourself are going to do it, you yourself are going to delegate it, or you yourself are going to cut it out of existence. It doesn't need to be done right now. So your queen be role even evolves with the hats that you're wearing, because what you'll need to do right now, like for us we just posted the other day, we're looking for an appointment center. Well, for what? For, on the front end of all the wonderful electricians, all the great people who are looking for the kind of help that we provide, to have someone as a liaison to help connect them A to the value pieces that we give away for free every week, really every day, because even people comment on the old ones and we're in exchange again Someone to help be that liaison so that we're never dropping the ball on the help that people need. That's a hat, it's a hat that Joe, someone part time wears, it's a hat that I part time wear, and so we're trying to take that off, systemize it and give it to someone else so that they can take it to the hundred, ninety hundred, hundred and ten percent. That makes sense. Just using us as a reference point here, something to follow along and make sense of this.

Yeah, I follow you.

Now this next tire, the installers the same thing, and that's what we've been talking about. How do we systemize that? Take that hat off and make it so someone else can wear it and make it better than you ever could, at least with your cooperation. We're kind of together to make it better through their suggestion and their experience of using your process. Because there's another evil that happens here, and that evil is that we tend to think what we do is simple.

Yeah, the thing like I remember one person that brought up who I've been a man of respect for, but I mentioned the thing about common sense. It was like, well, this should be common sense and, realistically, what is common sense? How can you assume that someone knows something just because you believe that they should know it, if they haven't been exposed to it in their own experiences or their own lives, or their own businesses or their own installations, how would they know? That's why we need to always establish training metrics and establishing that our team always has a path to grow and improve from.

Absolutely. We've seen people come in with simple price books, change to a process that's actually simplified and all of a sudden their sales are connecting again. I was on a call with someone yesterday who told me I think it was someone in their network their price book had 4,500 line items plus in it.

But I have a good search function.

Whoa right. What's simple about that? We find this in our business, that things we think are simpler often not that simple. So it's very, very useful to go through that, get a second opinion, work through your process and make sure that you've got it labeled down to the simplest steps. And here's how far we've taken it. We insert screenshots in our processes, even. Hey, here's what this looks like. Here's a picture. Why? Because a picture is worth a thousand words. People. Words don't add up. What if the person reading it is dyslexic?

That's true and we need to accommodate that as well.

It's not our decision. We don't draw a line on hey, we don't hire people with dyslexia. That's not fair, because some of the most gifted people in this planet have dyslexia, right, speaking of business, what about Richard Branson? Never read an entire book in his life. He's listened to lots of audiobooks, though Just processes information different doesn't make him less of a person. In fact, it's made him incredible. I'm going down a bit of a rabbit hole here, but I hope everyone's getting the point here that Queen B role the delegation. What we're trying to do is simplify, get these hats off and get them to valuable people that are within your organization to help you grow. And that brings us to the latter half of this. I know I have to say half, but I've already used like 15 minutes just monologuing on that. Joe, I apologize.

It's all good, I'm not going to be disappointed because it's a point that we're trying to communicate that sometimes needs time to properly communicate. Like imagine you were to say I want to sum up the declaration of independence in 15 words. Like there are some things you lose certain gravities by trying to rush it. So I can't blame you for wanting to ensure that it had proper connotation.

And I got to acknowledge Mandy's wonderful comment here, as Mandy's joined our group recently. She said this group has changed our lives, even being able to start transitioning our systems to Google Docs, because what we have seen with our, with the SLE roadmaps. Thank you, mandy, for those heartfelt words. That really is appreciated. I can't say it enough. We just want to help electricians grow. We know what it's like to be in the position of no one helping. We didn't get a business education when you got your electrical license, in whatever state or province you were in. Yeah it's going to.

I was gonna say in New York we had and I believe still have some pretty crazy requirements, like it was 11 years to get a masters and I was able to qualify with seven years because I had two years of trade school and two Years of college education. But even with all of that business mastery like tax laws and Understanding how to properly structure and learning how to grow a proper organization was not something taught. You know how to do the work. One of the code questions was what's the wiring you use when reassembling a crane? I'll never work on a crane, but I had to know the wire. So it's important that we recognize that these things aren't common sense but are an accumulation of our experiences and who we choose to expose ourselves to, and I feel that that is something that really sums up what we're trying to say, because the installers that we bring into our team will end up staying longer Because they're exposed to the proper values that we choose to emulate. And when you think about what is it going to take for someone to not go somewhere else? It's not just the payment of them, because money will buy everything, but it doesn't buy people, doesn't buy loyalty, it buys time Instead, if you can create a scenario to where, if they're exposed to proper values, good culture, but also you're continually in training them on the areas they want to grow. And forgive me for monologue in here as well, but like it's great if we're gonna say, like, imagine an installer. What is it that person wants? If they want to see the customer serve the highest level, then you transition them to being like hey, I'm gonna teach you how to be a service tech. You can help people when they need it most. Maybe they're very meticulous on the tools and they want to be the best installer that can be. Well, that's the case. What's stopping us from saying We'll give you always new things to work on and we're gonna give you a training room to improve your skills and we're gonna test you on it and we'll teach you everything we know? Both paths would retain different people, so it's understanding. One is the culture good are your values is. If you hold up the mirror of your business, are your values being shown? And do you know your technician enough to say I know where they're trying to go and let me try and help you get that path totally.

You've probably all heard me speak about Maslow's hierarchy of needs before. It's something that I reference commonly when engaging with people, when planning with people, when trying to view and understand what someone's perspective and their needs are, because it truly impacts how we respond or react in situations. It's all based on the current level of values that we've achieved, and so Maslow's hierarchy of needs, for one like, starts at physiological right the air, water, shelter. We did an episode on reproductive rights and how it is your responsibility to get your employees late. That's because reproduction being, having the ability to reproduce is right down in the basement. Think about it. Look how many people are on the planet. That's not just a coincidence, but reproduction is a key to your physiological safety. You actually need it for the most part, right? So then level two is your safety and security. That's the white picket fence that people dream about having a savings, having the nest egg, having a retirement, which, as we know, many don't have. I can't remember the statistic. Do you know that number, the percentage of people that actually have retirement savings?

going not offhand, but I know for those who do. If I can stitch someone I know the best person to talk to is my close friend Josh Lupo from the fi couple. I know that he advised me on so many different things and turned my financial situation into a real success. So I would say, if anyone's gonna ask, look him up. But what I do know as a great guy, that's a way nice, nice guy. Thank you, I appreciate that. One metric that I do know is that if you ask people what they think they need, they'll consistently say one million dollars, yeah. And it's actually really funny because I, when I was talking to my financial analyst and saying what do we do, what? Where do we need to be, it was like most people need to be closer to three million. I, yeah, because you don't. Let's say, you have a six-figure salary, you're running a business for 20 years, you're really growing, you want to thrive, you want to maintain that lifestyle. You need to be able to pay yourself that same amount, plus the inflation that happens throughout your lifetime. Yeah, so even if you put a million dollars away, it doesn't mean it'll equate to a million dollars worth of value.

Totally. A lot goes into that. So anyway, that's kind of level two of Maslow's, that safety and security that you start building. Level three is actually connection connection and community. So now let's bring this back to your staff and the retention and what Joe said. We know that people who are achieving in between two and three Actually have a different set of needs. It doesn't start with money, it doesn't start with pay. This even applies to attraction. It's not just retention, it's who we're attracting to our brand and how. The language of your recruitment ad has a lot to do with the people that will apply, based on what you're marketing to them. This is an incredible lever that most of us don't really understand. I Could go deep into that. I think I got to put that and table it for another episode. Joe, language and recruitment that one stored in the bank. So let's say you've got someone who's been with you a little bit. They got their physiological needs met so they're able to pay the rent. They're they're paying the bills. They've got a girlfriend, their life starting to take shape in this new direction. Now they're at safety and security. They're starting to get and save some finances. They're in a place of slight abundance, even what the evolution that happens in their needs is. It becomes rank recognition, rewards, then money. There's a shift there, and what you're suggesting, joe, really Subliminally even, is that in that shift we also need to shift our approach.

Correct.

Follow them on their values journey and be in constant recognition of where people are at. And while this sounds like a lot of work, it's actually just having a couple tools on the tool belt and having scheduled time to be with your people In group and one-to-one environments. Please jump in, brother.

I remember yesterday I talked about an exercise for our all-star action. Which is an exercise called what do you want, and what I want to also establish is when you're trying to talk about spending time with your team. It's also good to have that intentional time. The reason being is that you can put a bunch of people in a room and they may make small talk, but very few things would actually have a deep breakthrough. To make a physical or emotional connection with someone, yeah, but if you were able to understand what they wanted prior to entering that conversation, you could position it in a way where you can get their attention, because when someone says this applies to me, suddenly they perk up. So just an additional thing to say why not make that part of your routine to say what does my team want? How can I motivate them? Is it finance? Is it reputation? Is it title? Is it security? What is it? Do they want to be able to bring an award back to their wife at home or their partner at home and say I Did it, I'm the best, or do they want the paycheck? We don't know, but they do, so they should ask.

Yeah, I agree, man, I definitely agree with that. And If you really think about it, what people mostly get hung up on in recruiting and even retention is this wage thing. How much should we pay people to keep them? The trick there is you don't really pay people to keep them, you give them value. And Anytime, even in recruiting, when someone kind of box at the wage that you're offering or they say, oh, that's not enough, typically we're within a dollar or two an hour. I've found that's not saying anything. At the end of the, the tax cycle, it's. We're talking about very minimal difference. Right, even considering, okay, there's two thousand hours in a year and we're talking about two dollars an hour. So what's the math here for grand? out of a year, minus your what 25% tax. So so we're talking about 1500 bucks hmm, that was bad math. We said four thousand a year, but so three thousand dollars, right? $3,000 doesn't make or break a person, but what does make or break them is your perception of their value, and that wage is a representation of, again, rank Recognition. It's about the rank and recognition of their value that's holding them back, and so you'll get far more, far, far more from people and longevity with people, based on how you make them feel. We've heard that before, right.

Mm-hmm.

People don't remember what you said. Let's let's go back and think of you know, and I spent almost a decade with one company and different facets of working with them. What did they pay me in the beginning? I remember only because it's part of my story. It was a hardship. I had to restart in this trade with a young daughter at home at 15 bucks an hour and try to pay the bills. But from there to the end I don't remember what I was paid at the end. I remember receiving significant bonus checks. That because what made me feel because of the rank, the recognition that that showed. But the hourly wage I can't tell you. All I can tell you is there are a great bunch of people. They made me feel like family, they made me feel heard and I had an impact on their business. That's why I stayed so long.

Brilliant.

Does that make sense?

Yeah, I really think it does. It's one of those things where how you felt really translated to I didn't need the money Not that you didn't need the money, but your value was based on what they perceived you at. Your value is aligned in that perception and, as a result, that's what made you want to stay.

Totally as much as I want to end this because we're going longer than we should. What you just said is so important and critical. I hope every electrician listens to this point. I bet, if you reflect on your own conflicts and what caused you to go out on your own, you reached a point. Or else someone has done this with you or for you, or is about to, or you made enough. All of a sudden, you started to question what am I living for here? Because the same thing happens to business owners. At some point you break through the million dollar threshold a year and you realize oh, that was just a phony ceiling that I was holding. That actually has no value. Now, fucking what. Didn't you experience something similar in your business?

Yeah, I want to explain that because prior to me having kids, this was I did. I don't think I got at my diagnosis yet. It was right around, I think, early 2017. I remember having a turning point because I was doing like the 16 hour days. I was working crazy hours, I was trying to build everything I was building and I was doing it to push for something we wanted to build, this amazing empire kind of thing. Then I realized that our values had separated and I didn't know why I was doing this anymore. I was like I'm putting in all these hours, but if I died today, what happens? Who gets this? What does this go to? Is there more? Can I put these hours to a more meaningful purpose? I already mentally started realizing that coaching is really what I enjoy doing most. I want to be with my family. I don't care about going out with friends. I needed to say I'm doing something with a purpose, my life has meaning and if I die tomorrow, I want to be able to say I did something for a cause that was worth fighting for and I wasn't doing that. Then, when I had my kids, everything shifted and when I got my diagnosis, everything changed and I finally had a path that was worth walking and I had a cause that was worth fighting for. That's why I'm here.

Definitely At those higher levels again, I'll link in Maslow's here because at those higher levels it's more of the self awareness, the empowerment of self, growing beyond that and becoming something more that you vision for yourself. All the money, all the phony stuff's out of the way at that point. It's a higher values level and you as an employer really only have a couple of options. This is why in early conversations with staff, when people express wanting to go out on their own one day, I welcome it. In fact, in our own recruitment I'm that we just put out on Facebook the other day I stated that explicitly. It's like hey, you want to do this on your own one day, no problem. Just like we say go work for someone who does it well, first gain an understanding and then take a shot when you're ready. We're willing to build people up just in the recognition that people have this higher vision of themselves. Should we really turn those people away, or should we work hard to make it so easy for them under our umbrella, show them how to do it right and then show them how right it can be, so that they never want to leave knowing how hard it would be to build that up for themselves anyway. That, to me, is truly empowering people. At some point you all just have to accept that to keep someone might actually mean letting them go. To keep someone might actually mean letting them travel for three months, six months a year, kind of like your kids flocking out from the nest. Everyone needs to spread their wings and fly and I hope that you'll consider that and recognize that everyone is cyclical. This whole formula for success and retention is actually and this business to build really is that everyone's replaceable, everyone needs to be replaceable and everyone needs to feel irreplaceable. If you get that mix right, that balance right, then I truly believe you can have a culture worth having and really powerful. We've got to wrap this up and kick out a couple of action items. Can I start by all?

means I got to go to one off top of my head.

I've talked about Maslow's a couple of times. If you guys haven't seen this, look up Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. It's easy to look at. It's a little model. Put it on the wall beside you, make it your screensaver, save it to your phone and reflect on it weekly. Whatever it is, we're talking about five to 10 words to remember in the order that they're in. If you get that and you reflect on that and start to try to really listen to your staff, listen to the people in front of you and try to understand their perspective listen to actually hear, not to be heard You'll see a massive difference. I think that's the base action today.

I've got an all star for you. All right brother Hit it. It'd be arrogant of us to think that we can assume what every single person is thinking. It just wouldn't make sense. We can assume how the framework of people think, but knowing a specific person's thought wouldn't be correct. But you know who would know it? The actual person who's experiencing it Love it. Now, the hard part for some of us is we don't know how to get inside their head. We don't know how to ask those questions, but what I found was a good way of doing it is a three to one rule. If you asked your technician what are three things you liked about this week and what is one thing that you hated, you'll learn after just a year, let alone six months, being able to say okay, I know what situations throw this tech, I know specifically what he likes. If I can take that data, I can create a path where he would have less of what he doesn't like, more of what he does like. As a result, who wouldn't want to be retained in that position? I'm going to say I understand you, clay, and I truly want you to be part of what we're doing here at this company, so that's why we've created a special customized plan specifically for you. That way, we can show you that we're truly trying to keep you as part of this family and this team and we'll consistently try to improve your experience here. Was it wrong of us to want to do that for you?

Not at all. In fact, I'll point something out right now as someone who's felt misunderstood many times. I don't think I've ever had anyone actually say they understand me. How impactful is that it's just a recognition. In this moment, no one's ever said that to me. I'm breaking down, this is a breakdown and then a breakthrough, and it's all because Joe understands me. Guys, this has been another episode of Electric Pinner Secrets. The Electricians podcast, episode 171, where we bit off more than we could chew, ran about 13 minutes long with you guys here. It reminds me of the good old days and we had no stop on this at all. We gave you a couple of bomb action items and I've got to go to the next meeting. We will see you again tomorrow, friday. If you guys didn't get that value piece, the Installer Upgrade process yesterday, check us out on Facebook and the Electric Pinner Secrets group where Mandy so kindly put a testimony and engaged with us today. I can't wait to see you guys again tomorrow to finish this week off. Cheers to your success.

That will be well. It's a wonderful senior, thank you.