Michael: Hello everyone. And welcome to the HaBO Village podcast. I'm Michael Redman.
Kathryn: And I'm Kathryn Redman.
Michael: And this is the podcast that helps small business leaders like you build Passion and Provision companies full of profit, purpose, and legacy. We want to make sure that you beat and defeat the business failure rate and the disengagement rate. Wow. We've packed a lot in here, but this podcast is about helping you and encouraging you. It's encouragement, it's training, it's instruction, it's food for thought.
Kathryn: There you go. If you're new to us and haven't listened to us go on and on and on about the business failure rate, it sits at about 90% of all people who start businesses. So that's a dismal-
Michael: It's even worse in the entertainment and the hospitality-
Kathryn: Yes.
Michael: Arena at the moment because of COVID. Today's podcast is going to be on what?
Kathryn: Well, I was going to explain disengagement before you go there.
Michael: Okay, go ahead.
Kathryn: Okay. So the disengagement rate of most, a Gallup poll, all American workers, 74% are disengaged, which means essentially employees who work for you who are sleepwalking through their day. That is not a good gift. Sleepwalking through their day. 74%.
Michael: Which is not what our podcast is on today directly.
Kathryn: No, but you mentioned it, and I just wanted to make sure people understood.
Michael: So every time I mention it, you're going to define it?
Kathryn: It's possible. Let's just see how it goes.
Michael: That's probably not a good idea.
Kathryn: I'm a little snarky.
Michael: Yes you are. Let's see how today's podcast pans out. We're going to talk about how to legally hire someone for free. You can't. But before you hang up, because it's not just clickbait, what we're talking about is you want to hire people that would work for free. That is the ideal employee. Yes, you have to pay them a salary. Yes, you should pay them a salary. And yes, as we say, the ox is worthy of the wage. That means that whatever the work is being done, there's a fair rate and they should earn it and maybe earn high in that fair range. We believe you need to reward people and take care of them. But the idea is that if they would work for free, if they would even consider doing that kind of work on their own for no money, think about it, because you want to hire people who are going to be super motivated, self-managing, and believe in high quality.
Kathryn: There you go, which helps them avoid disengagement. So it's not completely unrelated.
Michael: It's not completely ... Matter of fact, in our world, it all relates to those two things. How do we stop businesses from being failures? How do we make sure that the company that you own doesn't end up owning you and you're miserable and unhappy? Because it turns out we wrote a book called Fulfilled, and it's all about the Passion and Provision strategy to build profit, purpose, and legacy and control your legacy.
Michael: So today we're going to talk about this whole issue of hiring, and really one of the things that I think it comes back to as we were talking to before we started the show, was this idea that one of the questions that a lot of people ask, a lot of business owners ask, is how do I hire people? Matter of fact, one question I got this last week. How do I stop babysitting my employees? Or how do I hire employees that I don't have to babysit?
Michael: Well, you'd hire somebody who would do the work for free. If you can find people like that, who do a good job and would do this on their own ... What we mean by for free, is not going to come to work for you at the company, but they would do it on their own for fun.
Kathryn: Because they love it.
Michael: Because they love it. Now, I think it's important that we talk about Passion and Provision at this point, because Passion and Provision, super important. So you want to describe that?
Kathryn: Yeah. So when we're talking about passion, we're really talking about this concept of what does it look like to be engaged in work and livelihood that has deep meaning for you. That you care about so much that you'd actually be willing to suffer to keep moving forward. So not this flighty, "I feel very passionate about tomatoes," or, "I feel very passionate about this TV show." That's a word. It's a word that gets thrown around a lot. But for us, we're defining it really as that driving energy that makes you want to keep moving forward because you believe in the end result, you believe in where you're going, you're willing to actually push through some uncomfortable times to get to where it is that you're going.
Michael: What happens a lot of times in businesses. Now everybody's going, "Ooh, it's floaty, floaty and mystical stuff." And you just want to love everything and all that kind of stuff. The other side of that is the provision. The bottom line for today's conversation is we care about a company's profitability. We care about it having a significant profit margin. You don't just make a gross margin, you don't just bring in a lot of money as revenue, we want money to go to the bottom line so it goes into your ability to grow the company, goes into your pocket. You need a net profit, and you need a healthy net profit.
Kathryn: Well, and nothing will suck the life out of your love of what you do than not actually making a living doing it. That becomes an expensive hobby.
Michael: Absolutely. So let's transition into the concept of labor versus toil then. This is all setting us up folks for this idea of hiring employees that are great employees that manage themselves, that produce high quality and everything else because labor versus toil allows us to go really, a Passion and Provision company's a labor company, not a toil company. But what do we mean by that?
Kathryn: So essentially it's the concept of you're digging a hole and you dig and you dig and you dig. Then the next day you come back and the hole's been filled in again. There's just this sense if you're toiling, you're just doing something that has no purpose, no meaning, you can't envision why it would ever matter, and it's sucks the life out of you. So that's kind of toil.
Kathryn: Labor, on the other hand, would be if you are digging that hole, but you understand why you're digging the hole. Yeah. Somebody has explained to you, "Well, you're digging the hole for this reason because we need to do this." And by the way, it's not just going to get filled in the next day. It's actually resulting in movement forward in whatever it is you're doing. So that's kind of labor versus toil.
Michael: The old Greek story we talk about in our book-
Kathryn: Archimedes.
Michael: Archimedes who pushes the rock up-
Kathryn: The hill, and then it just rolls back down.
Michael: And then it rolls back down. And every day he's destined to just continue to have to push the rock-
Kathryn: For all eternity.
Michael: Up the same hill for all eternity.
Kathryn: So that is a great picture of just toil. There's no meaning, there's no purpose, there's no end to it, and it's horrible.
Michael: So when we get into this whole idea of employees and this idea of, "How do I not babysit them anymore," you want to hire the right type of employees. One of the things you're looking at is making sure you define the position that they're in, that they're going to be doing, the type of work and the culture, both. What you're looking for is you're looking for somebody who has the predisposition to like that type of work. There's a personality test to do that. There's a Kolbe test and Myers-Briggs are the ones. The Kolbe is the new one I'm liking. The Myers-Briggs one we've been using for a very long time, and we use DiSC at times. The best way to dive into this is this great illustration that our office manager gave us.
Kathryn: Yeah. So we were just laughing so hard. She teaches Sunday school and had a Sunday school lesson this past Sunday morning with the kids about working hard and what it looks like to work hard and that kind of thing. They did this exercise, and I'm going to do my best to describe the exercise efficiently. Michael, you can chime in if I get crazy.
Michael: Absolutely.
Kathryn: But ultimately the exercise was, there's kind of this grouping of tasks that were in a bucket and each kid got to pull one of these tasks out. It might be taking the trash out or walking the dog, so kind of your chores-
Michael: Mowing the lawn, something like that.
Kathryn: Doing the dishes, mowing the lawn, whatever. So each of them got to pick out a task. And then on the board, there was this group of cards that basically identified what they thought could be an appropriate reward for such a task. The things on the board range from something as simple as 15 minutes of screen time, an hour of screen time-
Michael: Five bucks.
Kathryn: Five bucks. It could be-
Michael: Ice cream cone.
Kathryn: Ice cream cone. That kind of stuff, all the way up to things like a day at an amusement park.
Michael: Yeah. $100 bill.
Kathryn: 100. I mean-
Michael: A day at an amusement park and somewhere in between there might be going out to your favorite restaurant.
Kathryn: Right. So there's all of these potential rewards. And so that the activity was, the kid would pick essentially the task and then they would get to decide which reward they felt was appropriate if they were to do that task. Then the rest of the kids got to thumbs up or thumbs down, depending on if they agreed that that-
Michael: That's what they would do.
Kathryn: Association was appropriate or that's how they would see it.
Michael: Right. Right.
Kathryn: Right? That's kind of the setup of the activity. The story she told us in the middle of that twas kind of two different kids, and I think they were siblings, right?
Michael: Yeah.
Kathryn: So-
Michael: The sister went first.
Kathryn: Sister goes first, and she draws out a card that is about doing a month of homework ahead of time. So a month's worth of homework. So this is the card and she looks at the card and she reads the card. She holds it. She thinks for a minute. She says, "You know, I don't need a reward for doing homework. I love doing homework. So I would do this even if there was nothing."
Michael: There's nothing appropriate because I don't need anything.
Kathryn: I don't need anything.
Michael: It's like this is easy.
Kathryn: I am intrinsically motivated to do homework. Literally, the vote comes for the rest of the kids and it's thumbs down. There is no way. You could not pay me to do a month worth of homework. Or if you did, I would want a super high reward.
Michael: None of the kids thought she was crazy, just insane. They all thought she was crazy. All of the thumbs went down.
Kathryn: Yeah. So nobody agreed that a month's worth of homework was anything you would ever want to do without a significant reward attached to it. Then her little brother, I think, comes into play and he draws a card and the card said doing the dishes after a holiday meal. So we're not just talking about a normal-
Michael: Not normal dinner dishes.
Kathryn: Tuesday night, we're talking about a holiday meal. I don't know how big this family is, but he clearly envisioned a significant job. He went to the board and what he decided would be a sufficient reward for this kind of exercise or this kind of chore was a date at an amusement park.
Michael: Yeah, with rollercoasters.
Kathryn: With rollercoasters, the whole deal. He was like, "Hmm. Yeah, this is a lot of work. I don't like doing dishes. I hate doing dishes." Then they do the vote with the kids and some kids were like, "That's a pretty steep reward for doing dishes, dude."
Michael: Some of them agreed and some of them were like, "No, I don't need that."
Kathryn: So there's thumbs up, thumbs down. Right. So that was what happened. Michael, what does that illustrate?
Michael: So, I mean, it's a perfect example of this idea of the natural propensities we all have. And the chill kids are a perfect example, but this is an exercise we're incorporating into our training because it's a great, simple way of going, "Look, there are just some things you really easily do." It's a dramatic illustration of there's some things that we like to do and we'll do them for fun. I read nonfiction business books for fun.
Kathryn: Yeah. I totally don't comprehend that at all.
Michael: You don't. You don't.
Kathryn: I'm like, "Give me a book that's going to help me do something that is unrelated to my real life."
Michael: Nobody has to pay you to clean at home.
Kathryn: No, in fact, I was laughing because I'm thinking about this specific illustration. I want to clean house. I'm always, "Why am I the only one that picks anything up?" It's because I'm the only one who's intrinsically motivated to care. But the thing is too, if we use that holiday illustration, if I had to cook the holiday meal-
Michael: Oh, there's another one.
Kathryn: I would want a weekend away at some Airbnb with a spa day built in to cook the holiday meal. Like no. But cleaning up the holiday meal, cleaning up after you, after you cook it, whatever. I'm going to do that anyway.
Michael: Well, totally. For me, if there is a list of things that ... If we're divvying up all the work and somebody is saying, "Well, we need somebody to prep and cook, and we're going to need people to clean. We're going to need people to go outside and chop wood and do whatever," I'm running to the front of the line as fast as I can to sign up for cooking.
Kathryn: Right. I'm running to the front of the line to sign up for the cleanup of the dishes afterwards. I don't want to chop wood.
Michael: I don't want to chop wood either.
Kathryn: We're not talking about marriage, but by the way, when you figure those things out in your marriage, that is a good gift.
Michael: When you divvy those things up. Because what you're doing is you're looking for those natural gifts, talents, and skills and interests. Gifts, those natural gifts and talents, that you have that everybody has. But all those things they need to be developed. There needs to be practice. There are very few things in our world where we are just, first of all, naturally gifted towards them and then naturally awesome at them. We may be better than a lot of people around us, but when we compete against people who are naturally gifted and work hard at it, we fall behind very quickly. People who are naturally gifted in baseball or some kind of sport, they may excel well in their high school, maybe college. But if they are lazy about really building their skills and honing them, they're never going to become a pro athlete no matter how much they dream. So many kids dream about being pro athletes.
Michael: So when we look at an employee, we're going okay, if you can define the job and then you can define the attitudes, perspectives, thought processes, and the actual skills needed, what you can do is you can find somebody who's actually developed some competency, some reasonable competency. They're good at what they do. The quality is good, and they're intrinsically motivated. They like it. So the idea that they're getting paid is they need to get paid. They need to have a job. They have to pay the rent and take care of the kids and put food on the table. But it's one thing to do a job that, I don't care how much you pay for it, I hate going to work because I hate that type of work versus you can pay me the same amount and I'm more than happy to go. I might even take a little less money because I can do something that doesn't do it.
Michael: Now, what happens at the end of the day, the end of the day, the person who hates the work is exhausted, run out, everything else. The other person's energized. They have more energy for their life, and they often are looking for new projects at work because they get through things faster. When you have somebody who actually is like the little girl doing the homework, just think about that. These two kids are adults and they're both employees and one of them you hired to do dishes and the other one you hired to do homework, the one who's doing homework, your cost basis on that employee is way less. The quality and care of pride of work and everything else is higher. So you're going to get higher quality, you're going to get faster results, and it's going to cost you less money to get that. That's what happens employees because the other one is well, to keep them around, you have to pay them a lot.
Kathryn: Yeah. I mean, imagine if you have the kid who doesn't like doing dishes and that's what he gets hired to do. How well is he going to do them if the reward isn't so high? I mean, if there's an amusement park for this kid, then he's probably, like that one time, he's going to do a pretty good job. Like, okay. But if he had to do that over and over and over again, no amount of amusement parks are going to keep him doing a good job at that.
Michael: A great example in our office is we have staff members. We work really hard at trying to make sure that this is appropriate because not only do we want ... The more you fit these people in, the less you have to babysit these employees, the less headaches it causes you, the less energy you have to spend managing them. Even if you're managing them well, you get to spend less energy, which means it's way less hassle for you. You're saving on money and time. It's making your job a Passion and Provision job. Way more. Allows you to work on the things that you need to get to and that you're good at. But we have employees that literally, if they have to sell to a new customer, if they have to talk to a brand new customer who wants this stuff and everything else, we have at least two or three, four, we have at least four employees in our small company that that's like pulling teeth.
Michael: One of them will do it and it's not horrible, but they just don't like it. If we made them do a regular basis, it would wear on them over time. We have a second one who, if we're ranking them, she'll do it. But I'm telling you what, it's going to wear on her a lot faster and tear her down a lot faster. And the other two wouldn't do it at all. Because we would never get customers, they would suck at it so bad because they hate it. Put Kathryn and I in that situation, I'm like, "That's fine. That's great." Our office manager's like that. She doesn't want to sell and she doesn't want to give the reports, but as soon as we start the conversation and begin it, she's more than comfortable stepping in and helping fill in all the details.
Michael: And quite frankly, she can carry 80 to 90% of the conversation. But if you make her go off and do it all herself, it's not. So she's doing most of the work, we're interacting with the client itself. It's a great team. And then it really isn't that hard because I'm not doing all the prep work for the meeting. We're not doing all that kind of stuff. Reporting happens like that around here.
Michael: That's powerful for an argument for understanding not only what the work is you need, but what are the right kinds of giftings and personalities and talents and skills you need for that job for it to be a good fit, especially with your culture. Again, we won't go into details, but the principle's the same with culture. It needs to be a good fit culture wise.
Michael: So that's what we're talking about when we're talking about this idea of jobs for gifting and natural. A Passion and Provision business is really when the entrepreneur is in the right industry, and it's complementary to your gifts, talents, and skills, the entrepreneur or senior business leader. But then you to further develop and build and have a better Passion and Provision company, you want to create Passion and Provision jobs that allow all this.
Kathryn: So Michael, that all sounds really, really dandy. But what happens if only part of the job is really ... I mean, because it's hard-
Michael: Perfect transition.
Kathryn: To define hard to define a job that's going to completely be everything that I want it to be.
Michael: Yeah, because somebody is saying right now, "That's just-
Kathryn: This is pie in the sky.
Michael: Pie in the sky.
Kathryn: People.
Michael: There are some people right now listening. Some of you are listening and going, you're on some scale of, "That's pie in the sky." Either that could never happen, and you basically think we're full of crap or you're somewhere less than that going, "That's a nice idea. I've seen it work sometimes. It's really hard work," blah, blah, blah. The answer is yes. Now here's what we do. We say with Half a Bubble Out ... And Passion and Provision and HaBO Village and all the different things that we have ... We say that 51% of the time, that's your goal, you want to start with, are you looking at hiring for a minimum of 51% of your time? Because if more than half of your time every day or every week or every month is spent on things that actually fit into that gift, talent and skills, they're like the homework you'll do for free.
Michael: Then you only have to figure out how to create the energy, to do the other things afterwards. Then you have this extreme of they go from, "It's not my favorite," to, "I absolutely hate it." The more you get closer to absolutely hate it, the more personal, mental, emotional, and physical energy it takes to overcome the fears, the dislikes, the I'm not good at that or whatever. So your goal is to try and make sure that you're staying closer and closer to that other 49% of the work isn't so far out of their bailiwick. But now you have to come up with other ways to motivate yourself as the leader and your staff. The number one way to do that is making sure you're communicating that there is purpose and meaning to their work. It actually helps resolve or produce something that's valuable. Remember when we talked about labor and toil. Labor is actually when I work hard-
Kathryn: Sometimes you actually have to dig a ditch.
Michael: Yeah. But it's for a purpose and a meaning. So a great example is the story that we've heard about filling up sandbags.
Kathryn: Yeah. So the sandbag illustration is great because it's the idea of you've got two guys and they are told, "Your job is to fill up 10 sandbags an hour. That's what we need you to do."
Michael: [inaudible 00:21:15].
Kathryn: [inaudible 00:21:15].
Michael: Do this, and do it as fast as you can.
Kathryn: Fill the sandbags. So for one guy, he's never told why he's doing that. He just has to do it. And that is exhausting work. But the other guy who's doing the exact same work is told, "The reason you're doing this is because there's going to be a flood, and we need to shore up the levies so that New Orleans doesn't go underwater," for example. So suddenly there's a purpose and a meaning and something that is incredibly important attached to this really difficult, really hard work that feels very like a menial labor. Those two guys are going to view the world in completely different ways.
Kathryn: Another illustration is the person who, you've got two guys back in ancient times who areworking on a cathedral. Only one guy doesn't really know that, that's what he's doing. For him, he's just-
Michael: He's building a building.
Kathryn: He's just building a building. He's creating the bricks and the blocks and he's stacking stuff. He's just building a wall. That's all there is. Whereas the second guy doing the exact same job has been given a vision of the end product, which is this majestic cathedral that will be a gift to generations to come. He's building the wall with that sense of purpose and pride in his contribution to the bigger picture. And that's in the day and age when folks, there'd be multiple generations building those kinds of buildings. That's kind of the difference between the toil and the labor is really tying the work to purpose and meaning because none of us work 100% in our passion. I mean, it's just really hard to do. If you're going to own a company and you're going to actually run the company well, you have to actually develop some awareness of how to do stuff that maybe isn't in your skillset. You actually don't love it.
Michael: Or it's not enjoyable.
Kathryn: It's not enjoyable. So that's just going to be reality. But the more that you understand that what you're doing ties to an end game, a larger picture, and you remind yourself and you remind your people of some of these things that are a little bit harder, they are not without meaning. So the more you can tie it to values, purpose, end goal, all those kinds of things, the less it's going to feel like toil.
Michael: Yeah. We look at this and we talk about it and it happens in our own life. Kathryn and I try and divvy up stuff at home, but we try and divvy up stuff at work with what our giftings and talents and skills are. While we are not always the epitome of the entrepreneur or the visionary and the implementer in something you might hear out there, but we are definitely spaced enough that she's more the implementer, and I am definitely the innovator, strategist, idea guy and stuff like that. Then for us, one of the things as we're growing and scaling our company is we're looking now, we've been able to handle that up to this point, but we're looking to go to the next level ourself in our own company and grow our companies. We're going to need an implementer.
Michael: We're going to need somebody who's much more traditional in that context. We've been waiting to the point where it's like we're stretching and pulling on our giftings and then being able to move to the next level of that and have people on our team that fit that more. With our staff, our staff is amazing because they require training. All staff requires training, but when you give everybody the training they need, and you have the right people in the right spots, the right people on the bus, in the right spot-
Kathryn: In the right seats.
Michael: In the right seats and the company is going in the right direction, I would draw the connection that the bus going in the right direction is the type of company that you're trying to be and the way it's operating all aligns with the market and it aligns with you.
Michael: So if it fits you and the operations of the company fit the market, it's all going in the right direction. Then right people in the right seats are the right people in the right jobs. And yeah. Then you have to ask the question, if you can't find the right seat for somebody, are they even supposed to be on your bus? Are they supposed to be in your company? It's so often people don't define all of those pieces before they start asking anybody to get on the bus, because there's no way of refining that.
Michael: If you think about the definition of what the company is and you're aligning that, you're going to act, you're going to do work as if it were like you didn't even have to be paid for it. Being paid is the reward, this incredible huge reward because you're willing to do all this stuff for little to nothing. For me, I would say 75% of my job is, and we intentionally have designed this and we intentionally designed Kathryn's task too, that we actually work so well in this, we love what we do. And we get paid. We get to say our vocation, our job fits into a vocation because it fits into who we are and our gifts, talents, and skills. I have to grow and be stretched, but I don't have do this stuff that just I hate.
Kathryn: Well, one of the ways that, I mean, one of the things that's true about when you are truly working in your gifts, talents and skills, when you are truly doing what you are designed to do, you are actually, I'm going to use the word blessing because it's the only word I can think of at the minute. But you are blessing everybody else. When you're really working in your strengths, then you're excellent. You're going to be excellent in those things. Whether it's an employee or you as the owner of the company, people notice that. That's what allows you then to be doing the things that you love and making a living doing it. That's because people are willing to pay people who are good at what they do to do stuff.
Michael: When they know that you're consistent, you build that reputation. It's like a feedback loop that just continues to grow and grow and grow in a positive way. Then you move from that to your employees and you're like, look, you really want to be hiring somebody who you would never have to pay. To the idea of the title of this podcast, How Do You Legally Hire Someone for Free, you don't. But what we want to say in behind that is you can legally look for the right people who would work for free. You can legally, there's so many legal ways to go around and ask questions and interview, but you have to define the job, the tasks, the descriptions, the type of person that would fit. If you don't know the answer to that, there are ways to find that out.
Michael: We have some of those ideas in our book, Fulfilled, and you can find more on our website and there's stuff online and YouTube. There's some great companies that are doing it. I'll just give you one little tip. I'm just going to say this. The art and skill of delegation. We have been learning over the years how to delegate better and more effectively, and we've actually been intentionally trying. But recently I was made aware of a whole training program that explains it so much more clearly and fluidly than I'd ever imagined. It's going to take our delegation skills all the way up to the next level and maybe a level above that. It will help us to scale and help us to reduce the amount of stress even at the level we have in our business. You want that as a leader.
Michael: So that's the whole process today that we wanted to really talk about and go this idea you need to sit on and think about. It can produce huge dividends to you in your own personal work and your company and with your staff, because you'll have people that literally would do that for free because they end up doing it at home.
Kathryn: Yeah. And they're going to do such better work. So when you see someone who is doing something that they would do for free, they do work that makes you go, "Oh my gosh, that is so cool." Then your customers are super happy and delighted because that person went the extra mile because they love what they were doing. It's super fun. We had an employee who loved video. When we tasked him to do this one video project and it was just time-lapse, just put this thing together, and what came out of it was like, oh-
Michael: That was cool.
Kathryn: That is so darn cool, and it was because he loved doing it. The work was just a notch above, and it's just fun to watch.
Michael: It helps when they have that much energy and joy. Also in my experience, less skill compared to somebody who has more skill but doesn't like it, it provides that the person with less skill and the enjoyment, it produces better, more creative stuff.
Michael: So get this. This is the bottom line. If you embrace this concept and idea and start learning about it and start looking for these kinds of things in your employees, you're going to be less frustrated, you're going to have less hassles, you're going to have more time in your schedule, and you're going to have more money in your pocketbook. It's just going to happen. So we want to encourage you with that.
Michael: If you liked what you hear today, please hit subscribe or any of the other things when you're listening to our podcasts.
Kathryn: Like, share, love.
Michael: Tell people about it. We need to share this idea of how to build these companies so that we can reduce the business failure rate and reduce the disengagement rate. We want more people who are having thriving, profitable companies that they actually love and enjoy, and that allow them freedom in the rest of their life. That's what Passion and Provision and the HaBO Village is all about. You want to add anything?
Kathryn: I think you summed it up brilliantly.
Michael: We hope that that today has given you something to think about and something to chew on. So we want to thank you for joining us. I'm Michael Redman.
Kathryn: And I'm Kathryn Redman.
Michael: We want to wish you a great week and keep growing.
