Episode 13: Employees, with Glen Grant

STRATEGIES TO GROW YOUR BUSINESS

Glen Grant is the owner and lead consultant for HRfx Consulting, a boutique consulting firm that provides human resource consulting services to small and mid-sized organizations. Over the last 8 years, he and his team have helped lots of small businesses across Canada learn that the key to growing your business is to focus on managing their most valuable asset, their employees.

With over 25 years of HR leadership and consulting experience and a specialization in organizational effectiveness and strategy, Glen brings a corporate background to helping small business that have employees but not a dedicated HR resource. Glen works with a variety of organizations to improve their management practices and ensure they can attract and retain the people critical to their success. Working closely with his clients, he develops innovative solutions to their unique people issues.

Glen is a certified HR professional in Canada, the US and on a Global basis. He currently serves as the Board Chair for Habitat for Humanity in Vancouver.

Hi, everyone. Welcome to with me, Colin Sprake. As we walk you through, something that is really important to me around small business, and that’s, I say it all the time, you want to go. I find business owners all the time say, Colin, I want help growing a business but I don’t want to hire employees. I think you’re absolutely crazy not hiring employees. Why? Because guess what? Every time you’re away or away from your business, your business is effectively closed. We’re gonna talk about some really key strategies today, around having employees. I don’t even like the word employees, so actually, we’re going to be talking about team and why a team is so important and how to get your team engaged. Make sure you have a notepad and pen ready, because, I have a really, really amazing guest. He’s actually one of our faculty members here at Make Your Mark. He teaches a program for us called Hire Fire 101. The gentleman’s name is Glen Grant from a company called HRfx. Welcome, Glen.

Thank you. Thanks for having me, Colin. Appreciate being here.

Yeah, it’s great to have you. I thank you, man. Glen teaches one of our courses for us, across Canada and of course into the States as you continue to grow your business and expand. Glen, let’s get right into it. I mean, you run a consulting practice that really helps small business owners bring on amazing — forget about it — I don’t like the word employees. bring on amazing team members. We’ve done a lot of work together. We utilize your services all the time. Even working with us, what are the biggest mistakes some small business owners are making around bringing team members on?

Two comments on that. One is, I think often small businesses will talk about their employees being key assets to their organizations, but I don’t know if they bring them on, welcome them, and treat them as assets once they come on board. Too often, a small business might have three or four employees. You get to three to four staff, they’re in place, and then you, as the business owner, are off doing what you need to do, which is growing your business. it’s respecting that these people are now assets to the organization. they’re there running the business when the business owner is not. It’s important to have the right people in place. Treat them as important aspects to the organization.

My second comment would be, is to plan around your people aspect of things. We see this sometimes with your organization. There’s turnover that happens in a business. People move, people get married, people change careers. If you look back sometimes at your historical data, when did people come, when have people left, you can actually see there can generally be some trends. April and September are the highest turnover months.

We see that in our business all the time. As a business owner, if you’re thinking you’re gonna lose somebody in September, you’re now planning time, resources, energy around them versus, oh my gosh, Glen quit today. Now, what do I have to do? I’m already working 40, 50 hours a week. Plus, I have to hire someone on top of that. How am I gonna be able to do that? So, planning around just like any other part of your business. There should be a business plan around your people.

Source: Pexels

“There should be a business plan around your people.” - Glen Grant Click To Tweet

Well, I remember many years ago, you saying to me, you know what Colin, you’re always hiring. I’m like, yeah, I didn’t understand that now I really understand that. You know, because, I feel sometimes setting me, and I’m open on this show, is that people will say, Colin, you have some staff turnover. I’m like, of course, we do. We’re like any company. People get other opportunities, people die, people move on. People move, spouse moves, they get transferred. What have you. That’s just part of the par for the course. In some ways, too, you know, I think the world’s changed. You know, keeping people for 10, 12, 15, 20 years and giving them a gold watch at the end of the day, it’s pretty much changed.

Yeah.

So, let’s dig into something. I want the business owners here that are listening today, to really think about this, is, if you look over your history and with small business owners, around even how they hire or what they’re doing, what have you. We always hear, hire slow, fire fast. I don’t even like the word fire. I think it’s rude. Release them to a place that can better serve them, in some way or form, cause sometimes they don’t fit in. What is, what’s the biggest thing you’ve seen, really, small business owners are doing that’s causing them to hire the wrong people or maybe not even hire people. What do you think is the biggest challenge for a small business?

You’re right. So often, in small business, people end up hiring within their network, and it could be friends or families that they’re bringing in. You may have a trusting relationship with that person, but you may not, they may not have the skillsets that you need. understanding truly what the job involves as far as the job description skills, experience, behaviors a person has to bring to the job. Get that in front of you, and then look at the applicants as they’re coming in. It’s very easy to say hey, can I get my brother, brother-in-law, or sister to help me do some aspect of the business. That can be great for a period of time, but often it’s not the right skill set that you need and you’re doing it based on a trusting relationship. If you go ahead and hire a friend or family, I always suggest you do it for a period of time. Let’s do this for 60 days, 90 days, six months, have a chance to evaluate it. that way you know the employment relationship’s gonna end, and it’s not gonna be a negative effect and part of the relationship going forward.

We talk in Hire and Fire that every employment relationship ends at some point. If they last 25 years and retire, that’s great. There is a stat that came out from the US Human Resources Society that the average career is 2.6 years. Which is not very long, but at the same time as small business owner, if I said every one of your employers is gonna last 2.5 years, would that be okay? Most business owners would say, you know, that would be okay if I knew I could hire around it. A few employees that are around two years with you or less, how are you helping them to learn how to grow your business and establish it? You know, we’ve talked about one of your staff, which is looking for a different role internally. Not necessarily more money, but they’re looking for a different role and career growth. How do you give that? Certainly the generation today is a little bit more about title, responsibility, and career growth. That 2.6 years I think can change if you give them that opportunity internally. Too often small business owners say here’s your role, stick with it, and hopefully, they stay there for 25 years.

So let me do this, just for our listeners today. Understand what Glen is saying here. Sometimes, opportunity is not money. We have one of our team members here at the office who’s come to me and said, “Colin, I don’t necessarily need more money but I’d like to maybe be at home in the afternoons with my family. Can I come to the office mornings only, and instead of going out for lunch, I can go home for lunch, and do work at home in the afternoon to do some different items which actually are good to do at home which are high focus work?” It gives them time with the kids, and I think that’s really important. Listen to what Glen is saying here. It’s not always about throwing more money. Remember, people only remember two things about you as an employer. What was the experience like with you and how do you make them feel? So, allowing you to go spend more time with their family is more important than giving them more money. I look at that Glen, I look at it immensely in even our own business.

We’ve learned so much about hiring people, and please understand us, listeners. It’s really good to hire people. Don’t take this negatively. Hiring people is leverage in your life. Without people, like I couldn’t sit you down on the podcast, Glen. I can chat and have fun with you because my company still runs because of amazing employees and amazing team members. For you, if you run a podcast and you have no team members, guess what happens? Your business is right now standing still. I want you to think about this. Stop saying I don’t want employees or I hate employees or I’ll never bother with employees. Number one, it’s really good to give people a career, and number two, it’s an opportunity for you to be able to go on vacation and your business still runs. Everyone wins. It gives their family income, it gives you income. It’s a win-win all the way around.

Glen, what I see though, and what I’ve experienced over the years, with our hiring, is you know, in the beginning, I used to say hire really quickly. I would wake up one day and go, oh my God, we need these people, bring them in. Then we rush rush rush to hire, and then we go into panic mode to get these people on board. What I’ve learned over the last while is slow it down. Like, some people it takes three or four months to get through the interviews until eventually get them on board. I want you to give your biggest learning experience with Make Your Mark, in terms of, you’ve been with us six years?

Six years.

Six years? So you’ve been with us six years, as completely your own business, really working with us and helping us hire. What’s your biggest transition you’ve seen in maybe me as a human being, or us as a company. I’m completely open, you can say whatever you want. This is The Brutal Truth with Colin Sprake. We’re not here to flap this up. We’ve gotta be honest.

Well first is, when we first met, I think you had the hesitation of small business owner about actually hiring staff. I think you had had some experiences beforehand which were negative. You still did it, but I think it was a less strategic plan and more, we need to fill a gap. What I have seen over the six years is you now have a hiring process. You have 10 steps in your process. every employee that comes on is treated the same, whether they’re a frontline employee, or the COO, or CFO, or something like that coming into your organization. Every step is the same. It’s consistent, so they understand who you are in terms of organization. You get to understand them as individuals well, too. The other thing I’ve seen is, you’ve now delegated that responsibility to the area managers that have some responsibility. You still have some engaged for future employee coming in, but often, they’re taking ownership of alright, here’s someone coming onto my team, joining my area of responsibility. Obviously, it’s your organization, Make Your Mark as a whole.

But there’s that process that you have. You have three or four steps from the interview process, you’ve got a group interview, you have the DISC Profile, feng shui, and the sacred gifts is all a part of it. Things that you’ve developed from a cultural perspective, and that’s gonna come across in the interview. We helped Colin’s team do some screening at various times, and we’ve had some applicants say, I don’t want to go to a group interview, or I don’t want to go to a certain process. That’s better to find out at that stage than to have them here for three or six months and recognize there’s not that connectivity.

Yeah, well what we found which Glen really touched on there, is the culture. You know, we hire on culture now and then we look at skillset, resumes, what have you. We still look at the resume beforehand, but the initial interview, as Glen said, is a group interview. Maybe five or six applicants in the room together, going through a group interview. I think there’s now 13 questions we ask during that interview. To really get clarity on who we’re hiring and focus on the culture of who we are. Can you speak a little bit to culture over skillset, talents, what have you? What do you see as more important? Culture or skill set, talents, what have you? Cause I know I’ve seen many times, people that are really good at what they do, irritate the snot out of you.

I think there’s a bit of a balance. I think there are some core skills and experience and behaviors you need to be successful at a job. If you come into accounting and you don’t have an accounting background, you made it through the culture but you’re not going to be very successful in your job. It’s having that base aspect of things. The second thing is having the culture. again, in the Hire Fire Training, we do talk about that every business has a culture, right? Whether you’re a two-person shop or a one-person shop or a 200 person shop, you have some kind of culture. There’s some great definitions online about what culture is, companies have captured it. To me, and you touched on this earlier, is when you walk out of the office, it’s what happens in that workplace, the office, the warehouse, when you’re not there. That’s the culture of the business.

Source: Pexels

“Culture is what happens in your business when you leave the office.” - Glen Grant Click To Tweet

So all your clients, concerns, big issues, how they treat each other from a peer perspective, a coworker and a client perspective. Is the work getting done? Are they leaving at 4:30 versus 5:30, things like that that are now persuasive within the organization, and setting up the deliverables and accountabilities and all that kind of stuff. They’re unwritten. It’s not in a written that here’s what our culture is. It’s an experience that you come in and manage that aspect of things. That’s how you define culture. You know, as a business owner if you don’t know what it is, think about it, talk to your employees. That’s one of the things I enjoy about you and your staff. You talk to them. What’s the culture about, how do they fit in? We’ve talked about that one employee that was looking for a different change. The more you understand your employees, the more you can be able to respond to that.

But if you hadn’t had that conversation, that employee may end up in turn leaving, and finding another option externally that allows them to have some flexibility. It’s not always gonna work, but again having those conversations.

Yeah. I think you’re right, I’ve learned over the last, maybe last month or so, which has been really interesting for me is that you know, I don’t spend enough time with my team. You know, and, then some people get upset or disgruntled. When I say team, every single one of my team members in the office, even people that report to other people. I don’t even like the term report. All our team. I don’t spend enough time with them. you know, one of my goals right now, is actually to just figure out how to either spend more time or find someone that’s going to spend more time with them. You know. I want to go back to when you said right in the beginning, because, you know, over time, I have really become more seasoned to this, you know. I don’t like to see people going anywhere. People decide to do what they need to do. I always want to know why they’re leaving, because, they can tell me, you know, maybe our culture sucks.

Maybe we’ve done something wrong to them or wronged them in some way. People leave just because of more money. You would’ve figured out yourself, I had to ask myself, are they leaving just because of more money? Maybe I’m being too cheap in the way I want to, you know, look after them. Maybe I’m not rewarding them when they should be. You know, maybe they’re doing great work, and I’m watching them do great work. Now they’re gonna leave, so let me give them more money. I think it’s too late then. To me, if I was going to leave a company as an employee, and then they threw more money at me just because I was leaving, I’d be asking the question, shouldn’t I have got more money ages ago?

So, I want to go back to the question of, we walk out of interviews and this was in the early days of Make Your Mark. It fascinates me, and you said this in the beginning around family and friends. We walked out of the interview like, what do you think? And my team would say, well the person who was in the interview with me, doing the interview would say, I really like them. I want you to speak to that because I think a lot of people will hire people they like as opposed to hiring people that sometimes, might be the opposite to your personality. I wouldn’t even date a person like this, you know? They can do a great job and have the culture we need.

It goes back to that comment earlier about having some kind of job description about what the role’s actually gonna be and then using that as a guide as part of your interview process. Because you’re right. If you look at different roles and responsibilities in your organization, the skillset and behaviors are much different. Right? You look at some of your team that’s out in the ambassador type program or city ambassador program. Engaging relationship based type people. That’s not the kind of person you want to have as your accountant, right? I’m stereotyping a little bit, but you don’t want to have that sort of person. That’s where things like a DISC Profile can help do that kind of stuff.

You take someone who’s a city ambassador and say, alright, now you’re gonna spend eight hours a day in the office. They’ll probably quit after three days. Right? And it’s probably no different than you. You like to be out. You have to do something in the office. if I said 40 to 50 hours a week in the office without going outside, without talking to somebody, how long would you last in your role?

Yeah, I’d rather swallow a fishing hook. You know, there actually was a client of ours just down the road. A company that we’ve watched learn what they need to do when growing a business over the years, two accountants together. I’ll always remember, I’m not going to mention names, I don’t think it’s fair. A husband and wife team. The wife is the gregarious part of the partnership. The husband’s the one who can survive the computer and do accounting and do book work for their clients every single day. The wife’s always saying, why doesn’t he get out and go network? One day I sit down with her and I said, okay, let me ask you this question. If you expect him to get up and go network, which is absolutely not his personality, let me ask you this question. I want you to sit in your desk for the next 40 hours, in the next week, eight hours a day. I want you to sit in your desk and just freaking do work.

She said to me. I could never do that, I hate doing that. I said, well, then stop expecting him to do something that you’re not prepared to do yourself around other areas of the business. I’m a big fan of that, you know. It fascinates me when people want to like the person they’re hiring. It’s just so interesting.

If you’re running, jogging, what have you, listen to this later and get some notes from it. Because, for me, employees are such an important part to growing a business. Getting to the next level. Remember, there’s only a certain amount of income you can generate by yourself. The way you grow your business income is by having other people assist you in growing your business.

So, in your own business, in the last five years, 10 years, what have you. What would you say has been, and I’m not even talking about around hiring. What’s been your biggest learning experience? I mean, you’re an expert. Canada flies you all over the world pretty much to represent them to human resources. What would you say is been your biggest learning in the last five or 10 years, that you could say, please listeners, don’t ever do this? Learn from what Glen’s learned.

That’s a good question. You know for me, and actually, it goes back to our last conversation, which is understanding really what your strengths are from a personality perspective. When you become a business owner or sole entrepreneur, you need to do everything. I look at setting up my business, and I’m very passionate, and I think I’m very skilled in the HR component. Then you’ve gotta add on the accounting, website development, you know, the marketing strategy, all that kind of stuff. You try and do that all by yourself, for a period of time. At some point, you need to recognize, that it took a while and I had to gain some experience, that there’s other people that can help me, whether it’s in a contract basis, or third party or a project type basis to help take that expertise off and let me focus on what I do well. Then for me, over the last couple years, I’ve been able to build my team based on that as well too. We had some staff members that are involved in the recruiting, consulting as well too. I’ve got my role very defined as well in that sense.

So it helps understanding what we’re good at and allows me to focus on that and let my team focus on their skills that are behind them. As a small business, that can be challenging at times too. It’s also recognizing okay, and we talked about the accountant that’s maybe doing the networking. It’s pushing your boundaries as well too. As a sole entrepreneur or even a business leader, at some point, you’ve gotta push your boundaries. That’s where we do some minor coaching at various times. It might simply be that you actually need to schedule time to do ‘X’ because you know you’re not gonna do it. I’ll go back to that accountant that doesn’t network. If they were to be a sole entrepreneur, if they were to say two hours a week, they have to do some kind of networking, right? They may push themselves out so I gotta go for a lunch and learn, or I’m gonna go to a board trade event. Those are my two hours I’m gonna do. It gets them out of their comfort zone, they recognize it.

But if they don’t schedule it or don’t plan it, six weeks, eight weeks, three months go past and they haven’t done it. If you say every week I’m gonna do two hours a week, after a month, you’ve got eight hours of networking that month that you wouldn’t have done normally. Understanding how to grow your business, how to expand, and do it in small chunks is part of it.

Great man. I think, as I said here, and I’m sure some of our listeners are sitting here going, okay guys, your guys are from like the 18th, 19th century from the way you’re talking. This is all about employees, blah blah blah. What about outsourcing? You know, because that’s become the big topic — outsourcing. You can outsource just about everything. Outsource sales, marketing, what have you. What’s your feeling of, what’s your opinion of outsourcing number one, and can you outsource everything and just be a sole entrepreneur with all these outsourced or contractors around you? Number one. Number two is, you know, what do you see as the future with all this outsourcing. People cannot sit at home and just be unemployed because we need employees. what’s your feeling about this? Like, now we’re in the 21st century, I’ve noticed some people saying, oh, these guys aren’t even talking about outsourcing. What do you think about outsourcing and where it’s going and what have you?

I think that there are certain advantages to it. I think there are some skill sets or practices or deliverables that you can then define very easily and be able to outsource that sort of thing. We talked early about culture, and I think if you were to have a team of entire contractors and entire outsourced staff, or deliverable or consultants, you’re not developing any culture. It’s just you as an individual running the actual business inside of it., as a business strategy, what are you trying to achieve? How are you trying to grow your team is part of it. Because, there, outsource is only doing, delivering what the contract says. They’re not gonna do much on top, there might a little bit more, but they’re not gonna do the same sort of thing. If you have an issue at the office and your entire network is outside or outsourced or offshore, whatever the case is. How are you then going to be able to deal with that issue coming in?

Source: Pexels

“If your team is entirely outsourced, you’re not developing any culture.” - Glen Grant Click To Tweet

That’s good man. I look at the office every single morning. We have a Thrive meeting at 9:00 AM. It takes us about 11, 12 minutes. it’s just all about keeping each other on the same page, we share different things really quickly around our group of 23 people. We share that around the group. That to me, you don’t get with outsourcing. People say I don’t want to be sitting in my office with a whole bunch of Zoom monitors and all my outsourced contractors. They might have your core values, but they might not have your culture. You have this whole different culture. How they communicate with your clients if you allow them to communicate with your clients, how are they communicating? They’re not hearing what’s going on internally in the company. In fact, I don’t mind people working at home, but I don’t like them working at home. Not because I can’t see them working, I used to have that distrust issue. I’ll tell you that. now, I’ve matured, maybe I’ve grown up and figured out it’s okay to work at home. Yet, you don’t have the culture at home.

You don’t have, the people aren’t engaged, they’re not hearing what’s going on. then they come into a meeting maybe once a week, and they’re like, what’s going on at the office, I don’t understand what’s going on. That’s why BC Contractors being a part of what we do, but not everything we do.

Well, and we work as a contractor with your team, right? So, I’ve known you for six years and certainly gotten to know you and understand the culture and as a faculty member, enjoy that component. We have a small part of that process. Right? You have a 10 step process. we maybe do the equivalent of two steps out of that 10. The employee experience coming in goes beyond that. There’s areas I’m not comfortable speaking about your business because I don’t live it day to day. I can talk about my relationship, how we interact with making our team. I understand what your 20/20 vision is, but that’s coming from my perspective as a third party external consultant, right? That’s where that advantage of bringing them internally and becoming an employee is part of it.

The other aspect is there, as you’re growing a business and looking for opportunity, there are different ways you can bring somebody on. You can totally outsource and have oDesk type things done. We had a country and they sent the documents, and that’s it. You can have contractors, you can have contract employees, you can have term employees, you can have part-time employees. You don’t have to say, Colin, I’m gonna hire you 40 hours a week for the next 25 years.

Source: Pexels

“You can have part-time employees. They don’t have to work 40 hours a week.” - Glen Grant Click To Tweet

See, I think that’s the biggest myth. I think that’s the point most people get to. It’s like, I’m a solo entrepreneur right now and I’ve gotta go spend four grand a month or five grand a month hiring my first person. No, you can hire somebody one morning a week to help you do things. I want you to understand this, business owners. This is my favorite topic because I’m always a big fan of all business owners.

Write down all the activities you’re doing every single day. Invoicing, administrative activity, whatever it is. Put a dollar hour that you typically pay somebody to do those activities, and then write down what dollar hour are you worth. Tell me, if you’re putting down 25 or 35 dollars an hour, you should not be a business owner. You should be 50, 100, 200, 500 bucks an hour. All those activities you’re doing that are lower than what you typically would charge yourself. Why are you doing them? If you’re charging 100 bucks an hour for your owner services, and you’re doing 15 dollar an hour jobs or tasks or activities, then you should be looking at, how do I hire somebody to do those for me?

Every time you’re doing an administrative skill. Let’s say your clients are at work nine to five every day. You’re out there, you’re available to, Monday to Friday. Every time you’re not out selling as a solo entrepreneur, you really mean your business is effectively closed. If you’re doing invoicing that time, you’re doing invoicing in the evening when your clients are asleep or clients are unavailable, on the weekend what have you. What I find with so many business owners. They don’t take that first step of, let me get that first employee on board or even part-time employee. It could be mornings only. There’s a lot of great stay at home parents. Moms or dads, there’s a lot of stay at home dads now. At home as well. That are experts on what they do, that are looking for a nine to noon, part-time work.

What Glen’s saying is really important. It’s not about, I have to get a person on full time from day one. For me it’s like, starting to think about that. I’m going to add something here cause I think it’s really important for people to listen to you Glen, and I’d like you to speak to it too.

I don’t think the challenge of hiring employees ever goes away. Here’s a challenge. You think about it, let me get my first one on board part-time. then, it’s like, my first full time. That’s the next big decision. Then the next big decision is, my first junior manager. Then my next big decision is, senior manager. It just keeps on going. My next first director. Maybe my first C-Suite person, in terms of CFO, COO, CEO, what have you. It just keeps on going. I remember when I first started out, I was like, the average salary here in the office was 36 to $45,000 a year. Now we’re looking at hiring people, 120, 150, $180,000 a year. My salary, total salary at one stage, was 180 grand a year. I’m expecting to hire somebody at that level. What can you say to business owners? Is that like a truth that this stuff never goes away? It’s just part of running a very successful business.

It doesn’t. If you look at any size organization, they’re gonna have challenges and opportunities and things like that. The nice thing to see in a business like yourself, is when you see that growth right? So you see opportunities that are coming because of growth, things like that. Versus simply having the same six employees because of that little bit of turnover based on sort of lifestyle decisions and things like that. Again going back to my early comment is, if they’re treated as the most valuable assets in your organization, you’re gonna spend that much time and attention to them. If you think about it as a manager, if you were to say, okay, outside the daily tasks that I do and managing my staff and getting to do stuff. If I spent an hour a week either thanking them, rewarding them or developing them, how much difference would that make in that organization? That’s a lot of times to be able to do, but it’s spending some time and attention. That can be simply spending time in your office, saying, okay, where’s my team now? How am I gonna get to the next level? Is there anything they did in the last week that I can thank them for? Love the gratitude thing that you guys do around here, and part of that. that’s gonna help reinforce those positive things.

The other side of it is, there are times when you’re figuring out how to grow your business and sometimes employees don’t grow as well, as part of it. that’s when you’ve gotta go externally to bring somebody in, and/or maybe in that employee relationship, if they’re not capable of doing what the needs of the business are and things. Understand that I’m planning ahead versus being reactive is the biggest thing as part of it. I think a business should always be recruiting, right? And what I mean by that is you’re always thinking about, okay, who’s my team, where are we going? And then also, it looks at internal recruitment as well too. If you’ve got someone internally on your team, what are their career goals, aspirations? How can that growing a business? Okay, great. It can internally. Here’s where I see the business going forward.

Source: Pexels

“A business should always be recruiting.” - Glen Grant Click To Tweet

But on the other side, if it can’t, how do I develop such that they’re in a position they can go get a job that they want to do?

Absolutely.

And after 2.5 years of someone goes on a leave, they’ve got great service. Think about it, if you’re transitioning them, I say, Colin, I recognize that I can’t fulfill your needs. If you want to go to xy position. Let’s work for the next six months to develop a procedures manual. We can hire someone after three months, you can train them for three months. You’ve got a much more successful transition than, I’m done Colin, here’s my two weeks notice, I’m out of here. Then you begin to change things that way. Understanding that where people are is a big thing. Again, if it’s the biggest asset or one of your largest assets for your organization, if you treat it like that then you’re always going to have to maintain and grow it.

So I think pretty much what Glen is saying, I’m gonna flip it completely is, so Glen’s saying what’s your biggest asset? So, think about this. If your biggest expense on your overhead are employees, stop looking at them as an expense, and invest in them to grow forward. I mean, sometimes I’m preaching to mirror then here, to be honest. For myself, our biggest expense at Make Your Mark by far are our team members here at the office. Sometimes I don’t think I give enough time to it, and that’s why I’m bringing a Chief Operating Officer on board right now to really help me with that. Because you know, my time is really driven to being outside and really serving our clients. I don’t really serve our team effectively and I realize that, so to bring somebody on board to really serve our team. Start to look at your balance sheet differently. Your employees? You look at them as overhead or liability. Stop doing that. That’s your biggest cost. That should be your biggest, you should look at it as my biggest investment. Now, what are you doing to grow your business through that investment?

So I’ve learned something today, thank you very much, man. I always learn from amazing people like yourself on this podcast. This is so important. I want all of our listeners to realize like Glen said, you’re always hiring. Stop thinking about people are going to be with me forever. There’s going to be turnover. You’re gonna grow your business. Let’s not call it turnover. People will not be able to keep up with you, will not want to keep up with you, don’t care about your vivid vision of where you’re going and the growth you want. I don’t want to be a manager, leader, what have you. They just want to do a job and go home every day. It’s those kinds of people, and some environments don’t really sort of embrace that. Some environments are we’re a go-getting environment, and you don’t really fit in, you leave. Which is okay. Please business owners, stop thinking that you’ve gotta keep everybody for all the time. I even have people, students of ours that say to me, Colin you’ve got lots of staff turnover. I’m like, no we don’t have a lot of staff turnover. It’s way better than we ever used to be.

But there’s gonna be turnover all the time. It’s not gonna happen, I’m not putting that out intentionally, but it does happen. People want to go and do different things they love. Go backpack around the world or whatever they want to do. Glen, thank you so much for being on today. If people want to get ahold of you, or what have you, I want you to be inundated. Because people know, I mean, your services are very, very valuable. We value what you do for us here at Make Your Mark especially in yourself, you do a great job for us too. What’s the easiest way to get a hold of you? Is there a website, an email address? What’s the best way to connect with you to learn more about what HRfx does?

Yeah, well we’ve got a website. hrfx.ca. If you want to get a hold of myself or my team, there is Glen@hrfx.ca or info@hrfx.ca. We can be able to help you with things like that.

Is it Glen with one n?

Yes, one n, yes.

Going back to our conversation, part of it is, the reason I do what I do is I did see business owners that weren’t growing a business because of the employee aspect of things. My goal is to just help you continue to grow your business by being comfortable. I find HR easy, right? But I’ve done it for 25 years. I get frustrated or disappointed when a business owner’s not going to do something or grow or expand because of hiring staff. I’m like, we can help you, we can get somebody in, we can process it. We can help you manage through things. We can manage the exit side of it as well too. It’s not as though you have to do it on your own. We talked about outsourcing. If you’re not good at it, bring somebody in that can help you. That can be, often that’s IT and finance and things like that. Again, going back to your largest liability or the largest asset is the people side of things. get some help in managing that sort of stuff.

Love that, love that, wow. For me, that’s the most important and I’ve actually got lots of key nuggets from listening here today. Glen thank you so much for being on the show with us today.

Yup, always a joy.

Beautiful man. here’s the thing. Going forward, please, listeners, of course, this is Colin Sprake here and remember, my number one thing for you is make sure you’re implementing. Knowledge is only potential power. Implementation is where the power is. Connect with Glen, connect with him through their website. Learn more about what they’re doing, but the key thing is, remember, if you’re not good at hiring, maybe you’re not good at leading or managing or what have you. The best business owners in the world know how to manage resources, you know? They know how to bring on the right people to help them. Right now, as we end the show today, for me, my strength is going out and being with our students, teaching, facilitating, guiding people to the next level of their businesses. My strength is often not sitting in the office spending time interviewing each of our team members to find out where things are at. Guess what? That’s why I’ll hire someone to come on and do that for me. They will then spend time with our team, helping our team to the next level, doing the stuff that Glen’s asked for about today, and really spoken about today.

Thank you so much for being on the show, thank you once again Glen, and make sure that you keep on implementing and we’ll see you next week. Keep on doing things, and keep on getting your business to the top and being successful. Thank you so much. Goodbye.

Ways to contact Glen:

• Website: hrfx.ca
• Email: Glen@hrfx.ca or info@hrfx.ca

 

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•  – Episode 4: Conscious & Sub-conscious Mind – Captain & Sailors, with Colin Sprake

• – Episode 46: Understanding Your Profit with Margins, Mock-Ups, and Discounts, with Colin Sprake

• – Episode 1: You Can’t Achieve Success All by Yourself, with Steve Cunningham