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[Music] foreign [Music]
is proudly sponsored by the rising tide Mastermind the term Mastermind was
originally written in Napoleon Hill’s book Think and Grow Rich before that the
earliest documentation that we have of a mastermind group was Ben Franklin’s group that he used to meet every single
week in a Tavern that he called huntus Nation there’s no doubt about it life is
too short to do it alone and it’s not very much fun to do it alone in nation I
urge you to go to scalingup h2o.com and find out if the rising tide Mastermind
is right for you I’d love to have a 15-minute call with you to explain all
things Rising tide Mastermind and see if this is a group that’s right for you and
you are right for the group go to scalinguph2o.com forward slash Mastermind
welcome to scaling up the podcast where we scale up on knowledge so we don’t scale up our systems my name is Trace
Blackmore the host of the scaling up H2O podcast and last week we celebrated 300
episodes of scaling up H2O and the entire beginning of the episode was me
thanking you for listening to this podcast this podcast would not be
successful if nobody listened to it so thank you for doing your part I really
appreciate that and since the Airing of last week’s episode I have heard from
many people congratulating us on having 300 episodes as I mentioned last week
not that many podcasts make it that long and the fact that we are more than 300
episodes tells me that we have found something that people want we have found
something that people can use to make them better at their career careers to
make them feel better about what they do to give them some instructions on what
to do next and for those people that did contact me and say congratulations thank
you for that that makes me feel oh so good as I’ve said before I am in front
of a microphone here in my studio in Atlanta Georgia and I can’t see all of
you I’m hoping that someone is going to listen to this podcast as I’m recording
and it’s great to know that people do listen to that so uh scale it up Nation
thanks for being part of the nation and thanks for listening to this show
one of the favorite things that I do outside of this show is I host what we
call the hang and the Hang is a zoom call but it’s not a regular Zoom call
because we try to have some fun so we start promptly at 6 00 PM eastern time
we do one every quarter and the next one’s going to be April 13th and I have
met so many listeners on the hang that is just amazing and also I get to
introduce other listeners to other listeners so now they are increasing
their Network now here’s how the Hang works we start promptly at six and I’ll
let you know about some current events that are going on and then we quickly get into the hangout rooms and with the
hangout rooms what we do is I randomly select people like why’d you put me with
with this guy well I don’t control that I use the zoom breakout feature and I
simply hit a button I will say sometimes I’ll hit it two or three times just to make sure it shuffles I know that
doesn’t do anything but it makes me feel like I am doing my job as a facilitator and then those rooms are broken up and
then everybody leaves the main room they go into those breakout rooms and normally I have a couple of questions
just to get everybody started and the whole point with that is somebody is
getting to know somebody they didn’t know and a couple of things have
happened from the hang one people say hey I love this and I really want a
network of people that I can get closer with I can troubleshoot with and I can
help others with their issues and then that allows them to explore the rising
tide Mastermind which is exactly what we’re doing there for other people they’re meeting new people that are now
their new friend funds and they are reaching out to them to help them solve
issues there was one particular gentleman that was having a problem with a water softener and he tried everything
he happened to mention how frustrated he was on one of the hangs it just so
happened it was a good thing that I hit that randomly select button on the on the breakout rooms three times because
these two people now ended up in the same breakout room and he knew of the
issue that he was describing and this just made the gentleman that was having the problem with the softener feel like
he was understood because he had called the manufacturer he had called so many people and they were just saying you
know that can’t happen well that’s not helpful when you have an issue and people say well that just can’t happen especially when you’re experiencing it
happening I don’t know why manufacturers do that but I know you’ve had that experience well this gentleman talked
about what was going on and the other other gentleman said I’m pretty sure I’ve had a similar experience let’s
schedule a call after this and sure enough he knew the exact issue told him
how to fix it and within a week he had that issue fixed and that customer was
delighted because the customer wasn’t getting any help from anybody else this gentleman was the only one that was trying to get it solved so all of that
happened because somebody set aside an hour to talk with people they may not
know now meet new friends and explore things that they need help with nation
doesn’t that sound amazing don’t you need more people in your life that understand what it is that you do well
nation that is the hang and that is a great way for you to build your network
and have a little fun in the process and then once we finish the breakout rooms normally I play some sort of game and
I’m trying to think I done trivia before I’ve done a Wheel of Fortune before I’ve
done a pressure luck that was a little game with the with the whammies we’ve done some Jeopardy before we’ve done
prices right a couple of times so you never know what we’re going to do and it’s just something to have fun and we
get the entire membership the entire audience to participate in the chat section so we’re trying to figure out
will that person know the answer will they not know the answer and it’s just a lot of fun so you can go to
scalinguph2o.com forward slash hang and you can find out everything that you
wanted to know about the hang and you can sign up for the Hang once again that’s going to be April 13th at 6 00 PM
eastern time all that information scaling up h2o.com forward slash well
last week we were celebrating episode 300 and we just got a bunch of new
listeners in in Germany so Danka I believe that’s how you say thank you in
Germany I’m not a German speaker but apparently my English is good enough that the people in Germany can
understand me so I know sometimes I have that southern Atlanta draw so thank you
for all the new listeners out there it’s so cool when we get a new image pop up
on our listener map and we can see that we’ve got new listeners and a new part of the globe so all you new listeners
out there thank you for tuning in to the scaling up H2O podcast for all you existing listeners thank you for
continuing to come back and I know one of the reasons that you come back is we try to make it easy for you to know
what’s going on in our community so you can expand your knowledge and learn more
about your craft so here’s a few things that are coming up so April 24th through
28th Washington DC water week 2022 is
inviting professionals all around the world to come together and rally to get
policy makers to understand the importance of all communities to have
access to Safe reliable and affordable drinking water so if this is something
that you want to participate or learn more about we’re going to have all that information on our show events page that
of course is by going to scalingup h2o.com and you navigate over to our events also the water environment
federation’s odor and air pollutants conference is taking place in Charlotte
North Carolina May 16 through 19th we’ll have all of that information on our show
events page and the water environmental federation’s collection systems conference is taking place June 27th
through 30th in Kansas City Missouri all that information will be on our show
notes page as well I said show notes I really meant to say show events but let’s talk about the notes and events
because there’s so much on scaling up h2o.com it is becoming a resource for
the industrial water Trader to find out new information so you can search on our
web page and there’s just so much content that comes up you may know this
I might have mentioned it I may not have but all of our shows have a transcript
and the reason that we do that is to make them searchable make information easier for you to find so if you’ve got
a particular topic that you want to learn more about you can go to scalinguph2o.com and just search
whatever that is and then everywhere where that word or phrase is mentioned
it will come up and you might have five podcasts that you can listen to there’s
a company that I met at the awt Technical Training seminars and part of
their training regimen is they listen to podcasts and they try to figure out what
episodes they’re going to listen to that build certain knowledge and then they get together on a regular basis to
discuss that so something that they do is exactly what I just told you is they put in a keyword or phrase and they
figure out that they’re going to listen to these podcasts and by the end of these podcasts they’re going to have a meeting they talk about it and they’ve
had some really good conversations I say that because we’ve got so much content
out there there’s no reason you shouldn’t be using it but we also fall
into the danger of repeating the same thing over and over and over again so if
you’re working with somebody that’s in charge of some of the meetings that you do or maybe you are the person that’s in
charge of training or meetings think about what you can do to get out out of the day today to help people work on the
day-to-day and what are some fun things that you can do where you’re still accomplishing exactly what you need to
accomplish but you’re doing it a little bit differently and people enjoy that people have fun with that so maybe you
can do what that company’s doing and uh and try to play around with some podcast episodes well as you know each and every
week we have our friend James McDonald talk about periodic water table with
James and by the end of the year we are going to study 52 different items within
our water periodic table and we’re going to know a lot more about the things that
allow us to be industrial water Traders so here is a brand new installment with
James McDonald hello and welcome to the periodic water table with James where we think and
learn about water chemistry drop by drop please use your week to search online ask your colleagues or even pick up a
book to learn more about each week’s periodic water table topic if you do at
the end of the year you’ll be 52 water chemistry smarter so let’s raise the water table of
knowledge together and get started today’s topic is
calcium carbonate what is the chemical formula for calcium carbonate what is
its molecular weight how is calcium carbonate formed
how soluble is calcium carbonate what impacts a solubility of calcium
carbonate how can one predict its solubility what can be done to increase the
solubility of calcium carbonate why is calcium carbonate used to express concentrations of other chemistries such
as alkalinity total hardness Etc what does calcium carbonate scale look
like what are field tests that can be done to identify calcium carbonate scale
how can calcium carbonate scale be cleaned remember knowledge is power and taking
the time to learn more about water chemistry each week will help make you a force to be reckoned with
be sure to post what you learn to social media and tag it with hashtag water table23 and hashtag scalingup H2O I look
forward to learning more from you thank you James well as you know last
week we had a lot to say with our friend Chris e so we are bringing Chris back
once again to conclude our interview so here’s Chris
in speaking with people throughout our industry I’m always amazed at how little
thought they give to the questions that they ask in the interview process and
they put so much on the interviewee to give them what they’re looking for and I
see you shaking your head now so what should we be doing when it comes to prepping for these interviews you know
our desk procedures mandate that we have what we call strategy calls with
candidates before they interview with our hiring firms and we try to prepare
them the best we can on hey these are the types of interview questions there
are in general this is what we think they might ask in general and these are the concerns they might bring up about
you in particular so we really try to be strategic and prepare folks as best they
can and even if they don’t work with the recruiter that’s something they should be doing anyway right trace and we ask for feedback after the interview is done
hey you know Barbara call me back after the interview is done you know speaking with you know Mr Smith the hiring
manager and it’s amazing some of the questions and how apparent
the lack of preparation on hiring I’m trying to be nice the lack of preparation on some hiring managers is
sometimes pretty alarming for example the hiring manager will readily admit
Barbara I haven’t had a chance to look at your resume can you give me about 30 seconds let me look at your resume well
at that point Barbara’s pretty much written off you know geez I don’t want to work for you or
other questions hey Barbara tell me about yourself oh my goodness you know that’s an open-ended question right you
know so so you know yeah I see that where there’s a lack of preparation sometimes that frankly turned some folks
off I’ll get some free advice since you and I are talking but we very heavily depend
on our culture here at our firm and we have five core values that Define what
we said as a company we want our culture to be pretty much 90 of all of our
questions are based around those core values and whether that person will fit
into this culture and thrive in this culture are we getting it right is that what we’re supposed to be doing
my heart is soaring and my mouth is singing because you’re doing it a
hundred percent right you’re hiring for culture and not check
boxes on a resume not to say that those are unimportant but I would dare say a
cultural fit is absolutely critical and there are many companies out there and I
know this firsthand when you ask them hey what are your cultural values and
how do you live them out and then how do you hire for them and then once folks are hired how do you
reinforce and advance and extend your culture I dare say that there are hiring
managers with whom we work are stumped by that and that’s troublesome
because that adds a level of uncertainty to the hiring process and it equates to
more risk when you do hire somebody because if you don’t know what you’re looking for it’s very easy to find a bad
fit and if you find a good fit then I would argue maybe you’re just lucky that time you know
you don’t know right and I get it but you’re right congratulations to y’all
there’s my Texan coming through congratulations to y’all because y’all are doing it absolutely right congratulations Trace yes sir
well that was from the book traction and the entrepreneurial operating system
that we started uh I don’t know seven years ago we started running our firm on
that so I’ll recommend that book to all the scaling up H2O listeners out there the scaling up Nation so that’s a great
book and I know I’m going to ask you about books later but if somebody’s listening now and they’re like oh wow that’s something that I need to be doing
or I really need to ask a better question so I can get better answers or
at the very least set better expectations any any books any resources
out there that you can recommend so people can improve what they’re doing
books and resources there’s a lot of good books and resources about you know I’m a big Simon sinek fan starting with
why because that defines not just if you are a an employee or a candidate or a
potential candidate if you own your own company or if you’re a manager or if you’re a supervisor
you’re a VP level starting with why that book is excellent because it helps hone
in on why does your company exist like for you and me Trace as business owners
right so why does Blackmore Enterprises exist why why is Zenith search Partners taking up
oxygen in this world right and then that translates into values and that
translates into who and how we hire so it appeals this starting with why
appeals to I think everybody it’s Universal right but just practically
speaking it’s just like in our sales training that we all have had in some form or
fashion whenever we go make a sales call and we try to do a discovery on a
potential customer or potential client we should tend to favor asking
open-ended questions that start with the words how or why or what versus closed-ended
question right like close-ended questions do you have a bachelor’s
degree you know okay yes or no right you know those closed-ended questions one
should try to to shy away from them on both sides of the house as a candidate
is exploring an opportunity as well as when a hiring firm is looking for talent
that’s great advice uh since you’re a Simon cynic fan have you read Leaders
Eat Last I have not that is on a lengthy list of it’s on a lengthy bucket list along with
traction there we go there we go we’re we’re increasing your list today thanks
so I will say in Leaders Eat Last uh he talks about why some teams work really
well and other teams do not he he’s one of my favorite speakers he’s one of my
favorite writers I don’t think you can pick up any of his books and go wrong that guy’s gold you know he is he is
A-Okay he’s all right in my book yep have you seen the Ted Talk he did for uh
always start with all parts of it but I hear it is just legendary him and also
there’s another Ted Talk of gosh a little bit of a digression Angela Duckworth about what is that great yeah
about grit Angela Duckworth I read her book a couple years ago
I actually did read her or watch her Ted Talk that’s another great book and again I know it’s off the beaten path but for
anybody and everybody who’s breathing in and out I think anybody and everybody could
gain insight and see value in reading that book or reading a little bit about
Angela Duckworth or finding out what she’s all about um it’s she’s gold she’s totally agree
with that she’s been brought up quite a bit on this podcast and really since we have people that are driving we’ll make
sure to link directly to her Ted Talk and the Simon sennak one uh on our show
notes page super sounds great yes yes Chris let me ask you this you did all of
this generational research to see specifically you know how it fits into the water treatment industry what was
the most surprising thing you learned interesting most surprising thing I
learned is what draws us together I know that initially I was talking about what
differentiates us right obviously our birthday you know differentiates us for sure right but what are our common needs
and I came up with four needs that all
employees in my humble opinion all employees regardless of their age or
their station even you’re the number two person in the company we all need this okay and those four things are trust
compassion stability and Hope you know trust isn’t just Clarity and
honesty trust means that I can reliably and accurately predict your behavior in
other words if you run hot one day and cold one day by definition I can’t trust you because I don’t know what I’m
getting right so trust is Big compassion hey say it loud but back it up you know
please don’t insult people by just being all talk or in Texas big hat no cattle
right you know again my text is I’m sorry you know and then stability there are
two dimensions of stability at least two one of them is the Practical stability
but I would argue even more important than the Practical stability is hey what
about my psychological stability from working with you if I go to work for Blackmore Enterprises okay yes I want to
be sure that when you say that I get a truck that the truck actually runs okay that’s cool that’s cool right but you
know how am I psychologically feeling about my station here right that’s a huge component and pillar of stability
and finally hope you know hope it’s your company’s and it’s our personal most
precious asset in times of trouble and turmoil in the second and third quarter of 2020
hope is Zenith search partners and Blackmore Enterprises and everyone else’s it’s our most precious asset
and that’s what we need to lean into and that’s what employees need to have and
that’s what we as Leaders need to give does that make sense it makes total sense but I do have a follow-up question
I think the the question everybody is asking now is oh yeah that makes perfect sense how do I do that how do I make
sure I’m asking them the right questions how do I make sure I’m showing them the right things so they’re actually I’m
communicating this to them I think first of it is is something y’all and your
firm are doing great have a clear corporate Vision clear corporate values and make sure that they’re not just talk
or words or a poster or tagline or part of your signature block right so have a
really clear corporate vision and values engage
your employees you cannot over communicate just communicate communicate communicate
engage your employees act like you care show them that you care by asking how
are you doing it’s amazing how many folks come to me as a recruiter who are looking for other jobs and I say well
okay why are you talking to a recruiter and they’ll say because I feel underappreciated I feel undervalued I
feel underutilized and I say okay well have you told your current employer and
they said yeah for the last five years that’s why I’m talking to you like okay well then let’s talk I guess you know so
along with that things you can do to keep the wheels turning is communicate
the connection between a person’s role at a firm and the mission of the company
so help them see where they fit into the success and vision of your company help
them to see how their day-to-day work connects with the vision and mission of
the firm and then finally if I could have a freebie be adaptable make sure
that you are adaptable make sure that your values and culture reflect
adaptability because in 2019 you didn’t know that 2020 and 2021 would happen
and the companies that tended to succeed were adaptable and flexible and not set in their ways
very true I know there are people out there that have spoken to their leaders that hey I need this this isn’t
happening can you help me with this but I also know they’re a whole host of people out there that never had that
conversation and instead of trying to fix what they have they’re simply leaving what do they
need to do what should they need to consider how do they get the courage to have that conversation with somebody
that can actually make that change they’re looking for if a person has decided for whatever
reason that they would like to explore other opportunities what we tell people
trace is hey leverage your network you know people you know people that might
be able to help you if you want to find another role and this is true for hiring managers as well right you know people
that might be interested in a role with your firm will leverage your network that’s the
most efficient and direct path to success to leverage your network and
what we tell people in the next sentence is hey a good recruiter or a good person
who is in your space in your industrial space might be a great extension of your
network but it’s still the same you want to leverage your network right so if
there was one hint that I could give to anybody who’s looking for a new role is hey leverage your network and there are
many many ways to do that including but not limited to folks like me granted
that but let’s say now we’ve got a person that is unhappy but they haven’t done anything to try to fix their
current position what would you say to them ah and we asked that we say okay because we have some people that spend
20 minutes 30 minutes just complaining about their role and then when you say hmm well Steve have you ever told your
manager about this and you have a long pause I said hey have you ever asked for some
feedback from your manager what have you done to initiate a dialogue with your
firm and oftentimes for a variety of reasons probably the biggest win Trace is people tend to
avoid conflict and they don’t raise their hand and start a dialogue with
their with their manager or their firm and remember the first thing about
engagement is communication so we’ll tell dissatisfied employees hey before
we talk some more why don’t you call me next week after you’ve had a conversation with your manager and tell
me about it and we’ll really try to because we think that communication is the absolute
Cornerstone you know to success so it’s like hey man you know if you haven’t communicated then please do and the good
opener question is hey Mr manager I want to do the very best I can for you how
can I do better Chris I will say that that is what impressed me the most about you that’s
what I think sets you apart because somebody calls hey you do this you’re
going to get paid for this let me do it for you and you say oh wait a second I
want to make sure you’re doing the best thing I want to make sure that everybody’s happy in this maybe you working with me isn’t the best idea
maybe you need to go back and fix which could probably be very easily fixed I
just love that about you well again our our role is to serve people right and if your first defense
is just to eject yourself out of a bad situation part of this is self-serving
too my friend it’s like okay do I want to place you at one of my key clients right you know you know a firm that I
care very much about that’s going to pay me for placing Steve Johnson or Bill
Jones at the company and then have that person leave after one two five fifteen
years simply because they didn’t communicate so I I try to
serve that employee saying hey look you know what I tell them without really telling them is hey man there might be
something that you could possibly change about the way you do business about the way you interact with your employer you
know not that I can’t help or don’t want to help but I just want to make sure you’re the best you you can be
you know so yeah it all just comes back to the service aspect right you know one of our things just me as a person right
I care more about people than the deal because if I care about people and this is one of the cornerstones of my company
I ask anybody around here about Chris’s dumb little sayings and this is one of my dumb little things but it’s not
really so dumb hey if we care more about people than the deal then the deals will come
don’t worry about the deals worry about people Chris for all of the managers out there for all the supervisors out there are
there warning signs that we need to look for so maybe people aren’t coming to us like they should hopefully after
listening to this people are going to reconsider that but are there certain things that if these things happen it is
a flag and we need to stop our day-to-day and we need to go talk with that person and give them what they need
yes and that’s especially hard in our industry and we do a lot of work with
sales folks who are by definition not in the office that much right so if I’m a
sales manager sales director or an owner of a company or whatever right if I’m in management and I’m responsible for a
sales group of five people but I really don’t see them that often that’s even more Troublesome right because how do I
know how how they’re feeling as they’re driving in their truck from point A to point B
and they’re literally silently cursing me out for 80 miles how do I know that right
so the short answer is you don’t unless you engage and ask them so here’s
something that we ask it’s just a general ask and it’s not rocket science but hey rather than do one year annual
surveys and we would be we are very surprised at how many people don’t have any don’t even have that right you know
you know we don’t have annual surveys to do it you know to talk about your performance whether it’s good bad or
ugly we don’t even do that a year I think a one-year annual dialogue is next
to useless have it either every month or every quarter where you have a set of
questions that you ask and answer number one how am I serving you and both
parties can ask that how am I equipping you for success or how am I doing right those are both parties can ask that but
again communicate and connect that person with your vision
and if you make that a priority as a hiring manager to engage that employee
especially the remote employees that you don’t see that often and to make sure that they don’t feel like they’re out in
left field that there’s an US versus them and I see that in the sales world right us or the folks out there making
the money pounding the pavement being on airplanes and carrying around the test kits them or those yahoos in the puzzle
Palace who don’t get us well hey both parties have a responsibility to bridge
that Gap because we’re all one company one shared vision and we all have a role
Chris we had a speaker come into the rising tide Mastermind live event last
year and it was all about retaining talent and one of the things that he
mentioned to all of us was instead of doing a quarterly review to switch our
thinking and everybody knows what was done we can’t change that but change it
to a quarterly preview so we know what we did let’s not review that let’s do a
preview of what we’re going to do in the next quarter how I can help you do those
things in the next quarter I’m curious what do you think about that I think that’s excellent because part of a good
quarterly review typically speaking a good quarterly view is maybe a third of the time a look behind and at least
two-thirds of the time will look ahead right it’s like okay the review and and that’s a great I love the term because
it changes your mindset thank you I might actually steal that without paying you a royalty sorry but it wasn’t mine I
stole it from someone else excellent then then we’re both good so thank you whoever you are but no a quarterly
preview says hey what do we want to accomplish in the next 90 days
and hey how can I be accountable to you and how can I equip you for that success
and then hey how can we talk or what will what will necessitate a
conversation in 30 days why wait till 90 if we are going off track in 30 days
let’s define now what off track looks like so that we know what flag to raise
and what predicates the flag raising 30 days from now now we’ve got engagement
we’ve got communication and now we understand our expectations both me as a
boss and me as the employee I understand you know I got a clear picture of my
marching orders and what constitutes success in the next 30 slash 90 days and
now we’re building something kind of cool now we’re doing something pretty decent right at that point
Chris when people call you and they’re looking to make a change have you found
that there are certain items they have in common that just say I’m not happy
here something’s not happening for me yeah what we call in my company is we
look for what we call the three unders and if you see one of those three then
you’ve got somebody who is motivated to make a change and if you’ve got somebody
who says we’ve got two or three of those three then there’s somebody who’s motivated to make a change quickly like
yesterday so here are the three unders Chris I don’t like my current situation
because I’m undervalued my company doesn’t take care of me you know my
manager doesn’t keep me informed of what’s going on I’m undervalued okay the other one is hey I’m under utilized
I know and I’ve told my company that I can do this this and this and they for
the last five years have just ignored that they won’t even give me a chance to fail so I’m underutilized I’m also under
compensated right hey Chris I believe that the
market for my services is X and I know that I’m making 60 or 70
percent of X hey Chris if you can validate my belief that the value for my
services is X then I know because I’ve had other data points that tell me that
I’m under compensated so basically under appreciated under utilize under
compensated so if you have one of those three unders from a recruiter’s perspective oh my
goodness we’ve got a candidate who has motivation to leave so you know for
those of us who are hiring managers like hey do your employees know that you care about them
hey do you inform your employees do you prepare and plug in to your employees
definition of success and where they want to take their career and hey are you sure that you’re
compensating them well for where the market is today in 2023 or whenever
right does that help Trace does that answer it answers it it helps tremendously and I’m thinking of the
preview quarterly preview conversation we had earlier if we do not have those
three things that we are talking about we are failing miserably on those
previews I think it’s a precursor to culture right like look I don’t care what your
culture is if you don’t if you don’t appreciate me and you don’t value or I perceive that you don’t value me and my contribution I
don’t care what culture I’m not I’m not sold on your culture thank you very much I’ll go look for the job down the road
right I get it right you know so at that point culture is empty talk you have to
make sure that that base need for that person is addressed you’re making a lot of sense today and
I’m going to ask you this because it seems like in the younger Generations
this is just an expectation where in the older Generations they would say I work
for this company this is the company I’m going to retire from now it seems the
younger Generations are taught perhaps but I don’t get ahead
unless I move to another company is is this a true statement what’s going on
absolutely a year or two ago Careerbuilder did a exhaustive study on
their millions and millions of resumes that they have I mean it’s a published study but Career Builders said okay look
what is the typical tenure of a job for folks in these Generations
for example if you’re a baby boomer you know late 50s on up to 75. typical time
at a job is about eight years let’s compare that with a millennial or a gen
Z somebody 40 and below the typical time that you’re in a job Millennials for
example is less than three so if you’re 35 years old your typical
time in a job typically stereotypically is three years so there
is that loyalty on the employee side
clearly is waning but then we have to ask ourselves as managers and owners of
businesses what am I doing to reinforce that you know maybe I’m doing something to reinforce this job hopping right
maybe right you know maybe but yeah that’s a very interesting study where
you know the older generation quote unquote has much more time you know over
twice as much time at a typical role than a younger generation one of our clients is a property
management company and they’re hiring building engineers and I see this more in that industry in that space more than
anywhere else somebody will come and they’ll say my lifestyle has changed I
need a pay increase and they’ll say I’m sorry I’m not going to give it to you so they’ll go someplace else and they’ll
get that pay increase and then the previous company will hire them back
even higher than what that original pay increase was I just don’t get it I
understand that somebody who I would question if that firm understands the
local market for that particular Talent right you know kind of that
microcosm of the labor industry that just impacts you guys at this place
hiring for that role and I understand I see that and we have hiring managers say
yeah we think that this role they they need to get paid X dollars and we’ll say no ma’am I I think that you’re not going
to find a candidate at that at that price and it’s very difficult some because sometimes they just have it in
their mind no no that job is X dollars it’s kind of a little bit of a lack of flexibility and a lack of knowledge
about the here and now and you’re right just like your property management client the market will tell them reality
yeah I just see that more in that field than any others I think we get a little bit better when we move over to the
water treatment industry but it just seems like all of our clients in the property management industry they need
to have Velcro on their uniforms because they’re just swapping back and forth and back and forth switching back and forth
and they’re driving the market up right but that’s interesting and yes it does
happen in our industry maybe not as much but I assure you it does you know it does happen where there’s this kind of
lack of knowledge about the here and now you know but the market will tell you right just in general right free market
economy right more or less idle Market will tell you Chris this has been a great conversation
but let’s just say for some reason somebody just stepped in the car and
somebody’s been listening to this podcast and they’re only hearing one thing from this interview what’s that
one thing you want to make sure you get across today great question Trace I think the one key
takeaway that I would ask people whether they are employees or employers it
doesn’t matter if you’re a person and you’re listening the one takeaway that I would have is communication matters
making sure that your desires your expectations your drivers
those matter and along with that is we all have a responsibility to engage
others in that dialogue whether that’s on a personal perspective with your wife or your husband or your
children or whether that’s with your manager whether that’s your employees communication matters and either party
could and should initiate Chris if somebody wants to find out more
about what you’re talking about and the types of services that you offer what should they do they can certainly call
me email me text me contact us reach out to us on LinkedIn engage with us call us
we’re here to serve we’re here to to serve people so yeah just definitely call us we would love to see what we
could do to serve you so definitely call us reach out to us on a variety of platforms or just the phone call or text
or LinkedIn we’ll make sure to have all that information on our show notes page and
with your permission I’d like to also put the paper that you authored on this topic on our show notes page absolutely
please do you could absolutely do that and I would love to get feedback because maybe I’ve missed something and my
goodness what a blessing for me is you know would it be for people to say Chris I have a different opinion love that
well Chris now we’re moving to the lightning round questions are you strapped in are you ready let me go sit
up straighter and no all right this is the part of the interview that if you answer incorrectly a trap door opens up
and you just get sucked in oh boy no problem my team was installing that last
night you didn’t know about that yeah really it’s like okay all right question number one if you had the
ability to go back in time and speak with your former self on your first day
as a talent professional what advice would you give yourself
great question I would tell myself that we live in an analog world and not a
digital world that there are indeed Shades of Gray I’m an engineer by training I spent the first half of my
professional career as an engineer and by golly things are not black and white
and I would I would tell myself as a recruiter hey never forget
that there’s gray and listen and listen well listen actively that’s what I would
tell year one day one recruiter Chris Yee Chris what are the last few books that
you’ve read I’m always trying to increase my reading list so selfishly what are the books that you’re reading
great one of them is a oldie but goodie it’s the Bible for the last 15 20 years
I’ve read the Bible through in one calendar year so here it is you know
here it is first quarter so I read the Bible every year so that’s one and I’m
reading it again of course this year the other one I mentioned before start with why Simon sinek is just gold pure gold
and the third one is one also from rising tide Mastermind by Brian Moran
and a gentleman named Michael lennington the 12-week year gold gold gold 12-week
year is fabulous so yes those are three books that I’ve read recently that are
really meaningful I was actually looking back at the books we’ve read with the rising tide Mastermind we’re on our 14th book since
we’ve started the rising tide Mastermind and that’s a comment that we get quite a
bit as well since we read together and then we discuss together and then we try
to implement and hold accountable together people are starting to read more and then also actually do something
with what they read absolutely in the 12-week Years an absolute great thing because those are things that you can
Implement literally every day literally every week next question if someone were
to make a movie about Chris Yee’s life who do you want playing Chris
put me on the spot okay so here we go stream of Consciousness there was a movie called rush hour and it had Jackie
Chan and Chris Tucker I would want Chris Tucker to play me and here’s why
Chris Tucker fun loving doesn’t take life that seriously his mouth sometimes
gets him into trouble but he’s action oriented and he cares deeply about right and wrong at the end of the day he’s got
a good heart so I’d want Chris Tucker to play me for that role
last question you now have the ability to speak with anybody throughout history
who to be with and why well in light of one of the three books
that I’ve recently read Trace I would say that I would want to go Way Way Back
In Time 2 000 years ish ago and talk to the Apostle Paul I’ll tell you why I
think he’d have great wisdom about life how to handle ups and downs
but he’d also tell me how to we would have a conversation and he would help me
learn to live well and live with a purpose what would you ask him
I would say what are things that I can Implement in my day-to-day life that
will keep me focused and grounded on what really matters Chris you have given us so much to think
about during this interview I want to thank you for coming on scaling up H2O I
want to thank you for all the people listening out there that are thinking wow I really need to let my boss know
that I feel a certain way about something and I want to thank you for
all the bosses out there that are thinking I need to do things a little bit differently to make sure that I’m
connecting thank you for that Trace it’s my pleasure and thank you for
putting it together and thank you for all that you do for the water treatment space in general you’re a blessing and a
godsend so thank you for inviting me I appreciate it so very much
Scarlet Nation what a fun interview Chris I met at an awt conference and I
had several people in the rising tide Mastermind come up to me and asked if I
had spoken to Chris to get him in the rising tide Mastermind and I hadn’t even
met him yet so he was actually leaving the event we were at the banquet that we
do at the end of the conference each and every year and he was leaving and I
figured well if I’m going to talk to him I better run after him so I caught him right before he went out the door and
what an incredibly nice guy instantly I knew exactly what the other members were
talking about and I wanted to get to know Chris better and Chris joined one
of our Mastermind groups he joined the group called full steam ahead and by the
way all of our groups of course the rising tide Mastermind so we try to keep them nautically themed and whenever a
new group starts that’s their first task is they have to name what their group is
and the only the Only Rule around that has got to be nautically themed
um you know a funny fact about that they all thought it would be funny to make me
think that they named the group The Poop day attack and I just couldn’t imagine talking in front of a group and and
using the words poop deck I know that has a nautical meaning and there’s there’s use of that and all of that but
I just didn’t think it was a good name and they were playing with me and uh they had some fun with that and Chris
was part of that so they didn’t name it the poop deck they did name it full steam ahead and that’s the group that
Chris is a member of in case you’re wondering The Mastermind is not for everybody The Mastermind is where people
that do want to get to the next level it’s for them it’s for people that want
to do more than what they’re currently doing they want to be held accountable they want to be pushed to the next level
they want to learn things that they’re not currently learning we do that
through books and discussion and they are also comfortable and I will say they
get more comfortable as they go along but they’re comfortable letting people know that they have issues that they
need to work out and the issues are anywhere from technical personal financial you name it we’ve talked about
it in the rising tide Mastermind and we do that in a way where um we’re not
allowed to give advice we are supposed to try to figure out how you see the
issue and then after we have a good idea of how your lens is seeing the issue
it’s only then that we shift over to advice and I tell you the advice section
within the rising time Mastermind format it is just amazing because it takes
somebody from step one trying to figure out what the heck they need to do to step 8 9 or 50 because somebody else has
already paved that road for them now maybe the issue is slightly different but I have just seen some amazing things
where people say I know what you’re working on I’ve already got that built
I’m going to give that to you you see if it works for you and then as you improve
it give it back to me so now I’ve got something even better I’ve seen that happen so many times and the acronym for
team is together everybody achieves more and I know that’s kind of corny but that being said I see it each and every day
with the rising tide Mastermind and we’ve got our live event getting ready
to happen in May May 23rd through 25th that’s when everybody in the rising tide
Mastermind comes to Atlanta Georgia and we just have an action-packed three days
we normally have an assignment that we do that we help each other with we have speakers come in we do workshops lots of
group activities and it is just meant to supercharge your battery so you cannot
wait to go back to your respective businesses your homes and start working on all of these things that we talked
about at the live event last year we did something called WhirlyBall which if you
can imagine is go-karts or bumper cars rather and Lacrosse if they had a love
child that’s what this would be and it was amazing so we’re always going to do
some sort of event like that so I’m not going to reveal because the Mastermind members that are listening don’t know
what the event is this year so we just have a lot of fun so all that to say that I’m so proud that Chris is a member
of the rising tide Mastermind and if that sounds like something that you want
to be a part of you can go to scalingup h2o.com forward slash Mastermind we’ve
got information about The Mastermind but there is an interview process because we have to make sure each and every member
that we bring into a group is going to enhance that group we want to make sure
that that new member gets everything that they need but the other part is is that new member is now bringing that
group up to the next level so in order to do that normally it’s me I will give you a call and we’ll talk about all
things Rising tide Mastermind answer any and all questions that you have and then
from there we will see if that is a group that seems right for you and if it
is we continue if it’s not sometimes I point people into some other groups that I know of but folks that’s the bottom
line life is hard so if this sounds like something you want to explore more I really urge you to do that I love it and
I think the right people would love it as well maybe that’s you maybe you are a right person for the rising tide
Mastermind but if you’re not that’s okay there could be another group out there that you can join that is right for you
but the point is life is hard our industry is hard our family life is hard
you you name it every aspect of it is hard and it’s even harder when you’re
alone doing it so when you have people that understand what you’re going
through and they have a vested interest in helping you get to the next level can
you just imagine how awesome that is so that’s what we do in the rising tide
Mastermind that’s what a lot of other groups do so with all of that I’ll stop talking about the rising tide Mastermind
because you can go to scalingup h2o.com forward slash Mastermind to learn more I
just wanted to let you know that Chris was in the group and Chris within the group all the time helps us make sure
that we’re saying things correctly that we’re utilizing systems that we need to and that’s what everybody in the
Mastermind does how do we help others with what we know and then together we’re all getting better
Nation I am so thankful for you listening to this podcast still so
excited about 300 episodes of course this is episode 301 so uh thank you for
everybody that listens to this podcast and as I normally do on each and every
episode here is my plea in order to have another 300 episodes what are the ideas
that you have that you want to hear on
the scaling up H2O podcast go to scalingop h2o.com and you can either record a voicemail of what it is that
you want to hear or you asking me a question that most likely I will answer on the air or you can go to our ideas
page where you can just simply type out what it is that you want to relay to us
that helps us more than you will ever know and it definitely helps us when you
tune in each and every week to a brand new episode and of course that’s going to be next Friday where I will come with
you with a brand new episode so I can’t wait till then and until then have a great week folks
[Music] do you wish you had your own private
tutor to help you study for the certified water technologist examination well now you do so many of you have
asked me to help you with the mock cwt examination and I’ve done that very
thing if you go to scalinguph2o.com forward slash cwt prep
again that’s scalingup h2o.com forward slash cwt prep you will see that I’ve created
a course and I tell you everything I know about each one of those mock
questions it’s my hope that that helps give you the confidence you need to sign
up to get certified today
[Music]