****Please forgive any and all transcription errors as this was transcribed by Otter.ai.****

Susan Frew 0:00

Hi, I'm Susan Frew and you're listening to A Shark's Perspective. I often listen to the show it's going to be amazing.

(Music - shark theme)

Kenneth Kinney 0:23

Welcome back, and thank you for joining A Shark's Perspective. I am Kenneth Kinney, but friends call me Shark. I am a keynote speaker, a strategist, a shark diver, host of this show, and your Chief Shark Officer.

Kenneth Kinney 0:36

What do candidates want today in a job regardless of industry or size or company? People want to connect on a personal level more so than ever before. This can be a real challenge for companies who don't see this an advantage and take advantage of it. And this can be a really tough thing to convey, especially when you're trying to bring more people to an entire industry like skilled trade jobs. Then looking ahead, what does it take to recruit for a new generation.?

Kenneth Kinney 1:01

Susan Frew is a professional speaker, the author of "Compete on Awesome, Not on Price", and the CEO of Sunshine Home Services.

Kenneth Kinney 1:09

And on this episode, we will discuss Telecom in the Caribbean to home services in Denver, competing on awesome and not on price, recruiting for a new generation, when to search for candidates, getting more women into positions in the trades, leaving much of your on the job stress on the job without bringing it home, getting your systems tight, what people want in bosses, Mike Rowe, the Mario Bros., island hopping for AT&T, and a lot, lot more.

Kenneth Kinney 1:33

So let's tune into a Sunshine CEO with a Shark CEO on this episode of A Shark's Perspective.

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Kenneth Kinney 1:45

Susan, welcome to A Shark's Perspective. If you would tell us a little bit about your background and your career to date.

Susan Frew 1:51

Thank you, Kenneth. It's a delight to be here. Thank you so much for having me. Well, my background is actually in telecom. And in sales, I left my career as an international GM with 18 T wireless, I worked my way up from a sales rep in New York City. And I ended up in the Caribbean for two years. And weirdly, when I came back, I bought a business coaching franchise. And through that I weirdly coached 18 different traits. I was not intentional, didn't plan it. And I met my husband and through there and we started sunshine, Plumbing, Heating Air in 2012. In Denver, the height of the recession, we decided to go into service because we knew that no matter what people would still need service plumbing and heating. And that has proven to be true.

Kenneth Kinney 2:42

So a couple of questions here, which island in the Caribbean, or mostly,

Susan Frew 2:46

I lived in St. Vincent and the Grenadines and Grenada simultaneously. And I'd go back and forth, you know, half a week at one one location half a week at the other.

Kenneth Kinney 2:57

So you traded the beautiful waters of the Caribbean for the waters in Denver basically.

Susan Frew 3:04

Well, I came back and lived in the mountains for a while. And but you know, it's interesting, because living in a Caribbean country is a little bit different than visiting there on your, you know, catamaran or your Yeah, I was homesick. I was ready to come home. But I love the people there. They're fantastic. And the food. The food is also good. Yes.

Kenneth Kinney 3:27

Well, we're going to talk about one main topic. But before we do, I want to because I know this is part of your business as well. And obviously, I can see it over your left shoulder. But talk a little bit about your book that you wrote a few years ago about "Compete on Awesome, Not on Price".

Susan Frew 3:41

Well, we had grown our company very quickly. So we went from zero to 10 trucks and like 18 Months went from zero to 3 million right away. And we won the Inc 5000 list and 43 other awards. And people wanted to know how we were able to do that so quickly. And how we were able to do that so quickly. And what we're doing today is because we are out of the box thinkers, we never get stuck with. That's the way we've always done it. And, you know, sometimes my own demise because not everyone moves as fast as I do and wants change as much as I like. So, you know, sometimes that's been a mistake. But I'm now we found a new way to do out of the box thinking without making everyone crazy.

Kenneth Kinney 4:32

Yeah, it's awesome. So I want to touch on a very controversial topic in the industry. And that's plumbers crack. No, actually, let's talk about what are your let's talk about the main focus today, which is really one of your talks as well as recruiting for a new generation. So about 100 years ago, I worked in recruiting and I also worked towards servicing AT and T as part of that with a lot of the marketing work I was doing with him as well, but it was really eye opening to see such a company. As I'm sure you saw When you're at att when you're the eighth largest company in the country, and you're trying to employ so many people, but then your shift towards actually running a business like you were in Denver must have been a much different shift. You don't have millions of dollars in recruiting advertising spend to help promote it. But talk a little bit about the focus of what recruiting for a new generation is to you.

Susan Frew 5:22

Well, I was intrigued, there's a coffee house in my town. And I heard through the grapevine that they had 25 Young people waiting in line on a line to get a job there for minimum wage. And so my first question was like, What is the secret sauce here? Or a student? Are you giving them like, Colorado brownies? Or like, what's the deal? And so they let me come in and interview the young people. And I really, I learned so much from these interviews with these young people. And then I just kept it rolling. So for 18 months after that, I just started interviewing young people and asking them, like, what do you want in a job? What's important to you? You know, how do you feel about your boss? What's important to you in a boss? What are you looking for? And with that loaded with that information, I turned it around and found a new way to hire. And that's where the recruiting for new generation has come. And I also and if you're in the trades, and you're listening to this right now, you're going to be shaking your head. Yes, ma'am. Sometimes we hang on to employees that we shouldn't, because we're afraid that we can't find a replacement. And I was sick of being held hostage.

Kenneth Kinney 6:34

How have you gone about employing that in your own business? And kind of if you will elaborate on what that approach is to hiring?

Susan Frew 6:42

Well, what can I face you, you know, I stepped away from running the company for a couple of years and went and just did speaking, I was on the road speaking. And that was a mistake, because I left a company that wasn't ready to be left, because my systems weren't tight enough for me to be able to step away, and let the let people follow the system. They just, they were half baked, right? And that's what happens when you grow super fast. So now that I'm

Kenneth Kinney 7:09

awesome and rare to hear somebody say that there really is because most people don't even acknowledge that.

Susan Frew 7:15

Well, it's true. I mean, you can't you can't keep it going. Like that's an that's a mistake. And anybody who says you can do a work within four hours, you know, out of the box is lying,

Kenneth Kinney 7:27

reading that book, and you'll enjoy it. Yeah,

Susan Frew 7:29

yeah. So so what I found out is, now that I'm back, I came back to the company to become CEO again, last fall. And I plan to stay on as CEO, you know, indefinitely, but managing the entire business from top to bottom and re Systemising everything till the end of the year. But what I found out was, we were being held hostage by employees that weren't doing the right thing. They weren't hitting their numbers, they weren't being accountable, 20 process they were showing up and they felt like it, you know, it was just all lackadaisical. And that was not helping us make our numbers and the business was struggling. So how I found out a way to hire is based on all those interviews, I started doing a reverse lookup, where you go on some of the job boards, and you are looking for candidates. And here's the key, you need to be looking either Sunday night or Monday morning, and you only search people who have adjusted their resume in the last three days. Because those people had a crummy week at work last week, they didn't get the paycheck they wanted. And they are right, those are your hot leads. And those are the people you want to talk to, and get them into your business Monday or Tuesday at the latest.

Kenneth Kinney 8:49

And if you employ that at your place now and seeing success and hiring that way.

Susan Frew 8:53

I have in the last year, we have hired 11 people. Now in the trades, not all of them stick, right? So we have, you know, written it out with three people who have been here for a year now. We have two other people who've been here for about six months, and we just hired three more. And I'm really, I'm getting better at the interviewing too now. So I think that, yeah, I'm really excited. And since the beginning of the month, we have let go. We have released into the back into the wild. We have released three people that were not doing their jobs, and they weren't making quota. And I put a lot of pressure on them that now and like once I started putting systems in and processes procedures accountability. You know, a lot of people don't like that if you haven't had it for a long time.

Kenneth Kinney 9:43

One of the things I know you talk about is getting more women in the trades in those jobs. What's your approach and how we go about getting more women in these roles that are non traditional? I don't want to sound sexist in it. But this is not an easy shift to get more people in general to want to work. In the trades, let alone getting women to work in roles that it traditionally you know, we don't think of with plumbers and H back and solar and roofing and everything else.

Susan Frew 10:10

Well, here's the thing, though how many women are in our armed forces and police officers and EMTs and firefighters? Right? Those jobs are far more dangerous than plumbing, ah, fact electrical past like so many different vocations. But what I found out is that these young women were not even being exposed to the options that the trays were there for them. Right, and nobody was telling them. So there's a big initiative nationwide for scholarships and for education. And that hats off to an organization, a trade school called I universal Technical Institute. If that sounds familiar, they do. All the NASCAR are racing training for all the diesel mechanics, and diesel mechanics, and they're all over the country. But I've had the pleasure of working with them this past year where they bring in women, young girls 150 at a time, and tell them all about their opportunities and non traditional roles. And then they took them on the school and like the girls are like, this is so cool. I would never have thought of this. And then we bring technicians, women technicians in the room and speak to them. And it's fantastic.

Kenneth Kinney 11:25

What are the results you sort of see, maybe not even in your own company, but these women once they find jobs, so they tend to stick?

Susan Frew 11:32

They are amazing. In the plumbing side, we have only had one female plumber, and she was the bomb. And she decided to sin, like our kind of plumbing, we do service planning. There's all she just didn't like, but we're still in touch with her. She's amazing. customers loved her. She just had a different way of communicating. It was phenomenal. But I'm starting to see a lot more women going into electrical right out of some of the blue collar trades. Now that one is like considered the cleaner one. But of course you could you electrocute yourself, there's that but and we're seeing a lot more women going into the mechanic side. And you know Plumbing and Heating, we're just plugging along and there's so many scholarships out there, you totally get a free ride. And just think about a chemist, you don't take your job home with you, when you're a plumber, you done you put your tools in the truck, and you're done. You do not need to be sitting there with your laptop on your lap all night.

Kenneth Kinney 12:33

That's a great point. And I really thought about not taking any any stress from a plumbing or electrical job. But I do find it interesting though, how you would employ this, if you could kind of go back a few years, what you've learned today from running this business or from seeing the kids you interviewed at the coffee shop? How would you go about and employ that knowledge at a big company, like in at&t, not necessarily at&t, but everybody's having a problem right now trying to figure out a way despite some of the things in the economy to fill jobs.

Susan Frew 13:04

Well, this is the big aha that I found. You know, back in the day, you know, when I started working for 18 T wireless in New York City. I wanted to work for 18 T, I was so excited to work for a big company. Now, that's not the way it is. They want to work for Kenneth, they want to work for Susan, this new generation and even, you know, not even young, young young people. People want a personal connection. And it's my belief that a lot of this happened during the pandemic because we blended our lives, we blended our work and our personal lives. I now know what kind of cat you have, I've seen your son and daughter, I know that your mother in law's really loud, you know, I mean, we know all these things about each other personally that we never knew before. And that's in the workplace. Now, they want to people want a personal connection with the person that they're going to work with. They want to be able to respect you admire you like you, they are going to social Snoop you as well. So be prepared, you know, if your social profile, you know, looks hateful, or, you know, you do something that's offensive to a lot of people be be wary, because that is going to affect your ability to hire, and what I have myself doing, and a lot of people who see my talks, and they follow my system, I have people make a recruiting video. And it I don't want it to be fancy, it needs to be real, it needs to be raw. Like you and I are sitting here talking right now. I would make a video and I would tell you about the job I was looking for what kind of candidate who I am what we're all about, so that the candidates can see you and see if they can act. And you know, I get responses back when I when I do these outreaches and they're like, You seem like a really nice person to work for. Like I want to come and meet you. And that's the kind of response because they Want to connect on a more personal heart centered level than ever before? Well, I'm not going to

Kenneth Kinney 15:06

talk about just your company, but with other companies that you work with and consult with, from what you see in the marketplace, if you will. And I agree with what you just said, because we're the majority of businesses, I think that's one of the ways especially that SMBs have the opportunity that an AT and T for example, with a gazillion employees does not. So they can identify a lot more with, especially the owner of a small business, yeah, more than just a low level manager underneath 15 Other rungs of managers until you get to get to the top. But with the issues so much, especially in the trades, where people come and go, How do you sort of bridge a longer term work together? I mean, they identify with you, they come with you. But as we know, in that industry, they don't always stick?

Susan Frew 15:52

Well, here's what I learned. And you know, I'm going to take full responsibility for this. In our company, I believe we lost a lot of technicians, and really good people, good people, because our systems weren't tight. You know, in bigger companies, you have like this big systems machine, right? And everything's documented video pop up, you know, this is how we do it. Right? And like McDonald's, right? You might never right, Mary, say McDonald's has the best burger, but it's the same burger every single time. And I think that we've had inconsistent service, we've had inconsistent employee experience, because people might ask three people and get a different answer, right, because it's never been documented. So I really have been taking this last year and documenting everything using six different kinds of AI and all different programs, and making this accompany that, it's going to be easy for you to be an employee. It's not going to be give you a hard time to do I think that's important. And also getting back to the big companies to where I said, you know, connection point between you and I, if you work for a big company, and you're the HR director, you want to get the department head, who is hiring to make that video for you. And make the video for his department and talk all about what or he or she who they are, what their departments all about what it's like to work there, what they all like to do something personal. And that's something else too when I'm doing these outreaches I always mentioned something personal on a person's resume. Oh, I see you were in scouting. Oh, I see that you'd like to sail, whatever that is, like, acknowledge it and understand really read their dang resume for heaven's sakes, if you're trying to hire them.

Kenneth Kinney 17:48

Yeah, I think that's fantastic. So you're speaking about this a lot. You did a TED talk on it. There are other people that speak about this, I kind of think of Mike Rowe, leading the conversation on getting more people into the trades. What is it going to take to make this shift in your eyes to get more people into this line of business?

Susan Frew 18:08

Well, I think that technology is going to be the bridge. Right? Because we know that young people coming into the workforce, but young people in our families, love technology. And the trades are demonstrating that we are bridging that gap. We are using AI we're using technology, we're using Pro presses, we're using all of this cool stuff that's going to make us more efficient. It's going to make our jobs faster, cleaner, neater, easier. Right. So I think that that's gotta be the red carpet, that we roll out, is it to this young generation be like, Hey, we are with it, we are on board. With technology, you can use it just as easily here and you will start earning money right away. And maybe someday down the line, then maybe you want to start your own company, or go work for a big company. That's totally up to you.

Kenneth Kinney 19:03

That's a great point. Because there's so many people in this business that they may start off as the worker, but it's pretty frequent that they go into creating their own business and can make a ton of money without a lot of the take home stress, no payroll, and everything else is still a nightmare and managing that but at least you get to manage your own business. So Susan, you lived in the Caribbean, I ask everybody who appears on the show, you're not really going to see him now in the Denver area. Although there is one at the aquarium. What is your favorite kinds of shark and why?

Susan Frew 19:32

So when I lived in the Caribbean, there was a fair amount of hammerhead sharks at this one location union Island, which is at the bottom of the grenadine chain. It's part of actually Grenada and the Tobago keys and they had these little lagoons that would run through the hotel property with these hammerhead sharks out there. And so I don't know they were just became like friends, and they also don't look dangerous. They don't look very good. interest me which I'm sure they probably are, but they look kind of just like they're hanging out.

Kenneth Kinney 20:05

Well, Susan, it's a special time the show. Are you ready for the five most interesting and important questions that you're going to be asked today? All right, do it. Alright, if you had a choice of islands to go to and I'm not going to pick on the ones that you lived in the Bahamas or the Caymans, because you Island hot to lot setting all this up for roaming service with a teacher,

Susan Frew 20:24

I think the 37 countries ah, I would say Bahamas.

Kenneth Kinney 20:30

It's so easy to get to. Yes, the water looks good and they actually protect sharks, they're gonna like better anyway. Alright, number two. I actually pulled this from one of your keynote descriptions and I thought this was such a good a good question. Tools or mindset. mindset. It's a tough question to ask. Alright, number three, Mario or Luigi who most famous plumbers of all time actually was was googling plumbers which included Mr. crapper, which was a real one. But mario and luigi were the probably the two most famous I can find Mario. Okay, number four, plumbing or H fac. Plumbing. Why so?

Susan Frew 21:18

Okay, for the HVAC techs that are listening. You know, you're all the prima donnas of the trades. Guys, you're the

Kenneth Kinney 21:27

true indeed. All right, number five. And the most important question that you're going to be asked today is biscuits or cornbread.

Susan Frew 21:33

Biscuits.

Kenneth Kinney 21:35

Okay, that's a good choice. Alright, Susan, where can people find out more about you? Find out more about your company about your speaking and everything else.

Susan Frew 21:43

The easiest place is susanfrewspeaks.com. You can find me all over the place. I am a shameless self promoter. So whatever social media outlet you pop on, you will find me.

Kenneth Kinney 21:54

Awesome. Thank you so much, Susan, for being with us today on A Shark's Perspective.

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Kenneth Kinney 22:04

So there was my conversation with Susan Frew, a professional speaker, the author of "Compete on Awesome, Not on Price", and the CEO of Sunshine Home Services. Let's take a look at three key takeaways from a conversation with her.

Kenneth Kinney 22:16

First, I adore comment on getting your systems tight. For most companies I've worked with even the fortune 200 systems often very often get overlooked. They look tight with processes but just go ask their customers how perfect they really were and still not are today. Very often your advantage has nothing to do with marketing or positioning. Very often, it's whether you can deliver like a boss, and customers will remember. So whether it's a need for more leads more social media or advertising or whatever tight your systems before pouring good money into bad operations.

Kenneth Kinney 22:48

Second, great point on getting more women into the trades as she calls him. There's so many women that serve in the armed forces as cops EMTs firefighters, etc. But they're not hearing seeing or feeling like it's a good job for them to be an electrician, plumber, welder, Carpenter, etc. The money is generally much much better. So at least consider it we need more people, men and women in society who can do fix and build, we're going to eventually need a whole new generation to take over those HGTV jobs too. So there you go.

Kenneth Kinney 23:17

Third, love her whole conversation about how to recruit for a new generation. Quite simply, we all want a personal connection with someone that we're going to work for or with at a job. Younger people especially tend to join a company because of a boss. But what do you do when the boss leaves? For bigger companies, it can be tough to build that kind of personal rapport when there are 1000s and 1000s of employees. For smaller companies, though it's a real advantage if you know how to take advantage of it. And also make sure to grab her tip on timely recruiting employees who have just adjusted their resumes.

Kenneth Kinney 23:48

Got a question? Send me an email to Kenneth at a shark's perspective.com.

Kenneth Kinney 23:52

Thank you again for the privilege of your time and I am so thankful to everyone who listens.

Kenneth Kinney 23:56

Take care of your people and your employees. And please join us on the next episode of A Shark's Perspective.

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