Tell me about your vision.
Wow. So my vision, I guess that's a little bit of a tough start for an eye doctor.
Right. I mean, I'm an optometrist.
I have a private practice with my wife.
She founded it years ago and we had all kinds of problems in our practice with
hiring. So right off the bat, I wouldn't say my vision was some grandiose scheme
to solve hiring problems for all practices in America or small businesses.
Of course, it didn't start like that.
My vision was simply to try to get myself out of this steaming mess that I was in
where we were hiring the wrong people over and over.
Our average workday was was incredibly stressful.
We had incredible turnover, etc., etc.
That's essentially what this all started at.
And we were able to solve this problem of finding incredible team members
predictably and reliably.
And that's, I guess, where the bigger picture vision came from.
And now we're doing it in all kinds of different health professions outside of
health care to other small businesses throughout North America.
That's awesome.
Most small businesses and
little more than small businesses, they have no idea how to hire right people.
And there's been so many statistics out there like the cost of hiring an employee,
the cost of hiring a wrong employee and all those things.
It's a big number.
Sometimes it goes into a few hundred thousands and more.
And most times you can't bear that.
Like, it's a very tough decision to hire the right people.
I understand where your vision came from.
And so how did you get started in solving this issue for yourself?
What was that story?
Well, it started out with me looking at companies that were doing a terrific job
of hiring Disney, the Four Seasons, other companies that did that.
They just knock it out of the park.
And it occurred to me that maybe they got a reason they can do this
consistently over and over, did a really deep dive into how they did that.
And I found out that they were not hiring using traditional hiring methods.
They flipped everything upside down, essentially.
Yes.
So their approach, how did this get started?
It got started by defining the problem as how do we find the right needle in a stack
of needles, a big stack of needles?
And that's essentially the problem that we were able to solve.
Yeah, I'm glad you mentioned people like Disney.
I would say people like Google are also up top there.
People like Coca-Cola, they are up top there.
They have figured out J.W.
Marriott also, like they figured out
the systems and processes to the team that they know what to do and how to do it.
Right. And they're so ahead of the curve by most people.
It's kind of hard to catch up. Right.
And I'm glad you said something because most people don't even do that.
Most people don't look up to the top players that do it right.
Well, our goal with this wasn't to reinvent the wheel.
I didn't start out to start a company.
I started out to hire great people in our eye care practice in rural Pennsylvania,
which is exceptionally hard.
And what we were doing that was the exact wrong thing to do is we were using
resumes to hire and entry level folks, their resumes don't tell you anything
along the lines of what they're good at.
It's a work experience list that's mostly made up.
What we instead started to do was figure
out how to determine what people's natural strengths and talents are instead
of using their resumes. So when you put a person into a role in a business
that they have those natural strengths and talents for, the end result can be
extraordinary. And that's what we were able to figure out.
And then we systematized it, turned it into one big automated process.
And now we're doing that for clients throughout North America.
Wow, that's awesome.
I am. Wow. I'm so excited.
More and more talking to you about this.
Same. Yeah.
So what when you were going through the process, right?
What what challenges did you face
trying to figure out this?
Hiring, I want to call it a process, I would say.
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah, go ahead. So what challenges?
Well, first off, email.
We started this process using email.
And for people who sit in front of the computer all day, this is hard to believe.
But you ask folks, especially younger folks, how often they check their email.
They tell you whatever you need to hear.
The real answers are checking it two to three times a week.
And it is a cursory glance at best.
We were trying to contact all these candidates via email and it was a disaster.
They don't check their email enough.
They have long forgotten about the job they applied for.
By the time they do check their email and the only and I mean,
the only route to these people is via texting.
That's it.
So we built our entire system to be text based to the extreme that as soon as they
apply for a job, they get a text within five seconds of hitting the button on the job boards.
That's how extreme it has to be in order to communicate effectively with them.
Yeah, that's awesome.
Tell me more. Tell me more.
What are the other things that you faced and how you solve them?
Well, we tried to to find off the shelf, essentially assessments to to do this.
Like what would make a great secretary?
What would make a great assistant in a health care?
Because keep in mind, this all was born out of health care.
And what we ended up finding out is there's
not one tool that you can buy to do that.
So we have to build our own.
And this took a while and it took a while to validate them.
And it took a while to get the feedback
loops in place so that when somebody was hired, we got feedback from our own team,
from our clients, so this got better and better and better.
And now it's to the point where our automated process will tell us with about
97 percent certainty whether or not a person can do the job.
And then we do a video interview to remove the remainder of the uncertainty to make
sure that they would represent your business appropriately.
And from there we send over those finalist candidates to the clients.
And along the way, we we found out that without doing the strengths and talents
assessment, this goes nowhere without doing the video interview.
At the end, it can go nowhere.
And what I mean by that is, you know, we've had people that pass through
the process very well, one did a video interview driving a car, actually driving.
So holding a phone up while they're driving a vehicle.
And that's a great example of somebody
who is ridiculous and can't possibly be allowed anywhere near my business.
I don't know about yours, but we further and further and further screen in order
to get these people, because at the end of the day, we care about the folks that
we're putting into our business, we care about the folks we're putting into your
business. This is critical.
They have to represent you well.
And so that that's done in an incredibly
automated, incredibly predictable way.
You know, it gives businesses some advantages, too.
Like with our practice, you can be applying for these jobs in the middle of the night.
Everybody can do that.
But what you don't expect is a response
and you don't expect somebody to be getting back to you, you know, our
automated system to be walking you through this entire process.
You can start at 3 a.m., be done by 3 15 and have the video interview sent to you.
You know, you're completely done by the time you wake up in the next the next
morning and you'll hear back from our team that fast.
So.
When you're scaling or when you're looking for people to hire, right, apart from the
obvious skills they need, like the requirements, like, hey, if this is a job
nurse, you need to have this degree or this qualifications at least.
Right.
What other things that you look for that's not on a resume?
We are we're focusing on entry level positions more than than highly skilled
positions, and this is where where our our process delivers terrific results
because you're having to discern what a person is good at by looking at a couple
of lines on a resume.
And if you're looking for a doctor or a
CEO or marketing or any executive positions, we're not the company for you.
There are other companies that that will do a great job of that.
What we're designed for is to essentially
find an incredibly great fit person for entry and starter and middle level
positions in small businesses, and that's what we can do all day long.
So is that and that's what you need for your optometry business as well.
Right. That's how you started it.
But so now this goes to the why of the situation.
I think you've already explained some of the why, but I want to get into more
details. So what problems were arising before you started doing this process for
your own company?
And maybe attrition is one of the problems in that.
But these are entry level positions.
I want to know, like, what was the issue and what was your why that made you do
this? The.
Turnover hiring the wrong people, getting a business full of C, D and E and F
players, not a players, not B players.
We weren't hiring performers.
We the why behind it is we weren't hiring
performers, we weren't hiring people who were excellent at the job.
We're hiring people like doctors would hire, which by that I mean hiring folks
to help them get better, help them be a better person, help them up in life,
give them an opportunity.
Look, that's a noble approach, but it will not fill your business
with high performing employees and team members.
That's just how it goes.
We have years and years of experience without the hard way.
That's for sure.
So our why was to stop that from happening.
And it was to create a method by which we could keep
we could get like acquire a level B plus level talent and then keep them.
And the challenge is that A players only want to work with A players.
B players will tolerate or they'll tolerate B players, but they leave because of C
players. So if you can't keep great talent in your company.
And one of the reasons is that you're
you have too many of the C, the D players, and they repel the great talent.
It's the nature of it.
You categorize A, B and C and D players for our audience.
Can you give more insights on that?
What do you call an A player, B player and C player?
A player would be like a superstar, somebody who you point them in the
direction and they've already accomplished by noon what it took other
people the whole week to do.
I mean, these are folks that are just incredibly competent at what they do.
They're a natural fit.
They are incredibly productive.
And without them, your business just never gets off the ground.
B player, somebody who's close to that B plus, I should say,
somebody who's close to that, maybe not as as fantastic, but still a great person
for your team, the C and the D players, they can be great people.
The issue is that they're not working in the right role for them.
It's not a natural fit for their strengths and talents.
That's why they're only performing at that level.
And I know that's a really
frustrating thing for some folks to hear.
Why can't I make them better?
Why can't they be better?
But it's not going to be.
You're trying to change a person at their core.
It doesn't work like that.
Your better bet for the business is to help them find a position that is a great
fit for the natural strengths and talents and replace that person in that position
with somebody who has the fantastic fit that you're looking for.
That's how you level up your small business.
And that happened to me.
I built my team, I built my results for us.
And it was incredible how much less stress.
You know, you talk about my why.
That's why.
The end result was 95, almost 100 percent less stress.
It's a joy to go to work now.
That's awesome.
And what's your attrition?
Yeah. What's your attrition right now?
Well, in a small practice, you're always going a small business.
You're always going to lose somebody
because these are positions that that require, you know, let's say a spouse has
more of a career position, middle management or otherwise.
Then the person in the health care role
generally moves when they move, when they're transferred.
Military gets transferred, things like that.
So we have a very low attrition rate.
And that is something we're super proud of because of how well the team is
functioning as a whole, because each of the people is allowed to be themselves
at work, functioning in their natural strengths and talents.
That's awesome.
That is something Bill, my team simply delivers routinely as folks who stay much longer.
Yeah. And the attrition rate for your clients, what is that at now?
You mean the people leaving their their businesses,
the people you're helping to get hired in other businesses, because that's all right.
Yeah, absolutely.
It usually starts off pretty rough because they are having those problems.
As we bring these these A players and B plus players on the that all changes.
The culture of the business changes from one of coping to performance, if you will.
Thank you for being here today.
I'm really happy that you tuned in to Vision Pros Live.
I'm looking forward to seeing your reactions as these episodes continue to move forward.
This is going to get more and more fun.
We'll have more and more engagement as well.
We'll invite people to participate in the show.
And thank you for giving us your time and attention.
Have an excellent time building out your vision and becoming a Vision Pro yourself.