Company Branding

Why Marketing Should Run Your Hiring Process With Jason Piasecki And Richard Witham

Ryan Englin · June 8, 2022 ·

When talking about a company’s hiring process, the HR department comes to mind. If you face some challenges when acquiring and retaining people, perhaps you need to try a refreshing strategy. Featured in this episode is Jason Piasecki, a Partner and the CEO of Revel. He discusses the benefits of letting marketers run your recruitment process. Joining him is Richard Witham of Motion Dynamics Corporation, who shares how Jason and his team helped them set up this unique hiring process. Together, the two talk about the fruits of their partnership and how they stay on top of the rapid workflow.

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Why Marketing Should Run Your Hiring Process With Jason Piasecki And Richard Witham

It’s no secret that I believe that when it comes to recruiting, it is best left in the hands of your marketing team and not your HR team. We’re excited to talk to our guests. We’ve got two guests in this episode. This is something we’ve never done before. We’re going to be talking to a marketing expert who shares that same belief when it comes to recruiting, and we have one of his clients who has been on the receiving end of the incredible results that they’ve been able to generate.

Our first guest is Jason Piasecki. He is a Partner and the CEO of Revel. They are a marketing company that does some great things when it comes to helping companies better recruit talent. Joining us is Richard Witham. He’s with Motion Dynamics Corporation. He has been on the receiving end of some of the work that Jason and his team have done to help them recruit better people. We’re going to have a great conversation about the idea that marketing can help transform your recruiting results.

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Jason, Richard, welcome to the show.

We’re happy to be here.

Thanks, Ryan. I’m happy to be here too.

I’m excited about this conversation. As we get started here, tell me what the biggest myth in your mind is when it comes to hiring.

The biggest thing that we see as a marketing agency is that manufacturers and B2B companies don’t need a creative campaign to attract employees and differentiate themselves. A lot of times, we find it’s just business as usual. It’s understanding that there’s a seat at the table for marketing when it comes to their recruitment.

You’re saying the biggest myth is that they think that they don’t need to market. They just need to go get people. Let’s dive into that a little bit more. I love that because we have our book coming out, Hire Better People Faster, and that’s one of its tenets. We often think that hiring needs to be in the HR function, but you’re saying that you’ve had great success in its marketing function.

We typically find that we have the best success with our clients when it’s a collaborative effort, and HR is at the table with leadership, and they’re talking to their employees. There’s an opportunity for a marketing partner to get involved either in an in-house team or an outsource agency.

We get to have both of you for this interview. We get to have the marketing seat and the client’s seat on this. We’ll bounce back and forth as we go through this. Why marketing? Why have that as an important part of this? I’ll let the marketing guy go with this one.

That’s an easy one for me. Everyone has a unique story and employer brand that is theirs alone. Often, people think that they have to attract employees at the expense of other companies out there when the truth is, by telling your story and speaking about why you exist, you can attract the right type of employees and get more qualified candidates through the door. The paradigm has shifted where the power is in the employee’s hands now, so as employers, we need to appeal to them on their own terms and highlight why we’re an attractive choice for them.

By telling your story and speaking about why you exist, you can attract the right type of employees and get more qualified candidates. Click To Tweet

Richard, you’ve brought in Jason. You’ve brought in the marketing seat and made sure that you’ve looked at this from that proactively. Tell us a little bit of your why. Why would employees want to work for you? Then, let’s dig into how that translates into the marketing realm of it.

It’s an easy question to answer. For me and from our perspective, we understand our product. It’s a technical product, and that’s what makes it unique. We’re manufacturing, but most people, even locally, who aren’t familiar with our company don’t understand the uniqueness and importance of the products that we manufacture. They contribute to life-saving efforts. That’s easy for us to understand.

We’re engineers. We’re technical people. We don’t know how to market that, and that’s where Revel comes in. It has been a unique relationship as we’ve grown up together in the same community. We’ve worked together for years. They understand us, and they know how to get that word out differently than we would have thought.

Help me understand this, then. You’re an engineer. You ought to be able to get engineer buddies.

We’re not the most social people.

I wasn’t going to say that. You’re on here. I figured you were at least so. How is marketing going to attract engineers?

It’s presenting our product from a different perspective than we would’ve thought. We’ve always tried to fly under the radar. We were a small company. Our marketing was truthfully at $0 for a long time. We didn’t do social media campaigns, billboards, or anything like that. We were an under-the-radar company. Our target market is R&D engineers.

Over the course of time, mostly through word of mouth, we built a reputation in the industry that positions us where we want to be. This is thinking in a different way than we’ve ever had to attract people to the team. It’s a language that I don’t speak. Jason and the team at Revel understand us better than we understand ourselves in a lot of ways.

If I could add one thing to that, Richard is being very humble. One thing that is true of a lot of manufacturing companies that are looking to recruit and retain employees is they’re not a smaller company by any means. They’re 150 employees looking to grow and add to their team. They’re humble guys and gals. They don’t want to pound on their chest and talk about how great they are, so it’s our job as their marketing partner to talk to their leadership team, survey their employees, and find out what those things are that make Motion Dynamics a unique place for people to work. We were able to do that in a genuine way and share that with the outside world.

BCC 74 | Hiring Process — Hiring Process: Marketers take a candidate and hand them off to HR as marketing does with sales. That type of alignment is critical to success.

I’ve got two questions, one for Jason and one for Richard. Jason, I’m going to ask you to go first. I’ve heard you talk about being able to pull out their messaging because you know them well. I don’t know if you have the biggest thing that you’ve ever done or got the best results, but what is one thing you can share with our audience where you’re like, “We did this for them, and it got some great results. It helped move the thing forward?”

Richard, I’m going to give you the question so you can start thinking about it. With what Jason’s team has done, how did that help you with retaining employees? That’s more than half the battle a lot of times. You hire them, but how do you keep them? I truly believe that with the right marketing message and understanding of who you are and communicating, you keep the right people when you attract the right people. I’d love to know from you about some of the real-world things you’ve seen happen. Jason, I’ll let you go first.

The biggest thing that we did was we got everyone in the same room. We had leadership, HR, employees operations, and our team there. We asked questions and then listened. The emotional culture that sets them apart is when we made that front and center with their employer branding campaign.

Their company leadership keeps their employees updated with weekly team meetings. They have a workout facility on site. Not many companies have that, so that’s a differentiator. They also do fun things like cookouts and catered lunches. Another differentiator is their modern manufacturing facility. These are all things that we played up in their campaign through photos and videos and brought out there to their potential employees.

We ran an integrated campaign across traditional media. There were billboards and social media ads. We beefed up their careers page and did a company video where we had not only the company leadership talking about all this, but then we had their employees saying it in their own words. We also tagged on some internal communication where we were able to highlight a great referral program that they have. All those things help with retention.

We’ve had over 50 job applications and 4,500 visits to their careers page in the first three months of the campaign. The message is getting seen, and it’s driving the right type of people to interview. The last thing I’ll add is Motion Dynamics has an unusually high conversion rate when they get someone, and they make it to the point where they apply and convert them to employees. Our job as marketers is to take a candidate and hand them off to HR as marketing does with sales. That type of alignment is critical to success.

Richard, I know we got your question sitting there, but Jason said some stuff that we want to dig into a little bit. There’s one thing you said there that I could think the audience say, “That’s probably not so real.” You said you got the employees talking about it. Tell us a little bit more about that.

One of the things that are evident with the social media that has been out is employees are going on their liking, commenting, and sharing the post. That’s organic interaction with the campaign as they’re seeing it. From an employee’s point of view, it shows that their company is investing in growth, and they’re proud to see the ads out there. The fact that they’re interacting with the comments is proof that it’s ringing a chord with the employees.

I love that because I know if you can get the employees talking and chatting about it, we’ve turned the corner. We’re off. I’ve seen it happen several times. Sometimes I know that when I say something like, “We get the employees engaged in building the brand and attracting the right people,” they’re like, “I can’t get them to hardly show up for work.” When you touched in on that, I was like, “We got to know a little bit more.” You got them posting and commenting. You got them engaged in it because they knew that they had a great brand and a great company. I love it. Richard, let’s turn to your question now. How has this helped with the retention of your employees?

Every company's purpose is different. That's why employees dedicate their careers to fulfilling the company's missions. They want to work with a company with a higher purpose. Click To Tweet

What has helped the most and is spawned from Revel’s homework was a period of time during the introductory phase where Revel did a lot of surveying of our employees. We got to interpret that feedback. It was so beneficial to us because, as Jason said, we’re now a 180-person team here at Motion Dynamics. That’s quite large.

Our number one priority has always been maintaining culture. For many years, we were a company of fewer than 50 people. Many of our team members are comfortable walking up to our president’s office and sharing direct feedback on anything, whether production-related or about their role at the company. That has become more difficult to maintain when you get to the size we are now.

It prompted us to start asking questions about vacation policies or compensation or the different benefits we offer here. We surveyed our team, listened to their feedback, and made significant changes that are tailored towards not the group of 50 people that have been here for 10 to 20 to some upwards of 25 years but listen to the people that have been here for less than 5 years or maybe even 1 year. It has allowed us to tap into our team like never before, and that’s been extremely valuable for us.

Maybe I missed it, but did you say you used to be 50 employees, and now you’re 180 employees?

For many years, we were less than 50 up until the early 2000s. Jason mentioned a number of 150. We were 150 employees towards the end of the summer of 2021. We have 40 open requisitions that, if 40 people lined up at our door that fit well within our team, we could take them on. That’s why we’re such good friends with Jason.

That’s significant growth. That’s amazing. Jason’s not only doing a good job on the customer side, but he’s also helping you on the recruiting side too. It leads me to a question here for you, Richard. As a company grows, especially at that scale as fast as you’re growing, I imagine there are a lot of changes that are happening. Working with Revel, how do you keep on top of all those changes and make sure that your messaging is right and you’re getting in front of the right people? 40 open reqs is a lot of people you need to hire. How do you make sure that you guys are keeping on top of all the changes happening both inside your company and in the marketplace?

As with our relationship with Revel, they know us in a lot of ways better than we know ourselves. They have account executives like Kayla, whom I work with weekly at least. We have such frequent interaction that they get it. This is from a manufacturing perspective separate from the marketing. For a long time, we were a research and development company. We had R&D engineers that would approach us with either an idea or a sketch of something simple, and we would help them bring it to production.

us with either an idea or a sketch of something simple, and we would help them bring it to production.Over the course of the years that we’ve been in business, there are a lot of things that have been developed and reached production. Here we are now at the point where a customer of ours will know Motion Dynamics Corporation on their drawing. Sometimes in the medical device industry, you’ll have components move from supplier to supplier. We are so large now because we are responsible for producing these large production level quantities. That’s what has been attributed to our rapid growth.

You’re giving credit to Revel a lot of the time. I want Jason to finish this. How do you stay on top of all of this? It sounds like your team has dug in and knows them well. I imagine you do with all your clients. I’m thinking specifically for you because I’m sure a lot of our audience is like, “That would be great, but I don’t have a Revel on my side.” What are some things they can do to stay on top of this?

You say doing employee surveys and bringing everybody together. Is that something that you frequently do? Give us some tips and advice on how you stay on top of all this.

The number one thing is having a clear understanding of the reason the company exists. We have an exercise that we go through that was created by Simon Sinek, which is his Start with Why process. That’s how we kick off all our client engagements. The great thing about working with someone like Motion Dynamics, who we’ve had a long relationship with, is the one that we did years ago was different from the one we did when we launched its employer branding initiative.

Companies are always changing and evolving. Engage in that exercise. It’s great if you have an agency partner to walk through it with, but you can do that yourself. It’s a TED Talk. You can go on YouTube and watch it. Simon Sinek has tons of material out there that you can walk through yourselves. That’s the first key. Every company’s purpose is different, and that’s why employees dedicate their careers to fulfilling the company’s missions. They want to work with a company with a higher purpose. In someone like Motion’s case, they’re making life-saving products. That’s maybe a little higher purpose than the average company across the street, but every company has something unique.

Regardless if it was the products they make, it’s their leadership, their people, and the fact that they care and take the time to do those weekly updates to the team and let the company know how it’s going. They invest in a clean, modern manufacturing facility and do fun activities. All those things play together in the employer brand. You can do that regardless of whether you work with an outside firm.

The other thing is asking questions. Surveys are a great way to do to get feedback either from customers or from employees. We’re a little biased, but we always feel like you get a better answer if a third party asks the questions. Those two things, finding your why and doing some regular research, are two great ways that companies can remain relevant and invest in their own growth.

I liked the way you broke that down into those two things. Survey the employees and get them involved. One of the best resources employers have is their existing team, and they forget to tap them for that and then get clear on why they do what they do. I love the TED Talk and the Simon Sinek stuff. I want to take it down another level here, Jason. I’m going to start with you on this. If you were to get enough applications for Richard and his team to fill 40 reqs, maybe at one time, there was a little bit of fear like, “Are they even going to call these people? Are they going to follow through? I’m putting all these applications in front of them.”

I see a lot of employers struggle with the process side of it, and I’m big on the process. Are some things that you’ve been able to do between the two companies to make sure that when you’re generating these results for them, the team over there is dialing in the process and connecting and engaging with the people? What kind of coaching or thoughts do you have on that?

It’s a lot like marketing and sales alignment and making sure that there’s a service level agreement that there’s going to be a handoff. If you’re thinking about sales and marketing, what do sales do when a lead comes in? It’s no different with HR. Motion has an experienced HR professional heading up the effort, so our job was easy. It was to bring the leads in, make sure they’re logged on the website, and then communicate regularly and do regular check-ins. It’s having constant communication.

Accountability is not me telling you to do something. It’s me asking you if you did something, and you’re giving an account of that. When you have good accountability partners, the process works seamlessly. It’s got to be a team effort because we can do everything in our power, but if there’s not a great transition from when an applicant fills out a form, calls a phone number, or responds to an ad, the process will fall apart.

Everyone's saying that you must go to college and get a four-year degree. In reality, you can make an amazing living working for a great company doing manufacturing work. Click To Tweet

Richard, what have you seen on your side being in the team that receives that? Being on the other side of those service level agreements, what are some things you’ve implemented or been successful at over at Motion Dynamics?

Firstly, we were overwhelmed with how successful this campaign has been right off the bat. The amount of applications that we see coming in through our website far exceeds anything that we’ve been able to generate on our own before. We have an HR professional who has been responsible, whether it be on Indeed or relationships with multiple technical schools. There are several different relationships that she works with, but the process with Revel has forced us to look at ourselves from a different perspective.

We’ve got different people involved. We’ll do a pre-screening or a general interview, and then we’ll do a second interview, maybe with an operations member, engineering member, or even a production level member. We’ve started to involve other members of our team in the interview process. It has been interesting to see how much more detailed these interviews get. We place people better into areas because we have their potential peers working with them and understanding what they like to do. Before, we had an HR professional, but one that did not necessarily have a manufacturing background. It has restructured our process for interviewing a candidate and the people that we involve in the interview process.

What I’m learning from you is, and I’ve seen this happen quite a few times, how we communicate to the world, the opportunity restructures the way we interview them. You were in the interviews in between marketing their worlds where the sales pipeline was headed towards getting them to the end of the door. I’d love to learn some of the findings if we could go a little bit deeper into that. As you looked at five-year employees versus the long-term, what were some of the attractive benefits at this point in the world?

It’s about establishing a connection. Once we meet somebody and get a better idea of who they are, where their interests lie, what their experience has been, and the role that they may be a good fit for when we bring in the existing team or their peers that they could be working with, it establishes a connection. That connection, especially with some younger employees, has allowed us to communicate or demonstrate our culture.

Jason mentioned that it is so important to us that we try to maintain that as best as we can as we grow. There have been instances where we have not done a good job of that, and we have put somebody in an area that isn’t a good fit for them and what they want to do. For example, we make these small micro parts with a wire that is smaller than the diameter of your hair. We pack these into gel packs. We do it under a microscope. It’s very precise. It can be tedious, so you can’t put a high-energy person into a role like that. It’s almost torture for them. It doesn’t work. This process of working with our existing team out on the floor has allowed us to tailor candidates into a more well-suited position.

Jason, are there any reflections you have from any of the survey work you did? Were there any a-ha moments where you were like, “That’s a way we could pitch the benefits?” It could be outside of the culture. I know we’ve touched base on that one, or maybe it is in their culture, and you say, “It was all right there.”

The biggest thing with them is looking at it as more than a job. Manufacturing, many times, is viewed as a career that may be less than ideal. The reality is we’ve had a generation of everyone saying, “Go to college and get a four-year degree.” In reality, you can make an amazing living working for a great company doing manufacturing work. It’s not your dad’s manufacturing dirty or grimy on a shop floor. There is some of that, and that is rewarding work for the right type of person. It’s telling the story that this isn’t just a job. It’s a career.

We changed that paradigm rather than an hourly rate, which we see a lot of times on hiring billboards and campaigns. Anyone who’s running a recruitment campaign and is reading this, do not put your hourly rate on your billboards because there will always be somebody who has one better. It’s not the reason that very few people put it on the top of their list when they go to work at a company.

For the campaign that we did for Richard, it was about folks putting their careers in motion and showing all the things they could do while at the job, but also as a result of having this rewarding career where there was an opportunity for advancement, good salary, great benefits, and other perks that you don’t always see. Everything we did was centered around the word career.

I enjoyed the conversation. Clearly, you two have an amazing partnership for being able to do this. It takes a team effort here. Thank you for some of the insight. Jason, I know that you have an offer for our audience and anybody interested in learning more about how Revel may be able to help them get similar results. Can you share a little bit about that with us?

We want you to think about your employer brand, and one of the central points of any employer brand is a careers page. What I’d like to offer to anyone reading is a free careers page audit. Email me at [email protected] with a link to your careers page along with at least two competitors and what your hiring goals are, like you’re looking to add a certain number of employees. We will take a look at your page and give you some suggestions to improve it so you’re presenting yourself in the best light possible.

Thank you so much for being on the show. I’ve enjoyed it and learned a lot of great things. I do love the partnership that you two have in making this work. If you’re reading this and you’re thinking, “Maybe I don’t have what I need to make this happen on my own. Maybe I need to find an agency partner,” know that Revel is out there, and I’m sure there are other agency partners out there too that can help with this.

Recruiting is the number one issue that employers are facing, so make sure that when you are looking at your recruiting process, remember that it’s not an HR function. It is something that if your marketing team is not handling it exclusively, they are in an extremely close partnership with HR to make sure that you are attracting the right people to apply for your jobs. Thanks again. I enjoyed it.

Thank you.

Thanks, Ryan and Jeremy.

Thanks so much for being on.

Important Links

About Jason Piasecki

Jason’s our CEO and resident baseball expert. He is a graduate of Central Michigan University (Fire Up Chips!) with degrees in Marketing and Graphic Design. In 1998, he started ImageQuest Design, then in 2006, paired up with Andy to form Qonverge.

In 2011, they took things up a notch again and Revel was born!

About Richard Witham

Motion Dynamics Corporation is a specialized spring and wire form company committed to building long term relationships with customers desiring excellence in all aspects of relationships! Each of us is committed to understanding our customers and their needs.

We will accomplish this by providing unequaled quality and delivery, by dedicating resources to innovative processes and equipment and by hiring and developing people with exceptional skills that uphold our high ethical standards.

Bringing Skills Training To Manufacturing Companies With Rodney Nelson

Ryan Englin · October 20, 2021 ·

Skills training is an imperative if you want your business to succeed. A well-trained staff can mean the difference between success and failure. Ryan Englin and Jeremy Macliver are joined by Rodney Nelson, The VP of Client Operations for the Arizona MEP, to talk about how they are positively impacting small companies in the manufacturing space by providing skills training. Rodney shares his insights on working with companies and what training is most often needed, and he talks about the WIOA Fund and its impact on companies looking for help with training. Listen in for insights on training for skills in the manufacturing industry.

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Bringing Skills Training To Manufacturing Companies With Rodney Nelson

I’m excited about our guest. The Manufacturing Extension Partnership is something that has been around for quite a while, but for a lot of manufacturing companies and businesses in general, this is one of the industry’s best-kept secrets. We are going to be speaking with one of the leaders here in the Phoenix area, talking about the opportunities that exist not just in training and development but also in the grant money that is available and how the MEP can help you get some free training for your teams. I want to give a big blue-collar welcome to our guest. Rodney Nelson, welcome to the show.

Thank you very much for having me.

I’m excited to have this conversation. Let’s start off with one of my favorite questions. What is the biggest myth about your industry?

In general, it’s that getting help from government agencies, county or state is tough and it doesn’t pay off. That is not the case. It can be tough. You got to know somebody to help you get there is the answer. There is help out there for sure.

Rodney, we have worked together now a couple of times and I have fallen prey to that myth. There have been some challenges with that, but I know working with several clients now that have had success working with you. Share with the audience how you go about this. I was with one of our mutual clients. He has got a $50,000 grant from you. I’m blown away at how the work was with you. Tell us an overview.

First of all, in general, there are a lot of different grants and incentives out there. I’m sure they vary by where you are located and what state you are in or what county. The one you are talking about in particular is a grant that is from the City of Phoenix. It originates as federal dollars that are doled out to the various states across the country. I don’t know all the details about it exactly. I want to even tell you an acronym, but I don’t know what that acronym stands for. It’s WIOA Fund. The readers can go ahead and look that up. These funds are getting to the states to help the workforce. As you can imagine and this is probably where the myth might be somewhat a reality, is that these government agencies are not marketing. They don’t know how to market what they have.

There are some big companies that don't necessarily need help and there are ones that do. Click To Tweet

They are sitting on these funds. A lot of them, I would assume across the country and the state, don’t know what to do with them. Thankfully, the City of Phoenix is a step up here. They have a program put together where they will help pay for training for local companies. I support mostly manufacturers, but this training isn’t just for manufacturers. It’s for any company here locally. One of the companies that I was working with happened to be in the City of Phoenix. I happened to bring up this training grant. I knew that they also could use the help. There are some big companies that don’t necessarily need help and there are ones that do. This is a training grant that is through the City of Phoenix that is all federally funded and happened to fit in with our client.

You said to help them. Help us understand what help is. Do you guys help them with leadership training or sales training? What do you help them with?

The grant is to help them with any training. My expertise and what I do with Arizona Manufacturing Extension Partnership, MEP for short, is we supply all types of training and services. Most of it is geared towards manufacturing, but that is not the case because all companies need a lot of the same stuff. Some of the major things that we do are leadership training or training that you do Jeremy with EOS. Also, since we do focus on manufacturing, we do a lot of lean manufacturing training. There is a lot of other stuff like Excel training and training with any type of Microsoft Suite. That is where we usually help with when we do these City of Phoenix training grants because a lot of the companies fall into the majority of the services we offer.

It is any training that they need to get to the next level, particularly yours, if they focused on manufacturing. It sounds like the Phoenix Grant even extends beyond that. Is that what I’m understanding?

Yes. Since we’re involved in helping with that training and it is a complicated process, typically, when we are working with our clients, we are the ones bringing them the training. If they need leadership training, we are going to say, “We have the leadership person. We will help get that to you.” Oftentimes, especially in the blue-collar type companies, there is a lot of machines going on, there is a lot of equipment and they need vendor support. Sometimes these vendors are out of state and they got to fly in here. I know I had one client that needed training on this punch press. It was a $6,000 fee. That’s something that since I’m already helping them out with this leadership training, it doesn’t take any time to me at all to push that training that is from an outside vendor that isn’t going through us into that program. They get the benefit of that, too.

On that $6,000, how much does the company pay for?

BCC 56 | Skills Training — Skills Training: Oftentimes, especially in the blue-collar type companies, there is a lot of machines going on, there is a lot of equipment and they need vendor support.

Tell me if I’m getting too far in the weeds here. The smaller company they are, the more that the training grant will cover. The larger the company, the less that they will cover. However, the way that this program is written in the City of Phoenix is that they consider in kind. They consider your staff and the salary that you are paying them while they are in their training. They consider the money that you are putting into the program. Oftentimes, even though the grant might only be covering 75% of the training fees, these companies’ money that they are putting in for the people who are doing the training, that is as much as the training itself. They consider that a match. Long story short, they would pay for about $50,000 max per company.

Even if that is only 50%, which I know in all of the different clients I’m working with you, none of them there is at 50%. Even if it is, that’s a steal of a deal. Working with all of the clients that I get to work with, I get to see tons of different successes. We have seen double-net profit when breaking through some leadership training. We have seen a growth of 30% as they break free to get that clarity. Ryan was working with the hiring. We have seen them fill spots and get 83 applicants in four days after that. I’m sure you got tons of success stories. I would love to hear a couple of those that you have applied training and you helped them out. Where did they get to? I would love to hear 1 or 2 of those.

I will give you one of my first early ones that were successful. My background is in the manufacturing of Lean Six Sigma-type activities. I went to one of our local companies and they were having problems with their yields. What we find a lot of times is that the smaller and medium-sized companies, meaning companies that are probably around less than 100 people. That would be medium-sized. Smaller typically for us is around twenty people. A lot of these companies don’t have the resources that larger companies do. They don’t have the programs in place. We bring in one of our training experts. I will throw out his name here. He is awesome. His name is Jim Godfrey. He is great to work with and super knowledgeable. We will bring him in. I brought him into this one client and they were having a problem with their yields. They couldn’t figure it out.

We did the standard root cause analysis, which there is a way to do this called the 8D program. It goes through these various steps to help them figure it out. Sometimes I can read their yield was around 70%. Walking them through this process, that has proven that a lot of larger companies use it all the time. I have used it in the background with companies I work with locally on the semiconductor. We used it with a lot of 8D processes. We were able to start focusing on what the real root cause was and where these failures were occurring and then helping to identify those and train the employees on what to look for. We took their yields from the 70s to the high 90s, which is where it improved. We were only three days there. I could keep going on. That is a real quick impact for a company to change their yield from the 70s to the high 90s.

Rodney, I got a question for you. I know you have got a very extensive background. There is probably not a part of a business that you couldn’t look at and help somebody with. You were talking about these training grants and all the different types of training that are out there. If you think on average, what would you say the average business owner needs the most when it comes to training? Beyond that, what is the one they are least excited about that they need the most?

There are two different answers.

The one thing that companies need that they are not excited about is the financial management piece. Click To Tweet

I get it. That is why I posed both questions.

Leadership training, I think that is the biggest thing that they need. There is a lot around leadership. Typically, when I go to work with a company, leadership turns into things like EOS training and it turns into HR training. Leadership, in general, is a big thing because people go up the ladder and they have no business being a leader. I’m sure we have all experienced that. The one thing that companies need that they are not excited about is the financial management piece. In this job, I learned too. I used to own my own company as well. One of the biggest things that if I could go back in time, it would be with the financial management piece.

Do you get a lot of pushback when you recommend that financial management piece? How do you help people see that is what they need?

I think I figured that out. I’ll give you my pitch on that. This is my take. I assume and I’m writing 99.9% of the time for this fact is that, if a company owner was an accountant or had a CPA background, they would never start their business because that’s risky. CPAs and tax guys are not going to start a business. They will all lose money. That is why these owners don’t have that expertise. Company owners are visionaries. Company owners are inventors. Company owners are everything. There are daughters that inherit companies, but they are not accountants and don’t know the first thing about it.

The problem here is that they need to be experts financially to steer the ship of their company and set financial goals. The biggest problem here is that their in-house bookkeeper or controller doesn’t know about strategy financially. They don’t know what those reports are. Their tax accountant, who’s doing their taxes, just wants the tax information. Nobody is helping steer the ship here. That is why the biggest thing that they need is financial management. What we do is a quick assessment for them. We bring in our experts that then will help them develop these financial management reports, which will help steer the ship.

I love what you said there because I ran into it so many times with entrepreneurs, which are typically visionaries. That is what we call it within EOS. They are the ones with the bright and big idea that they could go sell it and we need them. Too often, they are relying on in an accountant. I don’t want to ever say anything negative there. They are relying on them when all that accountant is looking for is the tax side of it, not the financial strategy piece that is missing.

We teach a tool called 8 Cash Flow Drivers. It’s looking at what’s driving the cash throughout the company, which is different than profit. You and I know that. Profit is just the bottom line, but cash is how it’s flowing. When we teach that, we look at how it’s being managed all the way throughout, like the frontline people and the people on the floor manufacturing. Are there activities accelerating cash? Lowering cash? What are they doing? We are looking at it collectively across the whole business. You were speaking some of my soapboxes there as I look at it and say, “It’s way more than financial report at the end.”

One of our guys who helps us out likes to call himself the CFO, the Cash Flow Optimizer. We are on the same page there.

That is the one thing we are excited to get you on the show after seeing your work and some of the results. It’s been way more than just filling out paperwork to get a training program to run with something through. Often, you think it would be the way it was, but you are much more focused on what kind of results. One thing I wanted to highlight about the program you can explain more, is not only do you get the grant for them, but you’re there to mentor them throughout that year as they work with these consultants. You have the CFO, the Cash Flow Optimizer. I know we are working with you. You’ve got salespeople and all of that stuff. You’re working to coordinate and make sure that the business is getting results versus “Are they getting training?” I don’t know if you would share anything about how you help support that. I think it’s something that is unique.

If I could take one step back, one of the major parts of our program is that we get results for the company. That is what makes us different than any other consultants out there in that we are partially federally funded. When I go and do a program like with these clients, our goal isn’t to make money. Our goal is to have them fill out a good survey about us. I was running around and chasing clients to fill these surveys up. What keeps us honest is that when they fill out the survey, there are only ten questions. Some of them are, “Did we help improve your revenue? Did we help save you money? Did we help to improve you to grow jobs?” If any of our people ever thought that we were bringing them something that didn’t pan out, I will never give somebody something that they don’t need. That is not going to help them out. That goes to how we even approach our clients. I don’t sell them on things. I ask them what their problems are. I will then give them a solution to that problem. I forgot exactly what you asked me.

It’s about how you manage because you work with the consultant and company. It’s not just, “I filled out a piece of paper. My job is done.” It’s, “We want to make sure we get measurable results.” That was what I was wanting to highlight that you do that, which is impressive.

We project-manage. I call it maybe project management. We are making sure things are going smoothly. That is with communication. It’s making sure they are getting the deliverable right. It’s us understanding what is going on because, as you can imagine, there are going to be hiccups. I have saved a lot of projects when there is confusion or not a clear understanding of how things are supposed to go down. I’m there to keep things smooth and on track so everybody is happy and we get the results that we were thinking we are going to get.

There is no negotiation going on for the market and what size of the company you are. You need to surprise these candidates to come work for you. Click To Tweet

You know that hiring is a very dear and near passion of Ryan and me. What are some of the challenges you are seeing as we move into this next level of our economy? It’s gangbuster, yet we can’t seem to find work. What are you seeing teams do to overcome that? What kind of things are they working on?

I think this is crazy out there. I was meeting with a client about staffing. It’s one of the biggest things we are doing. They need help in every direction. It depends on the size of the company and what their pain points are.

In that 20 to 100 size, let’s stick right there. What are you seeing? What are some things that are working? Are you seeing like, “That’s good to protect me?”

Throw everything at it because I don’t think there is one thing that is working. It goes to what Ryan does, Core Matters. They need to brand themselves. Otherwise, why are they going to come work for them? Everyone has a job already. These people need to be moved. I had one client. We already had an agreement on what the base was going to be. When it was delivered, it was delivered where there could be some type of negotiation. There is no negotiation going on for the market and what size of the company you are.

You need to surprise these candidates to come work for you. They still need all the Google tech stuff. It’s great you have food in your refrigerator, but really, “I need the pay, vacation and benefits. I need to be moved.” If you don’t, there is somebody else that is going to be. You have to throw the whole kitchen sink at this thing. You have to be branding your company, doing your research and making sure that your salaries are on par. You need to even offer more training when they come there so that they can grow with their job. You have to throw everything at this thing.

I am seeing that ongoing training providing some additional value to them. Everybody is looking at this very competitively. When I say everybody, I’m talking about the employees. Very competitively that they believe they got a lot of options. If this option isn’t giving me more opportunities to either make more money, grow, go to the next level of my career and/or make a difference in the community, I’m seeing a lot of that with the companies that we are working with, which is blue-collar. It’s primarily what we focus on. Seeing more about what is the big difference we are making in the world as this world’s message changes and adjust, I’m seeing that would be one of the differentiators. I know Ryan works on a lot of that when he is working with the clients on getting that right message and brand that people are aligned. In the world now, every employee has got an option and they know it.

I finished some research and got some statistics because, during the whole pandemic, it has been hard to get reliable data. By the time the reports and the surveys are done, that data is out of date because something has changed in the economy or politically or something like that. We finally had enough stability and knew where things are going. There are these reports starting to come out. This one blew me away. Millennials account for 50% of the workforce.

Millennials aren’t even old anymore. I used to think they were all young.

Every single person has a joke about a Millennial. They know you are telling jokes about them. Stop it. They are going to take over the country and the world. We got to learn to play nice with them. The thing about Millennials, 93% of them prioritize skill development and training over anything else. If you are not training them to climb that corporate ladder to get more skills so that they can make more money or lead teams and you don’t have a training program that you are promoting to them, they are going to move on.

The other thing I thought was interesting is 86% of them will take a pay cut to work at a place whose mission and values align with their own. This is what Jeremy was talking about. They want to feel like they are making a difference and they are making it part of a team, where they get out of bed in the morning. They are excited to go to work because they know they are going to have done something to improve or make the world or maybe even their community a better place.

It’s funny you have those statistics, Ryan. I didn’t know those. It’s what I’m seeing in the trenches. When I see the companies that are starting to leverage anything, it’s the reality that I’m seeing. That is probably why I feel like having you on Rodney is such an important time. What you are helping to do is to leverage that company that is coming out of the COVID setbacks of 2020. You are helping to leverage the training and the ability for them to grow while giving them one of the biggest and most critical things to attracting half the workforce. It is extremely critical to what is going on in the world. We have provided tons of value here. What I would like for you to do is share how they can go get access to you to figure out if they qualify for any of these grants. Where can they go? What can they do?

It is best to reach out to us directly. Our website is www.AZMEP.org. If you go there, then you can see the team. You can contact us. Our phone numbers and emails are there or call the main number. What we are going to do is go through this. I was saying earlier it’s how this marketing piece of what is out there is taught because there are more than just things that are offered from the state, city, county and utility companies. There are things out there. Coming to us is like a one-stop shop. Meaning if you come to us and ask us, “What is out there that I can take advantage of who is trying to help me?” we can give you a list of those things. It’s not an actual list, but we can tell you what might be able to help you and how you can take advantage of that.

If they go to AZMEP.org, they can get access to all of the stuff. For everybody who is out there, if you feel like you want to be competitive at hiring over half of the population or all of it in any way, by any training or any of that, you are spending any money on training or you have anything that you feel like if we could do better, we would be better, I would encourage you to go to AZMEP.org. Look up Rodney’s information, look up the team and see how they can help because I can speak from this side of it. I have seen many clients helped. I know this is the real deal. We are happy to share it with all of you. Thank you, Rodney, so much for being with us. It has been great.

Thank you very much for having me here. I appreciate it.

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About Rodney Nelson

Received BS in Chemistry in 97 from NAU. First Job was in Tucson at a R&D company that focused on SBIR grants for research and development. There I learned about Physical Vapor Deposition. A process of applying Thin Metal coatings to various materials. I then took a position at a company called Global Solar Energy where I was a Thin Films Process Engineer. The company was still in an R&D phase but was moving towards production. I loved that company. I was the 12th employee there and learned a lot from my peers. More hands on engineering with not only the process but the equipment. I stayed there for about 2 years and received a job offer I could not refuse from Texas Instruments. I learned even more there. As TI was a very mature company with ISO001 certification there was a lot of processes and procedures that were documented. I was in charge of maintaining Production and Engineer specs. I decided that I wanted to move more into management and received my MBA in Technology Management. After receiving my degree I soon was offered a supervisor position. Unfortunately, TI was slowly moving their operations overseas. By the time I left I was in charge of multiple production areas in the Fab. I decided to move to Phoenix in 2005 and took a job at ON Semiconductor as a Product Engineer in charge of new product development. This position was a little bit outside of my wheelhouse as I moved from management back to an individual contributor position. Soon there after the economy tanked.

I was really not happy at ON Semiconductor as it was really managed by an Old Boys Club. Being a new comer and again seeing jobs slowly moving overseas I decided to take a big leap of faith and started a new business with my brother called Woolly Pocket Garden Company. We grew rapidly. I was able to use my technical background to help write patents, develop process controls, production lines and manage our growing team. creating our HR handbook and defining all of our benefits etc. I managed all of our logistics shipping to more than 500 garden centers in the US. Including partnering with distribution centers in Australia, Canada, and the UK. I soon took over the Marketing, Sales, and ecommerce division or our company. I decided to get out of the company after about 5 years as we brought in an investor and the business was really starting to plateau. We sold the company in 2014.

The skills I learned running my own company was amazing. I would have never had the opportunity to learn these skill working for other people/companies.

I ended up taking a position as a Regieonal VP of Operations for a company called Carecentrix. They were a Provider of in home healthcare and durable medical equipment. The opportunity for process improvement in the healthcare industry was unbelievable. I used my skill to effectively improve processes and was soon in charge of their largest group which managed Cigna clients. It was a fast paced and stressful operation.

A couple of years later in 2016 I found the Arizona MEP. I was very worried about finding a good job due to the fact that my resume was all over the board. Fortunately, that is exactly what you need when supporting Manufacturers.

When I meet manufacturers my sole purpose is to figure out how I can help. I consider my expertise to be very broad, just like my resume… eCommerce, Sales Management, New Product Development, Process Engineering, Lean Six Sigma, Project Management, Leadership, Production Management, Data Analysis, Logistics, Organizational Development, R&D… to name a few.

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