Deep Dive
Shownotes Transcript
welcometoscalitlab today were diving deepinto the world of strategic hiring and company culture with Eric bandholes， the founder of beard brand who transformed a mensgroomingstartup into a thriving ecommerce empire Eric story is a masterclass in bootstrapping he built a business that not only sales products but creates a lifestyle and a movement Eric isnt your typical entrepreneur hes honest about the challenges of hiring and building a team sharing a revolutionary nine step hiring process that is led to a staggering 95 percent success rate， healreveal hisunique approach to referencechecks the power of core values in hiring and how hes created a company culture so strong that his youngest tenured employee has been there for five years ericsfocus is on building a sustainable business that values enjoying the journey as much as reaching the destination whether youlooking to improve your hiring process building stronger company culture or navigate the challenges of bootstrapping a business Eric got the blueprint， so if youre ready to transform， your approach to hiring create a magnetic company culture and build a business that stands the testof time this is the episode for you， Eric is about to reveal the secrets that took him from hiring nightmares to building a dream team thats passionate about the business as he is the labstarts now welcome to scale it lab this is the podcast where we uncover the secrets behind the successstories of entpreneors who have taken their businesses to new heights and have them sharetheexact steps they took to skyrockettheyrebusinesses to 七八 even 9 figure this is scale it lab alright welcome back to the lab today weve got Eric and hes gonna teach some things that i need right now we just had went through a hiring firing process and hes gonna take us through that welcome the show im so appreciative your here whatsgoing on men what the excitement um lets tell everycus some people dont know who you are lets walk through really quickly what have you done what you scale lets lets rockin on get into a before we teach people had a higher people there i am the founder beard brand beard brand is a mins grooming product obviously！
we sell products for your beard with a name by beard brand but weve grown beyond the beard over the years we have products for your hair your body uh oh just all over if youd weve got a product for you were an entirely boot strap business i have new business partners and weve grown through really are prophets um this is a you know a lifestyle business， which i think some people can regard as dragatory but for me i think about it like how do i enjoy the journey as i build the business and so weve made decisions that are a very intentional with hower building the business， hower bringing on people， hower is developing products， hower communicate into our customers all that is built around this idea of enjoying the journey， so thats been a big thing for us and theres been a lot of up in up upsent down over the years so it is been a fun roller。
coaster and i love that you you talk about and we talk to this before when we add the the precall about culture and how important that is for you that someone fits into the culture well get into that because most people when they talk about scaling its all strategies like okay you do this and then you have this funnel on then you do this with your email reach and but we so often forget that the people you hire are the people the you know using opt or other peoples time on such a high level and building the culture and hiring the right people is mission critical cuz if you have the best strategies in the world。
it just really doesnatic if you dont have the people to execute on on your vision and be enable to do that theres so many great books out there but its better to talk to someone whos actually done it and built the entire life style around it so when you go through this what are the things that youre looking for i know youbrokena down into nine steps when you go into this are there any key things that right off the bad before you get to the nine steps youlike no where my goal look for the person or this person doesnt it with me it before you get to the nine steps or there anything like that yeah i mean um if you want me to do i can and can really quickly go through the nine steps and then we can kind of build we can go deeper into each of those nine nine steps if you want to do that um but the first step is really like can create a compelling job listing and put in it where your intended audience is going to be so you know if youlooking for designer you know you might post on like dribble or you know some kind of design form rather than indeed or career builder where you know those real passionate uh people may or may not be um im not a guy like ill ill tell you look at the story of our hiring process so our first hire we posted on craigslists and we just posted a listing ended up hiring this employee like twelve dollar an hour this was like when we had no money， we had nothing you know kind of ten 99 employee or contractor and probably the worst thing that happened to us was that that employee was phenomenal it was like the best higher she still works with us now she represents everything that we look for and the employee so we just thought was easy we just thought as easy you could just post on cregslist youll get all this great talent and then we we effectively had like a eighteenmonth period in the early days when we were trying to ramp up our business where we could not hire the right person and was just this this series this a hamster will where they get on higher bad person wed have to fire on they would make all these mistakes within the business and hit the business and it was just like you know out have nightmares over my team members and it was like a very unpleasant experience in and then it creates us mindset of like your theonly person whos capable of doing the things within the business and then once we rolled out this hiring process now the people we hire are completely different i no longer have nightmares about my employees and i enjoy working with them they are far more competent than what i could be doing in their job so like this process will change it to where your mindset is like well we dont get the right higher we can always fire em like that is the worse mentality to have when youre whenever youre trying to hire someone um because youre trying to fill a whole like really quickly to a painpoint you have so if you ever hires someone in like well we can fire em if they dont work out do not hire em this will change to to to to by the end of the nineset process you can not wait with this person to start working for you are absolutely sure that they are going to be an amazing fit they will come in they will kick as and you know obviously nothings like a hundred percent but it moves it from like a fifty percent hit right to like A 95 percent hit right and in fact like one of the problems i have now is my youngest employees like five years and we havent had a hire anyone so i had a like dusk of all my notes because we havent been hiring any one because everyone six around and and they do a good job i i i love that you talk about the nightmares that people have i there are employees that i dont know the business anymore and i still have nightmares about those employees and having interack with them because i like oh god im sending so and so to song so client more of the companies i exted from i literally exted cause i coulddeal with the employees it i just i can do it anymore i was like i just trapped in the situation im gonna exit and just take the easy road out i wish i had this nine step process back down i probably would still own the business。
but no it well it people understand how intensities and that fifty fifty gamble you can get it even if you told me was like 70 percent i but OK but if youre around 95 percent yes， please turn with the nine steps search yes！
so the the only time they dont work is when i break i break the rules you know is like oh yeah well， break the rules for this candidate or this employee i uh and i have a rule like if i have a bad dream about an employee， they 肝 fire the next day like because like you know subconsciously like that persons not working out in your dreams are there to help you prepare for how theyre not going to operate well within your business so ive had plenty apart positive dreams uh with my employees where theyre theyre doing interesting things are cool things so so step number one as we talk about is creative compelling joblison your goal here is you wanna get as many applicates as possible so posted on a bunch of job boards get it out to recorders make the job seem absolutely amazing you want people to come in sell the dream， sell the vision， sell the job in the opportunity and what it can be for the people um but while you do that you have to sell it to the right kind of people like so fear selling it by like oh we got bean baggs and we got fooseball tables and we got happy hours youre gonna get a different kind of person than like you a job thats like hey come come work for a rapidly growing business where we have hard problems so salt you know so theres like uh you have to think about how youselling the business to be able to make sure youre attracting the right people and then in this job listing we like to include a a pretty am i opinion low states uh task for candidas to do to really like weed out all the like the f players and for us that is a Wes send them over to 16 personalities and have them do umirsbrigs test and i know theres some sycologically rolling in the grades here in mires brigs but i found that personality test is the easiest one for me understand and ah i find it relatively accurate is not how wheel were not really basing our decisions on peoples personalities at this point um but it is like a stage to make sure someones really interested in there and then the most important thing and kind of like this whole process it is our version of top grading， which is basically within here we tell them that we are going to do reference checks at the end of the hiring process and that will help weed out anyone whos not able to do positive reference checks so thats step number one try to get as many people as possible we use a software go hit yeah！
you also mention that you you？
you put the place is not only by what youre asking， but also where youre asking it youre not gonna go look for a coding person in over in one place and a design person you it just you can do it increduless so i like that youre very specific i like that youre also saying that hey were selling us as much as were looking for someone to buy its its its a two way process one of the things you know it if its miners breaks or whatever else is long you understand get you that better result one of the things that we do on our end is we make sure that whenever we do low end tasks we hide in there for attention to detail were like hey make sure when you apply to the job for these really low en predium task that you start the subject with this， whatever this thing is！
and it just weaws out the people just consistently putting in these little hurtles whatever they are to make sure that people like oh okay this is almost attention to detail if thats what your focus on for this job i love the idea of the bean baggs dont hire the people were the bean bags and happy hour that theyre good god so i mean you know good god yeah yeah i i i should not focus on i on benefit and i think is like you have to understand that theres a lot of job seekers who just effectively apply to every single job like they dont think twice about it its automated they almost have bot set up you want to do everything in your power to make sure youre not wasting anytime at all so if you can auto reject， so i i look through the resumes or will auto reject anyone who doesnt put in this information its just like hey man like im youre not wasting your time applying for this job im not wasting my time looking at your resume exactly， you really want to have some kind of process we use a software called jazz to to manage resumes um i think like uh there are some like a with a notion board or theres some kind of like data oriented stuff out there that you know if i was doing it now i may not use um but you want to have all the resumes coming into one spot so you can be efficient with your time um so we use jazzitl allows us to set up like email， flows and things like that that we verdecreate it so the next step of the hiring process is the resume screening process um everyones going to have their own kind of internal biases my bias is to focus on cover letters i feel like thats going to be an effort that they really distinguish uh from everyone else you can quickly see if they can communicate well， how they communicate if its an audimated yeah， i dont know you you read enough cover letters and you can just kind of tell us a copy and pace yeah， versus like original so im looking for people who are who have crafted a cover letter specifically for this job and then they theyre able to communicate well， and and theyre also smart enough to understand like here my skill sets in here how is going to help the business and then base on the cover letter ill look into the resume in kind of like their background experience but very rarely if ever i actually never， i never look at the resume first to see what they did because i think we like resumes are are genually just kind of like all bullshit anyways yeah， so um coverletters are our highwise screen em so most people are getting screen but people who i feel like have potential were worth talking to we moved to step number 3， which is our core values email so step number three is where we start setting the company culture of what were about so what we ask them to do is two things wetell them what are core values are， which are freedom hungerentrust and then we tell them what is freedom hungerentrust？
medyou meanto you please reply back with what those core values mean to you so weset in the tone that this is a very core value or YouTube business that this is how we make decisions and when you come work at beard brand like these core values are going to be the core values that you you live essentially you live by and we also ask them to take a a one minute typing test just to see there capabilities uh on the computer everythings yeah yeah everythings digital um so if someone can type at you know six words per minute um theyprobably pretty capable and competent on a computer um but if theyre cranking out at eleven or fifteen， you know， thats probably a pretty good indication that for an ecommerce business service it yeah its its probably not going to work you know maybe if you have like more of a mechanic focus role， you know this is different， but these these processes are going to be best for digital oriented businesses so we do that core value i mean i i over index for communication um with how we higher people i feel like if someone can comprehand what yous saying and communicate clearly back to you， then even if it takes them a little bit longer to to understand something that eventually， yoube able to get onto the same page or more things out when people just like you， you effectively cant communicate well together even if theyre the the the greatest gift like if youre not on the same page the you you are just two people going on opposite directions so literally happens this morning！
literally happens this morning it was exactly great person not on the same page so great first date horrible second yeah yeah and is is like it is weirb because its like you know like sometimes people just communicate differently and and you have to you have to work well so its like by you also doing these processes or you or the hiring person whois going to be working with em like is seen all these things is its going to kind of like you want it to to mesh well the people in there i know theres a lot of camps out there does they like diversity makes you better and all this stuff but like reality is your company is a tribe you guys gotta have those shared values you have to see the world the same way because you cant fight over philosophy you have to be align there and then you fight over you know like the tactics or the execution of it but youre all align with that that same common mission so theres something that is OK to disagree on and there some get things that are not acceptable to disagreon um right， so really you do wanna set that that expectation of what your core values are and what your your businesses back um alright， so thats for values we see in mouse come back they look good theyre competent theres no spelling areas especially now like with ai if you have if you candeliver any kind of like i dont care if you send everything to me through ai and thats like your system in process and if thats what you always do great but um yeah like theres no focus to have in a job interview by myspelling just just like not am i opinion it term those things were i cant spell to save my life so every email that goes out everything that i create l the labor port everything gets run through ai because itjust its easier that way i know what my weaknesses are and then i outsource it so if its about the hertsinyou can find the solution so if you know that you got a weakness！
which is youve literally spelled your own name on which ive done if you know thats， a weakness just used bt its not complicated i wrote a book i have tons of spending mistakes i spent hundred fifty box and someone edited know your weakness is especially when your planned for a job but Ive never heard anybody do a typing test that i would never work for you because i can barely type um no its its happens thats it i know it was a whole point is coming on the podcast you wanted the see vergin it just not gonna work im sorry i break your heart what what your words for minute what um i think its kind of like golf for me i should about a sixty on the first hall when i play Goff so i think i type about four five words and know its i my problem is my grammar and my spelling is atrocious my so my middle name is joseof and i literally in highschool spelted joesph yeah， so i literally misspout my own name it is its common for me to misspell grammar um when i wrote the book， so i wrote it nine days and my assistant who was proof in initially she was you do know that your Hasan or on it right now the yes and she was because has a cousin it shut up so its pretty bad my graph， my spelling abilities， my sister has that she is got two masters degrees in English got blesser for i i got none of that i im its horrible when i do presentations or i do keynotes its really bad i can not spell and put a little counter next to it during meetings of how many times i misspell and if i misspell to a certain amount i end by in lunch， which i end by in lunch anyway， so， but yeah！
i itll and thats thats a reasonnearly the entrepreneur like lets be real you cant work for people like i canwork for people i am not employable no yeah not so were not looking to hire i mean generally speaking were not looking to hire entrepreneurs like you know maybe if youre trying to hire like a ceo or coo something like that my business partner is same thing like every email he sends to me has a spelling error and im like slightly dyselexic but um so i get it like theres people like us that you know we cant break the roles for ourselves but what the ones pay the building yeah！
yeah and then theres nothing wrong with employees ive got employees that i had door i i love them one of the tests i would give all the time i OK， weve gonna do were association games and this one of things i do when i hire is， i rapid fire with word association games and then ill say paycheck our employee and well see what comes out of their mouth and if theyre like security， um comfort benefits nine to five if that comes out of mouth， thats an employee and i love them for that role if they spid out things like person punishment slavery in servitude， they do that type of and they have this this angry reaction im like right thats not partner and its a different conversation and ive hired entrepreneurs to work from me never work that well never work that well， it just do i i when i do vcwork can i do Andrew investing i need to make sure that person is an entrepreneur versus an employee with entrepreneur like tendencies， which is a categorically different concept for people so yes， i am not employable but be never to filter these out with typing tests and things of that nature i never thought of typing test before so weve got the person where were were fishing for them where they are which is great weusing were actually pitching the job as something that they want to be part of and they were song in the business we then get into core values and we do we we ignore the resume first and we go after the the cover letter making sure its spout right we tester typing speeds what do we do after that what do we do in the next situation to get this 95 percent success right we even brought up our core values email if you want me to read it to you i can read it to you i dont wait so yeah we love yeah this is this is！
we are impressed with your background and cover letter and would love to move you to our next step of the hiring process the best gift that we can give up beard brand is a team of people who are passionate hungry and love to work so to help us make sure we build the right team at beard brand with a very thorrow interview process i call minates with an extensive reference check where the next step we would love to know whatthebeearebrain core values mean to you are core values are freedom we should an email back with each of those core values and what they mean to you in addition to that， please take this quick typing test and screenshot the results and your email reply looking for to your response and we get a typing dot com is what we use for the the one minute typing test so real quick it does like we do have a hard process like it should be hard to get a job yes， at at where youre at and you need to to learn all this information so after the core value test everything comes back we move into a quick screening a phone call so uh i will call them up and then the purpose of this call is to its really like a if you ever did sandlersales， theres this idea of like an upfront contract so basically i call them up and i verify everything i say are all right this job islocate in an Austin Texas you have to come in from this period of time nine to five if you dont come in， youre not going to get hired you know like the compensation for this job is this amount of like we are paying this amount if thats time OK， let me know because we will not go further because theres a lot more steps from here so the whole thing is like we set the expectation this column takes like ten to 15 minutes we we work all the details we make sure they understand what the job is we make sure they understand where its going to be like all the the big things because i dont want to get at the end of this and theyre like oh i wanted to make this amount of money or i want it so by doing it upfront and im like this jobs 50 dollars is that OK and i will get yes， that is OK be like theres no negotiation for this this is the job um so were what wedoin is like i found that people who tended a good she ate and a higher process it really starts the process off to a badfoot so the more you can just get that upfront and done with it is going to be great so we do the screen in interviews and if that goes well， we move em to our skills test uh process or is doing it the initial contract part and if if someone comes in and you say hey！
the job was between fifty to 700 dollars and you love them up to this point but theyre like you know what i i really need to make seventy five or whatever it is do immediately say hey you know what thats？
thats not the job thats not what were doing here or when you make the discressional decision to move around or youd locked in so were locked in because our compensation policy is that we pay 90 percent tile of market rates and awesome Texas so every employee at beard brand will be beanpay 九十 percent ile so we have a very you know， we have a flat compensation， so we want to give a range we would say to us this is what the job is worth and if we find the right person， i dont really care if theyre making this or that or um you know whatever， the experiences we try to systematize compensation as fairly as possible and at the end of the day you know it it is like you know housing and real estate like everything is you make an individual and we try to do it where its the most fair way um where if you get a job um or if you get an offer from ten？
jobs will pay better than nine of em so uh we do try to to pay on the high rate i think that helps with your retention policy as well the reason you havent higher for five years is you pay what people are worth ive always paid a little bit more than what someones worth in order to make sure that you increase that lunch if because yeah。
theres a culture and the personality snbeenable to work with them but also at the end the day if Ive got a Rockstar employee and someone offers them 15 times more than theymaking for me no matter how good my culture is probably not gonna stay so make sure you are in that top ninitive its a subtle day that most people forget and they just yeah i mean you can not everyone can be in the top nineth percenter i mean thats the reality of of the space so its a you know we we tended not higher super money driven people either thats not really like our core values were more going back to like how were trying to build the business is more about the lifestyle its about enjoying the journey um so we do tradeoff you know growth a little bit you know we we tended not higher mercenaries uh thats really what it is like if if youre trying to hire people that are driven by money youhiring mersceneries and theyre not bottend of the culture theyre botden to the money and they can do great work for you but theyre not going to be aligned with the vision and you know where boot trap company so we didnt start off that way um and in fact if it if i remember correctly been so long， i think we actually pay seventy fifth percent ile not the goal is to get to nineth percent all but the expectation is also that the team members perform at that level so its like if our companies performing well or hidden all verbenchmarks and were doing what we should be doing then yes were gonna be getting paid that but if were not you know the reality of of the the business is like i i can only pay what i can pay so we started off i think at like fifty of percent ile and then we worked up the 75 percent ile um but i just like to have like that helps me know that i feel like im doing the fair thing and that includes me like my pay my compensation is based on market rates like everyone unspacespace um yeah so the screen test uh mos into the skills test uh its its a two part test one is a online test we use a criteria corp， which is a online testing company they have a test called c cat， which is basically a cognitive test to see how smart they are um and different roles have different requirements for you know your abildisor problems and things like that theres also， like another employee personality test like a more scientific version of Myers brags like if you dont trust mirrorsprigs， you can use that a criteria is just one of many companies that that offer that service um but we will work to do in in person skills test or if its not in person， it has to be like done while on a zoom together so the the purpose the intent is that i can watch them work so they could share their screen uh but that in person skills test is one that we will built to be very specific to the job theyre doing so we had a data analyst role i got over dongmails from YouTube or from twenty videos i got the titles and then i get all the data for those videos i put them in a spreadsheet， and then i had all the candidates like workthrough that exact same spreadsheet i mean i would copy it for each candidate， and then they would have to give me a report on what the analysis was or we would do for customer service we would have like ten tickets and we asked them to go through the tickets the prioritize em and then reply to them how they would reply to them our copywriter same thing we would have em right an email and theyre all like all the candidates are doing the exection thing so we would have a a designer i would sit and watch a designer work to see how they work in photoshop or a video editor see how they work in um premiere and just like be able to tell like how competent or capable they are if they do have the skills to to handle what we need them to so when yourunning into a person who yougiventhese tests have you ever had resistance were there like thats a lot of work before i even do the job have you ever run into that um yeah i mean i think i think theres handed its out there and you see it on red it all the time who are just there bitching and theyre like i dont want to do free work or whatever is like i dont care if you complete this， you donhave the complete this in fact some of the jobs you can complete like its its an hour project where you would just be incomplete so the goal is like for me to watch how you work um and at the end of the day i really dont care like because i want to be spending you know a half million dollars on year if not more like depending on how long you work at the business if if i cant get you know two hours of your time upfront before i invest a half million dollars over the next you know five to ten years then im sorry like its its im im not willing to take that risk yeah that was thats what i was trying to get to because most employees dont realize that as business owners we have to invest this level into you this isnt just a hair wanna hang out with you lets good this good this is a massive investment in our dreams are future our financial resources are personal resources are time resources so for those viewer listening who may not own businesses who are like oh well this is how i get hired you have to understand this is whatgoing through the minds of some news on entrepreneur business owner when welooking at your libk？
this is where weve gonna gamble half a million plus dollars into you over the next x amount of years， so if youre not willing to put in the little bit of effort here， thats a huge sign for us its kind of like if you show up to a date， you havent cleaned your nails or your zippers undone or whatever else or you donbrush your teeth theyre clear indications of what were looking for， were not doing this， because we want to torture you were not doing this， because wedislike trying to get free work thats not this about were trying to get more comfortable in the idea that were bringing you into our culture and there were can inctest a half a million plus dollars in due for the next x amount of years so its not because i get this feedback all the time people like oh well why should i do free work？
its not free work were trying to figure out and see if its an excellent fit do i i and theres funny a jobs that you can go spark those is be like did if thats your mindset you dont align with our core doi is youre out like i was just i would just cut up not wasting my time or energy with people who you know due there lives in a purely transactional thing you know so like oh why would i pick up that trash in the supermarket and third away like im i get paid for that is like well you do it because you wanna live in a society where theres not trash on the ground you know why would you play your card away oh is because i you know like i just want to live so you do things like it in in my mind like those things are important to me like to to be around those can be so maybe theyre gonna be better little working for the government or you know working for a mega corp where others not that same kind of accountability and these little subtle teams when people ask why do you hire versus？
why do you not， why do you keep someone？
its these little things you go out you know， we always talk about how the person treats the waiter is as important as they treats the ceo across the table like or the way from deals when the person was route the staff ive been staff before its these little subtities of your personality and sooner or later theyre gonna find out， so when you have a business owner thats trying to do these small things and theyre trying to say hey， were doing these little test， those are test and if not so much the testtheygivingyou， theyre also trying to forget what else it does so please understand as a is if youre looking to， look for to work for someone， like to， look for to work for Eric or someone else on that level， every action has a purpose these didnhappen by accident these theres very in theres huge intent for this also， on a complete side note putyour dam cards away when youshopping its annoying to pull in the parking， lets live in a society， you clean things out pick up the trash help people out get out of peoples way， help people get things if youre tallerhelp people get things in the growth you start a little things try and make things a little bit better dont rely on the government， but its completely during conversation hey？
we， i， i， i， i should i， i want to readerate that all of these steps im telling the candidates that we are going to be doing a reference check at the end of this process so during the screen interview im like hey， we are going to call up three of your references is ack want to be inissh you know like during the skills test is like you know the next step when all this is done is were gonna be doing reference checks so like they know that reference checks are coming as part of this process， which moves to step number 7， which is our top grading interview so top grading is basically the style where we look like the the hardasses its like a two hour interview like youre really like growing people i can get time for that we keep bars to like thirty minutes and we keep to the the most recent three jobs a basically i have ten questions this exact same questions that i ask for there most recent ten jobs and what im looking for is themes or consistencies or you know um well， just themed in consistency of how they work among different jobs and uh so i have those questions uh what is the best part of this job？
what is the worst part of this job？
um talk about your working relationship with your supervisor how would your superhow is your supervisor going to describe you？
when we do our reference chat what is an accomplishment？
you are proud of what something you recall you wish i done differently how or why did you decide to leave this job？
whats the most valuable skill you gained here？
what is something your supervisor can most approve upon and did you reach your full potential at this job？
um so those are the ten questions that we ask for every single job and and like it when i get into a job im like whois your supervisor？
so ill have their name be like what is John you know oh what is jarg when i say when i call him up into this reference check what can John do a lot of times real interesting is like youre not going its Tom what i say about John uh and im like no im not over here at like snitching on you with your passport but what im looking for is like if John was a if this boss was a bad communicator and this other boss was a bad communicator and this other boss was a bad communicator get a pattern and maybe it wasnthebosses maybe was right the the candidate so were those are kind of the things that were looking for and by the end of the top grade in interview， you really have a strong grass on what kind of things they like to do um we go through the the three jobs and then we have three questions that we end it and is like why are you interested at the job at beard brand？
what are you great at professionally and what do you suck at professionally？
like what is a worsing that i can have you doing if you come to work for beer brand and like those those last two questions really like what we would have like someone apply for a customer service job and like ah i hate repetitive task gonna like do youjust going to be doing tickets all day long like this job is not going to work through so they are going to by this point they are the the the top grading interview style is a truth serum test you are gonna know exactly what they like what they dont like and because they know that you are gonna be calling up theyre super visor a they dont want to be cut in a lie umm， so thats uh as a really important part of this process and then um i dont know if you have any questions about the stop credit in interview。
i do it so theres a couple things i love that you didnt candid questions， which is like where do you see yourself and fire shut up？
thats not valuable this is about true something is getting it to that theres normally， also the opportunity and i and i have to help people do this is your it being interviewed as much as your interviewing them， so when youre candidate going in and asking very specific questions of the employer， because these are great ten questions but for me when we do hard in i want to see the initiative， i want you to be interviewing me as well， because your as much as im investing time money resources， your investing time money resources and in a lot of cases the ability to feed your children， so if youre not asking me questions as well that normally is a flag to me im like 嗯， why are you asking me questions and i always ask my Jerry questions or anything？
i can answer for user details about the the job or the workplace or culture what are some of the do you have any questions that you ever got asked by an employeed or potential candidate that was like wow， OK， that one made me think differently and we had to change things up or that surprised you are you thought that was a really good question well？
i mean a lot of the jobdetail ones are done in that screen in interview so you know i dont expect like you know， what are the benefit or what is the pay or you know kind of like those aspects of the jobs um and then within the skills test theyre getting a strong grasp for like what theyre actually be doing so because were doing so many different steps along the way um they they they tend to actually have a pretty good feel for what is like to work it at beard brand and what the expectation is and a lot of times like the skills test will be with someone else in the company so is not all just me doing stuff its different people are beard brand you have different opportunities as questions and get a feel for i donthink theres ever ban like you know any remarkable questions um that of kind of throw me out theres theres been ones where its like you know this is an in person job and theyre like can you do remote at all and im like no like and theyre like OK well done oh there are theyll get like snapy and entitled and shit like that so its just like i was just not a good fit so not a fit yeah， um but yeah you do you do want to see like there needs a be communication like you need to make sure that you know like along at the end of this you know i i would say something like is you know is this a job you still interested in like should we proceed for should we move for to the reference checks and you know like each step you kind of give them that opportunity like do you want to continue moving forward like this is a job youre interested in um and then what we do is uh after that we do the reference checks and they need to facilitate them so they need to get the uh the former bosses information they need to find out when is a good time to call those bosses um and they need to pass that along they need to let the bosses know that to expect to call from this phone number and if cause if we cant do a reference checked were not going to get a an offer for them so do i like that you make them facilitated as well！
i like that you think youre gonna be involved in this process im not just gonna randomly call on to hey im Bob from blob you admit why am im calling about Susie q i like that you put the ownership on them so okay youre gonna faciltate this now you know youre gonna put it because again you can choose any reference in the world of course， every if theyre giving you references normally， youre like no this is godskips this is a great issue and be on the planet right， okay， so being able to have to facilitate that is important it also shows there ability to execute but when you go to that faciltation process and you get actually get there reference on the phone there are some legal things and goblys the government making this more challenging for us there are things we can and can i ask what are the things that you normally ask when youre on that reference call did there things that are you know obviously we verify employment we verify the time they verify what they did is there anything else you do ask that you legally can because i know theres a bunch of stuff we legally just can ask yeah！
uh let me pull these up like one of them is like would you hire them again umm when were， they employed what was our title and roll uh did you can ask whatever you want its， you know its whether or not they tell you that information that that theres more of a legal owners on the the reference check on what they may or may not tell you but you get can ask whatever you want um did did she re here she received any promotions or demotions what kind of duties and responsibilities were assigned at the candidate um can you evaluate the employees performance thats one of those questions where you might get you know like which you wash your responses if theyre worried about getting sued was the employee punctual， did they get along well with their peers？
managers and customers would you rehiker the employee is there anything else i should take into consideration before i hire this candidate so um that last one is the most important one thats very similar mind i might is there anything else i need to know is running other things thats always been kind of the most important one because i then shut up and there is a big thing that most people running the problems is sometimes silences of your friend and its a gift if you stay quiet a little bit longer than someones used to theyre gonna be prone to fill in that blank because they just they dont like it if you do it otherwise， so theyre like oh well yeah， but then theres also this in this in this so holding that couple seconds of quietness even in regular conversations people dont like science they want to fill it so being able to do that is always been a huge gift so you gone to the hiring process you talk to the references you done a skill check you hadnt in person meeting with them yougone through that the guidelines youve already knocked out where it is by now youve got a you know you get a really good grasp with them youve even made them set up the calls with the with their references which im still in that from you thats something i ive never done that i would just plan my god i hopefully i get so and so on the call the vector is your making them facility that that will save me so many awkward calls so many awkard so i thank you for that im going to still that what are the next steps that you run into because were were weve done so much for each one and again potential employees be it for you or anyone else please understand this is whathappening in the background and your you miss out the months and months of us either having to fire someone else pair the thing theres so much work does let us up into here were you just the supply to a job at this point youre only the last twenty percent of this process theres also been another eighty percent of us just getting to this point， please understand that is potential candidates yeah！
the the ninth step is the offer and kind of wraps it up so we should already have agreement on what the compensation is through our other processes we should have an understanding of like when can they start working， you know that was in the screen in call like how much notice they need to give um so were able to draft up an offer that should check all the boxes and if theres negotiation after the offer， we we end it like hey， i its sucks to get all the way to step number nine um， but weve learned that like you know effectively， they cancommunicate because like they have those steps and they have those opportunities and if they start offering， we we just pull the table in and for the times that i did cator towards that you know where i didnt like really like a hundred percent of my bad hires since rolling this out or like times that i break it you know like times that i didnt clearly define what the conversation was upfront or times that i didnt clear like maybe i skip a couple of steps because there are a f， a reference from a referral or there are a college friend or something like that so um we we we found that you really like if if someone goes through all nine of these steps theyre gonna be great like。
i think if someone negotiates with you at the nine step and violate your culture thats not the idea that you wanted to do in anyway， she performing like hey this is what we do this is how we offer this is how we work？
this is our culture and its either gonna be a culture fit or its not and if they sort changing things around at the very end thats thats your red flag because more of the things im always looking for hey， what are the Telltale absolute science always just like people always wander in they ask me how do you find out when someones line， theres not just one indication， theres a byzillion different things you have to see as a collective picture so if someonegot all the way， the step nine and all of a sudden， theyplainthis would think is what they violate your culturefix and you move on real really quickly i wish i can say that i didnmake somethingmistakes at you have done web all made those mistakes we fired people that we should not have hired because were reference or college friend or you just had a good feeling i literally had that this morning i still make those mistakes its going to happen just failfaster as you go into it um so i love this methodology and how this works and its very simple and theyre sharing the details of it one of the questions i want to have is what are the other things you found because youve expanded this youve done such an amazing job with this what are the isor anything else that you find out that hey， these are some practices yeah， this is our great one here but if i could have told myself ten years ago or whatever was when you started this， i wish you would have also had this insight or read this book or the how what would is Arraya those float around that are like wow because youre very meticulous with how you break down your steps and theyre theyre beautiful yeah！
i mean i think the part is part of this is it is a lot of work， its nine steps it is multiple interviews its a lot of phone calls like you and when you factor， you have you know hundreds of candidates that you have to screen through and i think the hard thing is like when you get to step number nine and you make that offer youre only making offers to people youre super excited about that you cant wait and then for it to follow part after nine and knowing that you only have a few candidates and step two or three and then like yougoonback to square one like find in that you know that that pain of just wanting to be done with it because we dont get into business to hire people like this is not fun this is not a fun thing that i look forward to um so i think like being able to really like stick to the the night steps is important we you know our resource for this was top created so few Google top graded or lookends to it you can make it your own and thats kind of what we did this is not you know exactly by the book for it once they become employees we we roll out up the eos framework for hiring， which is a for our version of eos， which is kind of like you know based on rocks and quarterly springs and um you know do employees have it do they want it？
do they have the capabilities to do you know that kind of stuff so we do have like regular um we dont do like the the whole corporate thing where you you do like a once a year， a no review its like if we have a problem problem on that day， we go and we talk about it so we just keep them up the the base on the things they need workabout and were a small company so were under fifty employees so someonisnot working out we just we just fire em like um in a perfect world they should know its coming and we should have like enough communication about things not working but at the end of the day， id like Ive learned that you know deep down if an employees gonna work and yes， it would be great to be that employee that gives everyone a month notice or two months notice or put some on a work improvement program but if you know deep down you。
you could put em on a month improvement program and they still not improve that youre gonna be fired youjust youd delay in the inevable like you have to being asshole and you know like just sometimes you get yeah this is what it is and and if you dont know that you dont know just pay attention to your nightmares as you said before itll come up every single time as you said your subconscious nodes all the time you have that good feeling itll come up you know as a guy it takes a little bit longer than then the females do they get it incentive these got feminine i dont it takes a little bit longer i normally similar do i just have nightmare so my god shit this this is a problem ive got to deal with this but dont delay it as soon as you do have i guess thats the only advice i would have um fires quick as you can if it run then to this trustured get just speed of the process yeah theres gonna be paying but to be less paying than having to have them limpthem along um there and similar do you ive had a boot strap companies were my listen i would love to give you two weeks or a month of pay and of it sometimes this can do that theres other times or my herese or two weeks pay go away and there already locked out the one thing i would stress is if youre going to run into that this is about hiring at firing make sure youve got a protocol that youve tested for lockout procedures as especially with an it background make sure you got your lockout procedures really intensely done make sure you have copies of everything make sure everything possible before you do dont just walk in and like i susee your fire make sure you get a log out procedur and and make sure its real relatively bullet proof if you havent tested that out especially as an it guy ive watched entire data sectors get wiped off people servers because they were gonna fire Billy and he knew was coming in billisajerk so yous run into the situations please make sure you get a firing process that is as good if not better than your hiring process so from there i wanted counts selfreshall ask you questions about my beard and how people find you and all of that so we were tracking down because isorry i have that you get you get a better beer than anyone i know its cheating again then so when you walk into these environments um how do people find you？
how do they get a hold you？
people have more questions or people want to find out more about how you built it？
you gave so many resources that you use are really appreciated by you provided how do people find you and that im gonna ask you beer questions yeah！
yeah！
yeah！
so um you know beardbrand dot com is a my company go over there by products uh if your you know， our products will work for due withor without beard， weve got produx for you and then also our products dont know your genitalia so really you know they can work for women wegot a lot of women who userc salt spray love that product are styling paste as well， so theres a lot of products that we have you know not to pay the the woman beauty tax and get same quality or if not better quality， uh products uh coming from amends company and then um i also have an ecommerce conversations podcast called ecommerce conversation so if you want to learn more about e commerce or watch me interviews some gas head over there e commerce conversation is put on by radical ecommerce and then im on twitter thats the one social media platform that im on its my last name band holds b as a boy and lz so ask me questions there if youve got a paid account on twitter you can deem me and be happy to chat with you love that you still call it twitter im very someone do i if you should call anything else its twitter its always will be twitter sorry Elon renameback so i OK so i have a question um yes i wanna grow i have a beard it i have struff and ill have scruff i cant do the thickneep what product you have that you use that i could use that with thicken this up and is your practices？
i could use that or specifically from your brand yeah！
i mean so my space make me feel self conscious he yeah are c salt spray is a product that adds texture and waves in the hair um and then from there you can think about like your technique for howyou let your beard really dry or how you style it so um Greg bersinskys one of our content creators a few like Google， like red bursanski like beard styling the biggest thing that you need to do is you gotta give it more length um i think if you give it more link youre gonna have more to play with this probably going to take you out about three months of growth to be able to get a beard of do this link so its not something that happens overnight but your beer looks good man i mean you could you could rock the beered stash， which is like give your mustash a little bit longer？
a link um and then keep here is my lib fix it my lib yeah but years is great yeah so the next one i have is so hair pays and you know i talk this all the time girls get clouded with the the the female tax even when it comes a beauty product you get the same product or even a better product at fraction of the cost they dont think they could do that one of the things and i and it didnt realize that you sold products doesnmatter if you have internal plugin or external plugin or whatever you identify with the fact that youre going to be punished because youve got internal plumbing with those taxes you know one of some of the things that cause i know women always want chineer more volumized hair what is the product that you would recommend？
i clearly am not asking for me but i would like to give this information to someonespecifically what is the product that you would？
you that you guys have that i hate this is your the best results that we have it may may or may not be your most popular one but this is the best one for the female side yeah！
i mean like i guess said the seasal spray is going to be a great product that will give you beachslikehair so that feeling where you go into the ocean you swim around you get out your hair is get that kind of like crunchy wavy natural toss like if you want that kind of style or csale spray is great uh is an innovated product where the first company interput clayin there to mimic the sand but you get in your hair when you go to the beach most stuff is just step effectively like liquid a shell that you spray on your hair or just salt in waters so they forgot a big component of that bci hair um so thats a great styling products are Washington soften or were not using any silicans in our process so one of the problems that you have with longhair is um chain pows are formulated to have silicans on it， which will code your hair and its not inherently bad its not like a paraban or you know a product distrient your quota quota damage but what happens is for you to remove the silicon you need a very intense wash to remove the silicon so what happens is when you run that intense wash through your hair then thats when you start to cost some of the damage you get that frizziness and then when you have that frizzyness your drada used in a iningredient that has silcount in there to smooth it all out so our formulation strategy is to do more gentle washing with a uh conditioner that doesnt have any so lookens in it to have a really like what we think is your body is pretty awesome and doing things as naturally and get it back to the roots of how your bodywould handle things rather than mask or disguise its work with your bodies in natural chemistry to kind of output where looking for so the washen software will be a great one to punch for people who are looking a cause minimal damage to hair um and when intendo i mean when your hair gets long it， it takes three or four years to to get it down to here so you dont wanna constantly be doing things to it that can cause phrasins or damage if for those viewer listening。
he just described his companies culture regarding his products as well so if youre in bandattention， hedleader describe protecting it natural bean part of that so man i love it everything you do aligns with who you are being the talk to you all and off camera i hope people track you down track down your podcast thank you for pro providing so much value i really appreciate you being on the show yeah！
but just all my mix traveling as we bring this episode to a close we hope Eric ban holds is incredible journey from beard enthusiast to e commerce pioneer has inspired you to rethink your approach to hiring and company culture we extend our heartfelt gratitude to Eric for his insights your transparent discussion about the challenges of building a team and the power of a strong company culture is invaluable for entrepreneurs everywhere to our listeners your commitment to personal unprofessional growth drives us to continue bringing you these transformativeconversations were genually grateful for your ongoing support for those eager to revolutionize their hiring process and build a culture first business you wont want a miss Eric comprehensive lab report its a treasure trove of practicalwisdom， including a detailed breakdown of his nine step hiring process strategies for infusing core values into every aspect of your business and tips for bootstrapping success dont miss out on this resourcevisit our websitetscalletlabdot com to access the labreport its your guide to building a dreamteam and a thriving company culture remember your companies culture is your competitive edge so go for build a team that shares your vision and watch your business flourish until our next session keep innovating tupculturattheforefrontanverstopscaling。