In this edition of Junk Removal Made Simple Lee talks about the proper way to manage your junk removal team members. www.junkremovalauthority.com www.junkdrs.com Subscribe to this channel for all the best junk removal industry info Like and follow us on Facebook at Junk Removal Authority
Alright guys, another episode junk yard made simple by Junk Removal Authority, today we’re talking about team member management. Remember what we always talk about here at the Junk Removal Authority is building a business. No serious business had a, does not have team members. If you’re not going to have team members, you’re not a serious business. And with junk, we have to have somebody to help you. Um, you can do some jobs by yourself, but, uh, you know, there, there, there’s more jobs than not. You’re going to require a helper. So you have to have team members. Now, when you first started, you likely to be on the truck, depending on the situation. Most of you start out on the truck, uh, at least some there in the very beginning. As you get everybody hired out, as you’re training people to do what they need to do. The one of the key things is, is what happens once you’re off the truck, during your most profitable work, which is sales, marketing, and the work behind the scenes on your business. So being the face of your business and doing the long term planning, every business, make sure that the equipment and all that your business requires is in good condition. And then also, uh, the, the most important thing is getting out there and getting more sales for your business. So right from the store, one of the keys on team member management, is to hire great people.
If you will, your organism organization to have the reputation of having really, really friendly people work for then and you’ve got to hire for lay people that the entire key of having a, of getting great reviews and all about how friendly or people are, is to hire friendly people. Hire great people. So hire personality first. Hire appearance second. And when I mean by appearance is, are you going to allow visible tattoos? Junk yarders does not allow visible tattoos. If you have a visible tattoo, you have to be willing to cover it and say they have to wear like long sleeves or whatever. Um, hair length, how long the hair, your hair are you going to allow? Um, you know, uh, and then talk about your uniform policy and all of that and make sure everybody is up to your appearance standards. So do that. Second. The third thing is hire strength.
Typical interview is going to last about 15 minutes. If your interviews are lasting any longer, you’re wasting time. You really will not know how somebody’s going to do with junk removal until you’ve actually gotten them out there on the truck. And so you see what they’re made of. Guys, it isn’t a corporate job, you’re not interviewing somebody to, to lead your marketing team. You’re not interviewing somebody is going to be doing IT work. You’re not interviewing an executive for your position, you’re interviewing a truck team labor, and you can tell somebody has a good personality. And for first, if somebody comes in and they’re not looking at you and uh, they’re, they, they came late. If they’re late at all, they’re one minute late. They can interview with us. They’re done. If somebody’s going to be late to an interview, they’re going to be late to the job and you can’t, you can’t tolerate tardiness.
You get the appearance, right, and then you hire the strength third. So, and let me tell you, some small guys are very strong, but it’s not going to meet a whole lot. So one thing you can do is keep some heavy items, rear projection, screen TVs, that kind of stuff around the office and, and then you can kind of try them out. And Joe, we’ve got a, we’ve got a lot. We’ve got a waiver that they actually sign before they lift a thing, saying that they are not working for us, they’re trying out to potentially get a job. We need to see if they have the strength to do it. So they waive any releases for us of liability should they get hurt while they’re lifting that heavy items. So that’s not a bad thing to do until you get them out on the truck, you’re not for certain gonna know what they’re made of. You kinda can make judgments here, taking them out there, you don’t know. So what we generally recommend doing, is on day one they’ll come and we’ll come in for like an hour or two. So Day one, after you hire him, they read, you, get you get, you give them the, you know the paperwork done and you give them the operations manuals.
Now, to be part of a JRA, you already have a complete set operations mails from to go for it. Go, go through. So I mean you’ve got your entire business package from JRA. Everything that needs to get done is documented. If you’re starting your own business and you chose not to partner with JRA, then you need to develop some operations manuals when you’re, when you’re new, you’re not going to know what you’re doing anyway, but develop some basic operations manuals out of what you expect and then just amend those operations manuals as you learn what you’re doing. So you want to give them the operations manuals.
You want to do paperwork. That’s going to be your NC 44, well North Carolina is NC four. That’s going to be your state’s tax form W4I9 and make a copy of driver’s license, but copy, social security card, all that good stuff. If they’ve got to be driving, you send over their information to the insurance company for, for driving. You now have a checklist of what you need to do. Again, partners with JRA will have that. They’ll know everything that needs to get done from start to finish from hiring somebody. But, you know, you need to develop your own checklist about your hiring procedures. So don’t waste, don’t spend a whole lot of time talking over on this first day talking over what you expect out of ops and operations manuals. Like when we, for a long time, we used to spend like two, three hours on their first day of training, going through operations and there were a couple people I’d spend two or three hours of my time covering what’s expected and then they would no show their next day or they decide it’s not for them or they work one day and then they were done.
So day one, give up man and to do paperwork. And then we recommend a two week probationary period. During that two weeks, either us or them can basically cut us loose at any point. Now you might be able to do a one week probationary period because after two or three days, the majority of team members know if they are at this kind of work, they can they want or not the first day, start out, have him start where they know to and you might want to do this for like two days unless they just hit the ball out of the park first time. Your team members are very happy with them. They say they know exactly what they’re doing. No issues whatsoever. You might be able to turn loose on the second day, but it’s always a good idea to work them as a, as a a third person for the first couple of days because they’re more likely to no show for a few days. If they get out there and their work’s too hard for them to strangers, it’s too hot. They encounter something nasty they don’t like. Then they’re more likely to drop out and the first few days and then later on.
Once they weren’t a full day to. At that point, you need to meet with them. Go over operations manuals and really trained them up at that point, you’re really gonna make sure they’re going to be a good, valuable team member for you and you’re going to put as much effort as you can into making sure that they know what needs to be done and how to do it.
You need to be strict on parties are tolerant party policies. You’re allowed three per quarter. Anything over that. You have a sit down meeting with the GM and, this case Christian. And then if, if you are tardy again within that same quarter, you’re generally cut loose, so, and one minute late, it’s considered tardy. If they show up and they don’t have their shirt tucked in or the shirts, if wrinkly, they’re not dressed in uniform, they haven’t eaten. That’s considered tardy, tardy. You’re tardy unless you show up to work on time, ready to, or you’re not ready to work. If your shirts untucked and all that kind of stuff, you must be very strict on this because what will happen is if you’re not the team members you have that are getting on time, that are doing their part, they’re getting into work on time. We’ll notice that Joe keeps coming in and, and Joe who is late all the time and nothing’s happening. So they’re going to start, you know, hitting that snooze button and staying on, just staying in bed a little bit later before you know anybody who got, showed up five, 10, 15 minutes late.
That throws off your entire day. If you like young doctors, you know, one crews doing anywhere from four to seven jobs in a day, one guy being late throws off your entire day and, can keep kicking, can possibly have you, getting off late jobs, which is a no today.
Don’t tolerate mediocrity. So if you’re having to constantly correct somebody again and again and again, and it’s just not getting through their head, you need to cut them loose. You want to be compassionate with your people. But, but listen guys, you’re taking the risk, you’re, you’re the one that’s putting you taken out loans to, to run this business and, and, you know, it’s a lot harder for you to quit if something goes wrong, then for one of your team members, look out for yourself in this. You want to be, be fair to your team members and you want to try and make sure that they get hours and again, just be very fair and be compassionate towards them, but don’t get too emotionally involved. Very, very, very seldom will you, will you come across a team member who is actually your friend and it’s easy to look at him as a friend.
And if you’re looking at him as a friend, that’s great. But the problem is, is they probably aren’t in return. I’ve had far too many team members loaned him money that never got paid back or lend them money when they quit shortly thereafter or you know, they would ask all for the next day. And I do my best. I spend time trying to find somebody else to cover them, to get them all for you. Know there’s been umpteen doesn’t things that we’ve done for team members and, they just, it’s like, they think that you’re making all the money you can afford to do it. You’re not really doing them a huge favor that they make you enough money that they can do whatever and as soon as they get a better chance, they’ll leave you high and dry. They’ll quit and they want. This is something, a lot of people just quit without even showing up.
You’ll have one guy, I remember one guy in particular, this guy’s name was Scott and Scott and I got along great. He was nice guy. He’s a, he’s a big guy. He’s a great worker. A I think a week or two before I took them out to lunch. We eat lunch together. Paul kind of cut up and everything and then all of a sudden, one day, no shows three days in a row, we’d never hear from them. I had to before he made contact with me. What I, when I found out he was okay. I was about to call the wall and had a log in check on him because nobody heard of him. If he hadn’t been communicate with me and I can communicate with any of the other coworkers. And I know the guy was dead laid up in his apartment, whatever I was about to send the cops in and make contact.
Said he was okay with one of his team members. He would not talk to me until I told him in order for him to get his last check. He had kept his shirts in and, the operation manual, we had a paper manuals at the time and meet with me, or, you know, or he wouldn’t, you want to get paid. He was not getting his last check. So when he showed up, no apology or whatsoever or anything. I don’t think it ever registered him that I was just born he left, but I was worried about him too. That was one main thing I would where I was really worried about him.
So you’re taking all the risk here, make sure you’re looking out for yourself. And you, if somebody is not, hold up the ring and get rid of and find somebody else, you know, everybody’s got to perform. One of the things you can ask, I love this ask, would you rehire? So knowing what you know now about that team member, would you hire them again? And if the answer is no, you need to get rid of them. If the answer is yes or maybe look into it further, correct the problem, if you can’t get it corrected, then you’ll need to get rid of them. So that right there is what I always do and they will find somebody I say would I rehire them? And, and that generally tells me what needs to be done right then and there.
Always document everything. Documenting everything will help you avoid lawsuits, avoid unemployment claims. I had to, I’ve had more people to file for unemployment when they were let go because I couldn’t get into work on time, because they cussed out another one of my team members because they cussed in front of a lot of customers and didn’t treat customers very well and what saved my bacon was the fact that from the very start I documented everything. So when the unemployment commission comes and they’re like, ever going to pay this guy some unemployment money, I say, I was like, no, no, no, you’re not. Here’s what he did on this date, this date, this date. He was late on this date. He cussed in front of a team member on this date. I had camera footage in the truck where he was cussing out a team member and, and saying inappropriate things about me, you know, he’s not getting employment.
And that’s different by state. Some states are a lot or on the employee’s side on unemployment. And, and then it becomes even more critical to make sure you document everything stayed in North Carolina. We got a pretty good. They’re journaling on the employer side. So it’s, you know, it’s not that in North Carolina as a right to work state, generally employment, unemployment, at least in the state of North Carolina. And in both states, unemployment is, applies only to people who were basically laid off. So if you just got cut because of a downturn in the economy, because they shut down division, something like that. Normally you’re eligible for unemployment in the, especially the case in North Carolina, if you did anything wrong whatsoever, and, and, and you were fired with calls than you are not eligible for unemployment, but make sure you document everything or that’s hard to prove.
Generally no loans, because if you do it with one person, everyone else is going to expect it. Now, if you are going to do it, learn. The only way you should do it is by getting collateral. What do I mean by that is, like a pay advance, but, always do it after they’ve already worked, at least the amount you owe them for the pay advance. So for example, I recently violated this role and I loaned one of our team members some money, but what I did, he was wanting to thousand dollars. And I said no because he was long story short, he’s moving into a new place while I was still in his old. He’s gonna have to pay double rent. He’s been with us several years. Good team member. But what I did even then, and he wanted, he wanted a bar, a thousand, a thousand dollars.
And I told him, I said, I said I can loan you a thousand, but I’m not going to let you a thousand old ones. What I will do is I’m going to loan you 500 today, this Friday and I’ll, although you $500 next Friday. Reason being is because I knew he’d make 500. I, it’s going to make sure he got another hours. He would go to work enough where he’s going to make 500 bucks, he’d already made 500 that one week and then I will make sure he made another 500 following week. That way if something happens, I’ve got collateral, I’ve got the time he’s worked and you simply just deduct that from his check. So always give loaning team members have collateral. Don’t, don’t. I lost too much money, a couple thousand dollars loan and the team members and never got paid back.
No tolerance on drug use wait, it’s obviously affecting, your team’s performance. And if you suspect it they’re on, if you suspect they’re on drugs, they’re rolling. Anytime a personality change they’re on it and a drug addict is extremely good at concealing and lying. Most drug addicts are very good at lying. They’ve been lying their whole life about the drug problem. So you know, we’ve encountered issues in the past. You kind of say, well, something’s changed about him. Is he on drugs? He says no, and every time he proved to be right, any suspicion whatsoever of drug, drug using an urgent care can provide a drug test, have them go to an urgent care, a company then to an urgent care, have them take a drug test and you can see the results under no circumstances whatsoever. If you even begin to suspect somebody is on drugs, do you allow them to drive? It probably shouldn’t work. But if you had the slightest suspicion until you get this drug test results back, they don’t drive. So, that, that you’re just opening yourself up. Issues there.
One of the things I like is find ways they can earn commission. I want my team leaders especially and make make money, have opportunity to make money. I want to pay them fairly. I want to give them opportunity to earn money if they excel. So what we do, we have some marketing programs that we do that if it, if it leads to jobs, it’s the team members like putting out flyers and yard signs, stuff like that. We actually pay the team members commissions for any jobs that they bring. All that. One of the other things we’re doing is we’re. We already know, I’ve talked about this in the past, that we are going to a model shifting a model to where we are going to start selling items that we get, so we’re building and getting ready to start building the store and we’re gonna give our our team members a commission percentage, all full of anything they bring back that we can sell just our team later knocking member team leaders. You always want to try and give extra incentive to your tls people that drive quote, would you a quote jobs? You want to, you want to make them really appreciate that extra responsibility they have and be able to make a decent amount more money than your navigator. You want to give them a reason to become a TL.
I’m kind of run out of real estate or something will move up. Kind of skip around a little used cameras. Now vehicle cameras are a little bit of the pain that had a little bit of pain in the ass. If you want live feed. We always like live feed them, lowers, but you know, it’s 30, 40 bucks a month per truck. It’s hard to get a good reliable signal. Visual cameras, a little bit of a pain for sure. Uh, all but make sure you can get recorded. I suggest you have at least some trucks. Have live cameras and put team members you might trust a little bit less. Trucks have live cameras and they just rotate them around too. So when you have multiple trucks is rotate people around in different trucks. That way you can watch them live. Always have gps, always, always, always had gps on your vehicle. You want to say that people are spending 45 minutes at a, at a breakfast place, first thing in the morning, you know, comrades, you should eat. I ate already. You want to, you know where they are, if a customer calls and ask an ETA and you can’t get up with them. So cameras and gps, you can’t be on the truck with everybody but, in person. But if you have a camera, you have a gps tracker, you can
The only people that disliked cameras are people that are doing something wrong, the ones that are doing everything right, like cameras, because that weeds out the ones that are doing things wrong. Cameras are good. Don’t worry about people thinking you’re invading the privacy. They are in your, your vehicle, your property, and they’re getting paid by you. You have the right to know that what they’re doing is correct.
Check timecards daily always, always, always. Every single day at the end of the day or the next day, verify time. Make sure somebody had forgotten to clock in or clock out and make sure that, uh, you know, what? Generally do is match up team members. So if joe was working with John, make sure John clocked out about the same time as joe and Joe can luck out about St John’s. So, uh, that way you can make sure that everybody’s doing what they should is for time management. When you have a policy, teach them the why behind it. So for example, one of the policies we have when you knock on somebody’s door, soon as you knock, you take two steps down. You turn, you don’t want to be riding up on the too close. You don’t want to be too far away because that seems to distance. The key is two steps, and the why behind that is because if you’re too close, you’re crowding him.
There was a, the one of the most successful pizza delivery man of all time actually ran numbers and he tried on a tracking spreadsheet how, what, what were his tips were when he was owned by the same level as the porch, as the person who answered the door when he had taken a step down and we had taken a second step down. He got more tips my far on the second step down that he did on the third or fourth step down or on the first term or the or the base level. He had a lot more tips consistently from that second level. So that’s the reason junk doctors use this to knock and then two steps down when greeting somebody,
When you’re looking to advance, when you’re opening up a new position, be it somebody to answer the phone and book jobs. A dispatch person will call them ATC here, junk doctors that kind of routes, trucks all over the place. Somebody, uh, that’s gonna make me run a store. If you’re selling some of the items, anytime you have a higher up position, becomes available all free to think about it and trying to offer to an existing team member first. If you don’t have somebody you think would be good at it, then a higher outside, but always try and promote within.
I just want to reiterate, every successful business out there, for the most part, every real business has people that work for it. Uh, you must be willing to get out there and hire people. I hear business owners all the time, especially when I first started back when I was hanging out with, when I was around kind of less successful business owners a lot of times. And they’d always, they always talk about, you know, the problem with businesses, people promise people. The problem is employees. I can’t stand employees. They never, they always show up late, leave early, take too long a lunch break, don’t care about their work, do bad work. And the thing is, that’s the only if you hire the wrong people and it’s only if you don’t supervise, you can try and right. You’re not, you’re going to face all your, some of your, most of your, especially in your early years, your biggest, your most amount of stress except for a slow day out.
Most of my stress is going to be dealing with team members. But as you get larger, it actually gets easier to a certain point. So it’s not, it’s not as bad when it’s, when it’s you and, and like two other guys and you’re all metronic and they’re on the drug, gets everybody, gets along pretty good. You know, generally you’ve got to pretty good, good people in there you’re working with. The challenging part gets to where you get between like four and say 10 depends on many team members we have, but, but for a 10 team members, somewhere in there gets to be a bit challenging when you get up to 13, 14, 15 team members at that point, what happens is you’re less reliant on one person. They actually know that. So they make sure that they do a really, really good job because they know that it’s going to be a lot easier for you to replace them. That you don’t rely on them as much when you have more people, when you just have a few people, four, five, six, especially, people which can kind of show up late and that will, they’ll think they’ll get away with it.
Don’t allow them to get away with it, do not allow him to get away with it, but it does get easier as you add more people that you start, you weed out the bad ones and things start to run a lot smoother and the other thing never rely on one in business. You have one, unless he had number one, unless you jumped doctors in Raleigh or Charlotte or Greensboro and you’re doing more business than anybody else in your particular market, unless you’re number one, you don’t want anything to do with one. You don’t want one team member you rely on, you don’t want one customer brings the majority of your business. You don’t want advertising method that brings in the majority of your business, for example, used to scare the absolute hell out of me that the main way we were getting business was through ad words. And finally I developed a marketing play or we got a lot of other business from other avenues. And then also just as we were business lawn where we had more and more previous clients coming and more and more referrals from those previous clients. You don’t own one if you help it, you don’t want one truck.
We first start, if you have one truck, try and make a new one, make it something reliable downtown in downtime kills you or instead of buying one brand new truck, maybe you get two lightly used trucks, you’re going to, you know, but still make sure they’re reliable. Whatever you do, if you have one truck you might have to get started. You need to have a rental agreement already in place, like a u-haul or budget or something like that. That can be your backup option. And just try and get a second truck as soon as possible because you need that backup in place.
Anything you know, just is never, never, never rely on one team member, especially though, because, if you have really, really big day coming up and then the no show, you’re in trouble. So what you might wind up doing is you might wind up high and when you really only need one person, when you first started, like when we, when we first opened a new location, would you only hire three people or four people and then, you know, we’re up to six or you know, we got up to six by the third month in operation, depending on when we started. It was just during the slow season. It will be a little later if we started a busy season, you know, that’ll make a difference. But, what’s my attitude? You might that flyers, yard signs, stuff like that, that they put out to stay busy in order for them to get enough time that they want to keep working with you, uh, but go ahead and pay that extra 10 hours a week or whatever than risk having just one team member.
The other thing is junk removal can be cyclical from week to week overall. You know, the north, the, the weather affects you a little bit more, but you still have to get, stay pretty busy. But, it can be significant from week to week, rain parts. So when you have rain for several days in a row, that slows you down. But the thing is, if you’re slow for three or four days, you’re generally going to make it up on the other days. You’ll be so busy you can’t really keep up it be wearing after one team member. So always make sure you have extra. Never have one team member. I’m spending another episode of Junk Removal Made Simple by the Junk Removal Authority. Remember, a junk removal authority is the source to help you start, grow and expand your junk removal business. We provide complete business packages, takes you from the idea to opening day.
Everything in between. That includes your logo design, that includes your website, that includes your initial ad words setup, that includes your initial social media setup. That includes us coming to you. We’ve got complete websites. The websites, they SEO great. They’re great for ad words, ad words, management, anything you need for your junk yard business. Talk to us. Email me, [email protected]. [email protected] called nine, one, nine four, six, six, nine, three, two, two. You follow me on Facebook at Lee Godbold. You can also follow our junk doctors page and I’m really, really, really just looking forward to helping everybody. Hope this video right here provided a lot of great information for you and we’ll see you next time.