Zu geizig, um gute Leute einzustellen

0:00I sell guaranteed [clears throat] deadlines, and show-stopping trade show booths. Uh it's very >> deadline, what was it? >> Like we have guaranteed deadlines on our cuz they're it's all event event-based, right? So >> Uh-huh. >> People are hosting events like this. I have a guaranteed deadline on when our properties have to be there. >> So that you'll have a booth that you'll build for them. >> Yes, yes. >> That'll be done by the time. >> Exactly. Yes.

0:25>> Including the shipping and all that set up and what not. So we do A A to Z on that. Our revenue is about 10 million right now. I'd like to be at 20 to 25 million in 18 to 24 months. The biggest problem we're having is key man and manpower. And I mean it's kind of kind of same problem, right? I just need to hire more people to take over the responsibilities that we have now.

0:51>> So what stops you? >> The biggest thing is it's it's manpower in general, right? >> Okay, do you have the money to afford the manpower? >> Yes. >> Okay, what are the margins again? >> About 30%. >> Okay, so you're doing three-ish? >> Three-ish, yeah. >> Okay, that's not bad. Okay, so you have 3 million and what roles are you missing that you are struggling to fill? >> A lot a lot of trade industries like we need welders, carpenters, stuff like that.

1:16Obviously it's a big commodity right now, so everyone's paying top dollar for them. And just to get incentive to come work for us, especially in the trade show industry it's uh >> How much do you How much do you How much do you make per per tradesman roughly for the role that you're struggling to fill? Per year, gross profit. >> Um It's hard to say one part one part of the department that we just opened, and that it's the welding part, fabrication of it, metal part.

1:49We've brought in about probably $750,000. >> That's what one guy can do in terms of like what you can sell for his work. >> Yeah, and that that guy was me. Cuz I'm the one laser welding and doing all that of >> [laughter] >> Okay, so 750, fine. Let's just say that they're not as fast as you or as good as you and they can bring in 500. Does that sound fair? >> Yeah. >> Okay, great. So, 500 But what about gross profit though? What would So, that's revenue. And then is it just like what other costs are there besides labor?

2:15>> Very minimal. I mean the material I mean not obviously the the materials to build it. Um >> Is that like a huge like what percentage is that? 5%? >> Probably about 30% total is is the the material cost of that. >> Okay. So, they bring in 500k. So, there's 350k that would be left over. Does that sound right? And then you then you have to pay labor out of this. >> Yeah. >> Right? Okay, cool. But this would be like whatever after labor, the rest would be bottom line.

2:42>> Yeah, a little bit of building rent and stuff, but yeah. >> Yeah, just for just for incremental. Okay. So, um And that's per year. Okay, great. So, what how much how much are you how much does a welder normally get paid right now? >> They can go all the way up to $85 an hour depending on their their certificates. And we're not really >> like 180-ish. You can go up to that. Is that what you're offering? >> Uh we're offering a non-certified welder. So, those are

3:09>> So, how much do those guys get paid? >> 45 to 65. >> Okay, four What's a big range, but um >> Yeah. >> Okay. Uh so, let's just say 50 bucks an hour for simple math. >> Perfect. >> All right. So, 100 grand a year is what you're offering. Right? Um what do you pay right now in order to like in ads to get those people? >> We we have I I don't know the exact number of ads we're paying for, but we have uh I have my project managers on LinkedIn paying for the ads to bring people in.

3:37>> Okay. So, let's assume let's just get really aggressive here and say that you pay 180,000 for the Like if you paid 180, do you think you'd be able to fill the spot? >> Yeah. >> Okay, great. Um uh let's do 150 so I don't have to do this math. There we go. >> [snorts] >> So, $200,000 in gross profit is what's on the line, right? And if you paid this, you know you'd be able to fill the role. So, why don't we do that? That's real real question.

4:03>> Um it's If I could find someone qualified, I would pay pay for that, but it's the part the hardest part is bringing someone in, training them training them how to our processes, and then maybe they're >> If you advertise at this rate, you'd probably get more qualified guys. >> Okay. Okay. >> So, if you did that, and you got a qualified guy, you'd happily pay him. >> True, yeah.

4:30It's not a problem solved. >> [laughter] >> And don't feel weird about it. I had a a dentist here like 2 months ago. He was doing 20 million top line, 4.6 million in take home, and he was like, "I have it's I have he has a boutique dentistry, blah blah blah blah blah, right? I only have unicorns, etc. etc." And so, I said, "How much do you make in gross profit after you pay dentist per year?" And he said, "$700,000 in gross profit is what he makes per dentist per year in his in his practice."

5:00And I was like, "Okay." And his issue is he that's after him paying them, right? And so, his problem was that he I was like, "Okay, well, what are you spending in advertising to go acquire these these dudes?" He's like, "I'm spending $2,500 a month in advertising to get these dentists, and it's just not working." And wild. And so, I said, "Why don't we just get a head hunter and pay him a hundred grand to go find the person? And would you be I think I said 150 cuz I was being aggressive.

5:28150 grand per person. And so, this year your profit's going to go from 4.6 to 4, and then next year you'll add 2.8 million in profit to the business. And if I give you a trade that Imagine I have a stock stock investment where I said, "Hey, you give me 600 grand a day, and then for the rest of your life, you're going to make 2.8 million in profit per year on this investment. You'd be like, [ __ ] yeah. I would do that. Right. And for whatever reason, we don't do that with our businesses. And so this is why I still believe that to this day, the best way to beat the market is to find eight-player talent and pay them well.

6:01You'll also retain them longer, all that stuff. And I'll just say this is like just a general thing for anybody who deals with the trades, which is about a quarter of you guys. Right now, there's going to be I think there's going to be like a compression and then a huge drop off the floor, but for the next few years, you have to accept that the cost of acquiring and and paying good tradesmen is going to go up. It's a supply-constrained market. And so in a supply-constrained market, the supply has the has the has the the upper hand. And so that means that you're going to have to pay them more.

6:32Now, the good news is that the vast And this is, you know, not a slight, but there's a lot of people who are in the trades world who are not very good at business. Um and so they will not think this way. And so fundamentally, we just have to do the math of Is it Is it worth the money? And so what I was what I was outlining here, I was about to do the other side of this is LTGPE, lifetime gross profit per employee, to CAT, which is cost of acquiring talent. So just like we did LTGP to CAC on the customer side, it's the exact same equation on the other side, which is how much am I willing to pay to acquire talent and how much do I make in talent per year? What's the lifetime value of this talent? And so when you look at, okay, if we were to keep spelling it out, I'd be like, the average person stays with you for 6 years. You'd be like, great. So all in, I'm going to pay a one-time recruiter 20 grand to go get this guy, and I'm going to pay $150,000 per year over the next 6 years. So I'm going to pay 900K plus the 100, I pay a million bucks, but I'm going to get $200,000 per year for the 6 years, and I make it back, right? I'm going to make two whatever in profit all after that cost.

7:28>> If you're a business owner and you are not growing as fast as you'd like, I'd like to give you a free gift. So my team and I put together the $100 million scaling roadmap, which is basically 200 hours of us looking over all the portfolio companies we've had and what stages of growth they went through and more importantly where they got stuck and how they got past it. And so we broke it into these 10 stages and we made this little kind of quiz thing where if you put in your business information it'll tell you where you're at and the most important part for you what to do for each of functions of the business across product, marketing, sales, customer success, recruiting, IT, human resources and finance. And so no matter what you're struggling with someone else has already struggled with it and solved it. And so I'd like to give you this thing absolutely free you can go to acquisition.com/roadmap plug in your business information and if you want us to actually help you deconstruct the business and you're trying to scale we'd love to help you out on the thank you page you just book a call with my team and we will look at the business, see if we can help and if we can we'll invite you out to Vegas and we'll do this in person live.