Service Team Training: Addressing The Massive Skills Gap In The Multifamily Industry With Mark Cukro

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I wanted to start by introducing our friends from the Commercial Painting Contractor. They are supporters of this show. Check them out. If you have any type of needs for commercial painting for big projects that people you might want to call, give them a call. With that being said, let's get to introducing our first repeated guest. I'm very excited to welcome back Mark Cukro. Welcome back to the show.

Thank you very much for having me. It's an honor to be the first person back. I look forward to sharing my experiences and insights over the past, now that the pandemic has ended and we're reentering, are trying to normalize things as much as possible. I appreciate it.

For the people in the audience that don't know you well, or they don't know you at all, very few. You've been around for a long time. Why don't you introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about yourself, your background, and the businesses that you're you created and running?

I have been in business on my own for many years. I started off like many people on the show or multifamily as a groundskeeper, then I became a technician, I moved up through the workforce, then I became a supervisor, a regional position, then had a national position for the director of the service team development training and a lot of capital projects. Before I entered multifamily, I was an HVAC contractor. I have a lot of experience in the field. I've been doing trades my entire life now. I have 3 businesses, 2 that I own and 1 that I help run. That's all I do. I spend time with my family. I'm very blessed to have a wonderful family. That's my focus.

I have the service team training it's called PlusOne Incorporated, which is a concept that I got out of a book. That's anytime you provide service, add plus one. Always do a little something extra. That's not required to make your experience with your customer memorable. You shouldn't have to be asked. That's why I have PlusOne Inc. as the company and service team training. I can't think of a better name that describes what we do then than ServiceTeamTraining.com.



After years in the business of traveling the country, speaking and doing seminars, training, and speaking conferences, I have been asked multiple times, “Do you have anything for you that's training for people in the field, like from someone in the field for people in the field?” I bought MaintenanceVideos.com. I've started to build it. Now, I'm populating it with training videos. They're either talks for managers and supervisors for 5 to 10 minutes, in some cases, longer videos of sitting down and explaining how things work components, systems, and processes to help technicians in the field so they don't have to go through a three-hour course to get something that they need in 5 or 10 minutes. That's where I am right now.

Aside from that, I've been a jiu-jitsu coach. I've done Brazilian jiu-jitsu since it arrived in the United States in the mid-‘90s. I own an academy of 100 students and have a great team that works. They've all been with me for a long time. That's the other part of my life that helps me in this part. Both parts help each other.

A few very things that you share with us about your businesses, the first one is the training video part. I wanted to share a story with you with the audience. I posted something on LinkedIn about, “What do you think you will find the most useful ?” I give people some options. It was a poll. They responded to the questions, but then there were a couple that typed in responses to my poll, and they made comments, “This is the app that you're looking for.” I reached out to one of the gentlemen right there and I asked for a demo.

During the demo, they presented the product to me. It seems to be a great product. It's a product that's focused on all the apps that I know on workflow only. Make radius, service requests and inspections, whether due diligence, quarterly or annual inspections. What the app didn't have, all the apps that I know don't have, is a component. I've asked them, “Would you find this component useful or do you have something that has training or short training videos that show technicians in the field, how to do it, they don't have to run, they don't have to use their browser on the phone, literally, they pick up the phone, click on an app, go to HVAC, very little friction in the process and get to the video that helps them troubleshoot?”

They said, “We're not a training app.” That was pretty fascinating to me. Why? At the end of the day, all companies that are selling something or a product that comes with extra features are not making money, but it makes the experience more appealing and interesting, like you said, training videos. Please talk to me about your training videos and, how are they going to be accessible, where they are accessible to the general public.

A few things. I have a nice library. Now I'm working with some of the big companies like Grace Hill, GROW and swift bunny. Some of them will be available to them. It's more specifically for them. They're big presences in this industry, then I'm going to have my own thing, which is specifically from me summit in the field for people in the field. There'll be anywhere from 1 to 7 or 8 minutes. There'll be meeting or safety topics that you can plug into your schedule. If you're in a golf cart, car, van, or breezeway, you're like, “How do I troubleshoot this limit switch?”

You'll have a quick breakdown with of me with a multimeter explaining it, because what most companies do is say, “How can training help us reach our financial, retention or resident goals?” the individual wants to know, “How can this make my job in my life easier?” The resident wants to know, “Are you going to show up, make the problem go away, be professional, clean up, and then make sure that I am happy about what you did before you leave?”

We have these different perspectives. Typically, training companies very often focus on process and flow first, which is very important. When it comes to having someone who can articulate the technical points in a way that makes sense to someone who may not have a lot of experience, that's the tremendous shortage in the industry. Just because you take someone that's great at repairing something, it doesn't mean they're great at teaching that or vice versa. The same thing with leasing, management or any other discipline or endeavor in life. You can be an amazing practitioner of something, then in other areas, it doesn't overlap. You don't benefit people from other areas. That's my approach to training. It's getting built as we speak. It'll be out soon.

I have some trading-specific questions for you, more for someone with your experience. I think our audience will gain a lot from our perspective, bond trading in general and maintenance training in particular. You are the first returning guest on our show. This is exciting. It's a new milestone for the show. Thank you for accepting the invitation to come back. One of the reasons why I asked you to be back, to return, is that a lot has happened since we had the first conversation, and especially on a labor shortage front. I would like you to share some insight with me about what you're seeing and what I hope you're getting from the field of what has happened since our first conversation.

I presented at the NAA on this topic and would like to share some of those findings. Things have gotten better in some very small instances, but mostly things have gotten a lot worse from the perspective of not just the demand for technicians but also the demand for skilled technicians. That shortage is growing. It's going to continue to grow. We have to make some adjustments in this if you're an owner or a manager or regional, we have to make some serious changes in the industry, or you're going to have a shortage like you can't even imagine. If you think we have a shortage now, we're going to have one that's at least twice as big in the next year or two. We have to prepare and get ahead of the change. The challenge is people wait for pain before they address the pain in many cases. We want to make sure that we get ahead of that.

The other thing is that unskilled people are being promoted into supervisory positions without infield experience. You don't have to be able to repair everything. When I hear a technician say, “My supervisor should be able to fix everything or repair everything or service manager,” it's not the case. The manager can't do everything on the property. People that do marketing can't do everything. People that do service and maintenance can't do everything. We have to understand what we're looking for. The supervisor’s main role is to supervise and coordinate.

If you'll hear the term working supervisor, the more tech person works in the field, the less they can supervise the field. That's the balance of responsibilities. Also, it seems like a simple shift, but the rise of the service manager title is starting to take a lot more of a foothold in our industry because it implies monetary obligation and business success, as opposed to maintenance. Supervisors to watch not always do and participate. Managing means you have a monetary obligation. What do we do with those technicians that are coming into the field that are brand new? The big difference is, let's say you pick someone out of the workforce. This is an example.

There are exceptions. If you have someone that has been in the business for twenty years, you would expect the person that's been in the business for twenty years to have a much deeper reference of trades tools, working with tools, construction, electrical systems, mechanical systems, that's not always the case. Most people, let's say, my age, and we'll leave age out of the equation. Still, you grew up fixing cars or bicycles, working in the shop and fixing everything that you needed. There were no distractions by entertainment and technology as much that we may not be as savvy at technology in some instances, but we have a much deeper reference for the trades. That is completely reversed. It's inversely abortion.

People entering the workforce are very savvy with technology. This is a phrase I like, “If you need life advice, go see your grandparents or your parents. If you need your cell phone fixed, give it to your kid.” We have this challenge in the workforce, then we have a shortage of trades and training. I want to talk about training a little bit more, but I want to make a statement. There's not a single service industry, not one that trains its technicians less than multifamily. This needs to change. Out of all the service industries, multifamily provides the least amount of training across the board industry-wide. I think that we need to change that.

The trends I'm seeing are those. The other trend I'm seeing quite often, I'm very encouraged to see this, is the rise of the regional service director or their service manager. With that person, now it's getting a significant amount of investments from their company. They are sharing, co-sharing or co-managing the role with the regional manager except from a service perspective. They get more involved with capital projects into personal issues and training, they're making sure people get their certifications. That is something that needs to continue, in my opinion, and it does make a difference. If you're a regional manager, imagine having someone take a third to half of your phone calls and handle them from the intrapersonal and service perspectives.

It's going to free up some time and remove a lot of stress. There's also a shortage in the office teams. That's probably a different seminar or topic. Those are the trends I'm seeing. The last one is there's a little bit of bounce back now. All of these jobs are being offered to people. There's a tremendous shortage. The average is 40%. I expect that to get more. How do we adjust all of these? What is happening a little bit is people are leaving the industry. I'll go over the top reasons why.

They're bouncing back to the industry. There is a little bit of a bounce back. If you are hoping everyone returns, please be ready for people that return that ask yourself, “Do you have a policy or a personal belief where if someone ever leaves your company, they're no longer welcome back on that team?” You may want to reconsider that. Sometimes people need that experience outside the industry to go, “This was a bad decision. I want to go back to the industry I love and maybe find a better environment.” Those are the trends I'm seeing.

I want to pick up on one of the things that you said, “Our industry provides the least amount of training for all service industries in general.” You are seeing specific maintenance technicians work. I want to touch on service manager training and how our service managers are typically becoming service managers. There are exceptions. You have a very hard-working and very serious with a lot of work ethic maintenance technician that produces a lot in a day. They are the most efficient ticket runner on a property. When something happens with their manager, whether they quit, get fired, move on or start something else, that position becomes vacant. The first instinct for a manager is to look for someone that's familiar with already, which is your top producer, the technician. Hand them the keys and say, “Congratulations, you've done a great job. Now you've been promoted.”

You're talking about an asset that is $60 million, $70 million or maybe $100 million. All we do is hand them a key and asking got to figure this job out on their own. Forgive me, but in my personal opinion, you are irresponsible to take someone that has no knowledge virtually or any type of management or how to run a service department, put him in that position and expect them to succeed, beg them to produce results, with no formal training in sincerity, that has to change, that must change because we're setting people up for failure and burnout then you could turn a very good service technician into a miserable person human being, and also a not successful service manager. You will be losing a service manager, midterm or long-term, and you will also be losing your technicians' chances a technician.

What was the benefit of having this approach, and why not take the time and invest in our people, training them properly, then selling them for success? The second point I want to make is to get your take on the overlap between the two jobs, service manager and service technician. I'm not going to say my personal opinion about it. I would like to know yours and get your take on what percentage it overlaps between the two positions.

If someone promotes a technician to a supervisor and expects them to jump into the position and perform, honestly, I don't know what to say. It's delusional. You are setting someone up for failure. When they burn out, it's your fault. You put them in that position. If you prepare the person and invest in them in training, soft skills, supervisory skills, coaching, counseling, training, organization, scheduling and project management, then you put them in a position and they're successful. That is also your fault. All skill is a learned behavior.

Nobody enters the world as a human being and has this natural ability. You may have attributes, but you don't have skills. The tendencies may lead you towards something more than another. You don't arrive on planet Earth with the skill sets to be an amazing human being. You have to learn and make mistakes. It doesn't matter how educated you are or where you go to school. I guarantee you had a pencil with an eraser on it. We still put erasers on pencils. It doesn't matter where you go to school or how long you've been doing something.

If you're a regional manager, it's tempting for a manager of any kind of company organization to take a top performer and put them in a vacancy in a vacant position and think that the top performer will just perform. While they may have the attributes, mindset, drive and understanding on how to learn, achieve and overcome, they do not have the skillset in that position yet just because they were put in it. There's a learning curve. In jiu-jitsu, we have a saying that, “What got you to this belt is not what you need for the next belt. Leave the old belt behind and work on the new one.”

You have to prepare for that. When you transition into that position, nobody knows that a person has left the last one. Nobody knows that an inexperienced person isn't the new one. You should fill that position as if a masterful person took on that job. If you've done that, you have done a very good job preparing your employees because upward mobility is hands down. It’s 1 of the top 3 things that's been mentioned for these positions.

The challenge with that is you have unsafe, more unskilled people with trades, work, tools and equipment entering the workforce. They have the academic ability to understand how things are working, but they don't have the practical ability in the field to make the judgment calls, repair something and think, “My gauges say this. I learned this in trade school. I think this is a symptom that's misleading me.” Oftentimes, we follow symptoms that mislead us instead of getting to the root cause of the problem. The root cause of the problem in many cases is training. I can tell you this as a coach. I know we'll get into this a little bit later. People that train more, win more. People that train less, win less. Find me a team that proves otherwise. I would love to see that information. Do you want me to get to the point of the overlap between the technician and the supervisor?

Please do. I like to get your take on it as I have my own, which I'm going to express later on. I want you to go first.

I suspect it's similar in different at the same time because we're different people. When you're a technician, at least in my opinion, your main concern is having three levels of service. The novice, intermediate and advanced technician and then you go to regional or pre-engineering and then you go to manufacturing and their support. When you're a technician, it depends on where you are. When you become a supervisor, you are now focusing much less on technical repairs. The higher you move up in your company, the more important your managerial and soft skills are and the less important your skills are for tasks and troubleshooting, however you understand them.

For example, if you have a general contractor building apart a property, they're not out there putting nails and floors, hanging stairwells and framing outdoors. They're managing and supervising the entire process and schedule of events because they know that each thing built has a domino effect. If you want an analogy, here's an analogy. It's very important. I'll ask everyone that's reading this, isn't a good idea to put the electrical, plumbing and insulation in the wall before the sheetrock goes up? The answer is yes. If anyone says otherwise, I'd like to meet them and see what their situation is. There's an order of applications of things when you're a supervisor.

A lot of those skills will bring you into the realm of proficiency, from technical experiences and experiences in the field. What does not happen in most cases is the person has not arrived with the soft, managerial and interpersonal skills, interviewing the team, building, the processes, coaching, counseling, conversations that take place and tough conversations that take place. All of those things are what the person needs to be trained in.

For example, as a technician, mostly your liabilities are worried about yourself. When your supervisor, you're worried about the whole picture and all of the liability that goes that's associated with that. You're worried about payroll, production loss, coverage, shortages and making sure that people get what they need. When they need more than a few hours of training, they need to get it or people in the field will pay for it, especially the customers. From a percentage-wise, if you move from a technician to a supervisor, people want to give you a number, I would say they're half ready.

My personal percentage is 20%. We do have a different angle. I believe they overlap. That's a personal experience. This percentage could be challenged. I think it's more than anything for me to make a point when presented to owners and operators that it's important that we help. We're not giving these guys 1 or 5 chances to succeed. They deserve better. The companies deserve better. It's not just that. Everybody deserves better. I think more than anything is making a point.

I'd like to reinforce that my 50% is from this perspective. Half of what you do is hard skills and soft skills. You shouldn't be 100% efficient or proficient and effective as a technician when you take that position. There's that 50%, 1/3, 20%, that's real. More people need to understand that. If you're an achiever, I know you are but many people reading this, I would take that 50% and bring it to 20% or 1/3, so you can make sure everybody has what they need. I want to leave with that.

I wanted to go a little bit back to the training topics. I have an observation from personal experience. All companies that I work for, the way they provide training with a few exceptions, like the exceptions will be in-person training hands-on, is blanket training. In other words, someone builds a curriculum for their maintenance workforce and says, “We're going to do this eight classes every year, the number could be 15, 30 or 5 and everybody has to take these classes.” It's a matter of personal opinion. I haven't seen it working. I haven't seen benefits. I haven't seen guys to measure. Everybody acknowledges that we need training. Their idea of solving this problem is to pay a company. That's a training of very reputable company.

There’s nothing wrong with the company, but they're taking this program and they're saying, “Everybody has to go to the same classes.” People don't have the same needs. They don't have the same knowledge level. They don't have the same interest. You have to look up for people and say, “What are you passionate about? What would you like to learn more of?” If they learn, you benefit from it too. If you're going to come and say, “You're going to take this thing classes because you to improve on these ten traits,” another measure of personal opinion for me is that you play to your strengths, you're not going to be able to do everything at an excellent level.



You could improve a little bit with the areas that are not your strength, but then you can bring those to become over average. Maybe it's best that you focus on probably 3 to 5 core functions that you're already good at. Master those. In a team environment, you will have another 1, 2 or 3 co-workers to bring something else to the table. In this way, we'll bring something to the table and the team as a whole function a lot better versus trying to get everybody to be excellent at everything like to get your take on this.

I agree with this. I'd like to give my insights and a couple of ideas. Especially here in the United States, when we measure the performance of people in the workforce, we like to have everything consistent across the board and everybody gets measured by the same metrics so we can watch things. We deliver training programs like that, typically. What happens is we'll say, “Let's we got these twenty things. We're going to bring everyone through it. We're going to try to get the percentage up then. We're going to try to factor those into key performance indicators financially.”

This is the challenge, how do you financially quantify the effectiveness of training in the field? It's a question that people ask. There's never going to be a solid answer. You either believe training works or it doesn't. How do you quantify jumping an extra two hurdles for an Olympic medalist? Go ahead. I'd like to see that financial breakdown. Good luck. I would like to see that.

You can ask every coach, and they're going to tell you, “People that train win. People that don't, don't.” There's this challenge. We have these approaches where a whole block chaining will be applied to a whole block of people we expect this one-for-one exchange with a percentage of proficiency to come through. The reason that most of that is done is because the fear of liability is that everyone has to have the same thing presented to them. I understand from both sides because I've worked in businesses, owned businesses and liabilities that you'll issue and people do try to game the system and they find loopholes.

That's one of the basic approaches. If we offer these, most people get something. If you break that down to the individual level, and if readers take notes or reread it back to this point, but you have to have industry-wide training, then you have regional training specific to the region of the United States you're in. If you're in the Southeast heat, pumps are more important. If you're in the Northeast, gas and oil might be more important. If you go out to the Midwest, you use swamp coolers. The regional preferences for equipment and construction types to make an impact on the training that you have. In cold weather, the pipes and wires go through the center of the building. In warm weather, they usually go around the perimeter.

You have company training specific to your company, where your values in the soft training are more important then. After that, if you have a company that owns multiple properties, asset types in different age groups, construction types and decades of different codes, then you have to get to the company and specific training, then you get to the individual. What the individual wants is something that fits them right away. The perspectives are opposing, “I need this in the field. We want everyone in the field to do these things. We know everyone's doing the same and progressing along the same lines.” The challenge is finding the balance for that. I think that's where conversations like this with you and I and other people in the industry people can apply that to how it fits for their company.

If you have a small company with 5,000, 10,000 or 20,000 units, it's not a big company. You should be able to have some more flexibility. The larger your organization, the more difficult it is to be mobile and agile. We need to get the training in the hands of the people in the field. We have much variance in the field. That's the challenge. That's where guys like you and me are people that are out in the field.

If you look at your service department this way, do the top five service calls in every category, you're way ahead of your peers. What are the top five AC cords? I know exactly what capacitor, contactor, relay, sequencer, fan motor are. Have everybody addressed those? When training, also a mistake is to have highly advanced training in your programs. Get to intermediate training. The person should be able to develop that on their own or go to an alternate resource because now it's counterproductive for you to create that. That's my input on it.

This is pure gold. I’m going to give myself a high five for the inspiration to ask the question. It shouldn't be an obvious question for someone that does and develops a training curriculum. Thank you very much. This is phenomenal insight. I do want to go to our previous conversation. You did mention something and I didn't ask a follow-up question. I give myself a chance to as a follow-up question now. You did say something that they hate. Although the industry as a whole is suffering from labor shortages for not finding the right people, there are companies out there, they're doing it right.

They don't have vacancies. They're very successful. If you want to, I would like for you to share with us a few company names if you give a few examples. What are some things that they're doing right? How can we model the masters? Let's give our audience some practical advice. First of all, what are some companies to look for if you're looking for an opportunity because obviously they are doing the right thing? Since they don't have this turnover rate? Second of all, what are some things that are ruining right then? If you are a different company, you could follow the same model and the same path. Chances are you going to get similar results.

I will answer with some general advice instead of specific because when companies get it right, a few of them and I mentioned them consistently in conferences and podcasts, they get swarmed for people trying to poach their people. It happens all the time. There are companies that get it right. They do have waiting lists to work for them. I'm working with some of them now. It's interesting to see the difference. I'm going to pose a question and the scenario. I may have mentioned this in the last blog, and if not, I'd like everyone to read this for the first time.

If you get 10 companies to put 1 representative, 1 table in a room together. You have a room. 10 tables, 10 people from 10 Different companies, and 1 have one person walk in the room, and they get to talk to each person at that table. They get insight and to look into your company. What about your company would make them choose to work for you compared to the nine other companies? If you don't know the answer to that, how could you ever communicate that to a potential prospect by hiring?

I'm going to reference something we did at the NAA, I spent a year working on this research with a woman named Wendy Werner-Draper. She's a regional VP from Harbor. She's in Florida. She gets it right. She's on point. She's got a great team. She got a 95% reply rate for this research. Let me put this in context. Most people consider 5% to 10%, even 15%, a very good to a remarkable response with research, questions and interviews. We pose the list of questions to everyone in the field. The thing is to understand and feel it, not just hear that there are no consequences for you speaking the truth. You speak the truth. It's going to become our medicine to get better.

The number one thing that came up was team environment, the way we're spoken to and treated, and how our environment respects us as technicians. It was not even in the top three, although it did come up. It's interesting that pay is very important. The thing that people want, first and foremost, is, “Treat me like a human being. Don't say you respect me. Show me, display it and demonstrate it on a daily basis.”

Technicians find it disrespectful to keep interrupting them and asking them to drop what they're doing and do something else. From a production perspective, it's remarkably counterproductive to do that. Wendy and I got 95%. Let's have everyone contact you. I'll send it to you. It's my pleasure for everyone to have.

I love to have the opportunity to share with whoever's interested in the audience.

Is there another part to that question?

I think you covered everything.

If you don't mind, I'm going to transition into another session. The second thing that came up was career paths. This came from a comment. It was, “I don't want a job for twenty years. I want a career.” I remember this comment. If you have opportunities, and you can figure out how to make that happen, like we discussed earlier, where you can bring someone up prepared for the position, you will create golden magic in your company, and people will stay.

What most people leave for after 2, 3, 4 or 5 years is an opportunity or they're frustrated with the environment, in most cases. The other thing is resources. Let's look at a couple of things. What's the environment? “I love my technicians. We respect them.” He asked the technicians and they're like, “They don't respect us at all. They just say that.” I have the saying, if you want at least a little bit more respect from the technicians, stop getting pizza for lunch. People say, “It's okay,” because they don't want to deal with it. They don't want to deal with the twenty questions that follow it.

Get something decent to eat. Treat people with respect. Give them a break when they need it. Don't ever throw people under the bus. I see this happen all the time. The next one is the career path. This is where the service manager is changing. Maybe you do have technician 1, 2, 3 supervisors and service manager status, or someone that finishes all the training. Maybe you're like in a supervisory role that's interim until you finish all the training, you get certain performance levels, and then you become a service manager.

Now you have the training to support the claims and obligations of that role. What are the implications? It's up to the company. The third one is the resources. Pay is part of a resource. I want you to think about this. Most people that are technicians struggle to pay their bills, check to check, week to week. We don't even think about that sometimes. I heard someone say, “We give competitive pay.” If you use the word competitive pay, it's already low pay. It's perceived that way.

Language architecture is important. First of all, if you're going to put an ad out to try to get people, have some descriptors in it. What you're looking for? Define your environment, but here's the deal. Your environment has to meet the claim. If you lie to try to get people, they're going to figure it out within the first day or two. They're out of there. They are just ghosts. That's why ghosting is becoming popular. They have this remarkable ad, the interview goes well, it takes way too long, but somehow they wind up getting a job. They show up and it's not at all what they said it would be like, “I'm out of here. There are many jobs. I don't even need to say goodbye or give notice.”

I don't think people should do that. I think people should be professional and give proper notice, but that's what happens and the resources. I'd like to give an analogy. Imagine yourself and wherever your significant other is, for this particular case or someone, and maybe it's for you. Maybe you've been married for twenty years, and you finally get a home you want to build. It's your dream home. You're super excited. You want to drive to the vacant lot and watch the building get built, and you see the framing go up and the electrical go in.

One day the framers come back, and you pull up in the driveway. You got your camera, and you're super excited. The four guys sitting on the roof with one hammer. One of the framers goes, “Put a nail in. When you're finished, let me know. I'll come get the hammer. I'll put a nail in over here.” The third guy goes, “When you two are both done putting a nail in, let me know. I'll come over and get the hammer. I'll put the third nail,” then the fourth person says the same.

Management companies, we all of us do this to our technicians. You got 4 technicians and 1 set of gauges. How can you expect anything to get done? You're passing around tools waiting for the other person to get done. My takeaway from this is, please don't build a house with one hammer. Get everybody all the tools they need. Arbor Group did something wonderful. They got all their brand new technicians and tool belts branded with all the tools they need. It was less than a couple of $100 for the whole thing. It made a remarkable difference.

Imagine having a technician show up when you go, “Here's everything you need to be successful in our company. By the way, we have you scheduled for training. That's not specific to just us, but specific to you.” The last thing that's a piece of those three things alone is when you have a new person come on. They should have someone assigned to them 24/7 until they transition into the position. They need undivided attention and accompaniment until they're ready to go out on their own.

You can't hand someone keys, tools and say, “You've been in the business and go do what you need to do,” because they're going to bring judgments from the past into the present and do the best they can. That decision-making may not be exactly what you want to take place in the field. If you put them in the field, it's your fault because you didn't give them what they need to perform in the field.

You're putting much into everything you're saying that it hurts. This is a compliment. Things are in front of us and we try to look around and the other way. I do want to say something because you said something that's remarkable and I'm very passionate about. Competitive pay. Typical example, people on social media. Hiring managers will say to people who want to work, “We offer competitive pay.” I always tend to engage in a conversation and as defined comparative.

The answer typically is, “We're paying maybe the same or maybe a little bit better than our costs,” then my follow-up question is, “Do you not realize that you know you're in the same type of pain that your competitors are?” You're taking a failing model from your competitors because they have the same struggles that you currently do. They're not solving the problem. You're taking that model and you expect different results called crazy, but this was insane.

That's the problem with peer comparison. Here's the thing I love about these conversations, “We're a trailblazing company. We are amazing,” then break the trend and pay people more. Here's the deal. The average Starbucks employee brand new with no training starts at $15 an hour and $17 an hour in the summer. Let's say that Starbucks. My question is, what is the person in the field looking for a job going to do? “I can work in the AC for $15 to $17 an hour or I could work on the AC for $15 to $17 an hour in a poor environment where it's hot out. I don't have everything I need.” We need to change that.

We need to change our perspective, perception and experience. Pay scale changes all over the United States and the world. The thing is if you use the word competitive as a reason to continue what you're doing, you're not leading the pack, but you're following the pack. If we're going to be people that changed the industry, you need to stop doing what other people are doing and be more concerned about what you're doing that nobody else is doing because if you're looking for the unique factor in sales, “What's the wow factor for service and employee?”

The thing is, employees don't leave companies that treat them well and take care of them. They only leave people that mistreat them. I've never seen someone say, “This is the best company I've ever worked for. I'm out of here.” It doesn't happen. Maybe somewhere. I'll give you a general number if you look at the starting salary. The multifamily industry is around 25% lower than individual trades, starting salaries.

I don't want to pay people unnecessarily, either. We can't just give people a job and expect them to be happy. How about you give you a great job and we help you win in life, we give you what you need to do your job, we treat you with respect and in return, we hope that you stay. When people have everything they need and are treated well, they typically stay much more than people who don't have that. I would start there.

There are a couple of weak points that I like to make based on what you said. One of them is, “Most technicians out there struggle to pay their bills.” If you're going to have an employee worried about putting food on the table, gas in their tank, to go to and from work to keep a roof over their head, how do you think that employee is going to perform for you? That's the first question that I have. Put yourself in their shoes. Because we're in higher positions, or maybe we go for more things that they do, it doesn't mean that we shouldn't understand what these individuals are going through.

The difference between making it and not making it sometimes it could be $0.50 or $1 an hour that we have to be able to come up with. We have to go beyond just helping them pay their bills. We should be able to teach our employees how to build wealth for themselves, to become real wealthy, so they come to work because they choose to work, not because they have to. This is an idea that I totally stole from one of my previous guest, because I think it's an amazing thing. It's a very important shift in mentality. In the way that our employers are looking at their employees, “If you're going to invest in me, help me become a better person, help me take care of myself and my family better, then I will reciprocate this human nature.”

Help them build a life that is successful that they look forward to living instead of handing them a check and saying, “You should be happy.”

Everybody benefits, “If I win, everybody wins.” You should always think this way, “My employees win.” If you're not believing that you should be doing that for a very selfish reason, you should say, “I want to help my employees succeed because I'm going to benefit from it too 100%.” It's been proven so many times in human nature. The way you treat people, the most will reciprocate. Sometimes it's a tenfold type of benefit, especially in a work environment where you're talking about employee and employer.

I wholeheartedly agree. Do you ask anyone that's worked somewhere for twenty years, why they're there? Most often, they'll be like, “People take care of me, treat me with respect and give me what I need.”

We touched base on mostly everything that I wanted to ask you. I know that, unfortunately, time is of the essence. We have to save the remaining thoughts for the next episode. Hopefully, I'll see you again to continue that you could make on and you'll be interested in continuing our conversation because I think this is not a one-and-done conversation. It's an ongoing thing that a conversation has to become a statement mainstream for us, our industry and things to change. Any final thoughts?

I would love to do this on a regular basis because the changes are fluid in our industry. I'm out in the field every day, and so are you. We need to have these conversations. Anyone that is reading this, this all comes from a good place. We want you to do well. We want you to have a great team. We want to remove stress from your life and not add stress to your life. If you're a business owner and a property owner, we want you to have as a successful property. We want you to keep the people that you have that do a great job or find people that do.

I want the readers to know that we want to positively impact the industry. The closing thing that I'd like to say is if you're thinking about getting into this industry, this is a great industry. We can go over what's wrong with the industry. The reason we do that is because we love the industry, and we want to see it flourish and thrive. We want you to know that there's a lot of opportunity. If you're pretty good at what you do in this industry, there will be an abundance of opportunities.

For the managers that are coming up and regionals or anyone that's in the office team, we want to help you help. We need to help each other. Think about this, “How does my team measure respect and treatment?” It's probably very different than the people in the office do. We tend to think of, “This is what I like and prefer, and so you will.” That's not always the case. You have to understand what makes people tick. If I can help you in the future, personally, you contact me or Adrian. You can go to my sites if you'd like. I would love to speak with your team or at an event. Most importantly, I want to do that because I want your technicians to look forward to coming to work.

I want you to be glad that there's a little bit taken off your plate because everybody's doing what they're supposed to do and things are improving. You have to think about this seriously. You must take action, then you move must do something completely different than what you're doing now to get better results. If you're willing to try and fail a little bit along the way, bounce back, stand up and keep going forward, you're going to make changes. If I can help you make those, even through an email or a conversation, It'd be my pleasure. I appreciate you having me on here. I hope that this helps someone somewhere. You'd let me know. I'd love to do this with you more often.

I want to make this a regular thing for us and an ongoing conversation because it must be an ongoing conversation for the industry. Things change so fast. We shouldn't be waiting for a year for an annual conference, NAA, to be heard or for this conversation to take place. This has to be on a daily basis because it's the number one conversation that everybody is thinking about whether they express it or not in the industry. I wanted to ask you a few contact points. What's the best way for anyone to contact you? Where they could find you exactly?

The best place is my website, which is ServiceTeamTraining.com my email is Mark@ServiceTeamTraining.com. You can find me on that site. MaintenanceVideos.com, if you'd like to take a look at that, it's getting built. It's going to be very different. It's good now, but it's going to be a lot better soon. You'll be able to find me in the industry working with other companies, as well. If you want to contact me directly, I'll send you the handout from the c NAA conference in San Diego that we did. Thank you for having me and to everyone for reading.

I appreciate it. I want to thank our friends from Commercial Painting Contractor for supporting the show, for being here and very supportive. I'm looking forward to seeing you all here next time. Mark, thank you so much. I very much appreciate it. It is a great conversation. I hope we'll get you back here so we can keep this conversation going.

It sounds good. Take good care.

You too.

Important Links

• Commercial Painting Contractor
• Mark Cukro
• PlusOne Incorporated
• ServiceTeamTraining.com
• Previous Conversation – Past Episode

About Mark Cukro