How to Equip Today's Workforce with Critical Knowledge

In this episode of the Restoration Playbook Podcast, Leighton Healey interviews Steve Glozik, President of FP Property Restoration. Glozik shares how FP adapted its training for today's workforce and how it builds more competent and confident restorers... all while reducing management stress and improving work-life balance.

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Episode Transcription

Steve Glozik:
I was talking to a group of employees the other day, and it's always fun because I date myself when I'm talking to them. And I was talking about what an encyclopedia set was. And, uh, most of them had no clue what it was because they've never been exposed to that. They grew up with YouTube and they grew up with videos and they grew up with how- to, and it speaks to what you're saying here is the ability to allow people to access information, to learn...

I don't want to say just at their pace, but if they want to speed up the pace, you know, you'd be surprised how many people in a generation where I'm being told the generation doesn't want to learn or work, they do, they want to do it on their terms and they actually will do it off-hours. I have people that come in that will shock me with their knowledge of a dehumidifier because off-hours, they were deep diving into websites, into KnowHow, into all these various platforms they have, because they want to know something, they want to know the why and the how.

And when people ask why and how, sometimes I think you can feel threatened. Like, "why are you asking me why," but they don't mean "why do I have to do it?" They mean, "why are we doing it?" And if I know why we're doing it, I can do it that much better.

Leighton Healey:
Welcome to the Restoration Playbook Podcast. This month, I had a great conversation with Steve, the president of FP Property Restoration. Steve has figured out how to democratize the way that he wants things done and its driving incredible results. So let's jump in.

I was talking with, um, a gentleman that, uh, might be a familiar name for you, um, Mark Springer yesterday, um, previously, uh, ran a company called Dayspring Restoration and then that was acquired by Fleet.

He's been very involved in the RIA over the years. And, uh, I remember we were chatting yesterday and he said, you know, he said, "I was looking at a, at a recent study and," uh, and I said, he's like, "I had just come from working with a client." ---He's doing some consulting now.--- And he said, "the number one pain point reported by staff" ---and our research supports this as well--- "is that it is just really difficult for staff to just, get easy access to just what is like, what do I need to do just to do a good job?"

Steve Glozik:
So I don't even think it's just, it's only asset access. It's unlimited access. Right. So. The utensil when you're doing a business is you train people for their position and you tell them what to do. And I, in restoration right now, there's all these different platforms, technology, uh, standards that people have to abide by and you train them for their one position.

Well, you know, the one thing is how do you really know what someone's capacity is if you're not testing them? If you're not, if you're not exposing them to more information. So the one great thing that we found based on this theory is the fact that if you give people unlimited access to the knowledge that they can get into, you're really going to see what you have as a team.

And what we found is we have individuals that maybe we think are technician that are, could be a lead technician or a project manager and have the capacity to absorb information faster. The other part of it is you always get to people like when I, when I was growing up and working people, "I told you about this."

"I told you this." It's like you, you told me a hundred things, you know, how was I going to remember a hundred things? And I never had a resource, even, even when I started working, you'd have maybe the company handbook, but the company handbook is only as up to date as. When it was printed and often that was years ago, um, having this ability to, to digitally distribute information, but also digitally allow people to access information.

Leighton Healey:
No, that's well said. Steve, I don't want to miss an opportunity to just give you an opportunity to introduce yourself. Um, and then, uh, and then I want to jump right back into what we're talking about here. So tell us about yourself, uh, you know, your career, um, kind of what brought you to this role with FP Property Restoration.

Steve Glozik:
Yeah, I, uh, grew up on a farm and worked for my dad, my whole, from the time I was five years and up on the farm and he was a truck driver, went over, over the road trucking, and he always told me you have to go to college. It's a. You know, have to, it's a must in our family. Went to college, got out, um, got out at a point when it was, it wasn't a great, uh, employment, uh, landscape.

Went to work at a restoration company, I think for a year or two. Um, from there decided I was going to relocate down to Florida from New York. Got down here, put my degree to use, was working, doing marketing. Um, I liked it, but decided that, you know, working behind in an office environment, wasn't great for me growing up in a, in a hands-on blue-collar environment and started looking around for what opportunities I had to be self employed, you know, my dad was an entrepreneur.Um, and I said, you know what, that I can do that. And looked into restoration, actually had a water loss at our apartment that we're living at and the people that showed up were supposedly great. Um, and I was like, wow, this, this is what the competitive landscape is in Florida. I think I'm going to get into this and slowly got back into it.Um, was lucky early on that my first couple hires were just like fantastic individuals that are still here. Uh, and from there we grew from, you know, a couple people with a couple of trucks to where we are now with five offices, 75 employees, trucks everywhere. Um, And still great people. You know, we've been blessed with the people that we've hired, um, and been able to train and build our team out.

Leighton Healey:
That's really interesting. What, let's come back to the, the kind of farm roots, you know, your parents obviously had, um, vision for, uh, let's call it like optionality for your life, right? And, uh, and so we have similar roots, you and I, Steve, you know, um, interesting. so let's come back to that. And so, , one of the things that, uh, I think that you are doing a tremendous job of is you're listening, you're listening to your staff.And, uh, so you've been in business long enough to see the workforce change a bit. Uh, like what's your read on. The worker today, how they like to learn, how they like to interact with knowledge, how they like to be equipped.

Steve Glozik:
So how we train people when we started the business was how we train now are completely different. You know, um, we used to have these lectures. We used to have, you know, these printouts and everything. And now we have people coming in and, and it's a very much like, show me how to do it, but then show me the resource to know the why and to deep dive into it.

And then I'll show you, I can do it. Right. And, um, The, the individuals, like I said earlier, they want to know the why and the how, and they want to deep dive into it, but they're, they're just a sponge of information. They, I think that what I'm seeing more and more is people absorb information faster now based on between AI and videos and things online.

And there's this belief that they don't, well, they're not reading books, you're not doing that. No, they are. They're just doing it digitally. Um, so as people come in now, we have a rough itinerary of what they have to know. We used to have dates and days next to it. And we took that off. Like, why are, why are we going to limit you to this?

And now it's like, here's, here's what we have to get through. And as we're getting through it, we're going to evaluate how you're doing this and how you're accessing it. And that's going to make, maybe better determine your path in our company. Um,

Leighton Healey: And what's the react, what's the

Steve Glozik:
‍Well, the react, so the reaction is that you, you'll, you'll see the people right off the bat. You're like, well, this person is going to be a star. You know, this person here is asking questions and deep diving and saying things that they wouldn't have known if they didn't have access to the platform. So if I'm sitting here lecturing you, you're only going to know what I'm telling you.

And, and I'll be honest as a trainer or whoever it is, how you train really depends on how your day's going sometimes, unfortunately, or what your temperament is that day or what has happened around you. Well, you know, as I'm sitting there, maybe lecturing and showing someone, they're sitting there on their phone, actually paying attention.

They're pulling up information, maybe schematics and stuff and learning. And all of a sudden they're saying, saying back to me, I'm like, okay, this is hitting. This person knows what they're doing. Um, and that even goes to how we interview is, is in our interview, we start talking really deep diving into how we're training people and you look for that reaction.

You know, you look for is someone here because they want to grow in this industry or someone just here for a job. There's nothing wrong being somewhere for a job, but you want to know, like, when you talk to him about the training, the intensity of training, the amount of training. Are they, are they, are they pumped about it?

You know, uh, and you, we have people that come in and, and, and they'll say, well, how long is the train going to be? And we're like, it's, it's as long as it's going to take us to get this information in, but also it might go longer based on your capacity to retain the information. You know, we're not just going to stop at a hard stop because you know what you have to know for your position.

You might be flying through it and we're like, this person's got to keep getting some information. Um, in the past when we hired, we had itineraries just for that position. You know, now we can have all those itineraries in front of us and say, why are we stopping here? Let's keep going with this guy and let's, let's keep, or, or girl and keep teaching them exactly what they're, what they're soaking up and what they know.

You know, we'll have people that come in and we think maybe they're inclined with their hands. We find out they're very technically inclined in the computer and they might be a better estimator than they are project manager.

Leighton Healey:
Interesting. There's a lot going on. There's a lot going on there. So let me, let me maybe peel back a couple things that you said. One is, The way that we're training has changed. So what was like, what was the catalyst? Like, what was the, what was the pivot point where you said, Hey, what we're, what we're doing either isn't achieving the outcome that we thought, or it's just not. Clicking with this workforce. Like what was the catalyst and, and, uh,

Steve Glozik:
I think it had, during the great resignation, you have this, this influx of people decided maybe they want it from home or they want to do things a little different. Um, we have these itineraries, and itineraries are anywhere from one to two weeks. And you have these individuals that often are leaders and they're investing two weeks in the individuals maybe over and over again.

And we're looking like, man, that we're really pulling this person out of their position to train. And you can see these leaders getting frustrated. Like, man, I did everything I could to get that person here. And it was, it was outside their, their control. And then we started looking, okay, well, what can we do to maybe streamline this and have an attorney that we can push to people, and to be self-paced with oversight, but also not have this physical person that has to be sitting in the room overseeing it.

Um, and when we started doing that. We started saying, okay, this, we could monitor it, still do our functions as a company, see how training's going. We could keep the same itineraries and tweak them. We could add videos. We could add processes. We could add all these different things we could push electronically.

And then we started to look at that and say, well, also we could retrain people easily too. So instead of saying, you know, this person doesn't, isn't good at their position, well, they probably are good at their position. Be good at like one thing. Why don't we deep dive into that one thing that we already have all the resources here and the assets in KnowHow and push that to them so they can be successful.

And we started seeing that little microscopic parts of people's jobs was holding them back. And we could, we could push the information and abundance of information about that role to them. And, and our retention rate started going up during the great resignation. And we started saying, okay, look, we're, we're doing this now.

Also, we, we, we started seeing that we're taking candidates that were okay and making them great, you know, that, that just, just allowing them to constantly have that, that, that access to the information and not have to go backwards and remember this two weeks of training they had when they were first hired.

Now they could, they could go back to this resource nonstop. Even if they had to do it daily, cause they couldn't remember it, it was there.

Leighton Healey:
When you say these candidates were okay, but not great. Um, I think what you're describing, like, I mean, different, that means different things to different people, different, ultimately you're saying like, I'm, we're hiring people that. We're aware they have some gaps. And So, why don't you qualify those gaps?

Cause I'm sure there's certain gaps that you're like, no, it's a deal breaker for us, but there's other gaps. You're like, we can work with that. So, so what, what do you mean? Like, like just

Steve Glozik:
So, okay. Can someone that comes in, maybe if it's reconstruction, has a little reconstruction side, maybe it was with a new, new home building, has never dealt with insurance, never dealt with restoration, never dealt with, um, holding down 20 jobs or the budgeting process. So they, they know construction, which is actually a microscopic part of a reconstruction PM's career these days.

So you're having to teach them financials. You're going to teach them how to toggle between 15 computer programs, how to navigate an adjuster, how to, you know, navigate the claim process. Um, so what they think, what makes them very qualified, they get in there like, well, this job's nothing like I thought.

I'm not really even really doing any construction. I'm managing people's expectations and a claims process. Um, so. We know that that's a big lift to get them to be a project manager. And historically, that lift doesn't go very well. Well, now, as we're able to deploy training and resources, we can make that lift incrementally too, instead of saying you have to go from zero to a hundred, we can say, okay, well, let's teach you budgeting.

Let's teach you the claims process. Let's teach you customer service. Okay, now let's put it all together and teach you our process. And being able to do that over time has allowed us to take people that I say, okay, that maybe aren't. There's superstars that come from the industry and get them right up to speed faster.

Leighton Healey:
Interesting. And in going back, that's interesting. And going back to something you said, you said, okay, so we have this, this, this great resignation, you know? So I'm going back to like November, 2022 and we're seeing this, this massive, uh, We like to refer to it as, in our research, as this self initiated resignation.

It wasn't like, it wasn't like employers ran out of money. It, was like individuals were, were pulling the lever and ejecting, you know? And it was like, like the, this, you know, it's like, okay, this, this, this. They did this themselves, right? Uh, and so what I'm hearing you say is, okay, so we saw all of these, let's call it variables.

We have the smartest people on our team. Let me qualify that a bit. The most experienced people on our team. And we were taking the approach. Tell me if I'm capturing this right. We're taking the approach where we say, Hey, you're the most experienced, thus you should train. Very common approach. People coming in seem to be a little flighty, a little more flighty than normal.

So maybe we have to take a different approach. Sounds like you're, you're, you're reading the room that how people seem to be, let's say, approaching training, uh, uh, is. different. And, uh, And it's interesting because one of the things that we're seeing in the market, Steve, is that, uh, experienced people with 20 years of experience are, are fewer and fewer. And a lot of people I believe are making the mistake of saying, I'm going to leave you in this frequently asked question purgatory, right? Where you're kind of, you never really get to do your job because you're kind of just in a sense, babysitting my, my workforce for me. Thank you. Um, and, and we think that we are deploying resources well, but in fact, we're, we're draining the life out of that experience.

And so you're looking, you looked at it from a very different perspective and you experienced retention rates rising at a time where most saw the retention rates plummeting. So is that a fair

Steve Glozik:
It is. And it's something that you touched on too, is that your, your key players, you can see it on their face. They're just getting drained, you know, because they also take it as they're not successful anymore. These are people that are very successful at what they do. They're very successful managers or project managers.

All of a sudden, they've been thrust in this role. They got to train people and they're up against a movement that they, they, they They can't win at, you know, and they're saying, Oh man, that person wasn't successful. I didn't train them right. No, no, no. You, you did fine. You know, we're just doing things a little, a little bit backwards.

And another thing is you take these individuals and you're pulling them out of the role that they're good at and they're happy at, and you're making them a trainer and as they're unsuccessful, that starts to bleed over into their other role. You know, if I'm a great operations manager and you're making me a trainer, not only is it, do I take the training serious and retention serious, but then every time I have to do that, it can be a little cringey because I don't want to fail again.

And you, and all of a sudden you're, you're, you have these individuals that were your superstars that are worried about failing. Another great thing is when you start doing things through like a platform, like KnowHow is it's self-paced sometimes as you're pushing the information and you can monitor the candidate.

Like we, something I learned when I grew up was that the interview process is ongoing. I heard you were bringing you in, but now I'm evaluating you in real time. And when you're doing lecturing, it's very easy to be like, "yeah, yeah, I get it. I get it. I get it." And then, you know, they go out and they can't do it.

But when it's self-paced and you have some sort of, I inspect what I expect, I'm testing you, you can actually see. If the candidate's acclimating to the, to the industry, like you need them to.

Leighton Healey:
We, we had a saying in a previous company I was involved in leading and we had a really large labor workforce where we would say, well, how do you know that they know? Like, I appreciate that you've trained them, but like, how do you know that they know? And, um, and so it sounds like, you know, you're, what you're saying, Steve is, um, knowing that they know, understand, like really in a sense, sticking a thermometer in comprehension, um, is more than just, you know, the peace of mind that they have.

That I communicated all knowledge at them, you know, at the, you know, and see people say, well, you need to see them do it. And you say, well, that's fine except, but, but you keep on several occasions now, Steve, you've said, but you need to allow them to do it at their own pace and in their own way. And, and what that tells me is that you've had to probably wrestle with something that I think is very difficult, which is a lot of people have an, a concept of how they learned or how they figured it out.

Right. And that becomes like their modus emperandus. Like they're like, they're like default mode of like, no, this is how I was trained. This is how I had to figure it out. This is how I prefer to communicate knowledge. And thus, you know, that's, what's on the table today. How have

Steve Glozik:
Well, and it's not just myself, it's other people. Like we, one of the people that I hired year one is still here and you'll hear him say, well, when I learned, or when I did this, or just, that's not how we learned. And I'm, and I always have to pull him aside. I'm like, yeah, we didn't have any of these resources we have now.

And we were, we were learning by mistake. And we don't want to do that anymore because we've already made the mistake. We've invested 13 years in making mistakes and correcting them. They shouldn't have to make the same mistakes. And we're not a good company if we let them make the same mistakes. Um, I think there's, there's something to be said too for, from an operator standpoint, is you look at the time it takes you to interview, onboard, recruit in the cost, and then all the resources you put into it.

When you get the individual in front of you, And this has been hard for me to grasp is you have to be a little more patient than you might want to be. You might be able to learn something very fast. You might be able to sponge something very fast. It might take them longer, but if you look at the on ramping and the cost of bringing someone and finding the exact person, you're At some point, you thought that candidate was the best person for the job.

That's why you brought them in, you know, just because they learn a little bit different doesn't mean they're not the best candidate. Um, and, and there's things even for me that take me a long time to learn. And then I have the aha moment when I have the aha moment. I just take off. It's see you later.

Can't, can't believe I couldn't figure that out. Um, and, and it's been hard for me to accept that, but the longer we accept that, and I think when the, the, the new candidates or the people that you're training, see your patient with them, they're that much more apt to try to speed up their learning process and, and to get it right.

Um, it, it's not, it's, it can't be square pay groundhold. Not everyone's going to learn the same way. You know, people take notes differently. People communicate differently. They retain information. You know, people, I see people read things differently on books. Um, as long as we all get to the same end goal, which is doing things within FP's processes and meeting a standard, that should be the goal.

It should be how we get there. It should be like when we get there, we're within our processes and we're meeting our standards.

Leighton Healey:
Yeah. That's interesting. You know, I've, I've found that, that, that is a, that is like a bridge too far for some people, you know, they, they, they get hung up on it. And sometimes I think it's rooted. I mean, just, I don't know, I may be pulling at threads here, but sometimes, Steve, I've seen it rooted in like almost an unresolved.

Angst that they have, that they were really under supported when they got in, and they had to kind of like, you know, sense deal with the heat in the kitchen, and now there's almost this lack of I don't know it's almost like, Overused word today, but it's a lack of empathy, right. Um, I've got to I have another question I want to put to you, but what do you think?

Steve Glozik:
you're looking at the mitigation side of things. You always have this bravado in the room of, well, we used to do it this way. We had to do it this way. We had to carry it. And it's like, great. Understand, but, but you're not going to find too many more like you. When you're even talking about earlier, you talked about the 20 year veterans that are leaving.

You know, there's a, some of this toughness in the mitigation side is leaving too. You've got to bring in, you're, you're working, you hear that Tim works smarter, not harder. There's truth to that, man. There, there's a lot of technology that's got an industry where you should be able to work smarter, not harder.

And why would you want everyone to do the same things we did? If we look back at it now, we probably, it's not the smartest thing we could have done at that time. Um, and I, I do think that there's a lot of. People that'll look back and say, but I did it this way. If they flip their thinking and think, yeah, but you, you, by you doing it that way, you paved the way for us to get to this point today, you know, it's thank you for doing it.

Now let's move on. And, and if we can get these individuals trained not to do it that way, to do it the right way, that's a win, man. You can pat yourself on the back though, that we got to this point,

Leighton Healey:
Well said. So Steve, one of the things that, uh, I'd love to get your perspective on is this, this dynamic that you're describing where, um, people are able to learn at their own self pace and the, the, for lack of a better word, the FP property restoration way of doing things you've said is like on demand, anytime.

You're wearing my logo. You've got the knowledge, right? But that knowledge had to come from somewhere. And oftentimes what we see is that that knowledge is siloed in subject matter experts. And sometimes a subject matter expert has kind of connected their knowledge base with like their job security, you know?

And, and, and, and the owner is like saying, I've got nothing but green pastures of opportunity in front of you, but you spend half your day. In this like FAQ role with my team and I need to get you out of that. So it's, it's, you know, there's like this, this interesting, um, almost hang up that I see people get into when their knowledge becomes so centralized.

in a few people on their team. And, and there's a need to kind of break that knowledge out to create this democratization that you have achieved. Um, what have you, like, how did you get

Steve Glozik:
‍That's an ongoing process, you know, that's every day. Cause sometimes you don't realize where it's located in your industry, in your business. Um, a lot of it, you can actually go back to people's pain points. So the same people that are your, your information silos is you're like, if you ask them what their stresses are, "my stresses are, I have so much time in the job and I, my phone doesn't stop."

And you're like, "okay, let me tell you how to get that phone to stop. Let me tell you how we can create some time here." And, you have to really sit down and say, you're all, you are an integral part of this company. You're going nowhere. We're, we can never replace you, but we need you to start training some people.

You know, because that's going to take off of your stress. It's going to create time. And sometimes it's not just taking a skillset from them. It's taking like a small part of that skillset and saying, well, train this guy over here on how to do this. If he can learn that he can help you. And then incrementally it goes up and it takes a little bit, a little bit, a little bit, and then personalize it.

Okay. This is okay. You know, we have, we've had people who's coming. They won't take, they won't take days off. They won't take PTO because, well, who's going to do my job? Like, well, that's a, that's a company problem. You know, that's a big company problem. And when you sit with those individuals, they just, they don't want to give up the how to and she was like, Hey, you're going to have to show me how to do your job.

Um, it's okay. And then when they, when they do, there's a sense of relief that comes over them. Right. They, and they realize, okay, they're literally just here to help. Um, you know, my, my position, uh, you know, I, I don't think there's anything I do in my position that someone else can't do. Um, I've trained everyone, cross trained them, but there's other positions in our company where it's like, well, no, I have to run that program, or I have to do that, or who's going to set this person up and, and just trying to get them to understand that we're not a good company if that's where we're at.

If we're stuck on that, we're, we're not who we think we are. If we want to be the best, there's got to be layers of command here that, that are, that are able to be deployed.

Leighton Healey:
You know, and, and when you're saying that, Steve, what it makes me think about is, I mean, if you just reposition that, I mean, can you imagine telling a, I don't know, a new potential, large commercial clients say, oh, and by the way, something, "you're going to love with my company. Knowledge is like completely isolated to like two people," right?

You know, you'd obviously never lead with that. What you lead with, I want you to meet Frank over here and he's got 30 years, you know, um, you know, and he's old school, Right? And you know, or, or, you know, one of the things I find is, you know, we do like all, you know, we do events to like get family, you know, our, our staff's client families out and their kids out and whatnot and You know, it's funny.

Um, sometimes the spouses, you know, you could, you could just sense the tension because this was, they're happy to support their spouse, but this is also the company that like blows up their phone at the dinner table. Right? And it's the, is the reason why they're, you know, their kids are in the pool and they're just, you know, one more minute, you know, as they're, as they're pulled aside in this, you know, funny moment and they can't be there for the, you know, look at me dad, or look at me mom moment, right?

Um, it's funny, like those, those are just angles that oftentimes don't...

Steve Glozik:
‍In restoration, I mean, you're 24 7 industry and these things never happen on good times. There's a joke that if we want a storm to come or an event, I just need to go plan a vacation. And it's going to come. And, and for years I canceled and canceled and canceled. And then we got to the point where I, you know, I can tell my wife, we don't have to, we can go, it's fine.

We have people do that. And, and you try to explain that to everyone here, because you talk about the spouse, you talk about that, you know, the term work life balance. And sometimes what people don't know is it's not the company that's preventing it, it's the individual that is worried. about the work life balance.

Like you don't have to be worried about it because those same individuals, when they take a day off or they do something, or they, they, they give up that skill set to someone else, they come in recharged. And, and, and what they don't realize is they had, they had put a ceiling on their growth, holding onto that.

And when someone else comes in and can take that off of them, all of a sudden they take off to the next level. They're learning a different skillset. You know, I have an individual that works in our office that holds onto some skillsets and finally when she decided to give him up a little bit, all of a sudden she's learning T and M.

She's going this direction. She's going to hold on their direction, her career that maybe she couldn't have gone if she didn't give up some of that information.

Leighton Healey:
‍Right. So what do you think about, like, if I was that knowledge expert and I'm being asked by my leader saying, you know, Steve's my leader and he's saying, look, I want, I want you to, I need, I want you to create some space for yourself so that you can take on more by giving up some of your knowledge.

There's like, there's an element of faith where if Steve hasn't like painted a picture of all the growth opportunities in this company, I'm almost being asked to like step out of a role. Where are their security and step into a future that for some companies, they don't define well, you know what I'm saying?

Like they don't define, you know, the opportunities for high performers, senior level staff, because, because you're asking them to step into a future that still has to be built. So, so how do you think about that? I think that the component of, let me just rephrase that. I think a component of enrolling subject matter experts to democratize how we do things is contingent on leadership, either developing Or even painting a picture of the future where they can see space for them in a, in a, in a different capacity.

What do you think about that? And like, what do you, what do you guys do in a book?

Steve Glozik:
So right now we had to step back from our business and look at how our org chart was situated and realize that we had these people in these spots that are superstars. The next level for them to get, there's a superstar. And there's a superstar and we're like, okay, but we're growing.

We want to grow. What do we do here? We have to create some, some layers here that allow people to move up. And there has to be some, some learning that gets to those layers. And we're in the process of doing that for different divisions. So we can go to some of these people that are superstars are like, well, I can't, I can't move.

What is my market going to do or what's going to happen and say, we can, and we need you in this role right here. And when you go to this role right here, this person's going to come in who you're still going to be involved with. To make for sure things go well, because most of the time, it's not just their position they're worried about.

They're worried about things going well. They don't want things to get broken. They've spent months and years making sure everything went smooth in an industry that's often broken. And, and, and now they're afraid if they step away, things are going to, things are going to go to hell in a handbag. Right.

And you have to convince them it's not going to happen. You're going to be involved still. So we're creating these different notches and we did it on our mitigation side. During what we started seeing was these technicians were coming in and asking A raise like everyone does, right? During the great resignation, you can see you had Wendy saying, come get a cell phone at 1, 500 to apply.

We can't keep up with that. Well, as they're coming in for a raise, we had to sit there and say, well, how are we going to do this? We can't just go based on them asking. So we actually started creating the tech level one, tech level two, tech level three, which a lot of companies have. But then we actually wanted to know how, and we created these checklists and these trainings.

Where you could actually go in and you could check off if someone was doing it and they can move up. Well, that also forced your knowledge people to get involved because you went to them and said, Hey, you know, you remember you don't like training, right?" "I hate training." "Okay, great. So we have to retain some people."

So, so now you're going to, you're either going to keep training or you're going to help me retain. It's up to you. All right, I'll help you retain. All right, great. Here's the checklist. I need your help on this. I need you to evaluate them and I need you to take them under your wing. And, and they found doing that was better than training.

And our retention started going up and now we had to look at different positions, reconstruction or admin and step back and say, all right, if I'm a really good coordinator here at FP Restoration, what's next? You know, what do I do next? Or if I'm a really good project manager on recon, what's, you know, that can be a very high burnout position.

I don't know if I want to keep doing this over and over and over again. I see people in the industry that have been doing it for 20 years, you know, What, what do I do next? And that's what we're looking at now is these different trajectories and then showing people how to get there. And then again, going back to how we started is, by the way, I'm going to give you, I'll let you look at the training, look at the material.

What do you think? That's what you're going to have to know. And people being exposed to that learning material early on, it's easier for them to make the decision. They're not making it based on the number, the dollar number all the time. They're making it based on where can I go? How do I get there? And, and, and who's, who's going to help me get there?

Leighton Healey:
Super interesting. Yeah. Well said, Steve. Let me, let me follow up on that. So what I'm hearing is because that's a great reframing tactic that I, I don't want to, I don't, I want to underscore that because I think what you said is so important is that no question, like, You get the superstar on the job site.

They've worked hard to really be efficient. And sometimes there's a variable compensation that they're really tapping into that's really exciting for them or they're just getting home on time. Right. And then naturally we, we, you, they fall in the sights of management saying you're going to be a trainer.

And immediately they're like, great, you're making me a babysitter. But what you're saying is, look. I think it's super smart. It goes, I think we need to double click on this. Okay. You don't want to train. Great. Help me retain. Right. And, um, I'm already seeing like the, uh, like the Steve hashtag, right? Don't want to train?

Help me retain, right? And so do you have any examples of how somebody on your team, who's a superstar, who was resistant to training, got on board with you?

Steve Glozik:
Um, you know, we have some individuals that are, we, we're a pretty fast paced organization. It's, it's known that we, we work fast. We're fast. This guy's run through walls, right? And we have some of our mitigation project managers that are seasoned are just animals. They do not want to slow down and they like it.

They like people being a little intimidated by him. Um, and then you have some individuals like, man, I, they're out on jobs are actually having to get dirty doing some things because what you're not retaining your technicians. Well, you're not retaining your technicians, so you're running them off. Cause you're running them off because you enjoy running them off, you know, you're running off cause you're not, you're not taking the time to train them.

And then we started focusing on, okay, I'm going to challenge you. Can you retain people? You know, and then you start challenging some of these individuals and they'll say, I can retain them, I can train them, I can take that guy and make it me. Okay, prove, show me, show me that you can do it. And it's, it's kind of challenging some egos a little bit.

Um, on the recon side, uh, I'm located in Fort Myers. We have an office in Fort Myers as well. We have a lady who, she's a superstar and I can see her pulling people to the side and helping them, or I hear someone say, well, Lisa told me, or Lisa showed me, and no one told her to do that. It was just, I think there's this sense to at some point you want to be the best.

And you know, I'm a big sports fan. You don't want to be the best on the worst team. You want to be the best on the best team. You know, you, you want to be Michael Jordan, you want to be Scottie Pippen, you want to be on the best team. And on that team, you want to be competing every day. Um, and, and, and when you get people and you can, and you were, if you interview, recruit people with those tendencies, they're going to want to train those people to be the best too.

They don't want to be, and I hate to use the word embarrassed, but they're going to go out, they're going to be a superstar. They're also going to be judged by the next person that's standing next to them on their skill set. You know, when you go to a large commercial loss, it's great. If you're the best project manager, hire technicians performing those technicians or reflection of you, which is a reflection of the company.

Leighton Healey:
So Steve, a red thread through all of this is you don't need to be the smartest guy in the room on your team, right? Um, it's a vibe I'm getting. It's clear you're competent. You're a very successful business builder. Um, you know, you got this farm route, so there's definitely some like, you know, there's some, As I like to say, there's that, you know, that farmer strength that just like, you know, you don't even know where it comes from, but what do you think, is just like some of the way you're wired that has made you effective in creating this dynamic where, um, you know, people aren't. Um, harboring their knowledge, but you're, and I realize this is an object. This is, this is a strategy in motion, but what you're doing seems to be working. And I get the opportunity to interact with a lot of people in your industry. And they're not achieving what you're achieving right now. Many of them.

But they want to. And, and sometimes what I see is that they aren't aware that they are a bottleneck because, you know, either they need to be the smart person or there's certain, there's certain situations that they want to kind of, um, hoard to themselves. I mean, heck, like it's, I mean, you know, I'm not always very good at it, right?

Like what, like, Tell us about Steve and like, like what is going on there that you're not getting in your own way, in your own

Steve Glozik:
I think, well, I think it comes from getting in my own way a little bit when we were, when we're operating this, you know, making some mistakes where you talked about, I wanted everything a certain way and I still, we still do have a standard here, but also wanting things to be done how I do it. Or just wanting things at my pace and having to step back and, and, you know, a couple of years ago, say, okay, you don't want to continue to reset, you know, and look for individuals.

If you continue to reset, you're only going to make these small incremental growths at some point, you're going to have to step back and, and accept some things are out of your control. You don't want to give up your core values. You don't want to give up your standards or your processes. It's not worth saying do them.

But if the end result is what you're looking for. You're going to have to look at it and say, Hey, you're going to let people get there in a certain way. You know, I run at one speed, it's pretty fast. And you know, I, I'm, I'm intense at work. That's how I was raised that, that be intense, you know, play to win.

Don't don't, you don't expect to lose. You play to win, you expect to win. And that's how I operate. And, um, I think also sometimes putting yourself in check and realizing, Hey, that can be a lot for people to be around. And also as you're hiring, though, you're hiring, looking at your core values, you're hiring your standards, your processes, but you also have to be true about who you're hiring, right?

If you know who you are, you know, your organization is, I visit a lot of organizations across the country of our, of our partners, and they're all cool to me. Like some of them are very, very laid back. It also has to be regional. Some of it's by, by state. They can be laid back. Some are very intense. Some are very management heavy.

Some are very tech, not tech heavy. Um, And every one of them special in its own way. It's not saying they're doing it different, but you have to know your company's culture and put the right people in the right seats. You know, as a Nick Saban quote, get the right people in the right seats on the bus and get the wrong people in this and the wrong seats off the bus to get the team moving and know who those individuals are, but also sometimes look at candidates to say, is that going to offset one of my weaknesses, right?

If I'm super intense. It's good to have someone around me that's not super intense for others in the room, right? Um, they may not think that, but I think so. But, you know, and obviously if I, if I'm not great with technology, it's great to have hire someone who's good at technology and vice versa. And that's helped us get past the plateau that I was causing since we've done that now.

And we, and we've got this, this, this, you know, trying to get people in and show a career path and industry that let's be honest, that's hard to show a career path in restoration. It really is. I mean, you know, you got these guys that come in in the middle of the night. They're like, Hey, you're going to a cat three loss.

You were sleeping, wake up. Someone's toilet overflow. Now you get to pick it up. Yeah. That's, that's not really sexy for, to, to move forward in a career and, and you have to paint a really cool picture. And that's hard to do every day when every day they're coming in. Well, one way that we're doing that to go back to training is we're explaining the how, you know, we talk to technicians and we say, if I tell you to break down this wall every day and you do it, great.

But at what point are you going to ask me why? You know, on day 300, aren't you going to be wondering, why is he having me break these walls down and getting people to, to learn the why, learn the science behind it, see the upward trajectory, um, making for sure we're hiring people that, that fit our culture, match our intensity.

Um, That's been kind of the, the overall recipe over the last three years. It's allowed us to break through that plateau.

Leighton Healey:
And, uh, and, and let me put something to you, just, I think it's right in line with what you're saying, but I wonder what you think about this. Because I, I have a theory that, um, And we'll come back to a kind of a side component of this in a moment. But I have a theory that it's hard to enroll your team in optimizing the process, like really polishing and getting it really rocking and rolling.

If they don't know the why, because if they don't understand like the function of it, where you're ultimately trying to complete, you know, prevent, avoid, achieve, like, what, like, what are you optimizing towards?

Steve Glozik:
It's funny you say that. So I have in front of me over here, two processes that, um, are in our know how that we use, we made a big mistake early on. We want everything to be perfect. Had to be perfect. How can I deploy this process if it's not perfect? In the course of making it perfect, we were still making mistakes at the service level because this had to be perfect.

And once we decided, well, something's better than nothing that gets us to where we have to be, deploy it, get it in the hands of our workers. Oh, and then guess what? Guess who's the best people to give feedback on the process? The people that are practicing the process. And so we have this leadership team that's up there trying to make this process.

Well, it has to be this, and it has to do this. And you're making the process, Because looking for oversight, right? Like, how do I watch this? How do I manage that? And what's failing is a service level delivery. Well, as you deploy the process and they get out there, some of them fall on their face because you put all these checks and balances in, well, we started just getting the things out to the, to our team, and then as we're seeing things, we're, we're, we're carving it.

We're molding it. We're making it better, or they're coming back and saying, this is no good. This is, this is the better way to do it. Um, it's not, everything has to be perfect all the time, you know? And I think that's something in business that, that I've had to accept is it's not going to be perfect.

Sometimes it's only going to be okay for a bit and, and you might get to good. To get to great. And when you get to great, you better pay attention because it could go back down to good real fast. So it's constantly changing. Also people fear change and we get people in our industry that say, Oh, we're changing it again.

And it's not changed. We're improving it, you know, but you have to tell them why you're improving it as well.

Leighton Healey:
So let me ask you a follow up question that I'm, I'm, uh, certain that like anybody listening to this is going to say, okay, you can write everything down. You can, you can put things in their hand. Like how do you get a person to actually follow, you know, the FP process, you know what I'm saying? And, and I wonder if, I just wonder what your, what your, I wonder what the reaction is. Uh, I wonder. Reaction is not the right word. Like what impact is a worker in your team knowing that if what you put, if I, if what I put in your hands is not optimal.

You can influence it. What impact is that having on adoption of the FP process? So how are you driving adoption of the FP process? And then what is the impact of the staff knowing that that you're open to input?

Steve Glozik:
First of all, it's bringing the right people in the room. In the past, we were bringing, bring your leadership team together, come up with a process. Your leadership team's not the ones that are going to be practicing it. So it's finding your key influencers too. Um, the people that are going to take it.

Do it, practice it. And also other people are following them and bring them in the room. Um, and then asking them what they think and then listening to, by the way, you know, that was a problem for me years ago is not listening to what do you think? What do you mean? You don't like it. Well, listening, what they think.

Um, and then if so, and then the one thing for adaptation is speaking to it. If you're not using the word process or standard every day, if you're just saying, this is how we do it. It's such a cliche talk. This is our process. This is a standard. And if you get your people speaking in certain terms, that's what people start gravitating towards, you know, and, and, and if it's, if it's a process in the, and sometimes they get to the end means and they're not necessarily in the process, it doesn't mean they did it wrong.

You know, maybe your process has too many steps and someone found a better way to do it. Now, If they're cutting the process and it's creating more work for others. No, that's not, that's not the, that's not going to work, but getting also people from all different parts of the business, you know, our mitigation process just shouldn't have the mitigation team in there.

It should have our claims team in there. It should have a recon team in there. It should have our intake team in there. It should have a mitigation technician in there. And then also one thing is have your leadership actually go out and do the process. What we found, um, unfortunately it was we were writing these processes out.

They were great. Our, our mid level and our entry level people, they were adapting to them. It was our leadership team was having a hard time adapting to the processes. They were designed them, but they weren't necessarily following them. And then when we got them involved in them and had them do them, had them actually practice them, they were the kind of the ones that came back and said, this was a little cumbersome, this needs to change.

There's a little too many steps in here. So, so getting people to actually try it out and then accepting the feedback.

Leighton Healey:
Interesting. And then what's downstream from that, like all this work, let me, let me ask it a different way. So, um, you've worked hard to. Make the FP property restoration way unlimited on on demand, you know, like on tap, you know, you need it, you got it. So like, what does that look like practically today? So I'm just thinking, you know, someone comes, they spend some time, uh, in your company and they've heard that your company is really working hard to try to democratize the way you do things.

What are they going to experience tangibly?

Steve Glozik: This is a new hire. Yeah,

Leighton Healey: New hire. And um, you know, And then why don't you, why don't you, why don't you dovetail into like, and what's your vision for it? Like,

Steve Glozik: so. So, so right

Leighton Healey: New hire, where's today? And then where do you want it to go?

Steve Glozik:
We hired an in-house trainer three weeks ago. Um, and. That in house trainer is, first of all, his first two months are just tasked with observing, you know, people ask me the itinerary, we taught them our core values. I want you to observe, give us some feedback, you know, find the holes that we don't see because we're, we're in it every day.

Um, we're looking to combine our trainer hands-on with The platform KnowHow and really build out a program where we can bring individuals in regardless of experience, by the way, we're looking for, for attitude and character now and bring them in. And give them the hands-on training while they have, you know, KnowHow deployed to them.

Um, show them the trajectory that, that they need to see to, to move up in, in our company. And to make our onboarding, our training, our hands-on training, our KnowHow a big deal. You know, make it not your typical, you know, Make it a month, make it six weeks, make it something when you get to the end. First of all, when you get to the end, it is impossible.

You don't know how to do something or how we do it. But also it's a celebration here at FP. You know, that, that you've made it to in, you've made it part of the group. Um, and we're, we're currently building out. We have a warehouse that we're building out a training area in there. It's not anything crazy, but it's enough that you can hands-on train in a, in a private atmosphere with a trainer.

And we have our KnowHow videos. We have screens up there. We could have everything in writing, show you how to get to it while using the extractor, while using the de amplifier, while using the air movers. And then these, these, these little mini tests, you know, I show you, I show you where to get it. Now you show me.

And now, now let's put it all together. You know, it's, it's here. I showed you five things. What you didn't realize is I showed you a process. Now we're going to put these five things together and you're going to show me you can do the process and you're going to teach me how to do the process. Teach me now how I taught you.

And we're, we're trying to build this out that when we bring someone in, we're selling the training experience. Yeah, this is who you're going to be when you get out. And it's something that we've thought about for a long period of time, but it was never able to materialize this until now. We're like, why don't we do it?

If someone can make it four to six weeks through training every day, hands-on training, testing, we're going to have this incremental opportunity to retain them. And probably they're going to move up faster and be like, what's next? When's my next training? So that's, that's what this looks like right now for us.

And also the fact that as we have a We're talking about doing more videos of how, of how to do something that we can upload into our KnowHow and add it to if someone's looking up hashtag dehumidifier and they're on a job site and they don't know why they're having this error code. Here's our trainer showing you now there, there it is in writing, but here's also our trainer.

Leighton Healey:
Totally. That's pretty cool. That's pretty cool. So if you've done a lot of hard work, man, um, kudos. I mean, that's, that's, that's, that's impressive. And it's, it's obviously been something when you talk about, well, we made a big change, you know, at the, at the, you know, the kind of great resignation. I mean, you've made a lot of change in not a lot of time.

So, so this is, uh, this is really impressive. I mean, you know, kudos to you and your team. Let me, let me just like step into the shoes of someone who's probably going to listen to this and they're going to say, you know, uh, Steve, that sounds really difficult and, and I'm, you know, and, and I don't know if that is for me.

So I'm just curious for you, how have you justified just like all the investment that you've made in this, this work? I mean, to me, I'm like, Hey, you're preaching to the converted here, but there'll be people that they, they look at your approach and they just say, man, that is so much work. Um, cards in the table.

I believe that the, that the rules of the game have changed. You know, and, um, but just like, how have you just done the math in your head that this is like, this is like a

Steve Glozik:
So there's a podcast episode I listened to, you know, sayings "pick your hard". And you can say, "pick your cost" to "pick your hard". It's hard to continue to recruit, retrain and hope for the best. Or it's going to be hard to say, we're going to invest heavily on this side and retention and build this out. And we're going to invest the same amount of time, but long term, we won't have to keep investing that time.

It's pick your costs as well. There's an opportunity cost to having never being fully staffed or having to continue to bring people in and train them. It could be your reputation. It could be how you handle jobs. It could be just lost jobs. Take the cost that you're going to spend or lose on training these people.

Indeed ads, if you're doing that. Recruiters, if you're doing that, all these various things, or the other thing is, you know, if, if you have individuals that see people going out the door, you know what they're going to do? They're going to probably think about going out the door too. So you have lost individuals that you don't realize you're losing, maybe because you can't retain other, other employees.

There's a real astronomical cost of that, that you may never want to calculate, but you should know it's there. And you could probably, or we are, investing fractional amount of that on the other side of the business to bring in a trainer. And as, by the way, by bringing in a trainer, all of a sudden these individuals that are doing training, They are like, well, they're listening.

I don't have to train anymore. Oh my gosh, this is, this just came off my plate. And you know who the biggest supporter of that trainer are? The people that were doing the training. So they're feeding them in for now. We have all this investment money over here. All of a sudden it becomes a recruiting tool too.

You know, when this is all a hundred percent functioning and, and, or maybe not a hundred percent, maybe enough that we can present it. We would be doing our interviews over there. Hey, let's do our interviews where we're training people. Let's show them exactly how they're going to get trained. Let's get them pumped.

You know, no, we're not going to put you in front of a homeowner. We're going to put you here in a little academy that you're going to be in for a month training. So. It is a lot of work. I just think that it's pick your, pick your lot of work. You know, do you want to be the one out there filling in for, for, for project managers because you can't retain them?

Or do you want to invest the time over here to work on these processes, to work with these individuals in your company and get things outlined so you can start? And the other thing that's key is start somewhere. You know, we had to start somewhere. We didn't, this, this is all just like it builds and it builds over time and you have to get your company to buy in.

It started with. Well, we need to improve retention. And it started with, Hey, I was at a trade show and I saw KnowHow. And then I started, I need to get, you know, Heather HR. And she saw and she's like, this would be great. And then we got it and not much happened. And then we started saying, we're going to use this.

And we started using it and we got the key individuals to use it. And as they're using it and they're starting to deploy it and pulling information in, it starts to take on a mind of its own. And then training, retention, and it becomes a culture at your company. You know, if you start using the number of your head count, people start looking at that head count as a score almost, you know, they want the head count to go up.

They don't want it to go down. They want to keep the right people and the right seats on the bus, but they want it to go this way because as it goes that way, They also understand that it's going to, it's going to provide different positions in the company. Maybe it's managerial positions, maybe it's layers of managers, but there's an advantage to the company growing and just getting the right people to all row in that direction.

Um, if you can get your team to do that, the, the investment and the time's not going to bother you at all.

Leighton Healey:
‍Yeah. Steve it's well said, you know, I, as we were going through this, this conversation, I, um, I almost feel like a need to like, Hit pause and like have a John Madden moment where I've got to, I feel like I, I almost feel like I need to back up and say, did you hear what he said? Like, like one of the things you said there that I don't want to miss.

And then we're going to go into kind of a rocket fire round to wrap up. Cause I know we're, we're coming up on time here, but, um, Oftentimes when people bring in trainers, sometimes what I've observed is that the, the rock stars can undermine the quality of the trainer or sometimes the trainer's authority by saying, well, what does he know?

Or what does she know? You know, like I'm out here on the tools, but by can I, It sounds like what you're saying is. that by connecting the dots that, Hey, this trainer is going to allow you to focus on what you love to do best, it's, gonna allow you to focus on retention, it's gonna allow you to honestly get some of these newbies.

Off your back. So you don't, so you, you know, you don't feel like you have them in a sense, for lack of a better word, holding you back. Right. I mean, you're enrolling them in, in a sense, supporting and qualifying the trainer and contributing to the trainer. And I'll tell you, like, if there's one thing, I was just having a conversation yesterday and they were talking about just the, how oftentimes the trainer becomes this source of grief in the business.

Because they're seen as kind of like the equivalent of like the safety officer, you know what I mean? And, uh, and it sounds like what you've done is you've found a way to get buy in from your cultural influencers for the trainer. They see the value to them personally and they don't see it as a comp as a competition for their prowess. Like, is that a fair summary? Because that is really impressive.

Steve Glozik:
I'll tell you, we're blessed that we had a group that really tried their hardest at training. And they still do, by the way. And, and it's like, most people would look at me and say, I'm not a trainer. That's not what I'm here for. And if you look on my job description, it's not on there.

I'm a trainer. None of them did that and they tried hard. And what's crazy is that most of our highest level performers here didn't come from the industry. They came from another industry and they've come up through the ranks. So all of a sudden now you have these people that didn't come to this industry are now trying to play trainer to individuals on technology that it took them a while to master.

So they see it as, okay, this individual is going to come in and tell me I'm doing some things wrong. But he's also going to take this load off my plate. And most of those individuals, the little nuances that are being pointed out, they knew it was wrong. You know, they, they, they knew. And they're also relieved that someone else is saying it.

You know, it was pretty, we presented as, Hey, you don't have to be the voice in the room anymore. He's the voice in the room. You know, I just need you to buy into what he's saying and then, and then manage to it. You know, when he leaves the room, don't go manage him back this other way. You managed to that right there.

Also given the, given the trainer that authority to go to job sites, go to job sites and give us feedback, give, give, give all of us feedback. And you know, you talk about, you know, the safety officer, you know, I get it. Yeah. But at the same time, you know, That that's, that's okay. It's okay to be safe. You know, there's this thing in restoration where people kind of shy away from that.

Like they want to be this macho bravado, but you know, no, this, this, this guy's going to go out there and tell us how to do it right and prevent accidents from happening, you know, which long term benefits everyone in the company. And again, that's another retention tool. People don't want to work where they don't feel safe.

Leighton Healey:
No question. Yeah. Well said. Okay, Steve, I've got some rapid fire questions for you and uh, and then I'm going to let you get back, uh, back at it here. So there's a lot of meat on the bone here, man. Um, I appreciate, uh, even dropping, dropping some, uh, some really golden nuggets here. So here, here's, uh, I've got, I've got four questions for you.

Um, okay. So first question, leaders are listening to this. They, they are, they are picking up what you're putting down. What's one thing that you'd recommend leaders stop doing to just better empower their workforces with just the how to that their team needs to succeed? Like what's

Steve Glozik:
Yeah. Limiting people to their position. You know, don't be afraid to, to, to let people, to see other positions, give them access to it, right? Don't be afraid if I have a technician who wants to be a project manager, let them go do a ride day with the project manager, let them see if he likes it or not, um, but, but just don't, don't protect the knowledge from people.

Just let, it's an open book, you know, it's an open book and let them see how we do things. Let them see how we estimate. If someone says I want to try Xactimate. Let them try Xactimate. What do you have to lose? But that, that's one thing that I've seen in the past, or, or, or recap people's ability to grow based on their title.

Leighton Healey:
Well said. Okay. So the inverse of that, someone's listening to what you're saying and they're like, Steve, I'm in. So, so what is something that you'd recommend them start doing? Like you, you said you got to start small, but so, so what's like, okay.

Steve Glozik:
Find your biggest pain point. And get a process and train to that and try to prove it because if you can get your people to see that you can improve their biggest pain point, they're going to buy into everything else. You know, figure out what, what stresses your company the most.

You know, when we did it, it was our, our recon process first, because everyone thought it should go a certain way and we got it on paper. It improved how people thought about a reconstruction division and then how they interacted, how they process information. And to be honest, it's how, even how we collected the money in the end, because people are on the same page.

But I think getting people in the room that don't see eye to eye and saying, what is our major hurdle here? Let's get this down on paper and correct it. And once they see that working together and learning together, and then getting the whole company to learn that works, it picks up momentum fast.

Leighton Healey:
‍That's super cool. Okay, two more questions. Long term bets, right? So some of what you're doing is taking you a couple years plus, right? Um, so, uh, what would you say are like, what's an example of like a worthwhile long term investment? That you just say, look, it's going to cost money. It's going to take time.

It's worth it.

Steve Glozik:
‍I think it's not only just a technology, like obviously we're invested heavily in KnowHow and, and, and we're, that's our, we're, we store all our knowledge, but it's also the investment in the time you're going to pay your people to get the information there. You're not going to buy a platform and it's just going to change your company.

There's got to be a buy in and you're going to have to earmark that time and that time is money. So it's a constant investment in what we're getting into the platform, like KnowHow, then deploying it and not deploying too much at a time that it becomes information overload. Following up and surveying your company and say, are you using this?

You know, checking the metrics to see who's logging in the most and all that, all those steps you can take, but that's the constant investment is you, you're going to have to allow your company and your key people to take time to do this. It's, it doesn't happen on its own.

Leighton Healey:
‍That's very, very important. And I, I, uh, I think that that is, um, not something that you're saying trivially, like in a trivial manner. Like it's, I can see from even just the interactions, I've had with your team members. Um, that, uh, you know, that, that there has been a big investment in, in codifying the FP property restoration way.

So then, um, so I guess the question that, that many people have is, you know, the number one thing that, that causes people to lose sleep in this industry today is Workforce, you know, like, So if you could, if you had a moment on stage or you're on a panel, you know, you and I are going to be in Dallas next week together, so you're, say you get on a panel and you could teach leaders one thing about attracting and retaining talent in, in this industry, in this workforce, in this market climate, what would be your, your

Steve Glozik:
‍So early on, I talked about, you know, knowing the culture of your company and know, know who your company is. And I think that's important. I think it's, it's, it's good to know exactly what your company is made up of and to bring individuals in based on attitude and potential, right? Uh, I think we get stuck on trying to recruit people that already have a skillset in restoration.

And I've seen even key leaders in our company be like, well, they don't have any experience. I'm like, either did I. You know, a matter of fact, our top, our top leaders never had experiences getting people in that fit your attitude and asking what their goals are. So for us, it's, it's, what's your, you know, what's your three year, what's your five year goal?

Can I get you there? Can I show you the roadmap to get there? And then let me tell you what our company's like. And you tell me if that's something that, that, that's attractive to you. And if there's a match, let's go hit your goals. So that that's asking some questions back to the, to the applicants and then bringing them in.

And don't be afraid of the cost and the time to train them on the soft skills. If you're, if you're the company you think you are, you're going to be able to train them on the soft skills. You shouldn't have to always go out and recruit people that have those skills already.

Leighton Healey:
‍Yeah, well said. Okay. Hey, I've got to ask that because I mean, to me as you're unpacking that, I just think one question has got to get asked. People are going to listen to this. People are going to, are going to, are going to share this with their friends. And one of the reactions that people are going to have is, I just want to be part of Steve's team.

Like I don't want to be part of what he's building because that's pretty inspiring. So, um, so who is a fit for FP

Steve Glozik:
‍Uh, very goal oriented individuals, um, that want to always be moving up and, and, and looking for more. And by looking for more, it's like, what's next? That what's next mentality. I have, we have technicians that are like, they'll, they'll, I'll travel with them. You know, we just in Tennessee, they'll get done with their fourth job of the day.

And what's next? What's next? Those individuals I love, you know, you try, cause then as leaders, we're trying to keep up with them. You know, and, and the what's next starts to go into what's next with knowledge. What's next with technology, how can we get better? Um, and then individuals that, that again, you expect to win, you want to win, you know, you always want to be a winner.

And then when you lose, you stop, you're like, what's just happened there? And what do I have to do to not let that happen again? Those are individuals that, that do great here. Um, and, and just supporting each other. You know, it's, it's a tough industry. We've been through, you know, the COVID, we had Ian hit here.

We've been through a lot of hard times here in Fort Myers as a team. And the people that stayed around and were true team players and support each other, man, they are so cool these days. Like they are here, they've moved up, um, their battle tested, their sponges of information. And then you just see how they, they take care of new hires.

You know, it's like they bring these people into the family fold faster. Um, finding people like that. I think, I think that that's what I would tell someone.

Leighton Healey:
Cool. Steve, your team, some of your team are going to listen to this team members that, I mean, I, I think there's people that I think what you've said here is timeless. I think you've offered some timeless advice. And so I think there's a chance that there's a very good chance that, you know, FP is going to be 150 people and some new hires going to listen to this.

And so what is your. You've been very generous to the industry here. What is your message to your team where, you know, you're obviously, you're, you're working towards something and, and you want them to, to know that you have a sincere, genuine passion for them to be successful. Like what's, what's your message to.

FP Property, team members of

Steve Glozik:
Um, I, I think it's the fact that it's, it's a tough industry. It doesn't matter where you work. Right. And I go back to pick your heart. You're going to come through the doors of the FP and it's going to be hard because we have high expectations for each other, but it's also because we hold each other to a standard.

So when you walk out the door and you go home and you're working as long hours or you're standing in line at a gas station, you can be super proud of where you work. You know, we say we want people to, to be like, we want to go work there, you know, and we want people to tell them you can't work there.

They're, they're, there's too great. And that's, that's the company we're building towards, you know, and you want to be able to walk around and we do, we see people all the time walking around with their FP gear on, not because they, they, they. They had to, they have to work, it's because they want to. The FP hats, the FP brand, and that's what we want.

And, and it's not easy. It's not an easy industry to do it in. It's not easy to retain it in, but every, every step of the way is a win. And we're not, we, we can't have those wins without the team we have, you know, even down to the individual that may not ever listen to this podcast or the person doesn't even know that, that there are podcasts that they are an integral part of what we do for me down to the technician.

Maybe we hired yesterday and everyone in between. If we don't have everyone rolling in the same direction, we're, we're never going to get to that point.

Leighton Healey:
You're a sports enthusiast. This is a, this has been a slam dunk, man. Yeah. Steve, um, you know, you've, you, uh, um, you know, I think you know this, but as someone who spends a lot of time shoulder to shoulder with leaders in this industry, I can tell you that, um, you're, you're doing something really special and, uh, you know, I just want to, you know, compliment you and your team for the hard work you're doing.

And, um, you know, it's, uh, it's pretty cool. And so thanks for taking time to share what you're up to and it'd be awesome to circle the wagons again, whatever, in a year or whatever, because I'm, I'm sure that, you know, you guys are

Steve Glozik:
Appreciate it, man. Thanks for the time.

‍Leighton Healey:
What an awesome conversation with Steve about how he's armed his workforce with the way they do things at FP Property Restoration. Now, if you want to read more, or you want to dig into other conversations that we've had with great leaders, head over to R&R Magazine through the link in the show notes.

If you want to keep up with all the content that we produce with leaders, with resources, with studies, head to LinkedIn and subscribe. At any time we put something out, you're going to get access to it front of the line. Steve talked a lot about how he's using KnowHow to drive massive impact at FP Property Restoration.

If you want to learn more about KnowHow and how we specialize in helping growing companies standardize the way they do things and democratize it across their workforce, head to tryknowhow. com. At tryknowhow. com, you're going to get access to resources, information, and a chance to sign up to have an expert walk you through how we can help you achieve the results that Steve has unlocked at FP Property Restoration.

Paul Silliman:
‍KnowHow is an intuitive, mobile first application designed to rapidly onboard new hires, upskill staff, and provide on demand, expert guidance for whatever task is next. Home to your company's proven methods, KnowHow ensures everyone has the skills they need. to get the job done right. With time saving features that make it a breeze for management to build, maintain, and translate standard operating procedures.

It's time to ditch your outdated operation binders and dated, difficult to search systems. With KnowHow in their pocket, your staff have the how to they need wherever the day takes them. Our new process creator makes drafting new SOPs faster than ever, helping you customize, edit, and share your time tested methods and processes with ease.

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