SALLY AND TRISTAN - ALYKAN ELECTRICAL SOLUTIONS - HOW TO BUILD AN A GRADE TEAM

Hey everybody, hello and welcome to another episode of Ladies with Trades How to Stop Shitting the Fair in Love, Life and Business. Today I'm with the beautiful Sally and Tristan Higgs from Ali Khan Electric. How are you going guys? Yeah, really good, thanks. That's good. I'm really thrilled to have you along for this podcast for this month's theme, which is all around team. Like I said to you both, I've been waiting for the perfect podcast episode to have you guys on because we've been together. I love how I talk like we're in a relationship for a little while now and knowing that I wanted to get you on here and there. I can't think of a better topic because you really epitomise great leadership in building a great team. But first before we get into all of that, let's hear a bit about you guys. So tell us about who you are and who you have been as individuals and how Ali Khan came to being. I think I'll go first for this one. So we grew up in New Zealand. Like most typical Kiwis had no idea what I wanted to do as was growing up. So I've been in that many jobs. It's not funny. Starting off in retail, moving up and into management type roles, into auditing roles. And then I decided to prove it at a sea change before coming over here and went into law enforcement and since customs. When Sally ended up having to move to Australia for work, I decided it was time to change you to get in and as an adult, I decided to do an electrical apprenticeship. So that's a bit about my background. Did the apprenticeship? So what age were you interested when you did your apprenticeship? I started my apprenticeship when I was 30. Oh, I love it. So not never too late to change. It's always, yeah, just never too late to change. Very cool. What about yourself? Yeah, so I did the whole start of retail thing. I did a double-grie in law and commerce and went into banking. So I actually used to fund and do banking for mid-sized businesses. New Zealand and then moved into the tax side. So actually building products to help help organisations. And that was the opportunity that I had to come to Australia. So he came over and then I'd worked for banks, I've worked for tech companies in accounting payroll and recruitment, building software to help organisations make these processes and things that easier. So I had lots of opportunities of leadership training, team training, seeing how all sorts of businesses from the micro businesses to the large-scale global corporations operating. So when Tristan was like, I want to go into electrical and was working through with another business, that got to a point where things weren't necessarily running as well. For them and we sort of went, you know, what we've got the skills in the background, why can't we make it go, but ourselves? And let's back ourselves in. So 2017 Tristan was fully qualified, had been for a while and so we jumped on and built LKN. So was that four or five years ago? Four years ago now. And even just listening to you say 2017, it's sort of like I have this moment of, oh my goodness, it has not been long since inception really. It's still a very young company for all that it's achieved already. So I love the stories behind Sally and Tristan and how they've come to this point because it does certainly inspire, it inspires me, you guys always inspire me, but I think it'll inspire other people. The wives, the treaty wives out there in particular, Sally, who are going, I'm keen on my business and I've either got a career of my own, whether that's high level corporate or anything in between. How do I go about supporting my treaty to take the leap at the same time? Because you got to do it as a team, you got to make that decision together. And you know, Sally, you were in your corporate job until not that long ago. Yeah, so I had my, what I called my day job. Yes. With, I had, look, I had some good bosses and stuff that understood what we were trying to achieve from LKN's perspective. So I got away with being able to do a little bit during the day as well for LKN. But yeah, I would work my day job for about three years and then I'd come home at night or lunch times and all mornings and do the bookkeeping and the marketing and the processes and pretty much just looked at the strengths that I had that I could contribute to the business from the experiences that I had. And then took me probably six months from the deciding that I wanted to move realistically full time into the business to actually executing on it, which was a big jump. So yeah, so it wasn't an overnight thing. There was a lot of, you know, giving up what you perceived as your sort of your life goals and changing your life goals to something that I should have done it sooner. Well, ultimately, should have done it sooner. But Tristan, I saw him in Fred's cell, the facility that I've done, I wish I'd have done it sooner. But at the same time, it's that identity shift, isn't it? And it's been very cool to watch, you know, because, you know, our goals been working towards Tristan sort of, put stepping out a little further and we've seen you just rise in your role and all of your corporate experiences just blowing the business out of the water, taking it to a whole other level, which is pretty cool. And certainly in the team perspective, from that, from that element of the business, you've really come in and taken quite a significant role in that space, which is pretty cool. Yeah. Tristan and I have had lots of conversations around where we set skills wise. We set it right up from front of where we say, so the guys, if Tristan calls you into the office, it will be for a friendly kind of discussion. But if you get a, you must go and see Sally and do have this conversation, then you're probably in a little bit more trouble. So we kind of set up the roles as having me more process oriented. Yeah. And Tristan, then I would have that more sort of collegial kind of. Yeah, more of a relationship, more building the trust and almost family type run business, even though we're bigger than that now. Yeah. Have that friendliness, have that camaraderie, have that trust with the guys. And I think to the thing that strikes me and we talked, we've talked about it when creating the rules of the game at L.E.C.N. and things like that is safety is paramount. I mean, you are an electrical company and creating that safe space where people can pick up the phone to you, Tristan and go, I think I might be cocking this up. How do I go about it? Like, you know, having that, that sort of multifaceted leadership, directorship opportunity between the two of you's very cool to see and to watch. All right. So today's topic or podcast name is building an A grade team, pun totally intended. Ascients, we're talking about electricians. So tell us about taking the leap into recruiting your first ever staff member. And you remember? It's not that long ago, but it's a lot of people ago, but it's not that long ago in time. Yeah. So it was one of those roles where you go, you know, I only have one of work on my own. I want to be myself. And it was literally less than six months into the business. I was going, this is nearly impossible. I need help. I wait. I wait. I wait. I need help. And I was working with a young guy. I was also a crew leader in state emergency service. And I was working with the young guy who needed a change in career as well. He was hated his job, hated everything about it. And as I said, I needed help. So I didn't follow any rules, didn't follow any recruitment process, didn't do anything that I should have. And went with my garden, said, yeah, let's give it a go. And and how I'd am he is just literally past all his exams in the last two weeks. And is now almost fully qualified. So that was your first recruit who was it was based on sub values based decision by the sound of it, knowing through your connections through the SES, you know, got that volunteering kind of mindset and obviously a bit of a goa in one way or another. And loyal too, because he's still with you. How many years later? Four years. Yeah. Yeah. Great. Yeah, and so you know, can you remember like did it feel comfortable making that decision at the sixth sort of eight week period? Absolutely not at all. We've never employed someone ourselves. We've never been responsible for someone else's life. You know, we were responsible for making sure you're head and neck. I headed in suddenly make sure that I had enough work from every day. Despite it had work, I've still paying for someone that I, you know, so it was very scary. We debated it between myself and Sally for a very long time before hiring. And we even actually had the conversation because we were sort of friends before we employed him. We had the conversation saying, Hey, if this doesn't work, you know, you may have to find another job and that was a scary conversation as well. So we went at that stage backing ourselves. And we knew we wanted it, but we, as I said, we did almost everything wrong. We got the right employee. So it's a bit of a lack on the first one. And we didn't know like all the rules, regulations, how to hire what, what even apprentice requirements were. So we're members of Master Electricians. And they've actually got a really great support network of companies that they work with. So we worked with a company called Ad Staff, who job printers, mentoring, and they actually helped us through all the requirements for onboarding the apprentice, making sure that we had the right contracts in place. So coming from corporate, it was like, I knew that you never brought anybody in without having a contract and having these policies and things. So there was a few late nights of trying to get the contracts sorted out, getting that sort of thing. So our industry association was fabulous and provided us with all the content that we needed. And then Ad Staff helped us navigate through the apprenticeship requirements so that we made sure that we were doing everything that we should do. Even though we didn't necessarily know all the detail for it to cover ourselves. And that's an interesting thing to discuss there, because people, they don't know what they don't know. Now you guys knew what you probably needed from your back, like your corporate background. So that probably was a bit of a save. Yeah, but I guess a bit of a bit of the messaging in there is lean on your industry associations, call, you know, their work or whoever it is that you need to and you know, you can access those through government websites, etc. to get the info that you need. Because contracts are a big thing that we observe a lot in trades industry. People just go, oh, is that a thing? Yeah. And I think there's one of the things around providing a foundation of people and your team. There's a lot of emotion and there's a lot of how you get the good feelings and stuff, but you always have to have that sort of objective. This is roles and responsibilities. So you can always pull people back to that, which for performance discussions, all that sort of thing as well. But yeah, that first hire with, yeah. Like like many guys, it's sort of, oh, we feel like we're pretty busy. We've need to do something about it. I need support. Yeah. Oh, yeah, you you seem like a good pick. Let's go for it. So and, you know, bless his cotton ones. We love Clado. He's been with you for a while now. So and I've enjoyed getting to know him too. So when hiring over the years, where has it gone wrong? I got to a point. I think it was about our third hire for four. Four. Four. We got to a point where we got very, very busy and we, we stuck an ad out. We were doing it all ourselves at this point because we thought we knew enough by the stage and found a guy and I decided to basically hire him on the spot. We did do reference check for this guy, which we did. And we did it to you, but we didn't involve anyone on the team. It was just myself and Sally. We decided ourselves. We didn't involve anyone else. The interviews were relatively quick because we needed someone and we needed them quickly. Within about three days, we were getting a lot of red flags. Within five days, we were saying we need to get rid of this guy and we need to get rid of him now. Now, second apprentice, rings us, who never says bourgeois goes to him, he was very quiet, he was not confrontational and he rang Tristan and he said he goes, I just remember hearing on the phone, he goes, I don't think I've done any work today. Interesting goes, what do you mean? And I think we've just driven around enough, I haven't done any work and we're like, oh, this is not good for us. So that's when we started doing a little bit more investigating. And was it day five, we decided that he was not a good fit. I had a page with two pages worth of infractions, things that he hadn't done, unsafe things and day six, Tristan, finer. So what was it about that and we'll talk about what your very robust process is now shortly, but what was it about that you reflect that was an ideal for the people listening who are likely looking for people at the moment? I think the biggest mistakes was rushing. We were in a situation where I wasn't saying we were desperate for extra health, there's always avenues, there's labour hire, there's subcontractors, there's frames, there's whatever. I got in the mindset that we needed someone and we needed them extremely quickly, I think that was the first mistake. We didn't count a balance, so we didn't have other people interviewing. We kind of took the first one that sort of could strengthen our sentence together. Yeah, you didn't have that check in balance. Yeah, so there was all about two quick. Two quick basically, two quick. Yeah, which is often something that we hear is, yeah, they go, oh, I wish I had a gone through the process now. We've got one fellow who's a builder in regional Victoria and he's a big advocate for the process now. Go through the process, make sure you go through the process. For the same reason, you get a bit burnt. Yeah, yeah, beautiful. All right, sorry, Trist, yep. I was going to say, probably what made it worse is our first qualified that we hired, we didn't follow a process. We followed more or less similar process to what we did on the guy that we fired. That feel quick interview and basically hired our first qualified on the spot following a similar process very quick and he's turned out to be a superstar. So it doesn't mean that you're doing it quick as wrong, but it certainly can lead to a lot of problems. Yeah, yeah. And I think to where you guys do things well is when it's not working, you act on that quickly. And then I'll just keep giving him, give him a go. I'll just give him another week. We'll see what happens. I'll just give him another week and see what happens. What's driven that because I'll say very, very much in our industry, we hold on to people for too long. So why don't you? I guess that's a bit of my background. So I sort of brushed out very quickly at the start, but I was employed by a large retail company in New Zealand where I was directly responsible for 150 people. Part of that is if you've got a bad egg amongst that, it can quickly spread amongst the whole team. And before you know it, your whole team becomes a underperforming. And that early stage is our team were striving to do what was right. They were better than what I had seen in the industry in the past. And the last thing I wanted to see was our team dropped to the level that I'd seen in other companies. So I think you just got to keep in mind that, you know, what's what they say? Now one bag egg can run a whole batch. Get rid of that as quickly as possible. And then the team also sees you acting on that behaviour. So they don't, and I've seen in corporates where you've got somebody who's behaving badly. And if management don't deal with it, then that kind of condoning that behaviour. And there's Tristan said, you know, bad egg, then that behaviour spreads. And the respect that the rest of the team have for you, and then I'll be deal with those harder conversations. And that doesn't build a good structure for the company overall. 100% could not have said it better myself, guys. And so what have you learnt through your experiences and then gone on to implement to make your recruiting or team building processes more robust? Tell us a bit about the early can way. I think after that one, that situation Tristan and I both looked at each other and said, we won't hire anybody without having our teams in involvement. And even the team now say it's the early can grilling. If you can get through it, then that's a big thing as my issue. We've committed to going, our people are working with these new people coming in, they should be part of the selection process. - It's worked really well in the sense that we get, we don't just go and get the senior people involved in these interviews, we actually get a first year apprentice involved as well. If we can, if we've got a first year or second year apprentice, just so that it is across the board. And as it's happened that one of our apprentices has come a superstar at interviewing, he picks things that we don't see and asks some really, really good questions. But now it's a buy-in. So if we hire somebody, it's the team that's decided that they want them, which means that they're included on my straightaway, it's not something that's going on, what did you hire that guy for? It's the team's decision. And that person, the new person coming on board gets accepted a lot quicker and becomes part of the team not quicker. And your team are invested in their success too because they've given them the green light. So I love this strategy. It's been great to watch how that unfolds for you guys because they really want it to work because they were on that interview panel. Yeah, what was interesting is we've had people where you said, particularly if you're looking at a tradesman and you go, how do you work with apprentices? And you don't, they introduce to say that their apprentices on the call and through the interview process. And it's been fascinating. We've seen people with tradesmen who have been interviewed, go, oh, their apprentices just there just to do the duty work and the shit work and stuff. And you're like, you've got an apprentice right there. Right there. And we're going, that's not the environment we want to encourage. We want people to pass on the knowledge. We want to build our apprentices into amazing tradespeople. So we want to make sure that the people we're bringing in will contribute to that. And we've had a few people self-select out of the interview process, show one just this week through some of the discussions that we've had. 'Cause we start with a phone interview and then it moves into a group interview. And then we will sometimes with COVID. We've, I think we've hired about four or five people through COVID. We've been doing online and then we'll go to a face-to-face meeting which is more that casual cultural kind of conversation for people to be able to have that get to know the team and for the team to actually interview them as well. - It's something that we sort of introduced sort of mid last year was what we call the coffee interview. It sounds really counterproductive with our literally just dough to a coffee shop, have a coffee, have a cake, whatever and just have general conversation for half an hour to an hour. No set questions, no set anything, it's just interactions. And it's amazing what can come out of that sort of environment because they relax and they start saying things and it relaxes it. Non-interview thing that actually can either make or break that person from coming on board. - It creates a bit of vulnerability, I suppose that's sitting where it's a bit more relaxed. - Yeah, yeah. Yeah, we have a very structured interview process as one of the key interviews before that one is really drilling into technical skills. Say it's drilling into valued bases and we ask some pretty hard questions. I think one of the questions that always triggers interesting responses, tell me of a time you've helped a friend or family member in need and going about how they actually would go through that because the value that we have in our team is around the care helping each other not really blaming people for mistakes and things and really that growth kind of mindset. And that's always one that triggers different reactions from the interviews. - Beautiful question. - And listeners pinch that, right that one down. It's an excellent one. And so let's dig into that a bit further because I agree watching your team and how they support and care for each other is one of the standout parts of the Ellie Canway. I suppose you would say. What, how do you choose those people? What are you looking for? You mentioned values there. Obviously skills come into it but is it a gut thing? And you've talked about your team being involved but. - Yeah, look, it's a little bit of every column I suppose. G gut definitely comes into it and it still comes into it. Because if someone's gut saying there's something wrong with this person so far, we've never proved that wrong. - Yeah. - So yeah, definitely gut but it's whether they'll fit. One of the questions that was asked me really early on when I started to interview him for another company was could you see yourself being friends with this person outside of work? Now that sounds like a strange question in itself but if you don't want to be around that person or associate with that person outside of work, why would you want to associate with them at work? And if you take that as your grounding or your benchmark and then work from that, if they surpass that by a mile then the chances are they're going to be fine. - And we take two things into account. So if you're looking at a tradesman, they've got their license. To get your license you have to do four years of education. You have to pass exams. So everyone's got different levels. But technically they have met the requirements to receive their registration and their qualification. So from a technical perspective, they've got the base level. We can teach the technical. We're really focusing on them as a human. What their values are, what motivates them, what drives them. And towards the end of the process, we don't use it as part of the selection process but we use the disc profiling to understand them more around what will motivate them, what will sit well with them in the environment and how we do that. And then on the apprentice side, we assume that they know nothing 'cause our job is to teach them the technical. But we were looking for people who show that little bit of extra motivation, the drive to learn. - They want to do the job not because someone else tells them that they should. - Yeah, so there's sort of where we focus on for the two, either the apprentice or the trace person. The stuff we can teach, but there's things that we look for that's inherent just in them as a human being. - And so it sounds like from that first hire to now that the process has grown. So what sort of timeline does it take us to recruit nowadays? - COVID's making everything challenging. I'd say outside of COVID, you're looking potentially four weeks. At the moment, we've been head and head out for nearly eight weeks already. And-- - Eight weeks, five phone interviews, one face to face interview and-- - So haven't found anyone. - Yeah, yeah. So I guess the message there is to find the right person it takes time. - And you need to start planning before you actually really need that person. - Yes. - So you don't rush yourself or make back yourself into a corner where you're having to go, I really need to actually just bring on anybody that's got a pulse as opposed to someone who's going to fit within the company. So-- - So after good point, Sal and-- - Yeah. - Go see especially Prattles on about this to the clients. Where, when do we need to be confactoring into the budget? When you want to drop a new person, what's happening with your scheduling and how's that, what sort of revenue deal need to be hitting before you go, "Yep, now's the right time to pull the lever for eight weeks' time when the new person starts." So there are a lot of levers to pull, aren't there? - Yeah. And the other thing as well as we don't do the whole process. So we work with Ed Star for around doing the front-end recruitment process. For-- we've been working with him for four years to understand our company really well now. They know the type of people we're looking for. So they do all the initial screening, all the front-end work because we found that, you know, if you just go straight out to market, you could be getting 40, 50 applications of which 20 of them are not even relevant to the job that they're applying for. So we do use people through that process. So it's not just about trust and a me, it's about our team, it's about the support network around it. And the cost that you pay for that just appears very quickly with what's in investment, isn't it? Because-- And I guess if we think about the journey that you guys have gone on from beginning to now, bringing in or outsourcing parts of the process has come with time. You know, some, you know, dependent on what, where your business is at and what you can actually afford to invest in from that perspective. Just like you, most people need to learn how to go through it themselves, have that experience. Go, oh, yeah, okay, this is what I want in my process now. And I'm comfortable with that. And I'm happy to outsource it to somebody else. Yeah, because we do police checks. We do medical checks. So every person coming on board has a medical. And it's not to select people out. It's to make sure that we've actually got an environment that if somebody does have a. pre-existing injury that we don't exacerbate it. If they have a thing that we need to be aware of, we can then make relevant accommodations with the work and all that sort of thing. So we can bring great people on board, protecting ourselves always. But it also works with them as well. But we also look at the cost factor. Yes, it cost money to my person. So therefore, if you get it right the first time and you don't have to replace them, then you don't have that cost again. So we've only lost the one that I had to fire and one that wasn't a princess who just decided it wasn't for them. But other than that, all our hires stayed with us. You've retained them, which excellent segue. But thank you very much, Tristan, because I want to know now about, because retaining staff, so some of the things just to give everybody a bit of context. And we've talked about this in the past. People will say things like, you can't keep staff post their apprenticeship. You've got to keep paying heaps more money to keep them. It's all these reasons, I guess, that we either turn over people or people leave. So you haven't had that experience over since 2017. Tell us what you think that is attributed to. How have you built that culture? So one of the things that we get told regularly in interviews, whether we've hired them or not, is a lot of people change jobs because they're just a number. They're not. Now, the bosses don't know who they are. They're not valued as a person. The opinions don't count. So even the part of the interview process where we're getting everyone involved means that that involved actually felt that the opinion matters. We do regular team meetings to get people's input and ideas. We try and get them involved all the way through. And that's, I think, one of the big things. It's not always about money. In our industry, our biggest competition is paying more money than ours. And their team, we know people were there, and they're not as happy. In fact, they're not as happy as our team when they get more money. So that's not always about money. It's about environment. Yeah. And we're very open around our financial status where the company's actually at how much money we're making or not making. What our sort of goals and things are, what we want to achieve as a company and having the team actually contribute to that as well. Huge. That's such a big thing. And we know all the research about good leadership and building good teams. One of the key features there is always they like to be in the know. And I think you guys really demonstrate the power of having people in the know because it is very transparent. And that they know how that they contribute to their outcomes. And we also invest back into them. So we've said we've got a budget aside for training that they can do each year. We've even created a pretty big incentive around if we hit a certain milestone on net profit that we will take the team away on a holiday. Their man, their partners. Not just any holiday. Let's go there. Where are you taking them? The first trips, the goal cost. So that would be 20 people that would be taking to the goal cost. And the next book, and then there was a bit of joking around. And then we said, we make a really big net profit jump. I think it was two and a half times that goal. What was the joke? We sort of went, oh, go overseas. And then they said, well, we want to go to Japan. So we're actually now stuck that in writing as such. So if we hit the certain dollar figure, we'll take everyone and the two Japan for a holiday. What do you think that's done for the team? It's got a buy and they are now looking at ways to help us save money and are looking at ways to help us make more money because they can see that it's not just helping line myself in sales pockets. It's actually got a direct impact on them. Now, I know some companies do bonuses and all the other bits and pieces, but when you've got a team of people that are not as focused on money, or it's not that they want the whole environment, giving them some money back doesn't necessarily encourage them to work harder, where you give them a goal to work towards. And that's certainly work harder. And they want to achieve that goal. That's, yeah. And from an investment perspective, because that's ultimately what we're investing, it's looking around 25% of that net profit back into the company and to the people for that. So you get that response back from them, which, you know, that's fabulous. Oh, it's absolutely fabulous. And we get a holiday too, right? And that's the thing, isn't it? Because that's the kind of incentive. And that was my last sort of question, which again, we've segwayed to beautifully around how you incentivize your team, because you're right. What you've stated there is it isn't all about money. It's about working through what motivates them. And I think people won't necessarily take themselves on a holiday if they've got time off, whereas if it's imposed upon them, I guess, in a way, if you could say a holiday is ever imposed on anyone that's getting shouted, it's a great reward to ensure that they've got a good work life balance too. And I think it loops back when we started our weekend, we wanted to build a business where we could have fun, where we could not necessarily be under, you know, if worked in corporates, we've worked in large government organisations where sort of like this, there's mandate in your own machine. And the whole reason we set up, Ellie Camp is not to be on a machine, so to speak. So I think it all loops back around being quite clear around our values, what we're wanting to achieve with the business. And then getting processes and finding people that they do that sort of, and then just sort of self-perpetual access. Yeah, we wanted a company where I wanted to work at. Not just where I had to work at, we all wanted to work at. Even to the point where decisions like at Christmas parties, we don't go to a pub for a Christmas party because if you're a disgust for a pub, it's dry, it goes home. There's no, it's just not what we do. So we do experiences with Christmas, so we've done X-throwing, what you've done, an X-gate room, what you've done. Winery tour, and a stretch, and a stretch, Hummer. (laughter) But the team makes those decisions, so we, as I said, it's almost like a family, even though we're a lot bigger than that now. It's, and we treat it that way, and it works. And we get the partners involved because our theory is that the person that's going to work with us then goes home and either pictures of mine's about the shoot day of job that they had and you know, blah, blah, blah, and all this crap, or they go home and they share with their partner, you know, I've had a great day or I've had a challenging day, but it's been really exciting and interesting. So their partner actually lives in breeze what they're doing as a day job. So that's why we get them involved. So that part of what you can see, what their, their person's getting up to during the day. Amazing. So important and so missed. Like that point is missed too often in business that the person at home is just as much make or break for the retention of that person in your business or not. You know, and whatever their motivations are and whatever their goals are, the partner that's, like working their job or at home with kids or whatever it might be, massive, massive thing that you've really nailed there as far as building a great culture, which is pretty amazing. I think there was something that we actually bought from New Zealand blew us away when we came over 10 years ago where we were like, all the Christmas parties just and go, I said, I've got my Christmas party, could go cool, where are we going? And I said, you're not invited and we're like, what? And then yeah, every thing and I was like, where's something we're back in New Zealand? We were like, this is something just part of, your partner's part of the work family. So we thought that's what we want to bring here and be part of for us. Beautiful. Another hot tip there for everybody. I hope everyone's squirreling notes for Oatice Lee. So performance and managing performance. So you've mentioned that the team's strong when you've got great, that type of stuff with great values. You retain them well, but not everybody's perfect, I'm sure. What happens when the performance, well, how do you manage performance at Ali Kahn? Is it something that you just do when shit hits the fan or give us a bit of insight? No, I think of your weight until the shit hits the fan or you wait for a yearly performance of you. If you wait full stop, then matters quite often get worse. We were doing six monthly performance we've used with casual conversations in between. We've actually progressed now to the 90 day type plan where every single team member gets a performance review every 90 days with conversations in between if needed. If there's an issue, it's so much easier dealing with it immediately. And then you can fix it and correct it. With those performance reviews, we actually set them dolls and targets. So there's something to be talked about. If we've got a member that's not performing, it's so much easier to deal with a non-performer if you've got something to measure against. And it's all very, very. And you've got nothing really in concrete. Then there's no way of actually easily correcting the behaviors. Yeah, and then you line that up with, we did the rules of the game and see if we did that workshop with you. We're really sort of getting the team to go, what is acceptable behavior. And so then it becomes, hey, we saw this behavior and that doesn't line up with what we've talked about. Why did that particular thing happen? Because there's always. There's generally a reason behind it. Someone was over, as I said, a chistist. People don't get up each morning and go, I'm going to go and have a shit day at work. That's right. I'm going to really wreck some shit today. I'm keen for that. People don't do it. You're right. So if you start from that basis, they're not trying to be. We have a shit day at work. But good people make bad decisions. And it's about understanding why they made that bad decision. So that we can either change a process, find a fix the process, have a discussion around the performance, or go, actually, maybe you just need to take a holiday. Have had a break or. That sort of thing. So it's the combination of having that more formal structure, but then balancing it off with being observant, knowing your people, and calling them out when they don't make the standards that the company or the bay even would accept. But part of our culture as well is we've said from day one, only up to step up. So that's been great for our company. So yeah, people make mistakes all the time. But previously, people used to try and hide those mistakes and it's a lot harder to fix something like this. So what we've done by own up of your stuff up is they earn up straight away. We can then have a look at decision process or why things went wrong and fix it without going down a disciplinary track or performance management track. We can actually fix it without having to go down that road. Which means that yeah, why our team's not perfect, no team never is. We can deal with the issues a lot quicker and fix them before they become serious. And I think the thing I observed too is that people are invested in implementing and really embedding the rules of the game or those systems that you guys have come up with around values and behaviours. Because a couple of your staff of EMA, can I get a copy of that? They've emailed me before around what you've come up with and it's really incredible to see that they're taking on that responsibility for that stuff too and making sure that it rolls through the entire business. So I think there's been times where they've even called us out. It's not quite in line. That's always fun, isn't it? When the staff start going, that's against the rules of the game or whatever it might be. And you go, "Okay, fair enough." Fabulous. Okay, guys, so we've had a lot, there's so much value in this chat. If you were to boil it down and one thing each year, if you can get down to one thing each, what's a piece of advice around building an A grade team that you would give to people who might be listening to this? I know we've all heard it from day one when we were kids, but treat others how you'd want to be treated. That's a big one. But I'm going to throw an extra one in the trusted gut as well. I think if you put those two things together, I think it's easy to do the right thing. Love it, Sal. I think it's that always look for the good and people and how you can build that person up. Because what you give out to the world and what you give out to those people will come back 10 times stronger than what you put in. So I think it really takes that time to invest in them, get to know them as people. They're not there to try and do a shit job. They want to be successful in their lives. If you can help them, then it'll come back 10 fold. Absolutely. Love it. Guys, it has been an absolute privilege and a pleasure. And there's so much gold in this. There's about 45 bazillion podcasts wrapped into one there. So many nuggets in there that you've shared with everybody. And I know how much that's going to help others, which is a big part of the way you to work too. So you give so much to our community. And we're really grateful for that at ladies with tradies as well. So we thank you very much for your time. And I know everybody out there will be thrilled to have all this great info and advice to work on and put into their businesses too. Thanks guys. Spain a pleasure. Thank you.