Full transcript10 chapters · 9,768 words
00:00Watching her husband grow a plumbing shop to 170 employees
Kelly Rowlett Presgrave: Private equity hires techs in hours, not weeks. I’ll show you how smaller owner-led companies can match that speed without losing their culture.
Tyler Martin: Welcome to Profit and Grit with Tyler, where blue-collar owners and insiders spill the real story behind their hustle, building businesses that thrive through sweat and smarts. We’ll dig into their journeys from scaling chaos to growing the bottom line with lessons and grit that pay off big.
Tyler Martin: Here’s your host, the Blue Collar CFO, Tyler Martin. Today, we’re chatting with Kelly Rollett-Pressgrave, founder of Work With Your Hands. It’s a recruiting company built specifically for the trade. Kelly helps home service businesses hire technicians, installers, CSRs, and leaders. And she understands this world better than most because she lived it for 30 years.
Tyler Martin: her husband grew a plumbing company from 10 techs to 170 employees. They expanded into HVAC and electrical and eventually exited. Kelly watched that entire journey up close and saw how make or break the right hires are at every stage of growth. In this episode, we dig into why so many hiring pipelines in the trades are empty.
Tyler Martin: We talk about the time to hire, the true cost of unfilled seats, and why there are no techs in my market is usually a process issue, not a talent shortage. Kelly breaks down her interview formula, the Warren Buffett filter she uses for every hire,
Tyler Martin: and why intelligence, energy, and integrity outperform perfect resumes every single time. If you’re trying to grow, but you don’t have the people to support that growth, This conversation will help you move faster, hire better, and stop letting vacancies stall your business. Let’s chat with Kelly.
Tyler Martin: Hey, Kelly, welcome to the Profit and Grit Show. How are you doing today?
Kelly Rowlett Presgrave: Doing wonderful. Happy Friday.
Tyler Martin: Yeah, for sure. Thanks. Thanks for spending your Friday afternoon with me. So I just want to start out learning about you a little bit. Could you share what you do professionally?
Kelly Rowlett Presgrave: Yes, I am the owner and founder of Work With Your Hands. We are a recruiting company that hires skilled tradespeople in the home services and commercial services industries. We actually hire from apprentice to the C-suite. So we will hire, you know, anyone, basically anyone within
Tyler Martin: the ecosystem of home services or commercial service space. Very cool. By the way, I love your business name with the Z. I think it’s pretty, well, just the name itself kind of says what you do. And then with the Z, that’s extra cool. Who’s responsible for coming up with a
Kelly Rowlett Presgrave: great name? Came up with a great name. I think it was a collaboration. I was actually at a Pantheon event. So there were a lot of people there who just took a little bit of a random poll at that event and it stuck, but work with your hands with an S. They wanted just an incredible amount for
Kelly Rowlett Presgrave: the domain. So I was like, we’re a startup. We’re not paying that for that domain. So we put a Z on the end and voila, that domain was available. So with the Z, it’s got a coolness factor.
Tyler Martin: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, it worked. It was one of those like, huh, I kind of like it actually. So yes, we went through a couple of iterations with the logo, but it was such a fun time to
Kelly Rowlett Presgrave: build a company. It’s awesome. Very cool. Hey, so and then what about on a personal note, anything you open to sharing just about yourself personally that you enjoy or about your life?
Tyler Martin: Yeah, I have three grown children. My youngest is still in college, but two sons and a daughter and love to ski, love to golf, you know, vacation, read, do all the things. I love working. I love work with your hands. Very passionate about growing the business. And, you know, people might say, why do you work so much? It’s not work to me. I really enjoy it and love helping home services companies get the talent they need.
Kelly Rowlett Presgrave: Very cool. So I want to get to the story. How did you get into, like, why trades? Why home services? Where did recruiting come along? I think if where this started, your husband runs a home services company. And is that where it initiated? And what did you learn kind of while you were seeing your husband run this business?
Tyler Martin: Yeah, no, it’s, we’ve been married for almost, we’ll celebrate three decades of marriage this February. Wow. Yeah, it’s been fun. But when we first started dating in a long time ago, he had 10 employees at the time,
04:38What 30 years of staffing taught her about long-term employees
Tyler Martin: 10 plumbers. And fast forward, he actually exited in June, but when he sold, it was, you know, 170 employees. So watching his company, yeah, start with plumbing, add HVAC 17 years later, add electrical about nine years ago, but watching his company grow and watching all the trials and tribulations
Tyler Martin: of staffing and having people on board and from the crazy stories about what someone did at work today. And then also look at what this one individual, how they’re really, can you believe that they started as an apprentice and this is what they’re doing today? This is what this,
Tyler Martin: you know, salesperson, how they’re moving the needle for the company. So it could be anyone from any department, but watching the company growth was a story in business ownership, the sacrifices that you make and the people that you need along the way to help grow your business,
Tyler Martin: but also how you can affect their lives. And I mean, you can’t do it without the people.
Kelly Rowlett Presgrave: Right, right. Is there anything you learned or took away as you saw that evolution because that’s quite a large amount of employee growth. Anything you took away from that while you were seeing it all unravel and unfold?
Tyler Martin: Yes, I guess for him, it was just, he had some really, you know, there’s so many things you can take away. But of the people that have just, that you could affect their lives and really their long-term employees. I mean, he had people who were working there
Tyler Martin: when we started dating and still work there today. So, you know, 30 year, 35 year employees, how you’re shaping their and their family’s lives. But also that you never can, certainly there’s always people that you think you can trust. And how many times did you think, you know, this person, somebody that would, you know,
Tyler Martin: they would tell you they would run through a brick wall for you. And then you find out that they were not trustworthy. So a little bit of a cautionary tale, I’d say in some aspects, but, you know, it’s the good and the bad, the yin and the yang of everything. There’s people out there who will
Tyler Martin: truly do anything for the company and vice versa, you would do anything for them. And then there’s always those that you need to watch back on. But he really, from seeing the company in its infancy, it really gave, it was very interesting to be able to see, everyone says hire slow, fire fast.
Tyler Martin: that’s easier to do the larger you are. To have like a really good onboarding and training and to be able to do all the, have great benefits and all the things that retain employees and attract them to you, all of that comes easier the larger you are.
Tyler Martin: So it really, you know, it really is kind of a stair-step approach where you can get better talent as you become more mature company.
Kelly Rowlett Presgrave: That’s a great point. And I think it gets glossed over a lot of times, these sayings where it’s like one size fits all. And it’s just so not true. Like, yeah, if it’s your key player and all of a sudden you’re going to like, something’s not working out.
Kelly Rowlett Presgrave: You can’t just all of a sudden say, oh, tomorrow they’re not there and not have big ramifications of that. Yeah, absolutely. It’s, yeah.
Tyler Martin: What was your husband’s, did he have any secrets or is this where work with your hands kind of came to be in terms of, cause he hired a ton of people to get to the level he got. Was that, Did he just build a good leadership team?
Tyler Martin: I mean, what created that ability for him to scale and grow to that size?
Kelly Rowlett Presgrave: You know, I think a lot of it was the leadership, honestly. Okay. Having a really solid CFO and director of operations that are still there today,
08:27The Pantheon event where everyone asked where are the people
Kelly Rowlett Presgrave: working with the company that purchased My Plumber Plus. But that leadership team, they had a very good, I’d say, just synergy and dynamic between my husband and his core leadership where they, you know, they’re very, they trusted each other. They’re very good friends outside of the business as well.
Kelly Rowlett Presgrave: So having that culture and really knowing that, you know, I heard on one of your other episodes about being able to walk away and go on a vacation for a month and your business still got to run. He didn’t get there. It took a while to get to that point, but eventually he was able to.
Kelly Rowlett Presgrave: And that’s having true leadership and having that team below you. You know, I don’t think there’s a secret sauce. We definitely helped him. I would say when we came seven years ago, we’re going into our eighth year, but he was our first customer.
Kelly Rowlett Presgrave: It really was, I mean, I’ve told the story, but it’s true. We were at a Pantheon event. Everyone there was talking about where are the people? I can’t find them. I could do all the things that everyone’s saying to do, but I need the talent and how do I find them?
Kelly Rowlett Presgrave: So that was where it was, you know, it was light bulb moment. Let’s figure out a way to help all these contractors. And My Plumber Plus was the first one to give us a shot. So that was where we could be off to the races.
Kelly Rowlett Presgrave: And I don’t have a recruiting background. My background is in finance. But knowing the industry that we wanted to serve, just learned trial by fire.
09:58Why techs have windshield time and won’t return your call
Kelly Rowlett Presgrave: Get into it, jump right in with both feet and start doing it. What we learned quickly was the blue-collar workers, that we need to hire the skilled trades folks, that there is such a nuance in home services and commercial services. Anybody who’s behind the wheel of a vehicle, they have windshield time, they’re turning
Kelly Rowlett Presgrave: a wrench, they’re not behind a computer waiting for you to ping them about an interview. You have to touch them multiple times to get them to return your call. to get them to show up for an interview. You need to be very persistent, reminding people,
Kelly Rowlett Presgrave: when are you, this is your interview time. Are you going to be there? Let’s reschedule. You don’t want to burn a bridge, all the things. Just making sure that they truly understand how important it is to be at this interview. If they’re interviewing with someone
Kelly Rowlett Presgrave: who is a stickler for time, you better be there five minutes early. You know, really going through a lot of interview prep, but blue collar and I think skilled trades people, they’re out there. They just, it’s a different, you know, not having a recruiting background, I didn’t have
Kelly Rowlett Presgrave: anything to compare it to, but I knew the people that worked at my husband’s company. And so it was just a matter of, I can build a rapport with them instantaneously. It was just a matter of getting them on the phone, finding their contact information sometimes,
Kelly Rowlett Presgrave: and then being persistent about, you need to show up for the interview. How’s it going for your first date? Like, you know, your first date, are you going to show up? Did you do your drug screen? Like all of those kind of steps in between to make sure that they did what they needed to do to start.
Kelly Rowlett Presgrave: So I’d say probably not having a recruiting background may have helped me in this instance because I didn’t know what I didn’t know. But really having the knowledge of the industry was paramount, 100%.
Tyler Martin: Yeah, yeah. I love your transparency. I love hearing your story, the progression from seeing firsthand from your husband’s company and then turning it into something, one, value to them and then value to other people in your own business. That’s awesome. Hey, I want to switch here.
Tyler Martin: So I want to talk about this finance background and how it relates into recruiting. So what are some common metrics for folks out in the audience that home service owners that are, what metrics should they be looking at when they’re thinking about whether it be recruiting?
12:15Time to hire, time to fill, and the cost of an empty seat
Tyler Martin: or the lack of hiring people? Can we go just a few important ones and then maybe just dive a little bit deeper into them?
Kelly Rowlett Presgrave: Yes, I would say first and foremost, time to fill. I mean, it’s a basic recruiting metric, but if it is, it’s just like speed to lead, just like the ability to, when someone takes, think of it as just like your customer. They’re calling, I have a plumbing problem.
Kelly Rowlett Presgrave: If you don’t, if you can get there in three days, click, I’m calling someone else. And candidate is the same way. If they’re active candidate and they’re actively out there seeking a job, you need to get to them quickly. If they respond to your job ad,
Kelly Rowlett Presgrave: they walk into your door, they’re a referral from someone else on your team, treat it the same way. Get in front of them as quickly as possible. Get them in for an interview. Meet them at a Starbucks. Do whatever you need to do to get in front of them.
Kelly Rowlett Presgrave: An active candidate will have a job within a couple of days, they’ll have offers. It’s just the nature of the world we’re in right now. So you have to be very, very quick. So time to fill is one of those that is, I would say, you need to be paying a lot of attention to.
Kelly Rowlett Presgrave: If they want to give two weeks, whatever, what we measure is there’s time to hire and time to fill. Time to hire is from the application date to when someone gets an offer. And you want that to be within two weeks, if possible,
Kelly Rowlett Presgrave: shorter, if you can. And then time to hire sometimes includes that two weeks notice. Wow. Okay.
Tyler Martin: What about like, where does, because you mentioned something in our earlier discussion, you talked about, you know, people are telling me what I should do with my business and that’s all sound great, but I don’t have enough people to do it. So what about the cost of vacancies?
Tyler Martin: Like where does that fit in and what do you see typically?
Kelly Rowlett Presgrave: The cost of vacancies, it’s different for every position, but I would say like, if you don’t have a comfort advisor and you’re coming up on the summer season, you’re in big trouble. The cost of that vacancy and the opportunity cost is millions of dollars. If it’s a plumber,
Kelly Rowlett Presgrave: you’re thinking of a plumber as a profit center. So what is the cost of that? It depends on the plumber. But I mean, plumbers can bring in a million dollars on their own as well. So the cost of the vacancy, if you have the leads coming in the door and you’re turning away calls,
Kelly Rowlett Presgrave: that’s easy to calculate. You know, harder to calculate sometimes is, I want to hire this person. I’m going to have to put the marketing behind it to get the calls on the board to feed that person. But if you have calls that you’re turning away
Kelly Rowlett Presgrave: because you don’t have the person, the butt in the seat or whatever you want to say, if you don’t have that person, that can add up to millions of dollars.
14:55There are no techs in my market is almost never true
Kelly Rowlett Presgrave: So it’s no joke. It’s real money.
Tyler Martin: Right. One of the things I hear, Kelly, a lot in my client base is, and these are just various things, but one example, someone will say to me, hey, we really don’t do that much of HVAC because it’s really hard to find a qualified HVAC crew, installs in particular, in this case, this example. But so most of our
Tyler Martin: businesses are plumbing. Or I’ll hear, you know, we’re in a part of the country where like, you’re just never going to find a comfort advisor. It just ain’t going to happen. Like they’re not out there. What’s your thought when you have those types of comments as a recruiter? That’s completely
Kelly Rowlett Presgrave: untrue, even in the hardest of markets. And it might cost you more. So one of the metrics, cost per hire, that can range. It could be over $1,000 for one person. It could be a lot less, depending on where you’re at in the country. So you have to be realistic about what you’re
Kelly Rowlett Presgrave: willing to put into finding that person. But I would say even for my husband’s company, one of his top salespeople did not have an HVAC background. He was just a good salesperson. So very, very smart. He’s very clean cut. He was very good at building rapport very quickly
Kelly Rowlett Presgrave: because of his prior, he used to sell Harley Davidson’s. So he just could build rapport with people very quickly, but they taught him HVAC. So then he went on to sell, you know, four or $5 million consistently every year. So I would say, even if they’re not plug and play, they’re
Kelly Rowlett Presgrave: not somebody who has an HVAC background, you’re going to have to teach them. They’re out there. The same with plumbers or anybody else. I mean, there’s areas in the country where you have a huge union presence. You have a lot of licensing requirements. You’re in a rural area, like you’ve
Kelly Rowlett Presgrave: got the trifecta of things against you, but they’re still out there. It’s just a matter of How much money can you put into the resources to finding the person? And, you know, how much time are you going to put into it to be able to do it?
Kelly Rowlett Presgrave: But a lot of that, if you’re in a very small rural area, you need to have the network. You need to be, you really need to dominate your market. You need to be at every fall festival. You need to be at every high school talking about your jobs.
Kelly Rowlett Presgrave: You need to be at the trade schools. You need to be in the community talking about the opportunity.
Tyler Martin: Yeah, that’s good stuff. Where do you feel culture relative to how much you’re willing to pay someone fits into this? So what I mean by that is, should we be a little more open to how much we pay for someone in hopes of, not hopes, but with our intent of having a better culture?
Tyler Martin: Where does that kind of fit in? I hope that question makes sense.
Kelly Rowlett Presgrave: It does. It’s very, I would say, it is a tough one. And I think also it’s one of those things where you can, if you don’t have every, I mean, numbers are numbers. So if you don’t have them, you’re starting out, you have a small shop and maybe you don’t feel like you could price like the big guys.
Kelly Rowlett Presgrave: So you’re not going to be like the low cost provider either, but you don’t have the ability to pay someone top dollar. You need to be at least competitive.
18:11Hiring on intelligence, energy, and integrity
Kelly Rowlett Presgrave: And at that point, I would say have enough conversations. And this is where it comes in to do not, I would say, never hire with a sacrifice of culture just to get someone in the door. It is not worth it because it will drive away anybody who’s good.
Kelly Rowlett Presgrave: So you do need to be cognizant of who you’re bringing on board. And sometimes it’s just a matter of talking to enough people to really be like, oh my gosh, this is somebody who values what we do. It all clicks. And you don’t get frustrated. You may
Kelly Rowlett Presgrave: have to talk to 10 people. You may have to talk to 15 people. But that’s sometimes what you have to happen. And maybe that person doesn’t care as much about money. They need to have every Saturday off to coach their son’s little league. Maybe they are a single parent and they need a special
Kelly Rowlett Presgrave: schedule. They don’t really care that you don’t offer insurance, but they need a stipend. They want an opportunity for growth. You’re willing to make that path for them. So there’s open the aperture for what you might be able to offer someone and do not
Kelly Rowlett Presgrave: sacrifice. We hire with Warren Buffett’s principles internally, intelligence, energy, and integrity. So if you don’t have intelligence and energy, we’re not going to hire you. Integrity is sometimes you don’t find out until after you’ve hired, but we try our best to interview for all those three things.
Kelly Rowlett Presgrave: And it’s been really, really, really, it’s worked really well for us. And the integrity piece, if we get an inkling that the integrity is not there, it’s not going to be a fit. So we really don’t want to make sure not drive away anyone who’s working for us that’s working well and is an A player because we have somebody who’s not going to fit our culture and our core values.
Tyler Martin: Yeah. So intelligence, I think to some degree we can interview for that. energy. I’ve always been, I don’t know if energy is you’re using in the same way that I used to use it was drive. And I always had a hard time with that one because in interviews and so you
Tyler Martin: can look at history a little bit, but it’s really hard to know how good someone’s drive is. How are you guys, what do you think you do that maybe can spot like the energy side of things, assuming
Kelly Rowlett Presgrave: we’re kind of talking about something similar? Yeah, no, I think for me, energy is just an overall, I’d hate to say vibe, but when you talk to thousands of people, it is really easy to spot good energy. And if someone is positive and they’re not blaming their past employer on every
Kelly Rowlett Presgrave: problem in their entire life, they’re not negative. It’s not two o’clock in the afternoon and they feel like you speak with them and it’s like they just rolled out of bed. There’s just, the glass is half full. They’re energetic. They talk, they speak positively. And for me, it’s,
Kelly Rowlett Presgrave: I guess, because I’ve talked to so many people, it’s pretty easy to spot on our end, somebody who’s got those good positive vibes. Yeah, it is vibe. Yeah. So it’s a little, sorry, I kind of interpreted it a little differently, but now I get what you mean. It is definitely vibe. So
Kelly Rowlett Presgrave: if you bring in a positive energy about you and just probably communicate in a positive way, have this good feeling. They leave you with a good feeling as opposed to, I know you’ve done this. You come at an interview and it feels like all your energy sapped as opposed to you come out
Kelly Rowlett Presgrave: and you’re like, oh man, that was such a great conversation. Yeah. I mean, they’re asking good questions. They’re engaged. They want to know more. If it’s a video interview, they’re making eye contact. They come prepared. All of those things point to a good energy as far as just like
Tyler Martin: somebody that you want to work with, you know? Yeah. Good stuff. Okay. I want to talk about
21:58How small shops can match private equity on speed
Tyler Martin: this speed to hire. We’ve seen private equity come into the space for a while now. And a lot of times I’ll hear things where they’re hiring people like the same day, or they’re willing to move really super fast when they find a candidate they like. What does this mean as it relates to
Tyler Martin: the typical shop that is a little more, you know, might be family owned or is small and their system isn’t really set up for that. What would you say to them and what should we be doing as, you know, and I’m talking shops that are probably under 20 million, somewhere between
Tyler Martin: one to 20 million. They don’t, maybe the, you know, as we get 10 million or more, they might have a small leadership team, but under that, they might not. What’s your thoughts around that?
Kelly Rowlett Presgrave: Yeah, it is tough. I feel for them, but I would say they have as much power. Make an offer contingent on a background check and a drug screen. You know, if you are insistent and you have a process that’s worked for you and you do
Kelly Rowlett Presgrave: not, we work with these kinds of companies who are like, I’m not that they have to do a ride along. They have to come in and work a half day so we can see them and someone else from our team can vouch for them.
Kelly Rowlett Presgrave: We’re not going to sacrifice and not do any of these steps because we’ve been burned in the past. That’s fine. Just know that you’re going to have, you’re going to have people who drop off because they go and they take other jobs and you’re going to have to be okay with that.
Kelly Rowlett Presgrave: So the companies that we work with that do all of those steps, they’re okay. They’re like, if they don’t want to go through the steps with us, then we lost them. That’s okay. They can come back another time if their current job doesn’t work out, but they’re going to
Kelly Rowlett Presgrave: have to go through all those steps. Otherwise, I would say if you don’t have a ride along and you’re able to move quickly, Have a backup for an interview. So if you get called out into, you know, if you’re the hiring manager or you’re the GM
Kelly Rowlett Presgrave: or whatever, you’re doing the interviews, have a backup. If you have to go into the field, okay, who can do that interview in your place so that someone is always available for an interview? Do the Starbucks interview, do the phone interview, do a virtual interview, make a contingent
Kelly Rowlett Presgrave: offer. There’s things that are in your control and do those, especially if you know that someone looks good on paper, has the good intelligence energy and probably what you can tell integrity, if it goes well, then for us, we have a replacement guarantee on every single hire.
Kelly Rowlett Presgrave: So use our guarantee to your advantage. Otherwise, I mean, really, yes, it hurts to have like a revolving door of people who come and go. But if they’re really good and they’re meeting everything that you’re, you know, that if you feel good about it, then make an offer and see. And that’s,
Kelly Rowlett Presgrave: you know, and then if it’s not going to work out, identify and fire them quickly. But I would say on top of that, have a good onboarding program, you know, have the things that are in your control. You can have a good onboarding process. You can have an interview process. You can have a backup
Kelly Rowlett Presgrave: for those. These are things that you can do and you can compete with the big guys. I mean, that’s all they have on their end. They have a deeper bench of people that can interview. They’re going to move through the process quicker with a contingent offer, and they’re going to get that
Kelly Rowlett Presgrave: offer out very fast. Those are things that any shop can do. They just need to make it a priority
Tyler Martin: and have the systems in place. What would you say in terms of when do you move fast and when do you pause? What’s coming to my mind is when we were just talking about vibe, a lot of times we’ll see on paper, oh yeah, they have all the technical skills, or maybe even in their interview, they
Tyler Martin: have the technical skills or maybe a ride along, but there’s like that little vibe thing that tweaks at you. Like, what’s your thoughts around that? Because sometimes we’re our own worst enemy. Like we get greedy. It’s like, okay, we got another technician, but there’s writing on the
Kelly Rowlett Presgrave: wall. What’s your thoughts around that? I would say try and figure out where it’s coming from. If it’s coming from, because you, and this is very typical with contractors or with any business owner, honestly, you’ve been burned. You’ve hired four people from this other company and they all
Kelly Rowlett Presgrave: didn’t work out. Or you hired four people who had 20 years of experience and you couldn’t train any of them out of their bad habits. And now there’s a generalization. All people from this, all people that have this are like this. So I’m never going to hire these type of people. So if it’s that kind
Kelly Rowlett Presgrave: of little voice in your head that you’re listening to, I would say do not generalize people. Listen to them and give them a chance without putting them in a bucket simply because of something that’s on paper or a past experience of yours. But if there’s a real something that he said and you didn’t pull on that thread during
Kelly Rowlett Presgrave: the interview, call them back and have a deeper conversation about it. Have a secondary person call them back and talk to them about the things that were giving you pause. Be open and honest and transparent at the front for sure. There might be a reason for anything that you misinterpreted or that they, as soon as
Kelly Rowlett Presgrave: they start spilling the beans on whatever it was, you’re like, okay, thank God I asked that question. You know, it’s really a matter of just digging in deep and don’t be afraid to call people back and have a further discussion and really dive into it if you have those feelings.
Kelly Rowlett Presgrave: If you can’t really identify it, have somebody else. If you have somebody else in your organization that can have a second interview, even if it’s just on the phone or a virtual interview quickly, if you’re afraid you’re going to lose them to the competition.
Tyler Martin: Yeah, that’s good feedback. And that gets me to want to dig in a little deeper. Do you have a recipe, if you will, or a methodology that for your style of interviewing that you follow or that you think gets better results? Can we kind of dig in a little bit there?
27:51Her interview formula and the red flags that end it
Kelly Rowlett Presgrave: Yes. So for our entire team, we follow pretty much the same interview protocol, I would say. Everybody has their own style of building rapport and communicating. But we want to find out, you know, why did someone get into the industry? If you were a plumber, HVAC tech, or electrician, like what led you to do this?
Kelly Rowlett Presgrave: Nine times out of 10, it’s because someone in their family, so their dad, their uncle, someone was in the industry and they learned at a young age. They were, you know, apprenticing. They didn’t even know they were apprenticing, but they were in it because some family member
Kelly Rowlett Presgrave: was. Then what do you love about being a technician? What do you still want to learn? So that is, what do you love about it? Passion. You know, what am I good at? Now I’m thinking about what I’m, now you’re taking pride in your work.
Kelly Rowlett Presgrave: And then what do you still want to learn? Do you have the intellectual curiosity or do you think you know it all? Do you have some humility or are you going to come in like, I know everything. I don’t, there’s nothing you can teach me about Plumny.
Kelly Rowlett Presgrave: I’m God’s gift to plummy. So that rubs most people the wrong way. So trying to pull out a little bit of that. And then, you know, the basic questions for us that will screen out a ton of people. Do you have a clean driving record? Are you okay with the background check? Are you okay with the
Kelly Rowlett Presgrave: drug screen? And if there’s a license requirement, do you have the license requirement that’s needed? Are you okay with windshield time? This service area for X, Y, and Z companies is pretty big. You could be going, you live here. You could be going to a service call at five o’clock on a
Kelly Rowlett Presgrave: Friday over here. So are you okay with that? Because there’s a lot of traffic in between there. So let’s talk about, make sure that you’re good with that wherever you are. Why do you want to leave the company you are at right now? Like, why are you looking for a new position? What are
Kelly Rowlett Presgrave: your compensation requirements? If it’s a sales position, what are your conversion rates? What do you normally sell? What do you need to feed your family? What percentage are you getting now? Like we’re diving into all their, a good salesperson will ask a lot of questions. Do I
Kelly Rowlett Presgrave: generate my own leads? Do the leads come to me? Like now you really know that they know their stuff when, but some of the questions they ask, but you know, we’re going to performance-based pay. I’d say plumbers for sure. Even in some, what was I, I was talking to someone in a separate
Kelly Rowlett Presgrave: industry, but their performance-based pay, it was elevator technicians, performance-based pay for elevator technicians. So even like across the board. So are you used to that? Like, are you okay with that kind of pay? If you’re not, then so, but you know, we have our formula, we go through,
Kelly Rowlett Presgrave: we want to, we want to weed people in, not weed them out, but qualify them for, and make sure that they’re, they know what they’re walking into. Then we sell the company. Everything’s a good, you sound awesome. Now we’re talking about our client. Hey, they do this, they have these benefits,
Kelly Rowlett Presgrave: They do this for, you know, as far as SPFs, this is what their top tech makes. Now we’re going into all the cool things about whoever we’re promoting. So that’s kind of our formula, if you will. But each recruiter, I’d say, probably tackles it a little bit differently on their own,
Kelly Rowlett Presgrave: depending on who they’re speaking with.
Tyler Martin: Do you have any questions around coachability? Anything that looks for whether someone’s coachable or not?
Kelly Rowlett Presgrave: Yeah, I would say just that back to that humility question. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. And generally speaking, if someone’s been in the industry for 30 years, they’ve owned their own company. Now they’re coming in and they’re going to be, you know, let’s say they’re, for
Kelly Rowlett Presgrave: some reason, they’re back to being a technician. Let’s talk about that. What’s your process? You know, do you follow a process when you greet a homeowner? Are you okay with presenting options? You know, there’s a lot of people that push back on, I don’t want to be a salesperson.
Kelly Rowlett Presgrave: Well, you can look at it that way, but you could also look at it like you’re helping your homeowner and you’re making sure that when you walk out of the home, you’ve actually made sure that their home is in good condition and you have done a whole home inspection and you’ve given them options and you’ve thought about them in a way that’s helping them,
Kelly Rowlett Presgrave: not that you’re trying to sell something to them. So a lot of people who push back on performance-based pay, I just want to go in and fix it. I’m not a salesperson, you’re probably not coachable. So some of those things that just within the conversation,
Kelly Rowlett Presgrave: you know, you don’t have to pull on that thread too much. It’ll just kind of present itself.
Tyler Martin: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. What about like red flags? Like what are some red flags that you would tend to see or hear and go, oh, you know, I got to think about that?
Kelly Rowlett Presgrave: Yeah, for management, it’s different. But for technicians, if you’re blaming your past employer for everything, and you’ve had, you know, job hoppers, I would say, seven years ago, a job hopper, if you see someone who bounces around a lot, it means one thing.
Kelly Rowlett Presgrave: Nowadays, it’s just more common. So are you not gonna have, like, if you don’t want a job hopper, good luck, because that’s part of the industry. It’s really, really prevalent in recruiting as well. So finding recruiters that have been at a job for a very long time is hard.
Kelly Rowlett Presgrave: to do. So where’s your threshold on that? And I understand I have complete respect for somebody who says, I want somebody who’s been at their job for at least four years. And that’s what we do here. And I’m not going to interview anybody who’s bounced around. That’s okay. Sometimes
Kelly Rowlett Presgrave: there’s reasons for it, but we’ll just, you know, we’ll move past it. But I don’t know, that’s sometimes a red flag. But really for me, the red flag is when you have that low energy, You’re blaming everybody else. You’re the victim. You’re not going to take responsibility for anything.
Kelly Rowlett Presgrave: And it’s somebody else’s fault. And you’d be shocked at how many people that comes out in a, you know, why are you leaving your current job? See that you had three jobs in the past four years. Tell me more about that. Ah, well, they didn’t appreciate me.
Kelly Rowlett Presgrave: And this other person was shady and they’re terrible people. And it’s just writing on the wall that that’s a person problem. That’s a them problem.
Tyler Martin: Yeah. Yeah. How about culture fit? I know, obviously, vibe and energy would play into some degree of that, but how do you try to get the right match for the right client? Is there anything you
Kelly Rowlett Presgrave: consciously do or how do you get that match? We’re pretty intentional if the client wants us to hire on that. Some of our clients will say, hey, we’re going to tackle that when they get into our office. We have our core values on our wall. We have them in our brochure. We’ve got
Kelly Rowlett Presgrave: of tattooed on our body. We’re going to talk core values when they get in. So don’t worry about that. Others are like, yes, can you talk about these are our core values? These are why they’re important to us. We definitely want you to talk about them. So we’ll include them in our script. We’ll pick
Kelly Rowlett Presgrave: out a couple and say one of them that we had for an old client was no jerks. So that was pretty easy. but the others have been humility was one that was a big one for. And so we really wanted to pull on that thread of,
Kelly Rowlett Presgrave: are they going to come in like, I’m the God’s gift to plumbing. You’re not going to work out at this, at the client we’re recruiting for. So we did talk, we specifically talked about this core values and asked them to provide examples on how they embodied that.
Kelly Rowlett Presgrave: What were some of their own core values that they lived by on a daily basis? So we can get in pretty deep. It really will let the client drive that, how much they want us to do that.
Tyler Martin: Where do you find branding plays into your job as a recruiter? Like, do you find if you get hired to do recruiting, do you find your jobs way easier if a company has like a kick charge type image? Does that even play into it at all?
Tyler Martin: What are your thoughts around that as a recruiter? I’m really curious.
Kelly Rowlett Presgrave: It can go both ways. Really? So, and it doesn’t, it’s the brandy, I would just say the reputation in general. So if you’re in, you know, Northern Virginia market, but I’m going to pick on, I’m going to pick on a different market. We recruit for someone up in the Northeast and they dominate their area.
Kelly Rowlett Presgrave: They’re huge, great company, you know, four or 500 people. They just really own the territory. We get as many people who say, I will not work for that company. That’s terrible. They fired my brother-in-law or whatever as ones that are like, oh my God, I’ve always
Kelly Rowlett Presgrave: wanted to work for them. They’re my dream job. So it can go both ways. If you are that big, you’re going to have both. You’re going to have people that you’ve heard terrible things and you’ve made someone mad that they know. And then you’re going to have people who’ve been like, you know, drive past your van and
Kelly Rowlett Presgrave: they’re like, oh my God, I just can’t wait to work there one day. So it can go both ways. if you’re in a smaller market and you, you know, or if you’re in a market where there’s just a ton of options, yes, everyone wants to work. I would say technicians like driving home a vehicle. They
Kelly Rowlett Presgrave: like driving around a vehicle that’s nicely wrapped. They want to have good, you know, nice uniforms. They want to feel like they’re representing a good company that has a good, has a good reputation in the industry. So it does matter. It does matter. And some of them,
Kelly Rowlett Presgrave: Like there’s a company down in Florida that does a lot on social media and people, I think, you know, see their funny things that they’re doing and they want to be a part of that culture. So there is brand awareness. And I saw them not too long ago and had people, they were standing there talking to me, but
Kelly Rowlett Presgrave: random people were coming up. Oh my God, I’ve seen you on Facebook. You’re so funny. And so it’s little things that you can do to make people want to work for your company. But as a whole, I would say, you know, there’s only so much you can control in that.
Tyler Martin: Yeah. Do you have a certain type of client that you feel you may not be able to help the best? Like, is there any certain things that, and where I’m going with this question is, if there’s some people out in the audience, maybe there’s some things they can do,
Tyler Martin: they can help their company a little bit more to make someone like you more effective?
Kelly Rowlett Presgrave: I would say someone we can’t help. I don’t know if there’s anybody we can’t help. I would say if you, there’s, we talk to a lot of contractors that feel very discouraged. They’ve been, they don’t feel like that they can get past the hurdle of talent.
Kelly Rowlett Presgrave: They’ve just been burned. You can just hear it. You see it when you’re talking to them that they just feel like beaten up and discouraged about it. And at that point, I don’t say this to them, but I often want to say, you have low energy.
Kelly Rowlett Presgrave: You need to go out and talk to somebody. and you cannot treat people all like all the people that have burned you in the past. You have to change your mindset. And, you know, we had one customer that used to, you know, for his salespeople, sell me this pen.
Kelly Rowlett Presgrave: And then he would be really mad at us that those people couldn’t sell in the pen. And I just wanted to be like, you know what? I don’t know that I could. And we couldn’t help him because it was just so old school and so set in his ways
Kelly Rowlett Presgrave: that I really tried, but it was, you know, it’s so for us, we try to be, we are, I feel like we’re subject matter expert. We know what works, but if you’re to a point where you’re so discouraged and kind of just burned, burned by, by their past employees that you can’t get, you can’t get your
Kelly Rowlett Presgrave: mind right around it. I don’t know. I don’t know what to, that’s a different, that’s somebody else
Tyler Martin: that needs to help. So, so Kelly, I had, this is the funniest one I’ve ever heard. I had someone say their sneak interview question, I’ll call it, was, what’s the last joke you heard? And if you didn’t have a joke on the top of your mind, that basically meant like you weren’t a
Tyler Martin: good candidate for them. And they were like adamant about this. They were like, if someone knew a joke, that always turned out to be a good hire. So they wouldn’t hire anyone if they didn’t know it. And I was like, oh man, I’d never get hired there. I’m not good with jokes off the top
Kelly Rowlett Presgrave: of my head. No, no. My father-in-law would have been hired like 50 times over because he just had like a litany of 150 jokes he knew at all times. But I don’t recall jokes that, no, I would have to make something up on the fly
Kelly Rowlett Presgrave: and it probably wouldn’t be funny.
Tyler Martin: Which in itself was kind of funny, Kelly.
Kelly Rowlett Presgrave: Maybe, but yeah, no, that’s interesting. I had not heard that one.
Tyler Martin: Yeah, I hadn’t either prior to that. Okay, so good stuff. I do want to, before we wrap up, just a couple more minutes, who should be using your services? Like who should reach out to you? And in what positions? Like, you know, clients oftentimes will have trouble finding CSRs, for example, or obviously technicians are a common one.
Tyler Martin: Are there certain areas that you’re more successful at than others? Is it kind of across the board who should reach out to you?
Kelly Rowlett Presgrave: Yeah, I would say any company that’s in the home or commercial services that needs, obviously technicians, CSRs, dispatchers. We’ve hired bookkeepers, director of marketing, COOs, CEOs of, you know, multi-million dollar platform companies for private equity, integrators, vice presidents, whatever. I mean, it really runs.
Kelly Rowlett Presgrave: We’re apprenticed to the C-suite, 100% anybody in the ecosystem. We’ve hired them, permit pullers, coordinators, like people make up titles all the time. We’ll go find them. So it’s really, you know, I love the industry when we truly niched down and niched into home services.
Kelly Rowlett Presgrave: That’s where we saw real success is because and then we could really move the needle for our customers. So, you know, we partnered with a company down in Florida in July and have hired 21 people for them since then. So we can really, really, I mean, when there’s a top priority and a big need, we’re on it.
Kelly Rowlett Presgrave: So we can certainly move the needle for companies. And whether it’s management or boots on the ground, field, office, we’ll help them all. So I wouldn’t say there’s not anyone we can’t help. I’d say that we love, I know there’s a lot of talk right now between private companies
Kelly Rowlett Presgrave: and private equity, and there’s this battle. but they’re both good. There’s space for both. There’s good private companies and there’s bad private companies. There’s good private equity and there’s bad private equity. So, you know, I not say bad, but there’s, there’s better, there’s, there’s space for everyone and we can help both.
Tyler Martin: Very cool. And then in terms of, so when I hear 21 clients, I think, wow, this is a fast scaling company. Most clients usually have like one-offs here and there. Is that a good match for your type of service? Are you guys, is that just a client you’ll typically work with that,
Tyler Martin: not necessarily high volume hiring, but as they, on an as needed basis?
Kelly Rowlett Presgrave: Sure. We can help them with that. You know, what we find is it’s once, once they partner with us, if they’re like an all three trades company, they see what we can do. And all of a sudden they’re like, Hey, I can put more money into marketing now because they’re going to get me the people I need.
Kelly Rowlett Presgrave: So it changes the game. So that’s what we want to be able to do is say, you have the confidence that we can bring with the people. So now you can go and concentrate on getting the leads, the calls on the board. And now we can, especially if we have the advance notice.
Kelly Rowlett Presgrave: So if they’re in their business planning workshops, they’re looking at next year. They’re looking at how much they want to grow. What does that marketing look like? You drill down, they know how many more techs they need. You have that information and you’re,
Kelly Rowlett Presgrave: be a month ahead. I need the techs in March. Let’s let us start in February and then we can really make a difference. So it’s not that we can’t help smaller companies. We just see organized companies are the ones that we can really make an impact on because
Kelly Rowlett Presgrave: they know what they want. They have their processes in place and they know when they need the people and then we can really be an asset to them.
Tyler Martin: Yeah, good stuff. Okay, last question. How about a mantra? Do you have something that you kind of live by or that you lean into as far as an entrepreneur?
Kelly Rowlett Presgrave: our our mantra for 2025 has been the culture of accountability and radical radical accountability
44:08Radical accountability and the people it pushed out
Kelly Rowlett Presgrave: and ownership for whatever is on your plate and that has been something that we’ve identified in our organization as it was much needed it changed our culture we had some people that did not like that and they are not part of our organization anymore major pushback from some
Kelly Rowlett Presgrave: And that’s okay, but that’s where we needed to go was radical responsibility and ownership and accountability. So it’s been fun, honestly, for the people to have a team. It’s changed the dynamic of our company to do that. I saw on Facebook or LinkedIn a post from, I won’t name the company, but he had commented on somebody.
Kelly Rowlett Presgrave: He said, well, we’ve instituted a culture of accountability and we’re just through the hump. and it impacted our revenue. And I thought that’s so funny that a home services company went through the same thing that internally we went through and we’re at the same place.
Kelly Rowlett Presgrave: And I know they’re a fairly big organization and they’ve been around for a really long time. So I’m like, the fact that they’re going through it and they’re a decades old company, it’s just, but it’s one of those things. I think you have to constantly be evolving
Kelly Rowlett Presgrave: and continuous improvement. And we’re on the other side of that. And it’s absolutely fantastic.
Tyler Martin: That’s awesome. And one thing you said that is just so wonderful and so spot on is when you make a decision to make a change like this or focus on something, you will have some shakeout and you have to be okay with that. That’s part of that change is to the people that are aligned with
Tyler Martin: what you want to be aligned with and what works for your company stay on board. And the ones that really weren’t probably servicing you well anyway, for whatever reason, doesn’t make them bad people, but they’re a better fit for someone else. So that’s a real important part of it.
Tyler Martin: So it’s cool that you kind of embrace that.
Kelly Rowlett Presgrave: Yeah, it’s, you know what you need to do. It’s doing it and making, you know, the decision isn’t the hard part. It’s taking action on that. Decision is hard. And then, you know, there’s all these people I follow on Instagram that do the hard things.
Kelly Rowlett Presgrave: It’s so true. Do the hard things, but you have to get past that. And you do have to be able to, you have to know that it’s, You got to go through the mud to get to the other side.
Tyler Martin: Yeah. Okay, good stuff. Few actionable takeaways that I took away. You know, just our vacancies are costing us money. Let’s say, make sure we’re measuring those. Really important from Kelly’s thoughts and comments that she shared. I think another big thing was just we got to move a little more intentional in our hiring.
Tyler Martin: I’m leery of using the word fast, but maybe it is fast. We just have to be more intentional and quicker to get to our decision-making, or else we’re probably going to lose to the competition. And then I would say hire for attitude. We use the word vibe, but I think, you know, you can’t emphasize enough that it’s got to be a person that brings a good energy to our office.
Kelly Rowlett Presgrave: Anything I missed or anything you want to add?
Tyler Martin: No, just that it’s a competitive advantage to have a sense of urgency.
Kelly Rowlett Presgrave: Yeah, yeah. So an intentional sense of urgency, but it is a competitive advantage for sure.
Tyler Martin: Yeah, good one. That’s a great point. Okay, website, work with your hands. Hands is with a Z. I love that. Workwithyourhands.com. I’ll also put your LinkedIn, both your business and your personal. You go, I’m probably gonna mess up your, I believe it’s your maiden name,
Tyler Martin: Kelly Rowlett Pressgrave. Rowlett, Rowlett. Rowlett, sorry. Kelly Rowlett Pressgrave is what your LinkedIn name is if anyone wants to look it up, but it’ll also be in the show notes. Kelly, thank you so much. That was an awesome conversation. Can’t thank you enough for being here.
Kelly Rowlett Presgrave: All right, thanks for having me, Tyler. It was fun.
Tyler Martin: Well, what an awesome conversation with Kelly. Here’s my takeaway from this conversation. Most owners don’t necessarily have a talent problem. They have a speed and vacancy problem. Every open truck, every missing comfort advisor or CSR is a profit center sitting empty. When you treat candidates like customers, shorten your time to hire, and actually put
Tyler Martin: a number on vacancy costs, your growth ceiling moves fast. Kelly also drives home that attitude and accountability are non-negotiable. The best shops are willing to lose the wrong people so they can build a team that owns results. That means hiring humility, energy, and integrity, then backing it up with a real culture of
Tyler Martin: accountability, even when it’s uncomfortable. All of these numbers show up in your numbers. Vacancies, labor mix, hiring delays flow straight into revenue, margin, and cash. If you want to see what your staffing decisions are really doing to your P&L and your bank account, that’s where I come in. I help business owners turn those messy numbers into a clear plan
Tyler Martin: for growth, hiring, and cash flow. You can grab an intro call at cfointrocall.com. That’s cfointrocall.com or go to my website, cfomadeeasy.com. As always, thank you so much for listening. Have a great one and take care.
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- The Real Reason Home Service Companies Run Out of Cash – Stephanie Allen
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- The Rules You’re Living By Are Costing You Millions – Laura Kelly
- The Hidden Revenue in Your Pipeline You’re Not Capturing – Ryan Fenn
Tyler Martin works with owners on the numbers behind these stories: HVAC accountant and fractional CFO for HVAC contractors.
