The Trifecta of Leadership

Hayden Lee

Welcome, everyone, to the Success Elevated podcast. As always, I’m your host, Hayden Lee, and I am joined this week by a returning guest and good friend of ours here at Spot On Solutions. Rod Cruce you are the founder and chief growth officer over at Trifecta Growth Institute. Rod. Thanks for coming on the podcast.

Rod Cruce

Hey, thanks a lot for having me. Always a pleasure to, be on the podcast and really appreciate the invitation.

Hayden Lee

Oh, it’s awesome. The the cool thing about doing follow up podcasts or second podcast with someone is we get to we get to kind of dive in a little bit deeper into some of the topics that we maybe kind of hinted that at originally. But this this is an opportunity for us to, you know, go deeper. And I love follow up. guests we’ve had a handful of guests have come on, you know, multiple times, which ends up being super, super cool. So, rod, I think first and foremost, obviously you introduce yourself to our audience and people are pretty familiar with who you are in the the restoration and home services world. But I’d love for you to kind of maybe just briefly give us an intro of a little bit about who you are and what you guys are doing over at trifecta, and then we can obviously dive into some of the things we want to talk about today.

But if you don’t mind, kind of start there with just a little bit about who you are.

Rod Cruce

Sure, absolutely. Thanks. Like you said i’m Rod Cruce the founder and chief growth officer for Prophetic Growth Institute. yeah. Trifecta of Growth Institute. We believe in growing businesses by growing people. And basically that’s through training, leadership and coaching and that piece of it. we’re located out of Denver, Colorado, but we also we work across the nation.

We we do have some clients overseas. So, yeah, we have, you know, some restoration certification courses and some, some really good training courses that are both online and in person. And, we can pretty much work anything around with people’s needs.

Hayden Lee

I love it. You, you come to that space with, with a background in it, like. Like you used to own a restoration company. Construction. You’re still doing construction in a lot of ways, and so you have experience in it. But I think what what maybe sets you apart even further is your background with regards to, like, leadership.

and I, you know, I don’t I don’t want to speak for you in any way, but I think a lot of that probably comes from your time in the military, right? That, a lot of your maybe some of those leadership skills that you’ve developed over the years and now implementing and training programs and stuff come from some of that background in the military?

Rod Cruce

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, one of the things about, you know, I was in Special forces in the military and, you know, we believe in training a lot, and you go through a lot of training just to get there. to be able to be, you know, qualified. And, and we’re always being developed, and within leadership and, and many other different skills and, and so there’s a value there.

And, you know, we have a growth mindset that was always instilled in us. And with that, you know, we kind of take that same kind of structure that will then that leadership development and bring it to the civilian sector. There’s a lot of a lot of different things that, you know, it’s not military style leadership at all.

even then we didn’t do military style leadership. We were always a little bit more out in the from the tip of the spear, working with diplomats, strategic initiatives with different countries and stuff of that nature. So we had to be very savvy. And, you know, how we address especially politicians in third world countries and, and, because you can go real quick, you can go south really quick if you’re not, taking in those cultural norms and also being respectful and being able to, to talk at a very strategic or or operational level.

Hayden Lee

I love it. You the majority of our podcast in our conversations today are going to be about leadership and training leaders and stuff. And so before we kind of dive into some more specific details there, especially about what you’re doing at trifecta, the the leadership piece in the military has always been fascinating to me. I have a really good friend of mine.

in Naval Special Warfare, and he talks very fondly about his leaders there. even leaders that during the training process sometimes have to yell at him. Sometimes have to yell at him and get after him a little bit. Right. And but it’s it’s this fascinating culture to me that like, you can be a good leader, but also ask for excellence out of your team.

Those two don’t have to be opposed to each other, you know. You know what I’m saying? That like, he he loves these leaders and believes in them and has confidence that they can care about him and his well-being. But they’re also going to get after him. And they also got after him during the training process and continue to get after him when he’s, you know, maybe made a mistake or something.

Right? So like, it’s this cool concept of like, you can you can have your, you can, you know, want your team to be excellent and strive for excellence while also like, people care about you and respect you. You know, I don’t know if you can speak to that at all or your thoughts on that.

Rod Cruce

Yeah I mean, Everything you know. You know, one of the biggest things that I always try to do as a leader, and I agree 100%, I have some very, very great leaders that, I was fortunate enough to be underneath and follow and, you know, it was it was always, you know, probably about three things.

I could always tie it to number one. We always it was all about culture and we had a winning mindset and a growth mindset culture. And so when you when you cultivate that thriving culture and then people buy into that, then, you know, the accountability is the second thing. It comes in there. I would I’m not putting these in any kind of order, but there’s accountability.

And when you set the bar high and you’re, you know, you don’t have to be mean, but you when you set that bar high and people buy into that, they want to do well. And so then it becomes that competitive environment, but also that accountability environment. So and then the Last one, you know, one of the biggest things I’ve always seen from my leaders, and that I’ve always tried to do, is show that genuine concern for the individual and that’s both on a personal and a professional level.

And when you can do that and that individual realizes that you’re really looking out for their best interest and also the best interests of the team. And it’s not about you personally. And, you know, at that point. Yeah. And that’s why I always try to lead. I don’t want it. It’s not about me. It’s about the team and it’s about the environment.

And if I can enable the team, whether that is for personal growth or professional growth, then the environment will take care of itself.

Hayden Lee

Yeah. I think that’s, that at the end of the day that that’s what ends up being most important, right? Is, is this idea of being a part of a team and the team’s goals, the team’s future is more important than the individual. and I think that’s how like obviously that’s how, you know, you have successful like military teams and units and all of that.

But but I think it’s how you build a successful business, like the concept of the, the, the goals of the entire team, the whole business are more important than the goals of an individual. And, and that goes to like the leaders as well. Like your goal. The goal should be team growth, not just the CEO wants to have a few more bucks in their pocket.

You know, like that. That’s how it’s got to be. That’s how you got to have that correct mindset. I guess in order for everyone to be successful.

Rod Cruce

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think it’s very for every company I’ve owned, it’s always been, or every company I’ve ever been even been a part of. there’s always been that strategic vision and there’s always been the mission. And, you know, a lot of times people make these missions, you know, provide, services or, or something that nature, which is fine.

But in reality, you know, whenever you’re, you want to get that mission statement out there. And as long as everybody’s into that, you don’t want to, you know, everybody’s going to support that in their own right. And, you know, at the end of the day, whenever you’re successful and you can really tie that to a mission statement to what you’re trying to do and where you’re being successful, the money’s going to come out.

That’s really what you’re what you’re trying, you know, of course you want them. You got to be profitable in business. Otherwise you’re not going to be in business very long. But there’s also a way to balance the needs of the individual versus the needs of the company. How you generate the profit and then also how you generate the culture and set that culture up to thrive.

And if we don’t do all this together and it comes very transactional, then at that point we have an issue. and at least from my experience, I think when it becomes transactional only, which I see a lot of companies are that way, then at that point people start to leave or they don’t get the buy in, and then that becomes a leadership issue.

in all due respect.

Hayden Lee

Yeah. Well, yeah, transactional is a great way to just say like when when you’re so focused in on did this employee or did this person make me money or make me more money? if if that’s what you are distilling your numbers down to, then, yeah, it’s you’re going to have a poor culture, you’re going to have leaders that are frustrated or you’re, you know, your leaders themselves are going to be causing the issues.

So I think the yeah, the distilling it down to like, are you so focused on the transactional piece that it starts impacting your culture is is huge there

Rod Cruce

and then, you know, at the end of the day, it’s about relationships and human connection, right? And when you can, when you can make sure you have that. And you like I said, you’re showing that genuine concern and then the transactions will take care of themselves.

Hayden Lee

Yeah. I think yeah, that’s it seems counterintuitive probably to a lot of business owners. But it will it totally will. Like if you’re if you’re more focused about culture and you’re training, right, like we’re going to be talking about and your people, you focus on those elements like the business success and the revenue growth and the the profits.

All of those things will come like, but that that shouldn’t be there. That can be that could be something you have in the back of your mind, like you mentioned earlier, like you can’t not think about the money because you’ve got to be profitable in order to stay in business. But, it can be something that that can kind of be in the back of your mind.

Whereas the, your, your real focus, your day to day optimization and, and operations can be about how do we help our team grow, how do we help our culture improve those kinds of things, and, I think that leads perfectly into kind of the first thing I wanted to kind of fully dive in, not the first thing, because we obviously been chatting here for a minute, but, before we we really dive into the leadership piece, which I think is at the core of this.

Every successful business has good leaders. I think the first step is you’ve got to build like some good training programs. And why do you think like this is something we’ve talked about on the podcast a bunch. Katie, as you’re aware, is a big proponent of like having training systems and programs in place. Why does like a successful company need to have good training?

And when I say good training, it’s because there’s probably people out there listening right now. They’re like, oh, I we’ve we have great training. Most of that training is like, go follow Bob around for a couple of days. It’s not like a legit training program. So why do you think like good, successful companies should have training programs?

Rod Cruce

Well, first of all, I think I think a lot of people confuse onboarding with training. onboarding is a type of training. And it’s meant, you know, that’s the kind of pieces where you get people to kind of do right seat rides and, and get people oriented to how the company culture is or how a company does business, or getting a, you know, how the how the systems work in that aspect, or what’s the normal procedures and we need that.

We definitely need that. And that’s usually why when a person comes on, that’s really sets the stage and and it gives a company the opportunity to wow the, the employee. Right. And you know, you kind of think about this. And it is counterintuitive to a lot of people in business because you’re like, hey, I just gave you a job.

But, you know, I just hired you. So now I’m they’re ready for them to start work. But in reality, it is it is still we still are doing we’re trying to establish a human connection and establish relationship at that point. So we need to try to wow the new employees. And it needs to start with that show that genuine concern that we’re just not throwing them out there on the job site day one without anything else or, you know, without any kind of understanding.

Once we do that now, then to have a really a big training and, you know, a dedicated or formal training program or something like that, you have to make the decision. Am I going to do it in-house or am I going to do it, you know, use a third party and, you know, some but very few companies are able to do it in-house.

and it was very expensive to have a full time trainer. And, and then also you got to make sure they have the skill set to do it. And then the second piece of it is now that you’ve got somebody else that’s taken off from doing productivity to train, and so you have to kind of balance that and make that decision up front.

But the reason I have one is really for skill development. You know, you got to look at your skills. I mean, not everyone comes into the company with the right skills. And we’re a big component of hiring for potential and development at that point. If you get the right, you know, if you get the right culturally fit or right person that fits the culture, that has the mindset you’re looking for and also has the ability to perform well now, then that’s a big part of the model from there.

Now then we can look at what skills are lacking or need to be improved upon or built upon. And now then we can make a good assessment. We can get that training available for that person and that that becomes a bigger, bigger deal than you think. Because now then, are we only getting those that training for one person, or we need it for the whole team.

And so you can’t take a shotgun approach to this thing. you really want to be more precise, and you also want to look at what you’re trying to do, what kind of objectives you’re trying to get in your company. you know, the other thing is increased productivity. I think this helps with employee retention. And also recruitment.

You know, if you have a, you know, one of the things that we always had was project management training. And so when we brought in project managers, you know, they would go through project manager training, you know, after 90 days, and it allowed us the time to assess them and it also allowed them to assess us. And then at that point we would start their professional development.

and the other thing I think it does, you know, when you put that in, too, it helps you identify future leaders. And those are some of the more important reasons why I think having a formal training program or some type of, you know, dedicated program is beneficial to a company.

Hayden Lee

That’s so cool. The there’s two things there. I think the first thing I’ll, I’ll, I’ll ask real quickly, you mentioned because because the second piece is how a training program can identify leaders. And I want I want to dive into that. But first, you mentioned that when you’re looking to hire someone, you’re hiring for potential. I’d love for you to elaborate on that a little bit.

Is is it like, are you thinking of, okay, what could this person become in three years or five? Or like, what are you looking at when you’re when you say, I want to hire someone based on their potential.

Rod Cruce

Yeah. So we have a different approach to, I think, you know, what that looking how we hire, you know, everybody can put out a job request out there and they can put the task or the, you know, the the nice, you know, we we want these things, you know, they’re the must haves. Then we have a nice to haves.

but, you know, if you look at it from a hiring perspective, we look at it three different ways. Number one, you’ve got the cognitive. And when I say cognitive, what we’re really looking at is someone’s experience, someone’s resumé. That’s when we’re going to put that what’s the first thing we’re going to look at to see if they’re going to, you know, be able to do the job.

And so when we look at the cognitive, you know, that’s usually a piece of paper that maybe somebody, somebody submitted, maybe a video of somebody was, you know, you know, nice enough to do that. But but what we’re looking is, do they have some type of training or do they have some kind of form, you know, education and then, you know, what’s their experience level?

the second thing we like to look at is and that’s the first question we’re asking, we’re trying to answer is this does this person have an experience or some type of experience. It can be related to this job. That would be a good fit. The second piece of it, we look at the effective and and the effective is kind of like your personality.

You know, a lot of people do Myers-Briggs or they’ll do the, you know, different, DISC assessment and stuff like that. And those are great. And what that does, it tells you how that person’s going to perform and when it’s when it’s nice, when there’s no stress, whenever there’s no, you know, any kind of stressors in there or, or adversely taking place.

And so we do want to look at that. And that’s really where we take it to the next level, which is the interview. And or the question we’re trying to ask then is, is this person the right fit for our culture? You know, do we feel like they’re going to do we think their personality is going to get along?

Do they can they communicate very well? And and so we like to ask that second question. the third question we have, we like to look at is the Conititve And in what where can I talk about this. People like the Conitive? what is the conitive. And and it’s not normally, you know, but we have an assessment that we we do and it allows us to look at how people problem solve

How do they do work. And that is very important. and everybody has strengths they bring to the table. And when you can identify those strengths on the front end of what they’re looking at or what you’re looking at and what you’re going to get, because some people, you know, we look at it, some people are fact finders and they’ll do a lot of research.

Other people are are very general and they don’t want to do the research they just want the answer. And then when we start looking at like how do you, you know, look at processes, who follows processes and who wants to circumvent processes. Those people, we can look at that and see where they’re going to fall in. And so we can also tie that to where we can work with a company and figure out what the job is, and we can create a modus operandi and M.O. for what person is going to best fit that job.

And then we can give that assessment to the individuals, and then we can overlay it and we can say, okay, this individual is a really good fit. You know, we give it a grade. There are a or this individual’s an f. And you know, you shouldn’t hire them even though they may have the right cognitive on the resume and they may have a good personality, but ultimately they probably will not do well in their job.

And so now you’re setting yourself up for a much better experience and getting the right candidate into that. And you’re going to the big benefit from from that is you’re not wasting 90 to 120 days to realize you hired the wrong person. And now then you’re right back to square one again, when really at that point, we should start looking and have a good assessment of where we need to start to develop this individual.

Because we hired all potential. We also hired on the right mindset for that. So now that we can develop and get them, it’s important when they’re performing really well.

Hayden Lee

So cool. Thank you for I didn’t want to I didn’t want to throw too much of a curveball there. But the your answer there was so, so good. Thank you. I, I think people get so caught up in and we I mean, we could spend a whole podcast and we’ve had we have spent podcast talking about the hiring process.

But people get so caught up in hiring for a specific need right now. Like, oh, we need more technicians. I got to get a technician. We’re so swamped. We’re so busy. And what you’re describing is you’re looking much more deeply into who these individuals are, who these candidates are. Can we develop them? Are they going to be problem solvers?

Can we help develop them into leaders? And, yeah, it’s it’s so, so cool. And I, I love the concept of, of having that, you know, a more in-depth analysis of those candidates.

Rod Cruce

I want to. Be clear, you know, when we’re start bringing in like the entry level and field personnel like that too. I do see the need for it. Or sometimes you have to hire somebody to be able to get into that position. And most of the time, if you think about it from the technical, from a mitigation technician perspective, when we hire that most people don’t find one that’s already WRT certified or you got all these qualifications, if they did, they got in from another company or somebody, you know, left.

And and that’s that’s great. But when we really start, if you think about your process there, a lot of times you’re hiring somebody at the entry level and And there’s an expectation at the entry level versus that when you get to the second and third level. When we start looking at mid-level managers, there’s a big a different expectation there.

And so you got to understand how you can climb the climb the the ladder to being able to go from an entry level person to an, you know, a two year person to a mid-level manager person to that point, and those skills that you’re what you’re looking for or those potential, hiring on that potential is different. And so there is a need just to bring in some field personnel for sure.

But when you start looking at, you know, these 70, $80,000, your jobs, then you need to put a little bit more effort into that, I think. Yeah.

Hayden Lee

Well, and even even hiring those technicians, that kind of the three things that you described, you, you look at still allow you you can still hire technicians using that process, but it allows you to think, hey, yes, you’re a technician today and you might be a technician for a couple of years, but I’m thinking down the road, who can you become?

And, it’s it’s yeah, it’s just a cool concept to think. Yeah, I’m gonna I’m going to begin. I’m going to I’m going to hire somebody here and begin their time with our company with a thought of it. They could eventually become this or this or elevate into this position, which is so, so cool.

The other thing you mentioned, if we if we rewind just a couple of minutes, you mentioned that this training program again, let’s we’ve talked about hiring. You’ve gotten some good team members. You’re developing this training program or you’re maybe reaching out to rod to help you develop a training program. How does a training program help you both identify and elevate leaders?

How does how does a training program do that? Do you have to do something different with it? Are you what what are you looking to try and accomplish with a training program to potentially either identify or elevate leaders?

Rod Cruce

Yeah, that’s a great question. number one, you want to look at how what is there, how do they go about the training. You know, at that point? Are they are they just, you know, I use OSHA ten a lot. Everybody wants to get OSHA ten. and, you know, OSHA ten is ten hours of training. It’s all about safety.

And it needs to be there. But for the most part, people just try to click through as fast as they can and get the certification and take the exam, and they’re done right. Whenever you see someone actually taking the taking the interest and putting the effort forward to their development, and then they’re you’re asking questions or they start to come back and they say, okay, hey, why don’t we have first aid kits here or there?

you know, now then you’re starting to see you’re starting to get a what I call a KPI, a key performance indicator for the training, because now then that individual is, is identified a problem or something. They’ve seen that they’ve learned from that now is going to help your business. It’s going to, you know, help prevent that. Or all of a sudden they start to walk around and say, hey, do you mind if I do this?

You know, do an assessment of our warehouse. And so those are ways out there that you can see more. They start to apply what they just learned. And they start to apply it. So now then when you’re looking at somebody who has a different level and is also trying to be a problem solver and also trying to show leadership, when you see that, then you you want to take a mental note of that.

You want to reward that behavior, but also you want to look at say, okay, now then what skill set do I need them to be like in two years? Or maybe I’ll bring them up to be a corpsman, or bring them up to be a project manager or a project coordinator to something like that. Nature. So that’s one, one piece there.

the second portion of it, and I look at this from a leadership, it’s also a accountability piece. I use project management all the time. I’d say if you’re going to put in any training for your company, putting in for putting in project management and putting it across the board, because, I mean, a lot of people who saw me speak earlier, I say, if you think you’re a restoration company, I think you’re mistaken.

You’re really a project management company because everything you do is managing projects. And so everybody needs to understand project management, and that’s what’s going to get you a higher ROI on your jobs. But when you get people that training to where they are, then they understand a more definitive why you’re doing certain things now. Then they start to question each other as a team, and they want to make sure that the procedures are being followed and that we have the ability to to do the right thing.

and that creates also the ability to delegate. Okay. So those are some ROI right there. You don’t see because, you know, you only have so much time for a project manager. And the more you can start to learn how to delegate that and people that have been trained and understand that process now, then you can also see that the leadership there do you have potential where they have a track now to grow?

Hayden Lee

Yeah. The the the coolest thing about that is even again, just to distill it down to just something super simple is I mean, you said you can you can identify leaders just based on how they go about the training. Like, like just just how they complete the training and how they problem solve and how they like, like that’s that in and of itself is a simple way to do it.

So even if you did nothing else but just set up the training program and let it run, you’re going to be able to identify, hey, these people could potentially become, yeah, your foreman’s, your project managers, your mid-level manager, whatever. Right? Like they you can you can start to see those wheels turn in in such a way that you like.

Yeah. That, you know, this person with enough training and enough time could turn into something else, you know, which is so cool to, to to see that happening. And again, it all comes back to having the, that foundation of the training program itself.

Rod Cruce

Well, then you start seeing initiative, start seeing better judgment or tangible things I’m talking about right now. That’s hard to measure then the tangible piece. But as you start to see more and more of those intangibles coming out, and that accountability, which is another intangible attribute, when you start seeing those things surface and then when we start, then you start seeing the productivity increase, you start seeing the bottom line go up.

there’s pride. There’s there’s that growth mindset. What we’re talking about. it’s just it’s really, really like a light bulb coming on when you see that and you’re like, man, this is probably one of the best things we ever did. Yeah.

Hayden Lee

Well, and and you mentioned it a couple times there and it’s something that, you know, I’m sure is on everybody’s mind, is carving out the time in the day to either develop your own training program or work with, you know, somebody like you to help build a training program. Is there an ROI that’s worth it? Like, is it worth their time carving out this portion of their day, whether it’s so many hours a week or however it works with you to do it, is there a legitimate ROI that you can get from spending the time to develop your team?

Develop leaders? Can you help me understand that element? I guess a little bit like you’ve mentioned it multiple times. You’ve mentioned the intangible ROI, which is you get, you know, just better leaders, right? But is it like, is it worth it for an owner to set something else? Obviously it is. But I guess how is it worth it?

I guess is maybe a better question.

Rod Cruce

I’m going give you an example of what I purchased my when I bought my restoration company. and what we did with a safety program, even, you know, everybody was like, we don’t have time for safety, but we would do these, you know, tailgate talks, or maybe they. So we do these talks every day or every week.

And, so we put in a formal program, and when I bought it, you know, there was the, there was about seven accidents that had been on the books there for about the last 18 months. And then we were not talking big accidents, but we’re talking about some, some stitches, some cuts and bruises, a trip or fall, you know, a hurt foot.

But all that goes into where it calculates into, how much you pay in worker’s comp. And so now then, so we put in the training program where we did it once a month, where we had a formal piece, we got everyone to start training. they had a simple, a simple subject. And, we put that out and then they had to prepare for it within the next over the next three years, four years, we didn’t have an accident.

One. Yeah. And so when we put the safety program, we got a 5% savings on the worker’s comp. I don’t I don’t know how we’re paying how many tens of thousand dollars we’re paying for that piece of it. But anyway, so we got a 5% savings there. You know, let’s just say it’s one, you know, not company. I’ll have $100,000, but let’s say that’s a $5,000 savings on $100,000 bill.

Right. The next thing is our our our coefficient on what calculates that went down. And so we went from like a 1.1 to 1.1 9 or 1.2 to. So that’s 22% over what you’re paying because of the accidents. When you get back down to one, you’re paying your regular dollar amount. When you get under one, you’re paying less because you’re a better, safer environment.

Right? So by putting that training program, we went down from like a 1.19 or 1.22, whatever it was when I bought it, we got it all the way down to a 0.94 over about a four over about a four year period. So, you know, calculate that up, let’s just say on $100,000, even if it’s caught, instead of paying that 1.19, you’re saving $19,000 there.

And then when you get below it, you’re saving even more money. That was just from a simple safety program. When we start to look at some of the key performance indicators, when even when same project management or how much conflict we have within the workplace, how much time is lost when you don’t have organization, how much time is lost when not everyone is on the same sheet of music?

How much time is lost when people are continually, having to look for stuff that should have been communicated. And so those hours can be correlated to dollars. And so when you start to see the productivity in the efficiency and the effectiveness start to take place, then you start to see the numbers tick up on each job. You start to see the waste go down.

Yeah. So that’s kind of how you look at what the training program is and of how you start to quantify that through, you know, return on investment or KPIs. And those KPIs should be telling you that it’s working and then the ROI will come. You know, it’s not going to be instantaneous after you did more training. But, you know, you should see that within relatively few months.

Hayden Lee

Well, in, in, in yeah, I mean that’s yeah. And thank you for that answer because I think it does sum it up super, super. Well you start looking at all of the efficiency and effectiveness in something as simple and, you know, simple, but something is just setting up a safety and training program can have long term real like dollar effects on your business.

You’re much more profitable because you saved X amount of dollars on that, you know, on insurance and all of that. I think one thing that that, you know, I’ve, I’ve often I’ve tried to apply here at spot on solutions and just, you know, my own day to day, you know, working with my team is every time I think I got to teach somebody to do something, I’m like, oh, and it’ll take me longer to teach them to do it.

And it will just for me to do it myself. Right. But but I’ve started kind of trying to flip my mindset a little bit that like, hey, if I can develop some kind of document or training or way to teach this, maybe this individual how to do this thing once, then I can then re share that with anybody else that needs to learn.

How about that in the future. And, and it’s kind of the same way with the training program. You sit down and develop this training program once. Yes. It’s going to be time consuming. Yes. You’re going to have to meet with rod a lot to get it kind of ironed out or whatever. But once it’s set in place, then it’s it’s not quite set it and forget it, but it’s now, you know, much more replicable for all of your other future hires, all of your other employees.

You can you can let it run in a lot of ways on its own without you having to spend the time to be like, okay, I’ve got so-and-so that’s going to shadow me today, and then next week I’ve got to have another new employee shadow me, and you’re spending all this time doing the same training over and over again.

And, having that program in place allows you to again, it’s not it’s not set it and forget it. I know that’s not the right phrase for it, but in a lot of ways it it is because you can you build it once and then it, it just repeats every time you hire somebody so.

Rod Cruce

Well and, you know, building that program or even building a training type class takes time, effort to do it right. And it also takes money. You know, we just we finished up our Procurement Essentials training course right now that we’ve put on to e-learning and one that we can put together. that you, me, you know, taking any time.

It also supports some of our certification programs and, you know, to really get that down to a point, somebody who’s going to do procurement or even a project coordinator who’s going to understand that I’ve never done that before, but it’s going to help somebody buy stuff on it. It’s saying there’s about six weeks to transform that over into an e-learning piece of it.

So the point where people can take it at their leisure and, you know, how do you bounce operations and, and, you know, training. Well, that’s one of the things we’re doing. We’re putting a lot of stuff to e-learning. But it’s also tailored to the restoration world and construction world. But so they don’t have to take it all at one time, but also the amount of time it takes us to put that together and do it professionally and get it to where it actually, nest very well.

And that builds upon each other. I mean, that’s an art versus if we’re just saying, okay, go buy this or go to Lowe’s or something like that, that’s not necessarily procurement. That’s more of a task. So when you think about how much time it goes into that and you think about what am I going to do that or we gonna let some else do that for us?

I mean, that’s a lot of time to put that training together. And for a lot of the companies, especially not the, you know, the real big companies that don’t have this, it doesn’t make sense. It makes sense to outsource that. because then you you have a professional program and a level that has been answered that you may not even thought for, and your time is probably better spent somewhere doing something else.

onboarding, I think 100%. You need to have a dedicated onboarding program that allows them because these certain things and that’s really the teach process procedures and kind of the culture and how we do things here, you know, call it x, Y Z restoration way. But when we start really looking at, you know, I’ll put one out there.

we’re doing a company right now is conflict management and they’re a larger company. But, you know, they’re going to have probably a couple hundred people that’s going to ultimately go through this conflict management course. They could easily go in and try to talk about conflict and stuff. But our course is really detailed it’s laid out. And so we’re taking the leaders and putting them through it, and we’re facilitating that.

But they’re also the e-learning version. So now that we are helping facilitate their leader development and also facilitate them being able to show leadership by taking one or the other people go through or the lower ranks go through our, our conflict management course, through e-learning. Now they’re going to be the ones who’s going to help facilitate that.

And show their leadership. And now then the whole company is going to be trained in conflict management. So they have to understand how what happens when it happens, how to prevent it, how to be proactive, how to engage in healthy conflict. So so there’s a lot to that when you when you really put it in play. But how much time are we going to say by having everybody trained in that, that they’re not going to be they can recognize small arguments that should never be discussed.

So they should just, you know, or they should be addressed early on, go out, you know, upscale into something even more bigger or or worse.

Hayden Lee

Yeah. Yeah. The whole concept behind it, I think again, in my, my small view of it, I’m always thinking, oh man, it just takes too much time. Too much time. But but how you’re describing it is it is it simplifies all of this. It really doesn’t take that much time. And again, it makes it so much easier to develop your entire team because you have a program that’s just set in place.

You know, you’re not you’re not constantly maybe you’re you’re not changing, changing your training based on individual to individual. Like you have very consistent, structured training that makes sense for everybody. And you’re you’re training for the position. Not necessarily because I again, I feel like training is so in the individualistic and so many different companies are like, well, this person I trained him this way and this person, I trained them this way.

And it’s like, now you can have something that unifies your team and we were all trained the same way. We all know how to do everything. We can all fully develop and know how to do our role that much better.

Rod Cruce

hey as You put in at the company level that that everybody gets and there are things you go individual, right. So like we have 180 something training courses that we have in our in our learning center right now. And companies can get that for, for less than $200 a person per year, and they get access to all of those videos.

And then we teach them how to facilitate that using those, you know, that alone right there. It helps you identify leaders. It helps them get some training in there. It allows you to take care of some, some, some of the common people skills that you need. And it’s really inexpensive, but it also helps you develop your leaders, and it also allows you to identify those leaders.

Going back to that idea, which is so crucial when you’re trying to grow a company or trying to trying to develop people to do what you know, what, what you’re asking them to do. So you don’t have to go back and just reiterate this to every individual because that does take time. And, so, so you want to be able to maximize your time as a one to many, but also have a good resource that you can use that’s going to allow everyone to get on the same sheet of music.

Hayden Lee

Yeah. You mentioned 180 training courses. most of the people that we both talked to end up being in the restoration world, a lot of the trade shows and conferences we go to are, geared towards restoration. If I owned a restoration business, what are the maybe your top three restoration courses that you would recommend or the training courses that you recommend?

from your your entire library. What would be the top three ones that you would recommend?

Rod Cruce

You know, that’s, that’s easy and a hard question.

Hayden Lee

Because there’s so many. You need all of them, right? Yeah.

Rod Cruce

Well, no, I mean, I mean, truthfully, I think number one for anybody in your company, I say conflict management. Yeah.

Hayden Lee

Especially you’re going to be talking to customers like it’s just something you’ve got to have.

Rod Cruce

Yeah, it is because a conflict. Right. The way we looked at it is both in between employees or in-house. True. So really.

Hayden Lee

And external.

Rod Cruce

To external customers, subcontractors, vendors, stakeholders, anybody their insurance agents all that. It just we’ve we’ve addressed all that piece of it. That’s that’s the one you need for your entire company. I would say the second I think that having a good soft skills people skills training, which is what ours is, is it’s like 4 to 15 minute micro videos and, and we can put that in play pretty easily.

But also it helps you get leaders on board to facilitate and show and demonstrate leadership and show that genuine concern for people’s well-being and and development. those are two that at the company level, you can put in for very, very inexpensive, and quick. The third one I would say is, is project management training. And I say that because you’re our project management company, I mean, everything you do is handling projects.

And we we have a lot of people that understand how to get projects from A to B and Z, but are they doing it the right way or the the most efficient, or are they making the best money on it? are they is it do you have a one legged person in a butt kicking contest who doesn’t have any help not using their team because they don’t have time to train them?

Like you just said? Here’s what I need done, but I’ll just do it myself. And so now they have a trust issue. I was a delegation issue. So when you can get more people understanding what you do as a company and that’s your true value proposition and product you’re delivering is project management, then you need to have everyone trained in on that, especially at the mid-level manager level, to the project coordinator program and office manager.

And understand even at the foreman I would say is great if you can get it down to lower levels, then, then that would be the next level. But I mean, the project management training is I mean, I can vouch for that just from when I was on, when I bought my company, I mean, we went from being not profitable, but in project after project to being well over industry standards.

and, and it was all the calls that we, even my receptionist was talking the right language. I could talk to a customer without having to wait to the project manager came back in from the field to call her to call the homeowner. She was able to, you know, so that’s that’s huge. and those would be the top three I would recommend, you know, not necessarily that order, but, you know, and we would help you do an assessment if you need it.

That’s free. Just give us a call.

Hayden Lee

Well, and that’s and that leads perfectly in. What I was going to ask you next is anybody that’s listening restoration construction or whatever it might be. They own a home service business and they feel like they need some help when some of these areas, obviously, you know, what kind of maybe send some links for them to, to contact.

You will link your website and stuff, but it sounds like the, the first step then would be an assessment to kind of help them know where they need some help maybe. What are some some blind spots that they might have, some things that they could work on. And then you can start recommending, hey, we could build you a custom training program, or here’s some courses that would help you.

It sounds like that assessment is kind of the first step for them to figure out what needs to be done.

Rod Cruce

It is and we talked and you know, that’s just a quick one we do with you just to kind of see what you have right now. we do also offer, you know, a facilitation workshop with companies, that where we come in and we help you define your entire training program strategy. That’s not free, but it is something we work with for companies to do.

and, and then, you know, we kind of go from there and we look at where what makes common sense, you know, what makes common sense. Yeah. I mean, I’ll try to say something or try to do something for you that doesn’t make common sense. You know, we want to make sure that we are going to get something that we can tangibly have tangible measurements on that show improvement.

And but it also needs to be addressing a need or a problem area. And that’s how we get started.

Hayden Lee

I love it, Rod. This has been awesome. It’s been a great conversation. I know our listeners are going to get some really cool value and insight out of this. I said, I said, and we’ll plan on putting some of these links in the description, but if people are curious in reaching out to you and want to maybe kind of chat a little bit about how they can develop some of these programs themselves or, you know, obviously work with you on some of those assessments and training programs.

What’s the best way for them to reach out to you?

Rod Cruce

in all reality is to go to our website at, Trifecta Growth institute.com. you can go check out some of our stuff on there. There’s also kind of, you know, get a consult You can go in there, you know, schedule a 30 minute consult with you. It’s free of charge. that will allow you to put what you’re looking for to get us started.

And then, you can pick a time to meet and, or show up there and that to get started. we also have on there an email, you know, info@trifecta-growth.com. but if you visit our website, you can get just on anything you need. All of that.

Hayden Lee

Love it. Rod. Seriously, thank you so much. This is an awesome conversation. we’re going to have to have you back on again. You’re going to be at, recurring guest. We’re gonna have to have you on every so often to talk all things training. And and I know you’ve got some cool stories, obviously, about your time in the military and owning businesses and and we’ll have to have you on to talk more about those.

But seriously, again today, thank you so much for coming on.

Rod Cruce

Hey, now, I really appreciate the, invitation and having me on. And, you guys, do a great job over spot on solutions. I always like working with you. I always like seeing the conferences as well. And, until the next one, I guess we’ll, we’ll stay in touch