Monkey Business Radio

Episode #24 - Employment Tailwinds at the Gutter Monkeys

• American Gutter Monkeys, LLC

Share episode

Send us a text

The labor market has always cycled up and down—but COVID erased predictability and rewrote the rules for hiring. In this episode, Chris Collins and Dennis Siggins (a.k.a. Bobby Downspout) look at how the trades have adapted, why qualified candidates are finally returning, and what that means for small-business growth in 2025.

Dennis shares how he rebuilt his crews at Cape Cod Gutter Monkeys, what he’s seeing in the broader trades and union markets, and how his five-step philosophy—hire, train, incentivize, delegate, and hold accountable—keeps his team thriving. The takeaway: business owners who skate to where the puck is going in employment will stay ahead of the competition.

Chris:

The labor market has always had its ups and downs, but COVID kicked predictability to the curb. Practically overnight, it changed how people work, what they expected, and how businesses hire. And the ripple effects have lasted for years, reshaping entire industries, especially the trades. Lately there's been some unexpected positive signs. After years of instability, qualified candidates are coming back into the workforce. Skilled, motivated, and ready to build careers again. Dennis shares how he built his crews at Cape Cod Guttermonkeys, what he's seeing in the broader trades and union markets, and how his approach hire, train, incentivize, delegate, and hold accountable continue to guide his growth strategy. In the end, it's a reminder that business owners who skate to where the fuck is going, especially when it comes to employment, are the ones who will stay ahead of their competitors. We have a great show for you today. So grab a cup of coffee, sit back, relax, and welcome to Monkey Business Radio. Hello everyone, I'm Chris Collins, and as always, I'm here with my good friend, business partner, Dennis Siggins of the Cape Cod Gutter Monkeys. Or you may know him on the Cape and the Islands as Bobby Downspout. Hello, Dennis. How are you doing, Chris? I'm doing good. Good. You've been away for a little while. Yep, we've been away. I did actually went and played some golf down on Myrtle Beach. Saw some old friends of ours, actually some high school friends. Well, shout out to Bernie and Dan. Yep, yep. Saw those guys down there. Yeah, it was good. It's good. Good to get away a little bit. That's great. I know you've been busy up here. Today we're going to talk about something a little different. Normally we talk about business in a sort of a general sense. We touch on Cape Cod gutter monkeys every once in a while, American gutter monkeys, of course. But um today we're going to kind of dedicate the show a little bit more about what's going on in the Cape Cod gutter monkey world and in particular in employment. Because for the last what, five, six, seven years now, it's been a roller coaster in terms of employment. Certainly we've had some issues, COVID and some other things happen. So it's been a real roller coaster. And I think you've probably learned a lot, experimented a lot with a lot of different techniques for hiring and things like that. So why don't we start with sort of give us an idea like pre-2020, pre-COVID? What was your experience and how it kind of shaped, you know, in the next couple of years? Because certainly it changed everything, and especially in employment, especially in a job like you have, where you're out in the field every day working, you know, you've got carpenters and uh skilled labor and some non-skilled labor.

Dennis:

So Yeah, we have a little bit of everything. I mean, pre-COVID staffing was a non-issue. We were a small but growing company back. You know, I might need to hire two new employees every year. We were growing a little bit, maybe three in a busy year. And I remember back then we would run an ad on Indeed for about a week. I'd get 20 applicants. I could discount 10 of them right on in the phone call. And then I would begin interviewing the remaining 10. I'd narrow it down to about five and pick the top three. And I could do all that in about a week to 10 days. Yeah. And I'm good to go. I'm fully staffed and we're off and running. You know, I might hire three people and maybe at the end of the year I might lose one of them. So I only retain two out of the three. But the following year I need a couple of more guys in the field, maybe need one more person in the office, throw out another add-on indeed, and same thing. I within a week I'd get 20 applicants, and you just quickly narrow it down. And staffing was such a non-issue, it's almost hard to remember. And then in 2020, things changed for two years, for the better part of two years. The state and the feds began paying a third of our workforce to not go to work. You know, I remember one of my uh nephews had called me. I don't know what the nature of the call was, but the restaurant he was working at closed in like March, and they were going to reopen, I think, in about May. He was making more money not working.

Chris:

Yeah.

Dennis:

He called me to talk about that. You know, my suggestion was go back anyway. Everybody needs to go back to work, so don't worry about the money. But he was making more money not working, so he chose not to work. That was hard to compete with. Right. As an employer, you know, I could bring a guy on, and you know, back then I don't know what we were paying them, maybe maybe 18 bucks an hour, maybe 20 bucks an hour, seven, eight hundred bucks a week. But if the combination of the state and federal money that they're collecting, maybe there was some stimulus money thrown in there. But if they're going to collect more to not work, then a lot of them will then choose to not work.

Chris:

Right.

Dennis:

So staffing in 20 and 21 or restaffing was tough. It was very, very difficult. We actually had a really good growth time, growth period in 20 and 21, despite COVID, we we grew nicely, but staffing was becoming more and more difficult. It would now take a month of effort to hire three people. Wow. As opposed to prior to 2020. Like I say, it was just it was so simple and easy, it's hard to even remember.

Chris:

Yeah.

Dennis:

And you had the work too.

Chris:

Like it wasn't like you were laying people off yourself or shutting down. You guys were working all the way through COVID.

Dennis:

So we grew during 2020, the COVID year itself, despite the fact that we shut down for three weeks in March and April when the governor recommended a shutdown and everything. Then one of my uh co-workers got COVID Christmas week, so we shut down completely for Christmas week. But there was always some customers were a little shaky about having service companies come into their house. So we got some cancellation, but in general, we grew that year. Yeah. And then we had a huge growth year the following year, 2021. But staffing was becoming more and more difficult. I was finding that we were spending more time. I personally was spending more time hiring and interviewing and all that whole process. So meanwhile, we're watching our restaurants struggle here on Cape Cod. A lot of our restaurants never reopened after COVID. I know these owners. I mean, these are people that I know. We go to their restaurants, we do our Wednesday night dinners, and a lot of them are our friends and our customers, and we were watching these people go out of business. Businesses have been around for a long time. Some reopened post-COVID, but couldn't staff. They just couldn't find people who wanted to work full time. And sadly, here on the Cape, most of the staff at these restaurants was over 50. No more 17-year-old kid busboy coming out of the kitchen, cleaning tables off, not a whole lot of young uh waiters and waitresses and stuff like that. It was an older group. And these are the people that didn't take time off during COVID. They said, no, I'm going back to work. I'm not going to sit at home and collect money. And honestly, right up until May of this year, I personally, as the general manager of my company, was having a very difficult time staffing. I get guys that would no show for interviews, guys I'd hire and they wouldn't show up day one. Yeah, you you've told that story a couple of times.

Chris:

I mean, just try to wrap my brain around what possibly could have happened up to that point where they decided not to show up. It's just it's hard to imagine, but guys would work a day or two and then not show up day three. Yeah. Just not even show up. I like the one story you told about the guy who wanted to work in the gutter industry but didn't know you guys worked in the rain.

Dennis:

Yes. But it's it was a crazy time. Right up until May, I hired these three guys in May. I mean, individually, I hired three guys within the same two, three-week period. They're just so soft. I mean, these are kids who are in their 20s, they're young guys. I mean, you're you're supposed to be very physically strong. These guys were so frail and so weak, and I had to let them all go. And at that point, I was just so disgusted. And I was way understaffed. I was understaffed a year ago. I just couldn't find good people that would work and that would stay and would want to work.

Chris:

Yeah.

Dennis:

And in June, I hired a young guy named Andrew. He used to work on a chimney crew, installing chimney liners, chimney crowns, chimney caps, relaying chimneys. He was a basically a level of a like a journeyman mason. And he worked for a company here on the Cape, and uh that's what he did. But it was a small company, and he applied for a job back in June. I know his former boss, and I called him for a reference, and he said, Yeah, Dennis, he's a good guy, he's a good worker, but you know, we're just a small company. We run one crew only, and he has no room for growth. He needs to be with a company like yours. So he came on in June and he's been great. Absolutely everything he could be. In fact, he recently was promoted to crew chief. I can't remember the last time I promoted a guy to crew chief in only like six months. Yeah. But he's been with me since June. He's never missed a day. He's not to my knowledge, has he been late? And he's got good skills. He comes in with masonry skills. Now he's never hung a gutter before, so I didn't put him on that crew. I put him on cleaning crews because he can learn that very quickly, ramp up very rapidly. He knows how to use tools, he knows how to swing a hammer, run a drill, he can run a screwdriver, he can, you know, he can do stuff.

Chris:

Yeah.

Dennis:

And those skills are laterally transferable. The thing I like most about Andrew was his personality. He's just a nice guy, hardworking kid. He's probably in his early 30s, and he's looking for a company that he can grow. Yeah. And we were a good fit.

Chris:

Yeah, and you'd always touch on that point. You know, you can teach skills, but you can't teach personality. Yeah, absolutely. Certainly. I'm I've always been impressed with Cape Cod Goddamonkeys coming in here. We we actually shoot this, record this podcast at the Cape Cod Gotham Monkeys headquarters. But the guys that you have here are just the most interesting, friendly, really nice people. I haven't met a person here yet who would consider, you know, not and want to go out and have a beer with or even work work with, you know, out in the field. So it's kind of amazing. You can definitely tell that that's a you know hallmark of your hiring strategy.

Dennis:

Well, something happened about August. I said to Molly, my office manager, let's throw another ad out there on Indeed. And again, we're putting the same ad out as we always do. And all of a sudden, the highest quality people are applying for jobs. It was almost like we flashback to 2017. Molly ran the ad for a week. I must have got 20 applicants.

Chris:

Wow.

Dennis:

And I scanned through them, narrowed it down to about 10. I interviewed maybe eight. I think I hired three or four at the time. I hired three or four of them, and they're all still here. And fantastic results. One of those guys was a carpenter whose company that he worked for was downsizing. I know his former boss, and I called him. He said, Yeah, he was the last guy I hired about two years ago. But he said, we're just not able to keep while the guy's busy. He's just a maybe a four-person shop. But he said, uh Tim was the last one we hired, so he was the first to go. And, you know, Tim came on and he's been great. He's he's a carpenter. So I put him on my um one of my gutter installation teams. And uh, even though he's never hung a gutter before, he's a carpenter. He can read a level, he can swing a hammer, he can run a tape, read a tape, and he knows what a job site feels like. He also knows what an eight to ten hour day work day feels like. He blended seamlessly. Because guys in the trades, they have laterally transferable skills. But the most important thing, and again, Chris, you just pointed this out with these three or four people I'm talking about, is they're just nice guys. They get along with everybody, they blend in nicely. The crew chiefs, you can tell who the really good ones are because they're arguing, I want him on my crew. Yeah, I don't want him to go on the other crew. You know, prior to that, for those that probably five-year window post-COVID, I just wasn't getting these type of guys. You know, there's so many times I would be interviewing, and um, I'm asking myself, can't you put together a better resume than this? Don't sit there and tell me I've been sitting on my parents' sofa for the last three years because I didn't feel like working, but my old man told me I got to get out and get a job. Come up with a better story than that. You know, so many of these young kids, and kids, you know, they're 25, 27 years old. They're not really kids. They're not kids anymore, but they're acting like maybe kids used to act at 14.

Chris:

Well, they were kids before prior to COVID, I guess, and they just kind of never moved on or they got lost in that period there. Kind of never moved on with their uh maturity or something. I don't know.

Dennis:

But one of the things I'm seeing now is the trades are struggling. I mean, one of my really good friends, he just retired. He was the CFO, and eventually I think he became the CEO of Relco, which is a large electrical contracting firm here in Eastern Mass. They employ hundreds of electricians. They're a good sized company. And in recent years, Joe just retired, but in recent years we would talk about the struggles of staffing as what we were having here in my company. You know, his was magnified 10 times that because his company's so big. But right now, the trades are struggling. The electrical contracting trades, the jobs are not coming in the way they were over the past 10 or 12 years. A lot of union work is drying up in Boston and in and around the North Shore.

Chris:

I've noticed it up in my house up in Worcester. I mean, the biggest problem right during 2020 in that whole period there, you couldn't get anyone to work on your house. You couldn't get a carpenter, you couldn't get a plumber, and da da da. I have a plumbing company, and we so he actually signed a contract with them that they're on, you know, they're on a minutes call and all this stuff. They're sending me coupons once a week saying 10% off any sort of work you want to do. So we actually had a pipe that got clogged, kitchen sink, and uh I needed a guy just kind of go down and take a look at it. It's an old house, so God knows what could be down there. And he came we had them there in an afternoon, and that never would have happened before. I was absolutely stunned. Sure. Absolutely stunned. So yeah, they must be looking for work because they wouldn't respond that quickly to a clogged pipe or something like that.

Dennis:

Well, again, the economy is a living, breathing thing. It's an entity, it's growing, it's moving, it goes left, it shrinks, it's always doing something. Right now, Wall Street is booming. I mean, week after week after week, all of the four, five, six major economic indicators on Wall Street are hitting lifetime highs. Yeah. So if something's happening on Wall Street, that's great. Anybody who's invested is making money. We're all patting ourselves on the back because we feel like geniuses. But no, that's not the case. The case is Wall Street is booming. And we just happen to be in the game. If you have a dog in the fight, then you're gonna do really well these days. But the trades are struggling. And I, you know, I I don't really have my finger on the pulse of the food service industry, you know, the medical industry, the healthcare industry. I don't know what's happening in those industries, but I know that right now the trades are struggling, and this is a great time to hire. If you work in the trades, the home service industry, if you are in an industry that you can take carpenters, electricians, and plumbers, tradesmen who have a skill and transfer that skill laterally to your space, to what you do for work, this is a good time to grow. My hiring process, my staffing process is hire, train, incentivize, delegate, and hold accountable. You know, and it starts with the hire. And as you you just said a few minutes ago, and we've talked about it over the years. I look for personality first, skill set second. Yeah.

Chris:

We always talked about it early on, especially. We had the first podcast was on Moneyball. So the strategy of Money Ball. Still a great movie, still a great strategy. Absolutely. Yeah, yeah. It was a great thing to start on because that's kind of been a thread that's run all the way through almost all of our podcasts, really. And that's sort of strategy of hiring the guys that seem like the outcast, but they have, you know, the skill that you can got and they got the personality that you can train and turn these misfits into, you know, superstars. You know, you turned to misfit, you know, a guy who actually wasn't probably a misfit. He's just the last guy to be hired. He probably had great skills, but he just wasn't looked on that way. And you turned him into a crew chief in uh what six weeks? So six months, but six months.

Dennis:

But again, you know, he was a guy that he worked for a friend of mine for four years. Four years.

Chris:

Yeah.

Dennis:

But they were a one crew company, they were a four-man operation. Yeah. And they weren't gonna hire buy another truck and hire another staff to build a second crew. So he had grown as much as he could grow.

Chris:

Yeah.

Dennis:

Well, he came on, I don't remember what we started him at, but he he's had at least two or three raises in six months. He thinks he died and went to heaven.

Chris:

Yeah, it's like the fish should be moved to a bigger bowl.

Dennis:

Yeah, that's exactly right. Increase his his wingspan. I mean, when you I say this all the time. If you work for Bertucci's and you're the general manager and your last name isn't Bertucci, I know how you became the general manager. You know, you mopped floors, you worked as a waiter, a bartender, you've probably cooked in the kitchen, you've been a shift supervisor, assistant manager, and now you're the manager. You're a hardworking guy. You don't call in sick very often. Those are skills that I'm looking for. I mean, sure, I'd like to have an individual come in with skills in the trades, but that's not my primary focus. My primary focus is the personality. Throw some skill set in, that's just a bonus. And restaurant managers, guys that have been in the trades for 10 or 15 years and have good references, you know, they have the things I'm looking for. You know, we're looking for positive attitude, dedication, toughness, grit. Guys that just show up on time every day, year after year. That's what I'm looking for. If that guy comes along with a little bit of skill set that we can transfer laterally into my field, that's just a bonus. And that's kind of what I'm finding now is guys in the trades that all have various skill sets, but we can hone those skill sets a little bit.

Chris:

Yeah, because sometimes you talk about also that the more uh experienced they are, the harder sometimes they are to train. Because now you got to break some of those habits as well, right? You get this guy on who thinks he's the expert carpenter and gutters are below him or installation is below him. And it's a hard thing to, you know, teach him how to do things the way you want them to be done, the way your company has them done.

Dennis:

It's much harder for a startup. So one of my new franchisees, he's looking for that lead carpenter right now. That's very difficult. I'm hiring union carpenters and union steel workers and really good qualified people, but they're not doing any decision making. They're on a crew that has been a tight, unified group of six people. That crew is a six-man team that runs like a well-oiled machine. When I put a new guy on that crew, let's say he's a carpenter, he's a really skilled carpenter. I take one of my skilled people off of that crew, I put him on another crew, and I introduce this new guy to the crew. He's surrounded by five guys that not only have developed a high skill in what we do, but those five guys have also developed a process and a unity that one new guy can't really affect one way or the other. Oh, that's interesting. Yeah. And so when my crew chief brings in this new guy, he knows exactly where to put him. You know, for example, if they're hanging a gutter, he's gonna be in the middle and he's gonna have a level in that gutter. And all five or six guys that are on those ladders hanging that 68-foot gutter, they're all talking to each other. I need another eighth of a bubble, raise that up and okay, lock it in, boom, and then they go down. And if you're on the job site, you can hear that communication. That new skilled guy is the guy in the middle. And what he's gonna ask is a technical question. You know, we're pitching this gutter to all run to the right because we're putting the downspout at that end and we want all the water going. So he's gonna ask, where do I want the bubble? Am I looking at a half a bubble, a quarter bubble? No, you're looking at about a sixteenth or less, the slightest pitch. He'll say, Okay, good. You only have to tell him once.

Chris:

Yeah.

Dennis:

He's a carpenter, he's an iron worker, he's in the trades, he knows what that piece of a bubble looks like. He knows how to read a level. You don't have to re-educate him or educate him at all on reading the level. So, yeah, bring that guy in. And as long as he has a good personality, now if he is a skilled carpenter and he's arrogant, he's gonna start an argument among six guys. I don't want him. I won't hire him if he's arrogant because he's gonna be dysfunctional. So that's why I look for personality first.

Chris:

Right, right. But you touched on the point of if he's coming on to a new group, because we have a new Southeast gutter monkeys, right? A new group, he's looking for an experienced carpenter. He's gonna be the lead guy on that job, probably, right?

Dennis:

That's exactly right. And that's where the new owner, the franchisee, really has to step in and make sure he is the right fit.

Chris:

Yeah.

Dennis:

That he's not leading that crew in the wrong direction. Right, right. You can take some direction. Usually I want that new lead carpenter from one of my franchisees. I want him to come on here with us. I'll put him on a crew for a week. Yeah. Yeah. And that way he gets an idea as to what we do. But again, with my current hiring situation here in late 2025, I'm just finding I'm getting the highest quality people, personalities. I hired a kid today. He comes from one of the trades. He's he's a union tradesman and he hasn't worked much in the last year. And he goes, and work is totally dried up now. So I said, I don't know what you were making, but I'm gonna put you on a gutter cleaning crew right away because we're coming into gutter cleaning season and it's very busy. I threw out a number. He said, Yeah, that's significantly less than what I was making, but I'm not making anything if I don't work. So I'll accept that as my starting pay. When do I show up? Okay. This is such a difference from four years ago when I I would hire or discuss the hiring with a young, you know, 22-year-old kid that has no work experience, no job experience, no prospects, and he expects to be paid way above his pay grade. And he won, you know, I remember one guy, he wanted to be whatever the guys are making on the crew, I want to be paid that. Well, you know, my top guys are making 40 bucks an hour. You want to make that? Yeah, I do, or I'm not coming to work. I showed him the door. You know, here I have a highly skilled union. I can't even remember exactly what his trade was. And he said, I don't care what I'm making. I just I haven't worked in a month or two, and there's nothing on the horizon in the unions. I just want to come to work.

Chris:

Yeah.

Dennis:

When can I start? And I'll accept that pay. It's fantastic because now I know I get to look at him for a week or two. I know he's gonna get a raise two weeks in. And probably before the fall season over, he's gonna get that second raise. And I'm gonna get him back up to where he belongs. Yeah. But the whole attitude of the culture has changed. Yeah. I'm interviewing guys now that have good prospects. Some of them even still have a job, but they want to transition out because they're starting to level off. Or, you know, mostly though, I'm finding I'm having guys that are coming in because their industry is slowing down and there's not enough work.

Chris:

Yeah.

Dennis:

And they're happy to work. They're bringing their skill set to my company and they're happy to work. Yeah.

Chris:

With all the uncertainty out there, I think maybe a lot of people too are just tired of the uncertainty. They want a job that's solid. You know, union guys have it tough because they got to go down to the shop, they got to get wait around for jobs to come in. You know, my brother was a union uh sailor, a merchant marine, and I remember he'd used to fly out to California and stay with me, he'd go down to Long Beach to get a job. I would just remember the stress that he would always be on. He'd go down every day and come back, you know, no jobs, no jobs, no jobs. Eventually a ship would come in and off he'd go. So maybe people are just getting tired of that sort of you know uncertainty, especially in the last couple of years. There's been so much uncertainty, and they're tired of it. Tired of it when it comes to unemployment.

Dennis:

Yeah, one of my new guys also came from the he was in uh the high-tech field. He would set up copiers and printers and other things. He'd repair them, replace them, bring in the new ones, get them all set up, troubleshoot existing ones. Way, way out of my space here. And yet he came in with great personality, enthusiastic. He's a little bit of an athlete on the side, so he knows he no problem climbing ladders, and he's he's a fit, strong guy. He's gonna be a good match here. I hired him about a week ago. He'll be starting next week. Yeah, they're coming out of the woodwork. And and I called his references too, and that was one where the owner of the company said, Yeah, we just work is slowing down. He's he he was with us for I think six or seven years. Yeah. He said, work is slowing down and the whole industry is shrinking. So we're starting to pick up new employees here just from industries that are way left and way right of where we are. Yeah. But again, to train these people, it's so easy because I'm taking their existing skill set and I'm surrounding them with people who have been together for quite a while and they blend in nicely.

Chris:

Yeah, it kind of reminds me, one of my favorite shows is uh Dog Whisperer. Have you watched that show, you know, on TV with the guy who goes around to trains dogs that are difficult?

Dennis:

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Have you seen it? What's the guy's name? Yeah, I've zapped out of my brain. I've seen it. Dog Whisper, I like it.

Chris:

There's a bunch of them out there now. But his one thing is the way he does really difficult dog is he'll actually take them to his place of where he's got all of his animals and stuff like that. And he uses the pack to train them.

Dennis:

Okay. I guess I've seen one or two of those episodes.

Chris:

So he doesn't actually need to train them. He'll put them in with the pack, and if they have certain, you know, things that they're doing wrong or something like that, the pack will straighten them out very quickly.

Dennis:

That's so interesting.

Chris:

They don't put up with it. It's much easier. And of course, the pack talks the dog language, right? So and it's not the boss coming down on him on top of him and pulling them around and chaining around. It's the pack, you know, making sure that the dog's misbehaving or being too aggressive or do this, too much of that. You know, the pack is what straightens them out.

Dennis:

Well, you know, the two key components of personality-based hiring is number one, I don't have to break bad habits. They come in from a different field, they know how to use the tools, they know how to climb ladders, they know how to do the basics, but they've never installed a gutter. Well, you know what? The first time we show them, that's the first time they've seen it. So they're not going to be hanging gutters on the wrong side of the drip edge. Yeah. They're not going to be pitching them the wrong way. You know, they're going to learn the right way. And the second the second thing is when you're looking at a personality-based hiring system, you're not going to deal with egos. You know, personality is first. And if you have a terrible attitude and personality during the interview, I don't care what your skill set is. And so many people make this mistake, and I think it's a mistake when they're in the trades and they look for the trade skill first, and they overlook the obvious to me. So training for us now becomes so easy. I've got such a good training system in place. I know which crews to put them on first, second, and third, yeah, and move them through. And I get feedback from the crew chief. How's he doing? Oh, he's good. A, B, C, and D. Okay, we're ready to move them to a different crew.

Chris:

Is there a particular when you're interviewing someone, do you have a way of picking up on the fact of whether they are more ego-centric or more team-oriented? Is there some favorite interview question? I do.

Dennis:

Well, you know, yeah. So one of the questions I ask early on is tell me about your current job. You know, I work for XYZ company. All right. What's your favorite part? What's the best thing? And they'll usually say, well, it's outdoor work, or, you know, I like to work with the customers, or I enjoy working with my hand, whatever it is they tell me. Yeah. Then I ask, what do you like least about this job? And that's when they say, Yeah, you know, the boss really gets overly involved in our work, you know, or or I don't like this or that. They they tell me what they don't like. Yeah. But the key is, and and I'll do that with their one or two jobs, this job you have and the last job you had. But they ask, I ask them, where do you want to be in five years? A lot of them have no idea. A lot of people they just don't know. What I want to hear is, and I do hear this, you know, I've been banged around and bumped around. I mean, look at my resume. I've had six jobs in eight years. I don't want to move around. I'm looking for a company with a good culture that pays well, a company that I can grow with. I want to be in the same, I want to be with the same company five years from now and not looking for yet another job.

Chris:

Yeah.

Dennis:

That's a great answer.

Chris:

Yeah.

Dennis:

That's the answer I want to hear.

Chris:

I can see a lot of people be looking for that now. Because of course we have this gig economy. A lot of people ran around for the last 10 years or whatever, saying that this is how everyone's going to work now. You're going to bounce from job to job to job, maybe work two jobs on the same day, and that's going to be the future. And I just can't imagine. I never could imagine it. It would be too stressful. And most Americans used to live, you know, with one company. They'd work 30 years at a certain company. A lot of them did. And we got away from all that. So maybe it's coming back around. Maybe people are done with this whole gig thing.

Dennis:

Well, 30 years ago, what we now call gig economy, 30 years ago, you'd say, Oh, there's a guy that just can't hold a job. Right?

Chris:

He can't hold a job. Well, one thing we used to always talk about. Yeah, well, I just used to be a hiring manager. We'd look at it and count the number. First thing you do is count the number of jobs he had.

Dennis:

Divide it by the number of years.

Chris:

Off you go, you know.

Dennis:

Yeah. Incentivizing. You know, my number three bullet point, you know, hire, train, and incentivize. When you hire these people with good attitudes, it's easy to incentivize them. You know, within a month or two, you you hit them with a raise and they say, wow, I started at X and I just got a raise. This is great. Yeah, that's a great strategy. Obviously, the boss recognizes me.

Chris:

Yeah, I don't know. I've been most of the companies I've been involved with, and people I've been involved with in new companies and things like that, with kids' employments and stuff like that. I've never, never seen that. So that's kind of an interesting one.

Dennis:

And you know, I like to hit them with a second raise three, four months in. So five months into their job, they've got two raises. They started, most of them started at or about where they used to be, but they've leveled off there after four or five years. Yeah. And they haven't had a raise in two years. I started them at that same X, and then they got one, then they got two raises. Now they feel like they're part of the team, they're part of the group, and they've also found their comfort zone. You're on this crew, and this is what you do. Further incentives come down the road when it comes to, you know, if they make it to crew chief, there's a different incentive that comes along with that. And then eventually comes profit sharing, and that's where the money gets really good in my company, but incentivizing these people so they feel like number one, they can make a really good living here. And number two, the boss recognizes me. I've got two raises in four months. This is great. This has never happened. I had one young kid that I ended up hiring, really nice kid. I said, Where do you want to be in five years? And he said, You know, I want to be with the same company.

Chris:

Yeah.

Dennis:

I've done this, and and that company went under. I I always had a part time job doing this, but that industry's drying up. So my night job has gone away. Two, he said, I really just want to work one job, 40 to 50 hours. He said, Me and my girlfriend, we're going to get married. We want to buy a house. He says, I just want to have a good life. And that's kind of what I'd like to hear.

Chris:

Yeah.

Dennis:

If you want to come to work for me, you're the kind of guy that I want.

Chris:

Yeah.

Dennis:

You know, if I interview a guy, where do you want to be in five years? Well, you know, I'd like to move to the, you know, to Alaska and become a uh Alaskan uh crab fisherman. I'm not gonna hire that guy if that's where he wants to be in five years. I ask that question, and that usually promotes a conversation. Where do you want to be in five years? He says this, I come back with that, and then we have a conversation about his life. What's he looking for? Because invariably, where he wants to be in five years is a little bit better than where he is now. Delegation as employees stay on further and further. Obviously, they're able to grow with the company. And now, like my one of my newer hires who just became a crew chief, I'm delegating a truck and a team to him. He's gonna be running a small team of guys through our busy season. You know, we go to seven days a week during the gutter cleaning season here, November 1st. So next week, we're at it seven days a week from November 1st to Christmas. And we only take Thanksgiving off. And my new guy is gonna be running a small crew, and he's doing great. So, you know, delegation. This is a young guy that came in. He's got good skill set, great personality. And I don't know yet about his leadership qualities, but he's a nice guy. People like him. I'm gonna build a team around him that he will be able to run for the next eight weeks, and he's gonna make some killer money during November, December. Yeah.

Chris:

This delegation one is an important one for me because I know the companies I've worked with, I've worked in a lot of startups, uh, some very successful, some have been total disasters. I've always been surrounded in all these by very high-tech, very capable people. When you start up these, do these startups in the high-tech world, you hire the best tech people you can find. So I always kind of look back on them and said, what was success what I mean, one's very successful and one not. And I have to always kind of fall back on is this idea of delegation. The ones that really were successful, the most successful ones that I was in, were the ones where we were cut loose and let able to work and we didn't have people breathing down our back. The ones that failed miserably were the ones where they were being micromanaged on every single aspect. And I can think of two of them. If you could ever write a case study about delegation in the high-tech world, you could take these two and have them side by side, they'd be a perfect test case for this. Because that's exactly why one failed and one didn't. The people were in fact, some of the people were the same people because we stole some of the people out of there when we went over to the other one. So it wasn't the people, it was the bosses. It was the micromanagement that just absolutely destroyed them. And they say, you know, the engine of growth or whatever is just completely destroyed by micromanagement. You can't grow. You can't grow with micromanagement because there's one boss and there's 20 people. So, you know, in the company, especially the smaller company, the first one I went into was 12 people. You just can't micromanage 12 people. You're never going to get them off the starting gate. And uh they didn't, they cut us loose. They told them what we needed to do, how soon it needed to be done, and uh they just cut us loose. And it was it became a very successful startup. So this is a big one for me, this delegation.

Dennis:

Well, delegation is a skill that is learned. I mean, when I was a young guy, I didn't delegate very well. I owned some small businesses, and my wife and I, we used to flip houses. And when you're young and strong and healthy, you can do anything. Yeah, you can even pull one all night or a week, which we would.

Chris:

Yeah.

Dennis:

And um, being young and healthy and strong, if you use that properly, you can overcome with that alone a lot of weaknesses.

Chris:

Yeah.

Dennis:

You can make your company look really good.

Chris:

Yeah.

Dennis:

I can remember one of my businesses. I owned a roofing business and I owned a carpet and upholstery cleaning business at the same time. And I would roof by day, you know, four or five days a week. And then a couple of nights a week and Saturdays, I'd be cleaning offices and homes and carpets and upholstery. But about twice a month, we'd have to pull an all-nighter because we have to go clean a showroom and it needs to close down at six at night. And then we would come in and we need to be out of there by like seven in the morning so they can open up for business. So we would just pull an all-nighter, me and my wife and my crews. You know, I'd put four, five, six of us together and we would just pull an all-nighter. Well, you can't do that your whole life. Right. You know, that's a young man's game, but you can get away with it in your 20s. But if you work that hard for a long, long period of time, by the time you're in your 50s, you can't do that.

Chris:

Yeah.

Dennis:

So, you know, there's a saying if you're not handsome at 20, strong at 30, wealthy at 40, and wise at 50, you never will be. And there's a little bit of truth to that. Being strong at 20 or 25 or 30, being strong in your 20s, if you're in the trades, it's great. Even if you're not in the trades, even if you're in the tech world, you can still pull all nighters. The energy and the strength you have as a young man is phenomenal if you use it right. Right. And you need to take that strength and begin converting it to smart stuff, intelligent stuff. Delegating never came natural to me, but I learned a lot of skills over the years. And I remember when I learned to delegate, I went, oh my gosh, this makes life so easy. Yeah.

Chris:

I used to get in the interviews and they say, What is your favorite part of the job? They actually asked that question. And I used to say it was being able to do so much more with people than I could do myself. I loved being able to build projects and run projects and watch how much could get done if you just kind of delegated it correctly, you know, let the people do what they want to do and cut them loose. Yeah. I used to love that. It was amazing. And I had one successful, I was actually running two groups at one time. And I had no choice but to delegate into this one group. So we set up some guardrails and basically, you know, test-based protocol. And they basically all they had to do was you know pass these tests, you know, every week. And that's all I kind of expected from them. We'd sit down in a meeting and say, you know, did you meet these tests? They'd say, Yes, they did. Okay, good, good job. See you next week. We did it. And I ran an incredibly successful project that way. Um, and it was because of this just you know, just this amount of delegations.

Dennis:

The micromanager, though, is also the multitasker because he's trying to do your job and his job and that guy's job, but also try to do his own job. Yeah. And I've known people like this and they make so many mistakes. Yeah, they're tripping over themselves. Honestly, when I make my most mistakes is when somebody comes into my office and says, Hey, did you, you know, did you see the Penske file or whatever it is, and I'm on the phone with somebody, or I I just took uh an appointment and I'm typing it in, and someone comes in with that, then someone comes in from the other door and says, Hey, I got to ask you something. Now I got three things going on. And some people will think it's a little bit rude, and it's been mentioned to me a few times over the years, but I will say, give me one minute, and I have to finish up entering all the data into the platform, or I might forget.

Chris:

Yeah.

Dennis:

And then someone asks me something, I got to switch the page on my desktop to do something else, and I forget where I was. Yeah. So I often I will put someone on hold and I will finish what I'm doing, and then I will address this, that, or the other thing, but I try not to do two things at once. Yeah. And it works very well for me. I make most of my mistakes when I'm forced into a multitasking situation. And that's why I try not to do that. But I have noticed that micromanagers, and I know several of them, they make so many mistakes because micromanagers are also multitaskers by their nature. And multitasking, some people, if they tell you I'm a great multitasker, you know what? That's a bad mark. Yeah, yeah. That's not a check, that's an X.

Chris:

Yeah.

Dennis:

Because someone who thinks he or she is a good, I'm good at multitasking, they just don't know what everybody else can see.

Chris:

Yeah.

Dennis:

After you delegate, hold accountable. That's number five. And that's my final point. You know, from the person who sweeps the floors after closing time to the CEO, everybody in every organization has to be held accountable. Yeah. Hold your people accountable. You know, as people get promoted, they should know what is expected of them and they should be held accountable. And honestly, every day, every day I see this. We had a situation that came in where a customer was not that happy. I'm sending the same crew back to make sure. And I know the customer made a mistake. He doesn't know what we did. We were hired to do some work on his house and we did it. He wasn't there. And so he doesn't think we did that work. So I'm sending the crew back. And I told the customer, I want you to be there so they can walk you through and show you exactly what we did. And everything will be fine. It happens once in a while. But you send the same crew chief back, make sure, you know, hold him accountable because he represents the company. I think right now in 2025, this is October, this is a tremendous time for growth. For companies that are strong and well put together, I view this as a huge opportunity for me to grow in 2026. I've never had such a high-quality group of people drop in my lap right out of the sky. I mean, we went from zero to 60, you know, from these three very inept young kids I hired through indeed back in May to this plethora of highly skilled, highly motivated young men that I've been hiring here. And I think I've hired about seven people in the last three or four weeks. Yeah. It's setting me up for a phenomenal 2026. I'm going to have a meeting with my franchisees here in the next week or so. And one of the things I'm going to recommend is that. Let's get out there, get those two or three extra people hired, because we're coming into our busiest, or we're in the midst of our busiest quarter and our busiest two months. So you know that you can accommodate two more employees and let's start beefing up our marketing.

Chris:

Yeah. That kind of goes to your chance favors the prepared sort of idea that we're always kind of head run on here as well. You know, you you're all set, you're prepared. So you're going to take advantage of this for whatever reason. People are becoming available, high-quality people. You're going to load up on them just before your busy season and you're going to hit it out of the park because now you're loaded up. You've got the people you need. You can answer the phone.

Dennis:

One of my one of my newest hires came from one of my competitors who I think went under because I know he sold his his gutter installation truck, the big box truck with the I know he sold the truck. He sold it back to my one of my suppliers who told me, hey, one of your competitors just sold me his truck. Okay, I knew he was hurting, but you know, well, one of his employees, and he was a small company. One of his uh employees, his only employee, came to work for me. He's been with me for a couple of weeks. Now again, this kind of goes against some of my philosophy is I don't want to hire a guy and bring him in here who thinks he knows how to hang gutters. Right. But again, he can't make he's not being put in a decision-making capacity. He's gonna be controlled by the pack as you described.

Chris:

Yeah.

Dennis:

I put him on one of my six-man crews. I surrounded him with five guys who know each other really well. Five guys that at least three of them have been with my company for eight years or more, and the other two have been with me for at least five or six years. I immersed him in that pack. So he's never going to be making a decision on a job site.

Chris:

Yeah.

Dennis:

He's gonna be surrounded by people who know how to install gutters properly. And he's gonna be immersed in this, and within two to three months, he's gonna forget everything else he knew. And he's just gonna be doing things without thinking the way we do it instinctively. You sort of mentioned something about you know, seeing the future. As I often like to say, some people go to where the puck is. I want to go to where the puck is gonna be when I get there. When I get there is January 1st. My whole year in 2025 is geared towards the fourth quarter. Right now, this is when we make our money. Yeah, this is our playoffs. You know, end of October to right after Christmas. This is our busiest time of the year, and we're here. The schedule is filled in, the hiring is done, all our trucks have had their maintenance and they all got stickered the other day. Okay, we're ready to go. I'm focused on January. That's where the puck is gonna be when I get there. So as I finish tightening up this little group as we go into the fall, my next objective, which starts next week, is January 1st. What am I gonna do? I need to beef up my marketing. I want to have a big growth year. I have enough trucks. I don't think I'll need to buy a new truck. I definitely have more than enough guys on staff and ladies in the office. That's no problem. So, you know, I look at my business growth chart and I say, okay, I need to drop another probably 2,500 into marketing. So I've got about two months to see how I'm gonna tweak my marketing system so that when we hit the road running January 1st, that we're going toward a record year. So it begins right now to me with staffing. Staffing in 2025 shocked me.

Chris:

Yeah.

Dennis:

I don't get surprised by too many things these days, but this one, I was pleasantly shocked at how many great quality people are out there. So this is something that I'm gonna mention to my franchisees and to my other business clients is this might be a time that you want to make it a growth period in your company. Don't wait for the economy to tell you it's booming. Don't wait for your politicians or the guy on the news to tell you this is a good time. Yeah. It's always a good time. Yeah. And right now, I think it's a really great time to make plans for growth. So that's kind of where I'm at.

Chris:

Yeah, it's nice that there's been a positive surprise. The last couple of years, there's been so many negative ones. So it's nice to see this. And again, that's this idea keeps coming back and back again, you know, that there's always something going on that you can make an adjustment and take advantage of it. Sure. Ups, downs, doesn't matter. As you said, your best year was COVID pretty much, because you had so much business, people were staying home, they were ordering, you know, work being done on the houses and stuff. You know, there's always something you can do. And it sounds like right now, employment is very positive. That's I think employment could be the catalyst to this next period of growth. That sounds exciting. So we'll we'll we'll touch back with you again soon and see how this worked out. Maybe we'll do a s maybe we'll do a show in January. We should do a show in January. Talk about uh the year's review and what went right, what went wrong. How some of the how some of these uh things that you come up with and some of your philosophies worked out for the year.

Dennis:

Well, one of my competitors just went under. He's in the same business. Oh, he was a small one or two manager.

Chris:

I was gonna mention that actually. I was found that interesting.

Dennis:

He's struggling, and we're not. Now, we struggled a little bit. We had some weather in February, March, April, and I know he got hit hard.

Chris:

And it wasn't too long ago. We were talking about a little downturn in the economy there all of a sudden. I was worried this hit us out of nowhere.

Dennis:

Well, so we work outdoors. You know, we're the Cape Card gutter monkeys, we work outdoors. We do not work indoors ever. All of our work occurs outside, all of our revenue generating work. Yes, I have an office staff that works indoors, but that's support staff. All of my revenue generating activity occurs outside. And February, March, and April, the weather just beat us up. It just kicked our asses really bad. And we paid the price. And I know one of my competitors back then, his one employee called me looking for work. I said, I gotta tell you, I'm struggling too. I was really struggling. I would call January, February, March, I mean, um, February, March, April of this year one of my worst three-month chunks ever. We just were getting beat up so bad by the weather. And halfway through that, in mid-March, I think Trump announced tariffs. Well, most Americans don't know what a tariff is, they don't know the short-term, long-term implications of tariffs, and people panicked. People on Wall Street panicked, and Wall Street lost 20%. So I'm coming into April and I'm not having a good quarter, and I'm scratching my head saying numbers are down. I was trying to blame the weather. Then comes this huge, huge downturn in Wall Street where Wall Street lost about 20% in a few days. So I was thinking recession. So I cleaned house. Yeah, we did a whole podcast on recession. Yeah, I cleaned house back then. I I had to let go two or three employees that were just marginal. And in a normal boom economy, I might have kept them on, but you know what? I got rid of them. And then things kind of regulated and straightened out. I tried to hire a few more, and I I told you the story with the snowflake sisters. It just didn't work out. I did have Andrew come on, that was a little bright light, but guys were taking vacation time in the summer, and Andy and I, the two owners, were back trying to run a crew or two. I mean, it was crazy. It was really, really crazy. And it finally all came together by about September. I hired a few more guys and they were really working out, and more quality people were applying. I even told Molly, get that ad off of um indeed, I can't handle any more of this. And we hit a plateau, we broke through that plateau, and I said to Molly, throw that back up there. And I got probably 15 resumes in the next three days, and I've hired four more people in the last week. And so it's been a real up and down year, but in the end, we're going into the fall. We're we're in the fourth quarter now with a bigger staff than I've ever had, and my bench is strong.

Chris:

Yeah.

Dennis:

We we have a really good group of rookies coming in, and I know some of my competitors are struggling, and you know what? That just means we're gonna be able to absorb some of the work that they were gonna do. It'll it'll fall in our lap. And only one of my new staff of the seven or eight new hires I've had here in the last five months, only one of them had gutter experience. And I think I told you I immersed him. I used the pack mentality that you you mentioned that I didn't even know existed until 20 minutes ago. I used the pack mentality. I put him in and amongst a group of guys that really know what the heck they're doing, and that's working out. And you know, uh, one of my new guys, he was a came from a carpentry background. I have two iron workers, two union iron workers that I've recently hired, a guy from a chimney uh background, a lineman from Comcast. Oh, that's great. Just not getting the hours. None of which those guys one advantage of them, they're probably not afraid of heights. Right. Yeah, the lineman works on lines, that's what he does. And I have this one gentleman starting on Monday or Tuesday of next week. He came from a tech background and printers and copiers and machinery like that. And he just seems like a nice guy, and the industry is shrinking. And he said, I can't go back in that industry where it was seven years ago when I went there. It's not the industry that it is now. These machines are better, they're simpler, and they're easy for the owner of the machine to take care of. And troubleshooting them is not the business that it was, it's not the industry that it was seven years ago. And so he said, I'm not going back into that industry. So he took a short time off, gave it some thought, and he wanted to get back working outdoors. Yeah, good for him. So six or seven different backgrounds, yeah, all landing in my lap. 2025 has been an interesting year for us, and um look forward to seeing you next week and and give you an update on things. Yeah, it's been a case study.

Chris:

It has.

Dennis:

Small business one over. All right. Sounds good. Thank you, Chris. Wrap it up today. And as always, no monkeys were harmed in the making of this podcast. That's right. So we'll talk to you guys later. Bye.

Chris:

Thank you for tuning in to Monkey Business Radio. If you enjoyed today's episode, please make sure to subscribe, like, and follow us wherever you get your podcast. It really helps us reach more aspiring entrepreneurs like you. If you've got a question or topic you'd like us to cover, leave a comment or reach out to us on social media. We'd love to hear your thoughts and keep the conversation going. Don't forget to leave us a five-star review if you found the episode valuable, and make sure to share it with anyone who might benefit from our tips and stories. We'll see you next time. This podcast is produced by American Gutter Monkeys LLC. Build real wealth to business ownership. For details, visit us at American GutterMonkeys.com.