Intro: Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX studios in Atlanta, Georgia. It’s time for High Velocity Radio.

Stone Payton: Welcome to the High Velocity Radio show, where we celebrate top performers producing better results in less time. Stone Payton here with you this afternoon. You guys are in for a real treat. Please join me in welcoming to the broadcast CEO and President with HigherQuest, Inc., Mr. Rick Hermanns. How are you, man?

Rick Hermanns: I’m doing great. How about yourself?

Stone Payton: I am doing well. I’ve really been looking forward to this conversation, and maybe a great place to start would be if you could share with me in our listeners mission. Purpose. What are you and your organization really out there trying to do for folks? Man.

Rick Hermanns: So I really appreciate that question. We’re we’re we’re in the staffing industry. However, we are a franchisor. And so really, one of the one of the greatest honors of my career has been to help facilitate the creation of probably 50 to 60 millionaires over time. And so it’s been just a great part of my career is, again, helping. I didn’t make him a millionaire, but we certainly helped them, um, through our system become one. And so, uh, you know, as a again, as a franchisor, we’re there to support our franchisees. And, um, and again, so I’m very happy with that.

Stone Payton: Well, it sounds like great work if you can get it noble. True. And it has to be rewarding. What’s what’s your backstory, man? How in the world did you get into this line of work and now being able to do this?

Rick Hermanns: Well, in some respects, I got into it by mistake. I had, uh, when I had finished grad school, I went to work for a bank and one of my clients was a staffing company, and I went there to be their CFO, and I hadn’t been there 3 or 4 months in a recession hit. And they were having big financial problems. And, you know, basically, I ended up being told, well, your choice is either, you know, collect unemployment or become a franchisee of ours. And so I became a franchisee of theirs, built the business up in a few years. And then ultimately, it’s a long story, but they ended up buying back a bunch of my offices. And then I went public and became a franchisor myself. So it it really wasn’t by design. I it was more, um, just capitalizing on opportunities that came along the way.

Stone Payton: That initial transition, becoming a franchisee. And now you’re running your own business. I mean, was that a little bit intimidating or scary at all in the early going.

Rick Hermanns: Well, it’s definitely something that I had really no intention of doing. I know some people, you know, they’re ten years old and they’re thinking about running 48 lemonade stands or whatever, and that really wasn’t what I was. That really wasn’t what I was looking for at all. And I remember, um, my office was in a was in a very, you know, very suspect portion of Miami. And there was there were riots, there was rioting going on. And I was only like five years out of out of grad school. And I’m thinking to myself, what in the world am I doing here? And about five months after that, Hurricane Andrew hit and it was just and it all changed. And so, you know, it was really a it was a bit scary to begin with. And then but within about a year, what I realized is all of a sudden, gosh, it’s nice that if I’m going to work next weekend, I’m going to work, you know, 12 hour days. The beneficiary is basically going to be me, not, you know, not some other, you know, some other company. And so it didn’t take too, too long and sort of it’s like, you know what? I could, you know, and anybody who knows me would sit there and say, yeah, this guy doesn’t listen to people well enough to, to to be a good employee. So it it’s worked out great. I really have just never looked back.

Stone Payton: Well, and I have to believe in your current role you have what my daughter would call the ultimate street cred, right? You’ve been there, you’ve been a franchisee. You’re not just a the old guy that used to know how it was done, you know.

Rick Hermanns: Right. No. That’s a yeah. And that’s a I mean obviously it’s probably not the topic, you know, the primary topic we’re discussing today, but I believe that that is an absolutely. I don’t I don’t know how companies hire people who don’t have sort of granular experience in their industry. I think it’s I know some people pull it off, but generally speaking it’s extremely difficult. I, you know, I was reading an article about eight months ago and, you know, it was talking about a large airplane manufacturer and just saying how the board and the senior management really had, you know, they weren’t none of them were engineers that knew how to build planes and didn’t never had been out on the floor, so to speak. And it’s like, yeah, I don’t know how you I just don’t know how you run a company without understanding the, the ins and outs. And it’s served. Its it has served me countless times over the last 34 years where it’s like, hey, you can’t blow a fastball by me because I know what it takes to do that.

Stone Payton: So being in the staffing industry in a leadership role like your organization is and like you are personally, you’ve got to have your your fingers on the pulse of of workforce trends. There’s a lot of interesting stuff happening, particularly now in the, in the, in the workplace. Yeah. Get us caught up on what’s going on.

Rick Hermanns: So, you know, there is a very, um, we’re in a very strange economy and really have been for I mean, if you think about it, 2019 was a year of I would say was probably the gold standard as far as economic growth, at least as it related to employment, because we were still in a non-inflationary environment. And yet wages, real wages were going up. And um, which is again, a Goldilocks period. If you’re if you’re an employee, right. You’re you’re your services are in demand. And yet it’s not like you’re just giving it away on the backside by having raising prices, you know, you know, rising prices. Then you hit the of course, the pandemic. You have a massive shift of people going from in-office to to, to working remote. I mean, literally it went from about 11% of the population working or the, you know, workforce working remote to upwards to 45%, working remote in the space of a month that that, you know, that that changed that way. So you had all those dislocations and then you had massive amounts of government money being paid for people to be idle. And so then all of a sudden you had this sharp, you know, you had this sharp increase in need, and yet you had a lot of employees that had made no economic sense for them to go back to work. And so you had, again, workforce, you know, workforce shortages and 22 and, you know, especially 2022 when after that government, uh, you know, direct payments to workers ran out, then you had this massive run up.

Rick Hermanns: And yet by 23, 24, the staffing industry really has struggled the last two years. And what’s become plain is, of course, we’ve had you know, I think it was like it was like 8.5 million sort of documented and, you know, basically documented undocumented workers coming into the United States. You start putting that perspective and it’s like, wow, you just added 2.5% to the American population in four years, of which, you know, the I’m sure the vast majority are working and are basically competing against a lot of what our workers do. And so you have all these dynamics. And I go through that sort of that trip down memory lane just to say this has been one of the most dynamic. And when I say dynamic, I don’t necessarily mean good. But changing workforce periods that I’ve experienced in 34 years in the business, I’ve never, you know, it’s like to have to adjust to that. So I do feel privileged to sort of be on the front lines and seeing how that, um, you know, impacts real people, both from the employee standpoint and from the employee standpoint. And frankly, though, I think we’re just getting started. I think we’re going into another, you know, we’re going into another period of, um, you know, great change. And, you know, how it ends up. You know, I’m not sure, but there’s a lot of change yet to come.

Stone Payton: So part of this people is this accurate. Are people are returning to the office, right? Some of them by their choice. Some of them maybe not by choice. Is that true?

Rick Hermanns: Yeah, there’s no question. And at this point, realistically, the vast majority who are coming back to the office aren’t really doing it of their own, of their own volition. But each week, you see, you know, you see another example of another large company bringing their employees back, you know, back into the office and you know, the, the which, which, you know, which begs any number of questions. But again, these are iconic names that are bringing, you know, again, that are bringing people that are bringing people back into the office. Of course, the Mac daddy of them all is happening right before our very eyes in, you know, Washington DC and really across the United States is, you know, is the federal government requiring people to come back into the office, which, you know, which our we did a high request, did a study back in, uh, about six months ago and by far the state with the or the the I can’t call it a state because it’s a district, but the District of Columbia had far and away the largest percentage of remote workers in the United States. And of course, that script is about to flip, uh, and which which is going to have massive implications.

Stone Payton: Do you have a feel for why? I mean, what they’re trying to achieve with that move are there I guess there’s got to be some pros and some cons or some some reasons behind. Hey, this is why we’re doing this.

Rick Hermanns: So and that’s a that’s a good question. And there’s really in some respects there’s, you know, there’s more than one answer to it. Part of like what they’re recognizing what they meaning the current administration is attempting to achieve, frankly is different than what a typical company would want to be trying to achieve. I mean, the stated objective is to get people to resign. Uh, so, um, you know, so forcing somebody who’s, you know, basically been out of the office for five years to come back, you know, they’re they’re banking on a large percentage of the people to not return. Keep in perspective, even as you look at, for example, you know, in essence, eliminating most of the contractors and eliminating the positions for people who are on probation. The new administration clearly is looking to you know, it has a stated objective to reduce the federal workforce by 10%. Well, those moves plus the voluntary, you know, if you you get a paycheck to the end of the year, if you, you know, if you if you agree to resign, you take those three together. Right now it’s still only showing. Maybe, you know, 5% of the workforce that that’s affected. And if your goal is 10% well, okay. How do you bridge that five. You know, how do you bridge that extra 5%? Well, one of the ways is you take people who’ve been, you know, working from home and you say, now you have to show up and it, it it’s so again, it’s designed to get people, you know, to leave their, you know, it’s not being done in a way that, let’s say somebody like a, you know, a Goldman Sachs would do it because it’s really being done pretty much, you know, indiscriminately.

Rick Hermanns: Uh, that said, for observers like yourself and employers like myself, you know, it will give us a lot of sort of insights into, you know, how many people are actually willing to come back into the office under, I’ll say, the worst of circumstances, right? It’s like it’s not sort of, hey, you know, a year from now you’re going to need to come back and, you know, but if you really have a good reason, maybe we’ll work with you. I mean, there’s not a lot of that. It’s just sort of like, hey, we’ve got 95% vacancies in downtown DC. You need to start filling that office or you’re gone. You know, it doesn’t matter if you’ve got, you know, top marks on your performance review. You just need to show up. So what I’m saying, again, is it’s designed to be, You know, in essence, to encourage a person to quit. Well, it.

Stone Payton: Sounds to me like that that objective will probably be reached. Sounds like that’s probably going to work. But what I’m seeing on the positive side, for me being selfish, I wonder if that’s not going to free up some talent for people like me that have opportunities for for people to work remotely, I guess. Yeah.

Rick Hermanns: Yeah. So and that’s a, you know, that’s where a lot of this will be. Um, you know, again, very instructive is what happens with, you know, what happens with productivity, you know, and those are things that haven’t been really as well understood as what they probably should be. Um, and part of our study, you know, the interesting thing that it showed, for example, is and particularly among younger workers, love, you know, love to work remote. Want to work remote, but it and self-reporting say they’re more productive. And yet you have other studies that show people, and especially younger people, being less productive. And so you have all this conflicting data out there. And so again, this will be a really good test case of, you know, of how that works and how that, you know, and how that doesn’t work. And look, I mean, I think that one of the biggest issues is and again, hopefully it’ll get employers to look at it sort of to your point, as far as, hey, you know, I kind of like working remote. I, you know, and I can do it. And, and candidly, I’ve, I’ve worked remote for 24 years myself. So, so I mean I, I see the value in, you know, in remote work, uh, you know, as well, um, you know, the, the, the issue is more but is it appropriate for everybody? And those are things where now we’re about to receive a bunch of, you know, again, a bunch of data as to we’ll see whether the productivity, um, you know, really works out, you know, whether whether it really works out or not. I think the other thing is a little bit of a tangent. I think the other part that where this might expose and you’ve seen certain tech companies starting to they started picking up on this two years ago. The federal government, not as much is how many people are still collecting, you know, premium pay for quote unquote working in DC, but actually moved four years ago to Ohio or Nebraska and yet are still collecting that pay differential, which is fraud, right?

Stone Payton: So just switching up a little bit, are you seeing a rise at all in interest among younger people, people entering the workforce in the trades and the skilled trades? Are you seeing that too?

Rick Hermanns: So I love that question. And and frankly, I’m a you know, higher quest is a big advocate of you know of that. Obviously part of it’s part of it’s selfish. But when you look at the average age of tradesmen like plumbers and electricians and masons, it skews very old. And there was a generation that was constantly, you know, it was for good reason, drummed into. It was drummed into my head as a kid, you should go to college, you should go to college. And it always, you know, it generally it it paid off. But we’ve come to this point where we’re pushing people, you know, into it that aren’t necessarily prepared. They run up a bunch of debts to go to school for a year and a half, and then they’re saddled with those debts. But they never really were meant to be, um, you know, really were meant, you know, really College really wasn’t shouldn’t have really been for them, wasn’t for them. And on top of it is, is that, you know, or it’s like, you know, how there are certain degrees where it’s like how many you know, you know, how many have certain degrees do we really need? And and so, you know, we’re I think the public school system is lagging. I think that, you know, back when I was in junior high, I had to take I had to take woodworking, I had to take classes, I had to do all these shop classes.

Rick Hermanns: So at the very least and then I, I worked for my father Construction. So when I graduated from high school, I knew it was work, you know. I knew what it was like to work on a work site. I knew what it was like to to, you know, to use a bandsaw to cut wood and you know it and, you know, unfortunately, you know, I really would love to see more schools, um, actually offer it. I happen to live in Pinellas County, Florida. And one of the things that our public school system is actually a little bit ahead of the game is does have some, you know, sort of skills academies. And frankly, I think every major school district ought to have those to help, you know, to help, uh, sort of grease the skids for more people to do it because, look, an electrician, you know, somebody could come out of high school at 18, work for a year as an electrician, you know, an electrician’s helper, then spend a few years getting, you know, going through an apprenticeship by the time by the time they’re 28, 29, they can easily be making 80 to $100,000 a year. And, you know, I would argue that there’s virtually. You know, there are very few college degrees that you’re going to end up in that same spot.

Stone Payton: Well, I’ll tell you, I’ll just share with you. My best friend growing up, I went to college. My folks had terminal degrees. It was never a question. I and my buddy Kirk, he went in the air conditioning business, and he can buy and sell me three times over. Rick, he’s done real well for him.

Rick Hermanns: Exactly. It’s exactly right. And I, I, I certainly, um, you know, I certainly hope that that, um, message gets through to more and more people. The, you know, that unfortunately, you know, you know, universities are a big business as well. And so there’s a lot of competition to encourage people to continue to, you know, to continue to pursue degrees. And in some cases, it obviously is the right call. Right? I mean, yeah, it certainly is the right call, but but golly, you know, it’s like they’re. So your point is exactly apropos. I mean, there there is a shortage of, you know, there is a shortage of tradespeople out there, plain and simple, and even, say some of the sub, you know, obviously not everybody has what it takes to be, you know, an electrician. I mean, you know, electricians, you know, that requires, you know, that that requires a lot of smarts. It’s oh yeah, you know, but there are even beneath that, let’s say beneath that category, there are a lot of sub professionals in the construction industry as now as well that are in short supply. I mean, I’ll say and let’s just say if you use dollars paid obviously as a proxy for what the market values a person’s skills, let’s say commercial painters are not their skill is not valued, let’s say the way an electrician is. And yet if you’re a good painter and you can round up 3 or 4 of your, you know, 3 or 4 people that are good painters besides you. To your point, you’re going to probably be able to retire when you’re 50 years old.

Stone Payton: Right? You have such a a marvelous vantage point to see trends, things that are happening in such a variety of industries. I’m curious, what are what are you seeing or noticing about? I it started to enter my world a little bit. I hit a button before we came on to our zoom room where we’re doing this interview, and it’s going to. We’ll see. But I think it’s going to like, take notes and give me a summary of our conversation. And all I did was click a button.

Rick Hermanns: That’s yeah, it’s pretty amazing. The, the, the types of I’ll call them menial functions. They’re not necessarily menial. It’s not the really the word I’m looking for but the repetitive functions that machine learning can handle right and and to. But to address your point, if you think about it and you go back 40 years ago, if you thought of a staffing company, what you mostly thought of was sort of like the what was the old movie? Dolly Parton and Lily Tomlin, you know, 9 to 5, right? And it’s like you’re working as a, as a, as a temp. Right. And what did you think of his attempt 40 years ago? He thought of a secretary. But how many true secretaries even exist anymore. So and obviously AI is quantum, you know, is a quantum leap ahead of even some of the basic technology that’s been employed. But think of how many jobs have been replaced by voicemail. And so in staffing, what you see is all of a sudden the, the, the staffing industry, the the largest component used to be placement of temporary. You know, I’ll call them secretaries, right? Obviously, there’s a lot more in it than that, but they were basically clerical workers is probably a better way of putting it. There was, there was it half the industry probably was. Was clerical workers. Clerical workers are almost that’s almost vanished. And you know that you bring up a great point with I and I think AI has the potential. Um, well, it’s going to transform our society that it has the opportunity, but it has the opportunity to be have a very positive impact and has the opportunity to be a very negative impact.

Rick Hermanns: Our policymakers are going to have to get out ahead of this, I think, and I fear, um, because if you you know, if you think of the greatest periods of revolution, it was really right after the Industrial Revolution, and you had Yet all the people who had to move from the farm, you know, into the city and people who were, you know, sort of had a normal what was then in the, you know, 1720s, a normal life where all of a sudden thrust into, you know, big cities and trying to work on some machine. To the extent that I fully develops, there are a lot of I’ll just use one example and, look, there’s probably a lot more tech, you know, and infrastructure that needs to take place for this to take place, you know, to fully take place. But let’s say we do get to the point of driverless trucks. There’s 5 million Americans that work as truck drivers. Where are they going to work after? What are they going to, you know, what are they going to do? And so, you know, there’s and yet on the other hand, you know, we import far more than what we, you know, than what we export. To the extent that we can eliminate, let’s say, cost differences, you know, why would we be manufacturing, let’s say, anything in Malaysia or Vietnam if we have AI applied in major doses on our factory floor, but we can produce all the stuff here.

Rick Hermanns: So that’s great. I mean, so that’s right. But then it’s all the, you know, and what’s the timing of that going to be though? Are we going to get more manufacturing here before, you know, before all of our truck drivers become unemployed? Or are all our truck drivers going to be looking around waiting? And so you just start, you know, when you when you think about the timing of that, those are major, major implications. And I don’t know if we as Americans have really started even thinking quite enough. You look at some of it and you say, wow, that’s cool. Like you said, it’s like, hey, the transcribing, you know, some machine is transcribing all of this. I read an article in the National Geographic a couple of months ago about like what AI is doing to forecast earthquakes, to read ancient scrolls that you know, that are rolled together. And if you unroll them, it you know, it would it would fall apart. And they’re predicting what the next sound a whale will make these different things. They’re all cool, right? But you start thinking about but they’re also going to take you know, they’re also going to take the jobs of a lot of people. And that brings back reshoring and new, you know, manufacturing comes back to the United States. That’s great. But what’s the timing of all that?

Stone Payton: I was going to quote, May you live in interesting times. Somebody smart and witty said that a long time ago. I think we certainly are, aren’t we?

Rick Hermanns: Well, you know, the that’s I’ve, I’ve heard that before and as, as I recall, it’s actually meant to be a curse. Oh.

Stone Payton: So, so in a local hire Higher quest office. Paint us a picture of the day to day. What’s going on in that office? What are higher quest folks doing on a daily basis to navigate all this?

Rick Hermanns: So, you know, I appreciate you asking that in part realizing Higher Quest has several major divisions. So one of the divisions that we have is Higher Quest Direct. So Higher Quest Direct is your classic, you know, basically direct dispatch labor company. So 85% of our workers are, you know, 85% of our workers are working construction. And so we’re, you know, we’ll have a person who, you know, the office will open at 530 in the morning, and then we’ll assign workers and we’ll get them transportation to the job site. They’ll work that day, and their pay card will be full of money that night. And so we have another person who takes care of that. Um, A lot of that, you know. And so we’re seeing, you know, you can tell really quickly what’s going on. And, you know, we have great insights from construction. You know, because of that we’re also very much sensitive in that to fluctuating demands. And so um, we get good sort of good Intel as to, um, you know, uh, how easier it is, you know, is or isn’t, um, for, you know, to, to, for, let’s say, for projects and because once you start seeing is, is if, if the economy is starting to falter a bit, you know, they won’t use us as heavily and and yet we’re great for supplementing in a very short range situation. Now our next you know, another large division we have is Snelling, which is more your traditional, you know, staffing.

Rick Hermanns: And again so we’re what we’re you know, we’re working with all sorts of companies with that, the residual clerical workers that are still out there, but a lot of it is related to, you know, a lot of that business is related to, you know, again, long term assignments in factories. Think of forklift drivers. Um, but also, you know, we do a lot of, let’s say, like, um, you know, even like medical assistants and things like that will number of our offices will supply people, people like that. So we have a broad range of broad range of clients. And, and so an office like that would have the manager and typically, you know, a person to do payroll and 2 or 3 people who are recruiting. And so they’re just going out and they’re finding, you know, based on what the client’s needs are, they’re going out and talking to people. And again, we get great insight, really, as to whether or not there’s going to be wage inflation because, you know, you get a client who maybe you’ll be sitting there and saying, well, we want to pay $16 an hour. And if you know, we’ll know whether or not we can fill that, you know, we can fill that order at $16 an hour and we can kind of get with our clients and say, hey, that’s just, you know, 16 bucks ain’t going to do it. You know, your competition’s all paying 18 or um, you know, so we’ve got great insight that way.

Rick Hermanns: But then we have another division, uh, the MRI network, which is one of the oldest network of recruiting companies. We have about 180 franchisees across the globe that are placing high level people. So you could think of a CFO. You know, we do. Ceos will do. Um, you know, we have some that do doctors, we have nurses, etc.. And again, so we have the the and again, so we’re seeing it from both the candidate side and from the client side. And we get just, you know, and so we’re a wealth of information for our clients and for our candidates because then we see over again over the entire globe, hey, our engineers are in high demand or are they not in high demand? And can you um, and so, you know, so we get a lot of insights, uh, we just get a lot of insights into that stuff. And, you know, again, our office is very we have we have certain offices that have 40 recruiters in them, and we have some that are they have one person who’s who’s sort of at the end of their career, they know a bunch of people in their industry and say, hey, I can, you know, I can make 25, $35,000 a year, you know, a placement, you know, helping my friends find jobs and they become a franchisee of us.

Stone Payton: Well, as an employer, and I’m not a big employer, but I can I can certainly have that hat on for for a moment. This strikes me as one of those areas where if I don’t take advantage of your specialized knowledge and expertise because you’re out there, you’re in it. You have so much data coming in real world data, I if I don’t take advantage of that, I mean, I’m operating in the dark. You know, I could be shooting myself in the foot and that could be very costly in a hurry, couldn’t it?

Rick Hermanns: Well, I think in particularly it’s particularly now with as many remote workers as there are, for example, and one of the, one of the beauties of remote kind of going back to that a little bit is think of it this way. Let’s say you’re trying to bring in a marketing person. It doesn’t matter for you. Realistically, it shouldn’t matter to you if that person could be in LA. That person could be in Maine, that person could be in Seattle, or it could be sitting one door down from you. What difference does it make, really? What he or she does is almost you know, I’m saying it’s irrelevant to where they where they’re working? But how are you going to find. I mean, seriously, how are you going to recruit that person? Whereas if you go to somebody who’s placing 50 marketing, you know, 50 marketing people a year, they’re going to have, you know, within three days you’re going to have five vetted resumes on your desk and all that’s worth, you know, saying and all that, you know, hiring the wrong person.

Rick Hermanns: You know. Can be a disaster for your business.

Stone Payton: Yes, I’ve I’ve learned that lesson. And I’ve also learned that I make all the mistakes. I have a tendency to hire in my own image, and I just every mistake that someone could make on every aspect of that. Yeah, I’ve got the scar tissue to prove it, and I bet I’m not the only one.

Rick Hermanns: So I’d like to turn that around and ask you a question. Yes, sir. Do you find over the time and obviously, I’m sure you have some that you hired in your own image that, you know, sort of like, wait, we can’t have two of these. You know what I’m saying? There’s not enough room in this town for the two of us, you know? On the other hand, overall, have you found that that’s better for you or worse for you? If you have a person that’s more like you.

Stone Payton: Oh, absolutely. Worse in my case. Absolutely. No. I need people that can fill all the gaps, because I’ve got this one little tiny, you know, circle of super power, and it’s pretty darn small. And I need to stay in my lane and do that. And then that whole big world of things. And so, no, I, I, I tremendously value everything you’re saying. And I’m learning a lot in this conversation. I appreciate it.

Rick Hermanns: I appreciate that as yours as well. You know, part of it it’s kind of funny is, is that, you know, it’s great that you have that introspection as well, though, that you can look, you know, I’m saying look at yourself and say, hey, I need to fill in those gaps. I think it’s one of the most important parts of leadership is being able to say, you know what I’m really good at? You know, maybe I’m really decisive and I can look at numbers and process the information quickly, but I’m so harsh. Nobody likes me. You know, like, you could be those different things. You follow me and. Yeah. And so it’s like, okay, well, if then I need somebody warm and fuzzy around me, or I’m just going to take everybody off and, you know, and end up with, you know, nobody who sticks around. Or maybe I’m a marshmallow and I hate firing people. You know, but an organization can’t just keep lousy people either.

Stone Payton: That’s right. Hey, listen, before we wrap, I’d love to leave our listeners with a with a pro tip. You know, the the tagline for the for the show is producing better results in less time. Let’s let’s, uh, let’s share a pro tip with. And it can be people hiring people looking just general life lesson in general, but something that’ll give him give him something to chew on for producing better results in less time, because you’ve clearly done it well.

Rick Hermanns: So I will tell you. I’ll give. I’ll give two, frankly, if that’s okay. Sure. One of the first ones that I learned this and it frankly, it changed my life. I learned this back. I was I was, you know, very, very new in my career. But I keep and have kept for 30, you know, nearly, you know, for 40 years almost now a to do list. I keep my to do list because otherwise things rattle around in my mind and then I forget. And then it’ll stress you out because it’s like, you know, you wake up at 3:00 in the morning and say, son of a gun, I forgot to call so-and-so or whatever it is, but I just keep track of I just keep track of it so that then I don’t I don’t worry about that. I’m not going to get things done. And anybody who knows me realizes I follow up on stuff. I follow up on stuff because I generally I have it recorded and the people who I supervise. I pretty much have a list for them as well, so I don’t typically forget what I’ve told them to do and I can hold them more accountable. That would be one of them is is but and it’s important to write it down. No one has a good enough, you know, writing down obviously you can write it down electronically. But I mean, the point is, is keeping track of it is is is crucial. And it’s crucial for your own, again, for your own sanity. Because you’re, you’ve you’ve often find otherwise that, you know, like I said, you just don’t.

Rick Hermanns: You’ll just keep worrying about it. The other part, and this isn’t my term for it and it isn’t, you know, and it isn’t my idea, but it’s something that I have found to be extraordinarily helpful in my, you know, in, in my life. Um, but also then in my work is and it’s from the book Atomic Habits by James Clear and it’s and it’s in one of the there’s a lot of good stuff in it, but in particular there’s a thing called habit stacking. And so one of the things that I’m very intentional about is, you know, we all we all have, you know, probably literally 100,000 tasks that we complete in a day. And then a lot of them, we have to do some. We just do because we like it, but some we try to avoid, but we don’t always do them. You know, we don’t always do them, uh, efficiently. And so with habit stacking, it’s kind of like, well, okay, I’ll go in the, you know, I’ll just use this as an example is, is that when I go to brush my teeth in the morning, well, then maybe I’ll, you know, I’ll charge my, you know, my Apple Watch at the same time that then I feed the dog and when I’m, when I’m heating up my coffee, I feed the fish. I just completed, like, six tasks, all in the space of two minutes. Yeah, but I do it each time. And then you don’t forget it to where it’s all of a sudden it’s like, oh, I forgot to feed Fido this morning.

Rick Hermanns: And not that Fido would let you. That’s probably a bad example. But then you really don’t forget things, and you manage to do all the mundane things that can throw you off track. And of course, you can do it on the, you know, again, on the work, uh, you know, at a work level as well, where it’s kind of like, well, okay, you know, while I’m checking my emails, then I’ll also, you know, I’ll, you know, I’ll do this or that at some point. That’s always dead time. And I have found that to be very helpful in, um, allowing me to be, you know, more productive. And you know what? I’m going to add a third one in for nothing. And part of it is, is not to let stuff sit around either. And part of it is with the to do list. But it’s like, realistically, things don’t get better with age. Just because you ignore doing something doesn’t mean that you’re not going to end up having to do it. And I still do it from time to time, and it drives me crazy. I use a really stupid example. I’ll sit down. I’ll sit there and say, okay, my fingernails are getting a little bit long. I need to cut them. But instead of walking 20ft over to the bathroom and clipping my nails, I’ll sit there and I’ll do it later. And then two hours later, it’s like, I really need to cut my nails, you know what I’m saying? You just keep going back, right?

Rick Hermanns: It’s like, hey, dummy, just do it. And then it’s done. And then you’re not wasting mental energy and you know, you’re not wasting mental energy on something that is really colossally stupid. And, you know, and so and there’s and that’s sort of a bit of a silly example, but there’s a lot of things from a business standpoint where all you end up doing is annoying your colleagues by not handling something that needs to be handled. And they may not like how you handle it, and you may not like having to deliver that message. But it’s still not going to get better. You’re still going to have to do it. The question is, are you know the question? And in half the time, then you stress yourself out while you’re thinking, oh gosh, they’re going to hate that message. It’s like, yeah, they’re going to hate it three days from now just as much as they’ll hate it three minutes from now. Get it done with.

Stone Payton: I am so glad I asked. That sounds like marvelous counsel to me. What’s the best way for our listeners to tap into the work that’s going on at Higher Quest? Is there a website or something? What’s the best way for them to to stay connected?

Rick Hermanns: Yeah, absolutely. So, um, we are on, uh, you know, we’re at higher quest.com w ww higher quest h I r e q u e s t.com. And that has links to all of our different offices and our different different brands. And, um, you know, or if you’re looking for anything even more, our corporate headquarters is in Goose Creek, South Carolina. And that’s 843723 7400. Um, but probably the website is the best. Again, higher quest.com.

Stone Payton: Rick, It has been an absolute delight visiting with you this afternoon. Thank you for everything that you and your team are doing. You’re clearly having a a real impact on something that is so important to all of us. And we sure appreciate you, man.

Rick Hermanns: Thank you Stone, have a good day.

Stone Payton: My pleasure. Alright, until next time. This is Stone Payton for our guest today, Rick Herman’s with Higher Quest Inc and everyone here at the Business RadioX family saying, we’ll see you in the fast lane.