The New CFO Put His Tires on the Company Card… for the Points [The Bad Hire Ep. 53]

00:00:00 She was fired and agreed to pay it all back in exchange for us not involving the police. And he even took it to another level where he said, I thought you would want the point. He walked out the front door and he never came back. This is The Bad Hire, the show with the best stories about the worst employees. We fired him, of course. People are crazy. It's like an HR nightmare. One bad hire stole all of it. Crazy stuff. She got what she deserved. I'm your host, Ken Monroe, and every week we dive into real-life stories from the wild world of work and what can happen when the wrong person gets the job. These stories aren't just crazy.

00:00:40 They're cautionary tales about lessons learned the hard way. Let's get started. Hey, hi everyone. Welcome back to The Bad Hire. That's the show with the best stories about the wild world of work. And I'm joined today by Nathan and we've got a special guest today, Alan Darby, a great friend of mine. Hey guys, how you doing? Thank you, looking forward to it. We got a great show for you today. You know the drill. Every week we dive into the wildest weirdest stories, but we've got one come up in a little while that Alan's gonna tell about a CFO who stole $2,000 in his first month on the job. Still my gunner. Stay tuned for that story because you're gonna want to hear it.

00:01:21 Lost at the end. You're gonna want to hear it. He shocked me when he told it because I didn't remember it, so it was pretty cool. But anyway, we're gonna tell some great stories today and we'll get a chance to introduce, tell you more about Alan here in a few minutes. So listen, story number one comes in. It's anonymously sent in as a healthcare story. We love healthcare stories for some reason. Apparently a lot of challenges in the healthcare industry around talent acquisitions. So I've been working in healthcare talent acquisition for five years and one incident stands out above the rest. We had to reschedule one of our monthly open interviews

00:02:02 with about a 24 hours notice. And so anyone who showed up on the original date would be prioritized. So this one person apparently did show up with a flyer that was not made by our marketing team. It looked like it was made with a marker and a photocopier and referenced paper applications we hadn't used in years. So we're a little confused, of course. So that same person came back the next day. I got called to the front because of my supervisor. 20 plus years in talent acquisition. You know, he had seen or she had seen everything and they were trying to calm someone who was shouting about not wanting to apply online and refusing

00:02:44 to take any of the information we were offering. So my supervisor- That was their way in? Yeah, that's it, yeah, that's it. So they're screaming, they're already losing their temper about the application they have to fill out. So my supervisor occasionally called me in to help me de-escalate the situations because I'm an army veteran. And apparently my presence helped with more aggressive applicants. Yeah. Apparently opposing, you know, this imposing presence. This time it did not help. She just started yelling at me instead. After about 10 minutes, we got her to take the information and leave. Now we flagged her name, but generally intended to,

00:03:26 we were gonna let her interview still. Oh, wow, very gracious. Sometimes there's a dire need for talent. It must be a desperate dire. Questioning the talent and the evaluator. That's right. We just planned to give- To get them to leave. We just planned to give the hiring manager a heads up first. A couple of weeks ago by, no application, so she doesn't apply, I get called to the front again, same woman, still had not applied. She was sitting in the corner giving me the kind of stare I'd expect from an angry kind of a man master sergeant or something. So, you know, she immediately launching into a tirade about how we hadn't called her. I explained again that we couldn't do anything without an application. Reminded her we were in the middle of COVID restrictions

00:04:08 and asked her not to show up unannounced to a building full of immunocompromised residents. She spoke to me. She spoke to me. Now I'm the person who helps determine who gets hired. Like I was a teenager who had smashed a mailbox. So two weeks later, still no application. She comes back again. By this point, we'd alerted lobby security to her name. She claims the position. She claims the position isn't showing up on our website. It was right there. I'm supposed to be a patient. She was just trying to apply to the wrong section despite being given the same instructions three times. At one point, she tried to poke me in the chest. A little bit of the soldier came out and I think she got the idea.

00:04:49 So she threatened us, said that she would take her services elsewhere. Oh yeah, I'm going to go to work for somebody else. Please do. I'm going to work for somebody else. Don't threaten me. I will work for someone else. You'll lose me. We wished her luck, flagged her profile for inappropriate behavior and added her to the security watch list of the facility. Why would you yell at a recruiter before you're even hired? How many times has that worked out for somebody? That's how their doubt started. She still never made an application. She never made the review. She didn't even make the application process. You just keep coming back and being mad that they hadn't called her and you're like, well, you got to apply first. Why wouldn't you call me? You haven't replied. Well, why wouldn't you call me? Yeah, that's crazy.

00:05:30 Well, and then she's angry too. These, this is not even an interview crash out. I mean, it's just, I mean, you know what I mean? We have so many great, yeah, we have so many great interview crash out stories. Yeah, they're so funny. And I'm always, you know, amazed at them. They blow it in the interview? Yeah, it just like, it just goes up in flame. But it was the earliest one we've had, like no interview. This is like, we didn't even get there. Not even applying, just kind of talking about the application. In a way, it's better, like, you know, they're going to be that way, let's get it on the table early. Yeah, let's not waste our time with the interview. Better with that than it comes out, the crazy behavior comes out years later. Yeah.

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00:06:51 That's B-C-H-E-X.io. All right, I got another story here. Another anonymous, so we know this is, I mean, we know they asked us if they could be anonymous. So in the early 2000s, I worked for a small company that had a run of bad luck with receptionists. But by far, the worst was Terry. That's not a real name. We're gonna have to throw Terry under the bus. Terry was a middle-aged woman with a big personality, bright red hair, and bohemian aesthetic. Flowing layers, bold prints, statement accessories. Her husband was an exec at one of our biggest customers, and she came highly recommended.

00:07:32 She answered phones, handled mail, stocked the supply closet, and right away won people over by handling, by handing out little extras from the office supply catalog, like squishy, like wrist rest, or metallic gel pens, lumbar pillows, whatever. She was also constantly buying stuff online and having it delivered to the office. So the reception area was always full of boxes, and her desk was covered in knickknacks and looking ceramic cal figurines. A few months in, someone from the accounting came to ask if I had ordered five, five fax machines from the office. Max machines? Like, your was this? Yeah, yeah. Hold on, it was early 2000s. That's what I said, early 2000s. Theirs was great.

00:08:13 This story was so great, this person is still telling it. 20 years later, like, brother, was this lady with the fax machines? A few months in, someone from the accounting, someone from accounting came to ask if I had ordered five fax machines from the office supply store. I had not, and we had no additional equipment and inventory, so then they started asking about other purchases on the company credit card. Turns out, we hadn't received our American Express bill in months. Terry had been intercepting it. When accounting finally called AMX directly and got a copy faxed over, there were thousands of dollars in strange charges. Oh, Terry. We looped in IT and pulled our company email when we found what we found was shocking. Terry had been using the company card

00:08:55 to buy junk off eBay, chunky necklaces, knickknacks, and her beloved ceramic cows. Cal figurines, yeah. There we go. This was before PayPal, so to pay for purchases, she was emailing sellers the credit card number directly from her work computer, and because she was apparently concerned about theft on a credit card she had stolen, she would send the number in two separate emails. You can't be too careful. I don't want you stealing my stolen credit card. I might get shut down quicker. That's funny. She's doing them a favor. When confronted, she confessed to buying office supplies and returning them for cash, stealing the credit card number and hiding the bills.

00:09:35 The total came to around 15 grand. She was fired and agreed to pay it all back in exchange for us not involving the police. Yeah, well, why? She never paid it back. Why the fuck that? The manager was too embarrassed to report it, and the ceramic cows got tossed in the trash. What do you do though? Her husband is one of the largest clients. You're in a little bit of a dilemma. I know. How much revenue does that client bring in versus the 15 grand that she spent? That's right. It's so funny you said that. That's right. I read that. Initially I was like, oh, that's not good. Yeah, it's not good. She's gonna have carte blanche here. You know the John Boy and Billy radio show here in Charlotte where they would do the dumb criminal stories, you know?

00:10:16 And it's just like, you're just like, how could they possibly think that they could get away with something like that? Yeah. And then you realize they're dumb. Yeah. So that's why I explained it. Yeah, you get that and you're like, well, clearly, you're intercepting the bill and it's not getting paid. I mean, eventually. I know, that's the key part. They're kicking it up. What's your end date here? They're kicking it up. The American Express gets turned off because it hasn't been paid. But why five-factor machines? Like, I feel like she was old. That was the big red. Yeah, she was reselling them. She was going on eBay and reselling them. Yeah. That scheme is, that's done all the time.

00:10:57 People are stealing and just flipping it on eBay and selling it. I guess so. Yeah, well, that's crazy. I'm gonna, yeah. Very bohemian. Like the Cal figurines. Listen to this. And this is a little bit to background checks. Okay. At some point, the manager talked to her husband. Was this part of the same story? Yeah. At some point, the manager talked to her husband, big customer, who said we were dumb to give her access to a credit card. He had taken her credit cards away from her long time ago. Should've known. And he made it sound like this wasn't the first time

00:11:37 she'd pulled something like this, which explained why she was having everything delivered to the office instead of the house. Yeah. So the manager also called the company, the manager also called the company that had given her a reference and said, hey, why didn't you warn us about this person? And they said, well, we didn't want to be liable for anything, saying anything negative. She stole a bunch of credit cards over here too, but what do you want to tell you? We don't want to be a towel tail. Yeah, thanks for having me. That's crazy. That's the reason today in the references. It matters a lot. You know, and employment verifications, you know, companies today will just do, yeah, they work here from this time to this time. And I don't want to say anything really. You know, you're just here for that reason.

00:12:18 They had a job. Yeah. So you can do employment verification. People sometimes buy employment verification saying that they get some insight into the person. And really, you're just getting, you know, yes, they worked here from here to here. And most of the time, they won't tell you how much they made. Then you got to get a reference if you want to hear. And then who gives you bad references? Who has no bad references? Well, I was going to say, some of the dumb employees that I haven't had to fire in the past, you know, you fire them and then they list you as a reference for them. Yeah, we've heard of that before. I'm like, I can't, I won't lie about them. I will try not to trash them, but like when they call me

00:12:58 and I'm like, you know, I'll just try to give them, I guess, to your point, like, yes, they worked for me for this period. And if they don't ask me anything specific, I might. Hey, can you tell me, you know, what did you like best about them? I like the day they left. They did the firing really well. Yeah. Yeah, but that is just, you know, again, you just go back to their mental intellect is lacking, but they had put you down as a reference and you fired them. They just don't think, you know, they just don't think their only role or they trust that you're afraid to say anything bad to them about them, you know, and probably believe you'll just ignore the call.

00:13:41 So they'll be like, well, I gave the reference. Maybe. And they just, you know, he didn't answer, you know, so not my fault. We've had a couple of those stories where like, they'll call the reference and the reference picks up like, oh, they put me as reference. They're terrible. Like we did not get along well, you know, just like an awkward situation. I tell that story you were talking about earlier because you were, you seemed, you said it was when you and I were in business together. Yeah, so we were growing really rapidly and like, I mean, we went in about a 12 month period, we went from basically a startup to around four, five million in revenue, which this is 20 plus years ago, so that was a lot for us.

00:14:22 And we decided we needed to hire a CFO. Okay. Which we did, because you and I are both moving to a million miles an hour, moving to coming in and it made total sense. And so we found a really credible CFO, certainly looked the part, you know, nerd with glasses and everything. It was great on paper. That's all you need. Yeah, you look like you're an accountant, so you must know the numbers. But so it was in the first month that we got a credit card bill. Unlike the bohemian who hit the credit card bill, our guy wasn't smart enough to do that. So we got the credit card bill and noticed that, because we had issued him a credit card.

00:15:05 So, and we noticed that he had spent, it was like 2,800 bucks on auto repairs, he bought all new tires for his car, his own stuff, all personal stuff. I am like faintly remembering this story, because I think you handled it most. Oh yeah, I handled it immediately. I think you handled it, you got the MX bill. Yeah, I was like, what the heck is this? And so we brought him in and questioning him on this. And his reaction was sort of like, like it wasn't a problem, that he used the company credit card for personal expenses. And he even took it to another level where he said,

00:15:46 I thought you would want the points on your car. Like he was doing us a favor, you know. And so, again, it was just one of his things. And he was planning on paying it back, do you remember? Yeah, yeah, I think he did say that. Of course, that would be the thing about it. No, bro, I was gonna pay it, I was gonna pay it. I thought I was just giving you the points. Yeah, I could see that, you know, like, okay, whatever. But, you know, the gall to just do that as a net level of a role without asking, in your first month, you know, maybe in your, maybe like after an interview. Maybe the message was sent to him in the interview process, like, man, we're going a million miles an hour, we don't even got time to look at all this stuff, we just need you to handle it. You know, I could see saying that

00:16:27 and setting that, you know, that stage. Yeah, I could see that taking, like he would go pay a bill that was actually a legitimate company bill without necessarily getting our approval, or like to go buy new tires. Yeah, or saying what he did. What would make him think he'd get away with it? It's like, it must have been the same. I'm going with- We don't, you know, hey, we're going so fast, we don't even look at this stuff, we need somebody to handle it. And he just thought, oh yeah, then he already told me he never looks at this. Yeah, they're going too fast to check if I'm going to get on the cars. The American Express bill, we got, I remember that, they got looked at every, oh man, I think, I think your wife got the bill

00:17:07 and she would always crack it open and look at it. She might've been the one that alerted me to it. Like, she was probably like, she was probably like, hello, did you buy some tires? What tires did you buy? What are you talking about? I don't remember that. Well, it's just, you can't judge the book by its cover. There are a lot of, I've experienced this and many times where I've heard someone who looks the part like, in this case, like I'm using the word nerd and that's not derogatory. It's just like, he looked like an accountant, talked like an accountant, wasn't an accountant, but he was a criminal. I told a story one time. I told a more, I'm not going to, I didn't name any names, so I'm just going to kind of give you this story.

00:17:48 I told a story about, really about a bad acquisition. What we did one time. It just ended up costing us a lot. And it really came down to a lack of vetting. We were just like, took everything at its word and because we're going to be in business together later, we expect that you're not lying on everything. We probably both learned a lesson in that. And, but I was telling, I told that story, I think, I don't know, mate, but forget where I was selling it, but I remember telling the story. You know, part of it was sometimes good people do bad stuff in bad times in their life. You know, you're just like, hey, this is a good person.

00:18:29 I had a good time for this person and under this amount of distress, this is how they acted. And maybe it's not reflective of their whole life, but man, in the middle of that, I got completely burnt, you know? Yeah, I've seen that before where they just, they were backs against the wall for whatever reason, financially, could be marital, personal issues, something like that. And they just make an irrational decision. But I would say that when confronted with it, they generally show a degree of remorse or, like, I realized that was wrong. In this particular case, that didn't have remorse. Yeah, that did not happen. No, I was trying to help. The credit card points, a little different. This is a different story. Yeah, that was, and that was after the CFO.

00:19:13 Turns out, we're bad evaluators. Turns out. I maybe got better over time. Yeah, I would say, like, in general. Well, I think it's true for a lot of business owners and a lot of folks who are building fast companies. I mean... Yeah, you don't slow down long enough. This is an area, hiring is an area where you're just, like, you're just trying to plug holes in which, you know, this is becoming a time stock on you. You can't move. You think you can go faster. You know, you're trying to build this team. And you don't have the processes, the things, the procedures, the structure to hire. Great. And so you end up making a lot of hiring. Hiring is a skill. A lot of decision. It's, it is challenging.

00:19:55 Another good friend of mine who does, like, he's sort of an expert in personality evaluation and hiring, and he says it sort of tongue in cheek, but it's sort of true. It's like, what gives you the right to hire somebody? Meaning, like, it is a skill in knowing how to interview a person, determine if they're the right cultural fit, competence. Like in my case, specifically, I don't hire people anymore directly. Like, I divest that. No, I obviously have to approve a lot of it, but I just realize I'm not good at it because I tend to hire people I like. Yeah.

00:20:36 You know, and that's a really bad idea. I mean, you want to like them, obviously. Yeah. They need to be competent in what they do and complimentary to your skills. Yeah. Where you're deficient, you want them to be strong. And I just always hire the people that I've got along with and anything a nice guy. I think that's true for people who, except for those who have trained themselves to be a different way. You know, like, I was talking to someone the other day, I was like, hey, check this out. Resumes are a 10% predictor of success in a row. Yeah, that's it. 10%, yet we pull our candidates through resume matching. Right, we're like, hell, look, we got 15 candidates who match the resume. So now we have a bunch of 10%ers, right, in there.

00:21:17 And then we interview them and we hire the one that we got along with the best. Yeah. It came in, it was like, oh. That's a shocking statistic. He was the CMS guy, yeah. We did something in this past week, we hired, it was a senior position and we had never done this. My partner has started every time we hire someone, she will give them a task as a part of the interview process, like an actual project to go do, so that she can see how they work and their performance is so important. So that's been really useful, but we took it another, we actually had a little team retreat where we had seven or eight of our technology people in and this role was a technology position

00:21:57 and we had them come in for a day and work, it was actually two days, they actually sat in as if they were a team member helping us go through the various topics and as if they were a full participant already and we got to see how they thought, how they interacted, how they reasoned, how they handled confrontation. It was a really good experience and something that I found very useful is to actually, we paid them a contractor rate. I was just gonna ask you if you paid them because if you didn't, you were even gonna get destroyed in the comments because online there's a lot of heat

00:22:38 for people who put in these tasks and jobs and then don't pay people and they get these little tasks completed through these hiring folks, but by paying them, you legitimize the whole process. But I was just saying, hey bro, I'm gonna pay you a contractor rate, so I'm not stealing from you and it kind of levels it and it's both, they get to try you out too. That was what I was gonna say. I felt like he was as much evaluating us as we were evaluating him and it was a very productive thing. We ended up hiring him and he ended up becoming very excited about the opportunity, more convicted because of his ability to sort of get behind the scenes and see what life was like working with these people. I will do more of that in the future.

00:23:20 Particularly for your more substantial hires. Yeah, that's interesting. Yeah, because the evolution of what you're talking about is a lot of people, like you had mentioned, will hire somebody and give them one project to see if they can actually do the job, but some companies kind of take advantage of that. We actually kind of need this website to be built. Why don't you build our website as part of your interview process? It's a pretty good process. Something like that. It happens, it does, especially in that arena. And they're trying to almost take advantage with free labor. It was a little bit different than doing more of a pressure test, like you were saying. That's super interesting. Well, I was crazy to remember that story because I didn't remember that story. Nathan, what do you got for us? Yeah, I got a few stories. Let's see, I don't think these were submitted. I think we found these online.

00:24:02 So here we go. It says, within my hires first two weeks, every task has become a grievance. She tells our team that there's a scheduling mix-up that was targeted. She takes a project that a coworker has spent three months building. She changes the font and the chart color, and she presents it as if it was her own work and a meeting in front of everybody. And then she acts wounded when the coworker pushes back in front of everybody. I start keeping a running list in my head of things to mention if HR ever asked me about her, mostly because I assume that HR will eventually ask me about her. I don't expect it ever to happen this fast or for any kind of reason like this.

00:24:44 So we have a senior director visiting from another office. They're married, and they're there for a budget meeting. She corners him near the coffee station and very unsubtly makes a pass at him. It's not to be mistaken for friendliness is how unsubtle it was. And he reports it to HR right away before he's left the building. And so by the next Monday, she was fired. And so I've seen people survive worse behavior for longer because they're at least quietly good at their actual job, but she was not quietly anything. Nobody in the room seems shocked when this all came out. We'd all been waiting for the other shooter drop. We just didn't expect to land quite like that. So that's the first week.

00:25:24 That's how a lot of our stories go. First week just flames out pretty much. Yeah, early flame outs. And it's also interesting that the team around her was not shocked at all. I found that to be like, Ken, you know this about me and my current team would tell us about me. It's like, I'm sort of oblivious to what's going on with people because I'm moving so fast often. And that's not a compliment for myself. But I'm totally unaware of what's going on. We've had to fire a few people and gotten comments from our team, like surprise that took that long. Right. Time thing and I'm like, what? When that burns like an arrow.

00:26:05 It does. It's really, when someone says that too and you're the CEO, you're just like, it hurts because you're like, what? Yeah, I was like, I don't wanna be perceived as dumb. Yeah, myself. I'm just unaware. I'm just unaware. You're gonna be unaware. No, I mean, I'm thinking about other things. Well, tell people what you do, Alan, because I want them to understand what your company does and all that because it's pretty amazing what you've built over the last, I guess, 10 years. Yeah. Yeah, so. Well, your whole career really led to this company. Yeah, so we're a name of the company is Alaris Acquisitions and we work in the M&A Emergers and Acquisitions Space, specifically in wealth management. So essentially we're sell side advisors,

00:26:46 which mean we represent sellers, owners of wealth management businesses that are seeking to transact. We call it a partnership opportunity when they're selling their business, they're not leaving, they're just joining another team. They have reasons for doing the transaction, but we help them go through the process of partnership, which is a very long, you can imagine, it's a huge transaction for most of these people. It's the single largest asset in their life most commonly. And so it's like this huge intellectual journey, but it's equally emotional. So we're like the Sherpa guiding them through the entire process to find a partner. Right. And you've done a ton of really, I think,

00:27:29 and you really rethought the entire approach of sell side. When you went into the market, I think you kind of did it really differently. And then you brought AI to the game in a way that probably no one has, even some of the big, huge, massive players that don't probably have the technology advantage you have. And if I'm putting words in your mouth. No, no, you're right on. So our industry, and this is not just our industry, but sell side advisors, investment bankers, M&A advisors, when they prepare their client to go to market, the mechanism that they use to go to market is broadly referred to as an auction style process.

00:28:11 They spend this time getting their clients prepared, organizing their data, educating them. And once they're ready, their mechanism for taking them out to the public is to basically invite a large number of buyers, when I say large 20, 30, 50 buyers sometimes, to this process. And the buyers, there's no inference made between the seller and the buyer as should this buyer even be here. And it's just get them in the process, give them some high level information on the business and ask them to put their offers forward. And so it's a really odd process when you think about it, particularly for firms

00:28:52 that are going to be joining your team or joining your company, that as a buyer, you would submit an offer without really interacting with them. You know, you're just reading the information that the sell side advisor has provided you. And so it's just, if you think about it, like math is the screening mechanism, you know? And so in our industry, it's wealth management. So our clients are guiding individuals, families with all of their wealth decisions. It's a very personal, relational type business. And again, they're not leaving the guy, the owners of the business aren't selling their practice and going to the beach. You know, they're joining this buyer's team. And so you would think they would be really focused

00:29:34 on what is life like on the other side, yet the auction uses math. Just your offer is what, yeah. And so we've sort of inverted that process. And so while we represent the seller, we actually have contractual agreements with the buyers and they're basically agreeing to give us tons of data on their business, 30 to 50 hours worth of time we spend to get to know the buyers in a very meaningful, deep way. And that data capture on the buyers allows us to run this inference of compatibility between the two parties. And that's very AI rooted. So it's like, if you can think about it, there's hundreds of highly contextual data points

00:30:17 on the buyers that when we're trying to infer compatibility, and this is two way compatibility screen, is virtually impossible for a human to do it, to keep the information on the number of buyers that we do to be able to reason to a fit, it's impossible as a human, and you can only know so many buyers. Yeah. And so AI has been a huge win for us in being able to take this massive amount of highly contextual data between these two parties and reason to a fit, to shrink the world of buyers from this 100 to maybe five, that's cool. And when you do that, now you can spend time with them to see if you like each other.

00:30:58 Yeah, that's right. So we're gonna get to the math, that's obvious. We know our clients wanna have the biggest economic outcome, but let's start with compatibility first. I think it's so interesting, and HR people ought to love this because you're setting the economics aside for a minute and saying, I'm assuming, and I think there's probably, I know there is, there's a lot of things you're looking at, and it's not simple, but a chunk of that's cultural, just cultural fit, which is the human aspect of the two companies, which HR people would just be like, oh wow, it's really great to see a company put the, in an M&A transaction, to lead with a chunk of the human compatibility first, because the economics aren't gonna work out

00:31:39 if that doesn't work out. That's right, ultimately, if you lead with price, you might end up transacting with someone who you're not gonna be happy with, and so the irony is, though, if you focus on compatibility first, see, I think culture is highly subjective, it's, when I, people try to describe it all the time, and it usually just kind of boils down to these moral, subjective statements of value, and, you know, so I think you could just boil it down to post-acquisition happiness from both sides. That's what you mean by cultural fit, like we're both happy, we would do it again. I like working here. I like working here like you on the team. So that is what, when I say culture, that's what I mean, but, so, if you focus

00:32:20 on compatibility first, like it's an on-paper match. So, for example, I could tell you, you could give me 10 things, like if you were looking for a spouse or a partner, you know, I want someone who has these attributes, I could find that person on paper, but it still doesn't mean you're gonna like them. You know, that's only gonna be born out of spending time together, and so, but that's compatibility, at least gives you the higher odds of liking them if they're, check all your boxes, let's say. So, that's what we do, we measure compatibility first, shrink the list down to only invite buyers who are compatible with our clients, then let them spend time together to get to that point of cultural conviction. And here's the punchline, we think when you do it

00:33:01 that way, you actually, one, you improve your odds of post-acquisition happiness, but then, secondly, the price goes up, because when buyers fall in love with you, they're more aggressive in price and terms, and so it's like a really, yeah, it's like an obvious conclusion, and we ask ourselves, why don't our competitors do this, and the only conclusion we can come to is they don't wanna spend the time it takes to get to know the buyers, because it's a huge time. That's so, that last piece you talked about was pretty interesting to me, because if they do fall in love there, right, in the end, I was, you know, comparatively, it's just economics, right, so if I'm about to lose, and I just ran an economic model,

00:33:42 I'm like, oh, you just crossed our threshold, so we no longer, you know, someone just outbid us. Without the, I love this company, if it's just an economic model, it's really easy to just be like, you know, while they crossed over the threshold, versus, no, no, no, we've spent time, we're highly compatible, this has to happen, and someone out, you know, it leads to the higher price, because they're putting that other piece first, an economic model. Well, I mean, you've sold businesses and stuff, like you, it's anti-climactic, it's like once the check has cleared, you know, you get back to what's really important, which is like, am I happy here? And are my, is my team better served,

00:34:23 are my clients better served? And if that's not true, you will be seeking an exit, or perhaps even worse, you'll just die the slow death of. Just give it up. Yeah, just like you're not interested anymore, there's no motivation, and so you just become less productive. Become an employee that has their job. That's right, and so. Oh my God, I can't think of a worse exit. Going from my own, it's gotta be, going from, I got my own shop, I'm doing a great thing, I feel, you know, I'm the king of the world, I joined this other team, and suddenly, I'm unhappy, feel like an employee, won't equip my job, but I'm stuck here, it's gotta be completely to a limit. It's worth what you're doing, you know,

00:35:03 I'm just so impressed with what you've done in that industry to just kind of completely rethink it, and I think it, in your post-satisfaction, post-transaction satisfaction stuff, you know, the way you've worked it, seems to prove your point that you've got the right answer for sellers. We think so, it's been a heck of a lot of work to get here, but over 100 transactions yet, not a divorce so far, so we're proud of that. 100% success. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's awesome. All right, well, man, appreciate it. That's also a letter here, so I hired a bunch of people, and those, you know, we got a few stories,

00:35:45 been in this this a long time. Yeah, I love it, that's cool. Wrap it up for us, Nathan, what do you got? All right, yeah, I got one more, so let's see what you think of this. So this one says, we hired someone who interviewed under a name and a social security number that, it turned out later, belonged to somebody else entirely. This other person looked enough like the other person to pass a glance at an ID, very sneaky. He trained very fast and was put on the register for his first solo shift four days later. So we do cash drops every couple of hours, moving money out of the register into the safe so there's never too much sitting up front in the register. My assistant manager got slammed that night

00:36:25 and skipped two of the cash drops and he noticed. So four hours into the shift that he told a coworker, he was taking his break, he walked out the front door and he never came back. When we counted the drawer, we were short over $4,000. Corporate ran the employment paperwork back through the verification and the social security number and it came back attached to somebody else who was in a different state and who had never worked in food service. The address on file was fake, the whole identity was borrowed for exactly long enough to get behind a register on a night when nobody was running drops on a schedule and he didn't linger, he didn't get greedy,

00:37:05 he just took the 4,000 and ran as fast as he could. He didn't get greedy. Yeah, didn't get too greedy, he didn't take 5,000. Four grand in the first name? That's right. So we fixed the drop schedule and they wish they fixed the drop schedule a week earlier and it would have been a lot cheaper. So they didn't do a background check on this guy? Well, I would say they didn't do a good one. Is that a thing these days that people are not doing background checks on their employees? It's not often, but I will tell you this. Let's do it wrong. That's a great question. There are people, this is a question we'll get, Alan. How much is your background check? Really? Yeah, how much is your background check?

00:37:46 And the question is like going to a car dealership, right? This sells a broad range of cars. How much is the car? I mean, how much is your car? And you're like, well, do you mean this car? The good car or the gravity car? Do you mean the Spiroy? That's a good point. That's phenomenal. And they just have no idea that these background screens can be built and layered and produced in a way to create really, really solid, positive, strong outcomes or they could just be a check the box low cost thing. Yeah, sort of like law or illegal, you get what you pay for it. Like if we've, I've learned that lesson in life. It's like, you know, it's like, you gotta, it's certain things

00:38:26 and I would think this would be one of them. You just know that quality should be the thing that you're prioritizing. Yeah, and so the buyer, the buyers aren't experts and so they don't even know the questions to ask. So salespeople have a really great time of selling them kind of high margin in my opinion, I see it a lot, especially in nonprofits and places where there's, you know, it's crazy, but around vulnerable populations, you know, they were early buyers, but still not experts and with cost pressure on them, it's so much easier to sell them a low cost solution

00:39:07 and they don't even have any idea what they're doing. I would think some employers probably actually think it's a check the box thing. Yeah. It's like, I would think that they would think all of the vendors, like they're accessing the same door bases or the same processes and it's costing them. What we found is like most companies, obviously if they make a background check hiring mistake, they're obviously not malicious and they're not exactly negligent of just skipping it, they just don't know, they just don't know. Oh, I didn't know I wasn't checking for that. Yeah, exactly. They think they have a broad, wide, great background check, they don't because they're just not an expert in it.

00:39:48 I built a master class last year for that. It's four or five hours of training to take people from like being a buyer to being an expert so that they could help structure and build great, especially HR people, hiring people, folks who are pros in that area could build up their competence in this area so they can really engage with the background screening provider and ensure that they're building and hiring. Hire somebody with the wrong social security number. I mean, that was fun. Yeah, that was fun. I loved it, loved it. Thanks for coming out. Good stuff. My pleasure. I appreciate you guys being here. Hey, if you'd like to show, like, share, follow, we love it, comment on our social media. I think we're still having, we're doing gangbusters,

00:40:29 we're really exceeding where we thought we would be. We looked at some numbers of the day that was shocking to me, the total hours of the show that had been watched, the number of shows that have times been watched. I thought, honestly, what's happening is on YouTube, we don't have as many followers as we have with other places, so follow us on YouTube. We'd love for you to follow the show, but it's getting watched a ton, which was shocking. We were looking at the Spotify numbers, it's getting listened to. I mean, it's a shock to me. I guess I'm shockingly happy. I was like, oh, you know, because we're getting millions of views and likes and shares, 100,000 interactions, emotions, engagements.

00:41:10 We spent a lot of time looking at the social media, and then the other day, we looked at the actual just full-on listeners of just the audio podcast, and it was thousands of listening hours. We were like, this is awesome. We were listening to it, not only Washington Stockton. It was the whole show, so we were just like, wow. Thank you for that. That's awesome. I know how to bump your numbers even higher. It's amazing. You have this show with all the bad hirers doing. Darby's on this one. We're listening to this show. We'll do the Bad Kin. I've got plenty of those. Oh, I know. That's how I do it. Ouch. That's a whole new show. Oh, my gosh. Hey, but we appreciate you so much for being here, for listening to us. Like, share, follow. We love it, and thank you. So we'll see you next time on The Bad Hire. Awesome. Bye-bye.