Are you curious about the benefits of the franchise model in the staffing industry? In this episode, we dive deep into the topic with Will Skowyra, the Director of Strategic Solutions at Express Employment International, as he shares his journey from growing up in a family-owned staffing franchise to leading strategic solutions at a major corporation. With a rich background in the staffing industry, Will lends this conversation a unique perspective, having been involved in both the franchise and corporate sides of the business. Tune in as he discusses the ins and outs of the franchise model, the importance of local ownership, and how technology is reshaping the staffing industry. He also shares insights on the evolving landscape of staffing, including the integration of AI and platform staffing models, and how Express Employment International is staying ahead of the curve!
[0:01:13] DF: Hello, everyone. Thank for joining us for another episode of The Staffing Show. Today, I am super excited to be joined by Will Skowyra, the Director of Strategic Solutions at Express Employment International. Will, super excited to have you on the show today. Thanks so much for joining.
[0:01:29] WS: David, thanks for having me. Long-time listener, first-time caller. Very excited to be a part of this. It’s going to be so much fun.
[0:01:36] DF: Yeah. Yeah, excited to have you here. Today, we’re going to be jumping in, talking about the franchise model, and getting some lessons and stories from Will’s journey in the staffing industry, which you and I were able to connect at Avionté Connect recently, and really dig in and learn a little bit more about each other. I think you’ve got a great story to tell with our audience today. To kick things off, could you tell us a little bit about yourself and how you got into the staffing industry.
[0:02:00] WS: Yeah, absolutely. Thanks again for having me. Will Skowyra, like David said, Director of Strategic Solutions at Express Employment International. Believe it or not, I think I was born into the staffing game. A lot of your guests are, you know, they accidentally fell into it. I think I was born and bred. I’m a second-generation franchise owner previously to joining Express.
I spent time in my dad’s staffing business, taking out the trash, the notes, doing the stuff on Sundays that franchise owners do and Saturdays or over the weekend, and just handling the business side of owning a business with him. Delivered cheques as soon as I got my license. So, I can pretty much tell you where every client is still here in St. Louis. It’s been a long – I’ve been around it since I was 12 years old, believe it or not. So, it’s been a fun ride. I’ve done the franchise thing. I’ve done the corporate thing and now got the best of both worlds in my Express role now.
[0:02:59] DF: Yeah. I remember from our conversation, to your background, your dad had the Express franchise and then you ended up running it and now, are at the corporate level.
[0:03:07] WS: We were actually, yeah, we were in the Remedy Staffing Franchise. Shout out to all those Remedy owners that are still out there. We founded in 1992 in the Remedy Staffing Organization here in St. Louis. I sold it back to Employbridge in 2020. I went to work for Employbridge for a little bit, so that’s where I got my corporate kind of chops before I went to Express and getting back to the franchise family, kind of feel over here and learned a lot along the way for sure.
[0:03:34] DF: Awesome. Awesome. Well, that’s a great story. Can you just tell us a little bit about Express, and who Express is, and where you guys are going in the market today?
[0:03:42] WS: Yeah, absolutely. Express franchise model, 860 offices across North America. A little bit of presence in South Africa, as well as Australia. We get to see a little bit of everything. Four billion in revenue, number four in that latest SIA. Poll that came out recently, so obviously, our franchisees do a lot of hard work and really drive the business forward and do a great job of getting the Express brand out there and working really hard in their local communities to ensure that they’re delivering exactly what their clients want and having such a positive effect on the community that they live and work in.
One of the goals here at Express is to put a million people to work. I think that’s – you can see that every single day in what our franchisees do. The culture that, that our founders, Bill Stoller and Bob Funk put together still runs through the veins of this company. For me to come, it felt like coming home. I know it’s not where I started from with Remedy and a franchise organization, but coming back to a franchise organization where you can abandon the seat and I can sit there and I can almost commiserate sometimes.
[0:04:49] DF: Yeah.
[0:04:49] WS: The fear of what might happen if we don’t get another job order. What we might need to do to continue to get job orders and what those decisions, and what goes into those decisions, and how heavy that can really weigh on you and your family too. But the support system here at Express is great. The people that they have at HQ and the resources that our franchisees have are tremendous. It’s a really good opportunity if you’re looking to get in the game, maybe reach out to Express and see if Vinny can help you out with any kind of franchise availability we might have.
[0:05:20] DF: Yeah. It sounds great. It sounds like a great organization. What are some of the things that – and I mean, you have the hands-on experience from this, but what do you like about the franchise model?
[0:05:29] WS: For me personally, obviously having done it, it was that gratification of you actually, you could see the result on your work, right? When you had an associate go out and get hired on and then that was the goal, right? It’s a weird industry to where our goal is that like, “I hope I never see you again,” right? There’s other industries out there like that, but when you think about it, you want your associates to get a job and keep that job and grow with the company that you place them at. So, you hope that you never see them again, because they’re happy and they’re on with their new job and off they go.
You can get to feel that like you can then maybe talk to that person later down the road and they’re all of a sudden, a decision maker, right? The continuity with the business owner and the franchisee being still there in the market and then being able to talk to the new decision maker that maybe you put to work five, seven years ago getting that opportunity to talk to them.
I think the — what a franchisee can do locally to being that subject matter expert, right, like we work where we live, right? It gives us an advantage as a franchisee to be able to say, “Hey, I know what type of employer this is. I know the relationships that they have with the community. I know if this is a quality employer, do I want to do work with them, are the pay rates right?” All those things that go into making a decision and staffing that you get to feel for, because you get the feel for because you’re in the market. You’re there every day, even when you go home, you see what commercials are on TV, right, that means you know what’s going on in the market.
It’s just a feel that they’re going to be accountable. I used to call them dinner plate dollars, like my associates and my clients need to be successful, or I won’t have money. That’s even – I’m not making any money — if my associates aren’t making any money, I’m not making any money. I think you get that in a franchise environment much more than you will in a corporate environment. No disrespect to any other agencies out there, but I just think the real skin in the game piece for a franchisee is a lot different and you just get a different feel.
[0:07:29] DF: What are some of the reasons or benefits for why somebody that’s looking to get into staffing? Why should they choose Express?
[0:07:37] WS: You get that local feel, right? You get a local ownership, but then you have, like I mentioned earlier, $4 billion company behind you, right?
[0:07:44] DF: Yeah.
[0:07:44] WS: You get this big brand in Express that you can go out and put yourself out in front of, and they’re going to be behind you supporting you. You’re not going it alone, right? You’re not out there trying to figure out, how am I going to get into this vertical? What am I going to do in this vertical? Is this even a vertical I should get into? What’s a VMS? What’s an MSP? All those things are – you’re going to have subject matter experts at HQ that’s going to be able to help you, and hold your hand’s not the right way to say this, because we’re all adults, but you know, kind of walk the path with you, so that you can understand everything about staffing and learn, and grow, and continue to get better in supplying workers.
[0:08:19] DF: Having started a few businesses over the years, having some templates for what you’re working on would be really nice.
[0:08:24] WS: Yeah. Yeah. I think. Just just rinse and repeat, right?
[0:08:28] DF: Yeah. From the franchise, franchise model perspective, what are some of the trends that you’re seeing in the industry today?
[0:08:34] WS: I think from the franchise side, we’re seeing the same thing that we’re seeing with everybody else. I think a little bit of a down here, not for everybody, but a little bit of a down here. That’s the unique thing about the franchise model is there may be offices that are in certain locations that are really suffering. Then there’s the flip side. We’re celebrating a lot of offices as well because that’s the beauty of being able to own your own business is you can take a different approach and maybe there’s a different vertical you want to work in as a franchisee and that gives you more access to a growth market and all of a sudden, you’re off and running.
I think everybody talks about the AI piece, right, and what that looks like. I think you feel that. You said – I heard it said a few other times like if you’re not open to working with AI, it’s not going to replace you, but somebody that is willing to work with it is going to replace you. I think the bigger trend in, and just not necessarily in the franchisee model, but just in staffing in general, it’s probably that platform staffing. I know we just, we were in Connect together and you saw what Rich had to say there, but I think as we continue to go forward, that blended model of brick and mortar, along with gig and removing some of the barriers for candidates and clients to connect, right, and be able to move forward quicker.
It’s a race, right? We’re all trying to find talent as fast as we can, but we’re also trying to find the job orders. Once you find a job order, how quickly can you get the talent there to make sure that job order’s yours and it’s secure? I think the platform staffing model will give us that opportunity in staffing. There’s probably somewhere in between, right? It’s not going to be traditional. It’s not going to be all platform.
I think the term out there is omni-channel. I think that’s probably where we’ll land here at Express because we have all those local owners, but if we could, we put them on the platform that we’ve seen the news, so recently partnering with Avionté to move forward and work as – work with them on our ATS, I think you’ll see our franchisees have a better platform to move forward on and try to blend that traditional staffing, brick and mortar with that platform piece from Avionté and land somewhere in the middle.
[0:10:39] DF: Yeah. I think, I mean, you touched on one of the key elements, we talked about this on the show a reasonable amount, but the omni-channel approach in recognizing different people want to be communicated to differently, different people want to engage with your agency differently. There’s going to be people that want to come in. There’s going to be people that want to call. There’s going to be people who want to use the app, and ultimately you either need to be really, really good at one and say this is all we’re doing or you need to figure out how you serve the entire market and offer omni-channel experiences that matter and that allow you to communicate how people want to communicate. So, I think you guys are moving on a good path there, which is exciting to hear.
What are some of the – and you guys, since you have hands-on experience again, what are some of the day-to-day challenges that you hear from running a franchise? What does that look like?
[0:11:21] WS: Here comes some irony, right? Here comes a ton of irony. One of the things that we always just struggled with is staffing as a franchisee, right, like, oh, we are a staffing agency, but how do you keep and retain staff within your own market, right? Yeah, you’re an expert on what your clients need, but what do you need? What skill sets are you looking for? I think that’s always been one of the struggles that we hear from our franchisees is we’re trying to retain salespeople, we’re trying to retain employment specialists and keep them engaged and what are the tools that we can give them as a franchise or as at HQ and to keep those type of people engaged and make it easier for our franchisees to retain them. That’s one of the biggest challenges outside of the ever-evolving staffing market, right? We’ve grown from being order takers to now all of a sudden, we got to go back out and get to work and knock on doors and pull door handles and try to find orders everywhere while we’re still racing to find talent. We get the – it’s a tough little mix right now and the more franchisees I talk to and when you get into some of those franchisees that have been around a long time, that saw 2007 and 2008.
[0:12:27] DF: Yeah.
[0:12:28] WS: This is a weird time. They’re not quite sure what to do with this, because the indicators are there that we should start to maybe see a little bit of an upturn, but we’re still just waiting for it. We were talking before about the staffing indicator and you see it going up a little bit, but it’s still not, it’s not a robust, holy cow, this is awesome, kind of thing. It’s just, we’re all just waiting for what’s next, right? With it being an election year, that might just be the way we roll, right? Because everybody’s just holding status quo is good and we’ll see what happens at the end of the year and go from there.
It’s the same challenges that you see in every other agency out there, every other organization in the staffing industry. We’re struggling to find sales. Struggling to find talent. Then also internally this retaining talent.
[0:13:13] DF: Yeah. I think from a market perspective, I mean, we’re hearing that everybody’s kind of like, “Well, let’s get through the election. Let’s get some interest rates, maybe see a little decrease there.” But it is watching the staffing indicator to see that, just every time you see a little bump, you get excited. Maybe it’s like – it’s been a long time in this, kind of an uncertain market for sure. What are some of the, when it comes to the franchise owners, people that are just absolutely killing and doing it well, success stories. Anything that you can share with the audience on best practices for like here’s how you do this well and where you are seeing wins in the market?
[0:13:48] WS: Yeah. For me, it’s always – and with the Express franchisees, what’s really great is you get so many different personalities. And there’s not one single path right to success.
[0:13:54] DF: Yeah.
[0:13:55] WS: It can be depending on the – where they are, if it’s Tennessee or Southern California, wherever it may be, but I think one commonality that you do see is as long as you have an engaged owner that’s there every day, engaged with their staff and is working hard, both on and in the business a little bit, you see success stories there, right? Those owners who may buy it as kind of a, we already have a team here, we’re just going to – like a whole lifestyle type of thing, maybe not the best fit, because staffing is hard. This isn’t easy.
Those owners that are engaged and they’re doing the work every day, those are the ones that are creating successes and that are growing, because they’re able to feel the market, right? They’re in the market every day. They know what’s going on. They can make pivots when they need to and they can deliver solutions that their clients are looking for, because they feel it, right? That’s, if you’re not there every day, you’re not going to be able to feel that and you’re going to be working on maybe old information or maybe you find out too late. That’s always fun when you’re – when you show up your one day a week or whatever it may be and you’re like, “Oh, man, that happened?”
[0:15:04] DF: Yeah – I had no idea we had that problem
[0:15:05] WS: Right. How do we fix – oh, it’s over? Okay, good. I think if you looked at like the common thread and the successful franchisees, they’re super engaged. That’s probably the most important key.
[0:15:19] DF: Awesome. Shifting gears, a little bit. One of the areas that I think you have a somewhat of a unique perspective on from what a lot of agencies I talk to about is the VMS. We always hear people say like, VMS, we know it’s been adopted. I mean, in healthcare and other verticals very heavily and I think light industrial may be accelerating. What’s your take on VMS and how do you view it differently than other agencies might?
[0:15:43] WS: We view it differently in that we actually have somebody hired, me, that is the conduit between our franchisees, and their clients, and our partner. We have a strategic partner in SimpleVMS. We’ve worked with them for 10 years, unofficially five now, officially. So, my job is to help those franchisees identify, then educate them on how a VMS tool can help them secure accounts, secure and differentiate them from prospects as well or from other vendors when they’re trying to talk to prospects.
Simple is a great partner to have, because they’re willing to do almost anything for us and really work with us on solutions for those clients that are looking for a VMS tool, right? We don’t want to be on the bleeding edge of it, right? I think we’ve actually probably passed that in the VMS space, right? That was probably 15, 20 years ago when we were really on that bleeding edge trying to introduce this tool to clients and staffing.
Now, we’re on the leading edge still to where we’re vendors introducing a solution as supposed to somebody in headquarters calling another competitor VMS tool that is out there and saying, “Hey, we’re looking for something, a solution that can help us get the visibility we need into our contingent labor spend.” We’re doing that from a vendor side, which is saying it’s a little different, right, like we identify that it’s hard to work with multiple vendors, right?
It’s a difficult task to try to reconcile four different time clocks. If you have four different time clocks. It’s difficult to – how many emails back do you get when you send an email to place an order, right? Especially if you send it to four different vendors, right? Because we’re all just hitting that keyboard as quick as we can and trying to send names over so we can lock those spots down. Those are efficiencies that we can create within, or for the client with the VMS tool that we see here at Express is a value add.
For me, it’s getting these franchisees to understand that this is how we protect business and we can differentiate it. They’re doing a wonderful job of taking that mindset and walking away from the dirty word piece that we’ve heard VMS called for so long. But we know that $179 billion ran through VMS tools in 2022. That’s a lot of money. I don’t know if you knew that, but – I would be happy with a $179 billion. You know what I mean?
[0:18:10] DF: Yeah. I mean that’s great that you guys are doing that. How is it affecting – I mean, one of the challenges I’ve heard from it is the ability to have the relationship with the client or the supplier. You guys are using it in a way that’s actually like, hey, we’re bringing this to you as a – we’re creating value by helping you manage something we already know is difficult. Do you have conversations around that about what it does to the relationship side?
[0:18:32] WS: Yeah. That’s obviously with the franchise model. That’s obviously the concern because they work very hard to establish the relationships that they have in the market, right? They may be friends with neighbors, coach kids, all those things. Yeah, we don’t want to take away that relationship. That’s one of the key things that we share with our franchisees. When we partner with Simple and bring them in, we don’t really take that relationship. We separate it, right? It’s, you’re the staffing expert, Mr. and Mrs. franchisee, and then SimpleVMS is our, is our technology expert.
[0:19:01] DF: Yeah.
[0:19:02] WS: You keep that relationship, you do what you need to do there, but let’s utilize this tool to give them the visibility and efficiencies that they need to better do their job, right? Then the efficiencies come along for the office as well, right? With Avionté and Simple being integrated together. Right now, we’re going to benefit from that as we continue to walk forward with Avionté as well.
[0:19:20] DF: Awesome. That’s great. I know we’ve already started dipping into this, but when it comes to the tech stack as a whole, I mean, you guys obviously are making some big changes, some of you have adopted SimpleVMS and are moving down the platform play. What are some of the reasons for the changes you’re making? I’d also love to know what you’re excited about in the market from a tech perspective too.
[0:19:41] WS: Yeah. I think what we’ve seen is that this is where the market’s going, right, like you need to have a piece of technology that one, your staff is willing to work within, right? We’re also, let’s be honest, we’re a franchise owner. We need to make sure that what we deliver to our franchisee is top-of-class, right? We need to be able to deliver technology that can help them be successful. So, that’s why you’re starting to see this shift at Express, because we’ve had a proprietary system for 40 years and it has done a tremendous job of getting our franchisees to where they are. But we use the cell phone analogy, right? I don’t think we – yeah, you’re not using a flip phone, maybe, but I don’t think you are. But –
[0:20:22] DF: Hilarious.
[0:20:23] WS: You seem like an Apple guy, not a Samsung – You have to continue to evolve, right? I think that’s what you’re seeing here as we move away from our proprietary piece and ATS in front office and into Avionté and just continuing to develop and kind of just evolve with the technology so that we can continue to deliver the end result of a great experience for both talent and client.
[0:20:48] DF: Yeah. I think one of the things with, when I hear about proprietary ATS and I think that’s – we moved, it used to be a more common thing and it’s moved largely away from that. One of the reasons I think when I look at the leading ATS platforms, the marketplace, I’m having a marketplace partner software, I’m probably maybe a little bit partial, but I look at it the same way, let’s go back to the phone. On my phone, the iPhone without apps would be cool, but okay.
[0:21:13] WS: Yeah. Right. That’s the whole thing, right? I think you’re absolutely right.
[0:21:17] DF: It’s like when you can just plug all these things into the device, usually you have the ability to do a lot more and scale a lot more. I think that the marketplace component of that and the ability to keep up with that on a proprietary level would be – I mean, you’d have to have an insane dev resource –
[0:21:33] WS: You have to make the decision, are you a technology company or not? Right? I think that’s really where it goes is, if you’re going to try to build out your own proprietary system, you’re truly in this day and age, you’re becoming a technology company at that point. Is that the way you want to make in the staffing industry?
[0:21:47] DF: Yeah.
[0:21:48] WS: I mean, I don’t think that’s where we’re going, but I mean, you’re more than welcome to, competitors, try that, but I think, there’s plenty of other tools out there that can get you to where you want to go.
[0:21:58] DF: Yeah. Absolutely. So, where do you see the future, I know we talked about the platform side and we could dig deeper into that, but like are there any major tech trends that you see in terms of the next three to five years, where you see things going?
[0:22:10] WS: I mean, I’m trying to stay away from AI, because it’s like the popular way to go. I think obviously that –
[0:22:16] DF: We have to talk about it at some point.
[0:22:18] WS: Yeah, right. That’s obviously the biggest trend. I think that –
[0:22:20] DF: Right. We’ve got to put it into ChatGPT.
[0:22:22] WS: Right. You’re like, when he’s going to talk about AI. I mean he’s – AI is trying to spit that out.
I think we’re going to see it. You’ll continue to see it, whether it’s just automation and creating efficiencies within the onboarding process, that’s an obvious play, right? There’s so many things that we do in the staffing industry that’s just monotonous, right, like things that we almost have to do every single day that can be automated, that can be put away somewhere else and let that just get that done. We’ll come in here and do money-making activities, right?
As a franchise, that’s what you want from your staff. You want them focused on money-making activities, not just being busy, right? I think that AI obviously will help that. I hinted on it, or we talked a lot about it before, but that platform play, where it’s going to be a straight line for talent to get to clients and they’re going to be able to get there quicker. We’re just here, right? That’s kind of, I feel like where we’re going is staffing agencies just here to – we’ll vet them and make sure they got everything they need, we’ll put them in the pool.
Mr. Client you go put that word out and get who you need and we’re just here in case you need us. I think that’s really where we’re going and I’m excited about that. I think that’s such a great opportunity to really – and people can be more flexible, like maybe I want to do this today, I want to do that and it’s not as burdensome on the talent, right? Now, you got to register with six different staffing vendors, you got to figure out where am I going to go this day, right? If you have it all on an app to your point you got six apps and you’re just flipping through and you get to figure out what you want to do and it gives you the flexibility to do what you need to do when you need to do it. I think that’s who we all are now, right? We’re all just –
[0:24:00] DF: On-demand and the channel that we want.
[0:24:02] WS: Right, yeah. Exactly.
[0:24:04] DF: What we want, when we want it.
[0:24:06] WS: Yeah, really? Yeah, I have three kids. It’s what we want, when we want it. It’s not what I want anymore. It’s what those three want.
[0:24:13] DF: One last question. I feel like you are a student of the staffing industry. I think you’re reading a lot and listening to what’s going on in the market more than a lot of people I talk with. One of the things that I also feel like you have a good aptitude for is the leadership level. What are some of the skills from a leadership perspective that you think are going to be really critical for success and for the future of staffing?
[0:24:38] WS: Well, thanks for that. I mean, I didn’t know we were going to go this route with leadership, so I appreciate that. It’s like a weird way to get complimented, but I’ll take it. The leadership side of that for me, first and foremost, is always about enabling your team, right? It’s not on you to do and take advantage of the things that they need to do. You need to present them with the ideas, be there, support them, and help them along the way, but I’m not doing it for you.
I’ve read a book called, Help Them Grow or Watch Them Go. I actually met the author. I got it autographed by her, so you want to talk about – I think you are indirectly calling me a nerd earlier about how I study.
[0:25:14] DF: I mean, I’m the same. I’m like, I’ve got 500 audible books. So, that’s –
[0:25:18] WS: Right. Yeah. Perfect. Good. Well, when you run 3,000 miles a month, I mean, for me, it’s how do you help your team grow? How do you enable them and how do you give them the tools that they need to grow and turn into better teammates, better people, right? I think that’s really what we see in this industry, because it’s a people industry, right? I think if you look at the great leaders in this organization, especially here at Express with Bill and Bob like I said earlier, their culture still runs through the veins of this company. They were there to help you get better, right?
I think, I don’t know where I heard it, but I heard somebody say, better, not best, right? That’s what you want to do, right? You just want to keep enabling your staff to get better every single day. They don’t have to be the best. It’s not always about being the best. I talk about that with my fifth-grade soccer team, right? We need to get better every day, because if we’re not doing that, then are we wasting a day, right? I don’t think anybody needs to do that. I think there’s just an opportunity to get a little bit better every single day. As a leader, I think modeling that and giving the opportunity to your team and the people around you to get better every day is the best way to take everybody forward.
[0:26:28] DF: I love that. With that, we’re going to jump into the speed round. So, first question I’ve got for you, which is one that you’ve heard before, but what books have you given most as a gift or have been most influential in your life?
[0:26:39] WS: Yeah. I cheated because I’ve listened to this before. I knew you were going to ask me that. The book that and this was I gave it to my team, but when I took the role as Director of Strategic Solutions here at Express, VMS was something that I’ve never really done, right? I was in that camp of VMS stinks. I don’t want to deal with that. We’ll sell around it. We don’t want to work within it. It was a new challenge for me. I went and got a book called, The Phoenix Project and it does a tremendous job of really diving into technology and what those teams have to go through to actually make a change in a software and then deliver that software.
It gave me a much better idea on to understand exactly what dev teams do, and how they have to do it, and how hard that is when you’re getting help desk tickets poured in your lap every day and you’re getting this distraction, “oh, I need this right away, oh, this broke.” So, it just gave me a better, I guess, respect for that, because for a long time, you just expect everything to work, right, like it should, like when something doesn’t work and you’re like, “What’s happening? Why does it not work?”
For me, it gave me a really good insight into what those teams go through as they try to create a tool that delivers the deliverable every day in an environment that may be unstable, because it depends on the web and what internet provider you’re using and all of that. It just gave me a totally different respect. Again, The Phoenix Project, is just a great read, kind of a nerd. Again, thank you for – I think we’re going to have a common theme here now, but yeah, it was great.
[0:28:10] DF: Awesome. What’s a failure or apparent setback that you now recognize as a crucial stepping stone to your success?
[0:28:16] WS: Yeah. We’ll go heavy here just for a little bit because I think we talked about it when we were connecting. I kind of make a joke about why I don’t drink, but –
[0:28:24] DF: Yeah.
[0:28:28] WS: About 10 years ago I gave it up. I gave up alcohol 10 years ago. I mean, I still hammer caffeine, but that’s me. I’m going to keep that one. It was a decision that I needed for me, for my family. It was my kids. One of the proudest things that I could say is that two of my kids will have never seen me, not sober. I mean, as long as I continue to walk the path, right? For me, it looked like a failure at the time, right, like you’re giving up, you’re finally admitting that you are powerless over this or this substance and there’s nothing you can do about it.
It feels like a failure, right? It feels like you’re quitting, but it’s the first step to making everything in your life more meaningful because now your focus is totally different. It’s not on you. It’s on everybody around you and how you can be there for them. It was a huge decision. I think there’s people who have met me after I made that decision that have never seen me that way. I’m super proud of that. I can remember calling some of my friends and just letting them know, “Hey, I’m not going to go do this, because I don’t drink anymore.” Their response is like, “Well, I’m glad that you stopped doing that.” Things like that, because – that’s exactly. Thank you for the instant verification that I’m shooting. Why didn’t you say something sooner?
For me, it’s, I don’t know if it’s saving my marriage, but it made everything better, plain and simple, and to meet people that are sober in staffing is kind of a unicorn. It can get pretty intense and pretty difficult, but yeah, for me, that was a huge decision. Yeah.
[0:29:59] DF: I love that and love the sharing of that. What’s a seemingly small habit or routine that has had an outside positive impact on your life or career?
[0:30:08] WS: I think for me, when you ask this question, the one thing that comes to mind is I made a decision that I’m going to be all in for the other people around me, right? This, yeah, I want to be successful, but we’re going to get there together, right? It doesn’t – that’s a big thing, but you have to commit to that every day, right? It’s a little commitment. It’s just get out of your own stuff for a day. It probably runs along with the sober decision as well, but I’m going to be here for others and I’m going to help them get better because that’s what’s going to make me better at the end of the day.
So, just being around, being available, right, and focusing. You hear people say live in the moment. Yeah, that’s great, but we root cause our problem to use a worker’s compensation form like we go, we go, we root cause it. All right, that’s it. Now we’re going to move forward, right? We’re going to walk forward. How do we get better with those and how do I help people get better with those problems every day?
It’s just a little commitment to get out of myself every day and get into everything else going on, because that’s way better, right? You just don’t, you don’t know, that little, like I’m going to listen to you for four minutes could change somebody’s life, because it’s important to them, even though it’s not important to you, right? I think that’s one of the, one of the things that I hear every once in a while, is you hear people say, it’s not important to me, but it was important to them, so I was there.
[0:31:33] DF: Yeah.
[0:31:34] WS: Right. That’s what, I think that’s just an easy little thing to do. Just be there. I think when I made that decision, it probably does coincide directly with the sobering up.
[0:31:43] DF: Great. It seems like it’s suiting you well. It seems like a good thing we should all take note of. Do you have any closing comments for the audience?
[0:31:50] WS: Well, I think, thank you, first of all, this was great. It was great spending some time with you and talking through this, but I think I just want everybody to understand this is hard, right? Staffing’s hard. We’re all here trying to get better every single day. We’re just – just take a little bit of time for yourself, understand that we’re not – it is hard, but we’re not doctors. We’re not saving lives. We’re influencing lives and we’re trying to make lives better, but at the end of the day, as long as you know you did the best you could that day, whether it was for talent or for a client, then be happy in that, right, like that’s all you can do.
I think for me, that’s the message I like to leave behind. Of course, I’ll do a shameless plug. If you are interested in franchising in the staffing world, Express is your number one choice. Also, engage VMS. Stop saying it’s the dirty word. Those are the two things. Those are the three things I’ll leave you with.
[0:32:43] DF: Awesome. Super fun having you on the show, Will. I really enjoyed the conversation. I hope you have a great day.
[0:32:47] WS: Yeah. Thank you. Appreciate it.
