Latest / The Inspired Stories Podcast / Building a Texas Staffing Empire Through Personal Growth with Amy Clary | Staffing Series

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Building a Texas Staffing Empire Through Personal Growth with Amy Clary | Staffing Series · The Inspired Stories Podcast

0:04
Welcome to another edition of Inspired Stories where leaders
0:07
share their experiences so we can learn from their successes,
0:10
how they've overcome adversity, and explore current challenges
0:13
they're facing. Welcome to another edition of
0:18
the Inspired Stories podcast, where leaders share their
0:21
experiences so we can learn from their successes and be inspired
0:25
by how they've overcome adversity.
0:27
My name is Anthony Codaspodi, and today's guest is Amy Clary,
0:31
CEO of Key Staff, a Texas staffing agency that has been
0:35
around since 2004. They do the recruiting so you
0:39
can get back to business. Direct hire, temp to permanent
0:43
placements and temporary placements are all services that
0:46
they excel in. They consistently deliver top
0:49
candidates, provide great customer service, and get
0:52
results for their clients which leads to overwhelming customer
0:56
satisfaction. They have office locations in
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Austin, Dallas and San Antonio, TX.
1:02
They specialize in admin and clerical positions, general
1:06
labor, light industrial engineering and IT call center
1:10
and accounting positions and their website is key
1:13
staffinc.com. Now before we get into all that
1:16
good stuff, today's episode is brought to you by my company,
1:19
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To find out if your company qualifies, contact us today at
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at back benefitsagency.com. Now back to our guest today, the
1:48
CEO of Key Staff, Amy Clary. Thanks so much for sharing your
1:52
time and your story with us today.
1:54
Yeah, thanks for having me. OK, so Amy, tell me, how did you
1:58
first get interested in the staffing world before you
2:02
started key staff? So that's kind of a funny story.
2:05
I actually spent a couple years living in Europe in in France
2:11
and I became really good at making crepes and I wanted to
2:15
start a creperie. When I moved back to the states,
2:18
I wanted to start a creperie and so I, and that's before they had
2:21
any creperies in Austin. So this was a big deal.
2:26
But after my business partner and I, who's actually my
2:31
business partner with key staff too after we and placed you know
2:36
kind of priced out how much it would start, it would cost to
2:38
start a restaurant in Austin 20 years ago, it was going to be
2:42
over $1,000,000 that we didn't have so.
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And this was 20 years ago even. 20 years ago, yeah, so and I
2:50
might have had some lofty goals. I wanted it to be like you were
2:52
sitting under the Eiffel Tower eating your crepe.
2:55
I mean again, maybe we a. Little bit of a visionary, are
2:58
you? Yeah.
3:00
But he basically said, well, if we want to do that, then you
3:03
probably need to get to, you need to get a job.
3:07
So I said, OK, so I got a job at a staffing agency.
3:11
You know, I'd always been interested in recruiting.
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And my goal was to work for, in my head, I had this goal that I
3:19
was going to work for Southwest Airlines and be a corporate
3:22
recruiter and be throwing out those squishy foam airplanes to
3:28
college kids, you know, on college campuses.
3:31
And that was kind of my dream of what I had thought I was going
3:35
to do. But I talked to a couple of
3:37
corporate recruiters at a couple different airlines and they said
3:40
you have to start at an agency. Everybody starts at an agency
3:43
and staffing and in recruiting. And so, so then I went and I did
3:48
some informational interviewing at a couple different agencies
3:50
and I landed the job at Staffing Solutions and 24 years ago,
3:56
which is crazy because I don't feel that old.
3:58
So I feel like I'm 22. So I'm not real sure how these
4:02
years just keep taking by. So anyway, yeah, I ended up
4:09
getting that job and I was there 3 1/2 years, top producer
4:13
nationwide out of 125 offices did pretty good.
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Found out that I was really good at it.
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I just kind of assumed everybody was good at staffing, but it
4:23
turns out I was really good at it.
4:25
And yeah, so I ended up landing that and and I.
4:29
And so finally my business partner says, well, why would we
4:33
start a creperie when you are doing so good in staffing?
4:37
He always wanted to run a business and he actually worked
4:40
at the time for Motorola. He's a masters of electrical
4:43
engineering. So really smart guy on kind of
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the back end, you know. So yeah, so we decided, hey, I
4:50
think what we'll do is we'll we'll start a staffing agency
4:53
instead. So let's go back a little bit.
4:56
Before you started key staff, what was it that was making you
5:01
so good at staffing? Right out of the gate, right out
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of school, no background in staffing and you become the top
5:07
producer in the country out of 125 offices.
5:10
Yeah, what are? You doing differently.
5:12
Rookie of the year, even. Yeah, You know, I think it is
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that I'm not scared to talk to people.
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This is the people business. Your your product is people,
5:23
your customers, people, everything.
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It's people to people to people. And you've got to be a people
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pleaser, but you've also got to have that kind of fire in your
5:32
belly to hit the numbers in this industry.
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And you've got to be a really multifaceted and you've got to
5:39
be a sharp thinker and you've got to have a good memory
5:42
because you're interviewing all of these candidates.
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And if you interviewed 20 candidates in a day, you've got
5:47
to remember who Jimmy Brown was, you know, and what what company
5:54
he would fit good in with. You know, you got to take a lot
5:57
of notes. You got to get work, you get
5:58
yourself organized. So if you saw my desk, you
6:00
probably wouldn't think I was that organized.
6:02
But I know where every piece of paper is on that desk.
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And so if I call the office on vacation, I say go to the stack
6:08
of papers on the right, go 6 papers down.
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It's a sticky note in the corner, you know.
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You've got a visual map in your head of where everything is
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located. And just a quick sidebar, if you
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talk to the people who are like the best memory experts in the
6:24
world, they actually teach a system like that.
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They teach you to sort of visualize these things that
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you're trying to remember in your head in a physical space.
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So whether you realize it or not, you're onto something.
6:37
Yeah. Wow.
6:38
Yeah. I guess I should write that
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book. No, just kidding.
6:40
Someone's already done it. Yeah, I know.
6:43
So, yeah, I think you know that. And given the opportunity, I
6:47
will say, too, that there's a lot of pressure there.
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That place was a pressure cooker.
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And I think at the time, and maybe I was just cut from a
6:57
different cloth or maybe I was raised differently, but I was
7:01
always so worried about letting people down.
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And I was, I never even had this thought in my head, like, hey, I
7:08
could quit and just go somewhere else.
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I thought, I have to make this work.
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You know, I have to, I have to be successful.
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I mean, that being said, I was also always anxious, which is
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not the upside to the story because no one wants to go
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around feeling anxious all the time.
7:24
I was always anxious I was going to lose my job.
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Even when I was top producer, I would get called into the office
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and told, OK, well, what's next? What's in your pipeline?
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Even after I closed a big deal, what's next, what's next?
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And I don't know if that pressure was ultimately good for
7:43
me or bad for me, but it, it is what it was, right?
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So I handled it and, and I kept going up and up.
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And every time I would have a good year, then my quota would
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go up, right? So, and I think that's how
7:57
people a deal with staff, with salespeople still in most
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industries, not just staffing. I think that's, you know, that I
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have some friends, a lot of friends in sales and they go
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through the same thing. So you got to be able to handle
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some pressure, you know, You know, I would say that running a
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business is a different pressure and it's a lot of pressure too,
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you know. So I think that set me up for
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success there too. And genuinely, I think in
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staffing, I like people, I like people, I like talking to
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people, I like getting to know their story.
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And I think that that's one thing you need to do on both
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sides. I like sitting and I like making
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people into. I like collecting friends.
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A lot of people have collections.
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I like to collect friends, so I love that on both the client
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side and the candidate side. When you meet cool people with a
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cool story and it is exciting, you know?
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It's a big reason why I love to do this podcast, so you might
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you might enjoy starting one of these yourself someday.
8:54
Yeah, that's a lot of work. A little bit so so tell me, how
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are you dealing with that anxiousness, that anxiety as you
9:03
were, you know, quickly moving up the ranks at your your job
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there? Well, probably, it's probably
9:09
the wrong answer. I was probably drinking too
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much. I mean, if I'm being 100%
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honest, you know, I was young, I was in my 20s, so I was doing a
9:18
lot of networking and have a good friend base.
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So I was spending a lot of time with friends.
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Probably, you know, I would go to happy hours because in our
9:28
world you can be invited. I mean, I always say if you do
9:32
it right in sales, you can eat breakfast, lunch, dinner and
9:34
happy hour for free everyday. We get invited to so many
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networking things, you know, and I don't think I was probably
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doing the best of taking care of myself, if I'm being honest,
9:44
back in my 20s, you know, which is something I'm paying for now
9:47
in my 40s, you know, So but yeah, I mean, I, I'm not like I,
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I wouldn't say like I had a problem, but I was just, I
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wasn't, I was just not making as that's a good decision.
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So I mean, you asked. So I'm being 100.
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Percent. This is exactly what we want,
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yeah. We'd go and relax, you know, I'd
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go relax with my friends with a drink after work.
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You know, back then I didn't have any kids.
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I wasn't married, so I was single and ready to hang out and
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have a good time. So, yeah, I mean, I think I, I
10:18
subscribe to the TO now I'm making myself sound bad, but I
10:22
subscribe to the work hard, play hard, you know, and now it's
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different. I've got 4 kids, I'm married,
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you know, involved in the church, everything.
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But, you know, at the end of the day, we still, even now with the
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stress that I have, I travel a lot.
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I try to get away. I mean, I still take my work
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with me, but I enjoy and I, I enjoy what I'm doing and I enjoy
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getting away from what I'm doing at work.
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So I, I work hard at work and, and I play hard when I, when I'm
10:50
off of work, you know, and yeah, so I.
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Don't. And so you mentioned you have a
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partner. What's his name?
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His name's Jason Stoneberg. Jason, So you and Jason decide
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we're not starting a creperie. That's crazy, but like you are
11:04
killing it in the staffing agency.
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Let's start a staffing agency. So you decide you're going to
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start key staff and what was the first step?
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How did you get your first customer?
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Well, let me tell you the first step, which is even before the
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1st customer, the first step is pretty funny because I didn't
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know like I was really nervous because at the time I was doing
11:25
really well at Staffing Solutions and I was nervous
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about leaving. I was nervous because by this
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point I had bought 2 duplexes and I had mortgages to pay and I
11:34
was still in my 20s. And I was thinking, what if, you
11:39
know, this doesn't work out? What, how am I going to go get
11:41
another job? And I'll tell you when I turn in
11:43
my notice. I was so sweaty.
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I mean, my notice sat under my keyboard all day and I had
11:48
reread it and reread it to where it was like almost see through
11:52
with my sweat. And and Jason told me something
11:57
because I had gone over to his house the night before and he
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told me. He said, Amy, you don't have to
12:01
quit because you don't, you don't have to quit.
12:04
Even though we spent a year working on this business plan
12:07
and we have rolled out everything we for Christmas, we
12:10
asked for a fax machine that's back when you faxed resumes.
12:13
We asked for a dry erase board. We asked for a rolling chair.
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And my family bought me all of my Christmas wish list.
12:20
All was the startup of the office basically.
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And he said, Amy, you don't have to quit.
12:25
You can work for staffing solutions forever.
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He goes, but just know you will work for someone else for the
12:32
rest of your life if you don't quit tomorrow.
12:35
And that's. Quite a speech.
12:37
What's more scary, right, Like, you know, for someone who's kind
12:41
of an entrepreneurial minded, there was more scary to think
12:46
about working for someone else for the rest of my life than it
12:49
was to think about leaving and and giving that notice.
12:54
And I knew because I was the I was the breadwinner for the
12:57
whole office. I knew that heads would roll if
13:00
I quit. I knew my boss would get fired.
13:02
I knew, I mean, so I felt a lot of stress over that.
13:05
That's a lot. And he did.
13:06
He ended up getting fired because he couldn't keep me.
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And the AVP called me. She really loved me.
13:12
She, she used to tell me that she wished that I was her
13:15
daughter. And then, but of course I
13:17
couldn't tell her I was leaving to go start at my own staffing
13:20
agency, you know, So I told her I was going to go back to work
13:24
at the Hula Hut because it was so stressful at staffing
13:28
solutions, which was true because I had two mortgages to
13:31
pay. I had to moonlight at the Hula
13:34
Hat as cocktail waitress. So I would so that's, you know.
13:37
Even with as well as you were doing in staffing, you still
13:40
needed a second job. Well, after you get cut off of
13:43
your income, right? So once you quit.
13:46
Oh, this, This was once, this was after you quit that you had
13:48
the side job. Yeah, so and I had gone back.
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I had actually already set that all up.
13:53
So I wasn't lying when I said actually, I'm quitting and I'm
13:55
going to go back to who had it. It's a waitress.
13:58
It's a cocktail waitress. She was thinking you're crazy.
14:02
They thought everybody thought I was crazy.
14:04
Of course, this is before LinkedIn and Facebook and even I
14:07
think it was maybe before Myspace even.
14:10
So nobody really tracked you, you know, nobody could really
14:13
find you, you know, So I mean, you could literally die in the
14:16
same city and come back to life after non compete ran out.
14:22
So and in Austin, you know, Austin was a small town back
14:25
then, but it was it was pretty crazy.
14:28
But what one really funny thing is I was really nervous just to
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do this. I wanted to make sure I could
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work well with my partner because that was a lot of risk
14:36
too. And so we actually started a
14:39
business called curbside service and we went around painting
14:45
people's curbs like paying they would, we would, I would do all
14:48
the marketing and I bought all the paint and I would take all
14:52
of the these Flyers door to door as I was walking my dogs and
14:56
say, if you're interested in having your curb painting, but
15:00
just with the numbers or whatever we offer, we offer the
15:03
UT Longhorn symbol we offer, you know, probably wasn't supposed
15:06
to do that. I don't know, but anyway.
15:09
Copyright infringement. Yeah, I'm like, I mean, I was.
15:14
But we, yeah, so we and so we would spend the weekends
15:18
painting curves me and this, you know, I, I have a degree in in
15:22
government actually from University of Texas.
15:25
And my business partner has a master's from his, his
15:29
undergraduate was from UT and his master's from A&N and which
15:34
it was kind of a that's kind of a conflict in Texas, but how?
15:37
To say yeah he did rivals. Yeah, but he So we'd spend all
15:42
weekend painting curves on our neighborhood.
15:45
And then we got a call from a guy, I guess, who lived in the
15:48
neighborhood who said you painted my curb.
15:50
You did a good job. I'm a I'm a builder out in the
15:53
suburbs in Leander and I have a neighborhood going in and we are
15:57
having trouble because they keep dropping like the stacks of
16:01
bricks and the stacks of lumber off to the wrong lots.
16:04
We just cut the streets. So will you go in there and
16:07
paint all the curves so that they can find where to drop each
16:12
each thing? So we we got that contract and
16:15
then they said, well, do you do stop bars?
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Well, yeah, we'll figure it out. Yeah, we could do that.
16:19
Do you do what? Stop bars, like there's actually
16:21
1/2 of a of a, it goes across the street just halfway at a
16:26
stop sign. A white bar that's reflective.
16:28
Oh, OK. You don't even notice them
16:30
unless you're the one painting them, you know?
16:32
And so we said, yeah, we could do March.
16:35
Yeah, we'll figure it out. So we figured it out.
16:37
You know, this is like even really close to before Google,
16:40
you know? So there was this.
16:41
OK, so how did you figure it out?
16:44
Oh, we went. Started testing.
16:45
The work, we went to the paint store, you know, and we asked
16:48
the place hypothetically, if we wanted to paint our street, you
16:51
know, how would we do that? And then APD called us, Austin
16:54
Police Department, and they said, you know, we can't ever
16:57
find the address that's on the east side of Austin when there's
17:00
an emergency call which you'd be interested in painting the whole
17:03
basically the whole east side lost.
17:06
It's huge. So finally and, and we had
17:09
mountains of spray paint. I mean, literally our
17:12
fingernails had spray paint under them.
17:14
You know, we almost probably looked like we had a drug
17:17
problem, you know, a sniffing problem.
17:19
So one day we woke up and we said we really don't want to do
17:22
this anymore. We don't want a spray thing.
17:25
I mean, we're making like $10 a curve, you know.
17:28
And so we, so anyway, we, we said, OK, I think we, we've done
17:32
this for a year. We're doing pretty good.
17:34
So let's, let's try this, let's roll out the, the staffing
17:38
agency. So after we've kind of
17:40
established a baseline, because I think one of the most
17:42
important things about business being that I've been doing this
17:47
now started in 2004, I'm 20 years into key staff.
17:50
I still have the same partner. And I think the most important
17:54
thing is if you are going to have a partner, you better do
17:58
your research on that partner first.
18:00
You better pick a good partner. I've just talked to so many
18:03
business owners who have just had so much conflict in their
18:06
partnership. And I'm not saying we don't have
18:09
conflict. I would be lying if I said it
18:11
was all glitter and kittens, but it is.
18:15
It is so important to make sure that the perfect, that you have
18:18
the perfect partner who supports you, who does the opposite of
18:22
what you do. Like I do all the marketing.
18:24
I'm the face of the company. I'm the one who goes out and
18:27
meets with everybody. I take all the calls.
18:30
Jason, he does all the back office.
18:32
He reads all the contracts, He does all the stuff I hate doing.
18:36
I think that if we were both sales folks, I don't know that
18:39
it would have worked out for 20 years.
18:41
I think if we were both back office, then I don't think we
18:44
would have sold anything. So he keeps us.
18:48
He keeps us compliant. I make the money, he counts the
18:51
money, and I think we're both in a good role for ourselves.
18:54
So if I'm giving some advice about business ownership, it is
18:58
make sure you can trust that person too.
19:02
Like I trust Jason. Like, like, I mean, he is like a
19:06
brother and I trust him so much. Like, I just can't even imagine.
19:11
Like even after one day we're done with key staff, we'll still
19:16
be lifelong friends. I mean, we're 25 years into a
19:19
friendship right now, you know? How did you guys first meet?
19:22
So we met at a wedding, actually one of his friends got married
19:25
and he was the best man and I was there from Switzerland back
19:30
and and yeah, his I worked at Hula Hut with his best friend
19:36
from high school. And so we got sat at a table
19:39
next to each other and we just started chatting and ended up,
19:43
you know, having a lot in common and becoming good friends and
19:47
worked through it that way. So it was, it was a good, it's a
19:50
good partnership. Yeah.
19:52
That's really good advice on picking your business partner.
19:55
I mean, it's as important, some would say, as picking your, your
19:59
spouse, your life partner. 100%. 100% it's, it's a marriage, a
20:03
different kind of marriage, but it's it's a marriage that if
20:06
things don't go right, it's messy and it's painful and it's
20:09
ugly to to disentwine. So yeah, yeah, that's really
20:13
good advice. So how did you guys get the
20:14
first client? So I joined a Rotary Club which
20:18
I highly recommend for everybody.
20:21
Rotary is the largest, I believe it's the largest service above
20:24
self organization in the world. Just a quick plug there.
20:27
I'm not currently a Rotary, although I should get back into
20:30
it. I got 4 kids now and so it
20:31
became too much. But Rotary really has just good.
20:36
It's just good bones. It's good people, it's good.
20:39
I mean, the four way test of that you say at every meeting of
20:43
the things that you think, say and do is number one, is it the
20:46
truth #2 is it fair to all concerned #3 will it build
20:50
goodwill and better friendships and #4 is it beneficial to all
20:54
concerned? So you're, you're sitting in a
20:57
room with a group of people who are reciting that once a week
21:01
and who are holding themselves to that standard.
21:03
And so when I left staffing solutions, I shared it with my
21:08
Rotary Club and I had been on Rotary probably for two years at
21:12
the time. And everyone in Rotary rallied
21:16
around me. I, my very first customer was a
21:19
fellow Rotarian. He's so actually, we have a job
21:21
order. He, I actually ended up, his
21:24
name is George Lineal, amazing guy.
21:28
I went to his wedding, he went to my wedding.
21:30
You know, just really, you just get really deep with people
21:34
there because you're connecting on a level of like, hey, we want
21:38
to do good for the world and we want to be good people and we
21:40
want to, you know, connect and. What a great foundation to start
21:43
from. Service, yeah.
21:45
And then when I said I'm leaving after my family exhausted their
21:49
Christmas budgets for my office, state court, I reached out to
21:55
Rotary and they all these and the folks in Rotary, a lot of
21:58
them are business owners. And they said, oh, I have a desk
22:00
you can have. I have AI have these chairs.
22:03
You can have that. We're redoing our lobby so you
22:06
can just have my old ones. And so that's how we started it.
22:10
Yeah. And so, yeah, George was my
22:13
first client. He just needed one admin to
22:16
start. But after I really got going, I
22:19
hooked up with this guy who owned a company who does, gosh,
22:25
there's still a client of mine, which is amazing, but makes
22:29
basically like wire harnesses a guy named Tom, really awesome
22:34
guy. And, and he said, he said, Amy,
22:38
you have done what nobody else has ever been able to do for us.
22:41
And he was also starting his his business at the same time.
22:44
He said, you have done what nobody else has been able to do
22:47
for us. And I said, you know, I would
22:48
love a referral. I sound like a real estate
22:50
agent, right? Like I would love a referral.
22:52
But I told him, I said I would love a referral.
22:54
And he in front of me. And I'll tell you this is the
22:57
best thing you could ever do for someone who you think is who you
23:01
have faith in. In front of me.
23:03
He picked up his phone and he called 10 different friends and
23:06
he's who all were business owners.
23:08
And he says, I've got this girl right here is staffing for me
23:11
and she's incredible and you need to meet with her.
23:14
And I ended up bringing in probably 7:00 or 8:00.
23:18
And then his little hub of friends became basically my
23:21
first kind of what I built the back of my business.
23:25
And I will tell you I am still working with 20 years later, I'm
23:29
still working with like six or seven of those.
23:31
Some of some have sold, some have moved on one company.
23:35
We have a lot of folks out there right now in Austin.
23:39
We've worked with them for 20 years and they have they've gone
23:43
through three different name changes like being sold, merged,
23:47
whatever, and still a loyal, a loyal client of ours.
23:51
So. That's phenomenal.
23:52
What a great. Story.
23:53
Yeah, it is cool. And then again, like I collect
23:55
friends. So the guy who was owned on that
23:58
company, he came to my wedding, you know, his son actually asked
24:04
if he could do like an informational interview with me
24:06
recently. So it's all about, you know,
24:09
giving back, you know? So, so talk to me about we, we
24:14
kind of covered it in the the intro that I did, but tell me a
24:17
little bit more about kind of what you guys specialize in.
24:21
So we do full service staffing like you said, temp temp to perm
24:25
direct hire. We've actually coined a new roll
24:28
out called smart Hire to which during COVID we found that a lot
24:33
of folks were wanting to hire from the employed marketplace
24:36
because it was so hard to find people, but they didn't want to
24:39
pay the huge headhunter fee, right?
24:42
The direct hire fee. So we started something called
24:44
smart hire, which is where you basically you direct hire a
24:47
person for the price of attempt to hire.
24:50
So, and it's paid out in 16 weekly installments instead of
24:54
this big balloon payment of you need to pay me $25,000 for
24:57
finding this person. I'm going to do it in these
25:00
weekly installments, which also gives them more of a guarantee
25:03
that you know someone's going to stay around.
25:05
And especially during COVID when people were like leaving,
25:08
jumping quickly to get the next amount of money right?
25:12
So. So the total fee ends up being
25:13
the same, it's just spread out over time.
25:15
It's a little less. It's the it's what they would
25:17
have paid if it was an attempt to hire.
25:19
So it's. How are you able to do it more
25:23
cost effectively for them? Well, I mean, with direct hire
25:27
staffing, traditionally when I started in staffing, you paid
25:30
30% of the client, paid 30% of the person's annual income and
25:34
they paid it upfront in one big fee right now, but pay rates are
25:40
higher, right? So it's a little bit like, well,
25:43
if someone, if someone direct hired somebody before for who
25:46
was making $30,000, now that same person's probably making
25:50
$60,000, right? So the fee in essence would
25:55
double, you know, but really the cost of running the business
25:59
hasn't doubled. So you can, we can slide that
26:01
back. We're not, we don't need, if
26:03
it's 30 percent, 30,000, you know, it's $9000 now it would be
26:07
$18,000. Well, I don't think necessarily
26:10
that, you know, $18,000 is that's a lot.
26:14
And it's a lot for a company to to, you know, I mean, if you've
26:16
got a big company, if you got the big companies, you know,
26:19
they've got a lot of money. But if you're talking like our
26:21
kind of our sweet spot is that middle, you know, not the onesie
26:24
twosies, not not, you know, Jim Bob who owns the, you know,
26:29
mechanic shop. But it's more like someone who's
26:32
kind of middle, you know, with maybe anywhere from 25 to, you
26:37
know, a few 100 employees. But it's not going to be this
26:41
conglomerate, you know, huge organizations, you know, those
26:45
folks are on these, you know, nationwide contracts with
26:48
nationwide staffing agencies. And you know, we give a lot
26:51
better service. They've kind of, sadly for them,
26:54
put themselves in a pickle where they've contractually bound to a
26:57
company where we say, hey, you know what the thing about key
27:00
staff is, you, you'll never just tie to key staff.
27:03
I never will ask for an exclusive.
27:05
My goal is to help you find the right candidate for your
27:09
position. I'm not going to pigeonhole you
27:11
that if I can't find him, then you're not going to hire
27:13
someone. I want you to find the right
27:15
candidate. I want to be the one who finds
27:17
that candidate. But I'm also, you know, I'm
27:19
also, you know, our organization isn't huge either, right?
27:23
So I want you to have opportunity.
27:25
And if we find them, you pay us. And if you know, if Kelly's
27:28
services find them, you pay them, you know, and.
27:31
Is your approach unusual? Do a lot of the other firms ask
27:34
for an exclusive? The big companies do, yeah.
27:37
I mean, I think they say you're only going to use us, right?
27:40
The the big Nat Nationwide companies will say, we'll give
27:43
you a deal, but you only can use us, but it's not really a deal
27:47
because now you're stuck. You know, if you're the client
27:51
and you've signed an exclusive with a large company then and
27:56
you've said you can't use anybody else, and then they say,
27:58
you know what? And this is what happens.
28:00
I mean, I mean, just think about from business perspective, if
28:03
you're one of these large staffing agencies and you signed
28:06
this large company at a discount rate, but then you have other
28:10
companies who you know are make you're making a lot more on
28:15
you're going to service them first because they're all stuck
28:18
anyway. They can't go anywhere else
28:19
anyway. So they're going to have to wait
28:20
for you to find them someone. Right.
28:23
And I'm motivated. Yeah, whereas I'm like, hey, use
28:26
me. Try me out if you like, if you
28:28
like key staff, if you like what we're bringing you, then use me
28:31
again, you know. And so let me ask you some of
28:34
these companies, you know, 25 person company, I can understand
28:38
a little bit more, but you're also talking about some of your
28:39
clients. You know, they've got a couple,
28:41
maybe a few 100 employees. Those are companies that are of
28:44
the size that they've probably got their own, you know,
28:47
internal HR team. They probably can afford to hire
28:50
somebody full time or part time that does recruiting.
28:54
What is it that draws them to key staff to want to use their
28:58
service, your services if maybe they have some of these
29:01
capabilities in house? I find that a lot of times when
29:05
someone hires a recruiter in office and some, don't get me
29:08
wrong, some kind of clients say hey, we have our own team, we
29:11
don't use staffing. OK, got it.
29:12
You know, But I find a lot of times what they find is they
29:17
want the try before you buy. They want to try folks out.
29:20
They want other pockets of candidates as well.
29:24
They don't want to commit. They don't want to do all the
29:25
paperwork. We're already doing all the
29:26
paperwork. If you're, if you're doing 10 to
29:28
hire, we're doing all the paperwork.
29:30
You call me, you call someone on my team and you say, you know
29:33
what? Jesse is not working out.
29:35
And guess what I do? I call Jesse and say you're not
29:38
working out. Don't go back tomorrow.
29:43
And there's no, there's no awkward conversations, There's
29:46
no write ups. The client doesn't have to do
29:48
any of The Dirty part of employment, which is the firing,
29:53
right? The counseling firing.
29:55
I'll do all The Dirty stuff. And it's kind of nice because it
29:58
takes it takes the person, you know, because if you've got
30:02
somebody working on site with you, right?
30:05
And you like this person, but man, she's always late, right?
30:08
She's late every single day. And you're like, hey, Betty, we
30:11
really need you to be at work on time.
30:13
And she's like, OK, yes, I'll do that.
30:15
And then the next day she's late and the next day she's late.
30:17
But when she's there, she does good work, right?
30:19
But now it's causing other people to say, well, Betty's
30:21
always late, right? So now instead of you calling
30:24
Betty, I'm calling Betty. And I'm like, look, Betty, you
30:28
need to pull it together and get to work on time every day or
30:30
you're going to lose your job. Now you're not the bad guy.
30:33
I'm the bad guy. I see and and people like that,
30:38
they like not having so. It's like grade school, rather
30:40
than me having to break up with the girl I can send one of my
30:42
friends. Is that what it is?
30:44
OK, you're wingman. Yeah, OK.
30:47
Yeah, it makes a lot of sense like that.
30:48
And they also like that there's just not the, you know, there's
30:53
not the commitment up front, right?
30:56
Once you onboard somebody, you feel pretty committed to them
30:59
that they're coming in as a temporary.
31:01
And you know what? And I tell clients this too, and
31:03
I don't want to mistake in this. It's temp on both sides.
31:06
So if you're the client and you're saying, hey, I want to
31:10
tempt these people because I want to try before I buy, just
31:13
know that the people are saying I want to try this company out
31:16
before I commit as well. And I think I like to be upfront
31:20
with clients on that because sometimes I think that they hold
31:22
all the cards because they pay. But we're in a market right now
31:26
where people can leave pretty quickly, right?
31:28
So you've got to be good to your employees and and hope your
31:33
employees are good to you, right?
31:34
You got it's got to go both ways, you know?
31:38
And most of the folks I talked to in my own business and on
31:41
this podcast, yeah, they still tell me it's a pretty tight
31:44
labor market. It sounds like that's what
31:46
you're seeing as well. Yeah, I mean, for the good
31:48
talent, it's a tight labor market.
31:50
You want good, you want people who are going to really, I mean,
31:53
there's a lot of people available to work, but they
31:55
don't want to work, right. So you, if you're looking for
31:58
folks who are really going to excel your business, you you
32:01
definitely need to, to hire the right people.
32:05
And you need to, you know, the old adage, right?
32:09
Hire slowly, fire quickly. It still applies today, right?
32:13
Find good folks. Again, just the same thing like
32:16
with the business partner, you know, make sure that you're
32:18
surrounding yourself with people who are going to take you to
32:20
that next level and take your organization to the next level.
32:23
Well, I think this is probably another benefit of working with
32:25
key staff is that this is your sole expertise is finding
32:31
training, retaining good folks, you know, whereas the, you know,
32:35
the company that has their own internal person, it's one
32:39
person, there are two people. And it's it's hard for them to
32:42
be spread out and it's hard for them to have access to all the
32:45
same databases and tools and resources and knowledge base
32:49
that you guys do since this is what you focus on exclusively.
32:52
100% You know, I, I did go on a client visit one time and the
32:55
guy told me, well, why would I use you?
32:58
I get, you know, I throw the job on Indeed.
33:01
I get 100 resumes in a day. And I said, well, you called me.
33:05
You tell me why you're calling me, obviously.
33:08
What did he say? What did he say?
33:10
I want to know. Yeah, well, I don't want to sift
33:11
through all the resumes. Yeah, yeah.
33:14
I mean, he doesn't want to do the work, right.
33:16
Yeah, you can. You can throw an ad up on Indeed
33:18
and you can get candidates, or you can throw it up on the
33:20
recruiter or any of the tools that we use.
33:24
But at the end of the day, there's still a lot of work that
33:27
goes between throwing that add up a creating that job
33:30
description, making sure that you've done it legally, that you
33:32
don't have anything in there that's going to get you in
33:34
trouble, and then getting it, putting in that job add up and
33:39
then waiting. Even if you have a job that's an
33:41
easy to fill job, then you're still going to get a you're
33:45
going to have a whole Rd. worth of work in front of you as far
33:48
as getting the candidates in pre vetting them, screening them,
33:51
Hey, asking them, you know, what are your requirements, right?
33:54
Do you do you want to make sure that if you're hiring Betty for
33:57
the front office that she has multi line phone experience and
34:00
can Type 45 words per minute? Well, she can tell you she does
34:04
that until you get there. I mean, I, I had a situation one
34:07
time where a client told me I've got the scroll in my office and
34:09
she doesn't even know where the stamp goes on an envelope like
34:13
from another agency. I'm like, Oh well, I mean those
34:16
are things that you should probably try to try to vet
34:19
before you hire Who who? Would think to even ask that
34:22
question in an interview. Yeah, well, I mean, probably if
34:24
they've got a lot of the other skills, they've probably got
34:26
that figured out too, you know? But I just have to think about,
34:31
you know, of course I don't. I don't want to disillusioned
34:34
anybody that I asked that to every candidate, but but it was
34:38
that was like an eye opener to me.
34:39
Like wow, you know, you've got to make sure that if someone
34:41
says they've got this experience, that they've got it,
34:44
you know, so that you've got to do testing, you've got to do
34:47
vetting. You want not only pre
34:48
qualifying, but then when they come in, then you've also got to
34:51
run their background check, make sure they're not on drugs.
34:53
I mean, there's a lot of. A lot of.
34:56
So if somebody says I can type 100 words a minute, that's
34:58
something that you're verifying. Yeah, yeah.
35:01
You want to put them on a program, and there's all these
35:04
programs out there now that you can do where they just go in and
35:08
a script comes up and they've got to type it and it'll tell
35:10
you how many words per minute they actually type, so.
35:14
Well, I mean that plus sifting through the resumes alone is
35:17
worth a nice feed. Well, and interviewing we, we
35:21
still, and maybe we're a little old school, we still face to
35:24
face everything today. And I feel like that's a huge
35:26
service because a lot of these especially larger agencies now,
35:30
they are doing everything through chat bots.
35:32
And we do have the technology. We have spent quite a bit of
35:35
money and time upgrading our technology where we have chat
35:37
bots. But I still want to lay eyes on
35:40
the candidate before they walk into my client's office.
35:43
I want to see that that person looks the way that that I mean
35:47
images, everything right? I want to see that when they
35:49
walk in there that they are dressed too impressed.
35:52
I tell every single person make sure you bring pre written
35:55
questions, a pen and a paper. Get your questions answered at
35:59
the interview so that you don't have questions on the 3rd, 4th
36:02
day of work that you should have had answered at the interview,
36:05
right? And so we're counseling on both
36:07
sides, right? We're telling the candidates
36:10
like, Hey, this is how you can be successful too.
36:12
So it's really, I mean, it's a matchmaking service really for
36:16
really is. For you've got sales that you're
36:18
doing on both sides, you got to try to, you know, sell to the
36:21
employee. You got to sell to the employer
36:22
A. 100%, yeah. Connect them together.
36:25
Yeah, You mentioned that some people maybe in their job
36:30
descriptions, they're putting things in there that might get
36:32
them into some legal trouble. What would be some examples of
36:34
that? Well, I mean, if you say, hey,
36:36
we're looking for a female candidate or hey, we're looking
36:40
for men only, Of course, anything that anything that's
36:42
going to take off of the EOE clause that you need to have at
36:47
the bottom of every single posting.
36:50
So if you don't already have the EOE clause saying that you're an
36:52
equal opportunity employer and addressing all of the things
36:57
that you are equal, race, religion, you know, ethnic
37:00
origin and sexual orientation, all of the things that are
37:04
protected classes at the bottom of every single job posting,
37:08
then you can get in a lot of trouble.
37:11
And if you're not writing the right things, if you're not
37:13
saying upfront, you know, you can't discriminate right against
37:17
if you have a man or a woman in a position anymore, right?
37:21
So if you say, you know, we want a female for this role, yeah,
37:31
And the male applies and he's feeling a little feisty that day
37:35
and he screenshots that and takes it to an employment
37:38
attorney, then as an organization, you could be
37:41
slapped with a lot of of fines. So one of the things we do for
37:45
all of our internal employees is they have to go through
37:48
employment law training, which is a really great.
37:51
There's a great book that actually Texas put out.
37:55
So of course we're only in Texas, but they put, they put
37:58
out some an employment law book, which you can get free off of
38:02
the Texas Workforce Commission website.
38:05
And it's, it's pretty thick and it's a terrible read, but it's
38:10
got it's got a lot of great information.
38:12
And we through training our internal team, everyone has to
38:16
pass a test, just like if they were passing ACPA test, but it's
38:21
just for us internally. But you want to make sure that I
38:24
want to make sure that I'm not going to get sued for something
38:26
that one of my teammates, you know, does.
38:29
And we call our teammates, we call them here partners.
38:32
So just like every time I hire somebody internally, they
38:37
legitimately become a business partner at key staff, right,
38:40
just like me and Jason. And just like if I let Jason
38:42
down, I would be a poor partner in his eyes.
38:45
And if he let me down, he would, you know, that would not be a
38:48
good partnership. That's what I tell folks when
38:51
they come and work internally here at Key Staff, is that in
38:54
essence, you're a business partner.
38:56
So I'm not going to let you down, and you better not let me
38:59
down so. What?
39:04
What advice can you give or what have you found are the best ways
39:10
to recruit good folks and once you find them, to retain them?
39:17
Internally you mean for you stuff internal?
39:20
No, in general. In general.
39:22
Yeah, even with the folks that you place.
39:24
Yeah. Recruiting good folks.
39:27
I, my biggest stickler is longevity.
39:30
If you don't have longevity on your resume.
39:35
And I cross reference all resumes for professional
39:38
positions with LinkedIn, so I can see if what's on the resume
39:42
is the truth. Right.
39:44
So were you really there for four years or not?
39:47
You know, again, if, if somebody works for a company for three
39:53
months and then they leave for six months and then they leave
39:55
for nine months and they might have great reasons.
39:57
They might say, oh, I got recruited out and they were
39:59
paying me $10,000 more. Well, that's a good reason, you
40:02
know, and then they had six months later they say, Oh, well,
40:05
you know, I got recruited out or whatever the IT could be also,
40:09
you know, oh, we moved or oh, this or oh that.
40:12
All the, oh, this is what happens or oh, I got laid off
40:15
from my fifth job in a row. There's there's a reason, right?
40:20
If you keep getting laid off, there's a reason you keep
40:22
getting laid off. You know, if you, if you.
40:26
So I'm really a stickler on that and I want to make sure also, I
40:30
think it's super important these days to look people up on their
40:33
social media because you're not just buying what's on that
40:36
resume. You are buying that personality.
40:39
You are buying that, you know, and if you want somebody who's
40:42
fun loving and who's going to show up to your company happy
40:46
hours and be a good time, you'll find that out on their Facebook
40:49
page or on their Instagram, right?
40:51
If you're wanting someone who's just going to come to work, get
40:53
the job done, he kind of keeps to themselves.
40:55
You'll find that out on their Facebook page, you know, So I
40:59
think it's important to make sure that you know who you're
41:02
hiring to like in there, whatever they're putting out in
41:06
the world. Just make sure you're taking
41:08
advantage of of the time that you have between interview and
41:11
offer to double check that that's the that's the person you
41:15
want working next to everyday. And So what about on the
41:18
employee side? What are they looking for?
41:21
What attracts them to try a new job and then keeps them there?
41:28
Yeah. I think for employees, I think
41:29
that they're, right now, there's a lot of stuff going on.
41:32
And it's funny because I find that a lot of my clients are
41:35
saying, hey, we offer lunch once a week and that doesn't really
41:38
seem to keep people. And they're saying, oh, we offer
41:40
great benefits. That doesn't really seem to keep
41:42
people. You know, what's what keeps
41:44
people is pay rate. I mean, if I'm just going to
41:47
throw it out there, it's going to be your, I mean, I can post a
41:51
job with a good pay rate and have no benefits and people will
41:55
still take the higher pay rate with no benefits, right?
42:00
I don't know why that is. I know for me and my family,
42:03
I've got 4 kids and one of my kids is adopted from China and
42:07
has hydrocephalus and we've done brain surgery.
42:09
So I'm all about the benefits, don't get me wrong.
42:13
But but yeah, yeah, if we didn't have insurance, I don't know how
42:17
we would navigate that. But folks like to, they like to
42:21
feel like they're making what they think they're worth.
42:23
You know, too, one of the things I do is if, if the job says it's
42:28
paying 20, but you really want to make 25, don't apply for the
42:32
job at 20, OK? Because you could ask, hey, you
42:35
know, can you pay more? And then you could get excluded,
42:39
but and you can ask, you can always ask and they might come
42:42
around. But at the end of the day, if
42:44
they say, if you were making 25 before and now this job is
42:48
offering twenty, don't take it because you're still going to be
42:51
looking. And then you're going to have
42:53
another notch on your resume. And then you're going to look
42:56
unemployable or you're going to look like you're a job hopper.
42:59
And people were during COVID when it was hard to find people,
43:04
that was OK. People were paying top dollar
43:06
for anybody who would show up and actually show up on the
43:08
first day. Now not the case.
43:11
Now everybody is back to really, hey, my, I've got to make my
43:15
dollar stretch. All these companies are like,
43:17
I've got to make my dollar stretch a little higher, you
43:20
know, a little further. And everybody's cutting even at
43:22
key staff here, you know, when someone leaves, we don't replace
43:26
them. We found technology to replace
43:28
them. Our front desk is now Alice the
43:31
receptionist. She's a computer.
43:34
She's here every day on time. She smiles when anybody walks in
43:38
and she says hi. Welcome to Key Staff.
43:41
I'm Alice. Please choose from the available
43:44
menu options. And now it's like, man, Alice
43:47
gets employee of the month, you know, so, you know, you got to
43:52
do a good job or sadly, you will get replaced.
43:55
You know, so that's one of the things that I feel like people
43:59
need to realize that, you know, if you make yourself
44:02
unemployable, then your job will become a job where somebody
44:06
where technology will figure out how to, how to take care of that
44:09
job or they, they won't need you any longer.
44:12
You know, so you got to be careful about that.
44:15
Make yourself where you want to be a good employee, a good
44:18
asset, a good partner for that, for that company.
44:22
And as far as companies keeping employees, I mean, I think
44:25
giving people opportunities, I mean, one, our tagline is
44:28
creating opportunities for success.
44:30
People want to feel successful. They want to, they want to have
44:34
an opportunity. They want to move up.
44:36
They want to feel like they're doing a good job.
44:38
They want kudos, not overly kudos, but they want to feel
44:41
like, hey, they're, they're, they're succeeding, you know,
44:45
and just making sure that they feel appreciated and that you're
44:48
like, you know, giving them raises, you know?
44:51
Yeah. Yeah, Yeah.
44:52
Everybody would want that. Yeah, I think it's old school,
44:54
You know, I really do think it's old school.
44:55
I think, you know, you can have this great lobby and you can
44:57
have this great workstation, but at the end of the day, the work
45:00
has to get done, you know, and, and you people want to get, they
45:04
want to get a fair compensation for the work they're doing.
45:08
Amy, what's a particular challenge that you've overcome
45:12
in your life, whether personal, professional or a combination of
45:15
the two, and what are some lessons that you learned coming
45:17
out the other side? Yeah, I would say a challenge in
45:22
life. Yeah.
45:23
I mean, I've had a lot of those. I actually, if I'm over sharing,
45:28
I and I feel like I said, I say this a lot to folks because I
45:31
had like a mental breakdown a few years into starting P staff
45:36
and again, I think it's because I wasn't taking care of myself.
45:39
I was also I started an organization at the same time.
45:43
I don't know why I thought I was so invincible in my 20s, but I
45:47
started an organization called helping Austin with a group of
45:51
friends and, and some Rotarians. And we, we ended up becoming a,
45:58
a fundraising arm for Big Brothers, Big Sisters of Central
46:00
Texas. And we started an annual gala,
46:03
which that's a lot of pressure right there, an annual huge
46:06
event. And the first year we raised I
46:09
think $6000. And, and then this is kind of
46:13
cool because I just went to the gala.
46:15
Now we're 20 years in and I just went to the gala and I don't
46:19
have anything to do with it except they invited me back for
46:21
the 20 year, you know, kind of 20 year hoopla.
46:25
And they invited me down to the studio to record some stuff
46:29
about the earlier years and also to just kind of give me a little
46:33
bit of like, I don't know, Kuda a really nice kudos.
46:36
Really. It was sweet.
46:37
And we, my husband and I went. We sat at the front row, the
46:41
front table, the CEO table next to the queen of Culpepper, who
46:46
is a local celebrity in Austin. Got sit right next to her,
46:49
chatted with her the whole time and they raised over $1,000,000
46:54
in a night now. Wow.
46:56
So that is just a really cool thing that happened to me.
47:01
You know that that I was part of that.
47:03
But I will say as far as the challenge that goes, having all
47:07
of that stress starting, key staff starting helping Austin,
47:11
working at Hula Head at the same time, I just didn't not taking
47:16
care of myself as far as getting good sleep and getting exercise
47:21
and eating healthy, all of those things.
47:26
I think I just am getting overwhelmed with stress.
47:28
I just literally had a mental breakdown and spent thousands of
47:34
borrowed dollars from my parents, which I had to pay back
47:38
on therapy and, you know, and joined a support group, which I
47:44
think is super important. Ended up getting a diagnosis of
47:48
OCD, but learned a lot about what OCD actually is.
47:53
And it's just interesting because that time in my life, it
47:57
was funny because I would, I would come into the office
48:00
crying every day, but I still showed up every day and I'd come
48:03
in crying and we didn't have a very big team at the time.
48:06
So I'd go to my office crying and sit there and Jason would
48:09
walk in and he would say, why are you crying?
48:12
Oh, no, you know, it was just, it was just overwhelming.
48:15
Everything was overwhelming. And I was definitely in
48:17
depression And, but I, but I persevered.
48:20
I kept going to work. I kept showing up and Jason and
48:24
his wisdom said we'll make some sales calls that'll make you
48:28
feel better, which at the time sounded very rude to me and
48:34
uncaring. But the craziest thing is, and I
48:37
I don't know that I've ever actually come full circle to
48:39
Jason and thanked him for that good advice.
48:43
But I would, I would pick up the phone, I'd suck it up, I'd make
48:48
some sales calls and somebody would say, yeah, I'll meet with
48:52
you. And then I would drive to the
48:54
client side, crying the entire way there.
48:57
And then I'd pull myself together in the car and I would
49:02
walk in. I'd close a huge deal.
49:06
They'd sign right there. I think that was God's blessing
49:09
that he just kept delivering. Like really, really, like, look,
49:13
you're good, you're good, you know, and I would get a, a
49:17
contract signed and I would get back in my car and I'd cry all
49:20
the way back to the office. And I put the contract on
49:23
Jason's desk and I go, OK, they need 12 people to start tomorrow
49:27
or what I've heard. And he'd go, why are you crying?
49:31
You have work to do. Let's get these jobs filled, you
49:34
know? And so I think that The funny
49:37
thing is, I think that running the business and being stressed
49:41
out and being overworked led me into a depression.
49:44
But focusing on the business and it pulled me out of the
49:49
depression. And I spent about 8 months in a
49:51
really, really dark spot. And, and I always like to share
49:54
that with folks because I don't want everybody to think that
49:57
this is all rainbows and butterflies.
49:59
It's not. It is absolutely not.
50:01
And there are days that you want to throw in the towel.
50:04
And I did go to this therapist. This is back before we had any
50:08
money. This is when we were starting
50:09
key stuff. And I grew up really poor.
50:11
So like digging in the trash cans for.
50:13
So this is back years ago. And I went to this one therapist
50:19
that worked on a sliding scale. So I think I, I'm not even sure
50:22
I paid her maybe $10 or something.
50:25
I don't even remember. But she was brand new.
50:27
She was right out of school and she actually ended up referring
50:31
me to the Austin Center for Treatment for OCD, which was a
50:34
lot more expensive but was what I needed.
50:36
But she told me this and I wish I remember her name and I wish I
50:39
could find her because I would thank her.
50:41
She said, Amy, this thing that you hate so much that you're
50:44
sitting in my office crying about this thing that is causing
50:47
you so much stress, this OCD, this mental exhaustion, this
50:52
depression. She says, I can tell you right
50:54
now that this thing you hate so much, if you harness this energy
50:59
appropriately, you will be unstoppable.
51:03
And this thing you hate so much will become something that will
51:06
that will really take you to the top.
51:09
And I don't know why she said that to me.
51:12
And I don't know how that all worked out, but I can tell you
51:16
right now that was the best advice anyone's ever given me.
51:20
Because instead of looking it as a, you know, I don't know if
51:24
disability is the right word as a handicap.
51:28
Something holding you back? Instead of making letting it
51:30
hold me back, I said, you know what, I am going to use the
51:33
positive side of this diagnosis, which is that I, you know, get
51:40
hyper focused that I, you know, all of the things that you know,
51:44
do come that can come from good from this.
51:47
And I'm going to, I'm going to, I'm going to flip the switch and
51:50
I'm going to take, I'm going to take control and I'm going to
51:53
make this work for me. And I'll tell you if I can find
51:56
her now, I would. I give her a big hug and just
51:58
say you have no idea what that one statement in such a
52:02
vulnerable part of my life, in such a sad and scary time of my
52:07
life and how that impacted me, you know, so.
52:11
That's terrific. I really appreciate you opening
52:13
up about that, Amy. This is the kind of thing that I
52:15
don't think it's talked about enough.
52:17
People don't realize how much everybody, but in particular,
52:23
you know, people who have been very successful have struggled
52:26
with mental health. And, you know, to hear how, I
52:29
mean, you were in a really rough place.
52:31
You come to work crying. You'd drive in between
52:33
appointments crying. You'd come back to the office
52:35
crying like you were really struggling.
52:37
And I think what I heard you say, if I were to kind of
52:41
paraphrase is, you know, there were a few things that kind of
52:43
really helped you here. 1 was, you know, continuing on with
52:47
your purpose, which was the business. 2 was the power of
52:52
human connection to help kind of pull you out of this, right?
52:55
You go to a client site, you close a deal.
52:58
When you're struggling, people just they kind of want to hole
53:01
up, they want to withdraw, they kind of want to go inside
53:04
themselves. And that can cause it to
53:06
snowball. It causes it to get worse and
53:08
you know, fortunately your partner, although it seemed cold
53:11
at the time, was kind of there to give you a little kick in the
53:14
rear to say get back out there. And then I really love the part
53:18
about, you know, that early therapist that you talked to who
53:22
kind of gave you a different way to look at this.
53:25
This is not a disability or something to hold you back.
53:28
If you can spin it around, if you can sort of turn that
53:31
leverage that fulcrum point, this can be used for for good
53:35
and this can be what escalate elevates you above everybody
53:39
else. Yeah, yeah.
53:41
I feel really blessed by that. I think again, I think God might
53:44
put her in my path that day. I really do.
53:47
I think that that I was really, yeah, I think he was looking out
53:51
for me. And I and also, I mean, I did
53:53
the steps necessary. I tell everybody, if you are
53:56
suffering from depression or anxiety, all of it, all of the
54:00
bad things, right? Get involved in a support group
54:03
like this. The people in my support group
54:06
were so amazing. I just can't even tell you.
54:08
And then when I got married and, and I, and I say this, you know
54:13
this, not that many people know, but I guess a lot we'll know
54:16
soon. But I, I never tried to kill
54:18
myself, but I know why people do.
54:20
I was in that dark of a place. So when I say it was a dark
54:23
place, it was a dark place. And on my wedding day, one of
54:29
the, my whole OCD support group came to my wedding and one of
54:34
the, and I'm not a card person, please don't ever write me a
54:36
card. I will throw it away.
54:38
But she wrote me a card. It's one of the very few cards
54:41
I've ever kept. And it said, Amy, look at you
54:45
now look at what you have done and look at how you have.
54:51
And she said you could have missed this and that like now
54:57
when I read that card, even now, I look at my four beautiful
55:00
children and I look at my husband and my life and the fact
55:06
that helping Austin now raises over $1,000,000 in the night and
55:10
that I started a new thing called Omelets for Orphans and
55:14
it has skyrocketed. I mean, this is only our second
55:18
year and we did over $17,000. And I've gotten 34 children
55:22
sponsored in an in Kenya, you know, for Darko orphans.
55:29
And I look at the things that I'm doing that are positive in
55:32
the world. Don't get me wrong, I'm not I'm
55:34
I'm no St. but I look at the things I'm doing that and I'm
55:38
not trying to gloat. I'm really not, but that the I
55:41
look at the things I'm doing now that are positive in the world,
55:44
saving my son from a it's making me a little emotional, sorry,
55:48
but from like a life of being an orphan in a Chinese orphanage.
55:52
And I look at that now and I just go, wow, like I could have
55:56
missed all of that, you know? And so when people are in a dark
55:59
spot, I'm like, man, like turn it around friends, like take
56:04
control of your life, get on meds.
56:06
If you need to join a prayer group, join, do it all.
56:09
Do everything you need to do to make healthy choices and get
56:13
back into a positive mindset. Because if you don't have your
56:15
mind, you don't have anything, you know?
56:19
Amy, I think that's an absolutely beautiful story and a
56:22
terrific way to end our talk here today.
56:25
Well, thank you. Thank you SO.
56:27
Much sorry I didn't miss you. Don't apologize.
56:31
The emotion that you showed and the stories that you shared are
56:34
going to help other people today.
56:35
Yeah, I hope so. So thank, thank you for opening
56:38
up about that. Thanks.
56:39
Thanks for sharing your time and your energy with us.
56:41
Yeah, no problem. Folks, that's a wrap on another
56:44
episode of the Inspired Stories podcast.
56:47
Thanks for learning with us today.