Building a Texas Staffing Empire Through Personal Growth with Amy Clary

Intro  

Welcome to another edition of inspired stories where leaders share their experiences so we can learn from their successes, how they’ve overcome adversity, and explore current challenges they’re facing.

Anthony Codispoti (15:09.506)
Welcome to another edition of the Inspired Stories podcast, where leaders share their experiences so we can learn from their successes and be inspired by how they’ve overcome adversity. My name is Anthony Cotispodi and today’s guest is Amy Clary, CEO of Keystaff, a Texas staffing agency that has been around since 2004. They do the recruiting so you can get back to business. Direct hire, temp to permanent placements and temporary placements.

are all services that they excel in. They consistently deliver top candidates, provide great customer service, and get results for their clients, which leads to overwhelming customer satisfaction. They have office locations in Austin, Dallas, and San Antonio, Texas. They specialize in admin and clerical positions, general labor, light industrial, engineering and IT, call center, and accounting positions. And their website is keystaffinc.com.

Now, before we get into all that good stuff, today’s episode is brought to you by my company, Adback Benefits Agency, where we offer very specific and unique employee benefits that are both great for your team and fiscally optimized for your bottom line. One recent client was able to add over $900 per employee per year in extra cashflow by implementing one of our proprietary programs. Results vary for each company and some organizations may not be eligible.

To find out if your company qualifies, contact us today at adbackbenefitsagency.com. Now, back to our guest today, the CEO of Keystaff, Amy Clary. Thanks so much for sharing your time and your story with us today.

Amy Clary (16:46.753)
Yeah, thanks for having me.

Anthony Codispoti (16:48.458)
Okay, so Amy, tell me how did you first get interested in the staffing world before you started Keystaff?

Amy Clary (16:56.953)
So that’s kind of a funny story. I actually spent a couple of years living in Europe and in France and I became really good at making crepes. And I wanted to start a creperie when I moved back to the States, I wanted to start a creperie. so I, and that’s before they had any creperies in Austin. So this was a big deal. But after my business partner and I, who’s actually my business partner with Keystaff too.

After we placed, know, kind of priced out how much it would start, it would cost to start a restaurant in Austin 20 years ago, it was gonna be over a million dollars that we didn’t have. So, 20 years ago, yeah. So, and I might’ve had some lofty goals. I wanted it to be like you were sitting under the Eiffel Tower eating your crepe. I mean, again, maybe we could’ve done it cheaper.

Anthony Codispoti (17:38.62)
And this was 20 years ago even, yeah.

Anthony Codispoti (17:50.036)
Little bit of a visionary, are you? Yeah.

Amy Clary (17:53.165)
But he basically said, well, if we want to do that, then you probably need to get to, you need to get a job. So I said, okay. So I got a job at a staffing agency. You know, I’d always been interested in recruiting. And my goal was to work for, in my head, I had this goal that I was going to work for Southwest Airlines and be a corporate recruiter and be throwing out those squishy foam.

airplanes to college kids, you know, on college campuses. And that was kind of my dream of what I thought I was going to do. I talked to a couple of corporate recruiters at a couple of different airlines and they said, you have to start at an agency. Everybody starts at an agency and staffing and then recruiting. so, so then I went and I did some informational interviewing at a couple of different agencies and I landed a job at Staffing Solutions.

24 years ago, which is crazy because I don’t feel that old. So I feel like I’m 22. So I’m not real sure how these years just keep ticking by. So anyway, yeah, I ended up getting that job and I was there three and a half years, top producer nationwide out of 125 offices. Did pretty good. Found out that I…

Anthony Codispoti (18:55.522)
Where’d the time go?

Amy Clary (19:12.889)
was really good at it. just kind of assumed everybody was good at staffing, but it turns out I was really good at it. yeah, so I ended up landing that. so finally, my business partner says, well, why would we start a Cravery when you are doing so good in staffing? He always wanted to run a business and he actually worked at the time for Motorola. He’s a master’s of electrical engineering. So really smart guy on kind of the back end, you know.

Anthony Codispoti (19:40.001)
Mm-hmm.

Amy Clary (19:41.965)
So yeah, so we decided, hey, I think what we’ll do is we’ll start a staffing agency instead.

Anthony Codispoti (19:47.562)
So let’s go back a little bit before you started Keystaff. What was it that was making you so good at staffing right out of the gate? Right out of school, no background in staffing, and you become the top producer in the country out of 125 offices? What were you doing differently?

Amy Clary (20:03.307)
Yeah, rookie of the year even. Yeah, you know, I think it is that I’m not scared to talk to people. This is the people business. Your product is people, your customer is people, everything is people to people to people. And you’ve got to be a people pleaser, but you’ve also got to have that kind of fire in your belly to hit the numbers.

in this industry, you’ve got to be really multifaceted and you’ve got to be a sharp thinker and you’ve got to have a good memory because you’re interviewing all of these candidates and if you interview 20 candidates in a day, you’ve got to remember who Jimmy Brown was and what company he would fit good in with. You you got to take a lot of notes, you got to get yourself organized. So if you saw my desk, you probably wouldn’t think I was that organized.

but I know where every piece of paper is on that desk. And so if I call the office on vacation, I say, go to the stack of papers on the right, go six papers down, it’s a sticky note in the corner, you know.

Anthony Codispoti (21:06.868)
You’ve got a visual map in your head of where everything is located. just a quick sidebar, if you talk to the people who are like the best memory experts in the world, they actually teach a system like that. They teach you to sort of visualize these things that you’re trying to remember in your head in a physical space. whether you realize it or not, you’re onto something. Yeah, go ahead. Yeah.

Amy Clary (21:08.887)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Amy Clary (21:22.617)
Really?

Amy Clary (21:29.882)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I guess I should write that book. No, just kidding. Someone’s already done it. Yeah, no. So yeah, I think, you know, that and given the opportunity, I will say too that there was a lot of pressure there. That place was a pressure cooker. And I think at the time, and maybe I was just cut from a different cloth or maybe I was raised differently, but I was always so worried about letting people down.

Anthony Codispoti (21:56.78)
Mm-hmm.

Amy Clary (21:57.121)
And I was, I never even had this thought in my head, like, hey, I could quit and just go somewhere else. I thought, well, I have to make this work. You know, I have to, I have to be successful. I mean, that being said, I was also always anxious, which is not the upside to the story because no one wants to go around feeling anxious all the time. I was always anxious. I was going to lose my job. Even when I was top producer.

I would get called into the office and told, okay, well, what’s next? What’s in your pipeline? Even after I closed a big deal, what’s next? What’s next? And I don’t know if that pressure was ultimately good for me or bad for me, but it is what it was, right? So I handled it and I kept going up and up and every time I would have a good year, then my quota would go up, right? And I think that’s how people…

Anthony Codispoti (22:28.252)
huh.

Amy Clary (22:51.627)
a deal with salespeople still in most industries, not just staffing. think that’s, you know, that I have a lot of friends in sales and they go through the same thing. So you got to be able to handle some pressure, you know. You know, I would say that running a business is a different pressure and it’s a lot of pressure too, you know. So I think that set me up for success there too. And genuinely, I think in staffing, I like people. I like people. I like talking to people. I like getting to know their story.

And I think that that’s one thing you need to do on both sides. like sitting and I like making people into, I like collecting friends. A lot of people have collections. I like to collect friends. So, you know, on both the client side and the candidate side, when you meet cool people with a cool story and it is exciting, you know.

Anthony Codispoti (23:33.1)
love that.

Anthony Codispoti (23:41.514)
It’s a big reason why I love to do this podcast. you might, you might enjoy starting one of these yourself someday. So a little bit. So, so tell me, how were you dealing with that anxiousness, that anxiety as you were, you know, quickly moving up the ranks at your, your job there, any tools that

Amy Clary (23:43.661)
Yeah!

Amy Clary (23:47.655)
Yeah, that seems like a lot of work.

Amy Clary (24:01.101)
Well, probably, and it’s probably the wrong answer. I was probably drinking too much. mean, if I’m being a hundred percent honest, you know, I was young, I was in my twenties. So I was doing a lot of networking and have a good friend base. So I was spending a lot of time with friends. Probably, you know, I go to happy hours because in our world you can be invited. I mean, I always say, if you do it right in sales, you can eat breakfast, lunch, dinner and happy hour for free every day.

We get invited to so many networking things, you know, and I don’t think I was probably doing the best of taking care of myself, if I’m being honest, back in my 20s, you know, which is something I’m paying for now in my 40s, you know? So, but yeah, I mean, I’m not like I wouldn’t say like I had a problem, but I was just, I wasn’t, I was just not making as good a decision. So I mean, you asked, so I’m being 100 %

Anthony Codispoti (24:29.218)
you

Anthony Codispoti (24:55.102)
No, this is exactly what we want. Yeah. Just, just honesty. Yeah.

Amy Clary (24:56.941)
Yeah, I would go and relax. I’d go relax with my friends with a drink after work. back then I didn’t have any kids. I wasn’t married. So I was single and ready to hang out and have a good time. yeah, I I think I subscribe to the, now I’m making myself sound bad, but I subscribe to the work hard, play hard. And now it’s different. I’ve got four kids. I’m married, involved in the church, everything. at the end of the day, we still, even now with the stress that I

Anthony Codispoti (25:01.046)
Very common, yeah.

Amy Clary (25:26.473)
I a lot, I try to get away. I mean, I still take my work with me, but I enjoy what I’m doing and I enjoy getting away from what I’m doing at work. So I work hard at work and I play hard when I’m off of work, you know? yeah, so I don’t know.

Anthony Codispoti (25:46.42)
And so you mentioned you have a partner, what’s his name?

Amy Clary (25:49.719)
His name is Jason Stoneberg.

Anthony Codispoti (25:51.798)
Jason, so you and Jason decide, we’re not starting a creperie, that’s crazy. like you are killing it in the staffing agency, let’s start a staffing agency. So you decide you’re gonna start Keystaff and what was the first step? How’d you get your first customer?

Amy Clary (25:56.215)
No.

Yeah.

Amy Clary (26:07.395)
Well, let me tell you the first step, which is even before the first customer. The first step is pretty funny because I didn’t know, like I was really nervous because at the time I was doing really well at staffing solutions and I was nervous about leaving. I was nervous because by this point I had bought two duplexes and I had mortgages to pay and I was still in my twenties and I was thinking, what if, you know, this doesn’t work out? How am I going to go get another job? And I will tell you when I turned in my notice, I was

Anthony Codispoti (26:10.475)
Okay.

Amy Clary (26:37.289)
So sweaty. mean, my notice sat under my keyboard all day and I had reread it and reread it to where it was like almost see-through with my sweats. And Jason told me something, because I had gone over to his house the night before and he told me, said, Amy, you don’t have to quit. Because you don’t, you don’t have to quit. Even though we spent a year working on this business plan and we have rolled out everything. For Christmas, we asked for a fax machine. That’s back when you faxed resumes.

Anthony Codispoti (27:06.113)
Okay.

Amy Clary (27:06.529)
We asked for a dry erase board. asked for a rolling chair and my family bought me all of my Christmas wish list. It was the startup of the office basically. And he said, Amy, you don’t have to quit. You can work for staffing solutions forever. He goes, but just know you will work for someone else for the rest of your life if you don’t quit tomorrow. And that, what’s more scary, right? Like, you know, for someone who’s kind of an entrepreneurial,

Anthony Codispoti (27:28.758)
Well, that’s quite a speech.

Amy Clary (27:36.523)
minded, it was more scary to think about working for someone else for the rest of my life than it was to think about leaving and giving that notice. And I knew because I was the breadwinner for the whole office. knew that heads would roll if I quit. I knew my boss would get fired. knew, I mean, so I felt a lot of stress over that. And he did. He ended up getting fired because he couldn’t keep me.

Anthony Codispoti (27:58.37)
That’s a lot, that’s a lot on your shoulders.

Amy Clary (28:02.361)
And the AVP called me, she really loved me. She used to tell me that she wished that I was her daughter. But of course I couldn’t tell her I was leaving to go start at my own staffing agency. So I told her I was going to go back to work at the Hula Hut because it was so stressful at Staffing Solutions, which was true because I had two mortgages to pay. had to moonlight at the Hula Hut as a cocktail waitress. So that’s, you

Anthony Codispoti (28:13.654)
Mm-hmm.

Anthony Codispoti (28:28.244)
Okay. Even with as well as you were doing in staffing, you still needed a second job.

Amy Clary (28:34.521)
Well, after you get cut off of your income, right? So once you quit, yeah. Yeah, so, and I had gone back, I had actually already set that all up. So I wasn’t lying when I said, actually I’m quitting and I’m gonna go back to work at WhoHut as a waitress, as a cocktail waitress. They were like, they thought, everybody thought I was crazy. Of course this is before LinkedIn and Facebook and even before, I think it was maybe before MySpace even.

Anthony Codispoti (28:38.772)
this was after you quit that you had the side job, got it.

Anthony Codispoti (28:53.324)
She was thinking you’re crazy.

Amy Clary (29:03.181)
So nobody really tracked you. Nobody could really find you. So I mean, you could literally die in the same city and come back to life after non-compete ran out. So, and in Austin, Austin was a small town back then, but it was pretty crazy. But one really funny thing is I was really nervous to do this. I wanted to make sure I could work well with my partner because that was a lot of risk too.

Anthony Codispoti (29:19.031)
Yeah.

Amy Clary (29:30.369)
And so we actually started a business called Curbside Service. And we went around painting people’s curves, like painting. I would do all the marketing and I bought all the paint and I would take all of these flyers door to door as I was walking my dogs and say, if you’re interested in having your curve painting, which is with the numbers or whatever we offer, we offer the UT Longhorn symbol. offer, you know.

Anthony Codispoti (29:54.497)
Okay.

Amy Clary (29:58.553)
Probably wasn’t supposed to do that, I don’t know. But anyway, yeah, I’m like, I mean, was years ago. But we, yeah, so we, and so we would spend the weekends painting curves. Me and this, you know, I have a degree in government actually, from University of Texas. And my business partner has a master’s, his undergrad was from UT and his master’s from A &N. And which was kind of a,

Anthony Codispoti (30:02.018)
copyright infringement trademark violation.

Amy Clary (30:28.345)
That’s kind of a conflict in Texas, yeah. Yeah, but he, so we’d spend all weekend painting curves on our neighborhood. And then we got a call from a guy, I guess, who lived in the neighborhood who said, you painted my curb, you did a good job. I’m a builder out in the suburbs in Leander and I have a neighborhood going in and we are having trouble because they keep dropping like the stacks of bricks and the stacks of lumber off to the wrong lot.

Anthony Codispoti (30:29.718)
I would say those are heated rivals.

Anthony Codispoti (30:56.746)
Hmm.

Amy Clary (30:57.421)
We just cut the streets. So will you go in there and paint all the curves so that they can find where to drop each thing? So we got that contract. Then they said, well, do you do stop bars? Well, yeah, we’ll figure it out. Yeah, we could do that. Stop bars, like there’s actually a half of a, it goes across the street just halfway at a stop sign, a white bar that’s reflective. You don’t even notice them unless you’re the one painting them, you know?

Anthony Codispoti (31:12.162)
Do you do what?

Anthony Codispoti (31:21.352)
okay. Got it. Yeah. All right.

Amy Clary (31:25.323)
And so we said, yeah, we can just stop March. Yeah, we’ll figure it out. So we figured it out. This is even really close to before Google. there was this like, just have to we went to a painting store. We went to the paint store and we asked, so hypothetically, if we wanted to paint our street, how would we do that? And then APD called us, Awesome Police Department, and they said,

Anthony Codispoti (31:34.282)
Okay, so how did you figure it out? You just started testing different, okay, ask the experts.

Amy Clary (31:49.325)
You know, we can’t ever find addresses on the east side of Austin when there’s an emergency call, would you be interested in painting the whole, basically the whole east side of Austin. So finally, and we had mountains of spray paint. mean, literally our fingernails had spray paint under them. You know, we almost probably looked like we had a drug problem, know, a sniffing problem. So.

Anthony Codispoti (31:58.144)
What? That’s huge!

Amy Clary (32:13.493)
One day we woke up and we said, we really don’t want to do this anymore. We don’t want to spray paint. I mean, we’re making like $10 a curb, you know? And so we, so anyway, we said, okay, I think we’ve done this for a year. We’re doing pretty good. So let’s try this. Let’s roll out the staffing agency. So after we kind of established a baseline, because I think one of the most important things about business

Anthony Codispoti (32:20.352)
Okay.

Amy Clary (32:39.127)
being that I’ve been doing this now, started 2004, I’m 20 years into Keystaff, I still have the same partner. And I think the most important thing is if you are gonna have a partner, you better do your research on that partner first. You better pick a good partner. I’ve just talked to so many business owners who have just had so much conflict in their partnership. And I’m not saying we don’t have conflict. I would be lying if I said it was all glitter and kittens. But it is…

Anthony Codispoti (32:43.426)
Yeah.

Amy Clary (33:08.213)
It is so important to make sure that the perfect, that you have the perfect partner who supports you, who does the opposite of what you do. Like I do all the marketing. I’m the face of the company. I’m the one who goes out and meets with everybody. I take all the calls. And Jason, he does all the back office. He reads all the contracts. He does all the stuff I hate doing. I think that if we were both sales folks, I don’t know that it would have worked out for 20 years. I think if we were both.

back office, then I don’t think we would have sold anything. So he keeps us compliant. I make the money, he counts the money. And I think we’re both in a good role for ourselves. So if I’m giving some advice about business ownership, it is make sure you can trust that person too. Like I trust Jason, I mean, he is like a brother and I trust him so much. Like I just can’t even imagine, like even

Anthony Codispoti (33:38.624)
Mm-hmm.

Amy Clary (34:05.145)
after one day we’re done with key staff, we’ll still be lifelong friends. I mean, we’re 25 years into a friendship right now, you know? So we met at a wedding, actually, one of his friends got married and he was the best man. And I was there from Switzerland back and yeah, I worked at Hula Hut with his best friend from high school. And so we got sat at the table next to each other.

Anthony Codispoti (34:13.462)
How did you guys first meet?

Anthony Codispoti (34:29.41)
Okay.

Amy Clary (34:33.638)
And we just started chatting and ended up, you know, having a lot in common and becoming good friends and worked through it that way. So it was a good, it’s a good partnership. Yeah.

Anthony Codispoti (34:44.704)
That’s really good advice on picking your business partner. I mean, it’s as important, some would say as picking your spouse, your life partner, you know, because it’s a marriage, a different kind of marriage, but it’s a marriage that if things don’t go right, it’s messy and it’s painful and it’s ugly to dis-entwine. yeah, that’s really good advice. So how did you guys get the first client?

Amy Clary (34:53.305)
100%, 100%.

Amy Clary (35:04.536)
Yeah.

Amy Clary (35:09.443)
So I joined a Rotary Club, which I highly recommend for everybody. Rotary is the largest, I believe it’s the largest service-above-self organization in the world. Just a quick plug there. I’m not currently a Rotary, although I should get back into it. got four kids now, and so it became too much. But Rotary really has just good, it’s just good bones. It’s good people. It’s good, I mean, the four-way test of…

that you say at every meeting of the things that you think, say and do is number one, is it the truth? Number two, is it fair to all concerned? Number three, will it build goodwill and better friendships? And number four, is it beneficial to all concerned? So you’re sitting in a room with a group of people who are reciting that once a week and who are holding themselves to that standard. And so when I left Staffing Solutions, I shared it with my Rotary Club and I had

Been in Rotary probably for two years at the time. And everyone in Rotary rallied around me. My very first customer was a fellow Rotarian. He said, well, actually, we have a job order. I actually ended up, his name is George Lineal, amazing guy. I went to his wedding. He went to my wedding. Just really.

You just get really deep with people there because you’re connecting on a level of like, hey, we want to do good for the world and we want to be good people and we want to, you know, connect and serve in service. Yeah. And then when I said I’m leaving after my family exhausted their Christmas budgets for my office decor, I reached out to Rotary and they all these in the folks in Rotary, lot of them are business owners. And they said, I have a desk you can have. I have a

Anthony Codispoti (36:34.816)
What a great foundation to start from.

Amy Clary (36:54.925)
I have these office chairs you can have that we’re redoing our lobby so you can just have my old ones. And so that’s how we started. Yeah, so, yeah, George was my first client. He just needed one admin to start. But after I really got going, I hooked up with this guy who owned a company who does, gosh, they still applying to mine, which is amazing, but makes basically like wire harnesses.

a guy named Tom, really awesome guy. he said, he said, Amy, you have done what nobody else has ever been able to do for us. And he was also starting his business at the same time. He said, you have done what nobody else has been able to do for us. And I said, you know, I would love a referral. I sound like a real estate agent, right? Like I would love a referral. But I told him, said, I would love a referral. And he in front of me, and I’ll tell you, this is the best thing you could ever do for someone.

who you think is, who you have faith in. In front of me, he picked up his phone and he called 10 different friends, who all were business owners. And he says, I’ve got this girl right here who’s staffing for me, and she’s incredible, and you need to meet with her. And I ended up bringing in probably seven or eight, and then his little hub of friends became basically my first kind of.

Anthony Codispoti (37:55.084)
Yeah.

Amy Clary (38:16.697)
what I built the back of my business. And I will tell you, I am still working with, 20 years later, I’m still working with like six or seven of those. Some have sold, some have moved on. One company, we have a lot of folks out there right now in Austin. We’ve worked with them for 20 years and they’ve gone through three different name changes, like being sold, merged, whatever, and still a loyal client of ours.

Anthony Codispoti (38:44.384)
That’s phenomenal. What a great story.

Amy Clary (38:46.231)
Yeah, it is cool. And then again, like I collect friends. the guy who owned that company, he came to my wedding, you know, his son actually asked if he could do like an informational interview with me recently. So it’s all about, you know, giving back, you know, so.

Anthony Codispoti (39:04.674)
So talk to me about, we kind of covered it in the intro that I did, but tell me a little bit more about kind of what you guys specialize in.

Amy Clary (39:14.403)
So we do full-service staffing, you said, temp, temp to perm, direct hire. We’ve actually coined a new rollout called Smart Hire, which during COVID, we found that a lot of folks were wanting to hire from the employee marketplace because it was so hard to find people, but they didn’t want to pay the huge headhunter fee, right? The direct hire fee. So we started something called Smart Hire, which is where you basically, you direct hire a person for the price of attempt to hire.

Anthony Codispoti (39:34.668)
Okay.

Amy Clary (39:42.817)
So, and it’s paid out in 16 weekly installments. Instead of this big balloon payment of you need to pay me $25,000 for finding this person, I’m gonna do it in these weekly installments, which also gives them more of a guarantee that, you know, someone’s gonna stay around and especially during COVID when people were like leaving jumping quickly to get the next amount of money, right? So.

Anthony Codispoti (40:05.036)
So the total fee ends up being the same, it’s just spread out over time, a little less.

Amy Clary (40:08.002)
It’s a little less. It’s what they would have paid if it was attempt to hire.

Anthony Codispoti (40:14.124)
How are you able to do it more cost effectively for them?

Amy Clary (40:17.529)
Well, I mean, with direct hire staffing, traditionally, when I started in staffing, paid 30 % of the client paid 30 % of the person’s annual income and they paid it upfront in one big fee. And now pay rates are higher. Right. So it’s a little bit like, well, if someone, if someone direct hired somebody before for who was making $30,000 now that same person’s probably making $60,000. Right. So

Anthony Codispoti (40:44.418)
Mm.

Amy Clary (40:45.785)
the fee in essence would double, you know, but really the cost of running the business hasn’t doubled. So you can, we can slide that back. We don’t need, if it’s 30%, 30,000, you know, it’s $9,000. Now it would be $18,000. Well, I don’t think necessarily that, you know, $18,000 is, that’s a lot. And it’s a lot for a company to, know, I mean, if you’ve got a big company, if you’ve got the big companies, you know, they’ve got a lot of money, but if you’re…

Anthony Codispoti (40:58.604)
Gotcha.

Amy Clary (41:13.517)
talking like our kind of our sweet spot is that middle, you know, not the onesie two C’s not, not, you know, Jim Bob who owns a, you know, mechanic shop, but it’s more like someone who’s kind of middle, you know, with maybe anywhere from 25 to, you know, a few hundred employees, but it’s not going to be this conglomerate, you know, these huge organizations, you know, those folks are on these, you know, nationwide contracts with nationwide staffing agencies and.

You know, we give a lot better service. They’ve kind of, sadly for them, put themselves in a pickle where they’ve contractually bound to a company where we say, hey, you know what the thing about Keystaff is? You’ll never just tie to Keystaff. I never will ask for an exclusive. My goal is to help you find the right candidate for your position. I’m not gonna pigeonhole you that I can’t find him, then you’re not gonna hire someone. I want you to find the right candidate. I want to be the one who finds that candidate, but I’m also, you know, I’m also…

Anthony Codispoti (42:06.785)
and

Amy Clary (42:13.369)
you know, our organization isn’t huge either, right? So I want you to have opportunity and if we find them, you pay us and if, you know, if Kelly’s services finds them, you pay them, you know, so.

Anthony Codispoti (42:23.764)
And is your approach unusual? a lot of the other firms ask for an exclusive?

Amy Clary (42:28.109)
The big companies do. Yeah. I mean, I think they say you’re only going to use us, right? The big nationwide companies will say, we’ll give you a deal, but you only can use us. But it’s not really a deal because now you’re stuck. You know, if you’re the client and you’ve signed an exclusive with a large company, then, and you’ve said you can’t use anybody else. And then they say, you know what? And this is what happens. I mean,

I mean, just think about from business perspective, if you’re one of these large staffing agencies and you’ve signed this large company at a discount rate, but then you have other companies who, you you’re making a lot more on, you’re gonna service them first because they’re all stuck anyway. They can’t go anywhere else anyway. So they’re gonna have to wait for you to find them someone. yeah, whereas I’m like, hey, use me, try me out. you like key staff, if you like what we’re bringing you, then use me again.

Anthony Codispoti (43:09.622)
Yeah.

Anthony Codispoti (43:15.466)
Right. You’re not motivated. Yeah. The goals aren’t aligned.

Anthony Codispoti (43:24.49)
Yeah. And so let me ask you, some of these companies, know, 25 person company, I can understand a little bit more, but you’re also talking about some of your clients, you know, they’ve got a couple, maybe a few hundred employees. Those are companies that are of the size that they’ve probably got their own, you know, internal HR team. They probably can afford to hire somebody full-time or part-time that does recruiting. What is it that draws them to key staff to want to use their service, your services if

Amy Clary (43:24.633)
You know?

Amy Clary (43:41.145)
Mm-hmm.

Anthony Codispoti (43:52.572)
maybe they have some of these capabilities in-house.

Amy Clary (43:56.025)
I’ve said a lot of times when someone hires a recruiter in office, don’t get me wrong, some clients say, hey, we have our own team, we don’t need staffing. Okay, got it. But I find a lot of times what they find is they want the try before you buy. They want to try folks out. They want other pockets of candidates as well. They don’t want to commit. They don’t want to do all the paperwork. We’re already doing all the paperwork. If you’re doing attempt to hire,

We’re doing all the paperwork. You call me, you call someone on my team and you say, you know what? Jessie is not working out. And guess what I do? I call Jessie and say, you’re not working out. Don’t go back tomorrow. And there’s no, there’s no awkward conversations. There’s no write-ups. The client doesn’t have to do any of the dirty part of employment, which is the firing, right? The counseling, the firing. I’ll do all the dirty stuff.

Anthony Codispoti (44:46.775)
Mm-hmm.

Amy Clary (44:50.233)
And it’s kind of nice because it takes the person, know, because if you’ve got somebody working on site with you, right, and you like this person, but man, she’s always late, right? She’s late every single day. And you’re like, hey, Betty, we really need you to be at work on time. And she’s like, okay, yes, I’ll do that. And then the next day she’s late, and the next day she’s late, but when she’s there, she does good work, right? But now it’s causing other people to say, well, Betty’s always late, right? So now, instead of you calling Betty,

Anthony Codispoti (45:01.175)
Yeah.

Amy Clary (45:18.581)
I’m calling Betty and I’m like, look, Betty, you need to pull it together and get to work on time every day or you’re going to lose your job. Now you’re not the bad guy. I’m the bad guy. people like that. They like not having.

Anthony Codispoti (45:26.37)
I see.

So it’s like grade school rather than me having to break up with the girl. I can send one of my friends over. Is that what it is? Okay. Yeah. Okay. Now that makes a lot of sense.

Amy Clary (45:35.341)
Send your buddy, yeah, send your buddy, your wingman. Yeah, I think people like that. And they also like that there’s just not the, you know, there’s not the commitment upfront, right? Once you onboard somebody, you feel pretty committed to them, that they’re coming in as a temporary. And you know what? And I tell clients this too, and I don’t want to mistake in this. It’s temp on both sides. So if you’re the client and you’re saying, hey,

Anthony Codispoti (45:48.012)
Mm-hmm.

Amy Clary (46:02.763)
I wanna tempt these people because I wanna try before I buy. Just know that the people are saying, I wanna try this company out before I commit as well. And I think I like to be upfront with clients on that because sometimes I think that they hold all the cards because they pay, but we’re in a market right now where people can leave pretty quickly, right? So you’ve got to be good to your employees and hope your employees are good to you, right? It’s gotta go both ways, you know.

Anthony Codispoti (46:10.24)
Yeah, that’s fair.

Anthony Codispoti (46:30.63)
And most of the folks I talked to in my own business and on this podcast, yeah, they still tell me it’s a pretty tight labor market. It sounds like that’s what you’re seeing as well.

Amy Clary (46:40.599)
Yeah, I mean for the good talent, it’s a tight labor market. You want good, you want people who are gonna really, I mean there’s a lot of people available to work, but they don’t wanna work, right? So if you’re looking for folks who are really gonna excel your business, you definitely need to hire the right people. And you need to, you know, the old adage, Hire slowly, fire quickly, it still applies today, right?

Anthony Codispoti (46:48.78)
Okay.

Amy Clary (47:06.518)
Find good folks again just the same thing like with a business partner You know make sure that you’re surrounding yourself with people who are going to take you to that next level and take your organization to the next level

Anthony Codispoti (47:16.012)
Well, I think this is probably another benefit of working with key staff is that this is your sole expertise is finding, training, retaining good folks, you know, whereas the, you know, the company that has their own internal person, it’s one person or two people. And it’s, hard for them to be spread out and it’s hard for them to have access to all the same databases and tools and resources and knowledge base that you guys do. Since this is what you focus on exclusively.

Amy Clary (47:21.997)
Mm-hmm.

Amy Clary (47:25.465)
Yes.

Amy Clary (47:33.027)
No.

Amy Clary (47:45.209)
100%. You know, I did go on a client visit one time and the guy told me, well, why would I use you? I get, you know, I throw the job on Indeed and I get a hundred resumes in a day. And I said, well, you called me. You tell me why you’re calling me. I mean, obviously. Yeah. Well, he doesn’t want to sift through all the resumes. Yeah. I mean, he doesn’t want to do the work, right? Yeah. You can, you can throw an ad up on Indeed and you can get candidates or you can throw it up on ZipRecruiter or any of the

Anthony Codispoti (47:58.818)
What did he say? What did he say? I want to know. What was his response? Yeah.

Amy Clary (48:15.107)
tools that we use, but at the end of the day, there’s still a lot of work that goes between throwing that ad up, A, creating that job description, making sure that you’ve done it legally, that you don’t have anything in there that’s gonna get you in trouble, and then putting in that job ad up and then waiting. Even if you have a job that’s an easy to fill job, then you’re still going to get, you’re gonna have a whole road worth of work in front of you as far as getting the candidates in, preventing them, screening them.

Anthony Codispoti (48:28.322)
Yeah.

Amy Clary (48:44.569)
Hey, asking them, you know, what are your requirements, right? Do you want to make sure that if you’re hiring Betty for the front office that she has multi-line phone experience and can type 45 words per minute? Well, she can tell you she does, but until you get there, I I had a situation one time where a client told me, I’ve got this girl in my office and she doesn’t even know where the stamp goes on an envelope, like from another agency. I’m like, well, I mean, those are things that you should probably try to vet before you hire.

Anthony Codispoti (49:13.483)
Who would think to even ask that question in an interview?

Amy Clary (49:16.225)
Yeah, well, I mean, probably if they’ve got a lot of the other skills, they’ve probably got that figured out too, you know, but just have to think about, you know, of course, I don’t want to disillusion anybody that I asked that to every candidate, but it was that was like an eye opener to me, like, wow, you know, you’ve got to make sure that if someone says they’ve got this experience that they’ve got it, you know, so you’ve got to do testing, you’ve got to do vetting, you want it not only pre qualifying, but then when they come in,

Anthony Codispoti (49:20.588)
Fair enough. So.

Amy Clary (49:43.469)
Then you’ve also got to run their background check, make sure they’re not on drugs. mean, there’s a lot of, a lot of steps.

Anthony Codispoti (49:48.524)
So if somebody says I can type 100 words a minute, that’s something that you’re verifying before you, that’s phenomenal.

Amy Clary (49:52.833)
yeah, yeah, you wanna put them on a program and there’s all these programs out there now that you can do where they just go in and you know, a script comes up and they’ve gotta type it and it’ll tell you how many words per minute they actually type, so.

Anthony Codispoti (50:04.492)
Okay. Well, I mean that plus sifting through the resumes alone is worth a nice fee.

Amy Clary (50:12.089)
Yeah, well, and interview, we still, and maybe we’re a little old school, we still face to face every candidate. And I feel like that’s a huge service because a lot of these, especially larger agencies now, they are doing everything through chatbots. And we do have the technology. We have spent quite a bit of money and time upgrading our technology where we have chatbots. But I still want to lay eyes on that candidate before they walk into my client’s office. I want to see that that person looks the way that the, I mean,

Image is everything, right? I want to see that when they walk in there that they are dressed to impress. I tell every single person, make sure you bring pre-written questions, a pen and a paper, get your questions answered at the interview so that you don’t have questions on the third, fourth day of work that you should have had answered at the interview, right? And so we’re counseling on both sides, right? We’re telling the candidates like, hey, this is how you can be successful too. So it’s really, I mean, it’s a matchmaking service really for.

Anthony Codispoti (51:01.026)
Yeah.

Anthony Codispoti (51:08.78)
Really is. You’ve got sales that you’re doing on both sides. You got to try to sell to the employee, got to sell to the employer, right? And then connect them together. You mentioned that some people maybe in their job descriptions, they’re putting things in there that might get them into some legal trouble. What would be some examples of that?

Amy Clary (51:09.913)
for.

100%.

100%. Yeah. Yeah.

Amy Clary (51:28.173)
Well, I mean, if you say, we’re looking for a female candidate or hey, we’re looking for men only, course, anything that anything that’s going to take off of the EOE clause that you need to have at the bottom of every single posting. So if you don’t already have the EOE clause saying that you’re an equal opportunity employer and addressing all of the things that you are at equal race, religion, know, ethnic origin.

Anthony Codispoti (51:32.172)
Mm-hmm.

Amy Clary (51:54.297)
and sexual orientation, all of the things that are protected classes at the bottom of every single job posting, then you can get in a lot of trouble. And if you’re not writing the right things, if you’re not saying upfront, you know, you can’t discriminate right against if you have a man or a woman in a position anymore, right? So if you say, you know, we want a female for this role,

Anthony Codispoti (52:12.886)
Mm-hmm.

Amy Clary (52:21.305)
Yeah, and a male applies and he’s feeling a little feisty that day and he screenshots that and takes it to an employment attorney. Then as an organization, you could be slapped with a lot of fines. So one of the things we do for all of our internal employees is they have to go through employment law training, which is a really great, there’s a great book that actually Texas put out. So course we’re only in Texas, but.

Anthony Codispoti (52:22.444)
Oops.

Anthony Codispoti (52:28.279)
Huh?

Anthony Codispoti (52:36.428)
Okay.

Amy Clary (52:50.565)
They put out an employment law book, which you can get free off of the Texas Workforce Commission website. And it’s pretty thick and it’s a terrible read, but it’s got a lot of great information. And we, through training our internal team, everyone has to pass a test, just like if they were passing a CPA test, but it’s just for us internally.

but you want to make sure that I want to make sure that I’m not going to get sued for something that one of my teammates, you know, does. And we call our teammates, we call them here partners. So just like every time I hire somebody internally, they legitimately become a business partner at Keystaff, right? Just like me and Jason. And just like if I let Jason down, I would be a poor partner in his eyes. And if he let me down, he would, you know, that would not be a good partnership. That’s what I tell folks when they come.

and work internally here at Keystaff is that in essence, you’re a business partner. So I’m not gonna let you down and you better not let me down.

Anthony Codispoti (53:57.347)
What advice can you give or what have you found are the best ways to recruit good folks and once you find them to retain them?

Amy Clary (54:09.017)
Internally, you mean for P-Staff internally? In general, okay, Yeah, recruiting good folks. My biggest tickler is longevity. If you don’t have longevity on your resume, and I cross-reference all resumes for professional positions with LinkedIn, so I can see if what’s on the resume is the truth, right?

Anthony Codispoti (54:12.45)
No, in general. Yeah, even with the folks that you place.

Amy Clary (54:38.073)
Were you really there for four years or not? Again, if somebody works for a company for three months and then they leave for six months and then they leave for nine months and they might have great reasons. They might say, I got recruited out and they were paying me $10,000 more. Well, that’s a good reason. And then six months later they say, well, I got recruited out or whatever it could be also, we moved or this or that.

All the, this is what happens or I got laid off from my fifth job in a row. There’s a reason, right? If you keep getting laid off, there’s a reason you keep getting laid off. So I’m really a stickler on that and I wanna make sure. Also, I think it’s super important these days to look people up on their social media. Because you’re not just buying what’s on that resume. You are buying that personality. You are buying that…

Anthony Codispoti (55:13.142)
You see a pattern.

Amy Clary (55:34.125)
You know, if you want somebody who’s fun loving and who’s gonna show up to your company happy hours and be a good time, you’ll find that out on their Facebook page or on their Instagram, right? If you’re wanting someone who’s just gonna come to work, get the job done, who kind of keeps to themselves, you’ll find that out on their Facebook page, you know? So I think it’s important to make sure that you know who you’re hiring too. in their, whatever they’re putting out in the world, just make sure you’re taking advantage of.

of the time that you have between interview and offer to double check that that’s the person you want working next to you every day.

Anthony Codispoti (56:10.146)
And so what about on the employee side? What are they looking for? What attracts them to try a new job and then keeps them there?

Amy Clary (56:20.729)
Yeah, I think for employees, think that right now there’s a lot of stuff going on. And it’s funny because I find that a lot of my clients are saying, hey, we offer lunch once a week and that doesn’t really seem to keep people. And they’re saying, we offer great benefits. That doesn’t really seem to keep people. What keeps people is the pay rate. I mean, if I’m just going to throw it out there, it’s going to be your… I I can post a job with a good pay rate and have no benefits and people will still take the…

higher pay rate with no benefits, right? I don’t know why that is. I know for me and my family, I’ve got four kids and one of my kids is adopted from China and has hydrocephalus and we’ve done brain surgeries. So I’m all about the benefits. Don’t get me wrong. But yeah, if we didn’t have insurance, I don’t know how we would navigate that. But folks like to, they like to feel like they’re making what they think they’re worth, you know, too.

Anthony Codispoti (56:52.981)
Mmm.

Amy Clary (57:18.393)
One of the things I do is if the job says it’s paying 20, but you really want to make 25, don’t apply for the job at 20. Okay? Because you could ask, you know, can you pay more? And then you could get excluded. But, and you can ask, you can always ask and they might come around. But at the end of the day, if they say, if you were making 25 before and now this job is offering 20, don’t take it because you’re still going to be looking.

and then you’re gonna have another notch on your resume. And then you’re gonna look unemployable or you’re gonna look like you’re a job hopper. people were, during COVID, when it was hard to find people, that was okay. People were paying top dollar for anybody who would show up and actually show up on the first day. Now, not the case. Now everybody is back to really, hey, I’ve gotta make my dollar stretch. All these companies are like, I’ve gotta make my dollar stretch a little higher, you know, a little further.

Everybody’s cutting, even at Keystaff here, you when someone leaves, we don’t replace them. We found technology to replace them. Our front desk is now Alice, the receptionist. She’s a computer. She’s here every day on time. She smiles when anybody walks in and she says, hi, welcome to Keystaff. I’m Alice. Please choose from the available menu options. And now it’s like, man, Alice gets employee of the month, you know?

Anthony Codispoti (58:38.242)
Okay.

Amy Clary (58:43.167)
So, you you got to do a good job or sadly you will get replaced, you know. So that’s one of the things that I feel like people need to realize that, you know, if you make yourself unemployable, then your job will become a job where somebody where technology will figure out how to take care of that job. They won’t need you any longer, you know. So you got to be careful about that. Make yourself where you want to be.

Anthony Codispoti (59:01.676)
Yeah.

Anthony Codispoti (59:05.154)
Yeah.

Amy Clary (59:10.325)
a good employee, a good asset, a good partner for that company. And as far as companies keeping employees, I I think giving people opportunities. mean, our tagline is creating opportunities for success. People wanna feel successful. want to have an opportunity. They wanna move up. They want to feel like they’re doing a good job. They want kudos, not overly kudos, but they wanna feel like, hey, they’re succeeding, you know?

And just making sure that they feel appreciated and that you’re like, you know, giving them raises. Yeah. Yeah. I think it’s old school. You know, I really do think it’s old school. think, you know, you can have this great lobby and you can have this great workstation, but at the end of the day, the work has to get done, you know, and, and you, people want to get, they want to get a fair compensation for the work they’re doing.

Anthony Codispoti (59:43.562)
Yeah. Yeah. Everybody would want that.

Anthony Codispoti (01:00:00.61)
Amy, what’s a particular challenge that you’ve overcome in your life, whether personal, professional, or a combination of the two? And what are some lessons that you learned coming out the other side?

Amy Clary (01:00:12.503)
Yeah, I would say a challenge in life. Yeah, I mean, I’ve had a lot of those. actually, if I’m oversharing, and I feel like I say this a lot to folks because I had like a mental breakdown a few years into starting Key Staff. And again, I think it’s because I wasn’t taking care of myself. was also, I started an organization at the same time. I don’t know why I thought I was so invincible in my 20s, but I started.

an organization called Helping Austin with a group of friends and some rotarians. we ended up becoming a fundraising arm for Big Brothers Big Sisters of Central Texas. And we started an annual gala, which that’s a lot of pressure right there, an annual huge event. And the first year we raised, I think, $6,000. And then this is kind of cool because I just went to the gala now we’re years in.

And I just went to the Gaylord and I don’t have anything to do with it except they invited me back for the 20 year, you know, kind of 20 year hoopla and they invited me down to the studio to record some stuff about the earlier years and also to just kind of give me a little bit of like, I don’t know, kudos, really nice kudos. Really it was sweet. And we, my husband and I went, we sat at the front row, the front table, the CEO table next to the,

Anthony Codispoti (01:01:28.683)
Yeah, that’s nice.

Amy Clary (01:01:38.169)
Queda Culpepper, who is a local celebrity in Austin, got to right next to her, chatted with her the whole time. And they raise over a million dollars in a night now. So that is just a really cool thing that happened to me, you know, that I was part of that. But I will say, as far as the challenge that goes, having all of that stress, starting Keystaff, starting helping Austin, working at Hula Hut at the same time.

Anthony Codispoti (01:01:47.798)
Wow.

Amy Clary (01:02:07.065)
I just didn’t, not taking care of myself as far as getting good sleep and getting exercise and eating healthy, all of those things. I think I just, and getting overwhelmed with stress, I just literally had a mental breakdown and spent thousands of borrowed dollars from my parents, which I had to pay back on therapy. And, you know, and

Anthony Codispoti (01:02:24.224)
Yeah.

Amy Clary (01:02:35.799)
joined a support group, which I think is super important, ended up getting a diagnosis of OCD, but learned a lot about what OCD actually is. And it’s just interesting because that time in my life, it was funny because I come into the office crying every day, but I still showed up every day. And I’d come in crying and we didn’t have a very big team at the time. So I’d in my office crying and sit there and Jason would walk in and he would say,

Anthony Codispoti (01:02:44.034)
you

Amy Clary (01:03:03.993)
Why are you crying? I like, no. It was just overwhelming. Everything was overwhelming. And I was definitely in depression. But I persevered. I kept going to work. I kept showing up. And Jason, in his wisdom, said, well, make some sales calls. That’ll make you feel better. Which at the time sounded very rude to me and uncaring. But the craziest thing is, and I don’t know that I’ve ever actually come full circle to Jason and.

Anthony Codispoti (01:03:08.258)
That’s a lot. Yeah.

Anthony Codispoti (01:03:25.548)
cold. Yeah.

Amy Clary (01:03:33.347)
Thank Tim for that, advice. But I would, I would pick up the phone, I’d suck it up, I’d make some sales calls and somebody would say, yeah, I’ll meet with you. And then I would drive to the client side crying the entire way there. And then I’d pull myself together in the car and I would walk in, I’d close a huge deal. They’d sign right there. I think that was God’s blessing that.

He just kept delivering like really, really like, look, you’re good. You’re good. You know, and I would get a contract signed and I would get back my car and I cry all the way back to the office. And I put the contract on Jason’s desk and I go, okay, they need 12 people to start tomorrow or whatever. he’d go, why are you crying? You have work to do. Let’s get these jobs filled, you know? And so I think that the funny thing is I think that

running the business and being stressed out and being overworked led me into a depression, but focusing on the business and it pulled me out of the depression. And I spent about eight months in a really, really dark spot. And I always like to share that with folks because I don’t want everybody to think that this is all rainbows and butterflies. It’s not, it is absolutely not. And there are days that you want to throw in the towel.

Anthony Codispoti (01:04:45.28)
Yeah.

Amy Clary (01:04:57.943)
And I did go to this therapist, this is back before we had any money. This is when we were starting Keystaff and I grew up really poor. So like digging in the trash cans poor. So this is back years ago and I went to this one therapist that worked on a sliding scale. So I think I, I’m not even sure I paid her maybe $10 or something. I don’t even remember, but she was brand new. She was right out of school and she actually ended up referring me to the Austin Center for Treatment for OCD, which

was a lot more expensive, but was what I needed. But she told me this and I wish I remember her name and I wish I could find her because I would thank her. She said, Amy, this thing that you hate so much that you’re sitting in my office crying about this thing that is causing you so much stress, this OCD, this mental exhaustion, this depression. She says, I can tell you right now that this thing you hate so much, if you harness this energy appropriately, you will be unstoppable. And this

thing you hate so much will become something that will really take you to the top. And I don’t know why she said that to me. And I don’t know how that all worked out, but I can tell you right now, that was the best advice anyone’s ever given me. instead of looking at as a, I don’t know if disability is the right word, as a handicap, I…

Anthony Codispoti (01:06:02.935)
Wow.

Anthony Codispoti (01:06:20.62)
Something holding you back, right?

Amy Clary (01:06:22.137)
Instead of letting it hold me back, I said, you know what? I am going to use the positive side of this diagnosis, which is that I get hyper-focused, I… All of the things that can come from good from this, and I’m going to flip the switch, and I’m going to take control, and I’m going to make this work for me. And I’ll tell you, if I could find her now, I would…

I’d give her big hug and just say, have no idea what that one statement in such a vulnerable part of my life, in such a sad and scary time of my life, how that impacted me, you know, so.

Anthony Codispoti (01:07:04.118)
That’s terrific. I really appreciate you opening up about that, Amy. This is the kind of thing that I don’t think gets talked about enough. People don’t realize how much everybody, but in particular, you know, people who have been very successful have struggled with mental health. And, you know, to hear how, I mean, you were in a really rough place. You come to work crying, you drive in between appointments crying, you come back to the office crying, like you were really struggling. And

Amy Clary (01:07:10.393)
for sure.

Amy Clary (01:07:18.903)
Yeah.

Anthony Codispoti (01:07:30.72)
I think what I heard you say, if I were to kind of paraphrase is, there were a few things that kind of really helped you here. One was, you know, continuing on with your purpose, which was the business. Two was the power of human connection to help kind of pull you out of this, right? You go to a client site, you close a deal. You know, when you’re struggling, people just, they kind of want to hole up, you know, they want to withdraw, they kind of want to go inside themselves. And that can cause it to snowball. It causes it to get worse.

Amy Clary (01:07:48.183)
Yes.

Anthony Codispoti (01:08:00.866)
And, you know, fortunately your partner, although it seemed cold at the time was kind of there to give you a little kick in the rear to say, you know, get back out there. And then, I really loved the part about, you know, that early therapist that you’d talked to who kind of gave you a different way to look at this. This is not a disability or something to hold you back. If you can spin it around, if you can sort of turn that leverage, that fulcrum point, this can be used for, for good. And this can be what.

Amy Clary (01:08:07.95)
Yeah.

Amy Clary (01:08:14.574)
you

Amy Clary (01:08:28.952)
Yeah.

Anthony Codispoti (01:08:29.94)
escalate, elevate you above everybody else. Yeah.

Amy Clary (01:08:32.749)
Yeah, yeah, I felt really blessed by that. I think again, I think God like put her in my path that day. I really do. think that I was really, yeah, I think he was looking out for me. And also, I mean, I did the steps necessary. I tell everybody, if you are suffering from depression or anxiety, all of it, all of the bad things, right? Get involved in a support group. Like the people in my support group were so amazing. I just…

Anthony Codispoti (01:08:39.425)
think so.

Amy Clary (01:09:00.963)
can’t even tell you. And then when I got married and I say this, you know, this not that many people know, but I guess a lot will know soon, but I never tried to kill myself, but I know why people do. I was in that dark of a place. So when I say it was a dark place, it was a dark place. And on my wedding day, one of the, my whole OCD support group came to my wedding and one of the, and I’m not a card person, please don’t ever write me a card.

Anthony Codispoti (01:09:12.898)
Hmm.

Amy Clary (01:09:30.157)
I will throw it away, but she wrote me a card. It’s one of the very few cards I’ve ever kept. And it said, Amy, look at you now. Look at what you have done and look at how you have, and she said, you could have missed this. And that, like now, when I read that card even now, I look at my four beautiful children and I look at my husband and my life and the fact that

helping Austin now raises over a million dollars in the night and that I started a new thing called Omelets for Orphans and it has skyrocketed. I mean, this is only our second year and we did over $17,000 and I’ve gotten 34 children sponsored in Kenya, you know, for Darko Orphans. And I look at the things that I’m doing that are positive in the world. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not, I’m no saint.

But I look at the things I’m doing that, and I’m not trying to gloat, I’m really not, but I look at the things I’m doing now that are positive in the world, saving my son from a, it’s making me a little emotional, sorry, but from like a life of being an orphan in a Chinese orphanage. And I look at that now and I just go, wow, like I could have missed all of that. You know, and so when people are in a dark spot, I’m like, man, like turn it around, friend, like take control of your life.

Anthony Codispoti (01:10:32.716)
Please do,

Amy Clary (01:10:58.913)
Get on meds if you need to, join a prayer group, do it all, do everything you need to do to make healthy choices and get back into a positive mindset. Because if you don’t have your mind, you don’t have anything, you know? So.

Anthony Codispoti (01:11:12.17)
Amy, I think that’s an absolutely beautiful story and a terrific way to end our talk here today. Thank you so much for sharing. Don’t apologize. The emotion that you showed and the stories that you shared are going to help other people today. So thank you for opening up about that. Thanks. Thanks for sharing your time and your energy with us.

Amy Clary (01:11:17.849)
well thank you. Sorry I didn’t answer you.

Amy Clary (01:11:28.301)
Yeah, I hope so.

No. Yeah, no problem.

Anthony Codispoti (01:11:35.83)
Folks, that’s a wrap on another episode of the Inspired Stories podcast. Thanks for learning with us today.