🎙️ How can business leaders transform personal setbacks into organizational success?
Join us for an insightful conversation with Jim Weaver, CEO of The Ōnin Group, as he shares his inspiring journey from an aspiring musician to leading one of the most innovative staffing companies in the industry. Discover how early career disappointments fueled his drive to build a people-first organization focused on empowering both employees and clients.
✨ Key Takeaways from This Episode:
- Turning personal challenges into leadership strengths
- The power of mentorship and strategic guidance
- Creating a culture of empowerment and opportunity
🌟 Key People Who Shaped Jim’s Path:
- Keith and Hugh (Ōnin Founders): Identified Jim’s potential and supported his growth
- Early Mentors: Provided guidance during pivotal career transitions
- Wife: Supported career change and financial discipline
- Team Members: Embraced innovative approaches to growth
- Bill Kennedy: CEO mentor offering strategic insights
👉 Don’t miss this impactful discussion with a business leader who transformed career disappointment into organizational innovation while staying committed to creating opportunities for others.
LISTEN TO THE FULL EPISODE HERE
Transcript
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: 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 Kodespode and today’s guest is Jim Weaver, the CEO of the Onan Group, a Birmingham based group of companies focused on staffing and recruiting. They make a real difference in people’s lives by connecting workers with jobs that matter and providing them with life changing tools to thrive. They’re experts in the light industrial staffing sector and they rank as one of the largest staffing firms in the US. Jim’s professional journey at the Onan Group has been one of exponential growth for both himself and the company. Beginning as a salesperson in 2001, Jim worked his way up to become the CEO earlier this year. Over the past two decades he’s played a vital role in building a strong performance based culture that has resulted in 100X growth and recognition as one of the nation’s best staffing firms to work for for four consecutive years.
As CEO he is focused on creating opportunity and empowering leaders at every level of the organization who in turn do the same for their teammates, clients and communities on an ever-increasing scale. Now before we get into all that good stuff, today’s episode is brought to you by my company, Add Back 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 cash flow by implementing one of our programs. Results vary for each company and some organizations may not be eligible.
To find out if your company qualifies, contact us today at AddBackBenefitsAgency.com. Alright now back to our guest today, the CEO of the Onan Group, Jim Weaver. I appreciate you making the time to share your story today.
Yeah good to be here. So Jim before we talk about your time at the Onan Group, I’d like to hear about what first drew you to the staffing industry in general?
Jim Weaver: I would say desperation needing to eat drew me to the staffing industry. Before I became a corporate weenie, I was a road musician and I was living in Nashville, had finally made it onto a tour bus with a country artist Kevin Sharp.
He had a couple hits in the 90s and so 99 and then 2000, late 2000 he just cleaned house, just fired his entire band except for one guy he was close with and pretty devastating for me and you don’t get severance in that world. And as I licked my wounds, I looked at my wife and we said, wow we need to pay the rent and eat so I went into an Onan office, it was one of four at the time in the country in Nashville. I knew Lisa the manager there and I was looking for a warehouse job or whatever just to pay the bills and she looked at me and she said, hey we have a sales opening, you should interview for that job, you’d be great at it and I did and got the gig, took the job thinking I would just do it until I got my next road gig and here we are 23 years later so that’s kind of the way life happens but it really was not by design that I got into this business at all.
Anthony Codispoti: So your first role in a staffing business was with Onan as a salesperson?
Jim Weaver: First role like on the team in staffing, I had been a temp for some of the big staffing companies, I used to augment my spotty musicians income doing temp work for some of the big guys but yeah this was my first step, being on the team of a staffing company, the internal team.
Anthony Codispoti: And what is it that you think your friends saw in you that said no, no, no, no, not the warehouse job for you, I see you in a sales role?
Jim Weaver: You know I think I’ve always been able to connect with people, maybe a little lacking in IQ but EQ is probably a strength of mine so I think that’s probably what it was.
Anthony Codispoti: So lacking in IQ, is it safe to say that you maybe weren’t the best student in the world?
Jim Weaver: Yeah I don’t necessarily want to, yeah I was lower 50% of my high school class and I got into college but I had to really, really work at least the first go around, I took a couple shots at college and definitely was not the top of the class although I think for some reason I think in my mid-20s or 30s maybe a part of my brain downloaded that wasn’t there early on and I think I got smarter over time or maybe I just play in the long game and have never stopped, actually I think that’s probably what it is. I really am curious and like to learn and I think a lot of people that do really well in school maybe they just kind of stop growing, stop learning after they graduate and maybe that’s the difference I’ve played more in the long game with it.
Anthony Codispoti: You know that’s something, I’ve got two young boys, they’re eight and ten and it’s something that I try to drill into their heads all the time is that you know if you’re doing it right you never stop learning because they can’t wait until when they get to the end of school so they can be done you know learning. I’m like no no no no, like I want to open your eyes to a whole new world and it’s kind of like with you like you know I went through high school, I went through college but man it was after college that my eyes really opened up and I’m like learning is amazing like when I can choose the things that I want to dive into yes it opens a whole new passion.
Jim Weaver: Yeah and that’s maybe the thing you know high school and then my first school around a college I wasn’t necessarily interested in most of what I was learning and I was more interested in my social life.
I played sports, I was into music, I like I worked very hard at those things and school was just not that appealing to me but you’re right once you latch on to something that is actually interesting, man there’s nothing better.
Anthony Codispoti: Yeah so what was it that was so appealing about the Onan group that went from just you know thinking ah okay this is until I find my next road gig to now being there over 20 years?
Jim Weaver: It was it was a gradual process. I was honestly probably a little just just in a bad place about not being on the road anymore. I kind of kind of begrudged that but I started to have a little success and Keith and Hugh the founders saw something in me and they were very quick to empower me to run with things and success begat more success and then my wife and I had our first child and it got to be you know winning is fun making money for the first time in my life it was nice to not just be living hand to mouth and then as time went on maybe maybe about 10 years in it it struck me I was I was in my 40s early 40s and I was like man you know if you want to have an impact with your life this is actually a really cool business to be in like the number of lives we touch with our internal employees Onanites we call them with teammates that’s a contingent workforce tens of thousands of those every year and then our client relationships if you want to have an impact if done right the staffing industry really can fulfill that that desire to to have some meaning with what what we’re spending our day on.
Anthony Codispoti: So let’s talk a little bit about the Onan group because there’s now several brands under the umbrella can you kind of give us a little bit of an overview?
Jim Weaver: Our flagship brand is Onan Staffing and then we have some niche brands Onan Staffing is probably 85% of our revenue something like that and then we have niche brands we have a IT and engineering we actually have two IT brands and we have a aerospace brand that is really taken off not no pun intended I guess but that has really been grown explosively in the last three years and then as we have a factoring company which is it was a way initially for us to put our cash to work we’re buying receivables and advancing our customers a percentage of that and when we get paid then we we’re charging them interest it’s a way to keep them in the game we started in the energy sector with that and you’d have a big oil company that had some somebody clearing right-of-ways for them and they’d have 120 day terms and these guys are running crews of 15 people and they’d run out of money halfway through the project and BP or whoever was good for the money it just they had to wait for it and then they’d stop and they have to bring somebody else in so what we do is we bridge that gap with them we’ve expanded now beyond that into transportation and we even factor some staffing companies ironically so I think like 85% of our of our industry factors payroll so to give you a sense of our financial strength we have a factoring company
Anthony Codispoti: you saw so much opportunity there not only in a revenue stream for you but as a way to support your client base that you’re like hey yes that you know there there are lots of standalone factoring companies but you guys said hey let’s let’s do this in the house we’ve got the strength and the need for it yep yep yeah now uh jim there are lots of people who have worked at onan over the years but you’ve got kind of a special story I mean you’re the one who kind of started at the bottom and then you’ve worked your way all the way up to ceo what what do you think it is about jim weaver that’s allowed you to ascend the ranks say genetics good upbringing do you just have a personality for it
Jim Weaver: um I think I definitely I think there are things you can do to increase your return on luck or good or good fortune or providence or whatever you want to um and I certainly have been blessed to be in this company and I I know it could have gone a different way had I not been here or in a place like this I mean Keith and Hugh have just been incredibly gracious to to give me they saw something they saw like okay this guy is could do some stuff and they just open it up man and let me run so that’s been cool but um I uh I’m a constant learner um I am a hard but smart worker I think um I’m I’m always thinking about okay what is my highest value activity that I can be doing right now and everything else I want to build a system or hire somebody to take care of it so in that way I’ve been able to scale from an eight million you know leading an eight million dollar company when I started to 750 million or so now that’s how I’ve been able to been able to scale um people have always been the priority for me and and I’m really um I I’m I have a very intense hiring process I’m always recruiting um our team is is who has gotten us here um so I know that if I can if I can be really diligent at the top of the funnel and hire the right people uh and empower those people within our organization create an ecosystem where great people are attracted great people can do great things and great people are rewarded better than they’d be awarded elsewhere um that’s the type of environment where where good things happen so um I don’t know that was a little bit all over the play I think those are kind of the the main factors um for me I’m a real planner too um I’m a I’m a learner and and and I’m a planner um I’m very diligent about target setting and setting priorities and um visualizing where we need to go communicating that that’s so critical um to think that way you know leading an organization
Anthony Codispoti: you know to your point uh years ago I worked with a business coach that um taught me something very similar to what you just mentioned there which is think about the tasks that you do throughout the day which ones are ten dollar an hour tasks hundred dollar an hour tasks thousand dollar an hour ten thousand dollar an hour tasks you don’t want to be doing the ten dollar an hour tasks you want to hire that out or you want to build a system to automate it maybe some technology or software okay now you get to a hundred dollar an hour task you know it you kind of get the the level of the thinking you want to be spending your time more and more on those ten thousand dollar an hour ideas and for those lower value uh of things you you want to be you know finding good teammates that can take over those for you or like you said you’re building some system some software some processes that that automate those so it’s it’s out of your mind and you don’t have to expend any mental energy
Jim Weaver: you know you know it’s interesting too as if you’re in a rapidly growing company and you’re in leadership in a rapidly growing company you’re always find yourself in new territory and you you question whether okay is this am I moving beyond my operating range here like is this the end of the runway for me and a question I would ask myself and I um it would need to be adapted for each individual but a question I’ve been asking myself for years is how would the sea okay maybe maybe I am out of my depth here but how would if if I were a billion a CEO of a billion dollar company how would I think about this problem how would I approach it and that little exercise of of opening that up well I might not think about but a billion dollar CEO they would think about this way and and and over the like that’s it hasn’t quite manifested yet but you know that’s been a that’s been a question I’ve asked myself along the way to continue to try to elevate uh and and be able to navigate new new territory
Anthony Codispoti: almost uh inviting yourself to step into a different persona yep uh do you ever is there one particular or a couple of particular business owners that you will visualize when you sort of think about what would a billion dollar the CEO of a billion dollar company do or is it more of a generic thing um
Jim Weaver: well it probably shifts and changes based on who I’m listening to or thinking about right now I mean I uh there’s a guy who I’ve gotten to be friends with he was actually on my podcast uh Bill Kennedy he’s uh CEO of a roughly three billion dollars he’s a PE company CEO so he comes in he looks to unlock value it’s a three to five year run and then he goes and does the next one but he’s a fascinating way of of dissecting a business and looking from the outside and he’s a great book um that I kind of I found myself thinking what would Bill do um in the last year and then you know I just finished uh Elon’s biography a couple months ago I mean that guy is just superhuman um that’s beyond that’s a trillion dollar CEO right but um
Anthony Codispoti: I think I saw an article just uh this morning that said he’s the first person to hit a net worth of 400 billion dollars uh unbelievable personal net worth and then his company’s yeah certainly didn’t even have a
Jim Weaver: house it’s just amazing
Anthony Codispoti: um so tell me you know what is it that you got well actually before we go there um you just mentioned your podcast and so I want to give a shout out to it tell tell us the name and where people can find it
Jim Weaver: yeah uh real leadership and uh we’re giving a voice to leaders in the real economy companies that make move and process things I don’t think there’s been enough attention given to them that’s our client base that’s our love uh that space and uh so we have um C level executives from those companies on we we put out uh you know a couple I try to put out a couple episodes a month we’ve had some great guess on you can find them on all on all the major platforms so real leadership podcast spotify apple uh any of the major platforms we’re putting that out you can go to my linkedin page too and I I always post when when we’re releasing a episode uh but it’s been a lot of fun it’s been a lot of fun to get to know for me personally to get to know these folks at a level it’s very hard to maybe some of the motivation for you to do what you do um that we wouldn’t it’s conversations you wouldn’t have otherwise so it’s been been fun for me
Anthony Codispoti: yeah and we’ll include links to Jim’s linkedin page as well as to his podcast and the show notes folks thank you um so what is it that’s such you guys apart what are you guys doing that’s different that has allowed for such incredible growth
Jim Weaver: well um you know we have two groups that we serve in our in our business you know we have two prior uh two primary kind of constituents you have the client base and then you have our contingent workforce we call them teammates so and there’s differentiators for both of them they are interrelated but with our contingent workforce they choose us I think because of two clear differentiators first onanites that’s our internal team we’re we’re really connected to our purpose create opportunity empower people we uh we’re locked in our values one of our values is service is a really critical value and because of those things that connection to our purpose I think generally we just as Hokies it sound we’re we’re just nicer to people they walk into our branch and you know honestly that goes a long way especially with the entry-level worker who maybe is not getting served in that way typically um
Anthony Codispoti: the second being treated yeah yeah yeah exactly treat him how you want to be treated yeah it’s like
Jim Weaver: it should be a no-brainer but um it’s not for a lot of companies but it really is front and center for us and so and then the other perhaps more objective differentiator for our teammates is our life changing benefits you mentioned in the intro um you know all staffing companies have some sort of benefits and I know you’re a staffing you know benefit or you’re a benefit company which is which is great here’s differentiated with with what we offer ours are usable and affordable and I would say the litmus test of whether benefits are valuable to the workforce is enrollment rate and you will be hard pressed to find a staffing company with more than 5% enrollment and health benefits we have over 70% enrollment in our health benefits it’s a proprietary program so I’m not competing with you that that we built and managed we studied a workforce their health profile how long they they’re typically with us as a teammate what they’ll you want to use while with us then we went to work and we cut out one of our partners has a buddy who’s a broker kind of gave us the insider game and we cut out every single third party who’s mooching off the system and we built the plan from there so for less than 18 dollars a week we provide our teammates with medical dental vision teledoc eap legal support um if they’re with us long enough you know enrollment not as high in our 401k but they can they have access to our 401k so it’s it’s beyond what any of our competitors are doing and and the impact we we found was in the year that we introduced it our our retention metric that we use is average length of deployment that number went from 97 days to 129 days so 33 increase in retention the year that we introduced it so significant very very impactful um and that kind of naturally leads me to why our customers choose us our clients they don’t want a commodity staffing relationship our clients tend to maybe be a little more concerned about the human side of things they want their continued workforce taken care of um and then there’s also a benefit uh there’s a business benefit that too our relationship with the workforce means when they have when they put their foot on the gas and they need us to deliver we can deliver better because we have better relationships generally uh with with the workforce you know of course and on top of that we you know we have we’re on the leading edge of technology and and we have a great marketing team and and we have some really innovative recruiting retention programs but but I would say those are technology is an accelerator right it’s not it’s not differentiated it’s accelerator what you have going on uh novel programs are great but we’re in the people business and any staffing program thrives or fails based on the engagement of the local team and we’ve built an award-winning meritocracy where every single owner night has a long-term development plan we call it a tour of duty where we deliberately connect their career progression to them delivering for our clients and impacting our workforce and the deal with every single owner night is you help us grow and prosper we’ll help you grow and prosper and we formalize this as a as a document as an agreement it’s a three to five year plan typically and uh we’ve operated like that and we’ve built a kind of ownership mindset by operating like that for almost 30 years now but last year we took that ownership thing to the next level by becoming an ESOP so we are an employee owned company now we’re making owner night’s literal partners in the business and big picture the engagement of our team really I think is the the secret sauce in terms of why our customers are choosing us it translates to us delivering and you take care of your people that take care of your customers
Anthony Codispoti: a couple of follow-up questions for you there Jim what does it look like in in practical terms when you’re talking about that three to five year plan that you do with your employees can you walk me through maybe a specific example without using anybody’s name
Jim Weaver: sure well the the question is if you’re really so this is based on a I read a book by um Reed Huffman called The Alliance which is totally it’s one of the best best most impactful books I ever read and it you know when you read a book in it and it just sort of gives a language and a framework to the way you already think about something it’s like oh okay yeah but that book is what we we built this around and the the the initial question is what do you want to do next what are you working toward whether that’s with us or with somebody else and and and we we sit down we talk through what do you want to do next what are you working toward and and then we look at what we have available and we say well if you want to come work with us as you’re getting out of college and you have an HR degree but you can’t get a job in human resource because you don’t have any experience so give us three years as a recruiter and you’ll learn this this this this and this and through that you’ll gain this experience and you’ll be in a position where you can land that entry-level human resource job or perhaps you’ll want to be with stay with us and become an on-site manager or a staffing supervisor or a branch manager a business manager with us so we it’s like where are you going here’s where we’re going if there’s enough overlap there then that’s the basis of that you help us grow prosper we’ll help you grow prosper so I will give we’ll frame out like a current state of the business or the position we’ll frame out our goals for that business unit and how they’re what their specific contribution would be to that and then we frame out these are the things you’re going to get from this and the opportunities that could open up so it’s a it’s a you know two and a half page a three page document that we we we walk through
Anthony Codispoti: you mentioned before that you’ve got a pretty intense hiring process you’re always recruiting what does that process look
Jim Weaver: like the so the alliance is the first book the second book is top grading or who was the follow-up to that by by Bradford smart but I’ve been a top grader for many many years and explain what that means Jim top grading is the partners here call it Jim’s adoption process the concept with top grading is you want to methodically uncover patterns trajectory you methodically uncover patterns because you want to read you want to know with reasonable certainty what you’re getting nobody’s perfect but instead of kind of these voodoo hiring practices of you know tell me about your sock drawer or you know that that kind of crap you know we it’s you’re methodically looking for patterns of the types of environments they’ve thrived in the types of managers they’ve worked well in if they’ve had conflict where has that been if it’s amazing if you’ll ask these same quit your biggest wins in retrospect what would you do differently if you could do it over again you know you’re looking for and I preface it with like I’m looking for self-awareness so you can methodically through their career path every job and it’s remarkable you ask those same questions you dig the patterns that will emerge it’s like it’s so so odd because that’s that’s our best indicator of what somebody’s going to do next and then so that’s the first phase walking through that then we’ll do a personality profile and we have kind of benchmark profiles for our position you look where maybe they’re out and you take that that gap and maybe where they’re out of the stereotype doesn’t mean it’s a done it’s a it kills the deal but um we’ll then we’ll come back for a behavioral interview that fills in the gaps of concern from the story interview you call it that’s that uncovering patterns interview couples that with the how their profile matched up with the position um and then uh there’s a reference process that is super effective um and then and then hire so it’s a pretty involved process we don’t that’s for management roles that we go management roles and up sales roles it’s a pretty in-depth process you’re very in-depth yeah yeah I’ll spend a lot of time with someone but I’m hiring for the next level uh reporting up to me so obviously you know the the the bigger the role the more time you have to invest yeah but uncovering patterns man I think is the biggest key to hiring well
Anthony Codispoti: and you do that through the series of the questionnaires and the personality test and the in-person behavioral assessment all of that sort of
Jim Weaver: combines yeah yeah there’s an intake form uh that You ask questions about each of their jobs, you couple that with the resume, and then there’s questions you ask about, each the same questions you’re asking about each job to uncover those patterns, yeah.
Anthony Codispoti: I wanna talk a little bit more about the decision to go ESOP, the employee with the employee ownership. Some people may not be familiar with those. Obviously, I think at least part of what you were going after there is how do we get our team members more involved, more invested in the process? We want them to truly feel like this is theirs. Beyond that, what was part of the decision making process? Why did you feel like this was a good move?
Jim Weaver: Well, the founders, truly, Keith and Hugh, great guys, still very involved in the business. And they truly have a heart. They’re not like more and more and more guys. They love to grow. They’re very passionate about growth and expanding, and they love seeing people’s careers blossom with us.
I think that’s a huge motivator for them. But now they’re getting, but they’ve never taken anything out of the business for years. I mean, they paid themselves a little. I’ve paid more on the business than they have. Up till we did the ESOP, that was true.
But for them to start, for them to, they wanted to be able to take some money out of the business, but didn’t wanna sell to an outside group. So it was, and we’ve got some second generation folks that are in that are doing very well, and they wanted to send a message like, hey, we’re in this for the 50 year long haul. This is the transition plan.
We wanna keep this thing going, and we wanna bring you guys into the partnership. And it was a way for them to then get some money out of the business. They could have made a lot more money going to market. They could have sold for a lot more than what they’ve taken, but it’s that balance for them of wanting to do right by the people that built this thing with them. But still wanting to, you know.
Anthony Codispoti: Yeah, it’s an admirable approach for sure.
Jim Weaver: It’s cool too, the tax sheltering, so the ESOP, the percentage of the ESOP, the net income that is the ESOPs, the percentage, you don’t pay income tax on that, which is kind of cool too. So the overall liability of the company, the government, it’s really, it’s one of the coolest programs I think the government’s set up.
It’s pretty neat. They really wanted to create a good incentive for companies to go this way. And there’s some great companies that are ESOPs. We’re the biggest staffing company I know of that’s an ESOP.
Anthony Codispoti: And so the income tax isn’t realized until it’s passed along to the individual.
Jim Weaver: The ESOP doesn’t pay income tax.
Anthony Codispoti: Right. But when those distributions go out to the employees.
Jim Weaver: Then it’s personal, then it’s yes, yes, yes. Yeah, as it goes out, yeah. When they retire, they leave. Yeah, yeah, it’s paid then. And so it grows, it grows tax deferred and reduces the tax liability for the company.
Anthony Codispoti: Yeah, that’s a pretty cool approach. Yeah. You know, the other thing that really strikes me, if my research here is correct, the owning group has maintained a debt-free status for a long time. And considering the incredible growth that you guys have experienced, as well as being able to offer factoring to your clients and to others. I mean, it seems like a little bit of magic. What’s going on there behind the scenes that you guys are able to?
Jim Weaver: It’s discipline, man. It’s discipline. Well, you live on less than what you make. It’s just like personal finance. And credit to Keith and Hugh. I mean, they early on, a lot of owners milk their companies. Early on, they left. They just plowed it back in.
Every year, they plowed it back in. And we grew as an LLC. So the way the taxes work on an LLC, as long as you can do a cash method. So as long as you’re willing to do it, when you’re growing like that, the tax liability is deferred because your AR is always a step behind what your output is. So you have all this output in the cost of running your business. And if your cash method, your tax liability is deferred.
So that is helpful, too. The problem is in most companies, so they were putting back money to pay the taxes, the piper, eventually. Because it comes due. And it comes due when the economy downturns. Because when your revenue drops, then all your AR comes in from the year before. And then you have this huge gap between expenses and the money you have in the house.
And then you have this. But so they were able to use that strategy and not take money out in the early years and just built up. And then we invest. And the factoring company is a way that we invest as well. So we’ve been really disciplined about how we do that.
And it’s a very liberating thing, very liberating. We can play the long game. In a down economy like this, we’re looking for opportunity because we have dry powder for acquisitions, talent acquisition to go into new markets. We always come out of a down economy like a rocket because we’re ready.
Anthony Codispoti: You’ve been financially responsible. You’ve built those cash reserves. And so the real opportunities come when there are downturns. I’ve talked with a number of staffing agencies. I’m going to guess your story. Coming out of post-COVID is probably similar. You’ve seen a downturn. But rather than it for you guys being a time of stress and worry, it’s like, hey, this is going to open up some doors for us.
Jim Weaver: It’s no fun to be down. We’re still beating the industry by about 10%. So we’ll be down 3% this year. The industry deep down about, I think, about 14%. But it doesn’t feel good. We’re not used to it. But you’re right. We’re not losing sleep over making payroll. That’s for sure.
Anthony Codispoti: Innovation is one of the core values for the owning group. We’ve talked about some things you guys have done already with the ESOP and the B &B. The benefits program that you guys have built internally. Anything else that comes to mind that would be fun to share?
Jim Weaver: I think the coolest thing we have going right now is our own inflex program. And I’ll tell you, if the Trump administration is as aggressive on immigration as their posturing, I think it’s going to be really a critical tool just to get more of the workforce off the sidelines. But what we do is we work with our customers and we’ll set out a set number of shifts by position or maybe a department to be filled by people that want to work part-time on demand. And we’ll build out a flex talent pool who’s vetted for that particular client, those particular positions. Typically, it’s about four times as many people as we have openings. And then every week, we load the shift openings into our software, into our app.
Flex workers go in, they pick their shifts. And we’re in a position to pay the next day, which is nice. It’s really quick cash for them. And really, the big shocker with it was the caliber of employee that we’re drawing.
We’re getting stay-at-home parents, students, side hustlers. All of them want flexibility. And that flexibility is probably worth, I don’t know, this is not scientific, but like $4 or $5 an hour.
In other words, if you have a position that’s open for $19 an hour, you’re able to get someone whose market value is like $24 an hour because they value that flexibility. It works with their lifestyle. And that has just become more and more popular. It’s become more and more something that the workforce is demanding. And for our clients, the reduction in overtime costs, the reduction in turnover costs, it’s been massive.
We have a food production client, rural part of the country who was running over 45% turnover monthly. And we introduced Flex Program. We took like 100 shifts that we dedicated to Flex, opened up that workforce. We were able to, because they had a core group that was showing up consistently. It was like the turning, the turn was all in, it was 45% turnover, about only 15% of the positions.
You know? They were running. They turned over a lot.
Yeah, yeah. And so we did was, we said, okay, let’s just make those Flex positions. We opened up this entire workforce for them. And because their regular team was no longer taxed with having to cover for these knuckleheads that weren’t showing up and walking off the job. The overtime demand went down, burnout went down. The supervisors had better disposition.
And within a couple months, our turnover went from 45 to single digits. Oh my gosh. Yeah. It was, and we’ve seen that in several sites. That was the most pointed one, but it’s a pretty cool innovation. And I really think in the next year, it’s going to be a major part of the arsenal for us.
Anthony Codispoti: So I want to dig into this a little bit deeper and understand it. Because as you’re describing it, my first thought is it kind of reminds me of UBER and Lyft. Like I talked to a lot of the UBER and Lyft drivers when I get a ride. And what they like about it is the flexibility. And they can decide when they’re going to work. And this might be a good day for them to work 12 hours straight.
Or tomorrow, they may only have a couple hours to kill. And but whatever kind of fits into their schedule and what other side jobs or family obligations that they have.
Jim Weaver: A cool thing with this is you’re not putting mileage on your car. I mean, so many of those jobs, you’re using your vehicle to run food or whatever. But yeah, it’s.
Anthony Codispoti: Do you feel like you’re tapping into maybe some of the same? It’s the same group. It’s the same group. Yep. And so the breakthrough here is in the approach number one. But I’m going to guess there’s probably a layer of technology that needed to be built in order to enable this kind of a thing.
Right? Because in the past, tell me if I’m wrong, but in a contract staffing environment, somebody is they’re supposed to go there 40 hours a week for X number of weeks in a row. And if you don’t fit that 40 hour a week model, then well, you’re just don’t work.
Jim Weaver: Well, yes. Or the alternative to that used to be day labor, like the labor halls, like labor ready, where you got guys, they’re hanging out outside the door early, typically sleeping off a hangover. And they go in and OK, how many, you know, and they put them on a ban. And so and that was our resistance to doing this.
Obviously, we want to get into day labor. It’s a different. It’s a different game than when somebody can wait a week to get paid. But but this has the tech enablement of it has that is the thing that’s kind of leveled it up to where it’s really the gig economy, as opposed to a day labor scenario. So yeah, it’s the tech has unlocked it for sure.
Anthony Codispoti: Are there particular types of work environments where this works better than others?
Jim Weaver: We haven’t.
Anthony Codispoti: We’ve we haven’t come across somebody where this doesn’t work. Yeah. Yeah. As long as the the the client is willing to have the flexibility. So it’s a lot of companies try to do this with just the tech.
And you really can. Yeah, we have an onsite presence at you. We’ve we’ve got to be hands on coordinating, building the pool, like driving people into the town pool. Still, we’re hands on vetting the talent. We’re onsite. We’re we’re talking to the supervisors and out there solving problems and making sure people are in the right spot. So it’s not a it’s it’s tech enabled, but the tech alone is not enough. So as long as.
Jim Weaver: You know, we’re doing that and we have a customer who’s willing to look at things a little differently and kind of get out of get out of their habit of how they look at, you know, shifts and and we can bring back. It’s a lot of the same people that we’re bringing back. I guess if it’s too if the job is if it takes too long for them to learn the job.
Anthony Codispoti: Yeah, if it’s a highly skilled job, it’s probably not a good thing. You can’t do it there. Say more about what you guys are doing on the ground there in person. Well, with the Flex program.
Jim Weaver: Yeah, we love to have. I mean, it’s just part of our onsite solution. Our largest clients, we’re going to we’re going to have an onsite manager, super in some cases, multiple representatives onsite. So they are dealing with punch issues with clocking and clocking out issues, helping people get to the right spot.
I’ll tell you, we have a we have a thing we say it’s another difference. Every client has a recruiting plan and a retention plan. Our onsite managers carry a lot of that retention responsibility. So we’re checking in with people. We’re checking in with managers supervisors. We want to catch problems when they’re just little buds, as opposed to big, you know, weeds and the managers ready to let them go.
We’re going to counsel folks. I mean, the reality is in entry level roles. We’ve we’ve got to in many cases, we’ve got to help people understand what an employer expects of them, you know, and they’ve just never gotten that maybe at home.
In some cases, they just have never got it. So we’re we’re pretty, pretty patient in doing that in our clients don’t have time to mess with it. They got lines to run and but we can it’s our job. That’s a part of our value add where we can get in there and and help bring folks along and help understand like, hey, we need to sit down and have a discussion between you two instead of why instead of you walking off or whatever or hey, if you got a transportation issue, let’s talk about it. Let’s figure it out, you know, instead of not showing up or whatever. So a lot of it’s just real practical coaching opportunity for our onsite.
Anthony Codispoti: Want to shift gears for a moment, Jim, and be curious to hear about a serious challenge that you’ve worked through, either personal or professional and some lessons that you’ve learned going through that.
Jim Weaver: I probably go back to that day, walking into the O’Nan office up in Nashville, you know, 24 years ago, 23 years ago. You know, I had put everything into my dream was to be a professional musician. And I was I was not some stoner, bonehead, you know, I was a serious, like I really worked very hard at it, lived out of a lived out of a van for three years and played any gear and and would spend six to eight hours a day in the woodshed, you know, practicing.
And I had finally made it onto a tour bus. My wife and I were, this is why I align with the whole living on less than what you make thing with the business, I align real well, because my wife and I were just buried in high interest debt. Early on got on the whole Dave Ramsey program. And and when I got fired from that gig, we were up to our necks in debt.
My resume looked awful. And it was just a, you know, I had, I kind of climbed the mountain only to have the ground crumbled beneath my feet and and slide back down, you know, a thousand feet or whatever. And it really was for something I had poured myself into that much. It was it was absolutely, it was just it was devastating for me.
It’s not like a death or something, but it was a death of a dream. And but I’m I tell you, I’m thankful for it now. You know, a lot of my buddies from back then will call me and they want to make a career change now in their fifties. It’s like, man, I don’t know, man.
It’s that’s a tough one. So that was like my favorite. If it’s a favorite failure, that’s probably my favorite failure, getting getting fired from that that road gig, because it it led to a completely different, different path. And I think I have a honestly, probably have an opportunity for more impact with my role. Certainly, I’m happily married and have great kids.
And that’s almost impossible to do business. So I feel like that was good. At the end of the day, I’ve I’ve viewed it. I viewed music as an unrequited lover early on. I mean, just I just was heartbroken. But now, 23 years later, man, what a what a blessing getting fired from that gig.
Anthony Codispoti: Yeah, I want to spend just a moment more with this story, because I think you’ve hit on some really important things that don’t get discussed a lot. So in your case, it was yet you had worked so hard for this dream to become a professional musician. You know, in some cases, I’ve heard the stories of, you know, people working so hard at a particular sport, and this was going to be their path.
Interview a lot of business owners have a lot of friends who have been through this, where the business was that core piece of their identity. And then something happens to where it all goes away. Sometimes slowly, sometimes very quickly, like in your case. And you use the word devastating. And I feel like it may not be a strong enough word, because it it’s destabilizing and disorienting to people, right? This was was not only my identity.
Jim Weaver: It was my identity. Yes. That’s exactly the point is that not only was it a dream, it was who you were. It’s how you identified yourself. And now all of a sudden, this is gone. This thing that Jim Weaver identified himself as it doesn’t exist anymore. And now who am I and how do I fit into this world? Yeah, yeah.
Ryan, I think it was Ryan Holiday wrote a book or had a saying, the obstacle is the way. That’s a, you know, a stoic idea, but man, it is so true. And I mean, that really hit home for me early on. I would get pissed about the obstacle and the pain and the and the and man, it is empowering to. Okay, I’m feeling resistance. There’s an obstacle. This actually is the way forward. It marks the way forward. There is there is something in this that that will navigate me for there’s an opportunity in this. And every time there is every time.
Anthony Codispoti: So for somebody who’s listening and they’re facing their own obstacle right now that seems insurmountable, what advice can you give? How to see that way? How to stop seeing it as the roadblock that it seems like it is and see it for the opportunity that can become.
Jim Weaver: You know, the way you can hear a truth and you can sort of ascribe to it logically or you can say, okay, yeah, but to connect emotionally with it. I wish I could wave a blonde and do that for folks. I guess you just got to take it from me and everybody else who says it. I mean, you listen to anybody who has done anything and they will amen what I’m saying. Tony Robbins likes to say this didn’t have it’s not happening to you. It’s happening for you. And and I think sometimes it takes just meditating on that and and really telling yourself that over and over and always going back obstacles the way this is happening to me. This is happening for me or you know, I’m a I’m a I’m a Christian.
So Romans 812. He’s working all things together for the good of those. God is working all things together for the good of those who love him called according to his purpose.
So whatever that touchstone needs to be that is a reality. And if you want something, somebody’s got you do what they did to get what they got. And if enough people are saying things like that, you look at enough lives, everybody, you know, we are we’re forged in trial. And you think back, I heard Jordan Peterson talk about this how every every biblical character, so much of the mythological characters, they’re all called to adventure. They have a trial that happens that calls them into an adventure.
So I think thinking about it as the adventure, the challenge, it’s a much more empowering way to think about these things than than what was me or how am I going to do this?
Anthony Codispoti: Jim, what’s something fun or interesting that most people would know about you?
Jim Weaver: I have had some weird, you know, weird jobs for sure. I’ve dug graves. And I’ve been in the circus. So those are probably the two. So circus was drumming. Okay. I was playing I played drums in the circus. That’s how I got out east. I was going to school in Wisconsin was a music. I was a business major, but I really wanted to play music. And I got an opportunity to do a summer gig at an amusement park playing with a circus. And then I met this rock and roll band dropped out of school. And that’s kind of how I went down that path. The grave digging came when I was a kid. My my parents are really hard workers.
My dad ended up doing doing real well as a financial planner. But early on we were scraping by was the Carter years. And our church, their grave digger, for whatever reason, stopped digging graves. And it was a farmer that was doing his country church up in Wisconsin. And the guy would used to dig graves with a tractor, which is a lot easier. My dad, he’s like, we need the money is 150 bucks to dig a grave. We’ll dig it with pick and shovel. And I’ll bring Jimmy out, you know, with me. He paid me 20 bucks to help him out. But I’m telling you, digging a, I think it’s like eight foot by five foot by six foot hole, especially in the winter. Man, that’s some work.
You’re gonna get that’s that’s the work. And we always say like more people died that year in the church that any year in the pre we’re like, well, God provided, you know, I’ve never dug a grave before.
Anthony Codispoti: But I have had to dig holes for landscaping purposes and whatnot. And it’s incredible how much work that is to work. Like I see people doing it like on a movie or a TV scene. I’m like, they’re going to be there for hours. This is not like a five minute thing.
Jim Weaver: All day into the night. We would be digging. Yep. Yep.
Anthony Codispoti: So Jim, I’ve just got one more question for you. But before I ask it, I want to do two things. Everybody listening today. I know that you love today’s content. Hit the like, share, subscribe button on your favorite podcast app. Jim, I also want to let people know the best way to get in touch with you. What would that be?
Jim Weaver: Linkedin’s a good spot. That’s a real good spot. Instagram X would probably be in that order from there and can certainly certainly email me. We can put that in the show notes.
I don’t I don’t mind. And our company website, www.owninggroup .com. And you can you can branch out to all the different areas of our business that way and see what we’re up to.
Anthony Codispoti: Great. Last question for you, Jim. How do you see your business evolving in the next couple of years? What do you think the big changes are that are coming?
Jim Weaver: I think I’ve really settled into the reality that we are in a time of a lot of change. And we just like like trying to even try to predict that is very difficult. I do think with I think that immigration policy is going to tighten up the labor market pretty significantly. I think there’ll be again a lot more demand for what we do, but labor is going to be tough to come by. I think our flex program is going to be really critical to that. I think government policy that gets people off the sideline is, you know, we got I forget what the labor participation rate in Alabama is.
It’s like 62 percent. I mean, it’s we got to get people off the sidelines and productive. I do think that manufacturing is coming back to the U.S. So that’s that’s exciting. That’s that’s hopeful.
We’re just going to keep rocking and rolling. We’re we’re real focused right now on growing our existing branches, our branch footprint, not as aggressively opening branches. We are pushing into Ohio next year and we’re looking for acquisition opportunity as well.
But we’re super focused on just executing on the fundamentals. We’re we’ve done a recent shift where we’ve sort of rebranded our branch manager. We call them business managers now and and have taken their empowerment level. We’re pushing the caliber of person running our branch. We’ve we’ve given them a lot of tools and a lot of empowerment and a higher expectation of really running a business within our business that aligns with the with the ESOP. I think that’s going to unlock a lot of great great things.
I want I want 110 branches marching forward lockstep, spreading love, increasing our our impact. The reality is the contingent workforce is a better off in their life working with us than anybody else. And when we have a true partnership relationship with our clients, we are making their businesses better. And so we feel like we have a moral mandate to grow.
Anthony Codispoti: Jim, I want to be the first one to thank you for sharing both your time and your story with us today. I really appreciate it.
Jim Weaver: Man, it was my pleasure. You were very generous with the with the time. Hopefully, hopefully, folks enjoyed it.
Anthony Codispoti: Folks, that’s a wrap on another episode of the Inspire Stories Podcast. Thanks for learning with us today.
REFERENCES
🔗 Connect with Jim Weaver:
- Website – https://Ōningroup.com/
- Linkedin – https://www.linkedin.com/in/jim-weaver-36457418
🎯 Special Thanks to Anthony Codispoti & AddBack Benefits Agency: AddBack Benefits Agency – https://www.addbackbenefitsagency.com/
📺 Watch on YouTube: Inspired Stories Podcast by AddBack Benefits Agency
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-2KCy3zqjALje6hwzWT0VA