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Ladies Kickin' Ass
Welcome to "Ladies Kickin' Ass," the podcast where kickass women in the service and trades industries spill the real tea on making it big. Twice a week, host Tanya Wilson brings you the gritty, the pretty, and everything in between.
Catch us every week for a deep dive with a powerhouse entrepreneur. Hear her raw, unfiltered story—from breaking ground in her field to celebrating the ups and downs while scaling her business. These aren’t just chats but your battle plans for crushing it in your business and life!
Then, swing by later in the week for some fierce coaching. Whether from Tanya or a top-notch industry expert, you get the insider tips you need. We’re talking nitty-gritty business & life tactics—from whipping your systems into shape to mastering the art of a kickass workplace vibe and all the marketing savvy you’re skeptical about but seriously need. But let's not forget, it all starts with our mindset, so we'll pepper in some amazing support from women specializing in health, wellness, parenting, and personal development.
"Ladies Kickin' Ass" isn’t just a podcast; it’s your new squad. Here, you’ll link up with fellow badass women, share war stories, swap wisdom, and find tools to amp up your business and life! For every service-based entrepreneurial woman hustlin' to make her mark—welcome home. Let’s rise up and kick ass together!
Ladies Kickin' Ass
#130 - The A-Team Formula: Recruiting, Retaining, and Growing Top Talent with Libby DeLucien
How do you transform personal adversity into a thriving business? Join us on the Ladies Kickin' Ass Podcast as we welcome the phenomenal Libby DeLucian, a serial entrepreneur whose journey from a custody battle to a million-dollar business will leave you inspired. Libby's story begins with professional organizing and expands into the realms of residential and light commercial cleaning, all while navigating immense personal challenges. Her strategic use of peer groups and coaching underscores the importance of guidance and support in fast-tracking business growth.
Have you ever thought traditional recruitment methods were inefficient? Libby did, too, leading her to revolutionize the process inspired by the book "Exponential Organization." Facing the dual challenges of business growth and pregnancy, she developed a streamlined recruitment method that scaled her business and evolved into a successful recruiting SaaS software during the COVID-19 pandemic. Now serving hundreds of home service companies, this innovative tool transforms the hiring process, and Libby’s story demonstrates the profound impact of mentorship and curiosity in tech entrepreneurship.
Authenticity and core values are the heartbeat of Libby's business philosophy. Throughout this episode, she shares actionable insights on embedding these principles into your company culture. From the index card test to showcasing real employees on social media, Libby emphasizes a people-first approach that attracts talent and fosters a thriving work environment. Discover how prioritizing your employees can lead to exceptional customer service and unparalleled business success. You won't want to miss this episode filled with practical tips and inspirational stories from a remarkable entrepreneur.
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Welcome to the Ladies Kickin' Ass Podcast, where we help you ignite your inner badass and create the service business of your dreams. I'm your host, Tanya Wilson, and together we'll dive into inspiring stories and expert coaching to set your journey on fire.
Speaker 2:Welcome back ladies, welcome back ladies. I'm so excited to have an incredible guest on the podcast today. Libby delucian is a very multi-faceted woman and I'm super excited for you to hear all the different areas where she's decided to step out and be an entrepreneur. She's what I would consider a serial entrepreneur. She has passion in a few different lanes, which I think it's really really super cool. And, like we always do with all the guests on the podcast, we want you to see what it looks like to be able to bust into the home service industry, and it doesn't mean that you have to be the person out doing the service with things. You can actually own this business and, like Libby's going to explain to you today, she even created software for the business where she saw there was a need and a lack in the marketplace. So, so excited to have Libby on the show today. Libby, why don't you go ahead and give us a little bit of your background into the journey of getting into the home service industry?
Speaker 3:Well, awesome. So I am a, or I come from a family of entrepreneurs. Um, I've really I've never been a w-2, um, except for my own business. That's a whole different topic. But, um, you know, I I owned businesses prior to owning a home service business. I've owned a bar, restaurant, um, but I went through a really horrible, horrible divorce, separation, and I was fighting for custody of my kids and I needed something that was a very low startup, something that let me control my time, so I could drop off our kids, pick them up from school and my job not be used against me for a custody battle. And so it's a very deep story. But how I got into home service was because it was a very low startup, it was a very low overhead and to really get going, but it was something that I could actually do myself to get started, but you don't have to do it yourself. But that's really how I started.
Speaker 3:I started first professional organizing. There's a great money in that industry, it's a very high hourly rate you can earn, but there's literally no startup when it comes to organizing. And then, a few years later, I got this grand idea that I wanted to make money without working, and so I added the cleaning division to organize it. So we do residential and light commercial cleaning as well, and from there it just took off. It actually it exploded. The organizing side exploded the residential, because it's recurring revenue was really great for the business.
Speaker 3:But I knew nothing about cleaning when I started, so don't even think that you have to know anything about the industry. I joined peer groups. I read every book I could get my hands on and I just started to ask questions and get curious about you know how does the business work? I would hire them. I would hire companies to come in and service my house so I could watch them, I could go through the sales experience, I could figure out, like how do they treat a lead Because I actually had no idea, because I hadn't come from the home service industry at any part of it, and I grew from zero to three million to to a million in three years, which I was for a cleaning. That's pretty substantial growth. It was a wild ride. I made a ton of mistakes, you know, but I couldn't have done it without finding a peer group, a coach, some guidance. My solution was to buy my answers or my solutions versus trying to figure them out.
Speaker 2:I honestly think that is a very, very powerful story right there, because a lot of times we waste a lot of time trying to figure everything out when there's somebody out there that knows how to help you. That's like, especially in the world that we live in now, with podcasts and all the stuff that we have, like you can learn so much from free podcasts all the time. That's really one of the big reasons why this podcast exists. Like I want to be able to give back, because I was that woman once upon a time too, that went to start a business. You know, you're good at the person that I had partnered with.
Speaker 2:You're really great at running the field side of stuff. Now you need to run the business and I'm like, how the hell do I build a website? How do I set up my QuickBooks? How do I make this phone ring Like, how do I do any of this stuff? And so we spend a lot of time that we could be growing by trying to learn how to do something from scratch. Did you find a peer group when you were looking for one that was very home services centric, or were you just kind of open to like going to as many things as you possibly could?
Speaker 3:could A little bit of both. I found a specific peer group that really helped me, specific to residential cleaning, and then I did join some other peer groups that were not specific to residential cleaning. They were specific to home service. Recurring home service, like I think in the group, was like pool and lawn care and landscaping, and I learned so much from both groups. So I think they both has its benefits of going very industry specific and then also, you know, getting a little bit wider with that, because it also separated me from my competitors. Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 3:I was incorporating some things that I learned from the lawn care guys into residential cleaning, and no one had ever seen that. They're like, oh my gosh, that's amazing like I sold it from the lawn care guys.
Speaker 2:I think sometimes the people that we maybe don't think about the most that we can learn from it. Sometimes you're like, oh my gosh, like it's a light bulb moment that maybe somebody like you said that it separates you from the competitors because it's something that somebody in this industry has never put to use before. I remember when we decided with my septic company to finally just like go digital with everything in that this industry. It's so difficult to find people that still do digital things and even to to this day, like we've been like that for years, obviously, but even to this day people are just rave about like communication was so great and all the stuff. Well, we've got it set up to where it's all automated at this point, and so it's like those little things that you can do to always be out and about in front of your competitors.
Speaker 2:But don't ever think that you have to stagnate yourself with just your industry, because if you're only learning from them, you're not kind of seeing some of that outside of the box stuff that you are able to learn. So when you had your Organize it company, at what point was it that you decided like maybe there's a opportunity to be able to build a software company to help support this industry. Is that because of a lack that you saw there, or was it just that you wanted to incorporate all those outside of the box ideas into something that would help other people grow?
Speaker 3:So somebody asked me this just I think it was yesterday because I started to organize it. It now has three locations. I have two SaaS companies writing a book, doing some other things and everyone's like, was that your intention? And absolutely no, it was not my intention. But I think, with even adding the cleaning division to Organize it right how that came about and then adding my first SaaS company, it all came from keeping an open mind and being curious. So what is that keeping an open mind? I never thought about adding cleaning until one of our organizing customers said, hey, do you not clean? I need a really good cleaning company. Do you have anyone on your team? And I was kind of like, huh, let me check on that. And the same thing happened with the SAS product. I had no intentions of building a SAS and what happened was right.
Speaker 3:When I started the cleaning division, I got pregnant with my daughter because it was a few years into organizing. I had remarried and I really got. I got pregnant with my daughter and I had cleaned my way into a job. So for those that are in the field, started something and it's kind of like it feels like you're trapped and you can't get out. Now, that's what I did to myself and we were so busy. I cleaned my way into a job. I was trying to recruit the traditional way and it was absolutely stupid. Um, it was just like, and I I'm like what? What is going on here? This is horrible. Um, the amount of work and effort and no show rate. And I said there's got to be an easier way. Um, you know, it's all. It's also amazing what happens when we're desperate, because I think when fear and desperation sit in, that's really where innovation starts to come to play. Um, and I went to the kind of went back to the drawing board because I would clean all day, run to a Starbucks to change my clothes, because I always interviewed in business attire to you know all sweaty in South Florida to just run there for no one to show up for an interview, like no one. And I'm like this is, this is dumb.
Speaker 3:So I went back to the drawing board and my organizing side kicked in and I said I'm going to create a process because that's all software is. That's all any really software is. It's a process that someone has created that then use tech to automate it or simplify it. And so I created a process and I read this book and it was called Exponential Organization and it's the theory of round, where all unicorn companies and a unicorn company is 100 million in 10 years how unicorn companies are created? Because we all have the same amount of time in a day. So when we want to create something that's super powerful, we have to leverage either time or an asset, and what that means is I just want you guys to think about, like Airbnb and Uber. They are unicorn companies because they were able to leverage an asset. They're leveraging our asset. I have an Airbnb. Or if you're an Uber driver, they're leveraging your car.
Speaker 3:So, as I'm creating this process, I'm like I have no more time. I already have two kids. I'm pregnant with my third. I'm so scared that I'm going to fail, right, and but I have no more time because I'm running the office. I'm in the field still and I said, well, if I listened to the book, I have to leverage something and who has the time? The applicants have all the time something and who has the time? The applicants have all the time. So I created the process that leverages the applicants time and I gave a presentation on it. It worked amazing for our company. That's one way I grew from zero to a million and three years and it. You know, when I gave that presentation on it I didn't think anything of it. I don't know if you're like me at all for any of the listeners. When you make something, everybody's like, oh my God, it's great, it's amazing, and you're just kind of like I mean, it's OK because we made it. We don't ever, we don't. Sometimes we don't think like that of ourselves.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 3:And I just thought it was OK. And my business mentor that I had acquired when I started my cleaning company, she said I want you to come to our conference and teach on this process. I said, okay, like sure, and I did. And one of my friends I'd already I'd already knew him. He was in the audience. He was like this was the best thing I ever seen, like ever, can you build this for my business? Um, and that was March of 2020 when COVID hit, I remember, because we weren't even sure we were in Dallas, that we could fly home because they'd shut everything down, shut the airports down. I said, sure, I don't even know what, like what we're going home to. And I built it for him. We took that process. I, I took him from 17 texts to 32 texts in a matter of like two months and he was. He came back to me and he had said hey, are you you want to build this thing and offer it to other people? He's like it's amazing. And again, it's keeping your mind open, like creating those conversations but also being curious to like just not always say no, but also not always say yes, keeping your mind open to listen and then say, hey, let me, let me think about that. That sounds really interesting. Let me research it, be curious about it. I went back to him and I was like, yeah, sure, let's go. So we took all that year of COVID and built it and tested it. We offered it to our friends for free to see does this work for everybody? And we went live in 2021, right in January of 2021, with our recruiting SaaS software and we're recruiting for hundreds and hundreds of home service companies now.
Speaker 3:It has been an absolutely incredible ride, and this girl sitting right here didn't even go to college. I graduated high school. I just look at myself like I'm just some little Mexican Indian girl that grew up in Oklahoma that if I can create a SaaS product like anybody can create a SaaS product, you don't need all this coding and develop whatever. At the same time, I didn't know what I was doing at all and I went and found a mentor in the SaaS space to help me, to guide me. Like, how do you price a SaaS product? Like, how do we market it? Because I was marketing it to my current circle and they loved it, and so now we have franchises on board. Like it is killing it, it's crushing it and it was a complete accident.
Speaker 2:That is such an awesome story and maybe, if half of them show up, you're lucky. So what is it about your program that you created that helps alleviate some of the stuff? Because, libby, that is one of the number one things that gets asked in the community is talking about the pain points of hiring and how you find qualified people and how you get them to show up and what kind of you know like where, where the hell do you even go to find these people? So I'm so interested in what this, this software, is.
Speaker 3:So, again, it's leveraged by the applicant's time. So the first thing I want to say is not an ATS. And what does that mean? Because everybody's like, well, I don't even know what that is. So if you're using things like Jazz HR, you're using things like Bamboo HR. Those are ATSs.
Speaker 3:And my stance on ATSs is they're barbarically outdated, like barbarically outdated ATSs, don't have the functionality and they're also not user friendly. What it is is an applicant tracking system, and I make a lot of not friends in this space because I say that about ATSs and that's the majority of what softwares are. Right, they're an ATS, they're slow and they still require some of our input from the office or from the owner or from whoever's leading that recruiting process. So we're not an ATS, we are a software that is powered. We call it a flywheel. It's powered because a flywheel continues to move the engine with momentum. It is powered by an applicant. It is the sexiest process you've ever seen and the reason I built it that way is because it has to be for the applicants to want to continue to go through that engine, to move through that process, to show up Kind of like wow. So all of it's guided by video for that applicant experience. It's sexy, so the applicant wants to apply if it resonates with them. But it's also fast. It's like the Uber of recruiting.
Speaker 3:I can remove an applicant off of the market faster than my competitors because of this process, and great applicants are only on the market for six days and you don't know where they found you in those six days.
Speaker 3:So you could apply and show up to my job or my interview within 30 minutes because the software does all of the automatic, all of the automations of qualifying, disqualifying, inviting them to the interview, all that jazz. The offices are doing absolutely nothing until that applicant shows up at their door, and we even have a process for dealing with no shows and leveraging your time on that aspect as well. The other part that makes this different is that it actually works. What do I mean by that? Most ATSs or recruiting softwares are made by men in suits who have never owned a service company, who don't know what the hell they're doing. This was made by a home service owner who was out in the field scrubbing toilets, desperate to get out of the field, and so we had to make a process that actually worked and it's proven, it's tested and it's trusted by hundreds, like 700 companies to get results.
Speaker 2:That is incredible, so, so incredible. So is everything set up with just automation. It's all automated through it until they show up for interview time and you know that they already meet the qualifications of what you need. I'm looking at this. Let's give an example here. I'm looking at this. I am constantly looking for CDL licensed service technicians for my pump trucks. So it's like one of those where it's like they might have worked for a septic or sewer company in the past but they don't have a CDL. So by the time they get here and show up, I'm like, oh great, now we've got this big training thing, which we have a training program, but most of the time we want to find them. You've already got the license, we just got to train you in this industry and we're ready to rock and roll. So you can even detail it down as far as that stuff to make sure that the people that are showing up for interviews are all people that have already been screened for all of this.
Speaker 3:Yes, for all of this. Yes, screen for qualifications, right Qualifying screening, not screening for core values or characteristics, because that's part of that. That's what should happen in the interview, but 100 percent yes. Now there's another side to recruit. That is the most popular. One of the most popular sides is we have our software, we have our SAS, but I also have a service side to recruit, which is the recruiting software. What is that? Hey, we have our SaaS, but I also have a service side to WootRecruit, which is the recruiting software. What is that? Hey, libby, like I freaking hate all of it.
Speaker 3:I don't want to write my job ad. I don't want to post or repost, because even with an ATS, we have to repost, post budget. What's the budget? Are we within budget? We have recruiting Sherpas that you can add on to have a completely done for you process, and so that is like one of our most popular parts of WeRecruit as well. You have to have the software still, but that recruiting Sherpa will manage, like your calendar, your budget. Are you within budget? How many do we have scheduled all aspects so that you don't have to worry about anything but growing your company Because it takes up. We said our service side saves about $750,000 to a million-dollar company. About eight to ten hours of office work a week.
Speaker 2:Wow, that's huge. That is super huge, and especially for service companies, because I know like there's a lot of mid-sized service companies. They don't have like an HR person on staff. It's typically the owner that is hiring everybody with stuff. So something like this and just the automation and leveraging this stuff. This is such a great conversation because so much in the home service industry. I think people feel like they have to bootstrap it and they got to figure it all out Like we started with this interview about how you have to do everything on your own and create everything on your own.
Speaker 2:This is why I love to introduce amazing women like Libby on the podcast. That is, they've already solved something for you. So this is another thing that you can integrate into a business to help you be able to get the right people on the bus. We definitely need to have that, because these businesses aren't built by us. They're built by the people that we hire to come into the community, which it is, and the company to make sure that you've got really great qualified people in there.
Speaker 2:If you keep hiring people just kind of like, well, this is the best that we could find, which I know a lot of people are at that point you almost like are shooting yourself in the foot because you got to start over again in four months, when they don't work out, because they were the best you could find. So I think this is a really amazing, amazing software. Thank you for sharing so much about that. And in the spirit of hiring of stuff, you know, I think one of the most important things within a business that you can ever possibly do and we talk about it all the time here on the podcast is creating an incredible culture where people actually want to come and work for your company too. So when you have been building your teams, libby, what is something that you've really focused on in building like a really strong company culture within the business?
Speaker 3:So the first thing I want to say is for all of us in the home service industry we all think that we're in the service of like cleaning or home repair or construction or even septic, but in reality we're not. That is not the industry we're in as a home service provider. We are in the recruiting industry. So why? Because if we can hire and attract and retain the best talent, we will win. We will beat our competitors and we will win. And that takes care of quality, that takes care of all these other issues, right, being held hostage to our company by bad employees. So when we and I think that we were taught by some mentors and coaches you know that, oh, recruiting maybe isn't on the forefront, it's your quality, right, it's your sales, it's your pricing. But if we can change our mindset and say you know, we're not actually in the business of cleaning houses, we're in the business of recruiting, we can recruit the top talent and retain them faster than our competitors, we will win this race. But here's where the problem lies is that most of us look at it like the thing I have to do when someone quits, the thing I have to do when someone no-shows, or I fire them instead of the thing I get to do and get really good at. So that is how, also, you start building. Your culture is to always be recruiting so that you can have a team of A players that fit your culture. But on the flip side of that the owner, you have to know what your values are before you can even start to hire for your values. I think one of the hardest things for at least for me, was when I first started I just copied my core values like from things I saw on the internet, because I'm like, oh, that's not important, like, oh, I don't need that yet I need to go clean, I need better quality, right and I think until I got serious about what were our values and then I had to live those, eat those, breathe those. I couldn't hire for them, so I wasn't hiring right. Yeah, I did a really, really great exercise. This is just recently, in the last two years, and it's a book. It's called Vivid Vision. It's by Cameron Herold.
Speaker 3:No-transcript wanted this company to look like, feel like what I wanted my employees to say about it, what I wanted our customers to be saying, what I wanted the media to be saying, because then that guided me in every decision and every person I hired and every person I fired. It guided them as well in the decisions they made. So I think, to really build that great culture it's not games, right. It's not contests, because those are band-aids, those are short fixes to long-term issues. So getting really real with what your values are and then living those, eating those and breathing those in front of your employees at all times, because if you're not doing that, then I would beg to say the core values you have are not true to you. Go back to the drawing board and really get deep with what those are and then start holding people to those.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I think one of the big things when creating those core values, because if you go into most companies and you look at their values, that they're so proudly displayed on their wall, you're like how authentic is this to you as the owner of the business? Because if you're present, especially in a home service company, everyone starts behaving around modeled behavior. And if you have just thrown, like you say at the beginning, like just a bunch of shit that you found off the internet together and something that looks really pretty on the wall and we think we should be doing this, but if you don't authentically hold that and have passion around those things, no one else is gonna mirror those things. It is really to a point where your employees need to be able to tell you right off the bat exactly what those core values are that they stand for. Every single day within the business. It's something that we talk about every single morning when we're having morning huddles and talking about stuff within our department meetings. We're always talking about what those core values are and if you don't have them displayed where someone can see them and you aren't living them and you're not recognizing people by those values. They tend to be just some pretty wall art. So if you haven't done that, I think a lot of times with home service too, they're like well, there's only three of us, so we'll do that later when it, you know, it actually matters. It's like systems and processes, like get that shit together when it's just you and then watch your team scale exponentially. You know, instead of trying to play catch up the entire time. Once now you've got a team of 13 and you have nothing written down and you got to take everything out of here. So core values absolutely are everything in hiring.
Speaker 2:I think something, too, that I love to share with you and get your feedback on is leveraging our social media within our business to really demonstrate what the core values of our team look like, what I have learned so much, and especially in our industry I'm in the Phoenix market. I am the only septic company that consistently uses social media period and inconsistent, I mean, like the other company that kind of uses it probably posted in 2021. But it is a beautiful recruiting tool because when people start doing research about your company when you are hiring, they want to see are you really what you say you are? You know you're. You say you're doing epic shit over there at the septic company.
Speaker 2:How are you showing that? You know, like we like to show the cool and the funny things that we find on jobs, we like to show the people that are in our business. We always do spotlights on people. We appreciate people and they can see that and feel it through our social media presence. What is your take on using social media to really create a excellent culture and to be able to demonstrate that in the recruiting process? Do you think that's a good way to go?
Speaker 3:Absolutely. One great test to test even yourself and your team is to do the index card test. And that is give them an index card, ask them to write the core values down. See how many people can write all of them down. Right, we should only have three to five. But the index card test is a great test to say are you living those core values or are they just pretty words on a wall? And then with social media, we use social media a ton. We use social media a ton. We post daily, if not multiple times a day, for our home service company. But I have a rule.
Speaker 1:I have a rule as in you're not allowed to use a stock picture of a fake person on my social media.
Speaker 3:I don't care if you're our in-house marketer. I don't care if you're our in-house social media marketer if you're an agency we're paying for ads. Do not use a picture of a fake person. There are all these stock images that go around within the cleaning residential side that are just like make me want to vomit. We know that that's fake. Nobody cleans in yellow rubber gloves like that and it's horrible. But here's the downside is that the people who are applying for your job 89% of people who applied for your job will check out your social media. They will check you out online Hands down 89% of people.
Speaker 3:So what are they seeing when you promote it to them on, like, say, indeed or any other job board, and then they go and look you up online over here and it's like, well, you said you're all about employees, but you don't even show one of your employees online or on your website or on your social media. You say you're all about employees, but do your reviews reflect that? If you go, look at our reviews? Because we have things benefits in place where if they mention our cleaners by name, the cleaner gets an incentive and you're going to see like Winner, maria Jessica, why? Because we're highlighting those people so that when perspective, good fits are looking, us see, oh, they are all about their employees. Years ago I got out of that. I care about my customers and I do care, but I care about we're a PCR company, a people, customers, results driven company. So people come first, then customers, then results, and that, for us, has fixed everything and that, for us, has fixed everything.
Speaker 2:Yes, I think, as a owner or CEO of a business, even if you're in a leadership management role, take care of your people. It is not your job to take care of the customers. That's your people's job is to take care of the customers. If you do a really good job taking care of your people, you don't have to worry about that. It is far and few between that you have upset or distraught or something didn't go right, because when you take care of people and you see people in your business, they want to go above and beyond for you. They want to show up, they want to do a good job.
Speaker 2:At the end of the day, everybody wants to be a part of something. Everybody wants to help build something, be a part of something, feel like they're contributing in some fashion. And the more you can shift your focus to not the tasks but to the people, it does make a massive, massive difference. Like if somebody leaves my business and decides oh, I'm going to go to a different pumping business, which I can fairly say I have never known anybody that has done that. That has worked for one of my companies Because you're not going to go work for a better septic company, because I want to treat all of these people like they're part of my family. We are a small company and that's what people in the trades and home service industry really, really look for. You know, get to know their families, get to know their kid's name, ask them how their weekend was. Genuinely care about your people and it just it's amazing what will happen to your business.
Speaker 3:Absolutely Love that.
Speaker 3:I always say you know, I don't can 100% offer the best job in Fort Myers. Oh, I like that. So that's our goal. And now we have multiple locations of our cleaning division and our organizing division. So again, I know that I may not have the best job in the world, but I know I can offer the best job in Fort Myers. And why is that? We have great pay and we care about our people to another level, but that's the benefit of working with a home service company that really puts these things first.
Speaker 2:Yes, absolutely Well, what a great conversation today. Libby, I want to thank you so much for your time and all of your information that you have shared with us today, and just this has always been like a major pain point for me. I've been in the home service industry for 15 years. I know plenty of women that have, and men that have been in this that you know recruiting and that culture building thing can be really, really difficult for them. But it really does start at the top. It starts with those values. It starts with the way that you treat the people that are coming in, the way you show up. If you talk the talk, you got to walk the walk, because if you want people to test you, this is the industry to be in to find out about that. They will tell you who you are and how you behave. So I really love that about this industry and there's just so much opportunity here, and this is why we continue to keep talking about it, because one women have a beautiful touch on coming into a home service industry and building a culture.
Speaker 2:By nature, I think most women are really good community builders and so I think when you really look at your business like that it is like the sky's not even the limit in what you can actually create and offer the best jobs in the world.
Speaker 2:My company definitely doesn't offer the most glamorous sexy job in the world, but my pump truck guys can make easily over six figures a year just by the opportunities that are put in front of them. So that's a pretty good paying job for somebody in their early 20s to be able to find if they want to come in and do a really great job. So thank you so so much for what you've been able to give us and, living at the end of every one of these podcasts, I'd love to always just have a moment of connection with you in asking you a what it really means to you to be someone that is out there living a mission, something that you enjoy doing on a daily basis, the reason why you're building businesses, the reason why you choose to do what you do. So when you hear the phrase ladies kicking ass, what does that mean to you in your life?
Speaker 3:So for me, what it means in my life, to me and my life is you know, I think that sometimes women we were really hard on ourself, right, but we can definitely kick some ass. But we also have superpowers. Superpowers as in like, we're naturally empathetic where that is the number one sought skill for male CEOs and we tend to shy away from that because we don't want to be a woman. We don't want to be. But instead of leaning into that empathy, who we are and our natural tendencies as women, like you said, building communities can create the differentiator you need from your competitor to get great employees. And once you realize you can do that and it comes natural instead of trying to not be yourself or not be so girly or womanly, um, it can really create so much for you that what it means to me is like now um, my husband works for our company one of our companies.
Speaker 3:My mom works for one of our companies. My 26 year old works for one of our companies. My mom works for one of our companies. My 26-year-old works for one of our companies. My sister leads the sales in another company of ours. It gives me so much pride and passion to be able to do this not just for strangers like to employ strangers but to employ my own family and then to teach other women that you know your past doesn't have to define you. You define who you are.
Speaker 2:Oh, that's beautiful and that's super heartfelt, because if if you stay down every time, things have kind of come a wrong angle at you. You know, look at what we would be missing in the world with so many women that have done such great things. So I absolutely love that. That was an emotional one for me. So thank you so much for sharing that, libby, if people want to connect with you online, where is the best place for them to find you?
Speaker 3:at Sure. I mean, libbydcom is a website. It's kind of just a catch-all landing page to all my businesses. But I'm the only Libby DeLucian in the world, so if you can figure out how to spell my last name, I'm very easy to find on social media. But yeah, libbydcom or Libby DeLucian is every one of my social media handles.
Speaker 2:All right, excellent, and we'll tag all those in the show notes everybody. Thank you so much again, libby. I appreciate it, and until next time, ladies, keep kicking some ass.
Speaker 1:Thanks for being part of the ladies kick and ask community Cheers to all you badass women out there. Keep rocking your power, igniting your fire and making waves in the service industry. If you loved today's episode, please do me a quick favor. Take a screenshot, post it and tag us at Ladies Kicking Ass. Be sure to include the link to your favorite episode. Your support in spreading the word means the world to us as we aim to empower even more women. Hit that subscribe button to stay tuned for more kick-ass episodes. And don't forget a five-star review is the ultimate high five. Connect with us on social media. All the links are in the show notes. Thank you for being part of our tribe. Now go kick some serious ass, lady.
