Episode 5: Hiring and Recruiting Systems (to always have A-Players ready)

Summary
In this episode of the Huge Insider Podcast, host Sid Graef brings you powerful hiring strategies from Brandon Vaughn, a veteran entrepreneur who grew his

[Sid Graef]:
Hey, my friend, welcome back to the Huge Insider Podcast. This is your host, Sid Graef, and if you've been listening to our podcast, you already know this is a brand-new show for home service professionals who are committed to breaking the million-dollar revenue mark. If that's you, you're in the right place. If you’re already over a million in revenue, you’ll get even more out of the show.

So you already know—this is not your typical podcast. It’s not an interview show; it’s not expert-driven. Instead, we’ve gathered seven- and eight-figure business owners—people running companies that do anywhere from two million a year to 40 million a year—and we’re bringing you their best insights, all focused on a single topic each month. These are real operators, quietly building empires behind the scenes—not on social media looking for attention. They are in their element, building businesses and making things happen.

So it’s March 2025, and this month we’re diving into hiring. A lot of you have seasonal businesses, and you know it’s time to staff up now so you can maximize your capacity to handle the spring rush. Last week, we heard from Michael Dahlke—he talked about the difference between core behaviors and core values, why it’s so important, and how that can be critical for your hiring and company culture.

Today, you’re going to hear from Brandon Vaughn. Brandon started a window cleaning and power washing company as the sole employee (bought it from his dad), grew it to over 70 employees, and sold it. Then he built the Conquer coaching program—coached hundreds of small business owners—and also built Wise Coatings (which is still active). Now he’s building HireBus, a brilliant tool for hiring A-players. We asked Brandon: “What’s your best advice for best hiring practices?” Here’s what he had to say.

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[Sid Graef]:
So in the world of hiring, there's nobody better for us to ask these questions. We've got Brandon Vaughn on, and the question is: What are the best practices for your hiring process? How do we find and hire A-players?

[Brandon Vaughn]:
Happy to dive in—this is one of my favorite topics. I'll share what I'm doing with my home service companies. For example, Wise Coatings has a waiting list of about 260 technicians waiting to join. There’s a major reason: we treat it like a marketing problem.

Imagine your business is a product on a store shelf with many other options. How do you stand out? Most job ads are bland, generic. They don’t capture attention or describe what the opportunity is. We know how to sell a cleaning job to a customer—who our ideal customer is, marketing materials, videos—but if we don’t do that for employees, we fail. If we have no great employees, we can’t deliver.

When writing our job ads, we start with a strong “who you are” opening hook—our ideal candidate profile: “You’re always working to level up in life personally and professionally. You love running toward problems…”—referencing our core values. Then we say who we are, selling them on us: “We were awarded Top 100 Emerging Franchises by Entrepreneur, one of the fastest-growing floor coatings companies…” Then we include a quick video: “See what it’s like to work here.” Future-pace them—what would it be like being part of our team?

It’s about selling the opportunity. If your business isn’t big, it’s still “sexy”: a family-owned business with big dreams. Cast that vision. If it’s big enough for their dreams to fit inside, that’s how you attract A-players. Also, clean up your shop—fix the flickering light. Make it a place they want to work. Think about onboarding, training, job descriptions, so they have clarity.

Second, we keep ads running all year. “Always be recruiting,” as it’s a lot of work. That’s why we built HireBus—an AI fractional recruiter that posts the job ads, messages candidates, and interviews them, 365 days a year, to build you a talent pool. That’s how we keep a waiting list. So if I have someone perpetually late or underperforming, I can tap a candidate from the pool. You’re never a hostage to a bad hire.

Third, the difference between a good salesperson and a great salesperson might be $200K a year in sales vs. $1.5 million. Keep upgrading your bench. If you have a strong “always hiring” pipeline, you can be picky, release underperformers, and attract real A-players.

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[Sid Graef]:
Great. Within that process, you built HireBus to handle it. People apply, there's a screening. What’s the outcome you want from screening, and best practices for interviews?

[Brandon Vaughn]:
We focus on behaviors, experience, and skills. For behaviors, we use a “right seat” score—a single-question, five-minute assessment that outputs 21 behaviors. We benchmark them for each position: the ideal production manager, salesperson, etc. Everyone takes it, we ask deal-breaker questions, then we do interviews. I like situational questions to see if they’re lying, exaggerating, or hiding something. People come in showing their best side, so we dig deeper to see if there are any hidden issues.

The cool thing is, HireBus can auto-generate interview questions you should ask based on their behavior profile. You don’t have to guess.

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[Sid Graef]:
Okay, friends—what did you learn from Brandon, and more importantly, what will you do about it? How can you apply these ideas to your business this week? Everything Brandon mentioned is in the show notes. Most importantly, download the Action Guide—we’ve created a five-page guide to help you execute Brandon’s strategy right away. Grab it at thehugeconvention.com/action. Of course, that link is in the show notes. If you want to take a look at HireBus, go to hirebus.com/huge.

There are more ways to level up your business. One, keep listening to this podcast—it’s free, and the insights are priceless. You’re hearing from people at 2, 5, 10, even 50 million in revenue, telling you exactly how they do it. Also, our free newsletter, The Huge Insider, is at thehugeinsider.com. Each week you’ll get more strategies delivered straight to your inbox.

The Huge Convention—the ultimate event for home service business owners—is this August 20–22, 2025, in Nashville, Tennessee. Tickets are still very affordable. It’s the best networking, education, and biggest trade show in our industry.

Lastly, we want to feature you on the show. If you’ve had a big win—especially if you applied something from this show—or if you had a painful failure that taught you a powerful lesson, call and leave a message at 804-600-HUGE (804-600-4843). We might feature your story or even play your message.

That’s it for this week—don’t just listen, take action! I’m Sid Graef, and this is the Huge Insider Podcast. We’ll see you next time.