Speaker 1: incentivizing new recruits strategies for attracting skill technicians and maintenance personnel in general to the industry. I'm I'm working on that very problem or that very issue right now, both on the attraction, recruiting, onboarding, and for lack of a better term, apprenticeship. One of the things that that I realized when when starting to tackle it is that there are four very different specialties that you're talking about in each of those phases. What program or information or marketing, if you would, that you use to attract somebody to the industry is not going to be the same thing that's used to actively recruit somebody to your specific company, which is, you know, different than onboarding and different than on down the road. I almost think that we somehow need to tap into information or specialization other than than me because I'm the wrong generation for attraction at this day and age. The Department of Labor, where our average age for maintenance workers in general, the Department of Labor reported that last year for the first time in X amount of recent history, our average median age dropped. But the way the numbers played out, it's not because we had a huge number of young people entering maintenance. And admittedly, this is outside apartment maintenance. This is maintenance in general based on their their numbers. But it wasn't that there were a huge number of young people entering the career. It was the massive amount of older persons retiring. So the numbers are skewed. And even though for the first time our median age dropped, we are still six years above the median age for entry level construction workers. So in my mind, when you put that together, we have a at least what I look at a generational problem. I look at things completely different than the way that somebody who I would try and be attracting to come in. So I will admit I'm not the best person to talk to on that. And I'm not sure even our collective specialties, what we focus on the hard skills, electrical plumbing, CAMT, CPO, EPA. I don't know that there's a lot of crossover in those skills to get to attracting or how to. Jed, are you ready to get on TikTok and do your dance in order to do the maintenance attraction? Because that's all I got.

Speaker 2: I mean, it is it is tough right now to bring them in. I think, you know, a company's reputation has a lot to do with it, too. And you kind of have to it takes time to to build that to where people that are outside of your company or just coming into this industry know you or know what your company stands for. I go back to my ace in the hole for maintenance success of appreciate, compensate, educate, whether you're trying to recruit them or bring them in or keep them. Nowadays, they have to know that they are an important cog in the wheel, that they are a valued asset to not only the property that they represent or that ownership, but to the property management company that they're working for also. And compensating them. That's always been an issue with maintenance. Compensate them appropriately. I mean, that's huge to get the people to stay and get the people to show that they truly are appreciated and that you really are getting a great value from that maintenance tech versus having to hire a contractor for every single thing that comes up. And then, of course, educate. I think it comes back down to that, too. This isn't a job. This is a career. You have to have a path for them to be able to move forward. It has to be a visible path that they can know. Here's step one. Here's step two. Here's step three in order to get to their next step, because we're not all following the same path. Not everybody wants the same route in maintenance or that same career advancement path. There has to be different avenues depending on where they go. I've said before, some people like the merry-go-round where they find that one role and they want to stay that role and do it perfect for 20 years. Then some people like the roller coaster where they want to try everything and figure out what they're really going to be best at first before they settle down. If you can have those three things and have those paths for them, they feel valued. I feel like they're going to want to stay versus job hopping for that 50 cents an hour more.