You are now listening to Leverage for Growth. Hey, everybody. This is Jesse p Gilmore, founder of Niche and Control and the creator of Leverage for Growth.
Welcome to the agency Leverage edition. Today, I’m here with Nick Deck, the founder of Heroes and Sidekicks, a done for you agency helping founders and agency owners to build powerful, affordable, world class teams. And this is not the first time that Nick has been on the show, but but I am glad to have him back. Thanks for coming to our show today, Nick.
Excited to be here. Thanks for having me back, Jesse.
Yeah. Absolutely.
And what I’m wanting to do, for this episode is, actually talk about something that has started to come up a lot in the beginning of this year where people start coming to me and us because we’re strategic partners. And, they’re starting to find that they’re either burning out. They’re too close to the trees to really see the forest, and they need to figure out some way of breaking free, from this kinda, like, fifty plus hour work week where they’re working in the business, to working on the business. And we’re gonna, tackle this as a case study, And we’ll kinda go back and forth between it. And, so, that’s kinda like the the frame for it. If you could just give maybe, like, thirty seconds, kinda like, not an elevator pitch, but, like, description of you and and heroes and psychics a little bit more than what I have so far, and then we’ll kinda dive right in.
Absolutely.
You know, I’ll do my best to keep it succinct. So long term marketer took an agency from small to not as small pretty quickly, learned a lot along the way, wasn’t as profitable as I wanted to be, learned how to build really effective offshore teams, didn’t wanna build a business out of it, just did it for us, but caught the attention of other folks.
They needed help doing the same thing. We just kept getting better and better at it as we help people do it, and so that’s our primary focus today. We do, you know, about ninety percent of all the things that we do are related to finding and building great teams, for specifically for agencies and, you know, folks in that space.
Yeah. I’ll we’ll keep it to that. You know?
Sweet. Awesome, man. Yeah. And, and I’ve been following your journey for the last, four and a half years or so, and also sent some clients over a year away, as well, and they’re getting a good experience.
So Right.
Awesome, man. Well, let’s dive into this story.
For the sake of privacy, we’ll use, an alias, Joe. So we’ll talk about Joe.
And Joe is an agency owner. He’s working more than fifty hours a week. Some weeks can be seven days a week, leading towards, not really having a weekend free, for months.
But what’s more relatable to this is that he’s gotten to a place where he just feels kinda like he’s owning a job as opposed to a business.
He’s just too close to the trees, and he’s trying to figure out, you know, either how to delegate or how to how to free up his time to really focus around the visionary work. And a big piece of that is gonna be based around, hiring and and knowing who to hire for and and things like that, which I’ll kind of unpack.
But I wanna focus the next five to ten minutes or so on the hiring prework. Like, how how do you know you need to hire?
There’s, like, kinda like the saying of, like, hire when it hurts and hire slow, fire fast. There’s a couple different mottos there.
But I I wanna kinda set that stage. Do you have any questions about the Joe story as a a case study that you wanna kinda flesh out before we start tackling this?
Not not even in the slightest just because I mean, I think that I’ve certainly lived it multiple times over. I’ve been Joe, and I know, you know, every client that we’ve worked with. I don’t I don’t think I know an entrepreneur that hasn’t experienced the Joe case study in some way, shape, or form throughout their career. Yeah.
Some are easier to, you know, find it easier to get out of it, but most folk there’s a lot of folks that suffer through it painlessly, and it’s a slog. And I think that, you know, really excited to be able to talk about how you can how you can go from that state to something that is far more efficient, start far more, you know, gives you the freedom of entrepreneurship that you were always, you know, always chasing, always promise. So, no, not at all. Ready to rock and roll.
Mhmm. Awesome.
And I think it’s important to understand a bit more about the symptoms and those kinda early warning signs, because a lot of times, the Joe doesn’t really know there’s an issue until, there’s a kind of, like, lack of motivation or there’s a lack of that pull towards, like, being excited about actually growing the agency. And I’ve talked with a couple agency owners that are kinda in that scenario. And sometimes they’re actually at a place where either they’re wanting to not take on new clients, kinda like new clients as a burden Mhmm. Or, the the clients that they have, they just it it’s like it’s you’re considering whether or not to get rid of clients to free back up your time. And I think, a couple pieces of that as well is if you if you are going into your work week, as an agency owner and, you know, the clients, like, even if they’re just asking you something, like, that would be seemingly simple, and it just seems like, ugh, I can’t believe I have to do that. You know?
I think those are some of those things. And even finding shortcuts, you trying to, like, shortcut the work or, not focus on quality is another, kind of early warning sign. But, what are some of the early warning signs that you would, kinda point out as well?
I really like the points that you brought up because I think that, like, your business should be something that if there is growth potential, you can pursue that growth potential.
And in so many situations, you’re right. Like, people get to a point where they say, hey, I don’t see a way for me to take on additional work. I don’t see, you know, a way for me to take on additional clients. And in the same regard, like, your life outside of your business should have a similar flexibility and freedom. Like, you should be able to go and pursue the things that you wanna pursue in your family and your relationship and things like that. And in a lot of situations, when you have to turn things down because you are you feel stuck in your business, you know, if that’s stuck in your personal life or in your professional life, that’s a great indicator.
I’d say that, you know, one of the things that I encounter is people don’t see how stuck they are because it becomes this pattern, it becomes this habit, they just normalize, like this is just, you know, there’s been the whole, you know, work hard grind mentality that’s been kind of drilled into the the entrepreneurial subculture, and it’s, I think that people don’t necessarily pay attention to the early signs, and so that it’s only, and in many cases, when it’s really slapping them in the face that they really start to say, hey, you know, I need to do something differently here. So I’m I’m right there with you. It’s it’s a matter of, like, when you’re sacrificing the the growth and freedom in either your business or your personal life, that that’s something to really pay attention to.
Mhmm. Absolutely.
Yeah. One of the if you have, like, a a spouse or significant other, just asking them, am I working too much? Am I stressed all the time? Just getting, like, a secondary person to give you some feedback is is key.
And I know that, there’s a lot of founders. Like, this is not the first time that they’ve probably heard this. So anybody watching this is like, oh, yeah. I have to I have to let go, or I have to get somebody else to to do it. But and the interesting thing is is that a a lot of times they have a hard time letting go. Why why do you think that happens?
I think that for most founders, especially in their, you know, certainly in their first years of business, it’s they’re so used to being the person doing the execution, they are the expert, and they are not the business owner, they’re the person handling fulfillment early on, and they rarely start by having other people do the execution, and so they don’t necessarily trust anybody to do it as well as they do. I think that in many cases there is, there, like, founders are gonna do a better job at a lot of things than the team, but it doesn’t always mean that it’s not the right thing to move and hand that off to somebody else.
I think that in certain cases, good enough or just beyond good enough, like, there are things that you don’t need to do the way that the founder does in order for it to be effective, in order for the client to have the same result. So, like, there it’s a I think that for most people, moving from the person fulfilling to the person who’s actually running the business and and really kind of building the ship building the ship and building the team, building the machine is a really challenging transition because it’s something they’ve never experienced, and it’s a scary a scary prospect, really.
Mhmm. It’s really a, you know, it’s a trust issue because you and I both know there’s a a million and one people out there for every, you know, for every one good hire, for every one good person. There’s a bunch of people who actually will let you down and won’t necessarily live up to what they say they’re gonna deliver. And it’s Mhmm.
In many cases, either they don’t wanna risk it or in a lot of cases, they they’ve had a bad experience once or twice, and therefore, they’re just like, hey. I can’t hire for this. I’m gonna take I’m gonna hold on to this. I don’t know.
What is your experience with that? What do you see? Mhmm. Mhmm.
Yeah. I find it is a mindset shift, and because I think that in the founder’s mind, when they’re letting go of something, they believe that they had it perfect. Mhmm. Right? And and there’s this perfectionism that kinda gets in the way of, being able to let go. And I think that they also start to view it as, this person will never do it as well as I do.
And it kinda reminds me of this quote from Dan Martel. He wrote, buy back your time. It was funny reading it. I was like, oh my gosh. Like, has he gone through my time management module? But but, he talks about how eighty percent done by somebody else is a hundred percent awesome.
And I think that that was a key kinda, like, motto because if you can get somebody to do eighty percent of it, that’s eighty percent that you don’t have to do. And even if that means that, you kinda lean into, making delegation more based around nonvalue, low level tasks to start to really buy back your time. Right?
And start to look at how much time would actually be saved if you did that. And I’m I’m trying to find those kinda, like, different pulls towards hiring as opposed to more of a push where it just, you know, sucks, and then you you have to hire somebody.
You know? Yeah. So, yeah.
Pain pain being a often a more powerful motivator, it doesn’t necessarily have to be the only motivator. If you can be you know, so many of us are great planners, especially when it comes to the things that we’re serve doing to serve our clients. But often in our businesses, we, you know, we just kind of call their children’s syndrome where we’re, you know, we’re planning out all these wonderful things for our clients. We’re really, you know, going above and beyond, but then when when we go to do the same in our business, it always gets pushed off. It always gets kind of it’s it’s a lower priority item.
Mhmm. Mhmm. Yeah.
Yeah. That’s that’s good. So now we understand the the prework kind of, like, the setup, different kind of, like, mindsets that go into hiring. Let’s move into the next ten or fifteen minutes or so based around finding and selecting the right people.
So if we look at Joe’s challenge, Joe might have tried hiring before, or maybe he’s in the middle of hiring, and trying to delegate, but it he ends up just micromanaging. So all the time that he would spend typically that would try to save his time, you know, doing a certain task, he now just has to overlook everything that they’re doing. And he’s like, oh my gosh. I’m not saving any more time.
And so what he really needs to do is he needs to find somebody who can take real ownership, over a role as opposed to a task, and we could dissect that if we wanted to.
But really getting into where, like, very specific things are kinda taken over.
So I guess my question, what do you look for in a hire?
You know, maybe from, like, more of a macro view before we get into, like, specifics.
So I think that the most important thing that you and I have discussed in the past is, like, looking at what can be handed off because there are things that you’re just gonna need to hand on hang on to. You know, I think that a lot of times in the agency space, you’re gonna need to remain the kind of chief strategist. And if you’re in a smaller agency, like, if we’re, you know, just getting to the point where it’s time to start hiring experts, you need to be kind be the the high level oversight of strategy regardless of who’s gonna be doing the the day to day fulfillment.
But there are so many things that if you look at, you know, you know, paid media as an example, you know, a lot of the kind of campaign preparation and the actual execution day to day, the up monitoring and optimization, the reporting, all that stuff, like, that doesn’t require someone with really high level expertise. You know, if you can be in charge of, you know, offer and helping craft some of the messaging and overseeing the creatives and things like that Mhmm. It leaves the the media buyer in a position where they’ve been set up for success and they can go and, you know, based on some of the audience work that you’ve done with them and some of the stuff that you’ve helped them do on, you know, in the initial strategy planning for the client, they can go and largely be set up for set for success and run with that for a long time.
And so I think that in that situation, you’re just gonna look at, like, where are the most critical, you know, mission critical activities that you do need to hang on to. And of the of the remaining, you know, subset, what are the things that are gonna be easiest to hand off? And the reason I bring up this expertise or this, you know, handing things off to experts is because usually, media buying in your agency is not gonna look different to media buying an agency they worked in previously or, you know, when they worked in a company previously. And so I find that even if you don’t have systems, if you don’t have all this documentation, if you don’t have your processes documented, you can bring in an expert to take over and fulfill some a task like that really fairly effectively.
Like, you don’t have to do a lot of onboarding and prep work in order to do that. And so that to me is, like, all your campaign management day to day, week to week, that can be handed off to somebody else really effectively.
If you look at some of the, you know, some of the more, I think, nuanced work of strategy, it’s gonna be really expensive to find somebody that can do it well, or somebody’s not gonna be able to do it as well. So it feels like that stuff that you can hang on to. So when I look for who to hire, how to hire, what what to look for in a hire, I think that the main main focus is, like, where are you spending the vast majority of your time and how easy is it gonna be to hand that stuff off. And so that’s that’s my starting point. Then we can get into the specifics of, like, what that hire needs to look like, but what do you think about that kind of, you know, that that high level checklist at at first? Like, evaluating where to focus the hiring first.
Yeah. Totally. Yeah. I think it it it does depend on, the size of the team.
And so, when we look at the size of the team of, like, the the audience right now, so if you’re an agency owner and you have a team of three, right, or you’re just solo or you have a team of five, it might be a little bit different. But one of the things that is consistent regardless of the size of the team is that you’re hiring to get your time back.
You’re not hiring to grow the business because if you hire to grow the business, it’s actually just gonna increase the problem.
Because if your if your time right now is at capacity and then you hire somebody to in to to, get you more clients, you know, then it’s just it’s gonna be a vicious cycle. So my suggestion is, at least from kind of like an input, is figure out the time component. The other component, once you figure out what the time is, whether it is strategy, with media planning or things like that, or if it is something as simple as your inbox and calendar.
But being able to start freeing up that time so that you can focus on more of that vision.
And you might still spend fifty hours in your business, but the majority of it starts becoming more working on the business is a big thing. Now once you understand what the role is, I think it’s really important that any one of the candidates that you look at, regardless of what position it is, they have three main characteristics that you’re looking for.
Being humble is one piece. They have to be able to take in feedback, right, and, not be prideful. Right? Yeah. So humility is a big piece.
Being able to be coachable is another thing. If they can take in feedback and be able to adjust and adapt based around the feedback to get to where you wanna go is that’s a key one. Then they have to be hungry. And hungry is not just like they need food.
It’s like they actually have to, like, want it. And I think that those are the characteristics regardless of, you know, the position, regardless of, you know, cultural fit and things like that. It’s just it’s the type of candidate that you’re looking for, because if you give them what they need, they will thrive if they have those main kind of, like, innate characteristics.
Have you heard heard those three before? I know I probably got it in some business book. I thought it was really good.
Honestly, it’s like it’s it is our version of the, like, the way that we say this is, like, in many cases, you can hire rock solid technical talent, but if they’re not an amazing human being, they’re probably not going to be the right fit because, like you like you were saying, they’re either not gonna give it their all, they’re not gonna be deeply invested in in the success of your clients, of your company as a whole. Oftentimes, they’re going to look for, you know, their their attention goes to the highest bidder. They kinda got the the mercenary mindset there. Mhmm.
And there’s the lack of loyalty leads to a lack of longevity in the relationship, and Mhmm. Hiring and rehiring and all that, it’s just such a pain. Like, it’s just if you can retain your talent and work with that talent, like, if they have all the raw materials for them to be a successful long term candidate, I would sacrifice technical expertise in many cases in order to get somebody that’s gonna stick with me and put in one hundred and ten percent day in day out.
And I’ve learned that the hard way, honestly. Like, I’ve hired really really smart marketers, but in the end, they were just there for, you know, they were there was a quick stint with us, and then they’re on to the next thing, and that’s if you look at the resume, oftentimes you see that they’ve bounced from place to place, and they’re just kind of, you know, they they think very highly of themselves, and for that reason, they’re never really content in a role for very long.
And I want people to be proud of what what they do and think highly of themselves, but not to a fault, you know, not to a degree where they’re, you know, sticking their nose up at doing certain things.
Like, everybody on the team will sometimes have to do hard things that are below their pay grade, so to speak, and you need people that are just happy to jump in and get the job done because Yeah. Especially in, like, the volatile agency world where things are unpredictable and campaigns can fail and link you know, there’s technology that blows up on us and whatever there is. You need somebody who’s like, if they see after hours that a creative has, you know, a typo on it or something like that, they jump in and they either turn that turn that ad off or they, you know, fix the the creative themselves. They do that kind of thing because they know it’s the right thing to do.
Yeah. Yeah. That’s huge, man. Now for the next five minutes, what I wanna do is I wanna start looking at, you know, aside from those innate characteristics, and you had talked about pride, which is the opposite of humility as being, part of it. So that was that was a cool, tie in. But when we started looking at finding the right people, and kind of the the hiring process to make sure that you are finding the right candidates, that both match not only can they do the job, but do they fit within the team.
One thing I would I would suggest, and I’ll I’ll contact a little bit about my process and then you talk about yours and, we kinda go back and forth.
But once we understand and kinda like you go through a kinda like phone screen process where you’re kinda just seeing, does this person kind of align with, the the position and what makes them interested in the position? Some of the questions that I ask in the way beginning and I get a lot of agency owners to ask in the way beginning are things like, you know, tell me about your background.
You know, how does your background relate to this position, specifically?
What interests you in this position? What are your, you know, one to three year and short term, kinda career objectives? Like, what are you trying to accomplish? And from from those questions, even in the way beginning, you can kinda start seeing whether or not their vision for their position is aligned with, what you’re trying to, to do.
Once you get into that, I think that what’s really important is can they actually do the position? Do they have the expertise in there? So questions based around skills and position would be, after that. And then lastly would be based around the, the culture, like, the organization and where you’re testing values based around scenario based interview questions.
But that’s typically what I usually suggest. But, what do you think about this?
I like to throw people to the wolves and in the nicest way possible. What I mean by that is usually so absolutely, like, in a phone interview, if you’re on a call with them, I want you can you can absolutely tell if somebody knows you know, I keep using the media buyer example, so I’m a stick with that. But you can tell if somebody knows their way around an ads account just by the way that they talk about things, you know, if they talk about things that they’ve been able to accomplish in the past. I’d like to ask people for portfolio examples and say, yeah.
Hey. I did, you know, this cool thing with this campaign here, this type of industry. It’s fantastic. But, like, in in many cases, people will make their portfolios look up, you know, it’s only their best work, and, you know, you never know how many campaigns failed and what the ratio of success versus failure is.
So to me, when I’m on a call with somebody, like, especially in this situation where you can say, hey, you know, open you know, here’s here’s, you know, one of my ads accounts, or here’s one of my, you know, one of my, you know, my campaigns I’m running. Just walk me through what you would do here. And oftentimes, I don’t do that in a video, like a Zoom call. I’ll do that that as, like, the homework afterwards.
I’ll make sure that they, like, if they say all the right things and check all the boxes on the call, then I say, hey. You know, go dissect, you know, what what would you do? What are the optimizations you would make on this campaign here or this campaign here? What’s what’s going on?
What do you see that’s not working as well as it could be? And I don’t always expect, you know, lots of our lots of times they’re not gonna be able to see, like, big glaring issues and errors. But if you can see their attention to detail by saying, you know, they are picking out the little fine details and little nitty, you know, nitty gritty pieces, that’s a wonderful thing because they’re not gonna let those things slide.
And typically on the job when they’re actually, like, executing the campaigns themselves, and then, you know, same goes for, like, if they’re speaking with authority, if they’re speaking with confidence, if you can really hear the expertise in the way that they demonstrate in the way they communicate, their recommendations, even if they are fairly rudimentary or fairly, you know, they’re they’re not big glaring issues, I think that that’s really helpful. Because I think if you are an expert in that space, especially, like, if you are, you know, has have a background in paid media, that’s something where you’re gonna be able to hear somebody who knows what they’re talking about versus what they’re, you know, somebody that doesn’t.
So I like that. And I think that as much as possible, my recommendation would just be give someone a hands on homework assignment, unless there’s, you know, if it’s a creative role, make sure that they spin up a couple creatives, you know, do an example design for you so they can you can see exactly what they’re producing, what their work process is like, and how they communicate that kind of thing. Because I think that hands on experience prior to the hire avoids because, because, like, we’ll talk about onboarding, I’m sure.
Yep.
I I don’t wanna invest in, like, spinning up and onboarding and, like, because I I I take it really seriously. I don’t wanna onboard somebody if they’re not gonna be a good long term fit. So do the heavy lift up front. Make sure it feels like they deserve to be onboarded, and then, you know, then then you can go into that tiring decision with confidence.
What do you think?
Mhmm. Well, that’s huge. And just going back to to Joe’s challenge, and he’s tried, delegating before. Now he’s trying to figure out, you know, the the delegation and the hiring piece.
And and everything that we’ve talked about, both of us have given you different given Joe different, ways of looking at hiring to take ownership and figuring out is is this the right person.
Mhmm.
Because what you don’t wanna do is you don’t wanna be hiring based around comp, convenience.
Convenience meaning, like, the neighbor down the street says that they can do media buying, and then you’re like, sweet. And it’s like the only candidate. You know? You actually wanna do it based around competence. And what we’ve talked about is a lot of different ways of kinda looking in that from, the intro part of, like, figuring out what is the position you’re gonna be hiring for, then the innate characteristics, then going into the hiring process both from skills and culture. And I think you brought up a really good point, which is, getting somebody to actually show you how they think, through a problem that is gonna be relevant to that position. Very, very smart, and I think that, that’s a great idea.
Thanks.
So now let’s just say Joe finds a person, goes through the hiring process, does the shortlist, the person, you know, does the the small project. Joe understands that this person has some, expertise and is able to do it, so they hire him. And now we’re starting to look at the onboarding process. So after, the offer was accepted and you got a start date, Joe’s fear is even if I find the right person, how do I ensure that they actually help me and don’t just add more to the stress?
And they might have had past experiences where they hired somebody then felt as though it’s easier to do it themselves.
And, really, a lot of times, what I found at least is that that onboarding kinda prep process in the first, like, first day for sure, week, even month of that new hire, and kinda determines the the relationship, the expectations, and a lot of different things, to set them up. So, before I get into kind of my my thought process on it, what are some of the things that you would recommend, any one of the people that work with heroes and sidekicks and they’re starting off in that first, you know, day, week, month, to really set up that new hire for success.
Perfect world scenario is that you have all everything that you ever do documented, and people could just follow SOPs, you know, start to finish. And you have this, you know, wonderful welcome kit, and talks about who you are and what you do and who your clients are and all, but the vast majority of people just don’t have that, and so they’re not gonna go in that direction. I would say that if you can set kind of a high level overview of expectations for the role in terms of when they’re gonna be working, what they’re gonna be working on, what their expectations are in that role in terms of, like, their scope of work, it’s gonna be really helpful for them to understand where their where their limits are, you know, where where other team members are going to be involved in the process of fulfilling for that client, things like that.
I think that one of the things that I see often is even in situations where everybody knows that they should have some sort of documentation, some sort of onboarding process Mhmm.
Most agency owners when they’re hiring in the in Joe’s scenario, they just don’t have time to put that together.
And so my my fallback, which is often a very effective fallback, is just making yourself exceptionally available to the new talent, setting the expectation early on on the interview saying, hey. Look.
I’m swamped. I’m quite literally drowning in my own business right now. I need your help. I will invest in everything that I possibly can to make sure that you’ve got what you need, but I need you to be self sufficient.
I need you to ask questions. I need you to speak up when you’re stuck. Can you commit to that? And if they say yes, no problem.
That’s that’s a huge part of my personality. I just won’t, you know, won’t let things slide. Fantastic. You know?
You’re you get you at least set that expectation.
Mhmm.
And the way that I usually recommend people make themselves available is a couple different ways. So, obviously, you’re gonna have your communication channels, your Slack, your email, your whatever it is. You know? There’s gonna be a way for you to communicate.
But I like making sure that especially for the first week or two as somebody’s coming on board, the first onboarding call is gonna be get them access to, like, their tools and their accounts and show them around the you know, who the clients are, show them around who the team is, like, make sure that they get a good lay of the land. They don’t have to remember everything. It doesn’t have to be super comprehensive, but give them the the, you know, super critical data points that they’re gonna need to just understand where they fit into the mix. Mhmm.
Then the fastest way that I’ve seen people be able to effectively onboard somebody that is fairly self sufficient is just setting, like, a daily check-in with them, making sure that they know again, I have like, my my virtual door is is wide open for you. Reach out at any time. I will get back to you as quickly as I can. I want you to ask questions because I won’t have time to necessarily direct you and be as proactive with this with the with the directions that I give you.
But Mhmm.
So make sure that they know they can reach out. They don’t have to you know, they don’t have to feel like they’re bugging you. But, also, like, set fifteen minutes on the calendar every morning or every afternoon just to make sure that they aren’t stuck on anything. If they have questions, you guys can rapid fire back and forth.
Answer this, answer that, answer this, answer that, and then they’re good for the next at least twenty four hours. If they encounter something new throughout the day, they can message you. But if you can’t get to that message because you are really drowning in your business, like, at least you have fifteen minutes to just answer some questions and they’ve compiled that stuff for you. And to me, that feels like you haven’t set the expectation that they’re there there’s there’s not a misaligned expectation.
You’re gonna have like, you you you tell them upfront, I’m very busy. It’s not gonna be as not as nice as I’d like to make it for you. And then you provide an outlet or a channel so that they can get their questions answered at least in a daily daily touch point, you know, and and ideally throughout the day in in quick Slack back and forth or something like that. So I don’t know.
What have you found found to be effective in the when somebody’s like Joe, what do you find to be most effective to help somebody onboard a new a new hire?
I like how you framed it back to Joe because I was like, that’s exactly what I do. And I set up playbooks, and I give it to him and all the all the stuff that you said, like, it’s like a perfect scenario probably because I was in HR before. But, but yeah.
In the, in the Joe scenario, if you don’t have time to kind of build a an onboarding plan and you’re kind of, like, literally drowning in your business, I think one of the most important things is you really hit it out of the park in that first day.
The first day should be setting the vision for not only the company, but the role and how the vision and the role are connected in some form. And because if if you have somebody that can be a self starter, someone who can you tell them to go, you know, this mile in this direction and go, and then they just start booking it, and they start moving in that direction, they have to be aligned to something.
So if you can get crystal clear on the company, understanding where it’s going, to a place where it might not be as crystal clear because if we’re talking about Joe and you’re too close to the trees to see the forest and so forth, the vision might just be this role eventually takes over this certain thing so that it frees up my time to focus more on the vision. That could be the thing that you’re sharing with them. Right?
But that first beginning, I always use this thing called an hourglass method where you start off, you know, if they’re coming in or it’s virtual or whatever it is, you have some type of meeting. And in the way beginning, you’re giving me access. You’re making sure things are good. But, the main kind of piece of it is is that you’re setting the stage for what’s gonna happen today, the week, the month, and what you’re hoping to expect out of it.
We use, in, our mastermind, we use this, this training kind of model called consciousness competence. For anybody that has never heard that before, just type it into Google. You’ll see an image with it. But it basically walks people through how do you learn.
You go from awareness where you’re just exposed to things, but you’re kinda taking it in as kinda like a sponge to more of, like, the practicing piece. And then once you’re practicing, you’re starting to understand what’s working and what’s not. You still need oversight, you know, some QA, kinda checking things. Eventually, they become independent.
And as they become independent, then they start shifting into being able to train somebody else. And if you can understand how that process works, it makes it a lot easier for you to take parts of the role and give them something easy that they can succeed at. And give them something very small that they can just win because it builds momentum. So, and for anybody that is trying to figure out an onboarding development plan, if they watch this podcast, they find me on LinkedIn, and all they do is just send me a a message that says onboarding development.
I’ll I’ll send you this whole model and then probably a training on it to make it a lot easier.
But I think that setting expectations, getting to understand that you’re setting the stage for it, and that daily stand up is crucial, because it it gives a feedback session. And fifteen minutes is not, it’s not a lot of time, but it will reduce the amount of ad hoc questions, meetings from the person that’s kinda coming through. And so I think, I’m very aligned with what you’re talking about a second ago.
Cool. And I mean, like, we don’t have to get in the right right now, we’re talking about unbearing Joe. But Mhmm. You know, best case scenario, you’re doing these daily stand ups with a team regardless.
Like, you have the team there. That’s a touch point where they get to interact with the other, you know, the if if using the meteor buyer example, they’ve got the creative on the on the line. They’ve also got, you know, the copywriter there if you if there that’s how you guys break up your team. And Mhmm.
They can not only ask the questions, but they also get to build rapport. They get to hear what the other person’s working on. So, ideally, that’s not it’s not just a fifteen minute stand up. I like the idea of having a dedicated stand up so that they can have that time, but I like that to be something where that initial that initial I don’t know.
It it depends on the complexity of the role and how much ramp time they need, but that gets to go away eventually, and then they just get integrated into the normal stand up at a point where they just that that’s all they need. You know, they have enough of a lay of the land where they just get to interact with the team as you guys normally do, and they still get that that touch point to ask answer questions. So I just wanna put that out there because I have one particular problem not problem, but one an issue where a sidekick right now is just not getting what they need from the client relationship because they just don’t have they don’t have any standing calls.
They don’t have like, the the founders really, like, detached from a lot of the day to day and to a detriment to the team. It’s not like detached where, you know, it’s in you know, he’s not focused in the in the weeds. He’s not he’s not doing things that are not necessarily things that he needs to be focused on. It’s Mhmm.
It’s not giving his people the direction that they need. And so I’m actually working with said client to help implement something where it’s fast, it’s easy, but it does give the team what they need so they don’t feel because what’s happening is that person is getting reactive feedback, like, weeks or months sometimes later, even though that person’s been trying to resolve said issues, but they just don’t have, like, they don’t have a channel to do so. So putting it out there, like, that touch point, giving people easy access to you so that you can quickly just, like, nip problems in the bud, I think that that is I wouldn’t run a business without it. Let’s put it that way.
Yeah. Totally. I think, that’s a that’s a good point. And, I wanna spend maybe one or two minutes on this, and then we’ll switch into, the next kinda topic. But I think, meeting structure is a big piece of being able to track and measure success without micromanaging.
So you don’t really, if I was to give anybody that’s listening a meeting structure that has worked for my clients and also works for me in addition to that daily stand up.
If you set aside on a Monday a weekly planning session where you look back on the previous week and you say, here’s what worked last week, here’s what didn’t work last week, here’s what I committed to, and here’s what my results were, and then get other people to do the same exact thing.
What happens is that start the the culture of accountability starts to happen. And when you start to look at what is what’s on the docket right now, this week and what we’re trying to accomplish as a team, being able to do that effectively and be able to set it up, to where everybody kinda understands what the mission is, what they’re trying to accomplish that that in that week, that’s really beneficial. Now if you have a project management system and you use it in what’s called a Kanban, like, task board, where you have statuses going from not started all the way to completed, Running a meeting where you’re looking at the statuses from right to left, meaning closest to completion and working your way left, is another way of being able to focus on work completion, like completing work as opposed to just opening up a bunch of things and never actually completing it.
So that’s one part as the the Monday meeting.
The daily stand ups, on a on a daily basis of fifteen minutes where you’re just talking about the day. So instead of the week, it’s based around the day.
This is what yesterday was. Here’s what I committed to. Here’s what the results. Here’s what I’m committing to today. If everybody just did that in a in a routine, setup, you’re starting to get to a place where people are owning their their accountability, and you’re getting an inside glimpse if they haven’t updated the project management system or whatever else it is.
For new hires for the first month, every Friday, have a check-in with them. It might be just, like, an addition to that daily stand up And where you’re asking them one specific question, which is rate your week from one to five on how much you are overwhelmed by the work. Five being completely overwhelmed, three being just perfect, one being underwhelmed.
That is super important for type a personalities because you can find out very quickly whether or not you’re giving them enough work, or if you’re giving them too much and they’re overwhelmed and you wanna focus on prioritization, that one open dialogue is super beneficial, and it’ll save Joe from either underwhelming somebody who could take on a lot more or overwhelming somebody because they’re just dumping everything. And I I I think that meeting structure is really beneficial. I could go into so much more with it, but it it minimizes the amount of questions and ad hoc meetings that you have. So when you’re done with the meetings, like, everybody’s set up, and you just start going. So, anyway, what what do you think about that meeting structure?
I’m all for that. And the only thing that I that I add that I kind of work with clients on it, sometimes Mondays are very busy days. And I like starting the week off with a plan. But if Mondays just aren’t the right day to have your your weekly planning meeting, I want everybody to recognize that you can still operate in seven day cycles no matter when you have that meeting.
It can be on a Tuesday or Thursday or Wednesday or Friday. I’ve done a lot of planning. Like, I have a it’s Wednesday today while we record. I have a planning meeting with a client later this afternoon, and we just cover the last seven day cycle.
And so Yeah. You have to be able to flex to what works based on your unique business, based on how things go in your business, based on, like I find also that for me, I have to ramp into the week a little bit. So on Monday, I’m not in, like, go go go mode. And so having Monday be my planning, like, I don’t get as strategic on Mondays as I do on Tuesday through Thursday, you know?
So Sure. Just you have to make the business your own, and I think that’s one of the beauty, beautiful things about being an entrepreneur in general is, like, this is your business, you know, do what’s right for for you, do what’s right for your team, and people will thrive in that situation, you know, if you just adapt to the the unique inputs of, you know, your clients, your team, etc.
But I’m, I, again, I I won’t do, I won’t run a business without those types of meetings. I have my Monday, Wednesday, Friday calls with my team, just the way that I do it, and it it allows me to not talk to anybody before, after, on Tuesdays and Thursdays, like, the team just handles it. If they, you know, they have something that comes up, a fire, if they get stuck on something, obviously, a Slack message is totally fine, but, like, it allows me to know that they are good until the next time we meet, at which point they’re still usually pretty good. They have a couple questions. We, you know, we resolve the issues, and then they’re good to the next one.
It’s just Mhmm.
To me, the time savings, like, so many people try to keep meetings off their calendar because they think that the meetings are the time suck, and they can be. But if you do your meetings right, the meetings free you up to have these big focus blocks or work with your clients on special projects or whatever. You can do the critical thinking work if you can do your meetings right. So I’m I I love the structure, and I think that is is something people don’t do enough of because I think a lot of people hate meetings, and that’s okay.
But I think that they are so beneficial and in so many cases, a necessary evil. Like, you don’t have to you don’t have to think of them like that, but, like, if you see your meetings as as a negative thing, try to re you know, try to reshape them so that they are as productive as humanly possible. And so that you know that when you have these meetings, it’s saving you all the little back and forth with independent team members elsewhere. Mhmm.
Because that little five minute message or that little three, you know, thirty second this, it adds up to be not only cumulatively probably more time, but also like the context switching is just, it destroys, for me, it destroys my focus, that’s for sure. I can speak to that personally, but I see it with, you know, with basically everybody we work with. You don’t want a million message come messages coming through throughout the day because you just haven’t taken the time to plan appropriately in the meetings.
Mhmm. Mhmm.
Yeah. That’s huge. Because if we go back to Joe, I mean, he he’s at a place where he wants to make sure that, he doesn’t just shift from doing all the work into just managing all the work, and he’s still on the same issue.
And I think one of the greatest things that can happen is the open communication.
And if you look back, and I won’t go so far down the rabbit hole with this, but if you look at a CEO’s role and you start to dissect the best CEOs in the world, world class organizations, And their number one focus is just a free flowing information.
Like, that’s all they focus on. So, I studied, LinkedIn’s CEO or previous CEO, and he used to have very specific days. So, like, Monday was leadership, and Tuesday was whatever. And those themes made it to where people realize that this is the time that he’s gonna focus on this certain topic. And if I need to bring it to him, this is the time that I’m gonna do it. And if I bring it on the wrong day, he’s just gonna say wait till next week.
And so, if we think about that and everything that we’ve talked about so far to make Joe not be just stuck managing the work, from the meeting structures to looking at the management of people, to minimizing the amount of task switching or context switching based around these ad hoc kind of requests. I think that’s a big piece. But if we think about the shift that he’s trying to make from being the person who does the work, not just all of a sudden becoming a manager, but more being a leader, What are some of those things that you would suggest for him that we maybe haven’t talked about yet? Does anything kinda come to mind aside from the meeting structure and Mhmm. So worth?
That’s a good question. I think that in a lot of cases, there like, you know, everybody talks about systems and processes in their own way. Like, everybody has a different definition of what that means. But to me, it’s it’s all about just making the operations within your business predictable.
However you document them, however you implement them, if you use a Google Sheet and that’s all you, you know, you just have a bunch of steps that you have to that somebody has to follow and it’s a quick checklist, that’s better than just assuming, like, teaching somebody on a a call or, you know, letting them kind of ad hoc figure it out, and then assuming that they’re gonna follow that step every they’re you know, all those steps every time. I think that regardless of how big your team is, what type of business you run, like, I have never seen a business that is fluid and predictable and not experiencing the occasional big fire that really, like, makes the owner’s life hell Mhmm.
If they if they just operate, you know, flying by the seat of their pants.
Like, if you can I I think that as as great as your people may be, as great as, you know, as great as you may be, as great as your understanding as your clients may be, in the end, like, you need to have an understanding of basically everything that you do documented in some way, shape, or form?
I, you know, I’m a huge fan. You mentioned the Kanban board, like, I’m a huge fan of making sure that everything is in the project management system, and that, like, when something needs to be executed, if you’re I’m gonna continue to use the the media buyer analogy, but, like, if you’re, you know, gonna go and deploy an ads campaign, you know you have to do the copy, you know you have to do the creatives, you know how to go and deploy it, you know you have to go and have somebody probably I like to one of the things I’ll throw in here is, like, everything gets a quality assurance step. So, like, somebody else checks on the final deployment of whatever it is that you’re deploying, a campaign, a website, whatever it is. Somebody else needs to review that, so I’m gonna throw that in there. Like, do not overlook that step because it will save you so many times, and it takes, like, thirty seconds for somebody else to look at this and say, yes. It’s good or no. It’s not.
Mhmm. But going back to the predictability item, like, it is often painful to sit there and do it. Most people won’t necessarily like, they won’t put it on their priorities list by any means, but most people forget that their team is usually like, if you have a team, their people are the ones executing these tasks day in and day out. And so they can like you’re saying, Jesse, they can do the eighty percent of the lift there, and then you just review it eighty, ninety, a hundred percent in some cases.
You know, they may have the SOP just dialed in. I haven’t personally run written an SOP or built anything out, and I can’t remember how long because the people executing the task are the ones that are responsible for doing that, and I make that as high priority in some cases as some of the client work that they do and things like that because I recognize that the only reason that my team can operate independently and the only reason that I barely have to think about running my business is because we know exactly what’s what things need to be done in what order, by what person, at what date, and that somebody’s gonna check-in and make sure that they got done correctly on time.
So that’s that I think as much as that comes that’s a a team wide mandate, I think it it really applies here because when you have that for a new hire Mhmm. What I can tell you is when somebody comes into our organization, it is very clear that if they’re gonna be doing this role, this is the process they follow. Like, everything’s in Monday. Everything is very, very clear in terms of what what happens in what order and who’s doing it, and so they don’t have to really think about whether or not they forgot something, or they don’t have to think about whether or not it was done correctly because not only is somebody gonna go in and make sure that it was done on time and done, like, done correctly, but it’s been, like, it’s just been spelled out in really plain English for them.
So it’s something that a lot of businesses don’t necessarily do things as predictably or especially early on, but as you get into like, don’t don’t document something that will change next week. But as you get into having these systems that are, like, every time I do it, you know, deploy an ad campaign, this is what it looks like. Go and make sure that somebody’s putting together just at least a simple checklist, at least something where it’s, like, the steps that need to be done. You don’t have to have Mhmm.
Really robust explanations. And I know that I’m kinda preaching to the choir here, but what’s your take on that in terms of, like, especially in terms of order of priority? Because Mhmm. It’s it’s something that many people will push off until the, you know, the absolute last minute, and if anything comes in, they’ll say, hey.
It’s going to the next next next week, next month, whatever.
Mhmm. Yeah.
Yeah. I think when it comes to systems, you’re basically trying to make it to where a good effective system is where the the person doing the work can follow the like, if it switches, they can follow the system or follow the process or follow the SOP or whatever it is, to get a similar, if not equal result.
So if we just boil it all down into sys that’s what systems are.
And you you think about the switch that Joe’s going through from operator and he wants to become a leader, you have to build resources and build those systems to where Joe can effectively hand off something, tell them, you know, what here’s a starting point. But, eventually, they wanna take it over. If you’re gonna get to a place where they’re taking over that role, they’re gonna have to be the ones that update the SOPs that you know, like you were saying before that because they execute it on a day to day basis, they’re gonna be a lot closer to it. If someone who is listening right now has never built systems before and they start to look at how the heck do I get started with this, do I have to build a project management system, do I have to build a bunch of SOPs, My suggestion is is has two main things. It’s called just in time standardization, j I t standardization.
If you are in a process like an onboarding with a client or like the media buying scenario where there’s a setup process or whatever it is, Just record yourself in a Loom doing it, and I start explaining what you’re doing. I’m going over here. I’m clicking on this button in order for this certain thing to happen. I’m gonna pull this information, these file assets from this certain file folder, whatever it is. Just capture it in some form.
And when you start to capture it, you could either use that video or right after you do that task to make it visual. So before you’re sitting in front of an SOP and trying to create the first version of it that eventually somebody else is gonna take over, Being able to give them a visual image of this is the process. Here is the what’s called the trigger event, what starts the process, where it’s a closing event. How does it end the process for onboarding, for an example?
So it’s signing the agreement and paying the invoice, and then maybe the the closing event is having a kickoff call. Right? You have to make it visual because when you make it visual, you can have conversations about a process without getting so much into the weeds. It’s kinda like you’re looking at it.
Those systems are the second component to making it to where you can transition. If you do not build systems and you hire a bunch of people, you have now created an issue in your business. And so I think that going back to the Joe scenario, if you don’t have if you’re Joe and you do not have time to build systems, you don’t know how to do it yet, but you’ve hired somebody, get into a job shadowing scenario where you’re starting to do it. And then anything that you are doing that eventually you want somebody else to do, record it on a Loom video and slowly start building it out.
But those systems are actually where you get the freedom from.
The the daily stand ups, the all that kind of stuff gives you inputs into what systems need to be built.
And so there is no way that Joe can go from an operator to a leader without building systems. You can hire all the people, and you’re kinda rolling the dice even if you have really good psychics. Right? Mhmm.
You’re rolling the dice because you’re going, I don’t necessarily know if this person’s gonna work long term. And that person that is not set up is very similar to the the the person that you’re talking about in the example, where the sidekick is just not set up correctly because there’s no systems in the communication, and they don’t have the asset. So I think just to kinda recap, I think that it’s very important to build systems probably outside of the scope of our episode today. But, I think that the hiring piece, I think we’ve talked through this Joe case study and at least gotten that people component, kinda dialed in.
I can do, kinda like a recap, but, any thoughts on the systems piece?
I think, you touched on something that we we actually incorporated into our kickoff call deck. Like, we we go through an hour long call helping people onboard effectively, and we talk about, you know, adding in the quality assurance step. We talk about, you know, how simple it can be to hand off systems or excuse me, to create systems because most people, the reason they don’t create them is because they overthink it, they’ve never done it really effectively, they they think it’s gonna be this really time consuming process, but really, like you’re saying, I always tell people, you pretend the the sidekicks just look sitting there with you at your desk looking over your shoulder, Just explain what you’re doing on camera just like that.
So I think that there’s tons of alignment there, and I think that people you can’t make an excuse for not just clicking a button and talking about what you’re doing. Like, there is no extra effort except for maybe a couple extra words, And then you can hand that to somebody, and then they know exactly what to do. And then they can turn it into the really pretty documentation, and they can build it into my whatever. You know?
Don’t make that your responsibility. If you can get the stuff out of your head, then that’s ninety percent of the battle.
The other piece that I would say is if you hire someone who is worth their salt, it is the fastest way to get your time back. Like, I’ve never seen anything there. You can use AI, you can use all these systems, you can have these cool tools and whatever, like you there are a million different things that you can use to get your time back, but there is nothing that is more impactful quicker in my experience than putting a new a new body in there to do the things. And so Yeah.
The reason I bring that up is because you can unbury yourself fairly quickly. It doesn’t have to be pretty. It doesn’t have to be perfect. But if that person is even giving you sixty percent of what they could potentially be giving you back, you’ve got hours back each day.
You’ve got hours of your time back. And then that’s where you go, and you take an hour or two here and there, and you build the system. And then Yeah. You know, those are the things where you start to leverage your time more effectively so that no matter what, once you’ve created the system, even if that person gets eaten by a shark or a duck abducted by aliens, you can bring in another media buyer and say, here’s the system I created for how we do this.
And you’ve leveraged their time to make sure that you’ve got the system and that your business just can if you extrapolate that out across all the things that you do repeatedly, then it becomes something where your entire operation is documented. Obviously, there are gonna be ad hoc tasks, and they’re gonna be things that you need to just spin up on the fly. There’s no business that doesn’t have the the inevitable kind of onesie twosie projects and things like that, but I don’t know a business that that does, you know, that where they’re doing any less than, I’d say, you know, seventy, eighty percent of the things that they do.
Mhmm.
Every you know, very, very predictably, very repeatedly. And then I would say that the vast majority are doing somewhere between eighty and ninety percent of their activity on that kind of repeatable, predictable basis. And so that’s where I find that you do what you can to get some impact from the people that you you bring in, and then you don’t just squander that and go and, like, you know, drink beers and watch football. Like, go and take that time so that you know that that investment is then gonna you know, regardless of what happens in your business, you’ve got those assets, you’ve built that infrastructure.
So Yeah. I think that there’s there’s tons more we can talk about in the in in terms of what to do with Joe. And if Joe were here and we could, you know, he could post some questions, I’d be more than happy to answer him because we can go real specific and get really really nerdy with this. But I think that all I’d encourage is that, you know, like you said, Jesse, this is a this is a situation where both of us are known to be very generous with our time and information and things like that, like, we genuinely wanna help people because this is a scenario where we see the potential of entrepreneurship squandered, and most people are suffering in their business in this situation when they come to either one of us because they just there are a few little things that they can do to polish and, you know, and maybe sometimes big changes, but, like, there are some things that are glaringly obvious to you and I that they just are missing.
And I would much rather, you know, share some information, answer some questions, and help people just have that light bulb go off then, you know, I so that I just wanna second that, like, reach out and and, you know, ask some questions because this is stuff that there’s there’s more of a mission to this to this work than than most people understand and and that we let on in some cases. So just just wanna make sure that people understand that, like, there’s there’s certainly hope and, you know, don’t don’t hesitate to to spark up a conversation because I think it’s a it’s a worthwhile investment of your own time.
Mhmm.
That’s huge. And that kinda leads towards the end of, end of the interview. And I do wanna second what you’re saying right now, because, you know, Niche Control is my fourth business. My first three, I was Joe, and I actually dissolved businesses because I couldn’t get the freedom back.
And so it’s a personal kind of, like, mission of mine to impact a million entrepreneurs, and I think that, even just the starting of Heroes and Psychics for you turned into, something that’s very personable and, purposeful, because we see this all the time. And I think it’s really important for if anybody is resonating with the the the like, seeing themselves in Joe to either reach out, to either one of us. And I’ll include, a link to Nick. And I know what do you do in the, the first meeting?
Is it like a hiring strategy, or how does that work?
Basically, all we do on that first call is just to find the problem and the need. Like, in in a lot of cases, people are trying to solve the problem the best way they know how, but because, like, you know, we’ve done this I can’t I don’t have an exact number. Let’s just say for for sake of a range, we’ve we’ve hired helped people hire between two and three hundred people over the last few years as they closer to we’re probably over three hundred at this point if I if I actually go back and look, but the reason I share that is because we have so many data points to say, well, based on the way that you’re presenting this problem, this is how I would solve it.
And, you know, I’ve I don’t wanna pretend like I’m the end all be all expert. There are far more smart people out there than than I am. But what I can tell you is we we help people do this all the time, and so regardless of whether or not you wanna hire through us or hire with you know, go and find somebody else on your own or, you know, whatever the solution may be, that’s what we come come to on that conversation. Sometimes people aren’t ready.
You know, we have minimums that we have to hit with our engagements. You know, we expect people to work with their their sidekicks fifteen hours a week. Some sometimes people just need to go on Upwork and hire somebody for five hours a week or three hours a week or whatever because that’s a good starting point for them. Oftentimes, people end up with they think they want to hire role a but really role b is going to be far more impactful far more quickly and then they can hire role a in you know three six nine months whatever it is so it’s really about and one of the things I’ll say is I used to have salespeople, I used to have you know, this used to be a business where we do a lot of it really aggressive marketing.
I take all of our our discovery calls now because of the exact point that I’m making right now. Like, I have so much data to go off that I wanna make sure that that call is just as value packed as possible.
So, yeah, like like you said, Jesse, let’s you know, I’m I’m happy to speak to people. It’s something where it’s it’s about helping people more than anything else. You know?
Mhmm. Awesome.
Yeah.
Nick, I have a feeling like, the Joes of the world that are listening to this are gonna send us some questions, and maybe we’ll do it again. And maybe how hiring, like, mixes with systems, and we could go down that rabbit hole, or we could talk about management. We could talk about a lot of things. So if, if anybody is listening, to this and you want, me and Nick to kinda dive into a certain topic, or a certain question or anything like that, feel free to reach out.
I’m very active on LinkedIn, and so it’s LinkedIn, Jesse P Gilmore.
But what’s the best way if people wanna just connect with you?
And then I’ll also include the the link if if people are into a place where they wanna figure out the hiring piece and talk to you as well. I’ll include that in the show notes. But, is there a certain social media or something that you’d direct them towards?
You know, I think that based on my own personal communication channels and my preferences, I would say jumping on the email list, getting a the occasional email from us, and then or, you know, you can email back with questions, things like that. I’m an inbox zero guy, so that that’s the reason I say that is because I will clear out my inbox and respond to you the same day, whereas my social inboxes, you might be waiting a day or a week or or potentially more because I’m just not as active on social as I, I I once was. So Yeah. If if I’ll leave a a link for how to connect with that that list and make sure that, you know, you’ve got direct access to me via that as well.
Cool.
Well, thank you so much, Nick, for sharing your insights today. I thought it has been a lot of fun, and, obviously, we have a a lot in in common when it comes to different strategies and, the expertise with it. And, for anybody, again, for anybody that’s listening that sees themselves in Joe, I would suggest, like, getting a call with Nick and being able to kinda diagnose the hiring piece. Systems are kinda my thing as well. So, by that. Thank you so much, Nick. I really appreciate you being on the, podcast.
Yeah. Thank you so much for having me back, and I think that, you know, I wanna second that point. I think one of the reasons that we can have these conversations so organically is because we have very complementary ways that we help people, you know, I we we do our best, we are very hands on with clients, but the fact is that we can’t invest the time based on our engagement structure, we can invest the time to really dial down into your specific business the way that Jesse does. So I think that, you know, the nice thing I’ve I I the over the last few years that Jesse has mentioned, like, he’s been able to send us folks that he’s working with, and the cool thing about it is when you have somebody like Jesse being the kind of strategic mad scientist behind the scenes with you helping to design, you know, hey.
Define this is what we need to hire, and, you know, here are the systems that we’re building, and here’s the infrastructure that needs to be created to support that person, set them up for success. Like, it’s this kind of double whammy effect. And the cool thing about it is, like, you’ve got you’ve got really approachable guys where they can solve the problem from, you know, multiple directions. I think that it’s it’s really necessary in in a lot of cases.
So by all means, you know, Jesse’s a very humble guy, but I would say make sure that if you’re in a position where you are experiencing Joe syndrome, you gotta talk to mister Jesse here.
Thanks. I appreciate you, Nick, and, I’m sure that we’ll do this again in the next couple of months, But thank you so much, man.
Thank you. Cool.
