EP 120: The secret sauce to a successful startup: Building efficient teams, cultivating workplace culture, and onboarding strategies

In this episode, host James Mackey and guest Andrew Gazdecki, Founder and CEO of Acquire.com, explore the art of scaling a startup while nurturing a strong company culture. They share insights on thoughtful hiring for a solid foundation, with a focus on efficiency. The discussion covers valuations, deliberate hiring, culture-building, and interview techniques. 

   0:33 Andrew Gazdecki's background
   1:44 Scaling a startup efficiently
   8:25 Successful workplace culture
11:40 Onboarding process and interview strategies
28:04 Hiring for leadership roles in startups

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:27

Hello, welcome to the Breakthrough Hiring Show. I'm your host, James Mackie, and today we are joined by Andrew Gazdeki. Andrew, thanks for joining me.

Speaker 2: 0:34

Yeah, James, thanks for having me.

Speaker 1: 0:36

Absolutely. Before we jump into it, would you mind sharing a little bit about your background with everyone?

Speaker 2: 0:42

Yeah, quick background CEO and founder of a company called Aquirecom. We help startups get acquired and, prior to that, built and sold two different startups. So kind of been an entrepreneur in my whole life, I guess you could say, since I was a kid Good stuff.

Speaker 1: 1:00

And then at your current company, what stage of growth are you currently in? Like where are you guys up to right now?

Speaker 2: 1:07

Currently team size about 25. And then we work with a number of contractors. We have some support reps in Jamaica, philippines, engineers in Ukraine, so around that maybe like 35? We're still pretty small. Still got that tightly in a mean team, yeah I love that.

Speaker 1: 1:28

Maybe we can just start there, because I feel like your team's gotten pretty far, like you have a really good brand and pretty well known. It sounds like you're leading a lot of acquisitions with a pretty small team, which I'm curious to learn more about, the efficiencies and the approach toward doing so. Maybe that's actually where we get started is, when you're thinking about growth and scale and I believe you're VC back too right. Like you have investors, yeah we do.

Speaker 1: 1:53

Okay, so you're thinking about, like, as you're deploying capital and thinking about scaling your company. It sounds like you've done a pretty good job keeping a small team in place and making sure things are efficient and you're hiring thoughtfully and critically. I'm curious maybe we could start there. Do you have any thoughts on that and how you think about hiring and when to hire and the right amount of people to hire all that good stuff? Yeah.

Speaker 2: 2:13

So when you're building a startup, one of the easiest ways to get off track is you just hire a ton of people before building that small core team that really believes in your mission. Everyone gets along, everyone's laughing, everyone is clear on what success looks like. So right now that's kind of like at the stage we're at, we're just kind of like really solidifying that team and that culture, and I highly recommend doing that before scaling. Otherwise you can never get to define your culture and that core team sets it example for all of your additional hires. So I always, in this company specifically, we've been hiring very slowly and carefully with each additional person. So one thing we have is like we only hire when it hurts. We make sure that there's no one standing around doing nothing, stuff like that.

Speaker 2: 3:08

Everyone has a critical part in the business and what that does is that creates again a really lean mean I shouldn't say mean.

Speaker 2: 3:19

Everyone's really nice, but you're able to move faster, you're able to iterate, and so when you're just building out your sales process, you're building out your SOPs, your SLAs, where everyone needs to be completely aligned to deliver that consistent customer experience, it's just so much easier when you solidify it with a smaller team first before you go scaling a large sales team or building out a large product team or something like that.

Speaker 2: 3:45

So that's kind of the stage that we're at. We've had some recent hires over on the sales and customer success sides. That's the side of the business that we've been building out this year and, yeah, just nailing down the processes and the culture and really just making sure everyone gets along and I'm a big believer that people do their best work when they're happy and they're inspired and motivated. So that's kind of the phase that we're at and how I kind of view of what you need to do before you scale your company. Because without that you could scale a company where the culture isn't like really defined and set in concrete and you never get that opportunity to really let your team add value to the company to the point where, when others are brought into the company, they can model their behavior and their success. So you can maintain that culture as you scale.

Speaker 1: 4:41

Did you find it difficult and I don't know how current market conditions in tech impact your business. Do you help companies go through acquisitions that are mostly in tech, or do you help companies across several different industries with acquisitions Mostly tech?

Speaker 2: 4:54

Or actually I should say, all tech. Mainly 50% of our business is SaaS, so we work with a lot of e-commerce businesses, mobile app companies. Then we also see some interesting businesses like newsletter companies, which are actually pretty fascinating when you look under the content businesses, kind of anything that's an online digital business we'll work with, yeah.

Speaker 1: 5:21

So I guess my question to that is really like in 2021, when things were going crazy and the market was getting flooded with capital and growing insane rates, did you really start feeling the pressure to grow into higher? And I'm wondering how you managed that and made sure you weren't getting your skis ahead of you a little bit?

Speaker 2: 5:41

I'd be curious to take, because I'm sure that you saw pretty big jumps in acquisitions, did you, during that time when things were going crazy, oh yeah, and well, we've actually seen a healthier marketplace now, because before the problem was like founders of startups were able to sell it just crazy multiples and it was really hard to price anything, and so the valuation gap between what buyers' expectations are and seller expectations are was just so big. And so since kind of the correction or whatever you want to call it, we've seen valuations kind of normalize and that's actually accelerated acquisitions. But no, I never over hired or the way I think about things is, when you're building a startup, you want to keep your team again really like as small as possible for as long as possible. There's a really interesting image of just like the lines of communication, so as you're iterating and building on processes and creating different products, features, whatever, just that alignment.

Speaker 2: 6:45

If you have your team misaligned and you're going like two degrees in the wrong direction, you're going to waste a lot of time, a lot of money and then it's just really frustrating to work in that environment.

Speaker 2: 6:55

So I've always made sure to be very deliberate with our hiring and so, yeah, there was a little pressure, like everyone else is hiring, but we were like no, we know exactly what we need to do. And then just an analogy is like when you have that small nimble team, you're kind of like a speedboat, so you can take turns faster, you can adjust faster if you need to and you lose that as your team grows. It becomes much harder to course correct if you need to. So maybe it was just ingrained in me because my first startup I bootstrapped that company. So when you bootstrap a company you literally only can hire when it hurts, Like you can't afford that extra VP that you wish you had. So I've been very pragmatic about who I bring on, when to bring them on, and not getting over hiring beyond where we are today and what we need today.

Speaker 1: 7:52

For sure. And when you're talking about culture, I would love to dive into that a little bit more. How do you think about building a healthy startup culture? What key attributes are you looking for? And then, how do you actually make that real, versus just kind of values that are on a career's page, like how do you live those things? I'll learn more from you there.

Speaker 2: 8:12

Yeah, culture is kind of how everyone behaves when the CEO or the VP's aren't in the room. How are they performing? Are they taking initiative? Are they like the values that you lay out? Are they actually doing those things?

Speaker 2: 8:29

And the way that I've always thought about how to create that culture is I look to hire for motivation, attitude and skill set, in that order, because I can't teach the first two. I want someone to be motivated, self-driven. I can't teach a positive attitude and I think there's a study I don't know who did it but if you have like one bad attitude and a group of five, it decreases productivity by like 50% or something like that. You should fact-check me on that. But skill sets we can teach. So I always look for people that are driven with positive attitudes, and that's really what you need when the early days of a startup because you have the ups and the down moments when you get that right, you get a culture of people that help each other, make each other better, raise their hand when something's broken, fix stuff without being told very clear on what success looks like, a clear understanding of where we're going, what are we trying to achieve, and when you get all that right, you get this really enjoyable environment, not just for you as the founder of the business, like I always joke to my team like, hey, I got to work here too, so I want to make sure that it's a fun, inclusive and diverse culture. And it's not easy to do. I've done culture resets as well. When things aren't going well, those are always painful. So, yeah, I think just culture is something you work on every single day in terms of, and there's just little easy things that you can do just as a leader, because it starts at the top.

Speaker 2: 10:00

Culture always starts at the top, in my opinion. And just a simple thing. So just don't be an asshole, say thank you often. Understand that you can't do everything yourself as a founder. You got to let go at some point, so you need to clearly delegate, but you also need good onboarding and you need good training. You need to give your team everything they need to succeed. So when you have all that put together, you create a culture where everyone is aligned on your strategy, believes in your mission but, most importantly, enjoys the work that they're doing because they see the impact. And again, that goes back to one of my four beliefs, which is if you can have a group of people where they truly enjoy their jobs. They're going to do their best work and they're going to put in that extra 20, 30% of effort when they need to.

Speaker 1: 10:50

Yeah, yeah. So I think one interesting topic is getting into onboarding for startups and scale-ups, because I think in some cases, executive leaders feel like they're really strapped for resources and time and maybe aren't investing as much in onboarding as possibly they should. I think it's like in startups, of course, we need people that are scrappy and adaptable, but also that's not a reason to not be very clear in terms of what success looks like in investing and onboarding experience, because onboarding experience directly implicates results. It's completely linked. If you don't have the right resource available for people that are not going to be able to perform in their role at least as quickly as we'd like them to. So when you think about optimizing onboarding, what are some of the things that you do or talk with the other leaders in the organization or whatever it might be to ensure that, when you're hiring the right people, you're actually enabling them to be successful quickly?

Speaker 2: 11:42

Yeah, I think it depends on the role. Like, as an example, we did some recent customer success hires and so we'll have documented playbooks, like we have. This is the role. This is what call one looks like. This is what call two looks like. Here's five example recorded calls for you to go through.

Speaker 2: 12:03

We also do some fun things, like we play like Jeopardy, like we have acquired Jeopardy about parts of the business, like product M&A, advisory, due diligence, just topics related to acquisitions our product, our team, our company, and so we try to make it fun. But also we have playbooks available from day one. So we also map out for the first week what are the goals and then we typically try to onboard people and we have a graduation event after two weeks. We just had one on Friday for two people last Friday and that's when. So we try to actually onboard people so they can start actually adding value within two weeks, because you're right when they're just sitting idle, not fully ramping up. Basically, the faster you can ramp them up, the more excited they're going to be, the more they're going to feel they're supported by you and the better they're going to do with their job because they have a clear example of what success looks like, cause we have documented the processes and have a plan when they come in on day one.

Speaker 2: 13:11

Like what does day one look like? What are you learning? Day two, you're going to be meeting with these departments so you understand. You have a combination of helping people understand their specific role, understanding what other departments in the business do. Also understanding and clearly defining what are our goals and the metrics that we track for success. And then we just round that out and try to make it fun so they retain that information. But onboarding, in my opinion, is kind of an ongoing thing. You're always learning, you're always adjusting. So after the two week point doesn't just end like we continue to have weekly meetups where we'll review calls. I always believe the more that you can invest in your team, the more you're going to get out of them and the more they're going to be able to perform successfully your business.

Speaker 1: 14:01

Yeah, for sure. And when you're looking at hiring maybe we could just slow down on that a little bit Are you still involved with the interview process for every hire or how do you segment that responsibility? I'd love to get your thoughts on what you do in the interview and then we can also go through your entire structure so folks tuning in know how you structure the entire process to make sure you get the right people on board. But let's start with how the interview goes with you. That would be cool.

Speaker 2: 14:25

Yeah. So I'm all asked question like what's your favorite color and why is it blue? Just to loosen them up, because my goal I'm usually the last person to speak to the person, and so I'm looking for culture, fit. I'm looking for again, how motivated are you? So last questions just what drives you? And then I also want to know where do you want to be in five years? I know that's a question everyone asks, but I asked it from both sides Like where in the company do you think you could go?

Speaker 2: 14:54

And then I understand this isn't like your dream job, like I kind of get that out of the way. Like you have personal goals too. Like you I hope you do. What are they? I want to understand them. So when we're on this journey together, I want to make you really successful at this company if you come on work here. But I also want to know your long term personal goals. So, as an example, like some people will say, eventually I want to get into product or something like that. Like okay, well, now I know kind of where you want to head one day. There'll be moments where we'll put them in a product meeting or something like that, and so that opens up a lot of opportunities for promoting from within. So I'm a big advocate of promoting from within.

Speaker 2: 15:36

But then I'll ask questions, like kind of some trick questions. I don't know how good they work, but I'll ask tell me like two things that you really loved about your last company and two things that you would change. And then I kind of like flip flop on. Well, let's start with the things that you would change or the things that you would that you really liked. Actually, you just pick which one you want and if they lead with the things that they would change or the things that they disliked, that kind of is a small indicator that they didn't have a good experience at their last company. And I think it's always poor form to if it's a really negative sort of review on the last company, unless it's justified.

Speaker 2: 16:22

But I like to hear someone go straight to the great stuff, like I had an amazing boss and or I really love the people I worked with, just that positive view, rather than going straight to the negative view. So I try to see, like, do you go to the negative view first or are you going to go to the positive view first and then just other questions? You're just getting to know the person. What do they like to do in their spare time? What do you do on the weekends, where what's the most interesting place you have been just to see learn more about them beyond just these are my skill sets. This is what I did at my last company, because if you get to me, my assumption is you're capable for the job and if you're not, we'll get you there. So that's kind of how I've always hired.

Speaker 2: 17:06

I've always been kind of the culture guy who talks about everything. But, and then obviously I'll answer questions. But I love to see when people have done research on the company. That's kind of a big one for me, because I want people to want to specifically work at my company, not just want a job, but like this is a company that they're really interested in. So have they done any research? Then it doesn't have to be like I know everything, just at least something. So that's like a high level review.

Speaker 1: 17:36

Yeah, like about the final round, they hopefully had done some research right. Like it's one thing like to expect somebody to have a lot of expertise going in or a lot of knowledge going into a screening call, that's obviously completely different. But if you're on a final round with a CEO, you probably should know a thing or two about the company.

Speaker 2: 17:52

Yeah, I would agree with that.

Speaker 1: 17:54

That's funny though. So you brought up in terms of what they bring up for something, positive or negative. I agree with you right, Like finding people that are positive, that are going to speak highly. I do also like to talk about challenges, because I think it shows a lot about self awareness and critical thinking.

Speaker 1: 18:08

One of the things that I do like to ask folks is hey, look like, let's say, that you were promoted to CEO of your prior employer today and yet unlimited resources. What do you love? What would you double down on? What would you change? Anything? You can discontinue, and I love asking that question. I will ask it to individual contributors, Like I ask it for the recruiters that come on board to secure vision for individual contributor roles. But I really love that because I like to get a sense if they understand the activities and motions that are highest leverage, that help their employer or prior employer achieve whatever metrics that they're going after. So I would I'd love to hear like, yeah, we're doing this thing and it works really well, so I'd love to see more resources going in here.

Speaker 1: 18:48

Okay, well, how would you do that? How would you go about doing that? Why do you think that kind of dialing in there and then getting into what would you change? Okay, why would you change it? How would you change it? Like, who would you work with?

Speaker 1: 18:58

And again it's, Even if the individual again may not be coming into a strategic position with us I'd love to get a pulse for again, like their self-awareness, the awareness that they have in their environment, how they feel like they would plug into the solution, but also understanding that they probably don't have all the answers who are they going to pull in? I find that motion incredibly valuable to learn a lot about their psychology, how they think if they're a team player, are they approaching something as a lone wolf? Are they going to be collaborative and pull other people in? And so I've gotten a ton of value from asking those questions too. So, yeah, like the positive psychology, a positive bend to how they think, and then also like self-awareness and awareness of their environment, is definitely something I love to slow down on as well.

Speaker 2: 19:41

Yeah, no, completely agree. I think the question of what are some things that you would change about your prior company, or if you were completely in charge, what would you, yeah, like change that can? It's kind of a spider web question where you get multiple different answers. And if you get a response like that like my last company, the sales team we had some problems with marketing and sales collaborating I think if I could change one thing, it would be X, y and Z to fix that problem, and then you can dive a little bit deeper. But, yeah, that's a great question in terms of seeing how they view the whole organization Because, again, the more about every department, like you got to know the product, you got to know at least what we're doing for marketing. You got to at least know a high level of review of our sales process, and so understanding how everything connects together I think also can give you some good insights. And then also it could give you a peek at what this person could bring beyond just the role that they're being hired for.

Speaker 1: 20:40

Right. It gives you a peek into their potential to move up. You talk about the importance of promoting within and you can try to get a feel for if that individual could take on a different role in the future, which I think is really cool. We asked this to pretty much cover this ground every round, every final interview that I'm on as well.

Speaker 1: 21:00

I think the other reason it works so well going into this topic, this type of question, is because working for startup and growth stage companies, right, like we are trying to be lean, we don't want to over hire a lot of people and we want to make sure that everyone in the company truly understands what we're trying to accomplish as a whole as a company, and how everybody fits into that, and so the more awareness that they have in terms of how they're going to be working together with, or how they work together with, their team and how they go about solving problems is incredibly important. It's not that it's not important at enterprise companies, but teams are a lot more siloed. You're a lot more likely to be doing the same thing over and over again for a longer period of time versus, as we know, at a startup. Things evolve quickly, right, and we have to our job descriptions at our point of impact is probably going to shift, potentially a couple of times a year or even more right. So that's something else I'm looking for.

Speaker 2: 21:51

Yeah, like one thing I had to start up is there's kind of a joke that says, like your job description to just say it's going to change every week and it's so true. So you kind of, also in the early stages, you do want people who have worked at small companies. So I'm very transparent in terms of what it's really like to work at a smaller size company. Like, for example, you're not going to have all these different resources at a big company. We're hoping that you could come in and, like one recent hire would be, I recently hired a COO to help me with full operations of the business and so that person is going to want a certain amount of resources and so, understanding, what resources do you like? Can you get your hands in the trenches or do you need a team to lead?

Speaker 2: 22:41

Understanding that, I think, is really important, because I've made mistakes in hiring in the past where you hire someone that's used to a different stage of the company, like, as an example, I think VP of sales comes to mind the most where you hire someone to figure out sales or something like that, and typically a VP of sales is meant to scale your sales process and so if you make that hire incorrectly. That can be very devastating to your business. So, just being very upfront, like hey, we have kind of a very loose playbook, we have this, our sales text to act, whatever you want to call it, how would you like come in and like help, just giving them a clear picture of what they're working with? Because if they're used to, if they're coming from Salesforce and they have all the resources in the world, it's going to be a completely different role for them and probably not a fit.

Speaker 1: 23:38

Yeah, we saw a lot of companies make that, particularly in the early days of the last growth market. I was seeing a ton of companies make that mistake about 10 to five years ago, within that time frame where a lot of SaaS companies were going out and hiring VPs from Salesforce or whatnot. What we were seeing a lot of is this kind of copy-paste approach where a VP from a large tech organization would try to plug that into a startup and it really just wasn't effective. Unfortunately, I see that a little less now. I feel like we've hopefully a lot of folks have learned their lesson. But it's not that somebody can't be successful. That comes from that background. But experience does matter right, particularly at the leadership level, and having experience working in startups makes such a huge difference.

Speaker 2: 24:21

Yeah, and the second point I would add to that is again going back to just like do they like working in that environment? Do they like that sort of ambiguous or still figuring out a lot of these processes and is that appealing to you? Or do they like kind of the processes are already laid out and now it's really time to go from 20 employees to 40 employees and we have a plan to go to 100 employees or something like that. So understanding, like, do you got boots on the ground like stage of building a company and have you done it before? Have you worked with like a small team before? Like you enjoy that? Or because some people really like a lot of structure, a lot of, like you said, kind of doing the same thing over and over, and other people like to kind of be like a five tool player within a startup and you had a lot too, because there's just so much to do and with the small team, it's a great opportunity for people to be able to raise their hand and say, hey, I'll take that over, I'll improve that, and that kind of wraps back to the culture as well as where, if you get that small core team right at the onset of your business, before you start really scaling. I think your chances of success with future hires are just so much greater because you've really just cemented this team.

Speaker 2: 25:38

That's just passing the basketball as an analogy.

Speaker 2: 25:41

They're everyone's aligned and clear on what you're trying to accomplish and everyone's performing no one's underperforming. It's really hard to get right and my best advice there is there really are no like amazing, like tips. Changes just takes time. It takes time to find those people and I would just say be patient and wait for those people, because once you find, once you truly work with like a really like a true A player or a true I hate the word 10 extra, but we'll use it it can change your business. So, like that's, why not rushing to hire someone, especially if we're talking management roles or VP roles. I think it's absolutely critical because if you get those hires wrong, like it says to you back like quarters, and I think there's a stat where if you every misire costs like half of a person's year in salary because you just spent all this time onboarding them, training them, and then if it doesn't work out, you're back to square one. So it's kind of like you took one step forward but then you end up taking three steps back.

Speaker 1: 26:55

Yeah, well, I think too it's like when you talk about leadership. It can be a seven figure loss because everyone that reports into them. If they're not productive as a result or they're not marching forward in the right direction, then it's every cost associated with the entire team right Cost of the technology used to support that organization. It could be devastating. Yeah, like, hire up, you go in the org chart or you could be.

Speaker 2: 27:19

I've seen this. I've seen like you bring in like a big CRO or something like that, and I think the first red flag of any VP of sales or CRO you got to come in and close the deal Like I don't care how big the company is, because you got to win over the trust of your team and if your team doesn't believe that you can do their job better, it's going to. And I've been a CRO myself, so that was the first thing I did. It was like I'm just going to close some deals and then you're going to listen to me now, hey, so I got a question for you, would you?

Speaker 1: 27:51

so? We talked about the importance of startup experience right, particularly for, let's say, vp of sales. Let's just dial in on that. Would you ever like, would you hire a VP of sales? That's only worked for large companies.

Speaker 2: 28:03

No.

Speaker 1: 28:04

Never right Like never, Right, okay, so I actually got asked this. I was doing a podcast, like I got invited on a podcast a couple of years ago, and one of the questions I got was how would you evaluate a VP of sales that only has experienced big companies for a startup to determine if they could be a fit? And I said, well, I wouldn't. They're like what do you mean? I was like I wouldn't recommend hiring that person. And so their follow-up question was like are you saying that they couldn't? There's no likelihood that they could be successful. And so what I said was like look, it's not that it's impossible. Sure, it's possible, it could go right. But when we're hiring, particularly for such a critical role, we want to maximize the likelihood that this person is going to be successful in the role. So it is just not worth the risk to hire somebody who doesn't have that startup experience. At that level. You'd need somebody that has that startup experience. It's just too high leverage, high risk of a role in order to mess around with that.

Speaker 2: 29:00

I would completely agree.

Speaker 1: 29:01

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 29:02

Working on a big company and a startup is very different. It's two different planets.

Speaker 1: 29:07

Right and I'm sure there's somebody out there that's going to be listening to this like, well, hey, I came for a big company, I was successful.

Speaker 2: 29:12

But yeah.

Speaker 1: 29:12

I'd say they can't be done, it's just yeah.

Speaker 2: 29:14

I agree with you entirely. Of course it can be done. Of course you can find that person at a large company and it works out amazing. There's just so many variables. But yeah, hiring is about making sure that you're going to hire someone that's going to be successful at your business and if they have relative experience in the same stage that you're at and they've shown success there and they like that stage, then I would pick that one. But there's always examples of someone who did this or did that.

Speaker 2: 29:47

But another one I always believe is you can't hire someone to figure out sales and marketing. That's your job as the founder. I've never seen that one work out too well. But like you got to have something, you got to have some sort of like you define your customer, you've gotten at least like maybe you're doing founder led sales or something like that.

Speaker 2: 30:08

A big mistake that I see a lot of startups make is they don't do the founder led sales and they don't actually talk to customers and learn how to sell the product themselves and what that does is it creates kind of a hiring process where they don't really know what they're looking for, because they're trying to solve a problem they don't know how to solve. And so if you, as the founder of a startup, you're the one who's actually been doing the sales process, you've been the one who's been figuring out the marketing strategy, then you'll really know okay, I need someone with these types of skill sets. This is the sales process, whether it's high velocity sales or it's mid market or enterprise. Just having an understanding of the process that you're going to be looking to delegate makes the hiring process 10 times easier. In my experience, I completely agree.

Speaker 1: 31:00

I really do. I've been working with startups for 10 years over 200. And this is something that's been very consistent. Everything that we just discussed is something that I've seen dozens and dozens of times working with early stage companies, so we're putting on the same page there.

Speaker 2: 31:16

You want me to share my one hiring hack.

Speaker 1: 31:19

Yeah, let's hear it. What do you got?

Speaker 2: 31:21

Hiring people that you've worked with before. Yeah, you know exactly what you're getting. So my first four hires were my VP product, my VP of engineering and my CFO hired them all back. I'd worked with them for more than five plus years. So exactly what you're getting, especially in a remote world where these are such critical hires and you're not going to be sitting next to them every single day. That was kind of a little hack and the key there is just if you're doing a startup now, don't be an asshole. And then maybe, if it works out, great. If it doesn't, whichever way goes, maybe they might want to come work for you at your next company. Exactly what you're getting when you bring them back.

Speaker 1: 32:03

For sure, and I think too, sometimes founders they get to the point where they feel like they've tapped into their network.

Speaker 1: 32:10

And one thing that's worked well for me, both from a new business perspective as well as when we're thinking about building our team internally I have advisors that really are partnered with me because of the relationships that they bring to the table, and so, for instance, if you need to scale out a sales organization and you've tapped into the people that you've worked with in the past and maybe your team members have already made referrals, one way to continue to hire in that fashion is to look at okay, can we find an advisor who is a forex VP of sales and scaled several teams?

Speaker 1: 32:43

What if we brought them on with that person be able to make additional introductions to us through their network by making them an advisor to the company? So I think one hack, if you will, would be when we think about our advisors. You want some folks that maybe you're helping from a strategic standpoint and how we're going to operate and scale the business, but also look at advisors from the perspective of what's their network. Do they have a strong list of people that they could help plug into scale positions specifically. I think that's something that's definitely benefited me over the years.

Speaker 2: 33:12

Yeah, I like that. Yep, I would agree with that. Anyone who just has some sort of specific experience where you do not is always a huge advantage.

Speaker 1: 33:21

Yeah for sure. So the last point I was going to make is you brought up asking people about where they want to be in five years. I've received a lot of negative feedback. I love that question and I will die on that hill. I think a lot of people don't.

Speaker 1: 33:33

I did a poll on LinkedIn to see, because I heard a lot of people say, oh, that's a stupid question or whatever, and 66% of people don't like it, and so I have a lot of thoughts as to why the feedback for the folks that said that they don't like that question comes down to saying like well, it's not reasonable for somebody to want to know where they want to be in five years and this, that and the other. And the way that I always saw it is like look, it's. It's a good thing to have a direction and know where you want to go. It's okay for that plan to change.

Speaker 1: 34:02

As we develop more experiences, we collect more data. We should always try to make the best decision with the data that we have and what makes us happy, and so on and so forth. But I do always look to find people that have some idea of a plan in place about who they want to become professionally. I feel like it's really important to have that direction and I really love that question and that's why. But it was interesting that when I did this poll and I've talked to folks about it there are a fair amount of people who don't like that question, so I found out. It's kind of interesting, right?

Speaker 2: 34:31

Yeah, it's funny enough, I actually asked the question and what do you, where do you want to be in five years? And I know that's a question. It's a dumb question, like everyone asks on interviews. But what would be like your dream job in five years? Like, if you could be anywhere, what would it be Like? So I kind of paint it as like I know it's dumb, it's not. I know that every interview has it. There's actually like articles you can read how to answer the where you want to be in five years question. So I totally get that. But, like you, I do like to see if there's some sort of like.

Speaker 2: 35:06

If I'm hiring for sales, I want to hear someone like I want to be a CEO one day. That is an indication of what I'm really looking for, which is motivation and drive, and so when I get into like, that gets me excited. If they're an individual contributor, I want to hire people that are going to be future leaders, and that's actually happened. I've hired SCRs that are now VP of sales at other companies. So I think it's a great question and yeah, it's cheesy and yeah, everyone asks it and yeah, you can have a answer to the question. That's totally rehearsed. But I think if you preface it with a little humor, like hey, just like kind of work with me here, like just if you want to go land on the moon or something like that, like what do you want to do in five years, that's what you'll get a little bit more authentic of an answer.

Speaker 1: 35:53

Well, see, honestly, man, I so that's nice that you do. I don't even do that Like there's a third of the people out there that get it, Because to me it's, again, I think, a lot of the most successful people that I know, right, Other CEOs, folks that have had on the show my advisors, mentors and top performers at my company. They think intentionally about their life. They think intentionally about who they're becoming personally and professionally.

Speaker 2: 36:16

Exactly yeah.

Speaker 1: 36:17

Agreed. I believe in living life with intention and that's a big part of the culture that I'm building and again, it's okay to have I'd rather have a plan and change it than to not have a plan at all and I suppose to me, from a value and culture perspective, that's something that's really important. So it is again, around 66% of people that seems in tech don't necessarily love it but in my opinion, right, and maybe some of my experience, which is limited and I know I have blind spots but I feel like I want to work with a third of people that do see value in that.

Speaker 2: 36:50

Same here. I ask it every interview. So if you ever talk to me, I'll be asking you.

Speaker 1: 36:57

Apparently we have an unpopular perspective here, but I think it's that doesn't mean that it's not a good perspective to at least consider. So yeah, now I totally agree with you. Good stuff. Well, Andrew, look, this was a lot of fun. We're coming up on time here. I really appreciate you coming on the show today sharing your insights and experience with our audience. This was incredibly valuable, so thank you for joining us.

Speaker 2: 37:19

Yeah, thanks so much for having me, james, for sure, and for everybody else tuning in.

Speaker 1: 37:22

thank you for joining us and we will see you next time. Take care.