Merchandise Your Value with Joe Frankie III

Your leadership can be strong and still go unnoticed if you don’t know how to position it. That’s the battlefield we step into with Joe Frankie III, a former U.S. Army commander turned executive advisor who’s helped hundreds of executives, veterans, and students build a bridge to their next role. We talk about what separates leaders who quietly stall from leaders who compound trust, influence, and opportunity.

We start with the basics that many leaders skip: you don’t become a great leader until you learn to be a great follower. From there we get concrete about servant leadership, “leadership by walking around,” and why the best leaders think of themselves as resource providers. We also dig into prioritization when everything is urgent, plus a memorable distinction that changes how you delegate: calculated risk versus gambling.

Then we move into modern executive presence and personal branding on LinkedIn. Joe breaks down what it means to merchandise your IQ and EQ, why a resume is a black-and-white snapshot, and why your LinkedIn profile is the color portrait that does covert networking on your behalf. We get tactical on building influence without feeling salesy, writing your About section in first person, and the small trust signals that matter fast, including a professional headshot where people can see your eyes.

Know more about Joe here:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/joefrankieiii/
https://www.facebook.com/joefrankieiii/

https://x.com/JoeFrankieiii

If you’re a founder, executive, or veteran translating your experience into the civilian market, this is a practical guide to being found, being understood, and being trusted. Subscribe, share this with a leader who needs it, and leave a review with the biggest change you’re making to your LinkedIn presence.

Transcript

Chaos To Compounding Growth Intro

SPEAKER_02 0:02

Welcome to Scaling with People, your weekly playbook for turning chaos into compounding growth. Each week we go under the hood with battle test experts in all areas of business, from marketing to sales, operation finance, and people, plus product and leadership, to unpack the plays, numbers, and systems that turn chaos into compounding growth. Learn straight from founders and experts who've done it and continue to do it successfully. There's zero fluff, just moves that you can still immediately. This podcast is brought to you by Guide to HR. Human expertise, AI-powered impact. Welcome everyone to today's Skilling with People podcast. I'm Guinevere Curry, your host and founder and CEO to Guide to HR. On today's episode, we're diving into a battlefield most leaders underestimate. It's how you position yourself in the marketplace. Today's guest is Joe Frankie III. He's a former U.S. Army commander. Thank you so much for your service, kind sir, and returned executive advisor who has spent four decades leading teams across industries and helping more than 750 executives, veterans, and students build powerful bridges to their next opportunity. Today we're going to break down why your EQ and IQ are only as valuable as your ability to merchandise them, the covert and overt tactics leaders use to elevate their professional presence, and why being kind to your avatar on LinkedIn might be the most strategic move you make this year. So buckle up because this conversation turns networking into a present operation. Well, Joey, thank you so much for your time today. Love having you on this. Can't wait to dive in. But before we do any other uh words of wisdom of who you are and what you've done in the past, and again, thank you so much for your service.

SPEAKER_00 1:45

Oh, it's a pleasure to be here, uh, Gwinevere. So uh thanks for having me and look forward to getting into it.

Leadership Starts With Following

SPEAKER_02 1:54

Yeah, awesome. Okay, so you're like, let's just do it. That is the army man talking, Ronnie. Well, okay, great. So let me ask you, you've led teams across military, you've helped more than uh 750 executives, veterans, and students. Your background spans plan tune command to advising CEOs. How has your view of leadership evolved over these over over your decades of experience?

SPEAKER_00 2:19

Um, leadership is pretty basic. And uh there are certain steps necessary to become a leader. And uh in fact, I was uh uh in a class at a university uh and the subject was leadership. And so I shouted uh at everybody in the class and I said, Stand up now. And uh two people jumped up, and the rest of them were like, you know, what do I do? What do I do? And I said, Those are your two leaders right there. And they said, Well, how do you know that? And I said, Before you can become a good leader, you have to be a good follower. Oh, if you can't follow, don't worry about being a leader.

SPEAKER_02 3:08

That's interesting. I that's so fun. And I also think as you were telling the story, I was thinking, and that you were you were also the leader because you were telling people what to do already.

SPEAKER_00 3:17

Well, and but see, I I can train those people because they follow instructions.

SPEAKER_02 3:22

Yeah. Oh, yeah, I get you. Okay, yeah, great point of view.

SPEAKER_00 3:26

Yeah, so the ones that kind of most people are gonna kind of wander around like with a stunned mullet look, like, you know, what am I what do I do now? Think about it, look around, see what everybody else did. But these two people jumped up and I said, you know, the easiest way is to start with them because uh they can evidently follow instructions. And if you can't follow instructions, think about it. If you're a leader, then you have to lead people below you, but you also have a leader above you that you have to follow.

Servant Leadership And Walking Around

SPEAKER_02 3:59

So true. Yeah. So what uh leadership lessons have you learned from the battlefield that has translated most directly to business leaders today?

SPEAKER_00 4:08

Be a servant leader. Don't ask anybody to do anything that you uh wouldn't do yourself. And uh if you're a servant leader, you're right down there with them. You know what's going on, you can see things, you know whether they need resources, you know, and I always encourage leaders uh to, you know, I call it leadership by walking around. It's also called management by walking around, and that is go around the things that you lead and go see it, see what's happening, you know, interact, ask questions, uh, you know, and and people will let you know, you know, what you need to know in order to properly uh lead them.

SPEAKER_02 4:51

That is, I love that. I mean, first of all, you said leadership is easy at the front. And I was like, yeah, but there's it's complicated, but it's easy. And that Bright, you said that one thing, if that is all you do as a leader, it has such a phenomenal impact because you're building trust, right? You're you're letting them know you know what to do and can do it, but you're asking them to do it instead. I and you're listening to what the roadblocks are for them. And maybe some of them are their own roadblocks that you can help them get past, or they're roadblocks that the organization has created that you need to go fight for to get rid of to help them be able to do their job.

SPEAKER_00 5:25

Right. It's usually uh a a combination. Um, but uh, you know, as far as being a leader in an organization, uh, I am the resource provider for the people that I am leading. So, you know, I have to know what resources they they need. And if some somebody asks me to do something, I have to be smart enough to say, I can do that. You know, I have these abilities right here, but these are the resources I need to do what you just asked me to do.

SPEAKER_01 5:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 5:58

Or there's or the or an accommodation occurs. Well, we don't have those resources, so let's take it to that level and let me work on getting the resource to take it to another level.

Priorities When Everything Is Urgent

SPEAKER_02 6:10

Yeah, or I was thinking priorities too, right? Like you might have all the resources you need except for time. You can't make more time. Uh, and so sometimes I know a lot of leaders, like I coach them in regards to like you're what you need to do is help prioritize the workload your employees have so that they're focusing on the right thing that the business needs them to focus on to move the needle. I think that's really challenging as a leader sometimes, especially when you have competing priorities. You know, you have a customer that needs XYZ, but you have the investors or the board or your CEO that's demanding ABC and you've got to get them both done. And it's like, how do you help your employees, your direct reports know what to work on and get done first? And then having the voice, right? Like maybe it's like, hey, this client needs this CEO, I will get you your ABC. However, client, you know, we need to retain and make this client happy. Are you cool if we give you, you know, if we get this to you in a day later and having the conversation about prioritization?

Calculated Risk Versus A Gamble

SPEAKER_00 7:06

Oh, uh absolutely. Um one of the things I learned in the army was if you looked at all the requirements that you have to do as a leader, you know, you have uh one year, these are what I call annual requirements.

SPEAKER_01 7:22

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 7:22

Would take 465 mandates annual requirements.

unknown 7:28

Right?

SPEAKER_01 7:29

Yeah, wow.

SPEAKER_00 7:30

Consequently, what you really get paid on doing is okay, where is this particular unit at? You know, where do we want to go? What resources do I have? Because there's no way I can do those 475 or 465 mandates of requirements. So I have to be able to take risk.

SPEAKER_01 7:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 7:51

You know, yeah. And a leader has got to uh know when to take risk. And risk, I'm not talking about taking a gamble. A calculated risk is just that. I mean, it's analyzed, you look at what's going on, and uh okay, you know, we're going to accept risk here because we want to do this over here. And uh it's a challenge. Uh when I was explaining to junior leaders the difference between a risk and a gamble, I said um if you are down at the uh airfield and somebody you tell somebody, okay, this truck needs to go over here, right? And so you go and you see this soldier and say, Hey, take this truck over here, you know. You just made a gamble. Whereas a good leader would say, Okay, I gotta move the truck over there. Uh, okay, this soldier's available. Then the question is, hey, did you just come off duty 24 hour duty or are you available for duty? Hey, do you have uh a license for this two and a half ton truck? Okay, is that truck properly dispatched? You know, is in other words, it's it's safe and okay to use. And in both cases, the truck goes on the delivery and some uh person's driving on the wrong side of the highway, hits the truck, you you lose the soldier and all of that. One is a calculated risk that needs to be investigated. The other one was a gamble where uh you almost need to read the supervisor their rights and say, you know, you you you you didn't do right by this. So I I differentiate between calculated risk and gambling.

Resume Versus LinkedIn Value Signals

SPEAKER_02 9:46

That's really key. I love that. So let's kind of switch gears. As a leader, we don't think about a lot of times our own personal branding. You talk about merchandising EQ and IQ. What does that actually mean in practice for a leader or an executive?

SPEAKER_00 10:00

Okay, so um, for example, your IQ. Okay. Uh, that's your intellect, what you know about something. So if you think about a resume, a resume is really about 95% of your intellect displayed. This is what you got done, and it's a black and white snapshot of who you are and what you can do. Then on the other side of the equation is the LinkedIn profile. And the LinkedIn profile is a color portrait. Okay, it's got hues, it's got brush strokes, it's got all of this other stuff. And so you can also market or merchandise your EQ on a LinkedIn profile, whereas the resume is really designed for IQ, what what you can can do. And so the resume is always a subset of the LinkedIn profile. But the beautiful thing about the profile is you have all these other places on the profile to talk about the different personas each of us have and what we use on a daily basis. For example, you probably volunteer for certain kinds of things. You uh probably support certain kinds of organizations. In other words, the the organs are there for you to populate on LinkedIn, whereas the resume is kind of restrictive in this thing. So you have the ability to take the whole person concept, you know, with a LinkedIn profile as a as opposed to the resume is very specific to this one specific position.

SPEAKER_02 11:41

That's such a great example, too. And you can also hear their voice a bit better, right? You can see what are they posting about and how are they posting it? Who are they responding to and how they're responding to those posts? So you're getting to see a lot more flavor, like you said, the color of that individual. Why why do you think so many smart, capable leaders struggle to communicate their value effectively?

SPEAKER_00 12:04

Um I think uh a lot of it is they they just haven't had the experience. Um, you know, in the in the army, you start at the lowest possible level, you know, and you you work up and you work up. And so if you're successful, right? Just like in the corporate world, if you're successful, you keep getting increased levels of responsibility. And that's what people want is increased levels of responsibility because as as a as an HR person, um uh pay, salary is tied to responsibility, right?

SPEAKER_02 12:42

Well, it should be, that's for sure. Responsibility and outcomes, right?

SPEAKER_00 12:47

Yeah, yeah. And so your responsibility to produce. And you know, once you get on in the in the higher responsibility things, if you don't produce, you know, you know, uh it's not uncommon to say, oh, look, you either change the numbers or we're gonna change the faces.

Fixing Executive Visibility On LinkedIn

SPEAKER_02 13:04

Yeah, exactly. So if someone is listening and they're like, I'm still struggling and I'm higher up in my career, they're highly competent but individual professional. What is maybe the first step or two that they could take to help fix that visibility problem?

SPEAKER_00 13:18

Well, oh if you're if if you think you have a visibility problem as a as a senior person, then I can tell you immediately, almost within uh 95%, then you're not merchandising or marketing yourself on LinkedIn. You know, because if you take that effort, and believe me, it's not easy. Because think about it, you're doing a term paper on yourself.

SPEAKER_01 13:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 13:45

With all the edits and all of that kind of stuff, you know, or you get some help for somebody like me or or or something like that, because I'm a third party off the side, you know, interacting uh with you to help you help you do that. But I would say that you're probably not doing that. And if you haven't done that, then you haven't gone through this inventory, this research of who are you? What do you bring to the table? And uh people will say, Um, Joe, one of the things you just told me is you coach 762 people professionally. And I said, Yeah. And he said, Well, why is that important to me? And I said, Because if you work with me and you can't measure your production, I cannot help you.

SPEAKER_02 14:35

Yeah, that's if yeah, I love that. So uh we kind of cued up that we're gonna be talking about covert and overt methods. You we like of the to build influence and opportunity. Can you first explain the difference between the two?

SPEAKER_00 14:50

Covert versus overt, right? So overt are the things that we take out in the open. Like, for example, if one of your friends was needing a job, then they're talking to you. They're saying, Hey, can you keep an eye open for me? You already know me, you know, and so all all the those are the overt things. Say if you apply for a job, that's overt. So a lot of the world used to be overt. In other words, 15 years ago, you applied to jobs and you went back to the newspaper and you went over to the, you know, to their HR office because there was an ad in the paper, you know, and you had to submit your resume. Um, these were all overt activities. But now with the in today's world, uh, with especially with LinkedIn, and it's brought it to the forefront along with a lot of other tools, is now you you have the covert opportunity. In other words, you are going to a virtual coffee meeting 137 times a day, but it's not you. You don't know it. It's your avatar. And your avatar is the LinkedIn profile, specifically uh the about section and above. You know, it's the face that you show to the to the public outworld. And so those are the covert things you can do. And so I am uh I've coached in I think 16 different countries now.

SPEAKER_01 16:22

Oh wow.

SPEAKER_00 16:22

And I've never advertised. So then you ask yourself, how did these people in these different countries how did you coach them? Well, they sent me a LinkedIn message saying, hey, this, and you know, we ended up having a conversation, a phone call, and then they decide they want to be coached, and and we do it. Because we do it over the phone and the and the computer. Yeah. But my point is people found me as opposed to me finding them. So that's that is the covert power of LinkedIn and these other tools, is you can be seen by people you would not normally have been seen before these tools were made available.

SPEAKER_02 17:11

Yeah, that's so true. So, what are some covert strategies that high performing leaders use that most people never notice?

Build A Complete Professional Profile

SPEAKER_00 17:19

First of all, a high performing leader, okay, you have to decide whether you want to be present in the new world or not.

SPEAKER_01 17:30

Especially with AI.

SPEAKER_00 17:32

If you want to be present in the new world, then you you populate a LinkedIn profile to the extent that you can. Because think about it. When LinkedIn, uh when you get on LinkedIn, you you basically fill out a form and it says, Hey, my name's Guinevere, and this is my job. I'm in the HR business. That's the two things. Now you have this beginning of a LinkedIn profile, and they're going to start stimulating you to try to, you know, fill it out. But the point is they issue you a bleach white skeleton of yourself. And it's your job to hang muscle, ligaments, and tendons all over this body. And so what you have in the world is most people running around with about half a body, and they can't understand why nothing's happening for them. It's like, okay, you're in a race, but you want to run, but you got no muscles and the legs. Yeah, and people will say, Well, you know, I don't want to put anything on. I said, Well, that's fine. Okay, so you want to be 395 out of 400. I said, Well, I do executive search and I will never, ever, ever see you as 395 out of 400.

SPEAKER_02 18:55

Yeah. I think the biggest thing I noticed, especially on the recruiting and HR side, is that the people who don't even have a picture up, like, okay, what are you doing? To me, they're either stagnant in their job and aren't actively interacting and engaging with the world, or they're hiding something, or it's an AI thing. And even now, AI profiles are starting to get pictures up there. So, but like, don't have a picture. That's like for me, that's the first red flag.

SPEAKER_00 19:25

Yeah. And so uh nowadays, uh, I mean, uh LinkedIn has it where you can verify your identity. Like, for example, uh, I get a lot of uh connection requests from people that do not have uh, you know, their identity verified.

SPEAKER_02 19:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 19:43

Uh real quick, I look through it and you know, it they have a lot of things that I can't verify. Like they got their uh bachelor's degree in lit uh Latvia or something like that, and now they're in the US, you know. Yeah. Uh so uh, you know, I don't pay much attention uh to that. Once you've got your ID verified and you've got your uh, you know, picture, and I and you know, picture is worth a thousand words, and that's why I was telling you, I mean, your headshot, you know, really needs to be, you know, a professional type headshot. And I'm seeing where people can take a picture, you know, with AI and kind of get there the same way. But the bottom line is you you gotta be present and you gotta be professional.

Commenting For Quality Not Noise

SPEAKER_02 20:34

Yeah. So for those listening, what are practical ways to build influence without feeling like they're self-promoting or self-y?

SPEAKER_00 20:42

So uh one, if you uh post or go and like things during the week, you know, uh a lot of times uh uh I don't do posting, but I find something that comes up in the feed that I have knowledge about or have, you know, various experience with. So I'll share those three or four sentences or whatever it is, you know, and make a comment. So one, you're you're out there, and two, uh, you know, people, if you're making good comments, you're gonna get impressions. You can see them there. That means people are looking at what you're uh putting out there, and so you can get some feedback on that. But don't think that you've got to post three times a day or something like that. You just need to be out there during the week. And I think even LinkedIn says if you post once a week, you're you know, you're in the top.

SPEAKER_01 21:37

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 21:46

Not over over people. I know people that overdo it and um don't recommend that.

SPEAKER_02 21:52

There's a difference between quality and noise.

SPEAKER_00 21:56

Yeah. So uh I look for quality, and if I Can't add quality to something, or it's say it's something you posted, but I'm not familiar with it, you know, I might like it, but I'm not going to put a comment out there because okay, there's probably more qualified people on that particular subject to make that comment.

About Section In First Person

SPEAKER_02 22:15

Yeah, that makes sense. So earlier you said be kind to your avatar. What does that mean in the context of a professional presence?

SPEAKER_00 22:23

Okay. So uh think about your about section. Okay. So you have your background photo, okay, and then you have your headshot, you have your headline, and then kind of below that is you know the about section. So the about section is what you would do uh in in in an avatar sense. When you go to this virtual coffee meeting, that avatar and and that about section saying, Hi, I'm Joseph Frankie the third, you know, it's really your introduction. That's why it always needs to be in the first person. You know, and uh I had I went back and forth with uh Lori. She and I wrote a book together, and I'm I'm typical military, I was raised in the third person, you know. She's she's really um um, you know, get to know people first person. And so one day she introduced me in the third person to somebody that we were physically meeting, and I thought how strange that is. And she said, I just wanted to show you what's happening on LinkedIn because you're in the third person. And once I changed that, uh I I noticed a difference.

SPEAKER_02 23:37

Oh my gosh, I think I'm gonna have to go back and look at my profile. I might be in the third person.

SPEAKER_00 23:41

Well, usually the third person looks like okay, the marketing department wrote your bio and stuck it. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 23:48

She, she, yeah, you know, Gwynagar this, she that, her, that instead of me and eyes.

unknown 23:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 23:55

Yeah. So what do you see as um uh some of the biggest mistakes or one biggest mistake uh that you see executives doing on LinkedIn today?

SPEAKER_00 24:06

Uh well, first of all, executives need to get there. And if you're a big executive, you're in the top five percent, you got a whole marketing department, you don't have to worry about that stuff. Okay. But all the rest of us, the other 90% of us that are executives in smaller companies that don't have HR departments and all that other kind of stuff, you know, you have to be out there. You're the masthead of the organization, you're the number one marketer of your products and services. And so you got to show up, you know, professionally. And so um uh, you know, populate a LinkedIn profile so that people can see who you are, what your values are, and all that kind of stuff. And then they're gonna presuppose that all falls back down if you're the leader of this organization, uh, in the company. And if anybody was not dealt with right, uh, you know, you also have the ability to be uh contacted, which is not a bad thing. Um that's a chance to fix something rather than uh, you know, you just um have something that happened, you don't fix it because you don't know about it.

SPEAKER_01 25:19

Right.

Why Veterans Translate To CEO Roles

SPEAKER_02 25:20

Yeah, yeah, that's true. Okay, I want to flip the script a little bit here because as a veteran yourself and working with founders and CEOs, you help place veterans into CEO roles and other critical leadership roles. What leadership traits from the military experience translate so well into leadership and CEO roles?

SPEAKER_00 25:41

Uh one, they know how to deal with people. I mean, you can't be a leader without knowing how to uh um uh deal with people. And you know, usually if you're a really good leader, I mean you you've figured it out the hard way. In other words, you have a lot of wisdom as a leader. And wisdom is a function of experience plus failure.

SPEAKER_02 26:07

That's a good quote. You can't have wisdom without failure, yeah, because you learn more from your mistakes than you do your successes.

SPEAKER_00 26:15

Right. Yeah. Uh so um if you've dealt with people uh at the lower levels and you've increased that capability, because really what you're working with as you get two or three steps removed, now you're you're supervising leaders, which is different than supervising subordinates.

SPEAKER_02 26:37

Yeah, it is different.

SPEAKER_00 26:39

And then secondly, it's your responsibility to develop these people that are going to maneuver, you know, in the organization.

SPEAKER_01 26:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 26:47

I mean, why spend all this money and keep these people, develop them, and then let them go somewhere else uh because you know you don't have a methodology to uh take care of them. Sometimes uh you can't help that, that's okay, because there's no there's no positions, right? But uh anyway, if you have somebody that left your organization in a positive manner, I mean, that's a referral source. Yeah, you know, and people are always gonna ask, what's so-and-so like to deal with.

SPEAKER_02 27:21

Exactly.

SPEAKER_00 27:22

And they'll give an answer.

Translate Military Experience Into Metrics

SPEAKER_02 27:24

They will, yep, exactly. Uh, what misconceptions do you see civilian companies often have about hiring veterans uh into leadership roles? I mean, I veterans, you guys have a place in my heart, and I always try to figure out how to hire veterans into organizations, but I see there's just so much challenge. What do you see? Why is that happening?

SPEAKER_00 27:45

Well, first of all, uh when uh it's getting easier because I see change in how the services are, you know, letting people out. You know, when when I got out, there was, you know, LinkedIn wasn't there.

SPEAKER_01 28:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 28:05

You know, 20, 20 some odd, you know, years ago. And um so LinkedIn wasn't there. And so you had to do this stuff by moving around. And I mean, you went and got stuff from the newspaper, but you ended up finally having to learn that you've got to make the effort to articulate your experiences and what you bring to the table in hiring manager vernacular. Because the hiring manager has no idea. I'll give you an example. I work with this um senior uh uh sergeant. He'd done about 25 years in the service, and so he he was having a problem getting a job. So I was looking at his LinkedIn profile and he just says, uh, you know, petroleum um you know, truck, you know, fleet manager or something like that, you know, ser N C O I C non Commissioned Officer in charge, you know, of of this uh petroleum tanker thing. Okay, I knew exactly what it was. Okay, but I've been in the military 30 plus years. But you know, the civilians had no clue what that means and they're too embarrassed to ask, really. You know, because you can ask 12 leading questions and and and get it out of somebody, but nobody's got that kind of time anymore. So then I asked him, I said, well, how many truck tractors were there? And he said, Well, there's 55. How many 5,000 gallon tankers? Well, there were 65,000 gallon tankers. I said, How many customers did you have? Okay, we had, you know, 28 units that we delivered, you know, fuel to. Okay, how big was the area? How long were each of the routes? What were the operational uh capability of it? You know, were you was it 90%? Was it 85%? You know, did you ever have a uh safety problem? Was there anybody ever hurt or injured? And so once we got all those answers to those questions, and then I said, okay, let's go find the national stock numbers of the trailers and the and the tractors, and now this is how many millions of dollars of equipment. So basically at the end of it, he had this experience section that he was a fleet manager, you know, of you know, 65,000 gallon tanks, there's 55 tractors that pulled them. You know, he still supported X amount of customers over, you know, 200,000 square miles, you know, no late deliveries, no one killed, maimed, or injured, no reportable accidents. All of this is on the LinkedIn profile.

SPEAKER_01 30:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 30:46

And so when he went back, he got hired as a fleet manager because they could see what he brought to the table.

SPEAKER_01 30:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 30:56

And that was kind of an easier one because there are fleets in the civilian world.

SPEAKER_02 31:00

Right.

SPEAKER_00 31:01

So when you start getting in the into the combat specialties, then it it requires, you know, a more, even more thought and articulation about what you learn.

SPEAKER_02 31:13

Yeah. I appreciate that. Yeah. And and I see that there's also programs now that the government's doing where, like, the last six months of their um a contract with the government, they are allowed to go and work for a civilian, but they're being paid or the civilian company. The company is getting basically a free intern while the government's still paying for that last six months. And obviously, the hope is that that person can then give into that org and then translate into what they can do and show them to the org, them what their ROM and then the org would hire them. Um, so I'm I'm loving that those types of programs too. So yeah, lots of things have changed. Um I feel like we could probably talk for hours. I have so many other questions, but as we wrap up today, what's like maybe a final tip trick or thought you'd like to share with the audience?

SPEAKER_00 31:58

I would say uh a tip or trick, I would like to say, is uh I do executive search. So in 12 seconds or less, I determine whether I'm gonna read the rest of your profile for an opportunity. So the background photo uh has to line up with your headline. In other words, these things that you say that you want to be or you do or you have experience with, and you have a uh a world-class uh headshot where somebody can see your eyes. If someone cannot see your eyes subconsciously, you're not trusted.

SPEAKER_02 32:36

Interesting. All right. Well, thank you, Joe. That's a great tip. Uh, and for the listeners, I hope you got a lot out of it. And uh, we look forward to seeing you on the next podcast or having you listen to us on the next podcast. Thanks again, Joe, and thanks everyone for listening today.

SPEAKER_00 32:51

Guinevere, it was a pleasure. And uh we can always talk in the future on the difference of always.

SPEAKER_02 32:57

Thank you again, Joe.

Share Subscribe And Keep Scaling

SPEAKER_00 32:59

Thanks, bye-bye.

SPEAKER_02 33:01

That's a wrap for today's episode of Scaling with People. If you got value from this conversation, do me a favor, share it with someone building something big. And hey, I'd love to hear your take. Drop a comment, shoot me a message, or start a conversation. And don't forget to subscribe so you never miss the bold, unfiltered strategies we drop every week. I'm Gwynaver Curry, founder and CEO of Guide2HR, where we help high growth companies scale smart with people for strategies and AI-powered systems that don't just keep up, they lead. If you're building fast and want your HR to move faster, head to guide2hr.com and let's talk. And remember, scale isn't just about speed, it's about people. Until next time, have a great one.