Cut The Tie | Own Your Success

“You can’t investigate yourself.” – Michelle Griffin on the HR Mistake That Can Kill a Company

• Thomas Helfrich

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Cut The Tie Podcast with Michelle Griffin

What happens when founders try to save money by handling HR themselves and end up risking everything they built?

In this episode of Cut The Tie, Thomas Helfrich sits down with Michelle Griffin, founder of Griffin Resources, to unpack one of the most dangerous blind spots in small and midsize businesses. HR mistakes rarely show up as problems at first. They show up later as lawsuits, failed exits, lost talent, and leadership chaos.

Michelle shares how she built a seven figure fractional HR and back office services company by solving the exact problems founders ignore until it is too late. From payroll and compliance to recruiting and SOPs, this conversation is about cutting the tie to doing everything yourself and building a business that can scale, travel, and eventually sell without blowing up.

About Michelle Griffin:
Michelle Griffin is the founder of Griffin Resources, a fractional HR, payroll, and business operations firm serving small to midsize companies across the United States. With a background in industrial organizational psychology and executive HR leadership, Michelle helps founders protect enterprise value, reduce risk, and build scalable people operations. She has built multiple businesses with her husband, all without outside investment, while working remotely and traveling internationally.

In this episode, Thomas and Michelle discuss:

  • “You can’t investigate yourself”
    Why founders handling their own HR issues creates legal exposure and credibility problems.
  • The hidden cost of DIY HR
    How small mistakes around payroll, classification, and documentation quietly compound.
  • The 10 to 15 employee breaking point
    Why trust based hiring stops working once you grow past friends and referrals.
  • HR as an investment, not a cost
    How strong people operations protect valuation and make exits cleaner.
  • Fractional leadership done right
    Why most companies do not need full time HR but do need real expertise.
  • Building a business that runs without you
    Cutting the tie to being the bottleneck so the company can scale.
  • Why exits fail during diligence
    How missing handbooks, I-9s, and SOPs can derail acquisitions.

Key Takeaways:

  • HR touches everything and the law touches HR
    Ignorance does not protect founders from consequences.
  • Doing it yourself is not the same as doing it right
    Especially when emotions and power dynamics are involved.
  • The earlier you build structure, the cheaper it is
    Fixing HR after problems surface costs far more.
  • Scalable companies are transferable companies
    Clean processes increase value and reduce risk.
  • You do not need more control, you need better systems
    Let experts handle what founders should not.

Connect with Michelle Griffin:
🌐 Website: https://griffin-resources.com/

💼 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michelle-griffin-phd/

Connect with Thomas Helfrich:
🐦 Twitter: https://twitter.com/thelfrich
💼 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thelfrich/
🌐 Website: https://www.cutthetie.com
📧 Email: t@instantlyrelevant.co

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SPEAKER_01:

Welcome to the Cut the Tie Podcast. Hello, I'm your host, Thomas Alfer. On a mission. Help people cut the tie to whatever's holding them back from success. Now you've got to define your own success. That's your job. Maybe if you listen to this, you'll learn how to cut a tie or two. Something metaphorical. Hopefully no one's actually physically got you tied up. If not, it might be a book. Um Michelle Griffin is our guest today. How are you?

SPEAKER_00:

Good. Thank you so much. And thanks for having me.

SPEAKER_01:

I appreciate it. You uh we were talking about you're on a cruise, so just take a moment to say where you are, where you're from, why you're on a cruise, and what it is you do.

SPEAKER_00:

Um, okay, that's a lot of questions. All right, so I am currently on a cruise in Canada. I am originally from Alaska. I live in Florida, and I am on a cruise technically because we travel internationally, um, usually two to three weeks a month every month. Um, so we we do work remote. Um, some people dream of a corner office. I dream of life with a view. Um, so I do work internationally um quite often. And um, because of several things we do in our business, and businesses allows us to do that and kind of travel on points and things like that from one of the businesses that I have with my husband. We actually have five businesses. Um and uh but this trip specifically is our 18-year anniversary. So we're gonna be using that as an excuse, but that is not why we're on the cruise. We just happen to be on the cruise, and it is the trip that covers our anniversary.

SPEAKER_01:

Very good. Well, congratulations. I thank you for taking a moment to uh do a podcast in the middle of your uh of your of your crew, your your 18 years. Um you have five businesses, which which uh which are the ones you want to focus on today?

SPEAKER_00:

So the one, yeah, the one that I um tend to run and operate and know the best is the one that I started, um, which is Griffin Resources. That kind of kicked off the rest of the businesses. My husband has been in IT. Um, and then once COVID and stuff like that hit, um the company he was in um was not able to really continue because they were actually based out of England. So between Brexit and COVID and tariffs, that business wasn't doing well. So he um we took some of the resources that I had built up from my company and we started his. And we actually had both businesses under Griffin Resources until 2023. And then we split everything off, created a parent company that we have kind of homegrown everything. We've never taken investments or anything like that. So it's kind of just been us kind of growing the businesses together. The other businesses um are either just kind of there to support us. So rather than, you know, there's not really a need for like a particular marketing department in either company. So we started a company and we have international staff that do our virtual assistant, our marketing, our digital marketing, all that stuff. Um, and then we um had businesses with friends that they wanted to do some fun things with. So there was no business need to own a plane. So I created a new business so we could buy a plane with our friend, and that's a random other plane or rather company that we don't do much with, other than you know, it's good. The plane isn't a charter company and it just makes money when it goes out in the charter fleet.

SPEAKER_01:

That's crazy. Your business travel, it's great. Uh back up to your your main core business then. What is it you guys do? What's the problem you solve?

SPEAKER_00:

So HR, um, payroll, talent acquisition, um, and like back end bookkeeping, accounting, and some uh support for some of the business supports that we created for ourselves, we then extend to our clients, so digital marketing, sales ops, and things like that. Um, and basically I took what I knew, which was managing a department of HR and what I had seen as resources for very large companies. And I took that and, you know, basically scale it down for small to mid-sized businesses to make it affordable for them. And and then kind of grew it from the end of 2019, um, obviously through COVID. And then um, I got it to seven figures um by year three, and we've been seven figures ever since. And um, so now I have about 40 team members, about 85 clients nationwide. Some come some of them are worldwide. We do have some international parent companies.

SPEAKER_01:

That's fantastic. So the idea means like in like one of the marketing prop thing we do is like, hey, you get a fractional CMO for a mini marketing team for less than price intern. You give them like what would cost six in six resources, you can package it in fractionally to get it done for a price point that most people will sign off on, is the idea.

SPEAKER_00:

Right. So yeah, they basically everything is um it's billed kind of like a law firm. So think of it as like a paralegal and an attorney. So it's based on the skill level of the individual they're being paired with and the market value for that person. So payroll is less expensive than a VP of HR, um, and you know, bookkeeping is less expensive than a fractional CFO, things like that. Um, but then we just you know clock our time round everything in six-minute increments and then send them a bill at the end of the month for the work that we were approved to do. Um, so there's no packages, there's no retainers, small businesses and business owners really built the idea. I talked to a lot of business owners and then ended up being able to um kind of take what they had for feedback and then grow it from there.

SPEAKER_01:

I mean my wife being an HR of one for a global company of a few hundred people, literally just an HR of one. Oh it isn't a lot. Um I think maybe we'll get into this just a little bit later, but actually I can probably ask this question now, it's just kind of set up your business. Uh what I find in just from hearing from sometimes her and other just from being in the space with other entrepreneurs is that HR is often not looked at as a strategic role as more of a unnecessary cost operations piece. Uh for your customers, where do they land on that topic?

SPEAKER_00:

Um they have to be able to see it as an investment. They have to know that when they're investing in HR, they're they're solving some problem within their business, whether it be a issue with employment relation issues, because they've already had some complaints or legal issues and they know that they have to invest in it. So that's kind of where it's a necessary cost, but they don't see it as um an eve a necessary evil. So it's not like a requirement, they really understand how it impacts their business. Others, um, we if they see it that way, we can't convince them to purchase it. They have to understand that when they are improving their HR and they're improving their employment um, I would say, life cycle and work within the business. And, you know, they get more for their money for the benefits and that kind of stuff, or whatever it is they want to focus on, then they're getting more out of their people. They get more business for that, and it kind of helps their business grow. And so when they understand and see it that way, um, those are really the best clients that we have the most success with. Um, we do just some project-based work. We may just do, it's rare, but we may just write a handbook. Um and then we just give them the handbook and walk away. Um, we may just do an audit for an HR overview, give them the audit results and and walk away. Sometimes they'll, you know, basically say, stay and solve the problems you found from the HR audit and things like that. A lot of times that's from a business that's being sold or you know, purchasing someone else, an acquisition's happening, something really, really complicated where they they still see it that way. And but it's a requirement from some segment of the business. But typically the clients see it as an investment. And we have a quite a few clients and business owners that really do care about their people, and that makes a difference.

SPEAKER_01:

Well, I mean, it's to buy it for sure. Or do you require almost a local HR lead, or do you guys serve that role as well?

SPEAKER_00:

Everything is um pretty much remote. So all of our clients, we we do everything remotely.

SPEAKER_01:

And do they need like a uh their own HR resource?

SPEAKER_00:

Oh, no, no, no, no, no. So a lot of times they're too, they're too small to even have their own HR resource. So they just decide that they need to invest in HR because they want to compete for top talent. They, you know, have their own reasons for wanting to, you know, pass it off that we process their payroll. Um, but we access, you know, because we access everything remotely, they don't have to have someone on their own. If they're big enough, like, you know, usually over 75 people, they really should have their own person. Um, most of our clients that are that big, we are still either most of their HR or a piece of it. So they may, we've had some where they have an HR generalist and they use our VP of HR. So we're a part of leadership, weirdly enough. Um, and and then they just have the the lower level person um they that would typically answer to someone else in the company, like a COO, but they don't know how to manage HR. They don't know how to help them or give them HR resources. So we come in as like the leadership middleman between their generalist and leadership. Um, so we've actually done that several times, um, which I was not expected to do that.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, there's like a doer role. And then there's a leadership component that doesn't really take many full time if they're not also doing the doer role. And I I'm a little closer. I'm just curious because I think a lot of smaller business owners, me included, uh, where we use tons of outsourced, I don't really have pay, I don't have payroll unless I just want to pay myself because it's all overseas and there's no need for it. And uh but then there's companies that are kind of like, well, no, we need payroll, but we have 400 different countries we're working in. Like you're it's like, well, what person can't handle? It's just an interesting spot because I I think what you just described is interesting because it's fit, it's built for purpose.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, and we do have the yeah, and we have the doers as well. Like we have HR generalists, benefit administrators, all that kind of stuff too. So, like in this situation with your wife, for example, if she's the person of one for like, you know, hundreds of people, um, there's gonna be times where that's literally impossible to manage and meet expectations. And when that happens, we get brought in as like a support person um that she can delegate work to um for either a short period of time or long period of time.

SPEAKER_01:

And there's also times that connection for you. Um I think that'd be an interesting just because I I run into people that are the leaders trying to figure it out and they're doing it themselves. Like, sure.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

That's definitely.

SPEAKER_00:

And that's the thing. A lot of times they don't understand that everything HR touches has an employment law around it. And I literally mean everything. There isn't anything we can't touch that there isn't a law around. And so so if someone is doing that themselves and you know they don't have the you know legal resources or you know, HR certifications to at least recognize when they need to be doing something differently. Um, I was actually speaking with an attorney recently who had a situation with um a colleague and friend of his, so he wasn't their attorney, which is probably good, um, who had a uh harassment case against himself. They were all at a bar drinking, you know, one thing led to another, definitely got into a situation they shouldn't have been in.

SPEAKER_01:

Um involve a bow play concert or not?

SPEAKER_00:

Uh could have, but it's like not that, but close enough. And basically the person at the bar made a complaint against the owner. And the owner told his attorney friend, it's okay, we've done the investigation, um, and we found that there's no, there's no harassment. He's like, Well, who did the investigation? He's like, I did. It's like you can't, and he's like, but everything is fine now. He's like, Nope. He's like, you don't see any problem with this where you have the conducted your own investigation against yourself. Um, no, you can't do that.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, there's no uh arm's length. Um like right, it's like uh, you know, it it's HR's one of those pieces that is a is uh not a necessary until it's too late.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

I I think it's beautiful you've done that. Uh a little bit your journey. Uh tell about how you got here.

SPEAKER_00:

Um so this it's actually kind of a weird situation. I um never really had a lot of career goals. I had a lot of education goals. And so when I was my parents were business owners and they wanted me to go into their business. My dad was a jeweler and I did some like summer things like that with my dad and kind of I learned I didn't want to be a jeweler um because it's it's literally dirty and I had to like keep my fingernails really short. I'm a very girly girl. And I was like, um, didn't want to have to like follow in my foot, my dad's footsteps for that. Um but when I went to college, I majored in psychology because I always wanted to study psychology. Um to appease my parents, I minored in marketing um and thought I would never own my own business because I just didn't uh see the the need and wanting to like run the whole thing and all of the business aspects that go with it. Um and when I was in like knowing that I wanted to study psychology, I always knew I had to get higher education in order to do anything with a psychology degree. You can't just do something with an undergrad, at least not in psychology. Um, so right out of uh school, I was an auto theft and arson investigator. And I did that for six years and decided to go back to school to get my master's. And um, right around that timeline, it was like 2010. So right after the 2008 crash, we're still kind of like in the middle of the crash. There's still not like a lot of good jobs out there and stuff like that. Um, so it did take me about a year to find a job. Um, and so for my master's, I was focusing on something called industrial organizational psychology, which is a research degree of human capital. And HR is the actual practical application of IOSYC. So I kind of connected the two careers that way, even though I didn't know what HR was at the time. And then I got my first job in HR. And so I kind of, you know, kind of worked my way up into HR. My first company, I was the second HR person in a company of 300 people. Um, within a year of that, I had finished my um my master's degree and started getting my HR certification. So after two years of being in that company, I was promoted to head of HR. And at that time, the company had like 550 people. So I replaced myself through the team. Um, by the time I left, there was 850 people across 10 states and four countries. And I ran HR for all of it. Um, that company sold to a private equity firm. I left when a lot of the leadership was leaving. I went to a residential construction company and switched from tech to construction and had the to switch industries doing that. And then um I had I went from like all of that to 100 people in one state. And I was like, I can do that in my sleep. Um, so I realized I had kind of the energy and brain power to start getting my doctorate. So then I started getting my PhD in IO psychology. And um, after a couple of years, um I wanted to focus on my research and less on my corporate job. So I um switched to do a um consulting thing. I thought I would just do um be an independent consultant, make a little bit of money to help, you know, help pay the bills. It's just me and my husband. And um, and then I would, you know, continue to focus on school. That lasted less than three months before I had eight clients and hired two full-time people. And so I just decided to You found the need.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

So I was like, you know, as I mentioned, the was the um business owners told me really what they wanted. They saw the value in HR. They said, we don't want to do it anymore. We'll just give you an internal email address, you do the HR. And that really started hitting it off. And we got so much activity from it that the business kind of, I don't want to say built itself. It did take a lot of marketing, it did take a lot of networking. How did you hit on that?

SPEAKER_01:

Was it was it was a social media post? Was it just word of mouth?

SPEAKER_00:

How did you how did you it was it was a lot of a lot of both. Um, so I was going to a lot of HR conferences. I was already on the board of HR for Sherm for local chapters, and so I was kind of already known in the HR world. And I just told everybody, I'm going independent. This is what I I don't know exactly what I'm doing. I just know how to do HR and and I'm going independent. So someone I I had talked to said, Well, I have an idea. Um, he's like, I do, he was a HR director for a um essentially a cable company, like an installation cable. And the owners of that company, one of his other owner buddy friends, had a medical company. And as he was launching that company, he's like, Hey, why don't you borrow my HR team to start your medical company? So this poor guy who's doing cable installation HR is asked to do medical HR, which are two very different worlds. And he's like, Why don't we just say they could use you instead of us and we'll transition it over? And so everyone bought in on the idea, and that's what happened. Um, weirdly enough, though, when I met the owner of the medical company, we met at a coffee shop and I just said, This is my background in HR. These are some things I've accomplished, and this is how I think I can apply them to your business. And as we're sitting there for coffee, a lady walks in the room to kind of go through the coffee um shop into a restaurant, and we both stand up, we both give her a hug, and then she moves on. And he was like, How do you know her? And I was like, That is who replaced me at the large tech company when I left. She was the head of HR that replaced me. I spent six months training her before I left. And he said, Well, that's nice. That's my sister-in-law. And so he basically said he checked in with her, made sure I had a great, you know, glowing recommendation. And I was hired, and that was my first client. And people always said getting your first client is the hardest. Um, it really just took shouting from the mountaintops and then connections over connections. And um, I think the fact that it was that connection was a complete twist of fate, but it worked out really well. And then once I had a client, then it was um, you know, people kind of just referring, and then I my first few clients were referrals that people I knew.

SPEAKER_01:

Well, exactly. I think I think what you did something though that's uh I think people realize is you you were out there. Uh so you can't think just to work somewhere. You do have to be proactive to get in the community to be known. If you have and at the time you just did it probably because it was professional reasons, whatever else. But the truth is if you have any ambition to grow in your prayer, you you gotta be known because people for the bigger jobs, right? As you know, people find you, you're not gonna find it. They're gonna say, I want her, I want him. Um I have a question for you. Like, you know, uh you know, one of the one of the things that I that I've seen that HR is a r is not a strategic resource is because it doesn't add that monetary value because people may look at uh humans and their in their companies uh uh differently, meaning like we can always replace them, this whatever, right? It's like I can't do anything about that. But what does speak sometimes in their languages is on the exit? Do you have any data or anything that you would say, hey, by the way, having better processes, this stuff, some kind of function in place, allows your exit to go from a different multiple? Is that a is that a fair statement, true statement, or do you think it's yeah?

SPEAKER_00:

So a lot of times in being in the MA space, um, I've seen I don't assume you're mean exit of business. I don't know if you mean exit of people. Um, yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

So when someone buys it, it's a buying. So if you have something.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, if you have contractors versus employees, um, your your rate is significantly lower, and or you're not purchasable. Um, so one of our business partners is um, you know, is is in MA and she's our um one of our advisors. She's actually an acquisition that I did last year. I I bought her company and then she moved on to the MA space. And so I learned quite a bit um, just knowing what she has and the referrals that she can give us, um, is that if they their HR has to be stronger, and the the fact that if they have contractors or if they have significant risk from mismanaging their people, not having proper documentation, um, you know, things like that. We also had a company that was uh five restaurants that was purchased by another restaurant brand. And we had to help them with cleaning up all of their filing systems. Obviously, it's a mess across restaurants. They're Were like completely out of compliance, like every single line nine. Um, someone even had their um supporting document as a library card. So things like that, where it's like you have, and then so obviously because it was a transition. Yeah, we had to help clean, we had to stay and clean everything up, get them, you know, to a point where they could just run the business and take over HR and leave. So we had that project for about six or eight months, I think, during that transition. So yeah, HR, either the risk of it or the mismanagement of it, or just not having the right um classification of people can can really damage the evaluation to the company.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, I think that's uh uh not having handbooks in place under, I mean like all that kind of stuff. It's like I I like it's more you can make a company hand over where a shared service from a PE, like a private equity, can take over HR with the lead. And like there's there's a path to like reduce cost because the you're you're in you're in shape, right? You're in order, or keep costs the same as you grow. That is a multiplier because you you don't have to hire now additional revenue and it's it's it's organized better.

SPEAKER_00:

Uh we also do a lot with like writing SOPs. So if you have documented processes and someone else is taking over, it's so much easier to say, here's here's the process. Exactly.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, absolutely. Um just just kind of uh incredibly you know encouraging conversation. I think um I'll ask you this question in it'll come across as a shameless plug if someone's listening, but I'm curious, uh, just for you, like who's like uh what what is the like you know, what's going on in the bird, what's the business owner? What like what's the scenario that you just like? This is a no-brainer, you should do it, rock it right now, call me.

SPEAKER_00:

Um a lot of times it's smaller businesses that are like I would say that 10 to 15 range is an interesting point because employees or how do you mean that people? Yeah, 10 to 15 people. Um, because they can know usually that is what for whatever reason, that's the weird magic number that you can't hire people you know anymore. You have to hire strangers. And you're kind of starting to have to go through a natural, like an actual recruiting process, um, which we do have. We do have corporate recruiters. We don't do, we're not an agency, we don't place people. We also charge hourly for the process of recruiting people with you and working with management and helping them make the right hire decision versus just bringing candidates. So with, but at that point, you're starting to compete for talent for bigger companies that your people are starting to ask for what's your time off policy? What do you have for benefits? And if you can't answer those questions because it's been, you know, you and your friends and your family and you know, maybe some outside referrals kind of just, you know, they they don't have a handbook like you mentioned, they just don't know the policies, they don't have you know things in place, a payroll system in place. They're still paying people by check through their accounting system, which I've seen that quite a bit. Um, and they just can't manage people and they can't grow and they're at a they're stuck because they just can't attract the right talent and and grow the business in a specific way. So those are kind of the situations that are really noticeable. Um, the other ones is definitely when the CEO is just wearing too many hats. Um, you know, they they really have to start getting stuff off their plate. They're not the right person to be managing it, but also it's just not the right place to spend their time, whether it be a CFO, COO, someone in the C-suite is still doing it. Um, I had a company that had like 50 people. The CFO was still onboarding employees and literally taking all of their background information, putting it in the system, setting up their payroll. And I took it away from him, made processes, and then trained someone else to take it. Um, so they got them to trust and take that off of the CFO's plate. And when I first started, um, he literally had a stack of like three new hires, like paper, paper stuff that was on his desk to enter into the system. And I was like, you know, you can electronically have them complete stuff. Like you can put that in the system, right? You don't have to touch any of that.

SPEAKER_02:

And and they were into shit, right?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, they were they were a tech company. I was like, you should make your, you know, especially being a tech company, you should want your people to feel like it's a tech savvy company.

SPEAKER_01:

It's amazing, by the way, how bad you can get turned off by a brand when you're like, we're what? We're using what do we get paper paychecks?

SPEAKER_00:

What the f what yeah, you can't do a direct deposit? Like what?

SPEAKER_01:

What uh what years is uh let me ask uh uh if you um how would I say this right? I don't get called an HR's office. No, I'm kidding. Um if you had uh look at your own world today in the business, any of the businesses really what's really that metaphorico tie that you're kind of struggling to cut right now? What's what are you dealing with? What's what's the hardest part?

SPEAKER_00:

Um for them.

SPEAKER_01:

Um for you, for you and your business.

SPEAKER_00:

Oh, for me? Oh, for my business. Um I would say like oh my god, and especially I think of like the metaphor of cutting the tie on something. Um I'm okay, so I'm at a point where I my my business is large enough that I am and I want to make sure that my business has a good evaluation, which means I have to the business has to be able to run without me.

SPEAKER_01:

I mean, you're on the road internationally every two, three, but I think you're on your own.

SPEAKER_00:

So I still and I and I still work, you know, full time and things like that, even on the road. And I which gets very exhausting if I'm in a different time zone. Um, I've found working in Europe, working five or six hours ahead is much easier than going backwards in time and going to the west.

SPEAKER_01:

California's the worst or Kawaii.

SPEAKER_00:

And being four uh four hours behind Eastern time is very, very difficult. Um, and having to get up at five in the morning because then I still want to stay out until like midnight or something and go see the city and that kind of stuff. So Europe I have found to be much easier, and then South America is much easier because it's still pretty much the same time zone, give or take an hour. So that's not that bad. Um, so for me, a lot of it is building the business so that it has the resources and the processes to replicate and grow where I'm not a bottleneck and getting myself out of a lot of the processes. So that is literally what I have been working on for the last two years is kind of taken, and for me, I was the one that did all of the sales. Literally no one else in the company had closed new business other than myself. And I feel like a lot of business owners get into that situation because no one can sell the business better than you can because it's your desire, it's your goals, and you really can speak to what the entire business is capable of. Um and this last year is I have been able to trust a lot of other people on my leadership team to also step in and help with sales. We don't have a sales department necessarily, but we do have a sales admin now. And so we are able to continue to scale and bring in new resources and afford um new um, you know, kind of I would say like new tech and processes and things like that that help make their lives easier and and they can scale. And we now have like a leadership structure and departmental structure as the company has grown, making making it a lot easier. So that's probably my own thing.

SPEAKER_01:

That's a tough one, right? And uh I I know I personally am in that spot where I'm I'm sales and delivery because we're because the consulting and AI marketing, and it's like for me, I think sales piece is easier to replace than my knowledge of consulting of AI and marketing and and how to use humans in the mix, right? Um and it's like okay, that one's gonna be a tough one to crack. Because it's a it's a you know, and it's like, do I just I look at it go okay, I think I can get the sales piece done, but do I just at some point just do something different? I'm like, I don't think I'm gonna crack that one. That explains.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, yeah. And it's it's definitely been um a lot of uh, I would say different strategies, and some things have been just different sparks of ideas that we ran with. Um, like for marketing, we had we had tried to hire a marketing professional. We weren't really getting the results we were looking for. And so my husband was like, go on Fiverr. I was like, what's Fiverr? Like, and so I literally just gave them the exact same instructions I gave the marketing specialist and they came out with a better result. And then I was like, Well, how does Fiverr even, you know, charge so little to get the work done? Like, why does$50 mean so much to them? And turns out, you know, in foreign countries like the Philippines, that money goes really far. Um, and that's how we ended up, you know, hire, you know, basically partnering with a staff um in the Philippines, and then we, you know, kind of grew a company over there.

SPEAKER_01:

It's exactly how uh, you know, I was working for somebody, and and our marketing and salespeople can produce a lead for me as a practice leader. I was like, I'm trying to build a business, and I'm like on the hook for revenue, and you guys can't produce any conversation. And I was like, We're a billion-dollar company, you can't give me a meeting, and so I just solved it with that. I started on uh fiver up work out of the Philippines, and that's the same team, you know. They we did such a good job for myself. I started selling it commercially, and same team. Uh and it's still working. And the the uh the play on labor arbitrage is something you still have to manage because as AI gets better, there's things that happen. But uh the truth is you're right. If you're not looking outside in the right environments to build your business and scale for for activities that you're helping someone else uh have a create really good pay salary relative to market, and you're still accomplishing what you need to, and and you know, and talk about a weird time zone, it's 12 hours. Like so I like I love my teams and full of teams because of there, but I love that you did that. Uh the because that's exactly like you know, where uh you're adding value by being able to sell something at a price point that's still better, so you have margin, and there you're you're you can sit directly in the middle, middle man, so to so to speak, spot to do it.

SPEAKER_00:

Um that way we were able to do that without increasing rates for our clients because small to mid-sized businesses can only afford so much. And when the economy is, you know, hurting in certain situations, um, it's it's not a situation where we can raise our rates just so that we can afford different things. So we definitely had to kind of be scrappy quite a bit without it being us doing all the work. And so we found that to be really a valuable way to do it.

SPEAKER_01:

Wonderful. That's great. Thank you so much. Hey, listen, uh, it'd be uh be be clear on who you want to contact you. And and I tell people this is use a marketer, you'll get the statement. Give me one link for them to hit.

SPEAKER_00:

Um, so definitely I would say anyone in the C-suite of you know small to mid-sized businesses and the industry does not matter. We have everything from blue-collar to white-collar um nonprofits and even government entities. And so it really just comes down to everyone needs HR and not wanting to do it yourself and not wanting to get the company in trouble. Um, best way to reach us is griffin-resources.com.

SPEAKER_01:

Do you focus just to be clear on US mostly US companies, or do you follow?

SPEAKER_00:

Uh we focus on US because that's the employment law that we are familiar with. And if we multi-state, but the international um companies is the ones that we have a subsidy, if they have a subsidiary here in the United States. So we have companies that are based in you know, Canada, Spain, Scotland, um, Australia, and Germany at the moment.

SPEAKER_01:

And then you guys help with the US component of that. Correct. That's a really smart because that way we don't have to hire a full-time resource that can't handle like they're they can handle it, but they don't, it's not a full load, right? So that's true.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, it's not even a part-time job. We're talking five hours a week.

SPEAKER_01:

Right. It's like a it's a component. It's why you have a a business.

unknown:

Yeah. Perfect.

SPEAKER_01:

Um, thank you by the way. Um, if there was a question I should have asked you today and I didn't, what would that question have been?

SPEAKER_00:

Um, let me, I would say the hardest thing to that I had to learn as becoming a business owner um was I didn't realize like I would physically have to run everything that it takes to run a business. From obviously like marketing and sales, which I knew nothing about, and I had to learn that part. Finance was the hardest part I had to learn. My husband and I decided early on that no one can touch our bank accounts except for us. Um we do have obviously uh we have a CPA, we obviously have accountants and bookkeepers that manage all of the general ledger and all that stuff, but no one can physically touch the money. So I still do my own technically, my own accounts payable. I just don't have that many bills. Um and uh we wanted to really control ourselves from money laundering and white collar crime. We've seen it so much in so many businesses. I I thought it was like a rare thing. It's not. It's happened to a lot of our clients because they just don't have separation of duties or they don't keep control or they just don't care to understand that part of their business. Um, so that was one thing that was the hardest thing for me to learn was obviously reading the, you know, PL reports, understanding general letters, understanding like physically how to run the back end books, but um, I still keep control over my invoicing and all of the cash flow. So I've it is also something that ties me to the business quite a bit as far as making sure the business is going in the right direction. I can make business decisions, the numbers tell a story. I understand what that story is now. Um, so as a business owner, that was probably the I wasn't expecting to learn that.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, it's funny. I just as an owner is every now and then I'll go through with our counting on deep transactions, and I'll be like, what is this? What is and I'm like, we're paying for it. We used to use it. Do we still use that? And I'm like, check a team, like, we haven't used that in nine months. I'm like, why has anyone not told me?

unknown:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

So it's like then those things happen and you get the controls, and you're like, all right. I'm I'm doing this now though. I'll tell you, I'll leave this to you. You can you can I take our accounts and I put it through a an AI LLM piece that basically says what's what's unique, what's different, what should I what what give me, give me what your perspective is on what we're looking here and question it as if you were like an auditor. And it's really good at pointing out like saving nine bucks, a hundred bucks a year, two hundred thousand. You know, I saved three thousand last month just on refunds because I was like, we haven't used this stuff in a year. Why you know we're like we canceled it, and then they give you your money back. You're like, my god, like you cancel it, but you don't do stuff like that.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, we did the same thing with our Adobe license because we had so many. We had like, and I was like, is anyone even using this type of license? There's different you can just do Adobe Reader if that's all you need, but we were, you know, we we cut our bill from like 5,000 down to 3,000 by just talking to everyone in the team, finding out what they actually needed, and then right because I messed up because last year we were hit with our renewal and it's just like, here's your credit card bill. And I'm like, what the heck was that? And it was just automatically charging 10 licenses. I'm like, are we even using 10 licenses? Like, why do we have that as a book? Like it's a whole book of business thing. So we dubbed we dove in, figured it out, and then they wouldn't change anything until our they were like, Well, your next renewal, you can change it. So I was like, flag the count the calendar and we're gonna dig and you know, deep dive into it. And we, you know, it was like, you know, saving us a couple thousand dollars, but at least it stops it from doing that year over year mindlessly.

SPEAKER_01:

You know, in in a seven-figure business, right now, it's you still look at it, like uh if I can save two thousand, I can pay my people a little bit more and give them like I look at it that way, it's like that helps me put away reserves. I will tell you one thing like like that I I'll leave this advice to people is there like Calony is an example. We had two full Calendly accounts going, and I and I because we had cut the tie, we have instantly relevant, and I and I just basically got them on the chat and I was like, hey, is there a way we can combine this? And it's saving like 1800 bucks a year by going down to like no, we'll just import this one over and you just log in and announce one brand and you only need this many. Like and I'm like all right, cool. Did that. But then another company how you described where they wouldn't kind of oh, you can't do it till next year. I said, Well, what's better? Give me a refund now or getting a really negative review for that. And they usually go, okay, we'll give you a credit back now and refund what you have. Because like, I'm like, Do you want me to say, hey, listen, don't ever sign up for the whole year because if you're five days long and you decide because you didn't see your credit card bill, you can't, so don't ever do it. It's not that worth it. Yeah. I can give you the math why that doesn't make sense. And they're like, Yeah, we don't want that review. I've done that one lots of times to people. I'm like, listen, you don't only put a negative review with a million subscribers, do you? Yeah. You don't want that. You don't want that. I'm trying to blackmail you into it, but give me the damn refund. Anyway, yeah. Um do what you gotta do. Thank you again. You rock, by the way. Thank you. I love what you built. Go enjoy your cruise. 18 year anniversary.

SPEAKER_00:

Thank you. Thank you for having me.

SPEAKER_01:

I appreciate it. And listen, anyone who's still listening, you rock. And if you've been here before, you know what I'm about to say. Get out there, go cut that tie to whatever's holding you back, but define your success on your terms first. Thanks for listening.

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Thomas Helfrich

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