Building a Team from the Ground Up: Lessons for Level Zero with William Vanderbloemen

In this episode of the Vanderbloemen Leadership Podcast, Jared sits down with William Vanderbloemen, to talk about what it really means to build a team from level zero. From working off a card table with just his dog for company to leading a thriving business, William shares humorous stories, hard-earned lessons, and practical advice for leaders who are building their dream team—especially in the early stages.

Key discussion points include:

• Level Zero Leadership: Why you don't need to look like a big organization to make a big impact—and how being small can be your biggest strength.
• Hiring Your First Team Members: The risks, mistakes, and mindset shifts leaders need to navigate when making their first few hires.
• Trust vs. Talent: Why hiring only people you "know" can backfire—and how to balance familiarity with fit.
• The Danger of Too Much You: How self-awareness and diversity of thought create healthy, high-functioning teams.
• Slow to Hire, Quick to Fire: Why rushing the hiring process is the number one mistake leaders make—and how to slow down without losing momentum.

Whether you're planting a church, launching a business, or leading a growing team, this episode will help you think more clearly about building culture, managing risk, and making the right hires from the start.

Resources
Follow William on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/wvanderbloemen/
Follow Vanderbloemen on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/vanderbloemen/

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hey everyone, welcome to the Vanderblumen Leadership Podcast where we help you build, run, and keep great teams. Thanks for being here. Let's dive in. Hey, welcome, and we're so glad that you've chosen to spend some time with us today. You know, when we were thinking of a topic of discussion, we're talking about building your dream team. And every team starts at, in the wise words of Master Shifu and Kung Fu Panda, every team starts at level zero. William, I know there was a time where Vanderblumen was at level zero where you had to build it from the ground up. I just wanted to have any funny stories about I know you've talked about when it was just you and the dog. Do you have any funny stories?

SPEAKER_01 0:47

Yeah, not level one, but level zero. Less than one. That's right. Yeah. Less than nothing. Yeah, that's where we were. So we started uh uh for those who have not heard this story, we were uh I I worked at a at a church as a senior pastor for a long time, and then in a business rather large I'm about Fortune 200 size company. I think the market cap at the time was a little bit larger than Starbucks, so a good size. And uh they were putting me on a management rotation thing, so I was in HR for a year, and the CEO decided it's time to find the next CEO. They hired this thing called a search firm, which I'd never heard of. And since I was on the HR team, I was on the team, like third string water boy. Yep. But uh I got to see the whole thing and and it was quick and it was painless and it worked, and I thought, why don't churches have a better solution for finding pastors or pastoral staff? So uh I came home and and it's fall of 2008. The economy was awesome then. You can Google it. That was back in uh close to what my daughter calls the 19s, like the last century, but 2008. And um, you've heard the story I told Adrian, I think I need to quit my job and start something new for churches. And she looked at me and she said, That's because churches love new ideas, right? So uh, and they don't just ask Jesus. But uh in the middle of all that, we started what we didn't know if it'd be a side hustle. Yeah, honestly, but yeah, I didn't know. In fact, Adrian had been running several small businesses for yeah, uh doing the finances for them, and so she knew QuickBooks, and she said, I know QuickBooks, and if you ever get a client, I'll send the invoice. It's optimistic. Thanks, babe. Um so the dog and I would set out to work. We had a card table, yeah, and we'd work from the card table uh because I wouldn't get to buy furniture, I didn't have any money. And for a long time, Jared, we kept the card table. I don't, it's in storage somewhere now, but we used to have all the new hires work from the card table like the first six months. Oh wow. So like just try a picture, this is where it was. Uh but maybe one of the funniest stories, you know, when you're at level zero, you want to look like you're at level one. Yep. Right? Yep. And so when we finally were at two people or three, uh we bought a service. Uh it was a phone answering service. It was like a virtual PBX, you know, press one to talk to two, press two to talk to. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Uh and it was called Grasshopper. I heard it on a radio somewhere, and basically their pitch was, we'll make your small business look bigger than it is. It's terrible. I shouldn't tell you that story. Uh, but it was like, oh, for William press extension 437. Well, there were three people. I don't know. So you know, we did a lot of um we delivered on what we said we'd do, but we did a lot of things to try and try and show people we were legitimate in our work. And I wish I had known then um that the way you show people that you're legitimate at your job is that you just do a legitimate job. That's good. And you don't have to be a certain size. Yeah. You just if you just I've said it so many times, if you do what you said you're gonna do, when you say you're gonna do it, at the cost that you promised, you will be in the top one, two, or three percent of whatever industry you're in. Yep. And I thought when we were smaller, we needed to look big, you know, uh you know, the animals that puff up when they're you know, it's all kinds of instances in nature. You really don't have to do that.

SPEAKER_00 4:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 4:33

Uh you you you don't have to be ashamed about level zero. And particularly right now, you know, it was about oh, six or seven years ago that for the very first time uh people at the Stanford MBA program um had more graduates go into startups than they did into investment banking. Wow. Most of the time you get your MBA, you go to investment banking. Startups is where it's at. Think about it if you're a church leader, how much easier it is to consider planting a church today than it used to be. Yep. You got Arc, Axe 29, NAM, send, launch. There are all kinds of very good platforms for launching small things. Yeah. And if you talk to my friend Craig Grachel, they he has been saying for years, we're trying to figure out how to grow small.

SPEAKER_00 5:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 5:26

We're trying to how they, you know, how do we shrink down the congregation where there are people who really know each other rather than just this great big thing. And you know, here in Texas, big is like I think it's one of our four core values. I'm not sure. You know, I mean, you know, our airport here in Houston. This is so bad. This is so Texan. We're not the uh Houston International Airport, it's the Bush Intercontinental Airport.

SPEAKER_00 5:53

I mean, we that's giving you level one. That's not level zero, right there.

SPEAKER_01 5:58

But I don't think that's where the world is right now. And you know, the Lord says don't despise the small things. Yes. Don't despise level zero. You know, a lot of times is what happens there that allows you to go to the next place. And frankly, the bigger you get, the more bureaucratic it gets. I don't care what kind of business you're in. You're gonna if you grow enough, you're gonna be sitting in a meeting one day saying, Why are we having this meeting? When you're small and at level zero, you don't have time for that meeting. So I I don't know if that uh answers any of your questions, but I I just remember Grasshopper Dow 437 to get William because they're they're at least 436 people before you ever get to William. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 6:39

We trust me, we are level one, guys. Don't right, don't worry, don't worry. I love that. I love the thought of just building something from the ground up, and one of the most important things that a leader can do. Um I think the first hire, the first people that you're adding to a team is so crucial. Let's maybe talk to a senior pastor, to a business owner, to a nonprofit CEO who are maybe leading in a really small context and are realizing, hey, I need to I need to build this team. Uh, what are some qualities they need to be looking for? Um, how do they kind of filter out what is needed and what is wanted but not needed right now in their current context?

SPEAKER_01 7:28

Yeah, well, that's so good. And my mind goes a lot of different places. There's so many tensions to manage when you're making that first hire. And I and I'll tell you this I think we were both listening to the same podcast this morning from Mr. Beast. That's right. And uh is he in Chronicles or Deuteronomy? I s I don't know.

SPEAKER_00 7:48

He was talking about how he recorded a podcast at the pyramids the other day. So I don't know, Exodus maybe.

SPEAKER_01 7:54

Yeah, it was He was talking about uh trying to clone yourself, and he said, you know, the hardest part is going from zero to one. Yep. Once you go from one, you can go to three to five. So the first hire is probably the hardest one, and it's probably the one that people screw up the most. So I was at a church planting conference some years ago. There were about three or four of us, we were le all leading breakouts, and uh the guy that was at the time sort of our head of consulting number two, we were a much, much, much smaller group then. Um, he led a breakout based on his experience in a church plant, and the breakout was and it called, and it was the best attended breakout of all the breakouts at the whole conference. And I didn't think I'd show up. And here's what it was called how to fire your best friend.

SPEAKER_00 8:40

Oof.

SPEAKER_01 8:41

Because here's what happens when you do that first hire, you're gonna hire who you trust.

SPEAKER_00 8:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 8:46

And for a lot of people, that means how do you fire your brother-in-law? How do you fire your brother? How do you fire your mom? How do you so a lot of the uh the first hires in a in a church plant or in a church that's just getting going or an organization, uh, you go to who you know and who you trust. And this not to be, you know, frowned upon. Trust is awesome. Uh, but but I would just encourage leaders to remember this when they're when they're hiring. Hiring is a venture into the unknown.

SPEAKER_00 9:21

That's good.

SPEAKER_01 9:21

Anytime you hire, you if you're smart, you know, when we add somebody to this team, whether you have a thousand people and you're adding one, or you have two people and you're adding two, you know. Anytime you add a new voice, it's going to change the chemistry, it's going to change the dynamics, it's going to change things, and it's unknown. Hiring is a venture into the unknown. And here's the thing we hate the unknown. That's true. We hate it. I've got a teenager in my house that still wants a nightlight on. We don't like the dark. Yeah. We don't like the unknown. And what we do, we gravitate toward what we know. We put a nightlight out. Nightlights in hiring, you know what that looks like? It's, I know that person. They must be a great hire. And name looks familiar. A friend of mine said they'd be a great fit. That's the even worse. That's the one off. But you know, we when we first got going, um, I did hire my brother-in-law, and then Adrian was keeping the books, and we were like a small church, you know, with all family. Yeah. And we were just handing out titles. Well, you be the COO and you be the CFO. And who is a CFO when they're three employees? It's ridiculous. But but that's what we did, and it worked, and it was cohesive. But when things got to a place where it's like, oh, we need some different talent, well, that's really hard to undo. So your first hires are gonna be really hard to undo. And I would just encourage you as a leader to be really careful not to hire just the person you know. That's not to say don't hire from within. We can do a whole nother podcast on how hiring from within is a good, good thing.

SPEAKER_00 11:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 11:01

They know the culture, they know the values, you've got trust. If you hire from within the whole time, let me drop back. I'm from Western North Carolina. Okay. You're no way you're old enough to know this movie called Deliverance.

SPEAKER_00 11:13

No.

SPEAKER_01 11:13

Okay. Set in actually not far from where I'm from. And uh Burt Reynolds is in it, and he meets a lot of people that are, let's just say, closely related, right? The family tree in Western North Carolina is more like a straight stick. Okay. It doesn't branch out at all. I know what you're saying. And if you've seen deliverance, you'll understand when I say this. Uh hiring from within is good, but I promise you, constant inbreeding does not end well. Right? You end up with, you know, the test coming out of the womb is not an apgar test, it's the two ten-ten. Two ten ten test, you know. Uh instead you come out with seven or eight, you're looking like Goliath or something. Constant inbreeding in hiring will bite you sooner or later. And I think in the early stages, there's such a need for trust and such a fear of the unknown. This is what I felt, yep, that you go with what you know. Yeah. You know, or who you can talk into doing it. I'll get my little brother to do it. He'll do it. That's right. But but when you, if you can get past that piece, I'll give you one other thing to think about that took me a long time to figure out. Uh, my early hiring as a senior pastor, I was 31 when I went to First President Houston. Yep. We had hundreds of people on the payroll. If you added up the school and the contractors and everything, there was a big staff. Yeah. I think the staff was bigger than my home church. So I'll I know they should have used a search firm. They shouldn't have hired me, but great people, really glad for them. Um, but when I went to start hiring, I hired all these fabulous people that I really liked.

SPEAKER_00 12:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 12:50

And it took a while for me to realize the reason I liked them is because they were a lot like me.

SPEAKER_00 12:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 12:56

And I like me.

SPEAKER_00 12:57

Yeah, that's right.

SPEAKER_01 12:58

But a room full of me does not work. We were doing a uh personality test, it was kind of like the disc. It was called insights, and a guide was taking the whole staff through this, like here's what this means, and this and this. And there were four basic components, and you have all four components in an order, kind of like disc, and and each component was represented by a bird feather that they handed out, right? So there was the eagle was the D, and then there's the I was the party person, and they had a peacock feather, and then there was uh the wise person uh was was an owl, and then the really kind person was a dove.

SPEAKER_00 13:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 13:38

So uh we all take the test, we all get our feathers, and then we're all supposed to go to the corner where we are, and I look up, and it is all peacocks, yeah. And I was one of them, and it's like, oh, this is not good. Yeah, this is not good at all. And the poor dove is like you're talking about the eagles will eat this and this will eat this, and the poor one person that was a dove on our staff said everything eats dove.

SPEAKER_00 14:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 14:05

So what what am I why am I telling this long story? There was no balance, yeah. Because I was hiring based on what I liked, yep, and I like people like me. It took me a long time working at churches, working in a for-profit, and then finally building this, and I'm still learning, but what I'm learning is I have to, if I really want to hire well, I have to learn me.

SPEAKER_00 14:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 14:27

And how to hire people that will complement my weaknesses rather than just replicate what I like.

SPEAKER_00 14:34

Yeah, that's really good.

SPEAKER_01 14:35

And you can see it in our in our database and our systems. I mean, our I would put our database up against any of the major corporate search firms in the world. It is ridiculous how well organized every phone call, every text, every interview, every email, all of it. We can find all of it for anybody for a long way back. And I would never think like that. Like I keep if you come in the office in the early days, there were post-it notes everywhere. It was ridiculous, right? And that worked for me, but it doesn't work as a system.

SPEAKER_00 15:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 15:06

Now we've got a system that's like OCD with details, and I'd say that, but frankly, the people that run it are so freaking organized, they'd say, William, OCD is not alphabetical, it's C V O. You know. So I I think if you can learn to look in the mirror and figure out who you are, and then say, How do I complement that? That's good. So that you have, like Paul talks about the body of Christ. Yeah, you've got a body of a team that that can do all the different things. That's right. Right. So two things then. One, realize that hiring is a venture into the unknown, and that will make you afraid, whether you want to realize it or not. Yeah. Right. So address that fear by not necessarily going toward what you know. Right? That's a lot of times what we do in a search. People say, well, we've got a candidate, we think they're the right one, but we want you to take a look. We want you to go look at candidates everywhere else. And if you find us candidates from all over the globe and we go back and hire the one we know, then we'll know we're doing it based on reality. That's good. And not out of some passive fear we're not willing to admit. That's really mature hiring. That's great. So don't be aware you're going in the unknown and don't be afraid of it, and and don't necessarily go toward what you know. And secondly, take a look in the mirror and get to know yourself and hire in a way that complements what your skills are. Yeah. And as you get larger as a team, keep a map of where things are and say, oh, we need this and this and this. And you'll start to see, you know, we have uh one department in our in our office where the Enneagram, you know, uh threes work really well in that one department. We've got threes that you let me achieve. Show me the goal, show me where to go, you know. So uh probably a little more than you wanted to hear, sorry. No recovering creature syndrome.

SPEAKER_00 16:51

No, it's it's good. And I think what really that all is talking about when you're hiring, kind of going into the unknown, is having a little bit of risk tolerance, which I think is necessary, especially when you're starting at a level zero. Hey, is this gonna work out? Is this a long-term thing? Are we how much are we willing to sacrifice to get this thing going? Um, and I think it's uh it's necessary uh for all senior leaders of teams, if you're gonna build a team, you gotta be able to risk something. You gotta be able to have some skin of the game, you maybe would say. Um maybe, maybe let's talk about how do you balance that risk tolerance later on when maybe we're not at so much as level zero anymore, maybe, maybe we're at level five or level ten, you know, um, and we are maybe a little bit more established and we're looking for adding to the team and we want to make sure that we're doing it well. How do we how do we make sure that we're that we're not just choosing our brother-in-law, our sister-in-law, which can be a good hire, but making sure that they're great for the role.

SPEAKER_01 18:13

Yeah, uh well, several things come to mind. Uh, first of all, your first five hires are your riskiest ones. Yes. If you want to know the culture of an organization and the founder is still in charge, just look at the founder and the four people that are closest to them in terms of work relationship. That is the culture of the organization. So when you're hiring those first, yes, I maybe take a risk, yes, but I would be super careful. The number one mistake in hiring and in human resources, number one mistake, it's not something I came up with, but I believe it more than ever. People hire too quickly and they fire too slowly. I used to pride myself. I used to say, I can tell you within five minutes of meeting a person whether they're the right one or not. And I thought that was cool. And that was so arrogant. That was so dumb. I mean, you know, David said, uh, behold, I'm fearfully and wonderfully made. Yeah. Every single person is a very complex equation. Yeah. And when you're putting a complex equation on a team with other complex equations, boy, you better not rush that. Even if my gut is so good, I can tell if they'll work or not. So if you're out there and you're thinking of hiring no matter what size your organization, do not go on the first impression. First impressions are important, but do not go on the first impression. You know, we've done work for Dave Ramsey over the years. Yep. Dave has, I I don't know now, I know he's over a thousand employees. Yeah. Amazing job. Uh they it takes forever to do a search for them. And I'd say if you're sitting right here, in fact, I said to him one time, Dave, I think I could probably put somebody in the CIA quicker than I could in your organization. It's kind of ridiculous. And he said, William, even a donkey can act like a thoroughbred for three interviews.

SPEAKER_00 20:02

That's fair. That's fair.

SPEAKER_01 20:04

Yeah, I thought, oh boy, that's wisdom.

SPEAKER_00 20:06

Yep.

SPEAKER_01 20:06

Yeah. And I mean, he he does lots and lots and lots of interviews, but I just think uh when you talk about taking risks with hiring, every hire is a risk. I would mitigate risk by taking your time. Yeah. And when you get bigger and you are, especially if you're the founder, let other people get you down toward your final candidates before you see them. Here's what happens the founder, if it when I I started this thing, and I've talked to a lot of church planters and business owners that have started schools that have been started by the founder, and and founders are so excited about their cause. Yeah. And they're so excited about their team that when somebody shows an interest in spending most of their waking hours working on that team, I go what right out of discernment mode and right into recruiting mode. You're gonna love it. It's gonna be great. Best ever. It's the best. Come on, come join us. And you're never gonna get cured of that. It should be chronic. You should love your if you founded the place, you should love the place more than anyone else in the organization. And your team should keep you away from hiring decisions until you get down to the very end. Yeah. Right. So if you get to that level 10, you're still taking time, as you should at level zero or one. But at level 10, boy, I hope you've empowered some people. You've cloned yourself enough. That's good. That you've got some people who will shield you from a default of going into your passion and into your recruiting and trying to get someone to come join you rather than dropping back and saying, is this the right move for our team? Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 21:41

That's great. Well, here's what I know is that when you're building, even if it's from level zero, if you're slow with hellos, you can make the right decisions to build your team better than ever in 2025. Thanks again for joining us on the Vanderblum and League. Leadership Podcast. I hope you enjoyed today's episode. If you're looking for more leadership resources, you can find us at Vanderblumen.com and on socials at Vanderblumen. We'll see you again next week where we continue discussing how to build, run, and keep great teams.