The Transparent Podcast
The Transparent Podcast
Jacob Stripling - Recruiting, Entrepreneurship, and Integrity
What if the key to entrepreneurial success is embracing transparency and genuine connections? Join us as we explore this idea with my former baseball teammate, Jacob, who has transitioned from the baseball field at Harding University to founding a recruiting firm in Little Rock.
Jacob shares how an enlightening conversation with a manager at TEKsystems set him on this entrepreneurial path and emphasizes the significant role workplace culture plays in choosing a career. Together, we discuss our mutual passion for transparency, which served as a catalyst for creating our respective staffing companies, and how this value is embedded in recruiting and entrepreneurship.
The conversation illuminates the strategic decisions involved in scaling a business, from investing wisely in advertising and website enhancements to recognizing the right moment to expand the team and avoiding the pitfalls of inadequate systems.
This episode offers rich insights into the entrepreneurial mindset, the power of taking bold steps, and how genuine connections can lead to lasting fulfillment.
Hi, this is Nick Ford, the host of the Transparent Podcast. Today, I'm joined by a guest. His name is Jacob and we actually had the pleasure of playing baseball together at Harding University. And, Jacob, I will let you introduce yourself.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so my name is Jacob. We did play baseball at Harding. I started my recruiting company about uh five and a half years ago. Um, in little rock we do primarily accounting and finance and it recruiting um with some outside of that as well. But uh came up working for a really large it staffing company called tech systems awesome company. Really loved it, loved the people there. Um, still close with a lot of them. Um, but then that was more on the contract side. Started my recruiting company five and a half years ago. We do more direct placements um, it's kind of a general overview, perfect.
Speaker 1:Yeah, um, I own transparent staffing anding and host the Transparent Podcast. So you can tell that I'm a fan of transparency and the vision for the company was Transparent Staffing, which I founded four years ago now was bringing transparency to the staffing industry. And you know, I just I love working for myself, I love entrepreneurship and, you know, from a young age, wanted to start my own business. I was thinking back to some of our conversations on the baseball field about wanting to eventually work for ourself and it's amazing that we've been able to do that. And, similar to the theme of transparent staffing, the theme that I had for the podcast was to bring transparency to the world of small business and entrepreneurship, and so I thought it would be cool for people to just be able to hear from entrepreneurs, people who have started businesses. I've had people that have kind of larger companies Me and you are still smaller. You're actually bigger than I am because you have a few employees. We'll talk more about that in a little bit.
Speaker 1:But, um, you know, I, going into the recruiting industry, um, I had no, I had. I didn't know that it was an industry. I I, like cold, called the front desk of Jackson Healthcare to get an internship because I had to have one before I graduated. Found that out my junior year of college and he was like my advisor said. I had to have an internship in sales, and so I just started applying to all these places with like four months until my junior summer, which was when I had to have the internship, and cold call Jackson Healthcare, not really knowing much about what they did or that recruiting was an industry, and so I kind of fell into it and then fell in love with it. I just love talking to people, love networking and connecting, but what got you into recruiting and tell us a little bit more about how you got started with your company?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, if you've heard anybody from the recruiting industry talk, it sounds like nine out of 10 times the story is the same, where they're like you know you fall into it. Nobody chooses it, nobody even knows to choose it, especially out of school. My thing was I just wanted to go to a place that I was going to really enjoy and really like the people that I was working with and feel like I could learn from them, and so I had a bunch of interviews out of school and the the the office of it was tech systems. When I went to interview with them, uh, the environment was just such a different place and, as you know, recruiting is not an easy job. So if you don't have a good, if you don't have a good culture, it's kind of like all right, you gotta have something to fall back on, uh, when the job gets really tough. So that was how I got into it. It was how I went with them. Um, they just all seemed like super genuine guys.
Speaker 2:One of the guys that hired me what actually finally got me to choose them over somebody else was. I asked him what are the negatives about being here? What's the downside, what's the thing that nobody in here is telling me. And he was like well, why don't I just put you in touch with the guy that left? It was like a couple of months earlier, and he was like I'll give you his phone number, I'll let you talk to him.
Speaker 2:He left I don't know if it was on good terms or bad terms or what and he can give you all the ins and outs of what he hated about the place and what he liked. And to me that, you know, going to transparency, that was what sold me on that, because I hadn't had anybody else from any other place do something like that. So I was like well, if that's the way that you're going to handle this, then I know you're at least shooting me straight on this. And that was how I got into. It was just good people, you know you, they do a lot of times. They'll do like a half day interview.
Speaker 1:And so you get to hang out with them and you see like you know this might people are being real with you or kind of just doing their job or whatever. But yeah, when I got into recruiting at a well I was still in college, I was an intern I cold-called the front desk and the recruiter who ended up answering me still remember her name Her name is Leanna Laqua and she just picked up the phone and they had hired all their interns. It was like April by this point when I called them, and so she was like you know, we've already hired all our interns, but we'll, I'll check with our permanent division, permanent placement division, because she was on the locum tenens, which is basically temp staffing for medical um, and so she checked with them and they were like yeah, well, like I this is how I imagine that conversation went was they didn't have an intern, and the guy was like yeah, we'll pay some kid $10 an hour to cold call?
Speaker 2:Yeah, if anybody who wants to come in and turn for me is welcome at any time, no matter if we're at capacity or not.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and he, you know, I, I got home after I graduated and I don't think I even interviewed until I got home and I met with the VP of recruiting. He's still there and he played football at Auburn, so like we talked about sports and playing college sports and whatnot. And you know, I told Leanne when I called that I was a sales major, my degree was in professional sales, so like she liked that major, my degree was in professional sales, so like she liked that. And I found out later one of the reasons why she was interested in talking to me was because she knew harding, which was to me weird because harding's a, you know, private. It's a fairly small christian school in arkansas and this was in georgia. But uh, she knew harding and she was dating a guy who played baseball for patrick mcgahey, who was me and Jacob's coach. So she immediately knew like Harding and so she kind of like had a little connection with me. I felt like because of that, but but anyway, it was a weird business to get into, like I didn't. I never worked like in a corporate environment like that.
Speaker 1:They had a pretty strong corporate environment within recruiting and then, you know, I just knew, though, that I wanted to get into my own business at some point and my granddad was the one who really, like I've looked up to in that way.
Speaker 1:He was an entrepreneur and had owned his own company, and one of the things he told me, like, when I asked him about you know, how will I eventually be able to start my own business and recruiting, like if did that, well, this is still. I was at Jackson health care and he was, like learn every aspect of the business that you can don't just learn your job, learn the whole company. Like figure out how all the different departments work, how they all play a part in whatever service or product that you're selling. And so I did that and I think that helped a lot when I went to start my own business, because I thought constantly about, like, what are they going to be the hiccups, what are going to be the things that get in the way? So one of the this is a kind of a different question, but what got you into permanent placement instead of? Because you'd been doing more contract stuff? It's like what got you into step perm placement instead of the? You'd been doing more contract stuff.
Speaker 2:It's like what got you into step herm placement instead of the uh temp stuff well being in little rock, arkansas, as opposed to atlanta, georgia or denver, colorado or la or phoenix, um, a lot of those places that have major corporations where they're needing tons of contractors. Here in Little Rock we had several, you know, larger customers, but more than not people were wanting full-time people. They didn't want to have to hire a bunch of contractors. Obviously, you know there's some, there's definitely some benefits to contracting. You know where you can, you know, use them when you need them and things like that.
Speaker 2:But from the direct placement perspective, most people just wanted an employee right then full time, you know. So I kept finding that to be more and more prevalent. And then, from the candidate side too, a lot of times you'd be recruiting on a contract role and you talk to somebody and they'd say you know, is it a contract or a full time? You'd say contract and they kind of be disappointed here because they're like, yeah, I would really prefer to be on the full-time side. So it's just one of those things.
Speaker 2:And tech systems is also a heavy. They've moved into the services, um, into the services side really heavily. It has changed a ton over the last uh, few years, but but it was just that, just saw the need for it seemed to be a lot more prevalent here and again I would talk to somebody in Phoenix or Denver or something. I'd have a totally different story. You know where it's. You know San Francisco or New York where it's like oh, it's just a totally different landscape. But here it was way more on the direct placement side that people were wanting.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I, you know, when I did local attendance, most clients we worked with they didn't want, like a temporary doctor and, like I did, more long-term placements. I mean they released a three-month contract and usually a regular schedule. It wasn't like a weekend shifts or, like you know, graveyards or whatever. It was like they were doing pretty monday to friday eight to five stuff. So like they really would rather have hired that person as a perm but um ended up, you know they they would go with the contractor because they needed to or they couldn't find people or whatever.
Speaker 1:Um, for me, like business thing about the business side of it, what I why I decided not to get in the temp partly is because of the caught, the risk and the cost of like funding payroll and then like the liability for doctors, especially like you're paying them 200 bucks an hour, you could be out like 40 grand before you start getting paid and you gotta cover malpractice and so the cost associated with I knew if I was doing my own thing, like I didn't want to take on a bunch of money and go into debt to like get it going.
Speaker 1:And uh, that's the nice thing about a service based business like us, like you know, with per em, per-emplacement, they're not working for us. We're charging for our services rather than a product that you have to put money and financing into. I thought about when I was in my multiple jobs about just how new processes and systems get implemented, and I did a lot of work evaluating CRMs and applicant tracking systems and things like that. So now tell us a little bit about like your team and how decisions get made between you and your team and things like software, like how y'all are going to do things.
Speaker 2:Yeah Well, from the small business perspective, deciding on those things, I mean, I feel like there's almost no right answer. You know, everybody's so different from the standpoint of when you're starting out and you have no money and you would like to get the best system that you can, but you're limited by funds. So then you got to get the best thing that you can, but you're limited by funds. So then you got to get the best thing that you can for the money, so you're trying to get your best bang for your buck. And then, a couple years in, now you're making some good money and now you're ready to move to the next level of things. But you've built out a system that's so good now that you basically put handcuffs on yourself because the data migration would be such a nightmare. You lose a lot of the work that you've done and a lot of these CRM companies or whoever will say we can migrate all your data, it'll be seamless, we'll get everything, and it never goes that way.
Speaker 1:And that's one of the things.
Speaker 2:When I talk with anybody who is starting something up now, it's just such a question of do you want to assume some upfront debt and just get the nicer stuff? And to me now, in hindsight, I would have rather done that, because I heard a guy one time where he was talking about never give up ownership. Take on debt if it's between the two, as long as you're betting on yourself. If you have that confidence in yourself, that is not a problem, and also yourself, that is not a problem. And also I've shifted my perspective a lot more to value over cost. You know when I'm looking at something and saying I can't afford if it's, you know, $15,000 a year for this service that we're needing to have. But if you ask me, do you think that that service makes you more money in the next year, and you say yes, then you can't afford not to do that thing.
Speaker 1:So you know, it's easier now, though, because I mean you have five years of track record. I mean, hindsight's always, 2020.
Speaker 2:Of course, but it still goes back to the thing. And when I say 15,000, that's a, you know that's a larger number for a startup. You know for a startup like ours when you're a solo preneur at the time. But there were a lot of things where you might be talking just you know where. If we're being honest, two or $300 a month more feels like a lot when you're starting something new and I remember we were having a kid, we were having a kid soon and it was like, hey, you know I would, I would get advice.
Speaker 2:Somebody would be like it's only $300 a month. I'd be like I can't afford $300 a month for something extra when I'm already paying X, y, z. So you know all of those things it's again. I don't think there's necessarily a right answer but knowing what I know now, there would have been smaller decisions. I would have made a little bit differently to say I'm not going to skate by on this thing. Or you know, like a website, for example, people are like just get something that works, which I somewhat agree with. But if you're planning on having a business that's going to span over the next 10 or 15 or 20 or whatever years, don't you want to get a headstart on the things that will make you come across as and this again.
Speaker 2:This is very preferential.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, but I think you know if you're coming-. I don't agree because, like ROI, I look at 100% ROI.
Speaker 2:Like how is this money going to make me money? Of course that's value over cost.
Speaker 1:Yeah Well, like when we talk about this, like I'll spend money on LinkedIn ads or Indeed ads or whatever, just job post ads to get candidates Because to me it's like, okay, yeah, maybe I'll drop some money on that, but if it results in a placement, then it's a small amount and so I'm willing to spend money on that and I'm more, I'll be more open with it, versus there's always the risk that I don't ever make that placement still, even though I may spend the money.
Speaker 1:Um, and now, like you said, like I have spent more money on like crm stuff and I put some money poured money into like the website, more so, and and uh, the swag I got, like the shirts and whatnot that you know who knows if that's gonna end up getting me a client. You're drowning in swag. Yeah, dude, matt, my I hopefully he, he better listen to this, matt. I hired a vp of sales and recruiting and man, he got swagged out like his first week and I like told him later. I was like I regret I should have like not given this all to you at once.
Speaker 2:I should have slowly given this to you over time, he's just rotating between shirts and he's got a pullover, but anyway.
Speaker 2:The website is just an example, though. Yeah, there was just certain things. And also, if it doesn't affect your actual execution, then, of course, if we're talking about something where it's just a preference and you just want something that's nicer, that's not what I'm talking about. But when you look at the value, if it's something like I can't afford $1,000 right now I could, but it's going to squeeze me but you're looking and saying, well, here's what I'm going to get because of the $1,000. But you're like well, I can't afford it. That way, you'll stay in a never-ending cycle of constantly waiting until you have enough to make the move. You'll never take the actual risk. And if you started your business, you're already a risk taker. So I'm saying a calculated risk when you can see what's going to come from it. That's one thing I wish I had done differently. And again, I'm not talking about major investments where you've got to go get venture capital, but I'm talking about something where, okay, this is going to be $500, you know, a month versus 350.
Speaker 1:You know if you're pinching over $150 to me, you know it totally depends. Yeah, it depends on, like, how much revenue you have coming in and like how and what kind of business you're in. I mean, like it make sense for me to buy real estate to have an office space?
Speaker 2:No, I don't think it makes sense for me to do that right now.
Speaker 1:But if I was a real estate company and I was buying that real estate to lease to other? Companies then of course it makes sense. So it just all depends on you know. We'll have people who listen to this that are in all different kinds of business ideas that they may want to go get into. I like to call it wantrepreneurs. We were both wantrepreneurs at one point. We wanted to be an entrepreneur and just had ideas. We still are, yeah.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, I still have ideas.
Speaker 1:And I have to get reined in constantly, usually by my wife, who's like you can't, you can't, just go do everything right all at once yeah, she said no, you can't have your fun website, you gotta stick with this one yeah, yeah, she's like no use the free wix one like no one's looking at your website.
Speaker 1:Anyway, no one cares about your website. Yeah, I'm like, ah, womp, womp, probably right, though no one's. No one's like going out looking for transparent staffing and going to decide whether they work with me off on my website. Not with that attitude. See, hey, different, different perspectives, different ideas. You know they're all, they're all good for for uh, for people to hear.
Speaker 1:But, um, you know, uh, one of the things I have not done much of uh is is scaling. Much of uh is scaling and like I just like kind of I have a hard time with trusting people to build the brand and like pay them a salary to to work, and like the amount of time I have to spend training people or whatever, and so, like I just haven't done it much. Like I'm now hired matt and he's doing a really good job. He, you know he's been we've talked about transferring staffing for years. He's very well aware of the business and very high level uh customer success, account management, tech background, and so he's doing great.
Speaker 1:But like the idea of like hiring people under him and like hiring recruiters and stuff, I just haven't wrapped my head around it yet. Um, he's got big plans for what he wants to do with it and I, you know that kind of scares me. But what do you? You've had some success now, um, from conversations we've had. But, like, tell us about how you're looking at like scaling, like how do you repeat what you're doing when you're not the one doing it?
Speaker 2:I mean mean, the funny, the funniest part about scaling is I feel like I have sat down with countless guys who are much further in their career than we are, who have built these crazy successful companies, and everybody says something different and in so much of it they're like you know, you like? I was trying to talk about compensation one time and he was like man comp is just a shot in the dark, he goes. You try things, it works, you stick with it. You try this, it doesn't work, you shift it. But I mean, you know, scaling my favorite thing is working with people. If you told me that I could, you know, make crazy money by myself and I would, um, you know, but I would be alone, or I could go here and make less money but still make a good living, but do it with people. I would much rather that option. I mean, I love doing it, the guys we have are fantastic. I mean, it's just like it changed my life so much for the better.
Speaker 1:You feel like you're on an island. Otherwise, I mean, this feels very much like an island.
Speaker 2:I mean I remember the biggest placement that we ever did. It was me at the time and closed, the deal went down told my wife she was like that's amazing. I was like this can't be all there. You know, obviously the money was great from it but um, but things like that, you know, celebrating alone, you know not. I mean you can bounce ideas off people but they don't have the same stake as you because they're not actually affected by it. It's just a lot of those things.
Speaker 2:So the scaling aspect to me is always on the forefront of my mind, not scaling just to scale, but you know, always in waiting on the right person, where we're not necessarily posting a job and saying, hey, we're going to hire somebody in the next week, but always having an open mind. I mean Austin Crawford, the guy the first guy who came on with me, was one of those where it was like we had no, I had no intention of hiring at the time. He had, he was doing great in his job, he was about to head to his president's club, you know Bahamas trip or whatever it was, and neither of us had any uh indication. But I always knew that for the right person I will. I'll just figure out a way that we can make it happen, and so that's been kind of the way that it's gone. So there are several people that I'll talk to over time where it's hey, just know. If you ever want to have a conversation about this, I'd love to. And that obviously doesn't go for everybody. It's not just an open invitation for anybody who wants to come work, but for the right person. You're always open to that conversation and we know from the good companies that you work with those are the ones who say look, we may not be hiring, but if you have somebody who's outstanding, we want to talk to them every time. Why wouldn't we? You know that could be the person who changes everything for us. So, but it does.
Speaker 2:I mean the stress, the financial stress of you know, the investment's. Again, it goes back to where maybe maybe we don't differ as much as you think on this, because you know you've gone with the salary route. I mean it's a major investment. So it's like you're obviously looking at value over cost from that perspective and you know, trusting that person and, um, I don't know, I don't know that there's a right answer, um, but you know, to each person is different. But one of the things that I've tried to do is we've never really had debt, so I didn't take on any loans. I mean, we have a line of credit but didn't take on any loans, didn't take on any venture or private capital, didn't take on anything like that. I mean, you know a credit card when we're starting up, but trying to balance those things too, really difficult. You know where it's like. Do we need to hire somebody right now or should we get as healthy as we can with the crew we got? Like? It's always those questions.
Speaker 1:I feel like they're never ending yeah, the thing that I do wish I had spent more, spent some money on, is just paying a bookkeeper to do my books every month because, like I'm still, dealing with bookkeeping stuff from like years ago and like I had to go download every statement and every from every account and I like and some of them I didn't even remember I had and I had to download probably over 200 statements from different stuff over the last four years to just get everything cleaned up, because it was me doing it and I am the opposite of my accountant.
Speaker 1:The only season in college were in like accounting 101 and accounting 102 and so, yeah, like I would say I got. I heard a piece of advice, um, where they said if, if you can find someone that can do the job at 70 of what you can do, pay them to do it. So if, like, and if, if you can pay an accountant to do the job at 200% of what you can do, it only costs you a few hundred bucks a month. You should definitely just don't think you can do it yourself and it's going to be super easy. It will be easy until you start realizing that you didn't code it right or whatever.
Speaker 2:Dude. The first thing I say to my CPA every tax season is just how sorry I am for my books. She's having way we start.
Speaker 1:She's having to fix it.
Speaker 2:But this year I had a guy shout out, dylan Richardson. He helped me a lot with those and he's a really good buddy and I asked him if he could help me out and he was like yeah, let me take a look. He's like I'm not going to charge you. I was like no, you're going to charge me, just wait till you see him.
Speaker 2:One of those things and he got in, was asking me a couple of questions and I was like you see what I mean and he was like, all right, we can think about this.
Speaker 1:I met. So I have a friend that's a CPA and shout out Bronson, he's in Alaska. They moved from Georgia to Alaska a few years ago and I started going over my books with him and he's yeah, analysis.
Speaker 2:You know, there's so many things that you can trick yourself into thinking that you're being productive just because you're doing things, but this is one of those things that I wish on the front end. I could have established a much better process, because the headache every year of dealing with books when you're not a financial person is enough to make me be like just shut the whole business down.
Speaker 1:I'm quitting everything.
Speaker 2:Go work for someone else. That's what I told. I always joke with my wife. I'll be like. My motivation to just blow this thing out of the water for the next few years is so we can hire back office accounting that's it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, I told I told my buddy in the last time like we're gonna be working out a monthly thing after this, because I don't ever want to have this conversation again. Yeah, oh yeah terrible I'm gonna sit there for like a whole day just downloading statements and like some of them is just mine.
Speaker 2:That stuff is mind-numbing to me oh, dude, it's like looking out of your backyard that has just eight million leaves in it and you're like I gotta get to this at some point, and you sit there and stare at it and be like I can't, not today, yeah yeah, oh my gosh.
Speaker 1:Well, I mean it's you gotta find, you gotta know what you're good at and focus on that somewhat.
Speaker 1:I mean, like I'm Noah, I'm not going to get any kind of return on investment by trying to learn accounting and QuickBooks is a waste of my time and I just better to outsource it.
Speaker 1:But uh, speaking of knowing what you're good at, what do you think? Like when you look at people who, like you, would define as successful where you know, and I think some people, a lot of people, look at that as money, like how much money do they make, or how nice house they have, what kind of car they drive, whatever, but like there's other things that just like you know happiness and uh, success. So, like my wife is unbelievably successful as a mom and like she's homeschooling our kids and she's so she gets her reward is more intangible of like seeing, like my son knows how to read now and he didn't learn that in kindergarten but now he's reading books. So how do you what do you think you make separates the people who are successful, that are like thriving, from the people who you know are maybe wandering, don't really know what they want to do, or you know that kind of thing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, of course, if you have, I mean from the business perspective, if we're not making money. I mean you know there is a baseline to that, but to me, I mean you hear so many times whether it's Steve Jobs and I don't know, some of these may be just legend, but you hear so many of these people who have had more money than God and at the end of their life they all, it seems to be where they're like this couldn't be, this can't be. All there was, this can't be you know where. It's one of those things where, like you'll hear, you know, hear a guy that wins the Super Bowl and then after it's just kind of over.
Speaker 2:So to me, and not to be cheesy or cliche, but it's like what do people say about you? How do people feel about what impact have you made in people's lives? Have you actually made a difference? And I'm not talking about some giant difference where it's like you built a school or something insane. I mean that's great or something insane. I mean that's great. But to me, success is when it's like you know, if you've built something, if you've built a company and built a place where people can come and really be happy and feel secure and feel poured into and, you know, develop themselves and you know, and that to me is success, like if, if, if, when you die, there's people around you who are like man, there was a big difference made here at that success.
Speaker 2:Obviously, money is great, but I mean, as you know, I don't know, I mean you know, even in the biggest months, it's like some of our biggest months I've been in the worst spot mentally. So it's like it obviously doesn't equate to that. So I just with our thing, it's the way that we treat customers, the way we treat candidates is like it is not. I mean, obviously I think it's good business, I think it does work, I think it benefits you in the long run. But if you're only doing it for that purpose, I don't think it's sustainable, because it does take a lot of hard work and it takes dedication.
Speaker 2:When it's like, okay, I have two roads. One ends with me making much more money but maybe not treating these people as well. The other one ends with me potentially making less but doing the right thing. Here we will always take the road you know with, with less money, to treat people better, because it's like man, I don't want to get to the end of this thing and look back and be like sweet, we got an awesome house and we take a bunch of trips and you got a sweet car, but who can you call when something's good? You have nobody to celebrate things with. You've burned so many bridges, so that, to me, is the no.
Speaker 2:So I mean, I feel, like that's such a daily motivation for us. It's like and if that's why you're doing what you're doing with your business, I feel like that gives you so much gas to be able to do it.
Speaker 1:So fuel, yeah well, I mean, and I think there's like a element of like the golden rule just treat other people how you were treated and like you can go to bed at night and feel good about what you did, regardless of whether, I mean, hopefully, you were successful and made money or whatever, right. But but at the same time, I also think the golden rule is good for business because, like you give us, you get into like a sticky situation or you have a client that's upset or whatever, and you do the right, just do the right thing, even though maybe it seems painful at the time, maybe financially or whatever. But they're probably going to remember that and they may you never know who. They may know down the road that they refer to, um, and you'll have a good long-term relationship with them.
Speaker 1:That's why I mean, I believe in just being transparent with people, transparent staffing. I mean, um, be upfront and honest. And you know, uh, you know, I had another baseball player from harding on the podcast, bryce uh bradley, who we both played with, and his dad. He quoted this from his dad and his dad said uh, if you always tell the truth, you don't have to remember what you said and that's really good when you already have a hard time remembering what you said in general.
Speaker 1:Yeah, with how much I talk, it's very hard to remember everything I said. But as far as I was going to say, as far as like success, like you know you're talking about, like when you kind of like at the end of the day, when you, like you're older, die or whatever, like, what kind of like impact are you gonna have had? Or you know, my granddad passed away in october and, uh, you know, in october, november time frame, and you know I looked up to him so much and he had this massive group of people at his funeral that were all there that like came up to me after the funeral, were just like how much of an impact he made on their life. Like you know, he was a very strong christian leader in the church. He's an elder for a long time, but he also owned a very successful 300 employee business and he had, like employees from like 30 40 years ago and like people he had worked with and, um, you know it, that's what you want, like, you want like these people who like not that you want a bunch of people at your funeral, but just that you people you have met, impacted their life and, like you, made a positive impact on the world, and that can be financially, that can be spiritually, that can be your own family, whatever.
Speaker 1:But I think what separates people who succeed, though in business specifically, is I think you have to have goals. That's the de facto answer. If you don't have a goal you're working toward, then what are you doing, like? What are you working toward? Sure, yeah, of course.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, and the thing to me, I mean, if you're talking about the way that you impact people, that also correlates to habits and goals, because if I believe that we need to treat people as you know, the best we can.
Speaker 2:That means that you're going to work as hard for them as you can because you want to produce the results that they're. You know that you're promising, that you're going to so that doesn't really come without high levels of performance. You know, same thing with building a company being able to provide something that other people can take part in and benefit from doesn't come without a lot of performance, a lot of money, things, like you know. So it all kind of goes hand in hand. But I also it just goes back to I mean, I'm sure you've had a lot of these, but there's been times where it's like I don't know that this ever will benefit me and I don't know that this will come back. You know, I don't know that this will come back, you know when I go drunk.
Speaker 2:I don't know that this will happen, but I just think it's the right thing, you know, and again, not to be cheesy, but I do still think it works in business too, and I mean whether it's this. I mean, of course, I love doing this. I love, you know, the small business aspect. I do love the recruiting side, you know. When it's going well, it's great. I love working with people. But it's like life is about more than any of just these few things. So it's like if I'm going to have to compromise in a big way on any of the things that we're talking about, I'd rather shut the whole thing down and just go find another way. That was kind of how this originated in the first place was I knew what I wanted and I didn't know anybody or any place at the time that could provide it, so I just created it.
Speaker 1:So that's amazing. I love that. I love what you just said. I couldn't find anything that you know would do what you wanted to do, and so you created it. That is business right there, that's. And you had a vision for what you're going to do, and you know. Now you're pushing other people toward that vision. You know, and you, and that's to me, it's so much easier to sell myself and my, my idea, than to sell some other companies idea?
Speaker 1:yeah, no doubt yeah, I mean, that is one of the things that, like you, will never really understand until you start a business. Yeah, but it is so, it is so. I think a lot of people look at it as this daunting thing to have to do that, but, man, it's so much easier than trying to sell a product for someone else. I did it for a long time. Yeah, oh yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's different worlds.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, yeah, I definitely agree. And then, like you know, the flexibility that comes along with it. You know we have families with kids and you know I can, I can choose to be done. You know, this morning I went, took my son to breakfast at like nine o'clock and you know I just wanted some time with him. His brother is sick and I got to have an opportunity to be with him. So I, you know I did that and then I can, you know, flex my time and make up for it later.
Speaker 1:But, um, anyway, those are all things that like, like you said, you probably won't find somewhere else. You might get lucky and have like flexibility, and it's just. You know, entrepreneurship to me is the answer to that. But you know, now that I've hired someone full time, I'm having to figure out, like, where my time is most valuably spent. What should I, what should I have him work on and is most valuably spent? What should I, what should I have him work on and take off my plate, and what should I be focused on? How do you, how have you handled that? Because that's something that's brand new to me now.
Speaker 2:Dude. I feel like that is again. It goes back to the question or the answer. I mean, so many of these questions are the things that I try and find these guys who have done things much better and for longer and more successfully than I have. And that's one of the questions too, because there's so many times where you know, especially in recruitment, it's like OK, am I just going to focus solely on BD or do I need to be, you know, finding better ways for us to do things, or do we need to hire somebody to do both of those, or do we need to have you somebody to do both of those, or do we need to have you? And I don't know. I mean one of the things you know, we, I don't know if you guys ever take those personality tests like a Gallup strength.
Speaker 2:Final tests and one of the things I think this is probably yeah, and one of the things that is probably, I would think, relatively consistent potentially among business owners is liking new things. You know, liking. It's like, okay, I'll do this for a little bit, now I'm ready to do this. Like you know, you build that up and now let's go over and focus on this thing, and sometimes I feel myself falling in the trap of not chasing shiny objects as they come.
Speaker 2:But you're always thinking, okay, how are we going to reinvent ourselves? Because even with something as obvious as you know, the adaptation of AI everywhere it's like if we don't adapt, we'll be gone in probably less than five years. We have to continue to recreate ourselves and find what's new and be staying up to date on these things. I mean, you can just continue to get a lot better. But if you don't adapt, it's like the company that like, hey, do your softwares integrate with ours? And they're like, no, we're still stuck in this. It's like, well then, we're not going to use you, you know, so you run into a lot of those things. So when it comes to you know time spent, I think sometimes I try not to have your schedule dictate every day where you don't set out things and I've heard you know a lot of people have a lot of success with time blocking and things like that, but I do that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, I think that's just one of those that's evolving, like every year, you know, trying to set priorities and say what's the most important thing, not getting caught up. And you know we were going to do this, but this is kind of off topic. It just popped into my head. But talking about one of the things that our team discussed was that I don't think we failed enough last year and I don't think we tried enough new things.
Speaker 1:I think that we have things that we're working on no, it was not, not in the in the way that I said.
Speaker 2:Maybe it sounds okay, but it essentially translates to we weren't trying enough new things, so like yeah you know when everything that you're doing is working, but it's only because you have your select few things that are working, so you never veer outside of those. I think it goes back to one of those things where it's like you kind of pick your lane and you stay, but like how are you going to grow if?
Speaker 1:you're not like you're playing it too safe.
Speaker 2:Almost yeah, exactly, exactly yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean, I think you know, I think there's a level of definitely keeping up with the market and having your thumb on what's going on in your industry, especially if you're manufacturing or you're in technology. Obviously, ai is definitely a disruptor in technology. It's inevitable. I think some of it will be hype, like the cloud. Everyone's going to put AI on everything this year that they have AI, yeah, of course, like the cloud was, how much will it actually replace people's jobs or change the way we work? I think it will. In recruitment, I mean, it ultimately comes down to finding the right candidate, and so if you can get really good at that without using AI, then you'll be fine. If you can't, then other people might come, you know, start beating you out on things and taking business from you, or clients may not be tired of working with you if you're not delivering fast enough or the right candidate quickly enough or whatever. But yeah, with like with me, with like how I spend my time, like I'm very, very good at the sales side I studied sales.
Speaker 1:I enjoy like cold calling. I well, I don't know if I enjoy cold calling I enjoy cold outreach, like, whether it's email or linkedin or whatever, and networking. Um, I don't have any problem talking to someone I've never met before and trying to convince them why they should, you know, want to work with me. Um, matt, like that's what I'm trying to figure out is what Matt is good at, like I know he's really good at customer success, very good at managing existing accounts, and like one of the conversations me and him have been having is, like how much time should he be sending on sales? Like going and doing cold outreach, um, and versus like managing existing business, existing relationships and kind of mining those um, and so that's an ongoing thing.
Speaker 1:Right now, I feel like I need to really ramp up the sales side. That's partly because we've filled a bunch of jobs, which is sure, yeah, a good problem to have, but, but, um, you know what? So, as far as, like you know, bringing transparency to world small business, I think we've had a lot of good. You you know candid conversation here about business. But what would you like? What advice would you give to people that are on the fence about it, like they're thinking about starting a business but they haven't done it yet?
Speaker 2:I mean one of the things that there's so much information out there today that you can get answers to so many of the questions that you have. Even if there are a bunch of different answers, you can find the one that works best for you. So you don't really have an excuse to say, well, I don't know. You know, and also the guys that I really look up to and respect goes back to failure are the ones who are like man, I'm so glad that I went, even though I didn't know and I didn't have this and I didn't have that. I went and I started it and I got you know. So I think so much of it are. And ours is a little bit easier because, like I have a friend who's a chiropractor who you know, his startup cost was significantly higher than ours. You know you're talking real estate and equipment and staff and all those types of things you know we can. When we're initially starting, you know you need a phone and a computer, you know. And then your softwares and stuff.
Speaker 1:But so. But I think you have to have the software though.
Speaker 2:I mean you don't have to, yeah, you don't. Oh, there's, there's full companies that run just off Excel, yeah, so um, but you know, I think with that and also the thing that I hear people say all the time is like if you wait until it's the right moment again not to be cliche, but like it's never the right moment, it's never the right moment you never have enough money.
Speaker 1:It's never going to get less risky Unless you are the most stringent Dave Ramsey follower ever and pay off your mortgage and all of your debt and you're debt-free. That's the only way it will ever get less risky.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but even then you're waiting. A girl that I like to listen to. She talks about somebody who she really look up to a boss she used to have and she goes. You know, you have the person who gets it all together, creates the perfect product or whatever it is, and then brings it to market. And then you have the guy that she had who, before you ever get there, he's already gone to market, failed six times, found the seventh way that works, and now he's already operating and taking all the business. You know.
Speaker 2:So not to be reckless, I'm not advocating for recklessness, but for just saying you know, if you sit around and you wait and it's like once I had this amount of money in the bank, or once the same stuff that you hear from people who are like I'll get married when I have enough money, or I'll have kids when I have enough money, or whatever it is, and it's like, dude, it's, some people do, but most people, I know you never have enough to where you feel, so just like, oh, whether this thing succeeds or fails, I'll be fine.
Speaker 1:You know, at the end of the day it's. It's never gonna be easy, and to me I would. That's the advice I would give, too, is just just do it, take the first step. It'll be a lot easier to just take the first step, whatever that means, whether it's like researching the business you want to start, or like registering the LLC or like whatever. It'll be a lot easier to do that than to sit around thinking about it and regretting it. And the longer, the longer and longer it takes for you to start it, the further and further behind you're getting. Um, when you could have gone back, like for me, if I waited till now to start my business, I mean I would be starting from four years ago. Oh yeah, same same four years ago. Oh yeah, same thing from you. So I would just say go do it.
Speaker 2:I will say this too. A thing that I like that I hear a lot is don't let talk deceive you into thinking that your ideas and your discussions are actual execution or productivity or that you're getting somewhere, are actual execution or productivity or that you're getting somewhere. You know, like there's so many people that I talk to, who you know. It could be a guy that I meet with, you know, every six months or a year, and every time he's got something new and cool that he's about to do. And I'm like, man, after we've met 10 times and you've had 10 ideas and you haven't done any of them, why don't you just execute on one and let's talk about how it's going? So I think for people too, I know I fall into the same trap we all do, where we'll have certain ideas of what we want to do with the business and then it never actually comes true because you get this false sense of accomplishment from discussing it.
Speaker 2:So I think that's something when you're somebody who's thinking about going into business where it's like be about it.
Speaker 1:you know, have some yeah the thing I close with too is like don't listen to the naysayers, like the. You're gonna talk to people who tell you my sarah, my wife and my parents will tell you now that they always believed in me and they always knew I could do this. But before I started it, before I handed sarah the first contract that I got some of the client she was very, very hesitant and thought it was very risky. And even when I quit my job I already had the business going some as a side thing. Even then they thought they thought I'll nix like this big risk taker, like he's so risky, and to me I'm like I've been planning this for like 10 years yeah, the lowest risk thing I could do.
Speaker 1:I have a business going already, because I remember me and you would talk and you'd be like Nick, just go do it, you're going to make so much money Just go start your company, yeah, so anyway. Well, hopefully that leaves people with a good spot to think about. And you know, tell us how you know anyone listening to this, how they could help you. Is there any clients that we could kick your way, jacob?
Speaker 2:Yeah yeah of Jacob, yeah yeah. Of course, clients are always uh appreciated. Now Just, I mean, we're on LinkedIn future state careers. We're actually getting a new website right now I'm not sure when that's going to be done but, um, hopefully soon.
Speaker 2:Uh, but yeah, I mean I and I I just always love you know, if there's somebody who hears this or is wanting to think about going into business, like, I love having those conversations. Or if it's somebody who's early in recruiting, I love having those conversations. Or, obviously, if you're a candidate or a client who's looking to bring on some people in the accounting and finance or IT spaces, I would love to talk to them too.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I would say yeah. You'll be surprised how much business owners are willing to help you. They'll want to talk to you about business.
Speaker 2:Yeah, there's nice people out there, surprisingly.
Speaker 1:Yeah, me and Jacob are two of them, so you can at least call us yeah, all right. Well, thanks so much for being on the podcast. I really appreciate it. And we'll talk again soon. All right, man, all right.