How to Hire a GM or Operator for Your Home Service Business

Summary

Podcast Summary: Owned and Operated – "How to Hire a GM or Operator for Your Home Service Business"

Date: March 5, 2026
Host: John Wilson
Guest: Brendan Aronson (Founder, The Military Vet – TMV, recruiting firm specializing in placing military veterans in operator roles)

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Episode Overview

This episode dives into the process, challenges, and strategies of hiring General Managers (GMs) or senior operators for home service businesses, focusing particularly on the unique qualifications of military veterans. Host John Wilson and guest Brendan Aronson explore the end-to-end stages of recruiting high-level leadership, discuss when and why to consider a leadership upgrade, and analyze both internal and external talent pipelines. The episode also highlights the traits that veterans bring to the table and how business owners can create compelling opportunities to attract top-tier talent.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Why Hiring Military Veterans is Gaining Traction

• There are approximately 16 million military veterans in the U.S., making their transition into leadership roles a growing topic of conversation.
  • Quote ([01:37] John Wilson): "There's all these military veterans out there... This is becoming a hotter and hotter topic of, hey, can we place these skilled professionals into leadership positions? And they're uniquely qualified to come in and lead."

2. Constructing a High-Quality Candidate Pipeline

• Active vs. Passive Talent:
  • Active Talent: People actively job-hunting.
  • Passive Talent: Individuals satisfied in current roles who are approached about new roles.
  • Firms like TMV prioritize a wide pipeline, often narrowing down after speaking with dozens of candidates per position.
  • Quote ([02:12] John Wilson): "Is dozens the number?"
  • Quote ([02:14] Brendan Aronson): "For our own hiring process, we don't make hiring decisions unless we've talked to seven people for a specific role. But yeah, a big pipeline is better."

3. Candidate Experience Reflects Company Culture

• The process itself is both an evaluation and a sales pitch. How you treat candidates is telling:
  • Quote ([03:29] Brendan Aronson): "You can tell a lot about a company by the hiring process that they run."
  • Keeping candidates informed and engaged reflects positively on the business.

4. Motivations Matter: Understanding What Drives Candidates

• It's crucial to identify what potential hires value most—location, compensation, family needs, equity, career growth, work-life balance.
  • Quote ([08:48] Brendan Aronson): "There's no right or wrong answer. I don't think that that impacts how you would view a candidate. It's just something that's important to know so that you can then help them understand why it is a good fit."

5. Evaluating Candidates Under Pressure

• Beyond résumé, assess how candidates behave in high-pressure scenarios.
  • Reference checks and behavioral interviews are crucial.
  • Memorable Moment ([11:19] Brendan Aronson): "Reference checks are probably your best proxy... what feels high pressure to one person, might not for another."
  • Story ([11:19–12:29]): Brendan details his own shift from war zones to Wall Street, illustrating perspective on pressure.

6. Turnaround vs. Stable Growth Situations

• Most placements aren't turnarounds, but when they are, it’s critical to select leaders with the appetite for uncertainty and challenge.
  • Quote ([13:55] John Wilson): "Someone has the joy of the turnaround."
  • Anecdote ([14:00] Brendan Aronson): Describes a Marine who thrived in turnarounds despite the personal cost.

7. Building a Scalable Leadership Bench

• External Pipeline: Developing broad networks is key. Large firms often maintain or request curated lists of "hitters" for future opportunities.
  • Quote ([19:19] Brendan Aronson): "You have a list of people, right? Who are hitters in a variety of different spaces... you probably have a formalized list."
• Internal Pipeline: Leverage current employees' networks; promote from within when possible.
  • Encourage senior hires to bring talented former colleagues.
  • Quote ([20:29] Brendan Aronson): "...as you bring on the right people, they've got a network of people that they've worked with."

8. Time to Impact for Senior Hires

• The further up the organizational chart, the longer the ramp for measurable impact.
  • Quote ([23:27] John Wilson): "...as an organization gets bigger... it takes more time to steer. So, the difference between turning a cigarette boat and turning an aircraft carrier..."

9. When to Upgrade or Retool Leadership

• No strict revenue-based thresholds; watch for “Peter Principle” failures, constraint points, or when founders are stretched beyond high-ROI activities.
  • Quote ([26:26] Brendan Aronson): "You can think about it in terms of constraints... is my time better used in a higher leverage way?"
  • Typical triggers: founder spending time on low-ROI tasks, or KPIs/metrics showing lagging teams.

10. Investing in Training and Cultural Fit

• As orgs grow, leaders must formalize upskilling and ensure cultural coherence.
  • Quote ([32:20] Brendan Aronson): "The companies we've seen be really successful, they do take a really long-term view of their talent."

11. Veteran Value Proposition

• Veterans bring mission focus, team-first mentality, resilience (AQ: Adversity Quotient), and adaptable leadership.
  • Quote ([33:49] Brendan Aronson): "When you're hiring a veteran, you are hiring someone that is a professionally trained teammate."
  • Quote ([35:22] Brendan Aronson): "...they're Marines, so they're professionally trained and running into brick walls with their head first over and over again..."

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the transition challenge for executives:
  [23:28] John Wilson: "I would assume a red flag is someone immediately came in and started, like, ripping up the carpet. Like, if you're making a ton of changes off the rip and you don't know a lot about the organization, like, you should not be looking for that."

• Why veterans adapt to change management:
  [23:50] Brendan Aronson: "...the military is actually like, a great place where you see this in effect, because people change jobs every couple of years... The rule of thumb in the military is like, you don't come in and immediately change things. You, like, listen for a little bit."

• On the 'only way out is through' mentality:
  [36:01] Brendan Aronson: "You’re finding people with high adversity quotients who know what it is to suffer and to say to themselves... The only way out is through."

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Timestamps of Key Segments

• Hiring process & candidate pipeline: 02:00–03:50
• Candidate motivations & how to probe them: 07:10–09:19
• Assessing pressure tolerance & reference checks: 10:43–12:54
• Turnaround situations & their demands: 13:56–15:15
• Networks and building a leadership bench: 17:12–21:19
• Evaluating impact and change management: 22:39–25:16
• Signals for upgrading leadership: 26:26–30:23
• Training and talent investment: 31:16–32:50
• Veteran value proposition & final thoughts: 33:29–36:01

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Takeaways for Home Service Business Owners

• Widen your pipeline: Interview broadly, and don’t settle for “good enough.”
• Assess for fit and motivations: Beyond skills, understand what drives the candidate (and make sure they know your value proposition too).
• Reference checks matter: They often reveal pressure-performance and behavioral traits resumes don't.
• Promote internally but keep external networks strong: Both are vital for long-term scaling.
• For military veterans: Their training, resilience, and team-orientation are powerful assets, particularly for challenging or ambiguous situations.

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Conclusion:
This episode delivers a tactical playbook and deep perspective on hiring GMs/operators for ambitious home service businesses. It makes a strong case for considering military veterans for leadership positions, outlining not just the “how,” but also the crucial “why.” For those scaling, retooling, or even just preparing for growth—this conversation is a strategic resource.

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Transcript

[John Wilson]

What someone behaves like under pressure, they're

[Brendan Aronson]

marines, so they're professionally trained and running into brick walls with their head first. You are hiring someone that is a professionally trained teammate. As you get more senior and you're able to take sort of a longer term view, if you find yourself spending a lot of time either on low margin tasks or low ROI tasks, it's probably time to think about bringing someone on.

[John Wilson]

I would assume that a red flag is someone immediately came in and started like ripping up the carpet.

[Brendan Aronson]

The military is actually like a great place where you see this in effect because people change jobs every couple of years. You don't come in and immediately change things. You, like, listen for a little bit.

[John Wilson]

Hey, is this team cap of going from 40 to 100, does it need retooling or does it need reset?

[Brendan Aronson]

That's why leadership's so hard, because you're figuring out how do I motivate someone to, to be able to do this? And then also how do I give them the tools to be able to do it?

[John Wilson]

Why should we hire military veterans?

[Brendan Aronson]

Man, That's a good question.

[John Wilson]

Welcome back to Owned and Operated. I am your host, John Wilson.

[Sponsor/Advertiser Voice]

During the day.

[John Wilson]

I run a 40ish million dollar company now, which is kind of fun. We're plumbing H vac and electric and we are Indiana and Ohio about to be one more state. So that hang tight. That should be pretty fun. Today we brought on Brendan Aronson, the founder of tmv, the military vet, which is a recruiting firm that places operators from military veterans. Stay tuned. Welcome to the show.

[Brendan Aronson]

Thanks for having me on.

[John Wilson]

Yeah, this will be fun. We were just talking a second ago off camera how I feel like this has become more and more of a topic of, hey, there's all these military veterans out there. I think you said 16 million.

[Brendan Aronson]

Yes.

[John Wilson]

Yeah. And this is becoming a hotter and hotter topic of, hey, can we place these skilled professionals into leadership positions? And they're uniquely qualified to come in and lead, so this will be a ton of fun to dive into. Let's talk about actually hiring the leader. So we're going through this interview process. How many, how many people is like a good amount to talk to if you're hiring like a high stakes role like gm, president, cfo?

[Brendan Aronson]

I mean, you know, if you're working with a firm like ours, we've talked to dozens of people before. You have, and so we've kind of pared it down a little bit for our own.

[John Wilson]

So is dozens the number?

[Brendan Aronson]

I would think so, yeah. Yeah. For Our own hiring process. We don't make hiring decisions unless we've talked to seven people for, like, a specific role. And it depends, again, on the seniority of the role. But, yeah, I would say a big pipeline is better because you're obviously, you're just going to see a lot more things and have more opportunities. So we've talked a lot about how you are going to try and suss out whether someone is a good fit for the business. And the role we haven't talked as much about is passive talent and convincing them to come over. Yeah, yeah, right. So there's two types of talent typically. There's active and passive. Active talent is like, I'm in a job hunt. I'm applying to a lot of different roles. I'm, you know, putting my name out there a lot. And then passive talent is like, man, I'm happy in the role that I'm in. I've been here for, like, three, four, five, ten years.

[John Wilson]

Yeah.

[Brendan Aronson]

And I'm not looking around, but like, our jobs to go out and find that person prime out of where they are and help your, you know, our client hire them. And so, you know, the other side of the hiring process is in addition to letting you get to know someone, it allows them to get to know you and see how you do business and how you operate. You know, you can tell a lot about a company by the hiring process that they run.

[John Wilson]

Yeah.

[Brendan Aronson]

If you're applying for a job or you're. You've been hit up by a headhunter and they, you know, say to you, we will get back to you by next Wednesday with a response. And you don't hear from them. And then Wednesday goes by and, you know, it's Friday, you still don't hear from them. And then it's like three, two, you know, two weeks later, and they're like, hey, we'd love to move you forward. It's like, what does that say about how you are running your process if this is supposed to be important to you?

[John Wilson]

Yeah.

[Brendan Aronson]

Again, like, that's where a firm like ours, where our team will, like, actively check in on a candidate, give them updates along the way, and keep them, you know, warm throughout the process. Can be helpful. And then, you know, selling the opportunity of, like, why should you come work here? You're a hitter at your current organization. We recruited the CEO of our business. I'm in a board position and spend my time investing now. But the CEO of our business, we recruited him out of a firm. He had been out for 25 years. So he left the Marine Corps in like 2000. He got stop loss and brought back on service for a year after 911 and worked in the Pentagon. He's the only guy to ever have positive things to say about his experience in the Pentagon. And then went to work at a recruiting business which was acquired by Korn. Ferry spent a number of years there, which is like one of the premier executive search firms in the world. Yeah, you know, was a very senior partner there. Again, specifically focused on this military population. So he'd been with the Same company for 25 years. And you know, when we started talking to him, we were like, man, Jim, like, we really respect and admire what you do. We think that you're like the 800 pound gorilla in our space.

[John Wilson]

Yeah.

[Brendan Aronson]

You know, we had run some numbers and estimated that he had talked to like half a percent of all the veterans in America over the years.

[John Wilson]

That's crazy.

[Brendan Aronson]

It's a wild number. He, I mean, he was running these veteran recruiting conferences for decades. Yeah, that through, you know, the throughput of them was very high. And everybody knew Jim, he's a monster. And it's done a lot for our community. And so we had to, you know, talk to Jim about like, hey, like, what are you looking for in the next phase? Like, this can be a really long term partnership. We want you to be really happy here and, you know, we think the world of you. And so we had to help him understand why we would be good people to work with. At the same time that we were doing, you know, our evaluation of him as a partner, he was doing the same thing for us. He was backdooring, you know, asking everyone that he knew that knew us, what do they have to say about us and what we're doing with the community. And so that is sort of like the flip side of having a process is in addition to evaluation, you've got the selling aspect of it. Like make someone want to come work for you and see it as a way to accomplish their goals. That's better than the role that they're in right now.

[John Wilson]

Yeah.

[Sponsor/Advertiser Voice]

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[John Wilson]

worth taking a look.

[Sponsor/Advertiser Voice]

Book a demo at the link below.

[John Wilson]

What are some, like, ways to do that? Where are some tools?

[Brendan Aronson]

Oh, I mean, like, you know, I would feel like any business owner who has gotten to the scale where they're hiring someone into one of these types of roles has like a good idea of why someone should want to come work with them. I mean, I'm guessing, you know, you guys have been around for a really long time, but, you know, you can tell me better than anyone why someone might want to come work at your firm. Yeah, I mean, I guess what you're trying to get at on the hiring side is what is someone's motivations? Are they at a position in life where they are looking to where compensation is the number one driver? Right. Is location incredibly important to them? And their wife really wants to move back to be around her family and they're not going to look at roles outside of that or is like equity and long term incentives? Like, they want to feel like a part of the team, they want to be incentivized by equity. Is that what is going to move the needle for them? That's part of like our team's job, that's part of any hiring manager's job, is to suss out like, what is most important to this candidate. Because it's not always the same thing. Some people, like our CEO Jim, like, you know, he had a conversation with me that's very direct that was like, look, like, I really like to ski and I've got three girls and they like to ski too. And like, this is an important part of my life. And I was like, Jim, like, bring your skis. As long as I can come with you for a day, a year, I don't care, you know, um, and, and so people have all kinds of different reasons why they make decisions around their careers. So understanding what those decisions are. Do they want to spend more time with family? Do they want a more flexible PTO policy? Do they need to take a certain amount of time off for X, Y and Z life event?

[John Wilson]

Yeah.

[Brendan Aronson]

Or is it just all about the money? There's no right or wrong answer. I don't think that that impacts how you would view a candidate. It's just something that's important to know so that you can then help them understand why it is a good fit or be able to be like, look, man, like, it's just not the right fit. You're awesome. We'd love to have you on the team, but, like, you got to be in, you know, X location, and we're just not there yet. But we're going to call you when we buy a business in your. Your area of operations, your ao. Yeah. You know, these are the kinds of things that you should be sussing out.

[John Wilson]

Yeah. How do you unpack workplace behavior? I guess so, like, some. Some of the examples we brought up, building a process versus running this process. Like, you know, where are you comfortable in that zone? Like, what type of pressure can you withstand? Trying to think of some example we were doing an interview for. First off, the wrong thing. But. But that doesn't matter. This was like four or five years ago, and I was really fortunate because the candidate told me that it was a. It was a. Like a finance role. And it was during a period. It was like 20, 20, 20, 21, 22, somewhere in there. It was during a period of like, heavy growth. Heavy growth, heavy cash consumption. Like, the business expanded quite a bit. And. And the. The candidate. I think we were hiring, we should have been trying to hire for a controller and. Weird. You know, I think the titles we were looking at were like VP of Finance or whatever. But the candidate said like, hey, is this. I don't remember what word she used, but just like, basically, evergreen profitable. Like, are there any challenges throughout the day? Or like, on a range of this is evergreen profitable. And like, you're a Turnaround, like a 1 to 10.

[Brendan Aronson]

Right.

[John Wilson]

Like, where are you in that range? And like, we were probably like a four and a half. Right. Like, we were like right in the middle. We had just tripled the business in 90 days or something.

[Brendan Aronson]

Yeah.

[John Wilson]

So it's like, yeah, like, we're.

[Sponsor/Advertiser Voice]

We're tired.

[John Wilson]

You know, we have stuff going on.

[Sponsor/Advertiser Voice]

But. But I was.

[John Wilson]

I was really glad that she brought that up because otherwise she would have been a great candidate but like we were in a pressure cooker because of the just demand of the business at this time. Does that make sense?

[Brendan Aronson]

Yeah, yeah.

[John Wilson]

So like some of those like, okay, well how does somebody behave under pressure? And how do you like under. Aside from the. Well they were in the military. Well, like, sure, but like how else can we understand like what someone behaves like under pressure?

[Brendan Aronson]

Man, that's a good question. Um, I mean I would say that the reference checks are probably like a great. Are like your. But maybe your best proxy for getting at that. You can ask, of course, like everybody knows behavioral interviews. Like tell me about a time that you did X or Y or whatever. I mean those kinds of questions I think are helpful for. And you know, what is what feels high pressure to one person, might not for another. It just depends. So like for instance, when I transitioned out of the Marine Corps, I was you know, a year out from having done an A deployment to Iraq. Right. And this was when ISIS controlled like you know, most of the country. We were on this small outpost in the middle bad guy country. And yeah, then I went to work at Goldman Sachs in New York and it was like super high pressure. And it's like, you know, everything's got to be right for the clients because they're paying this huge bill. And you know, I looked around, the other interns were young, you know, and it was like, it would have like analysts come to me like, you know, crying cuz they got something wrong on a slide and whatever. And I was just like, look man, like nobody shooting at us, like we're gonna be just fine. This is gonna, you know, buff out. And like that feels like a tremendous amount of pressure for one person and it might not for another person because it's just like they've had these different experiences or different kind of perspectives.

[John Wilson]

Yeah.

[Brendan Aronson]

So I think like the, the subjective experience of what that felt like for the individual is super important. I guess those. Maybe it's a little bit of a squishy answer, but probably both of those two things. Like ask them about it so that you know what their own level of comfort is with high pressure situations. And then ask the references like what was a really stressful time that you know, you had this person on the team and how did they react?

[John Wilson]

You placed a few hundred. Yeah, yeah. How often is it a turnaround situation?

[Brendan Aronson]

I mean for most of those placements, the client was like a private equity backed business that was buying a business and they founder was looking to step away and there was going to be an overlap period, you know, three months to a year.

[John Wilson]

Right.

[Brendan Aronson]

But they try not to buy assets that are not good. So typically on the way in their view is like, man, we're lucky to have this. Like, we're lucky to be able to buy this asset. So I would say it's atypical for us to have where we're plugging someone in on a turnaround situation, but it's definitely happened. We've had leaders come to us and say like, this business is not what we thought it was going to be and this is a turnaround situation. And those, those are always, I mean it's a challenging spot to be in. Like, it's scary, right, for, for all parties. And I think for turnarounds you're kind of looking for a specific person.

[John Wilson]

Someone has the joy of the turnaround.

[Brendan Aronson]

Yeah, yeah, right. Because for them it's hard.

[John Wilson]

Like turnarounds, like, you know, you like turn.

[Brendan Aronson]

Totally. Yeah. We had a guy on the podcast, he was a great American, he was a Marine. He worked on a turnaround for KKR over the course of like a two year period and got it done. But it was like it aged him, you know, but he just loved it. And my questions to him on the podcast were like, tell me about, you know, what that experience was like and why you sought it out. Because like, if I'm thinking about a private sector career for someone that's come out of the military, a lot of times they're trying to de risk their career in the early innings and going to like a name brand place or an MBA program or something like that, or for an undergraduate university. 50% of veterans transition through higher ed and then, you know, they are trying to not place bets with their career that could fail.

[John Wilson]

Right.

[Brendan Aronson]

You know, everybody, I mean, especially folks from the military population because it's such a linear career path, they are oftentimes trying to pattern match in the private sector. And the private sector careers are really non linear, which is really tricky I think. But saying to someone like, this is a really high stakes situation that you're stepping into. The business has some hair on it is intimidating and you need the, you got to have the right person in there because otherwise someone's going to come in and be like, like this is just like what? How did I get into this position? And that's not a good look for us either to like have a candidate get onto a job who's either poorly prepared for it or who is, I

[John Wilson]

would have to imagine it just starts to happen more.

[Sponsor/Advertiser Voice]

I Mean the industry had a tough

[John Wilson]

25 and like we're seeing more and more like PE cast offs.

[Brendan Aronson]

It depends.

[John Wilson]

Yeah. Like I had, I mean I have like 5 friends that bought a PE cast off this year. Like just this year.

[Brendan Aronson]

Interesting. And they were buying a business that was owned by a sponsor that the sponsor was just like we don't wrecked

[John Wilson]

it and left it. Yeah. God, yeah.

[Brendan Aronson]

Brutal.

[John Wilson]

Yeah. But I mean an opportunity for somebody like let's come in and fix it. But doesn't sound like that's a big part of the current like offering.

[Brendan Aronson]

I mean we, like I said, we've worked with those kinds of companies. I think it's just like we've worked with companies, man, from like these are mature businesses that have the process, they've got the playbook, they've got the scorecard. They've used it dozens of times to like we've done employee number one.

[John Wilson]

Yeah.

[Brendan Aronson]

At a company. We've done employee number like two or three at a Holdco that's backed by a family office or a sponsor, etc, all the way in between those ranges. Yeah. So I think it's something that we'd be really comfortable looking at. But it's also like we have to understand our clients needs really, really well because we just can't, you can't operate otherwise.

[John Wilson]

And we're going to.

[Brendan Aronson]

It's a waste of everybody's time if we don't have an alignment or an understanding of what you need.

[John Wilson]

Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. Let's talk about scaling a little bit. So the segment is building a bench that scales now. We've done this a little bit. I'm curious how you think about this less so from Pipeline. Like we have not done a great job with Pipeline, but what we have done a good job with is taking frontline leaders and turn. Taking frontline team members, turning them into frontline leaders. And we're getting better at turning frontline leaders into senior leaders. And we're like sort of unpacking that right now over the past about a year and a half. So we've been doing that more and more. Like what do you see out there that's best in class? Like you're working with some of the largest firms in our space. Like how are they doing it and how are, how does that look?

[Brendan Aronson]

I mean, you know, for us, typically when we're interacting with a client, it's when they have an acute need. But they always ask us like, can you just keep an ear to the ground and if you hear of someone that might Be of interest to us in the long term. Like let us know about it.

[John Wilson]

Yeah.

[Brendan Aronson]

For any good executive, the rollover time, especially if you're like, you know, the E myth kind of progression of like I was a technician and now I'm a small business owner and now I'm trying to scale your job becomes more and more hiring based over time because you're identifying the constraints, putting the person in that can solve those constraints. And so as you get more senior and you're able to take sort of a longer term view, you are, and I'm sure you do. This is like you are spending more of your time interacting with folks and building your network so that when a need arises, you at least have someone that you can call that can be like, hey, you know, we talked about X problem that I was facing at one point and I've got this other problem now. Can you help me think? How should I even think about this? Um, so I think just like naturally being open to having a lot of conversations is something that some of the best executives will do. It's hard, it's so hard because you've got so many different priorities and so many different things going on. Um, but yeah, I mean having that like broad network yourself or at least having access to people that have like a super broad network is really helpful. There are a variety of roles that are professional networking roles. Obviously like head hunting is one of them. Obviously. Like you know, we talk about, we just hosted the military veteran startup conference, why we missed your guys conference a couple weeks ago, the Holdco conference. But like venture investors are, they have that like, they've got, they're you know, an inch deep and a mile wide a lot of times. Yeah, they've got like a really broad network. Um, so having those people that you can also just like call and be like, hey, like here's the problem I'm facing. Who can I talk to that can be really helpful? And then yeah, I mean for like a large, mature like enterprise company, they will keep it running.

[John Wilson]

How do you define, I mean if

[Brendan Aronson]

you're, if your business doing like over nine figures, right, or it's a billion dollars a year of top line.

[John Wilson]

Yeah.

[Brendan Aronson]

Like you have a list of people, right. Who are hitters in a variety of different spaces and you think really, really highly of them and you're like, you know, man, I would give anything to be able to work with these people. So you've kind of like got an ear to the ground and you, you probably have like a formalized list. So with Some of our partners. Again, oftentimes it's like an acute need. But we do have relationships with either their backers or like, you know, even a level up from the Holdco at like the sponsor level where they're like, can you keep like a running list for us for folks that might be outside of the band that you're typically working at and is maybe like a notch higher? Yeah. Just so that we have that bench. Yeah. It's hard to answer because it's like, how do I build a leadership. How do I build a bench of additional like auxiliary people that I might be able to work over to come and join us?

[John Wilson]

So most of your answer is external?

[Brendan Aronson]

Most of what?

[John Wilson]

Most of your answer was external.

[Brendan Aronson]

Yeah.

[John Wilson]

I think sort of like build a network. Yeah. Be. Be ready to call.

[Brendan Aronson]

Yeah.

[John Wilson]

Yeah. How. How do you think about it? Internal.

[Brendan Aronson]

I mean, one of the values or one of the most beautiful things about your organization growing and like we've experienced this firsthand.

[John Wilson]

Yeah.

[Brendan Aronson]

Is as you bring on the right people, they've got a network of people that they've worked with. Right. You know, they might have like a non solicit or something like that in place for a period of time, but ultimately that's part of the benefit. And everybody on the team, everybody does sales. Right. And everybody does hiring. So it's like as you're bringing people on, it's also just great. Especially at the senior level. It's also great to be able to have folks that have that network from having been in the space for a while who can be like, hey, you know, you have this acute need. Here's what we need. And like, here's five people I've worked with over the last 20 years who would be like, total no brainers. I would love to work with them again.

[John Wilson]

Yeah.

[Brendan Aronson]

So yeah, I mean, internally you can naturally develop that too. You can formalize that and have that be like, let's keep a running list. That probably is not going to be the case just because it's like you got a thousand different fires to fight every day.

[John Wilson]

Yeah.

[Brendan Aronson]

But you know, even just knowing that you've got experienced leaders on the team that have that kind of broad network is. It can be really helpful.

[John Wilson]

Yeah.

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[John Wilson]

If someone's bringing on, like, the senior leader, I keep going back to, like, cfo, gm, something like that. What? What is it? What's a normal time to impact?

[Brendan Aronson]

It depends. So frustrating answer again. Are you talking about a normal time length for a search or for someone to get into the seat for them

[John Wilson]

to make an impact? Because I think that, like, the farther up in the organization, the longer that the time period of, like, the measurement of successes. So, like, if I'm a technician, my measurement of success is yesterday, right?

[Brendan Aronson]

Sure.

[John Wilson]

Hey, did I do a good job yesterday or not? Is there a callback? Is there a sale? If you're a frontline leader, it's like, did we win the week? Did we win the month? If you're a senior leader, did we win the quarter? Did we win the year? And it gets harder and harder to measure, like a. A precedent.

[Brendan Aronson]

Sure.

[John Wilson]

And, like, measure the positive or negative impact that they made upon hire. So, like, I would assume a red flag is. And you sort of alluded to this earlier, but I would assume that a red flag is someone immediately came in and started, like, ripping up the carpet. Like, if you're making a ton of changes off the rip and you don't know a lot about the organization, like, you should not be looking for that.

[Brendan Aronson]

Yeah. I mean, like, the military is actually like, a great place where you see this, in effect, because people change jobs every couple of years. So like, a commander of a unit might only be in that seat for 18 months. Right. And they're inheriting whatever the previous commanders have done, the institutional knowledge. And then every Person in that organization is turning over every three years. Right. So. So you get. So at least in our community, we get people that are like, at least a little bit familiar with change management. And the rule of thumb in the military is like, you don't come in and immediately change things. You, like, listen for a little bit. Unless there's a problem that is like, you know. Yeah, it's like a big problem, like, you know, behavioral issues or something that's going to put the business at risk or something like that. For us, it's like, you know, if you see like a safety issue, like, we're gonna, hey, we're gonna go fire some orders. But we haven't really, like, plotted it out. We haven't really thought about it. Like, I'm just gonna go, like, let the boys sling some, know, explosives down range. It's like, all right, let's not do that. But yeah, to your point, I think you kind of answered the question, which is like, as an organization gets bigger, it is. It takes more time to steer. So, like, you know, the difference between turning a cigarette boat and turning an aircraft carrier is like, one of them is going to have a tight radius and the other one is going to take some time to turn. And I think the same thing is true in the private sector of, like, if you're bringing someone in and giving them a 40 million dollar a year business to run, they are not going to, you know, be able to make as hard of a pivot as someone that runs a $5 million a year company.

[John Wilson]

What if they did? It'd be probably a nightmare.

[Brendan Aronson]

Totally. Yeah. You would attract people, you'd have, you know, cultural issues. Yeah. I mean, you're creating additional problems along the way.

[John Wilson]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I would imagine, you know, back to this sort of like, pain point of hiring. Like, there's a need. We're feeling it every day. I would imagine that people think that they want that.

[Brendan Aronson]

I mean, everybody wants their problems to go away overnight, especially when they're painful. Yeah, for sure. But, yeah, I mean, unfortunately, that's not the world that we live in. So it can take a little bit of time.

[John Wilson]

Yeah. One of the phrases that we have talked about on this show, a lot is maybe a little bit different here, but I think it ties into this next question is who you start with is not who you end with.

[Brendan Aronson]

Yes.

[John Wilson]

Which it's like a painful truth of growing the business. Especially, like, if you're starting small, like, you're bringing on people that like, hey, they're probably not gonna be with you when the business is 50 or 100 or you know, whatever. Like as, as we think about how to process that or as we think about like what to look for, what are some signals that you see, hey, it's time to upgrade like this position or like this even suite of leaders. Like how are you thinking about that?

[Brendan Aronson]

That, I mean there's no like hard and fast. Well, once I hit $20 million a year of revenue, I need X because every business is different and the skills of the individual person are different. But you can again think about in terms of constraints. So you guys have had Chris Hoffman on in the past. I think he talked about this and he's a fellow Marine. But like, can I hand, how much of my time am I spending on various tasks? And then is there someone that is more capable at dealing with those tasks than I am or is my time better used in a higher leverage way? So like, you know, if a business is going through scaling from like 2 million to 10 million, it's still probably founder led sales. But to get to that $10 million point, like you're going to have to have people who can sell on your behalf.

[John Wilson]

Yeah.

[Brendan Aronson]

And so, and that is maybe the highest ROI use of your time. So if you're spending a lot of time on the operational portion of the business, it's like a no brainer of like, hey, like we have to have fantastic operations. Someone needs to give this their full time love and attention because we've got to make our clients really happy and we pride ourselves on the work that we do. And if I can spend more of my time selling, then ultimately that will make the business more efficient or you know, it'll make the business grow. Then that's an obvious time when it's like, yeah, like a operations manager, a director of operations might be a really good fit for you. Right. And now you've alleviated that piece on the founder's shoulders and they can then move on to selling all day. And then it's like, man, I can't get enough leads on my calendar because I'm always on the phone with potential clients. It's a good problem to have, but like, let's get some people in here that can generate some leads. Right. And so I think it just changes over time. Like you would know better than me the needs of growing a business from, you know, 10 to 40. And so you could probably speak to a lot of those pain points that you've solved for over time. But I think that's like the general framework that I would give which is like if you find yourself spending a lot of time either on low margin tasks or low ROI tasks or you're doing something and you know that you're not doing it as well as someone else can do, then it's probably time to think about bringing someone on.

[John Wilson]

Yeah. Are how many of the engagements as a like a P E backed or a sponsor backed customer they're coming in like there are some firms that replace the GM always no matter what. So I just sort of want to like ignore those ones for the ones that decide post acquisition like hey, am I going to replace. Am I going to keep like what are those pain points usually look, look like.

[Brendan Aronson]

I think they usually have like an idea of whether they are or not going in. Yeah.

[John Wilson]

Based on the candidate.

[Brendan Aronson]

Based on no going into like buying an asset.

[John Wilson]

Okay.

[Brendan Aronson]

Right. Because they are purchasing the asset for a reason. Someone's exiting their business and then the question is like does that person want to stay on? Do they want to roll over their equity and just be a part of a larger organization? You know, is it an asset to your point that you're buying from like another sponsor, like another private equity backed company? Or is it an asset that we're buying buying from a founder who might like bristle at, you know, being part of a larger, maybe more bureaucratic organization. I think they kind of have an idea of it in mind ahead of time.

[John Wilson]

Yeah, that makes sense. I'm trying to understand like I know the reasons that I've had that we've upgraded leadership and I'm trying to.

[Brendan Aronson]

Any of those reasons.

[John Wilson]

Yeah, I mean it's almost always like a Peter principal problem.

[Brendan Aronson]

Okay.

[John Wilson]

But I, you know, I don't know what, I don't know. So like hey, yeah, I could walk somebody through the 10 to 30, 10 to 40 and like what happened? I don't know what happens. 40 to 80, like I have guesses. But it, it gets harder, you know, the more and more removed you get from the minutiae.

[Brendan Aronson]

Yes.

[John Wilson]

It's harder to figure out when someone Peter principles to be honest. And like that's obviously the point of like KPIs and metrics. Like hey, is your team lagging is succeeding and trying to like set up the guardrails. But it does get trickier to figure out. And so I'm just trying to imagine like if I was a, if I was a buyer and, and I was out there like what would I be looking for? Because for my next stage? Because I don't really know, you know, I Don't know. Yeah. I don't know how they would think about it. And I don't know how someone would look at our team as like, hey, is this team capable of going from 40 to 100 with does it need retooling or does it need to reset?

[Brendan Aronson]

Yeah, I mean when you say reset you're not, you're talking about like that'd

[John Wilson]

be like hiring retooling would be like training is. Is there like a knowledge gap that we can enhance or. Yeah, yeah.

[Brendan Aronson]

I mean again, I think it really depends. But like id, in a really ideal world, like you want to create somewhere where people can come work for a really long time and have like a pathway and you know what the basic human motivations are. Like people want to make more, they want to have more responsibility, more authority. Yeah, maybe, maybe they don't. Some people don't. But like are they capable of getting to that next level? It's not. Those are hard leadership questions. You know, I guess I had the benefit of like in the Marine Corps there. It's, it is structured in terms of how you progress.

[John Wilson]

Yeah.

[Brendan Aronson]

Like there's like, you know, doctrinal schools that you will go to when you hit different wickets along the way. That's not really a benefit that you have in the private sector, but having like, you know, being willing to make the investment in training and development for your people is obviously really important. Sounds like just like a platitude, but we've seen the benefits of that.

[John Wilson]

Yeah.

[Brendan Aronson]

In our own team and being able to formalize that is obviously like a luxury for as you get bigger you can make it more formal and it's the earlier stages, it's just like, you know, more challenging.

[John Wilson]

Yeah.

[Brendan Aronson]

But yeah, I mean I think that the companies that we've seen be really successful, they do take a really long term view of their talent. They want to create a place that people want to work for a long time and that's, there's a variety of ways that you can support that through benefits, 401k stuff, whatever. And then they create the conditions that will allow someone to up level. Right. But yeah, it's hard. I mean that's the basic. That's why leadership is so hard because you're figuring out how do I motivate someone to, to be able to do this and then also how do I give them the tools to be able to do it.

[John Wilson]

Yeah.

[Brendan Aronson]

So yeah. And all of those things cost money. They do. While you're trying to grow and money and time. Yeah, right. Yeah. Which is like the limiting resources.

[John Wilson]

Yeah.

[Brendan Aronson]

So that's why business is so much fun and fascinating. It's like, it's hard and it's. I think for me, it's been just like an incredible tool for personal development.

[John Wilson]

Oh, yeah.

[Brendan Aronson]

You know when you're like, in that seat and the business isn't growing as fast as you want it to grow or it's failing in some kind of way.

[John Wilson]

Yeah.

[Brendan Aronson]

You, like, look in the mirror and you're like, well, I know what the problem is. Yeah. I wish it wasn't, but it is.

[John Wilson]

I don't. I'm sure that we sort of covered this along the way.

[Brendan Aronson]

Yeah, probably.

[John Wilson]

Why should we hire military veterans?

[Brendan Aronson]

I mean, we're big fans of military veterans. We named our company the Military Veteran. We did.

[Sponsor/Advertiser Voice]

It's pretty direct.

[Brendan Aronson]

We're not maybe great at settling. Yeah, right. Yeah. But, you know, veterans have unique skill sets. There's, there's like multiple components to this. One is the values based piece.

[John Wilson]

Yeah.

[Brendan Aronson]

When you're hiring a veteran, you are hiring someone that is a professionally trained teammate.

[John Wilson]

Right.

[Brendan Aronson]

They are. If they've adopted the best attributes that the military has to offer, they are someone that has been trained to put a team and a mission above themselves. Right. You find that across all the branches of the service, regardless of what the specific role is, you find people that are super mission oriented, that are like, you know, when I was at the infantry officers course, you know, they asked a question of the students, like, what is what. What is most important for you as a junior officer? And it's like, well, that we, like, give it our all every day is what someone said. The instructor was like, no, that is not what matters. The only thing that matters is victory in combat. That's it. And that you bring home as many people as you can while accomplishing your mission. Like, no one cares how hard you tried. So you're, you're finding those kinds of skill sets that have been, or attributes that have been built over a long period of time. And then when you layer on top of that those experiences alongside someone that has been in the private sector for a little bit. We do help companies hire people that are straight out of the military, depending on the role, which can be a great fit for people, especially if you're looking for, like, athletes or you've got like a general, more of like a generalist type role, that can be really good. You know, it's a really powerful combo for someone that can speak the language of business, understands their KPIs, understands what needs to happen. And then they also have this robust leadership capacity and they have the ability to align a team and to earn the respect of a, you know, variety of types of, type of types of employees and teammates. You know, it's a really powerful combination.

[John Wilson]

Yeah.

[Brendan Aronson]

And they've got this grit factor, right, this adversity quotient. Aq. A lot of our clients talk about aq. We want someone that's gritty and that's going to persevere. I'm thinking about some of my friends who are just like, man, you know, they're marines, so they're professionally trained and running into brick walls with their head first over and over again, you know. And so, yeah, you're finding people with high adversity quotients who know what it is to suffer and to say to themselves. I had this conversation this morning with a really close friend of mine who's got a lot of, a lot of moving parts in his life, both personally and professionally. And he was like, look, man, I was like, you got a lot on your shoulders right now. He was like, the only way out is through. It's like, yeah, I mean, that's what you want. So.

[John Wilson]

Yeah, yeah, I think that was a great primer on why to do it. I don't know that we, I don't know why. I think in our frontline leadership we have a few, few military veterans. I'm not sure how they've sort of never snuck up into senior leadership, but we'll, we'll have to look at it now.

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[John Wilson]

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[John Wilson]

Well, thanks for coming on today. This was a ton of fun. I feel like we had a good. I feel like we had a good discussion here and hiring leaders, what to look for, how to do it.

[Brendan Aronson]

This was really fun. Yeah, I appreciate you having us on. You know, if we can be helpful in thinking about people's talent strategies, you

[John Wilson]

can make it a hold.

[Brendan Aronson]

Yeah, the mill that.org and then, you know, we've got like an intake form there. People can actually select that they heard about us through your show. And then other than that, if you're a veteran, we have events for military veterans to help build their private sector network across the country. We've got podcast, newsletter, you know, go on our website, check out those resources and you know, good luck to people that are scaling and building their businesses. And then for you personally, like, if 22% of your workforce is veterans, grateful for your, you know, support for our community, it's really cool. So thanks, thanks for having me on.

[John Wilson]

Yeah, thanks for coming on.