← Second in Command: The Chief Behind the Chief with Cameron Herold
Second in Command: The Chief Behind the Chief with Cameron Herold
Ep. 436 - Quickly Hire COO, Emily Hunkler
00:37:59
Loading summary
Transcript64 lines
- [00:00]
Cameron Herold
Hey, it's Cameron Herald, the host of the Second in Command podcast. Before we dive in, there's something you need to know. If you're a coo, VP Operations, or you're in any role where you're the second in command to the CEO, the COO alliance is the place for you. If you're the integrator to the visionary, you're going to want to join us. The COO alliance is the world's leading community for the second in command. We've had over 500 members like you join from 17 countries to grow their skills, connections and confidence. You'll get the tools, friendships and a 10x guarantee to ensure that you get your money's worth. Go to cooalliance.com to learn more and see if you qualify. You can even book a free call with our team to ask questions. Now, let's jump into this week's episode.
- [00:44]
Emily Hunkler
When we first launched this company a few years ago, it was really entry level. I'd say for the most part it was our audience of agents, digital agency owners who are really just looking for some developer help, page builders, building out pages, that sort of thing. So we were bringing on. It started with WordPress developers that we were finding and kind of essentially subcontracting out. But as the business has grown and the demand has grown, we have been bringing in the mid level, the managers, the strategy people, and we also have a few of the fractional executives. Right. So CMOs and CFOs, we have some of that in the network as well, so we have a little bit of everything. I'd say the bulk is probably that mid to entry level still. But as we've been growing, we've been, we've been definitely bringing in more of the manager strategy level and then some of the executive as well. Welcome to the Second in Command podcast produced by the COO alliance and brought to you by its founder, Cameron Herold. In the second in command podcast, we talk to top COOs who share the insights, strategies and tactics that made them the chief behind the chief. And now here's your host, Cameron Harreld.
- [02:04]
Cameron Herold
All right, our guest today is Quickly Hire's coo Emily Hunkler. Emily leads operations for Quicklyhire's talent platform, connecting businesses with highly vetted freelancers. Prior to this, she worked at high growth startups in Barcelona, experienced firsthand the dynamics of scaling international remote first companies and outside of work. She's a mother, a trail runner and passionate advocate for remote work culture. Her international startup experience and belief in flexible work helps Drive Quickly Hire's mission of reinventing the modern workforce. And she's going to talk to us today a lot about how Quicklyhire helps companies not just hire remote people, but hire them on a fractional basis, which is very different from what most people do. We've all heard about fractional CFOs, fractional CEOs, but imagine if you could get anyone inside of your organization on a fractional basis. So you only have the right expert or the right pro working for that small period of time that you actually need them for that, but on a regular, ongoing basis. That's what we're gonna cover today. You're gonna love this episode. We'll see you on the inside. And remember, you can also subscribe to our Second Command podcast YouTube channel. And you can also check out lots of other videos that we share on YouTube too. We'll see you on the inside. So Emily, welcome to the Second In Command podcast.
- [03:20]
Emily Hunkler
Thanks Cameron. It's great to be here.
- [03:22]
Cameron Herold
Yeah, I'm looking forward to this. You've been building a really cool business and I like just even before we went live, you were talking about the fact that you kind of drink your own Kool. You guys are in an industry. I'll let you describe what, what quickly hire does, but you're in an industry of helping companies bring on all this fractional talent and fractional labor and then you guys do a lot of that in house. So why don't we start with telling us what the brand is, what your kind of niches that you focus on and then we'll talk about how you actually are drinking the Kool Aid too.
- [03:48]
Emily Hunkler
Yeah, absolutely. So the, the brand is quickly higher and we are a network of fully vetted fractional talent. So freelancers really. But these are people maybe that have full time jobs already and are looking for, you know, kind of the gig work sort or people who are just building their careers with, with fractional jobs and contract jobs. The way that we do it though is different in that we are really going for those long term relationships. So folks who are looking not for project work that you'll go to fiverr upwork for, but you need a designer, a developer marketer, va for, for long term. But you don't know you're going to be growing this role into something more. If you're just testing out some strategy, you can hire one of our pros on a monthly basis. You get guaranteed weekly hours, month, month, and you can grow your team from there. So let's say you hire a marketer and things are going great and then you need, you know, a copywriter to go with that, to support them. You can hire a copywriter and we also support contract to hire. So if things are going awesome, you can hire them too full time and bring them on internally as well.
- [04:49]
Cameron Herold
Interesting. Where do you find the talent? And you're kind of a two sided marketplace. Let's talk first on where do you find all the talent, where do you find all these, the freelancers or the gig economy people? And then we'll talk secondly about, you know, where you find your clients.
- [05:02]
Emily Hunkler
Yeah, so that's something we have definitely invested in. We have a full time internal global talent acquisition manager and we find talent in lots of ways. One of them is people come in and apply. So there's tons of talent out there looking for work. Right. I mean, if you go to any of the freelance marketplaces, you'll see that. So we get a lot of people that apply. They have to go through a pretty rigorous assessment though, before being welcomed into the network. So some of those folks make it in, not very many. But what we also do on the other side is we go out and actively recruit. So our talent acquisition person, he's out there, he's finding people on LinkedIn that have great resumes, great experience, that he knows our clients are looking for that type of skills, that type of profile. And he'll reach out to them and say, hey, if you're interested in working fractional positions and explain the premise to them and bring them on, go through the assessment still and bring them into the network that way as well.
- [05:57]
Cameron Herold
Are these entry level positions? Are they mid kind of level positions? Are they senior roles? What are the different kind of roles and categories and what are the different price points, I guess that you work at?
- [06:08]
Emily Hunkler
Yeah, it's a bit of everything. Honestly. When we first launched this company a few years ago, it was really entry level. I'd say for the most part it was our audience of agents, digital agency owners who are really just looking for some developer help, page builders, building out pages, that sort of thing. So we were bringing on. It started with WordPress developers that we were finding and kind of essentially subcontracting out. But as the business has grown and the demand has grown, we have been bringing in the mid level, the managers, the strategy people and we also have a few of the fractional executives. Right. So CMOs and CFOs, we have some of that in the network as well. So we have a little bit of everything. I'd say the bulk is probably that mid to entry level still. But as we've been growing, we've been, we've been definitely bringing in more of the manager, strategy level and then some of the executive as well.
- [07:00]
Cameron Herold
Where do you find the talent? Is there, are there marketplaces? I know, you know, the old story from 15 years ago was it started with India and then it was the Philippines and then all of a sudden it was like Romania, Bulgaria, Ukraine became where you get everybody for your tech side. Where do you find talent? Is it global? Are there certain markets you go after? And you go after. It's North American too.
- [07:21]
Emily Hunkler
Yeah, we're kind of everywhere, so it's for sure global. We do have a few folks in the Philippines for sure. That was where a lot of the folks when we first got started were based. But now we have a large amount. I don't know if it would be the majority off the top of my head, but in Europe, all across Europe we've been working on. One of the areas that we've been trying to break more into is Latin America and Mexico, South America, those places. The challenge there is just making sure and the challenge across the board where we've really been focused there is making sure communication skills are good, language is good. Because for the most part, I'd say, you know, 99% of our customer base is English speaking. So making sure that we're, we're getting folks that can, that can succeed in working relationships.
- [08:06]
Cameron Herold
Yeah, I mean, it's an arbitrage play where you're buying talent that is a little bit cheaper than we're getting in North America. And you're getting it fractional. But are you also getting, I guess, what percentage of your, what's the word? Pros? Talent. What's the percentage?
- [08:19]
Emily Hunkler
We call them pros. Yeah.
- [08:20]
Cameron Herold
What percentage of the pros would be, would be from the US and Canada versus global?
- [08:25]
Emily Hunkler
I would say maybe, I think 10% might be a good number there. We definitely have Canada and the US in the network. A lot of those are fully engaged because we have customers who prefer that location. So they are, you know, they're willing to pay that those costs because they're based in the US Or Canada. And yeah, we don't actively recruit in those areas right now. But when we see the demand rising for that, then we might say, hey, let's bring some more, you know, US Based developers in, into the market or something like that.
- [08:57]
Cameron Herold
The number of times that I now speak to someone on a weekly basis about fractional talent and agencies hiring fractional people and Companies offshoring. I mean I'm hiring two people that are on the sales side, setters. And then I, I just hired a full stack marketing manager. I've got, yeah. Somebody else who does like tech work for me. They're all remote, they're all global. It doesn't feel like first, it doesn't feel like it financially makes sense to hire North American talent. Is this a, is this kind of the writing on the wall for North American labor or.
- [09:32]
Emily Hunkler
It's a good question. It's an interesting question. You know, you can look at it two ways, right. In some senses you think, you know, hopefully not. I live in the us I want the job market to be active and good here. But when you also see when people are trying to increase revenue, increase profits, all of that and the options like this exist and it's not just the project based sort of thing. I think it, I mean listening to business podcasts and reading those books, I think there is a lot of information out there saying it could be the writing on the wall, but talent is talent and I think if, if you are a talented person and you have the experience and, and you're, you're employable, right. You'll, you'll find a job. I mean especially in the U.S. we, we have a great job market here and it's, it's going pretty well. So, so it's not, I wouldn't, you know, kind of ring the alarm bells or anything like that, but having these options is really helpful, especially for those early stage startups or agencies that fluctuate on revenue because they're, you know, project based businesses. So having an option like this where they don't have to sink so much capital into full time hires with the thought of, oh, you know, we might have to pivot strategy and instead of hiring marketing team, we're going to have to hire product team and we don't have revenue to cover all of that. So having these options for those types of businesses I think is, it's really helpful.
- [10:55]
Cameron Herold
Well, you know, we've heard the story now like I just hired a full stack marketing manager that in the US or Canada would be 150, 70,000 a year. 170. They're 50,000, 55,000. They're full time, they're from Argentina, they happen to live in Spain or in Germany right now. But they're amazing like, and they literally are a very, they'd be a junior VP or senior director level. But we've heard that kind of narrative enough. The narrative, I don't think we hear is the one that you guys are serving, which is fractional versus full time. And the reality is many companies need to get some stuff done. It drives me crazy when someone says I need to hire a marketing manager. It's like, no you don't. You need a bunch of stuff done. And the bunch of stuff that you need done could be done in five hours a week. But you're hiring a full time person and you're giving a bunch of other stuff to do that's kind of miscellaneous. Is that kind of the niche that you serve are the people that recognize they need to get stuff done. That stuff needs to be done all the time, but it doesn't warrant a full time person. It requires kind of a specialist. And then that specialist doesn't get bogged down with the reply, all the meeting requests and you know, all the other stuff. Can you speak to that?
- [12:08]
Emily Hunkler
Yeah, 100%. Speaking personally on, like you said, you know, we drink our own Kool Aid here at Quickly Hire and we have a marketing team of, of our own pros. Right. So right now I've got a demand gen marketer who is amazing. She's been doing really great work with increasing the flow of leads to the website, people creating quicklyhire accounts in our app, browsing the talent that we have there, the pros and everything. And then we also have an SEO specialist who is spending, like you said, five hours a week just doing SEO work and handing off tasks to a VA who can execute those tasks. Right. It's not our SEO specialist. He's fantastic and he's not cheap. Right. He's good and we pay him what he deserves and what he wants. Like they set their own rates in our network, but it doesn't make sense for him to be doing all this strategy work and then going in and having to update headers on the website. Right. That's something that a VA can do. So we're bringing a VA to hand that off. You set up the processes and the handoffs and it works great. And then we have, you know, that's three people I just named working less than 40 hours a week and you might argue getting being more effective.
- [13:14]
Cameron Herold
Well, and the reality is you don't need to have this expert 40 hours a week, but it kind of is irresponsible not to have them five hours a week if you can, if you can make that work. Right. So how does the company most effectively figure out what they need? Like where would you tell a company who's never done this before and they're like, okay, I'll, I'll play, I'll, I'll try this out. What's a couple of roles that they should try out, you know, looking for it and let's not go down the executive assistant path. What are a couple roles that they could try and play with and see what they could get some results from and then what, what might those results be?
- [13:49]
Emily Hunkler
Yeah, I think one of the most, the ones we see the most and the ones that are most effective and lead to more growth in the team is a marketing profess and a designer. And maybe the designer is just five hours a week, right. But a marketing professional that can set some strategy and execute it, whether that's setting up, you know, email marketing and a content marketing sort of blog, flow funnels on the website, that sort of thing. And then a designer that can help them execute that with great landing page design. And you know, if you don't have a five hour week developer to build that out, I mean that can help as well. So just a really tight little marketing department I guess which is marketing designer and developer. Those designer, developer, five hours a week marketing, 20 hours a week maybe because that's the bulk of the work there. And then it's just that marketing person is managing all of that as well, making sure the assets are getting done and all of that.
- [14:45]
Cameron Herold
It feels to me that companies especially like the entrepreneurial, the startups, the agencies, the businesses that you serve largely aren't necessarily aware of what they could put in place. Is there a service that quicklyhire your company provides that helps them identify what some of these opportunities are like? Is there some quizzes they go through or some surveys or some SWOT analysis like do you do that where you help companies figure out, oh, here's seven roles I could try this quarter.
- [15:20]
Emily Hunkler
We've got that idea on the board. How we do it currently is really just through kind of the discovery calls. We've got an account executive on the team who's great, he's been doing it for years now, or whether it's me or our founder jumping on calls. And a lot of times people come to us and say, I don't know if this is what I need, I'm exploring my options. And we tell them the examples that we have and we talk to them about it and that alone gets the gears moving and we talk about their problems and how we might be able to help with our talent, help them solve some of those problems. And hey, let's get started like you said, with an executive assistant. Get Started there. Get your calendar, email, inbox, all of that off your plate. Then you can see what are your two priorities. Because a lot of times, especially when you're dealing with startup founders or business founders in general, when they come to us, they're, they're in the weeds. So it's hard to see what the most effective hire would be out of the box. But yeah, that's, that's kind of what we're doing right now.
- [16:13]
Cameron Herold
They're more like in the field of big shiny objects too. They're like, oh, that's cool, I can do this one too. Right? I can do that. Like, oh, they're spinning all over the place, all these opportunities. Yeah, I think there could be something there with like an AI tool where you allow companies to figure out, ask a bunch of questions and it pops out kind of like, here's some potential ones and then you kind of do the matchmaking service of. Because I think about my business right now and the number of different areas people could be plugged in. Is a project manager a core one that many companies work with, like someone to manage all these freelancers and projects, or do you tend to get an internal person who's managing these people and projects?
- [16:50]
Emily Hunkler
As it is right now, for the most part, the companies we work with have an internal person. This is a request. We get a lot like, hey, do you have project managers? And we do, and like I said, we have marketing managers that can handle marketing projects. Right. But project managers, we do have them on the team or in the network, but they're not one of our most hired roles. And I think, I'm not exactly sure why that is, but I think it is kind of what you touched on there, that people are a little hesitant to, to outsource that to someone who's not a full time team member. Right. And truly understands the, the mission and, and the roadmap.
- [17:27]
Cameron Herold
It feels like you're hiring a babysitter instead of teaching people how to manage their own projects. Like, maybe I'll just give people the skill development to manage projects and manage people and freelancers. Where do companies go wrong when you have a client show up and they're hiring the right person for the right seat, they got the right role. Where do they mess this up?
- [17:45]
Emily Hunkler
I think, you know, a lot of times, not a lot of times, it doesn't actually happen that often, but what can happen sometimes is people have a team set up with quickly hire pros, and instead of maintaining that, they might say, okay, now I'm going to hire one person internally and my I've grown my business to a point that I feel confident in doing an internal full time hire. So where they will have that marketing team that we discussed, for example of a copywriter and a marketing manager and a designer, they'll let them go and they'll bring on one person. So and I don't have a lot of vision or insights on how that goes after I do know that some of them have come back and hired maybe not the same roles but hired other roles, build out a development team, for example. But that is something we see and I don't know that I wouldn't say it's necessarily like a company where did they go wrong? But I do think, you know, you're handing off specialized skills in various areas for kind of a jack of all trades possibly. Right.
- [18:43]
Cameron Herold
Exactly what I was gonna say. You've got five experts and you're gonna replace them with a jack of all trades master of none instead of probably hiring the hey, it's Cameron. I hope you're loving today's episode. Quick question for you. Does your company have a strong leadership training program in place to grow the skills of everyone who manages people? If you want to help yourself and your company grow, get everyone who manages people learning from my invest in your leaders online training program. There are 12 core leadership skills that I cover online and for only 650 per person they're all going to really grow. CEOs pay me $78,000 a year to coach them one on one and now you can all benefit for 1% of what they pay me. These are the same leadership skills that I created and certified everyone in at 1-800-got junk when I was there as COO. Go to investinyourleaders.com today and use promo code podcast10 before the end of the month to get 10% off each manager you sign up. Now back to the show. The let's say it's a marketing manager to now oversee the five experts and maybe the marketing manager can make sure that there's I guess more strategy, more coordination, more communication, better leverage. But yeah, you don't want to get rid of those or certainly don't want to get rid of all the experts. Like that makes sense if a company is out there. Let's say that one of your I know that you do a lot in the agency world. What's a great case study for quicklyhire? Like an agency that would be like yeah, that's one that we can totally help. Can you speak to who that avatar is what they look like?
- [20:25]
Emily Hunkler
Yeah, it's a agency owner that they probably have a team of three to five people. I'd say like internal full time hires. They've got a project manager that's kind of overseeing everything. They've got the founder, maybe they have a head of development, something like that, someone who's heading up their tech team and then they, they fill in all of the needs with fractional talent. So this is a, an agency that isn't too worried about pipeline. They've got projects in the pipeline, they've got plenty to do and they've got a process to get more in ongoing. And then they can hire fractional talent and they can get those really great, highly skilled, slightly higher cost tech talent that we have and bring them on. We've had folks that have taken really great, really fantastic developers from our network and brought them on full time. Eventually after two years of just being a fractional role at 30 hours a week and saying, hey, we're sold. We just want this person ongoing. Let's just take them and they can do that. And as long as the pros also open to that and wants to.
- [21:29]
Cameron Herold
Well, I could see a, I could see a pro that starts off with one of your clients. Maybe they're working with five clients and all of a sudden they're working with three and then they're working with one of your clients. It gives them more and more work and they kind of like them. It's. It is a way of try before you buy.
- [21:41]
Emily Hunkler
Right.
- [21:41]
Cameron Herold
Or dating before you get.
- [21:42]
Emily Hunkler
Absolutely.
- [21:43]
Cameron Herold
Sounds like too. Do you market it that way? Is that something that it is like a cognizant marketing strategy or is it just. Is really your niche to go and hire these fractional pros and plug them in and really get great leverage from them?
- [21:57]
Emily Hunkler
That's the latter is really what our focus has been for the last couple years. Again, we're still pretty new. I mean we've been around for going on four years now, but we haven't spent a ton of resources on marketing. We've had great growth through referrals and in our existing agencies, existing customers that we have. But like I said, we have recently in the last six months built this marketing team. We're focused there now and that is a message that we're trying to get out there because it makes sense. Right? It's low risk. Try before you buy that sort of thing. I don't know why, I can't imagine why you wouldn't go this route.
- [22:33]
Cameron Herold
I guess in your role as a coo, what do you focus on on a kind of day to day basis? Where's your are you. Let's, let's start with kind of quarterly. Let's go quarterly, you know, monthly, weekly. Where do you focus?
- [22:44]
Emily Hunkler
We like to have really top level goals and like we're a small, small team internally and even with the fractional talent we have, we' so keeping that focus where it is, where we want it. So for example, right now we're focused on. We just launched an update with our platform that you can. Users can come in and create accounts and browse the profiles of the pros in the network. Before it was gated, you didn't really have access to anything. It was just a method of. So we could manage all the engagements we have going. But now users, customers can log in, check out the talent filter, find what they're looking for, schedule intro calls. So our focus right now is really just getting those app accounts created, getting people to the website to create app accounts, whether it's through a partnership program, whatever it is, weekly or monthly, I would say we still focus on that and we go, you know, maybe a level, a level further and saying okay, where did the ones come from last month? What are we focused on this month? What's the growth numbers on that? Go department by department. Marketing, where are your growth numbers? How does that compare to last month? Sales, how many calls have you had? How many intro calls have there been? Talent acquisition, who's coming into the network? Where have we expanded? What do we have? Any new countries, are we having any issues? That sort of thing. And then weekly, it's really just, you know, a kind of stand up and saying this is what I'm working on this week. This is where I need help. You know, the focus being intro calls for sales, closing deals and then marketing is, you know, getting those app accounts created.
- [24:11]
Cameron Herold
And how do you get out? How do you stay out of the weeds? Is it just by hiring more of the fractional people to delegate to or do you have systems?
- [24:18]
Emily Hunkler
It is having. I like you're familiar with, you know, working with the remote team. I don't know, you know, how your audience kind of falls on all of that. But when it comes to remote communication is really so important in my eyes. So I like to have calls with the team. We have a full team call on Tuesdays where everyone's there, including our CEO founder and then I meet with people individually throughout the week, more as needed. But it is probably daily for the most part, especially with sales and marketing. Talk about what's going on, how I can help reviewing messaging, that sort of thing, making sure everything's on. On target there. But yeah, I think as long as you have the right people on the team, I don't really have too much of an issue getting into the things run pretty smoothly. The great thing about QuicklyHire is, you know, we are able to be a small team because of what we're doing. And as long as, you know, the pros that we're bringing in are great and they're, they're good talent and they're checking all the boxes that we have refined over the years. Like, you know, we know people need to be able to communicate, show up to calls on time, those basic things. And if, if they can do all that, then we don't have issues that we have to. We don't have buyers to put out.
- [25:30]
Cameron Herold
Well, and it's interesting, I heard somebody years ago, Ryan Holiday, talking about customer service, and he said there's only four reasons we need a customer service department. Either the product sucks, our service sucks, we overset expectations with the custom or. Or the FAQs on our website aren't strong enough for people to solve their own problem. And if we kind of solve the root cause of all those we don't like, my guess is you don't really have customer service because you don't need it.
- [25:52]
Emily Hunkler
Right, right, exactly. And, you know, if an issue comes up, we sales team handles it, it gets it, but it's, it's really, it's really pretty rare.
- [26:00]
Cameron Herold
So speak to the whole assessment of the people, because you talked about that a while back in the call and it was that your global acquisitions person really does put them through a pretty rigorous assessment. And you don't take everybody that wants to be on the platform pro. How do you assess people? How do you know? What do you look for?
- [26:18]
Emily Hunkler
Yeah, this is something that we have really honed over the past few years because like I said, it's noticeable when we, when we get off track, that's when it's all hands on deck. Why are we having so many fight. Why are there so many cancellations coming in? Right. Those sorts of things. And, and we've identified over the years we need to get better talent in the network and what are the things that cause those change? And nine times out of 10, any of those issues came down to communication. Yes, we assess the skills. Every role that we have in the network goes through a skills assessment where they're answering questions, going through a test and passing that test and meeting the benchmarks there. But they also have video calls, several of them, where they have to show up and talk and have a conversation. And during that call, it's not just what are their answers to the questions, it's the basic things. Right. That you would expect. Did they show up on time? Do they look presentable? Does their tech work? Are you able to have a conversation with them? Because the remote side of this is kind of a hurdle for a lot of people. And that is sometimes what we see is like, no, I actually, I'm deciding to go. While I loved that developer and I think they're really exactly what we're looking for. I'm going to hire someone locally because I want to have someone in office, even though they're not exactly what I'm looking for. And they actually don't have five out of the ten skills I need. But we'll figure it out because I want someone in office. So if we can make it as easy and smooth as possible to work remotely with people, that's really a big factor in success for us. So making sure we always tell the pros, you know, the more you communicate, the better. If you can get on every, if you're on a 20 hour week engagement, if you can get on every day and just say, hey, here's what I'm working on. Even if they don't ask you if they're in Slack or whatever you're communicating with, here's what I'm working on today, here's what I got done yesterday, here's what I hope to get done this week and just give those updates, even if they don't ask for it. It really solves so many of the problems and churn issues that we had seen in the past.
- [28:22]
Cameron Herold
Does it also help the customer realize that they're getting value for their dollar and maybe they bring on more of these? I would think so, right? Like, it's kind of a little bit of the grease. Swell. So back in the early days of Uber, I was talking to one of the founders and he said that they paid drivers $300 a day to be available in case someone picked up the app and thought, let's see if a car comes. Now we just know when you go on Uber, there's cars everywhere. But they literally paid drivers 300 bucks to sit there and go, maybe someone in this next eight hours will try to book me. In a two sided marketplace, you have to have all the pros and then you got to have all the customers showing up. How do you balance where to focus or do you just go guns a blazing on both? Like let's get as many pros as we can. But you don't want the pros just sitting there with nobody coming either.
- [29:07]
Emily Hunkler
Yeah, that's, and that's a really smart question because it is something we have to think about and we, we do lose talent that way. If we have a slower month with, with client acquisition, then we will have people say hey, you know, and we have to check in with them because we don't want to show people is available in the app and then they get an intro call booked and say, hey, I took a full time job. So it definitely is something that we have the keep the pulse on and we, we don't bring in talent when it's getting too lopsided. And we do go guns a blazing when we, when we notice it's, it's getting lopsided the other way. The other thing is, you know, we definitely set expectations when we're bringing talent in. There was a time where we realized our, our messaging was a bit off where pros were coming to the network and not getting booked within the first week and you know, getting angry and it's like, okay, what's happening here? Like, why would they even expect that? And we realized we weren't being fully explicit. We were having these jobs posted and they look like jobs and it looked like, and they go through, they go through a hiring process. Right? We are, like I said, it's a, it's a pretty rigorous assessment and interview process. And then to sit there when they think they're getting hired was not a great experience. So we fixed that, we adjusted it, we make sure and we're constantly tweaking it as needed. If we see, you know, certain things happening on, on the pro sets, like, okay, what's, what's going on here? But yeah, definitely making sure, checking in with them. We have a, we have created a community for the pros as well where they can ask questions when they're facing a development problem or hey, I'm trying to build an app that does this. Has anyone done it? I'm, you know, facing a roadblocker here, those sorts of things. So we've created other kind of assets for them to engage with. But it's definitely, it's definitely top of mind and something our talent acquisition person deals with.
- [30:49]
Cameron Herold
How about your growth? What have you focused on to grow as a leader?
- [30:52]
Emily Hunkler
I think it is really like management of a team in a remote setting. I think that's, it's something that's challenging. It's where my focus is. It's where I think I've built a lot of strengths and kind of refined those as well. Because I'm not a micromanager. I don't like micromanaging. I'm very much, hey, here's the goals. Let's go get them. And in order to be that kind of manager, you have to have the right people on the team. Right. Because you can set goals, but if people can't achieve them, then, then what's the point? And you're just banging your head against the wall. So making sure you have the right people on the team, making sure you're building a business together and setting those goals together and making sure they are achievable and checking in on them. Right. If, you know, we set a goal for this quarter and it's new. Right. Because we haven't, like I said before, creating client accounts in the app, that's something that we haven't had available. We don't have a benchmark for it. We don't know what that looks like. So we said, hey, let's get, you know, 300 accounts created in the app. And we're not. We're not going to hit that this quarter. And you know that. Now, we know we said that because we thought, let's shoot for that thinking, you know, it's Q4. We've got Thanksgiving, the holidays in December. So we were a little lofty with it being a totally new thing and not putting a lot of money behind any kind of ads or anything like that. But we check in weekly and say, hey, it looks like we're not going to reach that goal. No one's getting fired over it. Right. We talk about, okay, what can we learn, what can we apply going into January, going into Q1, how can we set ourselves up for success there?
- [32:25]
Cameron Herold
Is your marketing all direct, outbound?
- [32:27]
Emily Hunkler
It is for the most part. Right now. That's what we're doing. Yeah. I mean, we do the SEO work and that sort of thing, but right now our marketing is.
- [32:36]
Cameron Herold
Is that how many can you speak to, how many clients you work with, how many companies are using you? Do you have any data points around that?
- [32:43]
Emily Hunkler
Yeah, I think we've got probably about 300, I think in the. In the app we've got. Not all of those are active customers currently, but they are folks that have had engagements with us in the past or have active engagements or multiple engagements with us.
- [33:00]
Cameron Herold
Well, I definitely know quicklyhire is going to get some clients off this podcast because we get some good listeners and some good bubbles. I'd love to for you to speak before we kind of wrap up about your focus on the startups. I know you're going into the startup space as a kind of a niche that you're going to be focusing on. Why is it that the startup space is one for you?
- [33:17]
Emily Hunkler
Yeah, so that's one that we have identified as just kind of an ICP that could really succeed with this kind of service. We know personally we're not, we're a bootstrap startup. Right. We're not funded or anything like that, but we do this, we drink our own Kool Aid, we build fractional teams and use them and succeed with them. We come from the agency space. So our CEO and founder used to run an agency years ago and that's why. And we have connections and we have the brand identity there. And that's why so many of the customers that we do have currently are agency owners. And it's a great model for them as well. But for startups, we've been going to startup events, talking to startup founders. It makes so much sense for them, right? As a startup, early stage startup, you get some funding, you get the goals you have to hit and you need a marketing team, but you don't know in six months if that's the same talent you're going to need or if you're going to have to completely pivot into something else. You need to scale, you need to be flexible, you need to be able to pivot. And with fractional talent and building fractional teams, it's so easy. You don't have the guilt with it. Hiring people and having to lay them off, it just, it makes it easy. It makes it easy and seamless. And we're here to help with that.
- [34:29]
Cameron Herold
It's interesting, when I was writing my first book 12 years ago, double Double the sub, the working subtitle was how to get More Shit Done with Less people faster. And I kind of feel like quickly higher is the solution for that.
- [34:38]
Emily Hunkler
This is the way you want to.
- [34:39]
Cameron Herold
Get whole bunch of stuff done with less people faster. It's like plug in these fractional experts who can do stuff and then that momentum creates momentum. Right? It's your entire use case just makes sense.
- [34:50]
Emily Hunkler
It does. And the awesome thing is like the talent we have in the network, this is what they do. So when we hired our SEO specialists for five hours, I said to him, I was like, hey, do you think five hours is enough to have an impact or is that just ridiculous? He said, oh no, absolutely. This is my plan. Put together a plan. And he said, this is what we'll do and if you have a VA that can help execute on it better. If not, you know, I'll figure out how to do it. It'll just take a little bit longer. And I see those conversations happening all the time with developers, marketing managers, all of that. It's like, hey, I can help you build this app in 10 hours a week, but it's going to take six months as opposed to if you hire me for 20 hours a week, I can do it in three months. Right. And it's. And they can say, but it's what you want, it's what your budget allows. And if they say, oh, we want to get that done, but I also need, you know, a designer to help with it. So our budget can let us hire a designer and a developer to work together. And it's really cool to see that. It's been, as we've grown, we've seen more companies building teams with the talent and the pros and seeing them work together. And I talk with a bunch of them because I've worked with a bunch of them and they kind of have coworkers within the network. Right. It's like, oh, these two people work really well together because they've worked for three or four different clients on similar projects. So it's really cool to see that also.
- [36:00]
Cameron Herold
That's very cool. I love they can bring those people along. I'd like you to go back to the 21 or 22 year old Emily and give yourself some advice. What advice would you give the younger you that you know to be true today?
- [36:09]
Emily Hunkler
Oh my goodness, that's a tough one. I, you know, When I was 21 or 22, I was recent journalism grad so I was working at a newspaper and I loved it. But it was pretty obvious that that wasn't going to be a lucrative path for me. So gosh, advice I would give probably be like, be more comfortable with being uncomfortable, take a few more risks. I think especially, you know, I did the travel abroad kind of thing, work abroad and it was in Spain. So language was an issue as well. And I always felt very sort of stand back and observe and don't put yourself into it, you know, get. I would get nervous, I think put myself in a little bit more, maybe a little earlier. I did a master's program that I was very sit in the back row and don't talk because it's all in Spanish and I didn't want to sound uneducated in a language that I could understand very well and speak pretty well, but not great at. So yeah, I think it would be be a little bit better at being uncomfortable and putting yourself in the ring a bit more, I guess.
- [37:08]
Cameron Herold
I love that. Emily Hunkler, the COO for Quicklyhire. Thanks very much for sharing with us on the Second in Command podcast.
- [37:15]
Emily Hunkler
Yeah, thank you Cameron. It was a great conversation. Really good questions too. I like that.
- [37:18]
Cameron Herold
Yeah, awesome. Thank you.
- [37:23]
Emily Hunkler
You've been listening to Second in Command, brought to you by COO alliance founder Cameron Herald. If you enjoyed this episode, please be sure to like, share and subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and our other podcast streaming platforms. For more best practices from industry leading COOs, visit COOAlliance.com.