Ep. 554 - Springs Rejuvenation CMO Isaac Tobelen - How To Scale to $500K Monthly and Manage $36 Million in Ad Spend

Summary

---

Podcast Summary: Second in Command Ep. 554 – How To Scale to $500K Monthly and Manage $36 Million in Ad Spend

Guest: Isaac Toblin, CMO of Springs Rejuvenation
Host: Savannah Brewer (with Cameron Herold)
Date: February 17, 2026
Duration: ~58 minutes

Episode Overview

This episode dives deep into team building, hiring, and scalable business strategies with Isaac Toblin, who’s managed $36M+ in ad spend and scaled revenues from $100K to $500K/month. Isaac shares his frontline experience in transitioning from COO to CMO, pioneering direct-response marketing in the med-spa niche, and championing culture-focused growth amid hyper scaling. Both wins and growing pains are explored with hands-on tactics for entrepreneurs and second-in-command leaders.

---

Main Discussion Points & Insights

1. Isaac’s Journey: From Real Estate to Leading Edge CMO

• Isaac’s entry into marketing (03:30):
  • Real estate crash in 2008 led to looking up “how to generate leads online,” which led to discovering Frank Kern and the world of direct-response.
  • Met Ashton through Traffic & Funnels events, quickly advanced from media buyer to COO, then CMO at Springs Rejuvenation.
  • Quote:

    “From that moment on my life changed... learning direct response marketing–that’s how I got sucked into this world.” (03:43 – Isaac Toblin)

2. Springs Rejuvenation’s Unique Model

• Pioneered national direct-response funnels for stem cell therapies, unlike most med spas relying on local ads (05:50).
  • Revenue at $1.2–1.3M/month; ~140 units/mo, main driver is hair restoration.
  • Customers from online ads book consult calls, then travel to one of five national locations.
  • Differentiation: blending med spa services with digital marketing frameworks usually reserved for info/coaching products.

3. Scaling an Agency: People, Process, and Hyper-Growth

• Agency scaled from $100K to $500K/month in ~18 months (10:40–11:00).
  • Core drivers: knowing your customer, hiring rigorously, training on how to think vs. what to do, and cultivating a team of problem-solvers.
  • Partnership dynamics: balancing vision (Ashton) and integration/execution (Isaac).
  • Quote:

    “Rather than teaching people how to do something, teach them how to think. Once we were able to delegate the thinking part, everything became a lot more simple.” (13:31 – Isaac Toblin)

4. Hiring: Values & Mindset > Experience

• Strong focus on value alignment during the interview process (14:51–18:07).
  • Seek in candidates what’s innate–going above and beyond, ownership, doing the right thing. Skills can be trained.
  • Cautionary tale: hiring for experience alone often led to misalignment and regret.
  • Savannah’s story reinforces this:

    “A misalignment on culture and core values just creates way more problems... imagine if you spent all the time that you’re putting into your B players... into your A players, how kick ass would your team be?” (20:25 – Savannah Brewer)

Detailed Hiring Process (21:09–25:21)

• Multi-step funnel, sales letter-style job descriptions, practical screenings, and scenario-based tasks with minimal hand holding to test proactivity.
• Final culture fit interview with Isaac to preserve and protect team values.
• Screen for resourcefulness:

  “If somebody’s willing to say yes because they really want something, they’re going to do it.” (23:46 – Isaac Toblin)

• Pro-tip: Seed resourcefulness checks—give vague instructions and see who finds their own solutions (26:25–27:40).

5. Retention, Motivation, and Culture

• Onboarding: strong, organized processes and SOPs are key to building trust from day one (30:09).
• Employee engagement systems:
  • Innovation Day: Monthly, each dept. tries new ideas/strategies–win or fail, all are shared, rewards for best ideas, cross-pollinates creativity (32:00–34:38).

    “People love to be valued… we put systems in place so their voices were heard and their ideas made it through…” (30:53 – Isaac Toblin)

  • Virtual Happy Hours: Regular team bonding events, games, themed fun, fostering connection and belonging.

6. Learning from Mistakes: Concentrated Key-Person Risk

• A single top-performer left, triggering a cascade of additional departures and client churn—lesson in monitoring for hidden dissatisfaction and not putting all eggs in one basket (39:18–43:50).

  • Quote:

    “One of the biggest mistakes we made… not the talent itself… but the concentration of risk… if you’re too far removed… and that person decides to leave, the entire business is in jeopardy. People buy people…” (39:18 – Isaac Toblin)

  • Check in proactively with high performers, not just those expressing problems.

• Acquisitions:

  • Rushed due diligence led to distraction, underperformance.
  • Always “do your due diligence… especially if acquiring a business or partnership.” (45:10)

7. People Skills—The Enduring Edge

• Isaac’s reflection: people skills are hard to quantify but invaluable—especially as AI proliferates.
• The COO as integrator:

  “Being a COO really gave me... if you’re a people person … it’s such a really cool role to be in… You’re the visionary for execution and integration.” (48:48 – Isaac Toblin)

• Support and uphold the CEO; translating vision into execution for the team.

8. Looking to the Future: The Role of AI

• AI's practical use is accelerating, especially in marketing and ops (51:38–56:07).
  • Literacy in AI is now a hiring screen.
  • “Pick two or three tools… dive in, make all the mistakes, don’t feel shy about it, use it, fail, understand it.” (54:56 – Isaac Toblin)
• But: People skills will grow even more important for business leaders as AI makes it harder to distinguish what’s authentic.

---

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On hiring for culture, not just skill:

  “It was easier to take a little bit longer to hire but find the person that inherently had those values already… when things get tough, is that value system that keeps you together…” (15:11 – Isaac Toblin)

• On key-person risk:

  “If somebody’s good all the time, they’re not. Sometimes you have those seasons in your life where everything's perfect, but you work two years together, something’s gotta be wrong at some point…” (41:02 – Isaac Toblin)

• On the competitive future of human skills:

  “In a world that AI can make you seem better than what you are, having the people skills is definitely going to be a plus. Because now I could take somebody that's a C-ish person, use AI… but if I have a really incredible human next to me, man, you can build something really cool.” (56:24 – Isaac Toblin)

---

Timestamps for Key Segments

• 03:30 – Isaac’s background and direct response journey
• 05:57 – How Springs Rejuvenation’s national model works
• 10:40 – Scaling an agency: reaching $500K+/mo
• 14:51 – Values-based hiring & culture alignment
• 18:07 – Savannah’s story: core values over experience
• 21:09 – Detailed hiring funnel process
• 26:25 – Screening for resourcefulness in hiring
• 30:09 – Onboarding and employee retention
• 32:00 – Innovation Day: culture of experimentation
• 39:18 – Lessons learned: key-person risk and growing pains
• 45:10 – Due diligence in acquisitions
• 48:48 – The unique role of COO in organizational vision
• 51:38 – The AI wave: what’s coming next
• 56:24 – Why people skills matter more as AI grows

---

Conclusion and Takeaways

This episode is a blueprint for rapidly scaling service businesses while maintaining (and repairing) company culture. The conversation offers practical hiring tactics, honest stories of what went wrong, and how to set up teams to thrive in a fast-changing, AI-empowered future. Whether you’re on the journey to COO/CMO or hiring your first team, Isaac’s focus on values, process, and nurturing real human connection stands out as core to both past success and future resilience.

Contact Isaac:
Find him on Facebook, Instagram, or LinkedIn — just mention the podcast!

---

Transcript

[Isaac Toblin]

One of the biggest mistakes that we made was not the talent itself. He was incredible. I love him to death. We speak today still, right? But we no longer work together. But the concentration of risk of the business on one key person that if you're too far removed from the rest of the people from underneath and that person decides to leave, the entire business is in jeopardy. Because people buy people, especially at the scale of businesses that are probably watching these podcasts, right?

[Cameron Herold]

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 co host, former COO of a multi eight figure remote company and alumni member of the COO Alliance, Savannah Brewer.

[Savannah Brewer]

Today on the Second in Command podcast, I'm joined by Isaac Toblin, the Chief Marketing Officer at Springs rejuvenation and former CEO of Heman Media where he scaled the company from 100,000amonth to 500,000amonth in just a year and a half. With over 15 years of experience in digital advertising and leadership, Isaac has managed ad budgets topping $36 million annually and built high performing teams across a range of company sizes. In this episode we dive into what to look for when hiring top talent, how to retain great people and the biggest mistakes to avoid when scaling quickly. Isaac also shares how implementing an innovation day within the team became a game changer for culture and creativity. So if you are growing quickly and you want to build a strong, adaptable team, this convers conversation is a must. Listen, We are live with Isaac. Welcome to the show.

[Isaac Toblin]

Thank you so much, Vona. Appreciate you having me here. I'm really excited.

[Savannah Brewer]

Absolutely. We were just talking about. You're in Nashville. I lived in Nashville for a couple years. I actually got brought out to Nashville for one of my first jobs ever. My first real job, I would say. And then I was there for like a month and I moved my whole life to Nashville and that's when I actually went to traffic and funnels. After that I got intro. So that's how I met Ashton who is.

[Isaac Toblin]

Oh wow, what a small world.

[Savannah Brewer]

Yes.

[Isaac Toblin]

That's how you get sucked into the world.

[Savannah Brewer]

That is a little bit of it. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I'm really excited for this conversation today. We have, we were talking before this. There's a lot of mutual names that we know in a very similar industry. The online education space, which feels like such a bubble and it's really exciting to talk to someone that knows a little bit about the bubble and the similar struggles and challenges, but also the great things. So before we get into it, you have a little bit of a unique position in that you're currently a cmo. However for the last few years you were COO of one of my friends companies. So that's kind of been one of your main avenues. And like you had mentioned a lot of those skills really transfer over into the CMO role that you're in now. So we're going to kind of bridge both of those today. But first give us a little overview of springs rejuvenation. What do you do and who do you serve?

[Isaac Toblin]

Yeah, no, great question. So yeah, absolutely. It's ironic how things work because I learned about Internet marketing. Let me kind of give you a little brief time how this whole thing comes full circle. 2008 I was a real estate agent. My wife had just opened her practice downtown Brickell, Miami and the market was crashing. My wife is like Isaac, I need somebody to come help me in the office with generating business. So I was like why don't you help me? I'm like sure, let's do it, let's partner together. And I remember that search in my mind. I went online, first thing I do, how to generate leads online and I Frank Kern shows up on my screen with a Google Ad and I bought, I think it was mass control. I think I bought at that time and from that world. From that moment on my life changed when it comes to like learning direct response marketing that's how I got sucked into this world. Lo and behold I meet Ashton in 2019 through similar engagement through traffic and funnels and ultimately he started an agency and I came on board with him being a media buyer and we scaled so quickly that I became his COO within less than a year and then we just scaled from there. So having the business acumen, learning Internet marketing and then kind of being that right hand person for a few years in the COO position and now coming full circle as a CMO has really been an interesting journey but very blessed to be able to kind of serve in the marketing discipline but having CEO perspective as it is. So in springs rejuvenation we are rejuvenation center. We are a leader in stem cell therapy, stem cell, stem cell exosome therapy for hair regrowth, joint pain, skin, skin care, overall health and wellness. And we're really pioneering the space and the fact that we are kind of like a hybrid most of these Esthetics and med spas advertise locally. They usually do Google Ads, local Google Ads, things like that. But we drive all of our revenue using very traditional direct response marketing strategies. Ads to a vsl, to an opt in to some type of direct response mechanism. We have a full sales team that speaks with our customers, but they watch these videos and things like that. So it's a very interesting and very fulfilling business in the sense that we're actually selling a really good service. People wanting to restore their health, their hairline. Maybe I should start getting a little bit. But it really is really beautiful when you get to use direct response marketing. Not to only sell coaching and education, which is great. It's a growing space and it will always be. But it's really nice to put that those skills and strategies to work towards a product and service where people actually are receiving a tangible. Right. More hair, more youth, feeling younger, things like that. And yeah, I've been leading the charge there since December of 24 and that's what we do.

[Savannah Brewer]

Cool. I know for me and you, it's probably, you know, this is like our ABCs because we know this industry, but for probably most of the listeners, they're in different industries outside of the online space. And so what you're referring to with the offer that you guys have is there's a call funnel. So there's this. Basically it's a treatment plan. Right. To restore your hair and where people would typically just like walk into a clinic to go get this. The way that you guys are going about it is people are seeing an ad online, they're getting on a call and then they're buying this over the phone. Is that right?

[Isaac Toblin]

Yeah. And they're flying to our. One of our five locations nationwide.

[Savannah Brewer]

Very cool.

[Isaac Toblin]

Yeah.

[Savannah Brewer]

How many of these are you guys selling per month?

[Isaac Toblin]

Oh, man. So we're probably right around that 1.2, $1.3 million a month mark right now. So in terms of units, that's probably like 140 units a month right now, roughly. And there's different services in between that. But that's kind of like our bread and butter right now, which is hair restoration. And then everything is upsells on the back end.

[Savannah Brewer]

Was it that who. Whoever the person was, was like, let's try this online. Maybe the, the doctor, I'm assuming the owner of the company. Where did that idea come from of moving to this model versus what everyone else has been doing?

[Isaac Toblin]

Yeah. So that part for me is going to be more anecdotal because like what I've. Cause I've come into springs at a, at a point where they were kind of in the middle of their journey and starting to rescale again. But Dr. Charles started the, really a local clinic where they were doing these Google Ads and traffic came in through the door and or he's very well known in the sports space, specifically like jiu jitsu and things like that. So he's well connected with high elite level athletes and so he had a reporting connection and he was treating a lot of those athletes with stem cell exosome therapies, through IVs, knee injections, things like that. And my understanding. So one day he's like, you know, I. How do I scale this business? And very similar to a lot of us, you go online. And I believe he found, I think it could have Gordon during that time. But that's how they discovered Internet marketing as part of an acquisition engine for clients. And they kind of stacked it on top to the clinics and it worked. It really, really worked. So and now we're just taking that on, diversifying in different offers. You know, their flagship mechanism, if you will, to capture clients is an ad to a VSL to book a call. And now we're diversifying more to like quiz funnels and low ticket items and things like that to capture higher portion of the market and bring them into the clinic. So that's kind of a little bit of the rundown on, on how that happened.

[Savannah Brewer]

Nice. Do you think that more clinics will start moving to this?

[Isaac Toblin]

We have absolutely seen it. Our ads get copied all the time, our mechanisms and things like that. And I think we're fortunate enough to be able to be ahead of the curve when it comes to like the strategies because we've been in the space. Like myself, my team that I'm currently managing has been in the space for so many years. A lot of these clinics that are coming on, they may have a good product. But what I've learned over the years is not always who the best product is, it's who can market the best. Luckily we do that. Plus we have an incredible product. So these smaller clinics are coming up and they're trying to compete. You can see that they're trying the basic strategies, right? Even I get the ads, very simple static ads and using a lead form. Every time I see that, I'm like, yep, you're probably struggling to generate high quality leads because you can't put a proper VSL together for a marketing argument. The sales team, the ops and things like that. So we're very blessed to be in a position where we can really leverage this acquisition engine to keep growing the business. But yeah, I see it all the time. People are trying to copy the ads, the mechanism and things like that. There's a lot more competition now that we've been around for a while. We kind of put stem cell exosomes on the map, if you will.

[Savannah Brewer]

That makes sense. People are like, seems like it's working for them. Let's try a little bit of that.

[Isaac Toblin]

Exactly. And if you see it on social, it must be true. Right? That must be working.

[Savannah Brewer]

Well, I would be curious to hear what the overlap has been for you with working with Ashton in a COO role and then moving into the CMO position one. Maybe let's just start when you were with Ashton. You guys had some pretty rapid growth there. Can you tell us a little bit about that story?

[Isaac Toblin]

Yeah, absolutely. So when I connected with Ashton coming in during that period, we're probably doing anywhere from like 80 to 100 grand a month. But then we quickly grew to a 6 million dollar a year run rate very quickly within 18 months. And it all came down to really understanding who we were serving, knowing how to hire, knowing how to train, knowing how to retain, motivate and inspire. We became really, really good at that. The reason Ashton and I worked really well together is I call it got incidents is he and I, although not polar opposites, were opposites enough to create contrast. But we have a good overlap in understanding people. Empathy, psychology, doing the right thing. Right. Sometimes you have visionaries that are so, so different than their CEOs, like super visionary, extroverted. Then you have this introverted co. There's been a healthy overlap in that and that has allowed us to really be able to create a dynamic where he and I knew exactly which roles we took. I knew that Ashton and I trusted Ashton to be the visionary to see six steps ahead. He's proven it a million times. Six steps ahead. And he also trusted me that he knew like Isaac. You know what, Isaac? I love to teach. I hate to coach. I'm not really a coach. Like I'll tell you what to do. I see it. Go execute. You have patience. So why don't you do this? I'll worry about the vision part. Let's go ahead. I'll put the frameworks and everything in place. Help me execute this with the team to train, develop, nurture them so that we can build this incredible vision. And so that's exactly what we did. He was excellent at putting programs together. Vision really Draw out what he wanted. Right. And then I was really good at grabbing that. And at first I was executing a lot of it, almost like a director level. And as we grew and we hired and I replaced myself from different capacities, from media buyers to copywriters and things like that, we're able to replace ourselves because we had systems, good training in place, and that's really what allowed us to grow the agency. We started with three or four people. At its peak, we're at 50. And all that happened within less than 24 months. It was hyper growth. It was fast. We cried, we laughed, we made a lot, we had a lot of fun, we had a lot of failures. But in that capacity, one thing that we did get right is although we all make our mistakes in the process of growing super fast, one thing that we did get right is we built a culture that even today, you speak to other people that work with us during that time that still went on to do really cool things using the same frameworks and thought processes that we have. One thing that both Ash and I believe wholeheartedly is rather than teaching people how to do something, teach them how to think. We were good at hiring people with really good talent, but we trained them on how to think. Once we were able to delegate the thinking part, everything became a lot more simple.

[Savannah Brewer]

Right.

[Isaac Toblin]

Rather than focusing on, like, are you doing the thing right? It's more like, how are you thinking about it? Right. And it's the thinking about it that really shifts the person. They feel like they're growing. They feel like they're getting something from themselves, from the company outside of their paycheck. But it really alleviates you to do the other higher level thinking to focus on, like, how do we actually grow the business to keep going?

[Savannah Brewer]

Really amazing, the hyper growth that you guys had and being able to maintain a great culture at the same time, I think those are some of the hardest kind of competing things. So I'm curious, when you guys were growing, growing so fast, you mentioned you consistently try to do the right thing.

[Isaac Toblin]

Yeah.

[Savannah Brewer]

What I found is, like, we were always trying to also do the right thing, and sometimes things would slip through the cracks. You miss things a client gets dropped over here, or like, you know, you're breaking things faster than you can fix them.

[Isaac Toblin]

Yeah.

[Savannah Brewer]

So I'm curious, what was. Were some of the principles or the systems that you had in place to make sure that you guys were taking care of team clients yourselves while growing so fast?

[Isaac Toblin]

Such a good question and so easy for me to answer it now. And the answer is very simple. You know, every company has their core values, right? Defined by the. By the owner. Rather than try to find people that come and adopt those values when we're interviewing, we're looking for people that already inherently had some version of that value so that we didn't have to teach it. It was innate in them going above and beyond doing the right thing, staying in until the job is done. Because you said you would. Right? All those things were part of the hiring process. Did we spend time in making sure that we were hiring great copywriters, great media buyers, great account managers, things like that? Absolutely. But there was a lot of conversations with those interviewees that revolved around their life, what they value, how they value, how they see things. And it was in those conversations that we would say, okay, this person fits here. Not because of their skill set, because how they view things, because everything else we can teach. You're talking about hiring people in their early 20s, 30s, maybe even mid-30s. Right? They have a whole life of ingrained habits and thought processes and frameworks that you're not going to change. You're not. And if you think you are, it's an uphill battle. So it was easier to take a little bit longer to hire, but find the person that inherently had those values already. So that this is the most important part. So that when things get tough, it is that value system keeps you together because you understand you guys are after the same thing. When you have similar values, you can have tough conversations without getting offended, without feeling hurt. When you don't, everything becomes like, you offended me, you hurt me. And it's like, no, that's not what I meant. And you should know that. But they don't if they don't have the same value system. So we did it. Was it 100%? No. But I can say it was like a solid eight and a half out of ten that we were able to achieve that. And that's why we grew so fast, because we had the people that inherently wanted to work hard, inherently believed in serving. People inherently believe in doing something that was for their families. And that skill set that they were using, whether that's copywriting, media, buying, account managing, an EA for Ashton or whoever that was, was the skill set to allow them to practice those values. Right? So that's my answer to that. And that's how we were kind of able to go through. Did we break things all the time, but we were able to break in with grace. It's like, hey, Josh, what happened with this client? Right? And it was never a matter of like, hey, are you lying to me? It was like, Isaac, I messed up. I did this, this, this and this. Cool. What's the solution? What do we do? Perfect. That's exactly what I would have done. Oh, Josh. Next time I would try to do it like this. My benefit of having them on here was if I treat them right, they're going to stay here and they're going to go above and beyond. Right. And if they felt treated right, they're going to go above and beyond to solve the problems constantly without having to be in a constant like a chokehold with me. And so because of those values. Right. And so that made it more simple.

[Savannah Brewer]

Well, I love that. And it's bringing up a story for me with one of my ended up being one of my key hires I was interviewing for. I think this is when I was still doing interviews. Like I hadn't replaced myself fully yet from doing sales rep interviews. And this recruiting team that I was running and I interviewed this one guy who it's like I can tell it's kind of dark in the room, but he's got got a light and he looks like he's in like a warehouse. And he ends up telling me it's 3am in the morning or something for him because he lived in a different country and he's packing boxes. At this time we were pretty much only placing people who had had sales experience. But his energy and like you said, the I could tell the way that he lived his life and the way he thought about things. Even though this guy was packing boxes because he was in a really unique kind of place of life and sometimes people just, you know, you get curve balls thrown at you. I wrote in Asana, I was like, when this guy gets a little bit of experience, we're going to bring him on the team and we'll train up the rest. Yeah, we ended up getting him in a setting position. He worked there for six months, ended up leaving because that company ended up switching over. And I was like, we got to bring Monster. The recruiting team. And my recruiting team was ran very similarly to a sales team and he was one of the more under experienced. I mean he pretty much, he knew very, very little about our industry or about recruiting. But the core way of his, his just internal operating system was so aligned and this guy was reading self development books for fun and working out every day and eating well. Like there was just a lot of very similar alignment with our core team. He ended up becoming one of our top recruiters he's one of the people now in my life that I stay in contact with. Every few weeks we have a call and he's one of those people where I just, I know at some point we're going to work together again. And if I would, if I wouldn't have hired him just based on lack of experience, it would have been such. I mean, hundreds of people have been placed. I've gotten jobs as a result of this person now. And I've had the flip side where I've brought on people. I really, really needed experience and I, I may have let like a little bit of a core value or something like in terms of culture. I brought them on because I was like, well, we really, really need someone and this person's going to come in and I've got a few of those that I look back on and I'm like, you know, I should have held out to find the perfect person or I found someone with a little less experience that I could train up in some of those things. Because a misalignment on culture and core values just creates way more problems. It's something I took away from Cameron Herald where he mentioned, imagine if you spent all the time that you're putting into your B players, if you just reinvested all of that time into your A players, how kick ass would your team be? 100% so good.

[Isaac Toblin]

Totally agree.

[Savannah Brewer]

What was your hiring process? What did that look like?

[Isaac Toblin]

Yeah, great question. So at first, because we went through an evolution, because it happened so fast at first, during that process, during that time, at some point Ash and I were doing the interviews and because he and I had done a lot of the roles, our mini system until that point and then it evolved, I would do the step one, I would kind of take on my obviously review. We would put out the post, whether that being indeed Ashton would post on his socials and we had a little mini funnel, if you will, right? Like people coming into the page, reading the description, the description of the job description was always written out in a way like how you would read a sales letter, right hook headline. Like you really want to filter them down by the time they get to that so that you maximize the opportunity. Like people that actually, actually coming through are real high quality people, right? A lot of people lie, things like that. So I would take that first step at the beginning where I would look at the interviewee, jump on a call with them, 15 minute call, felt them out, see what their interests were, what their skill set was, things like that. And once all that checked off. Then I would bring them onto Ashton to really do more of the high level thinking type interview. Right. He's really good at questioning. Really, really good. If you've never been interrogated by Ashton, you should just for practice, that was our flow, right? Like we would get the apps, I would skim through them, jump on a call, filter them out and then I will put them on. I was kind of like the skill set operation, would they fit? Yes. And then Ashton would be more like, do they have what it takes to endure the hard things? And he would ask the really, really difficult questions and then we'll check off. If we both like them, then we would move on. Right. And then as we grew kind of like into that 20 people mark, we started hiring. We had a recruiter, right. And so she took on that role and then it became more sophisticated, if you will. Right. We still had the front end stuff like how we would attract people into our hiring funnel, if you will. But now we had a recruiter, she'll be calling, screening all the apps, 15 minute calls, sending homeworks. It was very important for us to be able to find people that weren't giving us a hard time about doing free work. Right. Because it was a simple task. But if we found that if they didn't do it 90% of the time, they end up being really not candidates. Nuances, right? It's like if somebody's willing to say yes because they really want something, they're going to do it. Right. And so we'd have quizzes or homeworks or projects if they were on the creative side. If there were media buyers like, hey, shoot me a quick video on how you would set up this ad account for an E comm client for an info based product. If it was a copywriter, we would make it super simple. The least amount of details the better. Because we want to see how they will think with the least amount of info. Because we found that the more info we gave, we got robotic answers. Very similar, right. So it's like copywriters, hey, this is the product, this is the headline. What do you come up with? We want to see how they would think. We, we didn't need the high converting copy. We wanted to see what their processes was like. And that's how we would kind of test everyone out. Like what can we do for that role? That we give them the least amount but enough guidance so that they can fall somewhere in the ballpark of where we want them to be. And if that came back and it hit the spot we're like, okay, let's jump on a right. And at some point when Ashton, when we're scaling and we're like 4 or 500 grand a month, he completely detached from. And I became Ashton. Right. I was the final call of them bringing on because it was still very important for me to filter out and make sure the culture was preserved. We worked so hard to get to that point that we were not in a position to allow at least a person, especially if it's a higher level person, come in and kind of like muddy the waters, if you will. Right. So it all funneled back up to me at the end. I would take feedback from our operations manager, from whoever the manager was for the role, whether that be the senior media buyer, senior copywriter that interviewed in that process. And then we'll talk about it and then we'll make the final call if we bring it in. So it was somewhat lengthy, but it happened fairly quickly because, you know, in this space you got to move quick. So that's kind of like how that process worked.

[Savannah Brewer]

Yeah. Amazing. The thing that I'm hearing in that is it sounds like with the sales process almost like it's almost like a sales process with the landing page. You're selling them on the role and the company. Because I think it's easy when we're in our own company to be like, why anyone should want to work here. Our company is awesome. And we forget that like there's a million jobs out there for people and you're competing against other job opportunities and especially if you're trying to be really resourceful and you're a smaller startup and maybe you can't pay as much out the gate. You have to have things that are compelling enough to bring people in. And at the same time it's like getting enough people in while also having enough obstacles where you're weeding the wrong people out. And there's. I think it was a training video. I actually watched it in one of Cameron's co alliance membership portals of a past speaker he had talking about his hiring process. And he said that one of the core values of his company was he wanted to make sure that people were resourceful. He did not want to have to help people do things that they could Google search.

[Isaac Toblin]

Right.

[Savannah Brewer]

Which those are like the most annoying people when you bring someone on and they're, I'm like answering questions that I. It's like, clearly you didn't look into SOP or read the onboarding thing. And when I got this from him, I started Incorporating it into my hiring process, which was. I would be on, like, a. An interview, and I would say something like, well, so the next step is something like di. I don't know, some kind of test that I think, like, Tony Robbins has. If you could do that and send it to me, that'd be great. And so you give them a little bit of information, but not all of it. And.

[Cameron Herold]

Exactly.

[Savannah Brewer]

That was the breadcrumb clue. Yeah. So I did this with the disc test because we were doing this test on everybody at that time, and, man, I mean, sure enough, 50% of the people follow up on an email, and they're saying, hey, did you think of that thing yet? Let me know, you know, or like, they would just wait until I would send it over, and then you would have the other people who are like, hey, I went and Googled just based off of some of the information you gave me. Is this the correct link that you want me to take? And you can do that with multiple things in your process because it's way better to screen that stuff out, even if it takes a little bit more work on the front end than bringing on the wrong person who you invest time into and you say no to other candidates. That would have been a better fit.

[Isaac Toblin]

Exactly. Absolutely. You nailed it.

[Savannah Brewer]

So the. The proactivity, the resourcefulness. Yeah. They'll bake that into your process. What about your retention strategies that you mentioned? I think you said retain, motivate, and inspire.

[Isaac Toblin]

Yeah.

[Savannah Brewer]

What did those kind of three categories. What did you guys do for the retention? Inspiration, motivation.

[Isaac Toblin]

I'm gonna go back real quick to what you're saying, because the disc triggered something that will continually go with this. So I've always had a hard time believing in those tests. And I'll tell you why. Because it's been my experience that depending on the month of the year, depending on the day of the week, those results can skew. Depending on, man. What if the applicant right now literally just lost their job and they're in fight or flight? They're going to take that test. Completely different than a person that's relaxed. That's so many variables. Right. One of the books that really changed my life and super simple and my wife kind of introduced me to it. It was Personalities Plus. It was Personalities Plus. And then on that, another book called the Five Human Types. Without going too deep into it, what? I use the information in those books to analyze a person as I'm speaking to them in person, because I'm looking for their body type makeup. I'm looking how they're breathing, I'm looking at how they're posturing. I'm looking at all these things to see exactly how their temperament is. Right. I'm not looking necessarily personality, like what's their temperament. And temperament so much more deep than personality. Because personality, you put layers on top, whether that be with your family and things like that. But there's things that you do on cue, unconsciously that like reveal a little bit about your temperament. Right. Furthermore, it's like how your body's constituted also tells a little bit about how you think. You know, a heavyset person may be a little more structured, right. A lighter built person would be a little more energetic. What we call choleric. It's faster pacing and going. Right. So all those things I put into the interviews and like I'm picking up on these things and I'm like, you know what? I'm hiring for an account manager. This person is very structured but lacks the personality to enamor the person. Right. So I would layer all that information, right. And that's why I still did a lot of the final decision, because I would observe all these things once the basics were checked off. All that to say when we brought them in and we had to see we had the proper SOPs. Right? People really love to know that they come to a company and things are organized, right?

[Savannah Brewer]

Yep.

[Isaac Toblin]

You did a really good job with your hiring process. But man, if the onboarding is terrible, it's terrible. And that's it.

[Savannah Brewer]

It's the same for lied.

[Isaac Toblin]

It's like you lied on the date. On the date, right? So I think we had a very good onboarding process. You know, we had a person that would take them on and then whether, depending on the department that they would go on to, whether it's copywriting, media, buying, account management, you know, we had their, the SOPs or training materials, everything was documented. Whether that be in asana. I mean how many times do we switch time management system just to find the right one because one didn't have the feature, et cetera. But between the sound and ClickUp and all these things and making sure that everything's organized to at least give them the foundation, right? That was step one. Make a really good impression. You get make a good impression when you're hiring, when you bring them on, they're super excited. But then you show them that you're also organized. You keep building that trust. I'm like, okay, cool. These people got it together. I'm here to work, I'm here to do really Good things, right? What we've learned is that people love to be valued and they will always request that more indirectly, more than above pay. So what we would do is, although we offered really, really, really good pay, we knew that nothing can outpace someone's desire, especially with the context of how they're coming in and who we're looking for. Growth, thinking, going above and be, work ethic, things like that. That kind of caliber person always felt like, at least in our company, it's. We needed to put systems in place to feel like their voices were heard, that their voices or their ideas in some capacity made it through and potentially maybe execute and define the direction of the company, right? And so what we would do, and it was Ashton's idea, and we executed on it really, really well. So we would have this thing called Innovation Day Day, right? Innovation Day. And that was once, once a month. And what each department head was supposed to be doing throughout the month is encourage their teams to try a new strategy, a new tactic, a new idea. Whether it failed or not, it didn't matter, right? And compile that information over the month. And once a month, we got together and every department would share, hey, this is what we tried. This is where we failed, and this is what we got out of it. And so in that, we would put the departments to compete over, like copywriters with the media buyers and the creative, because they were so different, right? Like, the creative departments are so different people, the copywriters. But it was in those conversations was like everybody came together like, oh, wow, that's super cool. I never even thought about that. You know, I could actually do that for copywriting. Now that I see you doing that for media buying, actually, that makes sense, right? The concepts, the ideas. And so when we would finish Innovation Day and we had a. Like, okay, cool. Which of these processes or these ideas you think we can start incorporating as part of our routine, right? And we would take those ideas because the. One of the. One of the value was idea meritocracy, right? And so that was a way for us to practice that. And everybody's voice was heard. People would take their time to put their presentation together, right? Like, hey, this is what I did. This is what we uncovered, right? And because it wasn't shame in failing, we always encourage the failing forward. So long as you're trying, right? Of course we need to get great results, but there's no shame in failing. And if you fail, let's figure out why you did. And then we'll course correct them because people Love that. Right? So Innovation Day was, was a great thing that we did. And then we had our very light hearted. It was on Wednesday afternoon. It was kind of like in the middle of the week. We called it happy hour and everybody was zoom, right? And we congregate right around 4 or 5 o' clock in the afternoon and just talk, no work, everybody coming in. We used to get virtual games like Jack in a Box. You know, there was one person that would kind of host the whole thing and come in depending on the season, right. Like if it was Halloween, we would have people kind of dress up, you can't show up unless you dress up type of thing, right. And people would show up with the most ridiculous costumes and we have a great time or we would come up with themes. Hey, and next week happy hour, you're gonna have to make a 30 second rap about your favorite client, your favorite team member or your favorite person. And like we would have the most amount of, good amount of time I'd be using.

[Savannah Brewer]

What's that? AI.

[Isaac Toblin]

Oh my God.

[Savannah Brewer]

Don't put me on the spot.

[Isaac Toblin]

If we had that two months ago. Yeah, exactly. I mean that would have been amazing. I'd probably be getting VO3 videos, right? But yeah, that's some of the things that we did to one, allow the creative outlet and let allow people to be hear. We were still small enough that that strategy worked really well. But also give people the opportunity to congregate as team members and kind of let things out in a fun way because that's really when people connect, right. When guards are down, there's no stress, things like that. But also people feel valued when at least you give them the opportunity to voice what they're thinking. And the type of people that were coming in wanted to share what they're uncovering and we honored that. We knew exactly what we were building. So we set up a process where would that was that would hold true.

[Cameron Herold]

Hey, it's Cameron Herold, your high energy leadership guru, here to pump you up on the Second Command podcast. If you get frustrated because your managers aren't leading like you want them to be, check out my game changing leadership [e-mail] that's investinyourleaders.com for just 347 per leader you get 30 years. My proven experience straight from taking 1,800 gout jumps from 2 million to 106 million as COO. And it's packed with 12 easy modules. Learn situational leadership, coaching, delegation, conflict management and more all in under 6 hours. @investinyourleaders.com with straight to the point videos, worksheets and real life scenarios. Your team will master time management, be able to hire a players and get aligned with your vision. It's all backed by a 30 day money back guarantee and raved about by hundreds of CEOs and thousands of managers already learning from the content. Grab this now and watch your business soar.

[Savannah Brewer]

The innovation day I have never heard of. Love that idea.

[Isaac Toblin]

It was ashes. It was ashes.

[Savannah Brewer]

It's great because I think that there's often our team members, we want them to try things, we want them to improve certain things that are happening without us having to get in there and be all up in their business. But then there's often this, especially some of the fractional work that I've done and just like getting really curious about why people aren't taking action is, well, as soon as I make a mistake then I'm, you know, kind of put on blast about it and now I just don't even want to try. I've heard this so many times and I. One of the things that I love that Cole taught me is he's like, there's no shame in failing. The only shame that should come from failing is if you don't learn the lesson from it. It. And that gave me so much permission to just try and try and try and you know, he never, not one time can I ever remember Cole giving me a hard time about failing something unless it was something like I remember like the second time I was late to an executive meeting. Like I had already been given the feedback on that one before. So there's just like, yeah, fostering a really safe environment, I think like safety in team members as much as like the term safety can sound a little like fluffy, especially with some of just the things that we're dealing with now, with some of the, you know, the waters that we're kind of bridging now as employers being creating a safe environment for people to try things and communicate, bring up hard topics and trust that they'll be heard. And like you said, some things are going to get taken and some aren't. Like one of my really close friends left a tech job. He was leading the entire sales team And I asked why he left and he said I kept bringing them solutions and they wouldn't implement anything because of the bureaucracy and just all of these complicated layers. So just creating that space I think is really important. Kind of taking a little bit of a different sidestep here. We're talking about the things that went really, really well for you guys. What about now, looking back in hindsight? You know, hindsight is 20 20. And I can see this with myself at closers, where at the time, being in the echo chamber, like, I could not see certain things where now, two years in the future, I look back and I'm like, you know, if I would have made that one hire at that one point, that would have changed so much. But I couldn't see it at the time. What have been some of those pieces, looking back now, that you would have done differently if you could have?

[Isaac Toblin]

That's what the people call growing pains, right? The things that you go through as you're growing, you inevitably are going to make those mistakes. So if you're not willing to go through those pains or to fail, the magnitude in which you're feeling willing to fail is the magnitude of which your result on the other side is amplified. Right? So we took risks. We did. And we had really, really great talent. One of the biggest mistakes that we made was not the talent itself. He was incredible. I love him to death. We speak today still, right? But we no longer work together. But the concentration of risk of the business on one key person, that if you're too far removed from the rest of the people from underneath and that person decides to leave, the entire business is in jeopardy. Because people buy people, especially at the scale of businesses that are probably watching these podcasts, right? And so if I had to look back, I would have done two things. Either checked in more on him because he was a yes person. He did everything, never complained, never did anything. Dude, how are you doing? Amazing. There was never, never, never a problem. But that wasn't true. And so I would take it at face value. He played the part, he got the part. And so I missed the cues of, like, if somebody's good all the time, they're not. And I know that now. Sometimes you have those seasons in your life where like, yeah, everything's perfect, but you work two years together, something's got to be wrong at some point, you know, at home, at work, something you're unsatisfied with. I wish I would have gone back and spent a little more time with him to re identify why he left. Ultimately, he started feeling very underwhelmed with the position and not challenged enough, and he felt like he was managing people. And then I also learned at that point is just because you're great at the thing, you're not great at leading people to do the thing, meaning just because you're an incredible copywriter. And you wrote VSLs that generated $100 million. Doesn't mean that you can lead a group of copywriters to the same. Completely different skill sets. Right? Great people. Completely different skill sets. And so he left and like flies, people just started dropping. Our best media buyers, our best account managers, and our business. Really, like, we went into a very, very dark moment, you know, and from that moment on, I stepped in together with Ash, and we kind of try to rebuild everything with people. But we. We did lose. We lost. And in the space that we're in, which was the agency space, clients are also married to the people. So if they hear somebody's going and they somewhat hear that they're about to start something remotely similar, their notice is coming. Is it next month? Is it this month? It's coming at some point, right? And that really impacted. Right? You can have all the. The clauses that you want in your contracts, but I've learned that you do this long enough, those contracts are only as good as the people assignments, you know, so most people don't have the resources to be able to fight them or fight back or whatever, spend the time dealing with those things. But if I had to do it all over again, spend more time with my key people, really spend time not just with the people that are expressing concerns or having a hard time, but the people doing well like, still spend time with them and really find out what's next. What's next? What's next? Even though we were growing, it wasn't necessary, but they're growing more like how fulfilled they felt, felt as a person. Right. So that was a big mistake. Concentrated risk on one key person. The other thing, the other big mistake, like dark moments, is Ashton went through an acquisition we're about to enter into this business to bring in. Ashton always thought about the flywheel and pretty sure you're familiar with it. So Ashton, like, the agency was the engine. And then over time, what we created is, man, we're really good at doing this. We get a ton of talent applying for media, buying position, copyright position. Like, what do we do with these? We started a recruiting firm, right? Human staffing. Right. We had human media, the human staffing. And so when our salespeople were saying, hey, this person's not ready for the agency, but they need a media buyer now. We had staffing, and then we had people that weren't ready for the agency but weren't necessarily even hiring. But they're like, man, I really need marketing knowledge. Like these guys. We had Human X so we had info products, we had hiring, and we had the agency, and that everything fed one another at some point. And so we're looking to. Ashton made this acquisition and he came in and unfortunately, the. What seemed at face value in regards to revenue wasn't true once you dug into the strategies the sales team was using to acquire the customer. And so everything was a lie, which needed a little bit more of underwriting and doing all of the due diligence. Right. And it ended up being a business that sucks so much time out of Ashton that it distracted him from the things that were working really, really well, which was the agency. We're starting to really build human staffing and putting Human X together. And so had we not done that, potentially in hindsight, all that focus and energy goes to that to continue growing it. God knows what would have happened. Right. But then again, there's that saying things happen for a reason, right? So either things happen for you or against you. And I believe it happened for us and for a reason. At least we reframe that way to stay sane, right? And find the opportunities when things happen. So those two big things is never take things at face value. Always do your due diligence, especially if you're in the process of acquiring a business or going into business or into a partnership. And number two, treat your people well. But specifically, pay attention to those that are constantly good, because those people are usually very quiet about the deepest, darkest things are going on. And they will never voice it because they're afraid to let you down 100%. They're afraid to let you down. At the end of the day, that's what they're afraid of. And you've never really communicated that is it just. They just hold you to such a regard that, like, man, I can't tell them this. What if I tell them this and they're like, then maybe we should just find somebody else. That's kind of like how people think. And that's not true. And that's not true. Sometimes I think there are leaders out there that say, dude, how are you generally? Tell me everything. And you're gonna want to at least if their journeys to stay on, figure it out. If it's not, then we'll do a graceful exit. You know, we've done that a million times. But it's the quiet ones that I'm afraid of that do really good work. But they're quiet. There's so many dark thoughts in their hearts and in their minds.

[Savannah Brewer]

Yeah. Well, I really appreciate you sharing and just being so vulnerable and open. I feel like this is where the real juice gets squeezed, is when we're just all honest. Like, it can be freaking hard out here doing some of this.

[Isaac Toblin]

It is, it is. And the COO position is such an honor. And you said vulnerable. You know that for. I'm 43 now. I met Ashton when I was 37. So six years ago for that Delta. From six years ago to back in my life, I've never really held a job. I've always been like, like entrepreneurial. I've done real estate, insurance, all these things. And then I lost everything in 2019. Literally everything. Right? And so that's when I meet Ash and we grow. My life changes thanks to the space. You know, there's a lot of things that we can say about the info space and things like that, but at the same time, it's created such opportunities for a lot of people, which is a blessing. But one of the things that has always been very, very challenging for me, me, is quantifying my people skills in a way that's marketable. You know, people say I'm good with people, right? Like, how do you measure that? I increased ROI3x in the last six months. That's easy, right? But knowing that you're really good with people and have that skill set, it was always an insecurity for me until I was able to step into the CEO role and really understood, like, this is where my value is. Right? This is where my value. And sometimes you're like, in the startup where, like, yeah, your worth is measured by the result that you're able to bring and revenue is required, things like that. And luckily I had the work ethic to do that. But I felt the most fulfilled when I was able to kind of like, allow other people to grow in their skill set and really be that integrator, right? That's the word that they use between Ashton and the rest of the company. Because Ashton is very intense, in a good way. Way. You know, he has a lot of ideas, he wants to execute a lot of things. And I was able to kind of be that filter, always championing him in front of people. That's one thing a great CEO does, right? Really upholds the CEO. The CEO in the eyes of everybody that they're managing, right? Because they're not. They're not constantly down there with everybody else, right? They don't know. A lot of people know of Ash and they were even afraid of talking with him, right? Because he's so far out. They see him in ads this Even.

[Savannah Brewer]

This, I get this.

[Isaac Toblin]

And they see that they're. This is the super person. And then I know him intimately. I'm like, man, and he's the nicest dude. Like, you know, but. But there's a flavor for everyone, right? Just that my palette is more expanded. So it's like he and I work really well in that capacity. And so being a CEO really gave me a fewer people person to any degree. You have good organizational skills and you still have some capability of a visionary. I think it's such a really cool role to be in. And the reason I say that is as the company grows and, you know, you start hiring C level suites. Like, for example, at Springs, we have different C level positions. At a C level position, everybody's some type of visionary for their specific department. There's some type of visionary, right? Because I'm not doing the thing, I can see what I want as a cmo, right? But I gotta cast that vision to my marketing director, my media buyer, whoever is underneath me, right? As a creative director, if you have creatives under you, you have to be able to cast some type of vision, right? So in some capacity at a sea level, if you're holding one, you're. You're a visionary of some type, right? As a CEO, you have a vision of how the company should execute and operate. The vision of the visionary, the ultimate division, right? So Steam still being able to kind of zoom out and zoom in. Not a skill set everybody has. It's a muscle. It drains a lot. But it's such a valuable skill set to be able to. To see, come down, speak it to life, and execute on it. And that's really, really, really, really cool. And I think that's the most fulfilling part of being in the COO position.

[Savannah Brewer]

Yeah, there's a lot of specialness to the relationship dynamic with a CEO and a coo. I mean, like you were saying with you and Ashton, I felt very similar with Cole. You know, Kohl's also can be very intense and people can read him one way. And I feel so lucky that I got to know Cole as, like, truly one of my best friends. And what we built together, I mean, there's just. And I've told him this, I'm like, there's just no one else in my life that understands as much as you of, like, what we went through building this and about how much I developed as a person going through that. And it's just. It's really, really special. And especially to have. Have a CEO who also honors the CEO. Position and like you said, really puts value on someone who takes care of culture and people and the things that aren't so ROI focused. It's something that Cole said to me that made one of the most meaningful things he ever shared with me was, you know, our executive team was Cole, Bryan and Mitchell at the time and then me. He said, if Cole, Brian and I were the border to a painting, you're the color that fills it all in. And that truly felt like, felt so true for me was I was bringing the play and making sure that people were happy and healthy and involved in so much of the hiring. And it is just a really cool experience to go through. And the challenge is part of what at the end, when you get. No matter what happens at the end, when you look back, it's just a really cool thing to look back on. And speaking of creating the vision, I'm curious for you, what is something that you're most excited about in the next six months? Do you have any vision type things for yourself, personally or professionally?

[Isaac Toblin]

Yeah. So on the professional side, you know, for the last 12 months, you've been hearing about AI a lot, a lot, a lot. Who isn't speaking, but very few people are using it in a way that's actually practical. That's practical, right? Like it's, I think it's actually creating more confusion. A lot of people. I think right now it solves an output problem, but it doesn't solve a, a clarity problem overall. Right. And what I mean by that, if, if you don't have direct, clear focus on what you want, the AI is just going to make the problem worse. You're just going to get more garbage out and more clutter, more confusion. Right. So if you still have a clear vision and you've always been disciplined and you've always kind of like followed your fundamentals, AI is a practitioner of whatever craft you're in, man, it makes you superhuman. Right. And so what I'm most excited about now, it's like, now the tools are evolving in such a way where it allows people like myself right now, where I before relied on the martech to build me a visually beautiful funnel, in my mind I saw it and I know everything I need to go for. I couldn't execute it. But now with a 200 product, $200 a month product, you can just go in there. So long as you have the right structure or like of the copy and things like that, you can build entire funnels in couple hours that are visually appealing. What the future holds, right now, like in the next six months is like really incorporating AI into all our processes. But more importantly, now that we were talking about hiring at the beginning, right, it's like now part of the hiring process and conversation is like, are you AI literate? Right. Like, are you comfortable with it at least to face the challenge of using it? Because if you're not using it in some capacity, you're going to fall behind. Right. So that's what I'm really excited about, like seeing like what the talent is like coming into the market now and how talent that's currently they're evolving to keep up with the demands because the demands of business are just increasing. AI allows you to stay in the game. Right. Or fall out if you don't use it properly. So I'm excited really about AI overall and honestly, that's probably one of the biggest things right now. Now that I'm excited about is like, how. How do we create systems and processes with the minimum amount of people right now? So we went from like having all these people to now it's like, man, we can actually do this whole thing with three. And that's exciting. But you have to. So much goes into that. So much goes into that because to make something super simple, there's a lot of complexity on the back end that people don't see. Me. I'm really excited about what the AI and especially in the marketing space right now and even operationally, I mean, you're seeing a lot of these tools like Asana and everything, like adding AI into their processes and things like that. But AI is definitely something that I'm excited about and how it's being used to amplify business's impact in the market, not just do more stuff.

[Savannah Brewer]

Yep, totally. I've been trying to just stay. Stay on top of things. Like, I listen to the. The, like the. Is it the daily AI could be.

[Isaac Toblin]

There's so many newsletters at this point, you don't know who's actually writing one or who's using AI to write them.

[Savannah Brewer]

Right? Yeah.

[Isaac Toblin]

You have to be careful too. You have to be careful on who you're listening to and what you're picking up. I think right now we're still in the space where it's like, maybe there's like two or three people that actually know what they're talking about. I think your best bet right now it's pick two or three tools that really are going to help you and just dive in, make all the mistakes, don't feel shy about it, use it, fail It, Understand it. It. And once you have that, then kind of go out there and see like what the world is speaking about to kind of create the context. Because there's a big gap between what you see and the actual execution of it using AI tools right now.

[Savannah Brewer]

Big gap. It's going to be fascinating to see how just what happens. I was on Instagram the other day and I saw the, the video. It's just like, I don't even know the name of it, but Granny speaks or something like that about the story. Like, old woman who's like dressed in pink and she's like super wealthy and she gives this advice to the younger generation. The first video I saw, I legit thought it was real. I like send it to my friends and I was like, this lady is off her rocker. And then I started seeing more videos. I was like, oh, this is not real at all. Yeah, it's. It's pretty crazy how. Yeah, real. Some of it is getting which, which.

[Isaac Toblin]

To kind of put like a bow in that part specifically. The more that AI is kind of encroaching into our lives, the more I feel. You know how I was telling you, like, I felt like my value came from people.

[Savannah Brewer]

Yeah.

[Isaac Toblin]

It's even becoming even more true now because now you don't know what's real or not. And so the human connection is going to be. It's so undervalued and it's just going to continue to grow because people, at the end of the day, we're still human, we still want the connection. So if you know how to do that, you're still going to hire, you're going to win at hiring, you're going to win at growing, and AI is just going to help amplify that. But in a world that AI can make you seem better than what you are having, the people skills is definitely going to be a plus. Because now I can take somebody that's a C ish person, use AI. But if I have a really incredible human next to me, man, you can build something really cool.

[Savannah Brewer]

Exciting, exciting stuff.

[Isaac Toblin]

Yep.

[Savannah Brewer]

Well, Isaac, thank you so much for this. This has been absolutely amazing. If anyone's listening and wants to reach out or follow you, where can they do that?

[Isaac Toblin]

Super simple. My name. I think it's pretty unique. Just look me up on Facebook, Instagram, on LinkedIn, Isaac Toblin. Send me a friend request. Just let me know you heard me on the podcast. Just so that I know you're not trying to set me for a call and pitch me on something. Because that's kind of like where we're at right now. And then I don't even to the AI or not, but just tell me. Hey, I heard your podcast and I love that with Savannah on the podcast. Would love to connect and I'll accept your friend request and we can have all the chats in the world that you want.

[Savannah Brewer]

Perfect. Well, thank you so much again for your time.

[Isaac Toblin]

Absolutely. It was a pleasure being here.

[Cameron Herold]

You've been listening to Second in Command, brought to you by COO Alliance Founder Cameron Herold. 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.