C (2:23)

Yeah. Applicable.

B (2:25)

Very applicable. Can I just mention this, though? Because I don't feel like I talk about this enough. This is my Montana mug that I love. So if any of you wonder if I pick up this mug, just realize the magic is about to begin. Because the real truth is established 1889 Montana, State of Montana. It doesn't get better than that, Taren. So as I drink from this, the magic is going to happen. Here we go.

C (2:50)

Well, this is my Alaska whale mug.

B (2:54)

I love your whale mug. It's a whale of a tail. I love it. Taryn. Yes. Yes. Okay. So I love when you use that whale emoji on our zoom calls when we're out with clients and you're just like, yes, a whale. Anyway, this is what I found is a lot of times people can get hung up on the thought of culture and wanting the right team. And I totally get that. Like, like, skill set culture are huge with hires. I don't. I'd be the biggest idiot on the Internet to come on here and tell you, go and hire not based upon skill set and culture. That's like, what everybody knows is true. But I will say this. There does come a time when I have, you know, there's a client prospect. They're not really on our team. They've never been a client of mine, but they were referred to us, and they've been trying to hire for pretty relatively low position for a long time. And so our client referred to him and said, hey, Aaron, the collab team is awesome for this. Like, what? Why don't you let them come in here, do the gap analyzer, assess where there are gaps on your team based on those gaps in the team. Why don't you let them come and just seat themselves in your team, hold space for that, create standard operating procedures around the role, and then go do some recruiting for it. You guys are drowning. Like, why don't you just let them help? So this prospective client reaches out and they don't want us to do the gap, and they don't want us to come seed on their team, which I feel like is always the best. Right? Because then, like, let us just, like, take some of the burden off your team for the immediate, and then we'll go to the recruiting. That's what we do all the time. But they didn't want to do that. They just wanted to use this for recruiting. And so I said, no problem, we can do that. So we went back and forth and kind of dickered a little bit about price and that's fine. Like, I think people need to kick the tires. I totally get that for us. We're not a marketing agency though, right? I don't charge a percentage like a lot of marketing agents out there are. Anyway, from 10 to 30% of year one income is what they're going to charge you. We don't do that. We just do flat rate because we don't advertise as a marketing agency. So I gave them the whole spiel, the whole shtick. Is this a good story so far?

C (4:46)

You.

B (4:47)

Are you engaged?

C (4:47)

I love it. Yeah.

B (4:49)

Good, good, good. It's the second time you've heard it, so I want to make sure it's really good for you. So anyway, they decided not to go with us. They're going to keep doing it on their own or they had some other agency, they want to use this.

C (4:58)

Great.

B (4:59)

So then they circle back around and we have the same conversation. They decide not to use it. So then they circle back around and then we have the same conversation and they decide. I see. So, so now my. I've got like a. This is like a 16 email chain of us having this conversation. They've been going about this for months, you know, and when I looked at like drill down on, okay, what is this exact role they're trying to hire for? It's like, it's like a less than 40k a year job. Like we're talking about, like, like, this is not a hard hire. This is not like somebody top of the food chain. This is like your team is probably drowning under this demand and that's in that kind of situation where I'm like, dude, freaking hire somebody. You can guarantee you've had probably over this amount of time, dozens of applicants that you vetted. You know, any, any project that we start recruiting for, we knock down at least like 100, 150 applicants straight out of the can. Right. And so then for us, we're identifying the best eight or 10. We do first round interviews with and shake up to you the best two or three, let you make a decision. I would say when it comes to a low cost, hire somebody that you just need to get in there and do the work because you're burning out team, freaking make the hire. Like, don't, don't dick around. Taren, what do you think about that?

C (6:12)

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it's, you Know, you're going to be wasting a lot of time not hiring them at that point. If it's somebody you need at an entry level position. And that means things are getting missed or people are being overworked or, you know, bandwidth's being reached, processes are lacking. Um, so it's a great spot just to get people into the door. I mean, we're still gonna, you know, us doing. If we did it, we're still looking for the best fit, you know, that can do the job as well as best fit. Culturally, that's gonna align with your core values. But beyond that, you know, get somebody in, and if they only work out two months, that's fine, you know, you can try again. But if they do work out, then you got them in there.

B (6:56)

I just think a lot of times what's probably happening is you're probably using somebody that's way overqualified to do a much lesser role, which means you're not even getting the best bang for your buck out of your more qualified person. It would be better for you to get in somebody that maybe doesn't quite, you know, like, is a maybe, but they have most of the things that check off on it. Try them, dude. Get them in there. Let's see how it works. When I do think that you should slow it down a little bit is like, if you're making a higher. A higher, higher. How about that? A higher hire. That's amazing. That's profound. You're making a more elevated position higher within the corporation. Somebody that's got a bigger voice, right? Somebody that's got more like a bigger shareholder in the pieces of the pie, right? Somebody that's going to be. That's going to make some pretty big waves once they step into the water. You know, I mean, I think that that's. That's somebody. I would say, yeah, be slow, be careful. You know, I mean, like, I. I know what. Stephen Diaz was going out on paternity leave. You know, he and Chelsea were having their second. Their second baby. They were going to try and hustle in the door a director of ops. In fact, I think it was a COO at the time. And I remember coming alongside of him just as a friend and saying, brother, they. We were already doing work for them anyway. I said, hey, pump the brakes. Like, pump the brakes on that. Just, you know us, love us, trust us, let us step into that spot. Just for the time that you're away on paternity leave. What are we talking about? Maybe two, four, six weeks at max, like don't hustle in somebody whose voice is that big that you don't know, can they do the things they say they can do? Because no matter how much vetting you go through, the bottom line is probably the first six months of a big hire like that, you're really going to get your feet under you. On does this person know what they say they know? Can this person do what they say they can do? And I would say you want to give them some time to prove that, right? So if you're not going to even be on the field, don't hustle this person in because they could change the whole culture of your organization if you're just going to leave them at the helm. So we talked Stephen into a slowdown and it was great. I felt like we were really able to help Steven Diaz and his wife build rainmaker family over the next 12 months to a place where they were able to hire somebody. And they actually ended up raising up somebody internally and that was awesome because they were able to come through Ops experts academy for us at the collab team where we were able to mentor them and really pour into them. And Kimberly turned out to be an incredible director of ops and has gone on to, as Steven has changed and pivoted directions, has gone, gone on to be a director of ops for Brandon Elliott over at Credit Council Elite, another amazing organization. But I think that the, the story of the Tale of Two Cities, Taren, is there is a time when you want to hire quick and that I would say that's when the team is drowning. And it's a pretty non consequential rule. Right. This is just somebody needs to go out there and make hay while the sun's out. Right. But this one over here, that's more strategic. I would say be careful on this one. Take your time on this one. I know, Taran, you were just in the middle of a recruiting project for Michael Jr. Amazing comedian and entrepreneur in the space right now. Maybe talk about that because I feel like you did a really good job at like let's be slow, let's be careful, let's vet some candidates. What are your thoughts on that?

C (9:54)

Yeah, I mean we went through a lot of applications, got a lot of people interviewed and into the pipeline and at that point, you know, Michael and the team, they did take their time too, vetting on their own, setting up some personal meetings with people that were in town, doing a couple follow up interviews, really working through whether they think they're a good fit for them. So internally they had Their own hold ups on, okay, we really want this person. But we know how much we're about to spend on it. We don't need to rush into it. I mean business is flowing. We've got things we could really use them for. But I've still got things going on. We've still got money coming in and money going out. We're here to stay, so let's take our time. And that's what they did. Took their time and got the right person in.

B (10:44)

Megan Green, man. Right. They hired the amazing Megan Green to become their director of ops. And I think that man, what a smart lady, amazing human being. But right before that they had come pretty close to pulling the trigger on somebody that was exponentially probably more than they should pay at the level of business they are. Right. And I think that you always have to take that into consideration. Like we're, are we at, in our growth cycle? Do, do we want to put that much of the pieces of the pie towards this one position? And I know that particular guy that, that Michael had really had, really enjoyed it was like the experience level we were concerned like does he have like, is the experience in this area? Like as far as Michael's got a very niche down thing that he does and he's brilliant at it. Like does this person coming in have like experience in that same space? And I'm like has he, does he have a proven track record? And, and the reality was he didn't really, you know, it was going to be a little bit of a gamble. And so I think you and I both were like, this sounds like a great dude, probably has an amazing skill set but maybe just be a little bit careful because that's a, that's a really high price tag, you know, which, the role, it's a pretty high level role but like be really careful. And I, I, I just think Megan Green is such an amazing fit for what they were looking for for the sake of elevating Michael's brand to where it's going. And, and I think just another story of like pace it, pace it for the role. Like make sure you're looking at the right candidates, make sure you're not rushing something. But I do think there is a time when you need to rush and that time is when you need people out there like clearing the forest. Like we're, we're falling behind. You know, I know another client of mine is, they've got a, they have a, they sell online physical products and so they have a warehouse associated with their brand. And you Know, we've been a little bit wondering, like, should we be doing more hiring in the warehouse? Especially maybe could we divide up the two sides? And maybe because they have two sides, they have those receiving and those that are sending on these two different sides. You know, they get a bunch of merchandise, and then they got to get a bunch of merchandise up based on sales. And we've been talking about, should we be doing more hiring there? You know, and we've been a little bit slow because we want to be careful of the labor ratio. But then as we drilled down into it, we realized, holy cow, we're actually paying crazy overtime to the people that are on the field right now. That even just in the overtime dollars, it would probably justify a whole nother hire that could offset the load better and actually make everybody work a lot less stressed. Because what we're starting to find was some of the people that are great performers, people that are excellent workers, amazing team. We're starting to burn out, right? Because you can only push people at overtime for so many hours before you're going to start seeing quality drop. You know, you're going to start seeing attitudes change. You're going to start seeing them, like, maybe not doing as well at home, and then that home life is gonna start bleeding into your work life. And I think those are things sometimes the visionaries don't always take in consideration is they see somebody that's a high performer and they're a high achievement. They're like, yes, give them more, give them more, give them more. Without realizing. I know everybody has like an ideal performance ratio where it's like, no, no, this is where they perform the best. And if you start moving into redline, they may look good at the beginning, but. But that's got a limited time. Do you wanna speak to that turn? Cause I feel like you deal with a lot of team that oftentimes ends up in the red. And you have to really consult with the visionaries that you're working with on. Hey, we need to be careful here because we're starting to see some drop in performance.

C (14:08)

Yeah, and a great. I mean, it's. It's really easy to spot that kind of stuff with hourly people. And you're paying overtime. And you can see the timesheets. You could see the direct costs. Once you get into salary people, though, it's a little bit harder to spot. And that's where the Gap analyzer app really comes in. Use too, to see who's being overextended. But yeah, you can easily burn people out especially, you know, if it's, if it's a quick turnaround type company and things are just happening quickly. It's like, oh no, we just need this one thing for next week. But then after next week, it's another one thing for next week. And it just keeps going and going and there is no actual rest stop coming up for you. You know, it was really easy to burn people out just in regular day to day stuff. But then there's scope creep when you're growing, starting to take on new stuff. One person might have been doing everything and you know, before you know it, customer support's taken up half her job, right. And really her expertise is in something else that she could be utilized more in. I mean, nobody's really stopped to ask, oh, maybe we should hire a customer support person, even part time, just to take care of the basic necessities. The lowest burns of the customer support free up this person to do what they're brilliant at and probably even happier doing than just responding to tickets. So yeah, that's the number one thing we really come in and help with too is we'll take over kind of those really small scope creeps too, of, okay, we can have somebody do customer support a few hours a week. We can do, you know, all these different things and you can start focusing in your sweet spots and then we can start hiring in beyond us too. But that's. That really gets people jazzed up too, once they get back to what they're supposed to be doing and what they're more originally hired for instead of what they've ended up doing.

B (16:06)

And there is nothing like seeing somebody get jazzed up. Boy, when they get jazzed up, they are stoked. They start using jazz hands more often. You know, I'm saying there's all kinds of energy coming out of them. Jazzed up is where you want to live. So you said a couple things there that I thought were really, really good. The first thing is I do think that visionaries, and if you're a visionary listening to this or if you are an ops person that serves a visionary, I think it's really important to identify a lot of times the energies that visionaries put in while essential, right? Because the visionary is usually the ones that are knocking down the dollars, right? They're the ones closing the deals. They're the ones that are up in front on the stage. They're the ones making the presentation, presentation, making the pitch oftentimes. And that energy is huge. And that energy is big. But usually that energy is Pretty isolated, right? Like it's usually to the event time, right? Or this main push or something that is pretty isolated to time. But typically the team is the one that picks up the lift after that, right? And sometimes visionary doesn't recognize they have more bandwidth to do isolated energy. Like, right, they can show up on more stages, they can start doing more things, but there's a pretty good lift that comes before it to ramp it in, right? And after it to fulfill it, you know, and sometimes visionaries don't realize, man, I'm back to back to back to back to back stack in my team. And they feel okay because they still have bandwidth to do it, but their team needs help. Like their team is drowning. And a lot of times they don't realize they've been redlining their team for a long time, They've been pegging their team for a long time. And you start to see people fall off. You know, we've seen clients who've lost really great people because they just redline too long and before long they, they still love you, they still want, they, they would stay here. It's set for, they just don't want to work like this forever. And then sometimes visionaries can be like, well, if they're not a team player, well, if they, they don't want to work hard and it's like, no, no, no, they've proven they're a team player and they've even proven that they work hard, but nobody wants to run at full out sprint for miles. That's not, that's not realistic. I'm saying, like, nobody can do it. The best sprinters in the world can't do it. So nobody wants to be in perpetual sprint mode. And I think having a variation where, hey, we do this many launches per year and we'd spend this much time in planning and this much time in fulfilling and making sure it's really paced. And if you want to increase that, realizing there's probably an economy as a scale of that, you know, we're going to have to increase the amount of players because we don't have an unlimited amount of bandwidth with the limited team we have now. So I think taking those kinds of things into consideration, the other thing that we talked about was a labor percentage. Do you know the labor percentage for your business? And I would say not only just your business, but labor percentage commensurate to the kind of line items that you're selling you. I mean, because some, some of the products that you sell have a higher labor ratio to them than Other products that you sell, you know, and really being clear on, and if you're not clear on that, we would love to come alongside you and help you get clarity on that. But really making decisions based upon what should my labor ratio be?

C (19:11)

And.

B (19:12)

And according to the products in my product offering, are there things I need to take into consideration and not just think, well, I've got enough people, I've got a lot of people on the field. But really ask yourself, no, no, no. But like, what's the spread? What's your business model? How redlined are you people? Because the, the thing that I think a lot of people don't take in consideration is you've invested a lot of money into the people that have been with you, like, keep them healthy. Because the fastest way you can lose money is having somebody quit unnecessarily. And then you have to start back at zero to build them back up and help them understand your message, help them understand the way your voice, help them understand how you fulfill. Like, no matter. Even if you hire some of the best players, it takes them time to get that same traction. It's going to take them a few months to. To get even back up to somewhere close to the speed probably of some of your best players now. So don't lose them to burnout.

C (20:06)

Mm, yeah. Yeah. I think too, it's. You gotta realize when you're. When you're going to hire. I think a lot of people, you know, just kind of assume, maybe I'm looking for more of the same of what I've already got. But really what you want to be looking for is, you know, what am I, what do I need to fill in? You know, if you have one person, like I said, they're running copy, they're running support, you're going to go to them and say, okay, you're maxed out. I don't need another person that can run copy and support. Why would I have two people doing both? I'm going to transition you. Which one do you want to do? Because maybe they do prefer one or the other. And then you're going to hire for the missing after that. So it's always good. You can start with your people too and say, which role would you prefer? Like, where is your strong suit? What's going to make you the happiest? Maybe you do want to be customer support. Maybe you want to. You did find it fulfilling. And so then we're gonna hire somebody for copy. So, yeah, just. Just don't hire more jacks of all trades. You know, the bigger you get, the more, the more isolated and focused each, each of your hires should be 100%.

B (21:17)

And that's why I would always add K for right like put them through the gap Analyzer. If you haven't checked that out. Gapanalyzer.com Something we sell day in and day out and help people with day in, day out. Gap Analyzer.com take people through the Gap Analyzer to identify where their time's going to and then take them through a delegate elevate exercise. EOS has a great tool called Delegate and Elevate. You can find it on their website in their toolbox. It's, it's a great thing. If you want it from us, I'd love to send it, send it to you easy. It's a free tool for you to put people through on determining how can I elevate people up to the highest bang for the buck of what I get out of them? And how can we delegate down anything that just does not require their brilliance anymore? And things that are quite frankly burning them out because it's too low of a task for them. We should get that off their plate. So I get the best bang for my buck and we keep them happiest in their role. Right. What do they love? What do they love doing? What are they great at? That's where we want them to live. And how can we get off from the things that aren't. And then once you've identified what those roles are, put those to a job description, these three to five key roles for the job description and then every quarter take them through a quarterly eval. EOS has a great system called 555. Take them through a quarterly eval and ask them, are these still the same core three to five duties that you're doing and if not, if there's been scope creep, well, let's go back to the drawing board and let's, let's take them back through the gap, take them back to the delegate elevate and determine what, what job description should they be living from and maybe there's going to be a change and then go hire accordingly. So, Taryn Turner, thank you for being an expert at all things recruiting and operating and just being just a good whale of a dude. Appreciate you for that. Well, yeah, Ops Experts, thanks for joining us for another week here on Ops Experts Club. We'll see you next week. Talk to you all soon.

C (22:52)

See ya.