The Breakthrough Hiring Show: Recruiting and Talent Acquisition Conversations
Welcome to The Breakthrough Hiring Show! We are on a mission to help leaders make hiring a competitive advantage.
Join our host, James Mackey, and guests as they discuss various topics, with episodes ranging from high-level thought leadership to the tactical implementation of process and technology.
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- Shift your team’s culture to a talent-first organization.
- Develop a step-by-step guide to hiring and empowering top talent.
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The Breakthrough Hiring Show: Recruiting and Talent Acquisition Conversations
EP 115: Navigating uncharted territory in the tech market: Trust, retention, and adaptability in growing startups.
In this episode, host James Mackey discusses the secrets of building a thriving business in uncharted territories specifically in the tech market, with Charles Frydenborg, CEO of MarketMuse. They share insights on fostering trust and retention within organizations, unveiling the power of radical transparency and the crucial role of adaptability in business.
0:39 Charles Frydenborg's background
2:55 Retention in the tech market
15:33 Keeping culture in place in a down market.
25:16 The importance of adaptability in business
33:13 Focusing on success
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Our host James Mackey
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Hello, welcome to the Breakthrough Hiring Show. I'm your host, james Mackey. Thank you for joining us today. We are joined by Chuck Frydenborg, chuck, thank you for joining me, james, thank you.
Speaker 2:I appreciate the opportunity.
Speaker 1:Really happy to have you here. Before we jump into it, could you share a little bit about yourself?
Speaker 2:Yeah, be happy to. Really started my career in sales. Started as an individual contributor way back when in the late 90s at Gartner and had a lot of success and followed that logical progression from being an individual contributor to sales leadership Over the years. Gartner a wonderful tenure there had the opportunity to run larger teams and chase bigger numbers Eventually left Gartner, went to Rosetta Stone to build out for them what was going to be a division of the company selling into corporations. Up until then they had sold into government and higher ed and K through 12. We went at the corporate sector, grew that business into about a $17 million business in the last three. In three years After that I made a purposeful decision because I really wanted. I enjoyed that taste of building something and wanted to work for smaller companies, startups, and for the last eight years I have worked for a couple of companies, most currently Market Muse in the content optimization software space, and for the last three years I've been blessed to lead Market Muse as CEO.
Speaker 1:I love it.
Speaker 1:I love it, and so one of the things to start us off today that we a lot of what we're discussing today is very topical to the current environment, specifically in the tech market. We are seeing a lot of conversations around everything from retention to, essentially, a mindset shift in terms of how to think about success in this market. How to be successful in this market, balancing cash, keeping a productive team in place, hitting goals and getting even more so into culture. How do you retain they keep the culture strong as well when you're hitting challenges such as layoffs. These are things that a lot of executives are thinking through and there really are no easy answers and we, I think, on this call, we want to provide a playbook. Every executive tuning in is going to have to figure out how to apply it to their specific company, based on the challenges or opportunities that they're currently facing.
Speaker 1:However, I think that there are some fundamental best practices that we can share that can really help folks navigate everything that's going on right now. So our first topic that we outlined was regarding retention, and I would really love to get your thoughts on, as a startup leader, ceo of a startup growth stage, a growing startup right now. Over the past year or so, how have you focused on retaining your best folks, keeping them engaged again, particularly considering the challenges that we're seeing in the tech market right now? Holistically right, what are your thoughts towards retention with your team? It's a great question.
Speaker 2:And when you I think you used the phrase a couple of moments ago about how you think about retention in this quote unquote market. The market that we're in is one that demands really relentless adjustment. I think into my tenure at Market Muse, when my first couple of years here, we were growing at 50% plus each year and at that point, when you're talking about retention, you're able to, as a startup, you're able to pay a bit less than market because you're selling the vision of the continued aggressive growth into the company and that eventual mythical exit Hopefully not completely mythical, but you know what I'm saying. Then the pandemic popped and we went from aggressive year over year growth to burning much more cash, actually experiencing declining revenues and for the purposes of that shared vision that I talked about before, valuations that for startups and VCs and private equity firms have absolutely cratered Right. So now you've got to sell a different vision. The vision can't be. Let's just keep buckling down, because at the end of the road there's this wonderful path. Because that wonderful path, that vision, is really hard to see at times.
Speaker 2:So we went through a period where when full transparency we had a lot of folks that were like, yeah, the reason that I joined is really no longer here and they're gone, and what we had to do me as the leader of the company and also my leadership team, because they are incredibly impactful, I'd say, in many ways, as impactful as me you have to adopt a policy of just radical candor, of trying to articulate hey, this is where we are, the reality of our circumstance dictates that we operate this way, this is the plan and if we execute on this plan effectively, this is where it can take, it take us and this is what that can mean to you.
Speaker 2:And after going through a really rough period of attrition during that great resignation period last year into early 2023, I'm happy that we have stabilized. We have not had any what I would call regrettable departures since, really, the end of March Knock on wood but we feel like we retained trust with the candor that we shared with our associates. We were transparent about the plan. We made our associates a part of that plan that we set out to execute and it's early stage it's only been one and a half quarters since then but the plan is working and people are buying it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think the fundamentally like, if you look before attrition, you get into employee engagement and it gets back to the fundamental belief in the company and the vision and these types of things. And I think, to some extent, when, as a company, pivots right and evolves to meet whatever demands that the current market is placing on the company, to some extent there's going to be unavoidable churn because the plan that you developed isn't necessarily going to be aligned either with the skill set or the desire of employees. Just to some extent it might be unavoidable and to some extent maybe it's better for folks to leave if they aren't aligned with the direction that the company needs to go in. Then there's the folks that maybe there's a middle ground, maybe they have the right skill set and with the right level of radical transparency they'll be bought into the company again, like one of the things that I've been thinking a lot about lately, not even in terms of leading a company, but for all of us, like this is just a shared human experience. In my opinion, when there's a tough time, it makes you consider how much something matters to you and it makes you evaluate it and determine is this still important enough for me to pursue, and I think it's like that's what's why we need corrections and why we actually need struggle in areas of our life. It doesn't matter. I'm not just talking about business, I'm talking about everywhere. When you hit some kind of hard time, it makes you think about your values, who you are as a person, who you want to become, and you either double down on something because it's still aligned with who you want to become, or you walk away from it, and so I think it's actually when you hit a hard time, it's an opportunity to recommit and to get people to think about recommitting and again, not everybody is going to, and that's okay and other people's. If we can, if we do what you're saying the radical calendar you can get the right people who are aligned with that to recommit and double down, and I think that's essentially what we're talking about here. Let's get those folks that there was that spark, the fire that wanted they wanted to come on board and let's figure out how to keep that going and double down on that with the right people.
Speaker 1:I've been giving this a lot of time because we're all in this boat together, some companies more than others, probably my company as a contract recruiting and better recruiting RPO firm doing hiring specifically or mostly for the tech industry. We've gotten it hit very hard right. A lot of our partners on the recruiting tech side have gotten it hit very hard, and so these are conversations that I'm having quite often and it's, you know, the more time I have to reflect and, given the fact that we've seen this kind of correction for the past year it wasn't like COVID, where it was like down three months and then we started seeing growth again We've had time to really think about this and so, yeah, it's an interesting conversation. This again, this is just where my head's been at the whole thing.
Speaker 2:I agree with so much of what you said, and what it triggered in my mind is something that I try to be very cognizant of, and I alluded to the fact that I moved into this role three years ago. Up until then, at Market News, I had been leading sales and then leading revenue, and when I moved into the CEO role, I had one of my mentors say Chuck, the thing you have to keep top of mind all the time is that people will always be watching you. Now and that's not some voyeuristic thing, it's about they are looking to you to see how you are going to behave and how you are going to react. Something as seemingly minor is that when you're in a Zoom call and you have a bunch of people on there, are you engaged and present or are you multitasking? Because if you're doing that, then it's okay for everybody else to do it.
Speaker 2:Let's shift that example, then, over to values. Every place I've worked I'm sure it's the same thing for you Companies talk about values and they talk about they have this great culture, and then, the first time the business is stressed, the first time something goes sideways, you often see that those values are compromised. All right. So when you are in a situation like this, where we're talking about retention, the most important thing is trust. If your associates see you blink, if they see you behave in a way which isn't consistent with the values that you've articulated and that you've demanded of them, your credibility is shot. They no longer trust, they don't believe, and that's when you start to hemorrhage. Knock on wood. We seem to have a group of folks that are a part of the market use family, that are bought in and committed, and I'm grateful for that every day.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think, just getting back to the radical candor part, I see more companies doing this right than I saw five, 10 years ago. I feel like it's hopefully things are moving in the right direction in terms of at least in the startup growth stage. World companies are. A lot of the business owners, ceos I know, are being pretty damn transparent, with people pulling up spreadsheets and things of this nature, and it really does go a very long way. I think what's been interesting is again, just in the recruiting space and the tech industry. We've had to do a fair amount of layoffs for our team to make sure that we're able to weather the storm and come out to the other side of it. There's been hard times and hard conversations. We've been able to. People still believe in what we're building and that's really special to see when we hear from our employees and our advisors and our customers and it's like that reinforcing act of hey, we believe in what you're building. We are looking forward to continue to grow once we get past this phase.
Speaker 1:I honestly, when I look back to what potentially has created that, it's really just about, with the resources you have, doing the best you can for people. The idea of just people first isn't about perks. It's about where you invest your time and your money and, fundamentally, how do you see what causes success in business? I'm a huge advocate and believer and I actually don't even think it's like belief. I think it's just simply logic. People are the core of all business success. You can't build a product, you can't sell anything. The core of everything is people. When you operate a business from that model, I think that impacts how you think about your team members and how you think about your customers.
Speaker 1:There have been, again, hard times where we've had to make hard decisions At a high level. When I look at it, I wish we could have done something more, something that would be even better for the folks that we're working with or the folks that we had to part ways with, or something like that. But again, what's interesting is just by level setting, doing the most we can with the resources we have. People are understanding of it and it's been nice to see that reaction versus, I suppose, environments where you're not as transparent or it's not as clearly understood how many resources are available, what can be done. People might have a different feeling if they're continuing with you or if they're laid off or whatnot. It's been interesting it's been actually silver lining to the market over the past year has been really seeing how our whole little ecosystem around the business has maintained a pretty positive impact despite the challenges. I think that that's really the benefits.
Speaker 1:Guys, this isn't the end. Even if somebody is no longer working with us, these are going to be people that hopefully we're bringing back, or these are going to be future customers or, at a minimum, these are going to be people that I'll be a reference for the rest of their careers. It's like the tech ecosystems are going to evolve. People are going to jump around, they're going to go different places, but we should always be thinking about it as moving forward as a team, even if, regardless of how roles may change, your companies may change. Ultimately, it's a team effort that involves your customers, your vendors, your advisors, your employees. It just changes form, people change roles, but you always want to approach it. As I'm expanding my team over the years, as I'm expanding my network, we want to move forward in such a way that is going to empower all of these folks to be better off. I think that impacts retention and culture too, having that mindset.
Speaker 2:I think there's a couple of pillars of having that culture and retaining that trust that bear being emphasized, because it's something we're living through right now. One is, if there's going to be sacrifice that is required of the team, that sacrifice be shared. In our example, we did a top-down 15% salary cut because we, being a VC-funded company, that, given the impact of our business from the pandemic and given some of the business results that came out of that, we were not in a position to get a raise done. At least we couldn't get a raise done where the cost of the money wasn't crippling. We made a decision to make the transition from VC-funded to bootstrapped. That meant going back to last year, that meant letting a bunch of people go and that meant taking every bit of cost we could out of the business. That salary cut was, unfortunately, a component of that.
Speaker 2:The second half of it, which I think is equally important, is that you ensure that the success of the company and the perceived success your individual associates have are aligned. You don't want to, as a CEO, get in front of the company and say, hey, we just had and these are real data points Q2. We just had a great turnaround quarter for our company. We had a 10% overall AR growth in Q2, and we turned the first profitable quarter in the company's history. But oh, by the way, I'm going to keep you going on that 15% base salary cut.
Speaker 2:We didn't get rid of it because that would not have been prudent, but we cut it in half. So you know it was explained. Hey, this is the success we've had. It's due to your contributions. So this is what we're doing as a result, and then being proactive in saying I know you'd like me to say we're going to have this go away, but we can't yet and this is why. But let's have another successful Q3 and Q3 is looking a lot like Q2 for us and then we'll be able to get rid of the salary reduction.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and this actually brings up a point where you're talking about successes and then also remaining challenges in the business and hopefully you're in a situation where the challenges are getting a little bit better based on the wins. One of the things that's been really an interesting development for me as a CEO has been balancing those wins with the reality of a P&L and sharing that with, because it's really interesting right now like we're getting so many amazing strategic wins in the business. We set up a board of advisors and our board is freaking stacked with incredibly bright people who have the exact experience that we need to build this company to be the number one category leading embedded recruiting company in the tech industry. We are very well positioned with the connections and the expertise that we are receiving. And then also with the show, we are striking incredible partnerships bringing on an incredible caliber of guests on a consistent basis. We struck a partnership deal with Greenhouse. Daniel Chait, the co-founder and CEO, is running a quarterly episode inviting on guests. We're now looking to replicate that with other category leading recruiting and HR tech companies. So there are all these incredible strategic wins that are going to enable us to explode with growth when we're coming out of this correction and it's like these wins are coming in every week or two but they're not the wins that like the short term wins that we need to grow the business or to be thriving as a business in the short term. And so it's been very interesting to tow that line where it's.
Speaker 1:I want to share the win so folks know again, like, how the work is paying off. Hey, we heard from this customer. They absolutely love us. Right, they're not going to continue because they don't need to hire, but they are absolutely thrilled with the work that you're doing. We're getting this strategic win and people get really excited. And then it's like to be very clear we are doing all these great things but they do not solve our short term problems in the business and we are not out of the woods yet. This is our plan to do so we're going to continue on these long term things.
Speaker 1:There's some shorter term impact things, but it's like you want to share the wins so people feel really proud. And then you also want to share, like, the vision of the future, and then it's also. But you have to counter about. You have to make sure that they still understand the reality of the present day, and so that's been something I feel like I've had to fine tune as a leader over the past year, because I want them to be excited but I also don't want them to think, oh shit, it sounds like everything's great now. So it's just communicating that very carefully has been a lesson that I feel is an evolution as whom, becoming as a leader, that is. I feel like it sounds simple, but it took some fine tuning on my part to get that right. A lot of simple things were really hard.
Speaker 2:And here you I think anybody that's in your position of mind at some point in their career have demonstrated a talent to motivate people, motivate groups and motivates motivations about realizing that there are different things that make different people tick, and understanding what those things are and being able to connect to that on a consistent basis. But that can't happen at the exclusion of pragmatism. Right, you will not sustain, you will not have sustained success at motivating people if it's based on BS. Right, people have to buy into you and understand that you are real and part of that this isn't a word, but part of that realness is pragmatism. That they know you're giving them not selective truth or not just ridiculously rosy optimism, but you're sharing with them what's real and you're basing decisions on that. And if you connect all those things, they might not like it but it'll make sense.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think so. I feel like it's a hard time. Ideally, the feedback you want from employees is hey, thank you for being transparent. If you're getting some of those messages, some of that reinforcement, it's not, it wasn't a fun call. We had to talk about real challenges that we're going to have over the next three to six months, potential layoffs, whatever it might be. But people really want to know and I think it's I honestly like what I've been doing too is I just open it up for questions as well.
Speaker 1:So like I'll go through the wins and the challenges and we'll pause at essentially different segments of the conversation and open it up for questions, which I also have found to be, when you're talking about trust, right To be very helpful and I share a lot. I can't really even I share everything that I can that I think would be relevant, and sometimes I don't try to get down in the weeds if I don't feel like it would be helpful. But I'm always like I try to be as open as possible and yeah, I think it's. It's definitely necessary if you want to retain trust and a culture during a downturn. It doesn't mean everybody's going to love it or be happy. But the other interesting thing I would point out, though, is it's interesting to see the evolution of this market.
Speaker 1:I remember when the market started to turn, we had to part ways with a few folks about nine months ago, and we had been very transparent up front. It said, hey, these are the challenges in the business. Most of our staff is billable, they're not billing. Like I I don't, there's literally nothing within my power that I can do. Like if I tried to retain these folks, then we would put everybody's job security at risk, like it just isn't sustainable. And so we had to let a few folks go, and I got a couple of Glassdoor reviews saying the company was financially mismanaged and overhired and this and the other. And it's no. And I, you try to explain. On the Glassdoor reviews, look like this is the situation. It was really shitty, we didn't want to do it, but the reality is that this is our reality now. It's not meeting our expectations, and it will, but it's not now.
Speaker 1:And what is interesting, though, is, like now that everybody's seen what's happened in the tech market, like six, nine, 12 months afterward, nobody's really saying that anymore. Like you heard, like at the beginning, like people were frustrated all this financial mismanagement, all this down the other. I'm not saying that it didn't exist with some of these VC back companies. I know some companies did over hire but they were a little bit probably too optimistic in a sense.
Speaker 1:But I think that also where we're at is it's almost a lot easier, in a sense, to communicate with everyone in the tech market right now, because everybody gets it now versus nine months ago. In some cases not most cases, most cases of my team members got it, but in a few cases I wasn't really able to explain to them the reality of the market and they felt like it was more of a what did we do wrong? Type of thing versus hey, demand for hiring is going down. So I do feel like in a sense, it's actually easier to communicate over the past like six to nine months that it was like a year ago. I don't know if you experienced that at all.
Speaker 2:I have, and I'm thinking back to when you and I talked last month and we talked about doing this podcast today, and one of the words you used was, or we talked about was, a need to be adaptable. I think a lot of times when decisions are made and perhaps they impact people that are less experienced I'm not sure Chuck in his mid to late 30s would have understood this, to be honest. But the environment around you is not static. Even if you make the best informed decision at a given time, six months, three months later, sometimes longer, those conditions change and I feel one of the hardest things for me in my role is really having to remind myself all the time that you need to keep adapting, you need to keep evolving. I think about our space and we haven't really gotten into that yet. I mentioned we're a content optimization software company. What we help our clients do is generate content that is optimized for topical authority and subject matter expertise and through that, have it drive search performance, and we have several buckets of value that we deliver right. We advise our clients as to what they should be writing about, given the topical authority they've already created with the content that they have. So we help them build out that content planning component. And then we get into and we've always been really good at and valued for on page writing assistance.
Speaker 2:You may have heard that this little like generative AI, chat GPT thing has exploded over the last year. That has forced us to evolve, right, it would have been foolish for us to continue to lean into. We can help you create content from scratch that will perform for search. So now we have a chat GPT integration, so we're merging our optimized functionality with what chat GPT can do. But as a company, we had to change how we emphasized and differentiated ourselves, and we're doing that through content strategy and content planning, because the generative AI thing is going to continue to jump and it's only going to accelerate.
Speaker 2:So us putting our chips in the table of hey, we'll help you write great content, didn't feel really prudent, right? So now, since you've already got all this stuff, what we're focused on is we're going to help you through content planning, deciding what to write. We're going to give your writers prompt engineering guidance to help them understand what they should be focused on and I'm sorry I've gone on a little longer here than I would have liked, but that having to respond to your external conditions, whether they are market conditions, competitive conditions, fiscal conditions, cash conditions. If you, as a CEO, hesitate on those things, if every time you are making your move, you're making it a month or two late, you're failing your company, and to me, that is the hardest part of the job right now, given everything that's going on around us.
Speaker 1:I agree. So our chairman of our advisory board, that's basically a huge part of his advice. Particularly leading in a downturn is adaptability fast and I think the hardest part of that science is making impactful changes quickly without having on this step that could somehow further harm the business and we can't expect to be perfect, but we have to try to get it right and make one to three like the way I would see it is like in a downturn, one to three strategic decision, like just a few impactful decisions to adapt to our environment and get them right, and I feel like that's really what I learned from him. He had built and scaled a incredibly successful business and sold one and he was basically just okay for my business as a services company. He was like look, you got a couple levers here. One open up your pricing model. You offer this pricing engagement, offer this and that as well to give people flexibility depending on how they want to engage. Then one of our other advisors was like look at offering something in return for longer term engagement. And it was like basic stuff, but it was like a few key initiatives opening up pricing models, work with your best customers, see what you can do to lock in longer term engagements and then from there, what can you be doing to open up additional revenue channels or leveraging relationships or whatever it might be, but it was like a handful of things.
Speaker 1:But the speed to move fast or the ability to move fast on changes is something that I think really benefited my advisor, the guy who built and sold a company like during COVID. He was also in my space, right and better recruiting, and so he had to drastically change his model very quickly to make sure that his team could survive that and so like. Within two weeks he had rolled out two other different pricing engagement models for his customers and I was like, damn, that's really fast. I'd be worried about doing that so quickly. And now, granted, he has a ton of experience right, so maybe that's what makes it easier too. But yeah, I think being adaptable it doesn't have to be like changing everything in your business, but what are like a couple of high leverage things you can do that you can be reasonably confident or the right thing to do and can you do it fast. I think it's really good.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I agree. I think it's finding that balance right. We keep using the word adaptable. That's great. What you don't want to be doing, though, is chasing every bright, new, shining object or log. That's just oh there's a squirrel oh, there's a squirrel. And being thoughtful while being quick, and, if you can, being thoughtful, researching, use data to inform that decision and then making it. But yeah, it's a constant battle between rigor and speed.
Speaker 1:The other challenge report, too, is when we talk about adaptability and changing. Is what you just said about not chasing a shiny new object? To slow down, to dive into that a little bit deeper is you want to adapt but you don't want to do something that's going to spread your attention too thin to where you're unable to execute, because you're like fighting on multiple fronts. And so a perfect example for us and this may some people might relate to this is okay, a lot of our customers are in tech is hurting. What do we think about expanding into real estate companies manufacturing different industries? And then it's this hard decision about okay, most of our relationships are in tech, right, so we can either double down on our customers, on retention, building out relationships, fighting for business there, or we could take some of that energy and invest it in other industries, some of which might be easier to break into.
Speaker 1:Real estate for us, like we've gotten several clients in, the real estate doesn't require a lot of specialization, expertise, so it wasn't like because it's doing well, we actually, I think, got one or two in bounds right and then we leverage those to get referrals and they don't get on the call with us. Can you tell us about the past 10 real estate companies you helped hire for right. But, on the other hand, did you look at like manufacturing? It's very specialized. The first thing they're going to ask you out a call is what manufacturing roles have you worked on? What companies have you worked with?
Speaker 1:They're really diving into your track record because it's a different type of recruiting, and so for me as a CEO, it's like what I decided. I don't know if it's the right or wrong answer, but I was like we do not have the time. I feel like the resources required for us to get into manufacturing would probably be a bigger distraction, and I think it's just going to be a waste of resources opposed to doubling down on our customer base. Now, I don't even know still if that was necessarily the right way to approach it, but those are the challenges too. It's like adaptability. But also, how do you stay laser focused on what's going to get you through a tight market?
Speaker 2:Yeah, where are you most likely going to win? Using your example right, you mentioned relationships, relationships, its experience and its brand recognition, or expertise Relationships, expertise, brand recognition. If you have to build all three of those, if you're trying to answer the question of where are we most likely to win, you probably answered your own question. There's a phrase that I love it's just keep the main thing the main thing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I agree, I was last year's at a conference and I spoke with a CEO of a really successful contingent fee recruiting agency the type where they give you a candidate and you pay them a fee afterward and she basically was like she wasn't going to do anything outside of tech.
Speaker 1:She was like this is what I know. We're going to dive into understanding our customers more and I think in some ways maybe you do essentially take a hit. Like I have a competitor that actually has a pretty deep, has a lot of relationship in tech, also has a lot of relationships in manufacturing, and I think they have weathered the storm probably better than a lot of the other companies in my space. But again, like those relationships they had been developing over a period of years, not just like a quick pivot during this current downturn. So I think that's something too. It's like we were to branch into other markets or in other industries, rather as a strategic way to bring stability to the business. I think that could be a great long-term play, but as a short-term bringing in cash motion, that's where I feel like there was the disconnect. Like I don't think it's the right time to do that.
Speaker 2:And I'm listening to what you're saying and I agree with all of it. I'm applying it in my mind, I'm applying it to our world, and it was something our ICP hasn't changed. But we need to do a better job of getting quicker to value. We need to do a better job of articulating and positioning our critical differentiation and we need to service our clients a hell of a lot better than we have before. So what it comes down to is there is stuff going on around us, just like you mentioned. You cannot do a darn thing about it, but there are segments that will impact your business, that you could control, and so lean in there.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's all in the nuance. I feel like success is all in the freaking nuance man, like the little details. I'm really big into psychology just to take a turn here because I feel like we're borderline getting into that too or just throughout this whole conversation talking about values and I think a lot of strategy is driven by psychology a lot. But when I was coming up I was a college dropout. I'd ever graduated I you know it took me a while to find my footing. I did free internships over a year and worked in a boxing gym early in the morning, late at night, to make cash and I finally got a paid internship. I turned into a full-time role after a year of doing that. But one of the when we talk when it talks about nuance, we're talking about nuance to these type of strategies when it comes to adaptability versus really dialing in and focusing.
Speaker 1:One of the things that reminds me of is like the old Tony Robbins stuff where he talks about the difference between being being great and being outstanding, and what I really love about the lesson that he was teaching is outstanding is only two millimeters higher than being great, but all the rewards goes to the person who's outstanding and I feel like the majority of what I am doing now is like where's that two millimeter gain? How can we go from being great to being the best? And it all comes down to, I think, making fewer decisions really well and getting the things that we're talking about, getting them right, thinking logically, unemotionally, really understanding our customers. And then for me too, it's like surrounding ourselves with the best advisors. There's a getting back to that great versus outstanding.
Speaker 1:That holds true for our advisors too. Right, like having the best advisor is significantly, exponentially more valuable than having a great advisor. Like when we're thinking about who we surround ourselves with and it doesn't matter if it's like we're hiring for our own people or advisors, it's don't come up with a huge list of hundreds of people. If you can pinpoint, this is the person. This is the person that has the absolute best expertise to help us make that two millimeter shift from great to outstanding and get the nuance that we need to adapt in the right way to take advantage of the market that we're in. I think it's again, this is a lot of my headspace is just like right in that little bit of nuance.
Speaker 2:James, I'm smiling a little bit just because our backgrounds are somewhat similar. I did graduate from college, but it was the greatest six, seven years of my life. I love that.
Speaker 2:Because I didn't.
Speaker 2:I had no idea what I wanted to do when I grew up and just being we're talking about radical candor it took me a lot longer to grow up than I think it maybe took a lot of the people I saw around me at the time.
Speaker 2:But when you start talking about the difference between good or great and outstanding, I think that experience informs me to that day, to this day, because I went through way too many years where I settled for good enough, where I didn't challenge myself to do the very best that I could do and I paid for it.
Speaker 2:And you get to a point where at least I'm not. I don't want to put words in your mouth, but for me, as things started clicking and I realized how much ground I had to make up to be what I wanted to be and have the life I wanted to have, that I just dove in and immersed myself for years to be that person I felt I could be. And I don't mean money, I don't mean just money, I don't mean just career, I don't mean just behaviorally, I mean the best husband, the best dad, the best friend that I could be and just no longer giving myself an out, no longer accepting the excuses, and that experience, I feel like it, gives me this perspective now, that makes me a more effective leader, a better person than I've ever been, and it is a journey that will never stop.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think you really have to look at or any type of meaningful success in life, business. You have to really try to have a vision or an idea for what the absolute best looks like. If you find that in a visor, or if you find that in leveraging your own values and whatever would make you feel like you're at the top of your game, then that's also a really important way to look at it too. I don't think enough people I think more people should give more focus, I should say, to really trying to get clear about what the absolute best looks like and so that they know exactly the behavior that they want to model.
Speaker 1:Last thing I was just saying I was speaking with a bunch of interns the other day and they were looking for advice on their careers and finding jobs and my strategy. Everybody was like they were focusing on resume optimization and all this kind of stuff and I'm like, look, you're at a special age in your life where people actually want to help you. When you have 15 years of experience, you're just going to be another guy or gal that's reaching out asking for something and people aren't going to get back to you quite as much, and so right now, this is the time to build your network. They're talking about reaching out to recruiters. I'm like no, reach out to the CEOs of the top, most relevant companies in your space. Reach out to them, just say, hey, I'm expanding my network, I'm just trying to. At the beginning of my career, whatever, don't even make an ask, but they're going to be a lot more willing to talk to you now versus when you're five years in, believe it or not, and then get mentors from that space.
Speaker 1:Learn from the very best. Don't shoot for the middle. Don't try to find a manager of engineering that's great. It's just that they're still on their path to becoming the best that they can be in their career. Find the folks at the very top, get a vision and know exactly what the best, the absolute best, looks like and learn from those people. And I think that, whether it's again us coming up with a vision for ourselves or leveraging people, it's like we have to think of what is the ideal situation, the ideal outcome, and work from that place versus like how do we? Getting incrementally better is good in terms of progress, but when we think about our like who we want to become, I feel like it's important to have the end in mind. Now that might change. We might decide that, hey, I want to become something else, but we should have that clear vision of what outstanding looks like.
Speaker 2:And I think and I know we're about out of time but the last thing I'll add is I think the foundation of everything you just said is the gifted introspection of looking in the mirror and seeing what's really there, not what you want to see. We all have strengths. We all have tons of stuff to work on. That's okay. But you can't fix it unless you embrace it, acknowledge it, and that can be applied to. That can be applied to you. That could be a lot applied to the project you did, that could be applied to the deal you just worked on or how you have managed the relationship. But looking at it and going, are there things I should be doing better here and what are they? And then acting on it. I just think that it's something I test for all the time in interviews, because if I'm talking to somebody and everything that's bad that's happened to them in their lives is somebody else's fault, and every time something good happens there are pat no self on the back. That's a person I'm staying away from.
Speaker 1:Oh, I totally agree, man, 100% on that. Look, chuck, this has been a lot of fun. Thank you for joining me today, you know it's been.
Speaker 2:it's been wonderful. We went a lot of directions. I don't know that I expected to be outside the call, but I really enjoyed it and I hope everybody who was listening to it did as well.
Speaker 1:Yeah, this was a great episode. So everybody tuning in. Thank you so much for joining us and we will see you next time. Take care.
