EP 183: How Playing Football Professionally at AFC Wimbledon Influenced This Talent Leader's Perspective

Reece Batchelor, currently in a Founding Talent role at Dust, shares a unique perspective shaped by his time as a professional football player. He reflects on how values, transparency, and teamwork are essential to finding great talent and helping them thrive.

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Chapters

• 0:00 Host Intro And Guest Background
• 3:31 Life Between London And Paris
• 5:51 Small Town To City Ambition
• 9:27 From Academy Football To Resilience
• 16:06 Teamwork, Pressing, And Company Culture
• 22:46 Celebrate Wins Without Complacency
• 28:16 Habits, Rewards, And Systems
• 31:51 Rebounding From The Tech Downturn
• 39:06 Joining Dust And Zero-To-One Talent
• 45:46 North Star: Lean, Enablement-Led Hiring
• 51:56 Where AI Belongs And Where It Doesn’t
• 59:06 Building Agents For Intake And Outreach
• 1:06:16 Hiring For Resilience And Ownership

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:46

Hey, welcome to the show, everyone. I'm your host, James Mackey. We got Reese Bachelor here today. He's uh founding talent over at Dust, is his most recent role. So excited to talk about that. Welcome to the show.

SPEAKER_02: 0:58

Thanks for having me. Looking forward to talking.

SPEAKER_00: 1:00

Yeah, I am as well. For everybody tuning in, we'd love to learn more about you, more about your background. Um, so did you grow up in the UK or where are you initially from?

SPEAKER_02: 1:11

Yeah, so born and bred in the UK. I grew up in a small town just outside of London called Crawley, which is by Gatwick Airport, one of the main areas, um, one of the main airports in London, or just outside of London. So born and bred there, grew up, lived most of my early life there before eventually moving into London about two years ago. So I spent the last two years now living actually in the city and in London. And also on top of that, as well, where I've been working for French founded companies over the last two years, I've been traveling back and forth to Paris quite frequently over the last couple of years as well. So yeah, it's been interesting.

SPEAKER_00: 1:44

So was that uh intentional?

SPEAKER_02: 1:47

Uh no, no, not intentional, actually. I um I I it's just a nice little niche, right?

SPEAKER_00: 1:53

To like work with these French companies, you get to travel back and forth. That's uh that's cool.

SPEAKER_02: 1:58

Yeah, yeah, not intentional. My old manager at my previous company, we've um been connecting for quite a while. When he landed it at this company, he reached out to me. That for me was like a really cool thing to do, to be able to have the opportunity there. And now I've sort of found myself in a French ecosystem, which then landed me my current job today, which are also based in Paris.

SPEAKER_00: 2:16

That's cool. And so you're you're going back and forth. I think uh you said every week or every couple weeks.

SPEAKER_02: 2:22

Yeah, every week at the moment. Uh and then if there's a few weeks that I can't do, but yeah, pretty much every week currently.

SPEAKER_00: 2:28

Are you still loving that, or did you does it start to get a little tiring?

SPEAKER_02: 2:33

It's funny because whenever I tell people they're like, it's really cool, the novelty wears off in that. I'm not I'm not sightseeing, right? I think a lot of my time is just back and forth to the office. Um a little bit tiring, but the journey's easy. It's about two and a half hours on the Eurostar on the on the train, so the journey itself's easy. But I think the main thing is when you're staying in hotels all the time and like you do mission your own bed sometimes. But uh, I I can't complain. It's like a normal commute, it's cool, but the novelty wears off.

SPEAKER_00: 2:59

So uh so you said you've been in London for a couple of years. What's that been like?

SPEAKER_02: 3:04

Great. Uh I love London. The big thing for me to move into London was like more opportunities, there's a lot more things to do as well, easier for commuting into work. Where I lived in Cruley was quite a small town, quiet. And I think the biggest thing for missing for me was that I'm quite ambitious in my goals and my career, and I want to be surrounded by like equally as ambitious people where I can have like a strong network. And that for me was I knew I had to move to the city to be able to do that. So that was like the real turning point for me on right, love my small town, love where I grew up. Great people, got my friends there, but there's more to this, so that's what made me make the jump to the city to build a stronger network and just have more things to do on the weekend. If I want to go to a restaurant or a pub, it's on your doorstep, right? So yeah, I I I love London, I love the city. I think wherever I move to next or go to will always be a city.

SPEAKER_00: 3:57

Yeah, I hear you on that. There's definitely always uh a lot going on. It sounds like you like to be able to go around and spend some time at different you know restaurants and travel to Paris quickly. That's uh that's nice, man. That's really cool. So wait, how far out of the city is Cro Crowley? Is it Crawley Crowley? How do I'm sorry, how do I say it?

SPEAKER_02: 4:15

Yeah, Crowley, Crowley.

SPEAKER_00: 4:17

Okay, so is that a couple away, a couple hours away from London, or how far away is that?

SPEAKER_02: 4:21

It's not that bad. I mean, if you've got the train, depending on which part of London, because London's obviously a big city, you can get into South London in a probably about 50 minutes, 50 to an hour. Um, so it's not actually too bad of a journey. The issue is of what I found was just that the trains aren't regular, right? So it's like if you miss one, you've got to wait like another 40, 45 minutes to catch the next train. They stop running at a certain time. So if you're having late nights in the office, like uh back when I was working agency and the hours were crazy, you know, I'd always miss the last train home and I'm having to get taxis back or stay in a hotel. Um, so I think that was like the biggest blocker is like if I want to do things past a certain hour, you always have to plan ahead on like how you're getting home. Whereas when you live in London, you never have to worry about that. You've got the tube, or it's easy to get a taxi or whatever it might be.

SPEAKER_00: 5:10

Yeah. Well, good stuff. And I, you know, one thing that I wanted to do before we jump into conversation more about recruiting is like, as you know, like a big part of the show is really diving into folks like life experiences and getting to a sense of um, you know, values and experiences that lead to how you think about talent acquisition and hiring and people in general. I'd love to just get a sense for who you were growing up. What were you into when you were a kid? Were you into sports or what was your thing?

SPEAKER_02: 5:35

Yeah, I was a big sports person. So in schools, I did every sports possible: football, cricket, rugby, athletics. I did all of them, but my core sports was football or soccer for anyone in the US. That was a big thing for me. So the system in the UK for football is you can get picked up by an academy, which means you uh get signed by a professional football team, and then you go through their academy system whilst you're in school. Um and I was fortunate enough to get scouted by an academy. Um, I started off with a team called Crawley Town, which was my local team. They were a professional at the time, had an unfortunate situation where they decided to dissolve the academy, which was like heart crushing for me because I only just signed for them and it was six months later. It's like I got this childhood dream and it's gone. And then from there, I was fortunate enough to go on trials at a few different other clubs, and then I got picked up by a team called AFC Wimbledon, who at the time were League Two, went to League One, which is like the third third division in the uh English football tier, and I was with them from the ages of 14 to I think 18 or 18 or 19. Um, and that for me was like my childhood, right? All I wanted to do was when I was younger be a professional footballer and fortunate enough to go through the academy system as a school kid, which the great thing for that for me was it means that I got taken out of school to go play and I did less days in school when I was training, and then I got offered a scholarship, which is once you finish school, you either get released and you're out, you're gone, or you get offered a scholarship, which is a two-year contract, and that's where you then become full-time. You're playing football full-time, you train every day full-time, and I was uh fortunate enough to get offered a two-year scholarship, and I did that through the ages of 16 to 17 or 18. And again, like that was my dream. And uh, I mean, I've got some great memories from back then, but then at the end of that scholarship, there's another decision, you know, do you get a new contract and regress from there? And uh at the end of that, I didn't get a new contract. That was when I just sort of sat and I was like, damn, like what do I do with my life? You know, do I keep trying to go down this football route or do I get a real job? I'm sure we'll talk about it shortly. But that's sort of then when I fell into recruiting. But um, yeah, a big part of me and my journey and the values and the way that I work today come from football, come from sports, and it's like there were some real key role models for me within the team that I played, the competitive nature, but then competitive in a team way as well, which I think is like the perfect mix, right? It was I was competitive in a sense that I wanted to get new contracts and I had to fight for myself, but then also we're a team and we have to win together, and it's finding the right balances between that as well. So that was like a a core fundamental of my journey, and and definitely that I'd say has shaped me into the person that I am today.

SPEAKER_00: 8:18

That's a really interesting point that you were talking about in terms of being competitive to on an individual basis, to land your own contracts, but then also balancing that with being a team player, right? I I do think that that's really relevant to how we build companies internally and think about competition.

SPEAKER_01: 8:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 8:37

Is that does that is that ever something you think about?

SPEAKER_02: 8:40

Yeah, and it's even like as I've thought about building my teams and um how I've like set goals for my teams, it's all been based on both, right? I don't want individuals that only care about themselves and the work that they're doing, but on the same nature as I don't want people that hide behind other people's work, right? I want someone that's self-motivated and is competitive in their own sense, but then also does things for the greater good, right? They're thinking about how does this affect the team, how does this affect the company. Um, and that's always been things that I look for in people, but then at the same time, it's then how I think about, you know, how do I motivate people, how do I build a winning team? And that's always really been at the core fundamental, generally what I believe in. I think you've got to be self-motivated, you've got to be competitive, but you've always got to think about the greater picture, right? It's not just about you and what you're doing and your success, because you can't be successful if people around you aren't being successful as well, and if the company isn't being successful. So it really does come back to that for me.

SPEAKER_00: 9:40

So is that when you were playing football, is that a perspective that just evolved organically, or was that did that come from a coach, or how do you think you developed that mindset?

SPEAKER_02: 9:52

Yeah, um good question. I so I think my competitive nature has always been sort of within me. I think I grew up with an older brother and we were competitive against each other in our own sense. So I think that sort of individual competition was always in me. But I think developing on a team sense definitely came from a coach. I learned a lot from my coach at AOC Wimbledon whilst I was there, like some really great values, but definitely around being a team player and how do we work as a team. Like every training session that we did, all the tactics that we put in place was like, how do we do this as a team? We were big on pressing, right? And the system that we did for pressing is you have to press as a team, right? If one person doesn't press in the system, everything else breaks and the ball goes through and they they get through and then they can attack you, and then suddenly the whole team is out of play.

SPEAKER_00: 10:40

Okay, so for for those of us that maybe aren't as like uh famous football, uh so what do you mean by pressing? Yeah, so I mean I think I have an idea just based on what you're saying.

SPEAKER_02: 10:49

So pressing is so when the other team have got the ball, and what we believed in was pressing from the front. So a lot of teams will play out from the back. So the goalkeeper will have the ball and then they'll pass it to their defender, they'll play short, they won't kick it long. So what we would do is we would sit back to encourage the goalkeeper to play short, and then we all move up as a unit to go press the ball and box them in and stop them from going forward, and then we want to win the possession up high. So that's what we mean by pressing. Now, if only one person presses by themselves, it's easy to play around. If only two people press by themselves, again, it's easy to play around. So you have to press as a unit, as in a function, and you all have got to do your job perfectly. And if you don't, and one person's out of place, you get played around and the whole team's now out of play. Um, so that was all around like, how do we do this as a team? For example, as well, if if one of your teammates is caught out of position or is tired, you go and you go and trap back yourself, right? It might not be your position or your job to track back, but you're doing that for your teammate. So everything that we did was like, how do we do this together? Because if we individually perform well and do our jobs right, all of us do that, the whole team will, and we will succeed. So those are like just some real beliefs that that was ingrained to me during that football career. So yeah, it's it's like you have to do it well as a team, but to do it well as a team, you have to do it well individually. And if one person on your team is struggling, you go and help out and do that for them. You know, you might be 110% while someone else is 80%, so go and help them. Um, so those are things that we did as a football team, and why a lot of the times we punched above our weight as well. We were beating teams that were fundamentally better than us on paper, but we operated as a team and we worked hard as well. We were all about working hard and working together as a team, and that's why we beat teams that were fundamentally better than us, and that's always then been like a core belief of mine. But there's a famous quote that is hard work beats talent when talent refuses to work hard. You know, that has always stayed within me, has always sort of followed me throughout my recruiting journey as I think about you know my work processes and what I need to do. So yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 12:57

What other values did your team and your coach talk about? And this is by the way, these experiences you're talking about when you got to the point where you got the scholarship. Is that right? So you were in that program. Like what else were you guys talking about back then?

SPEAKER_02: 13:14

Um staying grounded, humility, um, you know, no one's bigger than the team. So when you get a scholarship as a professional footballer, it's very easy that it goes to your head, right? You think that you've made it at this age, you know, you're 16 years old, you're playing football full-time, you're you know, the the one percent, right? Because everyone wants this and not everyone gets it. You're the one percent. It's very easy. You start to feel relaxed, you think you're better than other people. And our coach at the time was very good at keeping us grounded, right? We were very old school in the way that we operated in our, you know, we were still sweeping the change rooms after every training session and staying long hours late to make sure that everything was clean, cleaning the first team football boots, all having lunch together and no one leaves the hall before everyone's finished. We were just really taught like the basic level of being a decent human being and not letting this go to our heads and staying very grounded. And I think that just taught me a lot of respect. I've always been the now the type of person I respect everyone around me, no matter what level of person you are. You know, everyone is in this together, from the kit man to, you know, whoever cleaned your boots all the way up to the first team coach, to the CEO, whoever it might be, right? You can't build a successful club without everyone. And I think I was just really taught that respect and to always stay grounded. And then the other thing, as well, that's always stayed with me is you're only as good as your last performance. So we might have won the game on Saturday, great, let's celebrate that, but then let's get back to training the next day and we've got to go again because we're another game on the next Saturday. So let's not, you know, stay stuck in that win and then become complacent. Um, so that was another thing. But then at the same time, if you do have a loss, great, we've got another game around the corner where we can make up for it. So let's look look at the learnings, great, but let's not dwell in it, right? Let's get back to the training ground and go again. And I think those are two core fundamental stills uh things. So one, don't get too um complacent when you're winning because it's very easy to go backwards, and then also don't get drowned when things aren't going your way because it's very easy to correct it.

SPEAKER_00: 15:24

I feel like that's a a lesson that I am continuously learning throughout life, hopefully at like deeper levels, and but it it can it can sneak up on you both ways, right? Where you can grow complacent without necessarily realizing it, it can just happen over time, and then it's also easy to, as you put it, like to carry a loss forward, yeah, right? Um, I guess I'm curious, how do you find the balance? Because I think like when things are going well, um it's like this we need to like look forward to the next game, but I feel like you do need to pause and celebrate the wins along the way. And I I do have this tendency to get a major win, but then in my brain is like, well, yeah, I'm doing my job. This is I was supposed to do this. So I I own an embedded recruiting and RPO agency, right? And we won a really cool contract with the fastest growing social media platform in the world and went from zero to 40 million users in 20 months, they're called Blue Sky Social. We're doing all of the engineering and GTM hiring for them for next year. Huge, massive win for us, right? Yeah, and it like like maybe a few hours was like, Yeah, this is freaking awesome, and then it's like boom, immediately it's like, okay, no, but like we really need to be here, we need to be at this next level. So, how how do you think about finding the right balance between just enjoying the journey along the way, but then also yeah, I don't know. I mean, like, do you have any thoughts on that? Like, just from your experience, like playing football.

SPEAKER_02: 16:50

If I'm to be completely honest with you, I think me personally, I've not probably found like the perfect solution there. I'm me personally, right? If there's a win, I will great, yeah, but I'm my mindset goes straight to right, but what's next to do? Or like you said, I'm just doing my job, or I can't get complacent. And I think that's definitely been ingrained in me from like background experiences. I just know that it's very easy from past experiences to become complacent, or that win can be taken away from you very easily. So, me personally, I haven't found the balance for that. However, I am very intentional with like my team and the people that I've managed to make sure that they sit in those wins and they celebrate and to make sure that I give praise externally because there's some very good research out there, and I was reading some the other day, um, I can't remember exactly where it's from, but like how performance and how individual performance can grow and it excel with celebrating the wins, and teams that don't do that at all decrease its motivation. Um, so I think it is super important. And I, for the fact that I know that I'm not great at it internally, I'm very intentional about it externally.

SPEAKER_00: 18:04

Yeah, yeah. Maybe it's like, and this is actually, I was thinking about this. I'm really happy we're talking about this when Lane on this because it's something I'm thinking about a lot more recently. Um, because I I think I do blow past wins really fast, too fast. Yeah, you know what I mean? And it's probably the case for a lot of ambitious people, yeah, right? Like like you and like probably you know a lot of people that we know. I'm just wondering, like, maybe it's just like as simple as like, well, just celebrate it. Don't overthink it. Just like just make it okay. If you get a win, then you find some reward, find some celebration as a team, or even individually at times, like just say, Okay, when I get this, when I get a big win, I'm gonna do one of the following things.

SPEAKER_02: 18:42

We're or as a team, we're gonna do one of the following things, and you just make it like a habit to that's it's very interesting you said that because it's something that I have tried to implement in the past, I didn't carry it on, which was exactly that. So if I set a goal, I would then set what I do for that goal when I achieve it. So it's it's intentional, it's written down. There's no excuses. You know, if I achieve X, I'm gonna treat myself to a dinner with my friends, for example, or whatever it might be. So I do think that is that is right. Like if you're going to crack this, like you when you set your goals, set the reward rewards for it. Um, I think that's a great way to do it. And that builds the habit, that builds the system because it's there, there's now no excuse, and you hold yourself and whoever's part of that as well accountable to it as well.

SPEAKER_00: 19:26

Well, so that's really and that's actually the next level that and I didn't think about that, but yeah, it should be like a proactive thing, right? It's like, okay, like every time we close a big contract, we're gonna do this, or every time we hit XYZ milestone, we're gonna do something, and it's if we're stretch goals, then we're gonna do something crazy, yeah, right.

SPEAKER_02: 19:46

Yeah, yeah, because I'm starting to read. Um, have you heard the book Atomic Habits?

SPEAKER_00: 19:51

Oh, yeah, definitely heard of it. I actually I have not read it, but people have told me about it or asked me about it so many times. I feel like I need to now, right?

SPEAKER_02: 19:58

Yeah, great book. I'm starting to read it, but I was listening to a podcast of the writer who wrote the book. I listened to a podcast uh over the week and actually where he's speaking. And he talks about building habits and he talks about habits as like a system. And like the easiest way to build habits is one of the things is just make it accessible, right? The more accessible it is, the less friction there is to doing it. So if you think about that, right, is you set your goal and you set the reward for it, it's now accessible because it's there, it's planned. It's no longer something that you need to think about when that win happens, when your mindset will naturally shift to what's next to do, because it's already been agreed upon. So, yeah, the best way to build habits is by making it so accessible that there's no friction to it whatsoever.

SPEAKER_00: 20:39

So, what about okay? So, we talked about goals, right? And we talked about rewarding ourselves. Let's Talk about tech, right? Let's talk about the last few years because I think a lot of people that were around in the we had the COVID, right? And then we had this market boom, which was insane in 2021, right? And it was a lot of fun. It was very a lot of hard work, but we were going straight up, right? And then we had the market crash in tech, and it just dragged everyone right back down. And it was it was tough for a while, right? And so we talked about moving on from losses, is something that you you learned right and had to really focus on when you were playing football at uh a very high level, right? Yeah, what advice do you have? Because I still think that there's a lot of people in talent acquisition that I mean they got beat down pretty bad and they're in the process of rebuilding. So, how do you like from a psychological perspective, how do you get back on on top, or how do you focus on the next game and not carry forward any of that pain or the disappointment of the past, you know, for sure that crash, yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 21:47

Yeah, for sure. And firstly, like it's been so tough out there for a lot of people, and uh, I don't want to take away from you know anything that I'm gonna say now and how tough it is and how tough the market is for sure. Um for me, there's a few things that I always remind myself of whenever I'm going through like a tough situation, I need to bounce back from it. One, like I'm a huge believer in everything happens for a reason. You know, I think back to every bad thing that's happened to me in my life and all those moments that I've sat there and it's been super tough for me. And I look at where I am today, and I'm exactly where I should be today. And I believe in the butterfly effect. And if these situations never happened, I wouldn't be where I am today. I was made redundant by uh one of my previous companies, Trader II. I was there for four years, great company. I was made redundant there, but at the time I was like, what the hell do I do here? I wouldn't be where I am today if that didn't happen, you know? And I am so happy with where I am today. So I think that's the first thing is I always believe I always remind myself everything happens for a reason. I'm a big believer of that. And um, Joe, actually, so we uh whilst I was at Trey with my old manager, we we did something called journey lines. Um what journey lines is is you draw a line down the middle uh horizontally, and above it is like the uh like the real positive moments in your life, and then below it is like the real negative moments in your life, and you put a dot along the line on all the different situations that have happened, both positive and negative, and then you map it out, right? And what you see, right, is everyone has got this up and down moments throughout their journey that have been positive, negatives. Um, and what you always see is whenever someone goes down, they always bounce back up, right? There's always a turning point. So I think for me, it's always just bringing back to that moment. I always think about okay, I've been through this before, I've been through a tougher situation before, and I bounced back from it and I'm exactly where I need to be today. So that's psychologically what I sort of remind myself of. I think the other thing as well is uh like I'm a big believer in positive attraction energy. If I allow myself to stay in the moment of the bad situation, I'm only going to continue to attract the negative things. I'm not going to get the positive outcomes. So that's another thing that I believe in. And also, as well, right? Fundamentally, I go back to my core. The more I put out, the more I'm going to gain. For example, when I did get made redundant, I was hammering everyone every single day uh before I found that next opportunity. I was utilizing all of my network, I was reaching out to everyone. I wasn't relying on just applying to a role, I was reaching out to people directly. If you didn't have something, who can you introduce me to? You know, I was working almost longer days than I was when I was working for a role uh to find to try and find that next opportunity. Um, so that for me is a big thing. I then go to whenever I'm going through a tough situation, like let's say I'm working on a tough role and I don't know what's going on, I go back to just that core fundamental of just pure hard work determination. Um, and that's always what's then got me out the other end. So there's these psychological beliefs that I remind myself of, and then these just this core fundamental attitude that I have to tackling problems, which I will default to.

SPEAKER_00: 25:01

Yeah, it's interesting what you said about when you were looking for work, you probably put in more hours uh than at times when you when you have a full-time job. And yeah, I it's um, you know what that reminds me of is when I was uh a lot younger, this is probably I don't know, I guess at this point, man, 15 years ago, 14 years ago. I was uh out of high school, I was working in a boxing gym. So I used to compete in Muay Thai. Uh and I used to coach like MMA, boxing, Muay Thai. Uh, and I did it for like actually like a living for for many years uh before I got into recruiting. This kind of interesting career transition. But yeah, man, I was like all in on it. It was a time in my life I was actually living in the gym. And like literally, but I remember to make money, I was doing like personal training, right? And I remember uh somebody told me there, he was like, You should be in the gym, like doing the like for the hours you want to be doing PT, you should be in the gym that entire time putting in the hours now to make the relationships, putting the hours that you want to work work that much now. Yeah, yeah, just love that. So I was like, I would be in the gym at like you know, as as much as I possibly could, and putting in long hours just like I wasn't, I didn't have the uh any of like the clients yet, right? Um but I spent the time there and I really invested. And what the what was really crazy to me, I mean, I worked at a pretty cool boxing gym. We had like Riddick Bo, uh William Joffy, like some really big like world champions, Olympians in the gym. But like from a grit perspective, I was always there. So you had some of these folks that were like internationally known, right? Particularly like Riddick Bo. But when it came to getting clients one-on-one, I was there at 6 30 in the morning until nine o'clock at night, uh, a lot of the times, right? Um, and I ended up building like a book of like 20 something people that I was training, I was doing the classes. Yeah, I think I pretty much ended up like I was like back to back on a lot of these sessions. Uh and it really just came down to working the hours ahead of time that I wanted.

SPEAKER_02: 27:07

Yeah. And uh if people look from the outside of that though, right, they're probably going, Oh, he's so lucky to have got that. But there's a great quote which is the harder, harder I work, the luckier I get. Uh, you know, I again putting this back to like recruiting for a second. So uh like I'm I'm a big believer in both quantity and quality. Um, there is when I look at the the quantity side, there is always an element of luck within recruiting and talent. And the only way you get that luck is by having some quantity on top of that. Um, so yeah, I think a core fundamental for me and listening to your story, right? You wouldn't have got that luck of meeting these people if you didn't put in the hours and if you didn't put in the time. So, while some people see that as luck, I don't. That's just work and time and effort that you're putting in. Um, but you could translate that to luck.

SPEAKER_00: 27:57

But yeah, and just think about this for a second, right? Putting in those works in like Muay Thai and boxing, it landed me an internship uh at the White House, it landed me another internship in the corporate sector at a software company. The VP of sales at a company called K Force, a large publicly traded staffing company, was a client of mine. He ended up getting me my first job in recruiting. Wow. Right. And that's where my career really started to take off. I think this is also when we talk to people about school and like education or like whatever your path is, whether it is, it's like just if you do follow a lot of the times what you're passionate about, you will produce the best outcomes. And producing those best outcomes and putting a lot more out there, as you put it, like it will lead to opportunities. 100%. I think one of the things that I learned working in the gym is like a lot of people's mindset is like, well, I just don't have the opportunities, or that's just not me, or like it's just not possible, it's just not there, right? Or oh, I don't know those people, and it's like, well, the opportunities are here, you just gotta be aware of it. You have to understand that like there are these opportunities to grow, but you have to be aware of it, and you got to put a lot of work out there, and it it's gonna lead to something if you do. Yeah, who would have thought like Muay Thai would have led to getting me in the White House? Like, it doesn't make any sense on the outside end. Um, but but yeah, man, anyways, so just kind of dialing in on like where you are today, I would like to talk more about that. So, yeah, so for you were at Trey for the better part of four years, if I'm not mistaken, right? Okay, yeah, yeah. And so so then a transition, big transition happened, and I know you've been at more recently. You just started at dust. What was it like two months ago?

SPEAKER_02: 29:40

Yeah, about a month and a half, two months ago. I've been at dust now.

SPEAKER_00: 29:43

How's that coming along? How are you doing so far?

SPEAKER_02: 29:46

Yeah, great. It's been a long time since I've like worked for a product that I'm truly passionate about. Uh that that's one part that's amazing. I think the other part is the opportunity ahead. I was at a point in my career where I wanted two different paths. One was to either work again for an exceptional talent leader and continue to learn. Um, you know, I look back on my journey at Trey, I worked with two exceptional talent leaders that I still connect with today, and I I really see them as mentors, and that that accelerated my career. If I didn't have that opportunity to work with them, I don't think I'd be where I am today. So it was at that path where I thought, okay, do I do that again and continue to learn? Or is this now an opportunity to build from scratch myself? Um, you know, Photoran was almost that journey, but there was things that were built before me, but I was there to then come in and take it from like it wasn't zero to one, it's more one to one to one to two, one to five, uh, and sort of build upon that. Um, and dust really is that zero to one project for me. And it's a great product, it's a great team. So I really see this as a great and exciting opportunity.

SPEAKER_00: 30:50

And Dust is like what series A, series B, series B?

SPEAKER_02: 30:53

Series A, series A.

SPEAKER_00: 30:54

Okay. Yeah. Um, so pretty like new startup, right?

SPEAKER_02: 30:58

Like, yeah, yeah, been around for about two and a half years, two and a half, three years.

SPEAKER_00: 31:01

Yeah, let's just as a lay of the land for folks tuning in. What does zero look like? Like day one, when you come in, like what's kind of the lay of the land right now?

SPEAKER_02: 31:10

Yeah, so I mean, the good thing is uh it wasn't completely scratched, there's so there's an ATS there. So that's like that's always good.

SPEAKER_00: 31:17

They're ahead of the curve.

SPEAKER_02: 31:18

No, I've not yeah, I've not had to build out the ATS, which is great. But in terms of like the function, like the not all of the functionalities are sort of being utilized yet in the ATS, but um in terms of the fundamentals that are there is there are processes built in terms of there are interview processes that are being followed, but then like we haven't got like things like scorecards built out just yet. We haven't like fully aligned on like what our full ICPs look like yet. Um, we haven't got like any of our data analytics built out. I think the best way that I could describe it is talent is completely decentralized, right? I think every hiring team is sort of doing their own thing, and compliments to them is that they've built the company to where they are today, like this, and I think it's great. One of the things that I'm super impressed with is how invested everyone is into hiring. Hiring is truly a priority, and there's not that battle that I'm seeing with okay, how do I get people to do into it? How do I get people to invest time into here? Everyone's super invested, which is great. And the people that are currently owning hiring today have done a fantastic job and have continued to build that out. Um, Pauline, who works in business operations, has sort of owned hiring until I joined, and she's done an amazing job at building sort of those core fundamentals.

SPEAKER_00: 32:28

And who's that?

SPEAKER_02: 32:29

Pauline. So she works in business operations. Uh, she was one of the first, she was the first uh non-technical hire in the company. So one of the early employees. She's done an amazing job to own hiring and build it where it is today and to get some of those core foundations there. Now it's really about building it out, centralizing talent in that um I'm starting to build a team. Uh, so we're starting to hire some other talent acquisition partners in the team, especially on the go-to-market side, because a large part of our growth next year is going to come in in GTM to continue to support that growth. So we need to build out the team and hire there to help support from sourcing, from full candidate management, from then starting to build out the talent systems on top of that. Um, so that's sort of like what my focus is right now is making sure that we've got the team in place to support next year's growth. And then on top of that, making sure that we've got some of the core systems in place, which is all around how do we use uh as much automation to streamline the processes, how do we adopt and use AI as much as we possibly can. I'm a huge, huge fan and believer in AI and talent as well. Um, so it's looking at that, and especially with a product like Dust, which is all about creating your own AI agents. I have all the opportunity in the world to now utilize AI as much as possible in the recruiting and talent process.

SPEAKER_00: 33:47

Love it. So it's it's like you're kind of building the airplane while you're flying it, right? Kind of doing both building systems, hiring. Are you working on any roles hands-on right now, too?

SPEAKER_02: 33:58

Yeah, I mean, it's um so where I'm going to focus on my background is in product and engineering hiring. So that's where once the team is built, that's where I'll focus. So I'll focus on product engineering, then the rest of the team will focus on the GTM um stuff. At the moment, I'm being sort of just dragged in there and as naturally as it is.

SPEAKER_00: 34:17

So next year, right? This sounds like it's a big year for you and for Dust, right? So you're gonna be hiring recruiters. If you're hiring recruiters, it means you're scaling, right? So it sounds like scaling a lot of GTM hiring, you're also building systems out. It sounds like you have a kind of a base layer ATS. What ATS are you guys using?

SPEAKER_02: 34:33

Uh we use Ash V.

SPEAKER_00: 34:34

Ash V. Okay, cool. So you're using Ashby, which is one of the category leading, right? ATS providers. What like North Star, like what is your goal? What is the breakthrough, if you will, like that you're looking to accomplish in uh by the end of 2026? When we we do round two of this podcast next year, what do you want to uh accomplish?

SPEAKER_02: 34:54

Yeah, good question. The top level always is that we hire amazing people and they are fulfilled and happy within the role that they achieve. That's always like the just the top layer thing that I always think about, right? How do we build a great company that continues to drive growth? So I think the biggest thing for me is everything that we do has to support the business objectives and the business goals, and we need to build a talent function around that. So a lot of what I'm thinking right now, like if I was to think completely out of the box beyond this, what I want to build is I want to build a talent function that supports the growth of the business, that people look in and go, how did you do that with such a lean team? Right. So I don't want to go back to the days of 2020, 2021 where you had overinflated talent teams and then suddenly you're having to scale down. Right? How do we do this and how do we scale the company with a lean team? Um, the way that I really see talent is going to eventually move towards in how you sort of force multiply a talent function is through more talent enablement. And I don't mean talent enablement in terms of enabling the talent team, I mean how do you enable hiring teams? You know, with the power of all we've got with AI, et cetera, if we look at just some like core talent tasks, the barrier to entry has extremely lowered. If you look at Sourcing, for example, right? Back in the day, Sourcing, we used to see job descriptions that would say we're looking for Boolean wizards and things like that, right? You had to be an expert in building Booleans to be able to uncover hidden talent. Nowadays, with AI, you don't need that, right? You could build a Boolean through an AI agent. You can use tools like MetaView that have AI sourcing within it as well. So people that aren't experienced in sourcing can now ultimately do this themselves if you want to. So, how can we build the systems in place that empowers hiring teams that they can actually do some of this stuff themselves? And that's how you can keep a lean talent team, but then also scale in the multipliers that you need to do. So that's ultimately what I want what we want to build and what we want to do. Um a big thing for Dust, right, is our mission is to change the way that work has done, right, through AI. And we want to change the way workers done internally as well. So I think the thing for me is if we spoke in a year's time, is that I can tell you all of the ways that we have built and scaled Dust where it is today, through AI, through systems that you maybe haven't heard of or seen before. Like I really want us to evangelize and uh not plug and play the same playbook that we've seen and done before. That's really what I want to build um over the next year.

SPEAKER_00: 37:30

How do you think about finding the right areas to place AI and automation?

SPEAKER_01: 37:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 37:37

Versus maintaining the human touch or maybe amplifying it through technology by allowing recruiters to do more important human aspects of the job.

SPEAKER_02: 37:48

Yeah, good question. So I mean, my hot take is that AI makes recruiting more human, not less, but only if you use it correctly. So, in answer to your question, anything that is administrative, anything that is repetitive tasks, that's where you plug and play AI to do the work. And then that then frees up our time in Talon to then work in the areas that need that human touch. You know, working strategically with your hiring teams, uh, working closely with candidates on candidate experience, managing them through that journey, closing, on boarding, all the areas where we need to be very present as a human, we can free up that time to do so by using AI in the administrative areas or in the repetitive areas. So that's how I was sort of thinking about this. For example, you can do AI interviews now. I've not gone as far as doing that because I believe fundamentally that is a human's job and what we need to do. Um, but you know, I have used AI in, I guess, in the very simplest form, right? In terms of AI, Ashby is great with AI, it's got a lot of AI built into it, right? So you can scale um personalized sequence messaging, for example, through AI tokens within Ashby. Uh you can personalize interview feedback through AI tokens. I've actually built out uh more robust agents within Dust around more personalization. For example, when we've got a lean team and we're having to give personalized rejection emails to every single candidate, we can't physically do that when we've got high volume or something else has to break within the process to be able to do that. But where you can now plug AI in to help manage and do that, that means that we can scale that even further. Now you would still AI, one thing I would say as well, Right, is AI doesn't um AI doesn't do things automatically for us. There's still that human element that, you know, I would check the email and then I would approve and press send. Uh but that process that maybe would have taken 10 minutes now takes a couple of seconds, for example. And then some more bolder things actually that I've been um trying more recently with AI is I've built an agent to automate the full intake process with a hiring manager. Now, in an ideal world, I'd do intakes of every single hiring manager possible. Um, but I'm at the moment the only recruiter and we've got tons of different roles that we need to hire for. So, how do we ensure that we still keep a consistent process, a consistent scorecard, an objective process without the need of me being there all the time? Uh so I've built an AI agent that would act as a recruiter. And the agent has specifically been trained as well to push back on subjective criteria. So it would replicate an intake between the hiring manager and a recruiter. And then at the end of it, once it's gone through that intake, it will then automatically build out the scorecards, it'll build out the job description, it'll build out interview questions, it will build out a three stage messaging sequence, it will build out booleans that you can then use to go and source from. So all of that then gets built. And then that can then be sent to me and go, Reese, you know, I've done all this, ready to do it. I can then quickly review, push back anything that needs to. Great, we're ready to go, and we can go do the search. Um, so these are things that I'm just sort of thinking about is okay, beyond where yes is a bit more administrative, but like how can we make things more efficient, but then add in that human touch to it as well. We can use AI for an intake process, and then from there, a high manager comes to you directly with all of the information. You jump on maybe now a 15-20-minute call versus an hour call. You're just refining, push it back on a few things, a little bit of a tweak. We build it in Ashby and we go when we do the search where we're gonna push the boundary a little bit more, or maybe the areas that some people might be a little bit more uncomfortable with. Because everything I'm thinking about is how do we force multiply? And that's how we're gonna do it.

SPEAKER_00: 41:31

Yeah, it's a really exciting time. Most of these agents that you're building, is it like within Ashby, like workflows, or where so Ashby has a lot of uh in the box AI built into it.

SPEAKER_02: 41:42

So, for example, um AI personalization for messaging sequencing, AI for feedback, just general AI where you can ask it questions. I think with Ashby, that stuff is great, but you can't do any customization to it. So it only gives you what it's already got. So a lot of now the advanced agents that I'm building is with Dust. Because to build an agent on Dust, you can give it any instruction that you want, any parameters that you want. So I can customize that agent to be so specific to what I need it to actually do. Um, so with the more advanced stuff, I'm building that with dust.

SPEAKER_00: 42:19

Well, it's pretty cool that you get to use your own product, yeah, man.

SPEAKER_02: 42:21

And that's why you know I said I it's it I feel so passionate and excited by the product. Um, like just zooming out, I've always been before AI was a thing, and like I always try like how can I be as efficient as possible? I believe in efficiency in everything, and uh AI is then increased efficiency using dust as increased efficiency, so it's uh super energetic for me.

SPEAKER_00: 42:42

That's awesome, man. Sounds like you you have pretty ambitious goals between building systems, uh hiring great internal recruiters. Yeah, and I'm sure to some extent the way that you think about hiring team members is still influence back from when you're playing football. Um what is a good team member look like for you? You're building this lean team, it's gotta be an ambitious team, it's gotta be a team that works really well together, um, you know, uh that can push down the field, right? Like what you were saying, right? I mean, how do you think about like when you're hiring people? Talk to me more about the behavioral fit, right? Who you want by your side on the talent team.

SPEAKER_02: 43:22

Good question. I think someone has to also believe in both quantity and quality. I don't want someone that is just quality focused, and I don't want someone that's just quantity focused. I think they've got to have the right mix between the two, is super important for me. But then just looking at core uh like behavioral traits, resilience is a big thing for me, actually. Resilience. I think you have to have resilience in this game because you are going to be knocked down a lot of times in talent where you've run in a hard search, you get to an offer, and your candidate declines and you're back to back to zero, or you know, you're working with a tough hiring manager and you're having to push through, or whatever it might be, this journey is so up and down and it's never a straight line. Um, and I think that resilience to bounce back from these losses that you're going to have on the journey is super important. Um, so I definitely look for resilience in people. You know, do they have those battle wounds in the past? I actually really like people that have worked for a company that maybe wasn't the most successful, but they got the success out of it versus someone that just worked very comfortably at a company that was super successful, high and was super easy because they had the big name, they didn't have to go for any challenges. I would much prefer someone that's been through a much tougher situation and have built that resilience. So I think that's one of them. The other one as well is like just trust and autonomy. Someone that's a self-starter, high agency, someone that you can just have complete trust in is a big thing. And then the last one I would say is um maybe goes on top of the trust part, but like if you say it, you do it. If you say you're going to do something, you do it. And if you can't, you communicate and give an update. Never a problem if someone set a deadline and they're going to miss it for whatever reason, but it's the communication part. And I think that's not just important to me, but I think about when I work with stakeholders, the biggest thing I've always believed in is that a stakeholder should never not know what's going on and always over-communicate. And look, if you're annoying them by over-communicating, they're going to tell you and you can find where that middle ground is. But someone should never come to me and say, Reese, what's going on with this search or Reese, what's going on with this piece of work? They should just always know the information should be always available to them because you're constantly communicating. Um, and you know, if you say you're going to do something, you follow through and you do it. Those are the core things that are super important to me. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 45:49

So it sounds like that's also what you would you consider that's like your foundation, right? So like the things that right are important to you. So, all right, so you, I mean, look, this isn't your your first talent acquisition motion, right? It sounds like this might be a little earlier stage to some extent, but you've done this now, right? A few times for hyper-growth tech companies in that environment. Yep. You got really ambitious big goals that you got to accomplish this upcoming year, and you're leading the charge, right? You're making this thing happen. How do you think about your own growth? What are you gonna have to do as an individual to break through and accomplish this? You've gotten to the point where you have like the track record, the success, and you're you're playing at a really high level now. And you got you're accountable for really big outcomes. And so it's like, yeah, when you think about your own development and your own growth, what does that next level look like for you and how you're gonna perform at a higher level?

SPEAKER_02: 46:41

Yeah, it's a really good question. I I've actually was thinking about this a lot since joining Dust. Um, a big thing that I'm working on at the moment is growing my network of people. I think the more people you have in your network, the more you know you can lean upon people, especially starting as a founding talent person, you know, it can become r extremely lonely, right? And um, you always have people to bounce ideas off internally, and I'm I'm thankful to have that. But maybe on some super talent-related topics, you don't necessarily have that opportunity to. So who do you lean upon to help? So for me, the big thing that I am working on at the moment is to expand my network of support around me that I can both share ideas with and also get ideas from. It's also always great to just hear what other people are doing, right? I think you can become very like blinkers-on, naive when you're just focused on your work and your company, and you can forget like all these other great ideas that might be out there, especially when you don't have a big team of support around you. So I think in terms of my growth and my development right now, it's definitely to build a strong network of people around me that I can lean upon for advice when it needs to. I can learn what they're doing more of, and I can hopefully give back to as well. That's like a core, core focus for me right now.

SPEAKER_00: 48:00

And that's primarily like what are you looking to get out of that the most? It's like more so strategies and what other people are doing to build systems, or really trying to get a sense into the mindset of folks that are like also building and growing and at the top of their game, like what is like the main piece of insight you're looking, you're hoping to gain or give.

SPEAKER_02: 48:21

Good question. I think definitely uh, you know, learning more about what other people are building and not becoming blinkers on. Like, I always want to learn what other people are doing, and then how can maybe I either implement that here or how can I maybe take some of that and take some of that here and then mold it into what works at dust. I think the other thing, just to be completely honest to you, is just to have a nice network of people around you when things are tough. And you know, it's uh again, I think you can become naive to how tough situations are for you and think that it's just isolated to yourself, and then you hear what other people going through going, ah, do you know what this is this is completely normal? You know, I'm this isn't uh this isn't a me thing or a or a dust thing, but this is completely normal to the industry and what other people are going through, and it's okay. And I think hearing that gives you a lot of reassurance when you're going through those tough times as well, that this isn't just an isolated issue or challenge for me. This is very, very normal. So I think that as well is is actually nice to have. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 49:20

Well, I think it's also a pretty normal progression because it's like you move into that leader role, it's like you no longer have five, ten peers that are in the same role. And so it's like there's this level of isolation potentially, where it's like, of course, you have the other members of the executive team that you're communicating with, yeah, but there aren't necessarily multiple people in at your point of impact or with the challenges and with the outcomes that you have to produce, right? And so it's it's nice to be able to speak with people or to hear from people that are in essentially a very similar place, if not the same place, right?

SPEAKER_02: 49:55

Exactly, yeah. No, totally. And uh one of the things actually that I've started to look into as of this weekend, uh good timing, is a coach uh that I can work with. Uh I don't think I'm looking for like a recruiting or talent-specific coach, but just like a coach for both business and personal. One of the things that I always thought I I've always had imposter syndrome, always had imposter syndrome. And you know, sometimes sitting in a room with the exec team or whoever it might be, that imposter syndrome can creep in. And I think I've always been like if anything's gonna stop me from being successful, it'd always be the voice in my own head versus anything externally. And I think having a coach and having someone to help you and motivate you and give you advice is gonna be extremely helpful. So that's something also that I'm looking into as well, which I think will help then elevate my career and help me with certain situations, scenarios, collaborating with certain people. Um, so that's also something I'm looking into as well at the moment.

SPEAKER_00: 50:55

It takes a lot of self-awareness to get to that point where you're trying to optimize and trying to think about breaking through to the next level. And I think a lot of people do struggle with imposter syndrome when you're rapidly leveling up and you're taking on more. Is it okay for me to ask? I mean, we don't have to dive into it, but like what when you are struggling with that, when you have those moments, everybody has them, right? Um like what is it that like you hear yourself like saying to yourself, and then how do you get out of that situation? What do you tell yourself to push through? And to I'm just curious to if you wouldn't mind sharing, because I know other leaders are dealing with this too.

SPEAKER_02: 51:35

Yeah, I think so. Folks in more like, I guess, professional in the in the talent sense. So transparently, like I'm young for probably where I am in my career, you know, and I've always have been throughout my career. I'm 27 years old as of today. I was managing people when I was, I think, 21, 22, and I've been like a very young leader working with founders from a very young age. And my imposter syndrome is around these are older people around me, more experienced in sort of years sense. Like I shouldn't be in a room with these people, or I haven't got as much knowledge as these people. And I think that's what sort of gets in my head and what sort of has always stopped me. Less so now. Like I feel more comfortable in that now than I did maybe earlier on in my career a couple of years ago. So that is always what has that voice in my head that has been there, or like when I've been managing people who are much older than me, for example. Like, how's that dynamic going to be? When I take a step back and I tell myself is like I the fundamental truth is I deserve to be here. I deserve to be in the room. I'm here for a reason. These people trust me. And if they didn't, I wouldn't be where I am today. I lead by example. That's like my management. I don't like the word manager, but I that's sort of my management style, leading by example. Yeah, I'd never ask anyone to do something that I wasn't doing myself. And I think if I continue to do that, I will continue to deserve to be here and to be in a room. So I think whenever it creeps in and when that pops into my head, I just sort of take a step back, look myself in the mirror, and tell myself I deserve to be here. And something I've started to do more recently is like writing down my gratitude and affirmations every morning. And my affirmations every morning is like reminding myself I am a strong talent leader who deserves to have a seat at a table, who deserves to be in the room. Um, and that's something I'm now trying to like continuously tell myself and write down to tell that voice in my head that it's true. So yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 53:25

Yeah, I love that. How do you think your definition of success has changed over the years? Like from when you started out and talent in your like around 21, 22, to now being 27, being in a position at a very young age where you're responsible for a lot, uh entrusted with a lot. Yeah. Um, does success mean anything different to you at this point than what it did when you were starting out?

SPEAKER_02: 53:47

100%. If I go back to my agency days, success then was how much I build. That was a very individual, selfish look on things. It was like I need to build X amount, and that was what sort of drove me. Then even when my stepped internally for the first time, everything that I measured success by was how many hires I made at an individual level. That was sort of where I was measuring success. I started to manage and look after a team, and my mindset was slowly shifting to okay, like how do I, how do we be successful as a team? Still more on that volume base, like how many hires we're making as a team. But selfishly, there was probably still always in my head, like, well, but what was my performance? But I also think that was a nature to what I was also being measured against. You know, I probably wasn't being incentivized by the team and more incentivized by the individual still. Um, I fast forward today, and the main thing that I care about is that we hire great people that are successful here. It doesn't matter on the number of people, it doesn't matter on that. It's like, are we hiring great people? If it takes us longer, that's okay. But we need to hire the best people for the company. Um, and more on top of that, you know, what I care about is I look at the business objectives, right? There's no point in having talent goals that don't correlate to the business objectives and what the business wants to achieve because ultimately we are here to build a successful company. So the things that I look at, you know, whenever I have interviewed for a company more recently, whenever I sort of start to build out the talent goals, the first thing that I want to understand is what is the business objective? What do we want to achieve as a business? And then once I know that, I can then define success around that. So I start from there, whereas back in the day, I just started from how many hires do I make? Like the more highs I make, the more successful I am. So that's sort of where my mindset has completely changed. I think something else is that's changed more recently is I was very much just focused on the talent side, right? Hiring great people, but I never focused then or thought about the internal side. And I'm definitely now starting to think more about, you know, at least for like that that one year, how do we make sure that we set people up for success? It's not just about hiring great people, it's about hiring great people that are right for us as a company. And then how do we make sure that we set them up for success and make this a great place for them? So I think now my mindset is starting to shift, right? You've got the talent side and you've got the people side. I'm now starting to think bigger picture than just talent. I'm thinking talent and people because it all connects together. If people aren't happy and successful, it means that they're going to leave, means that we've got to do more hiring, right? We why make it hard for ourselves? So that's definitely how my mindset of success has evolved over time.

SPEAKER_00: 56:27

That's really cool. Um, what kind of leader do you want to be?

SPEAKER_02: 56:32

That's a really good question. I think this is a really good question because I think I've I've thought about this a lot, and I I think back to like when I first became a leader, I wanted to be the leader that everyone liked. And that creates challenges in itself because when you want to be the leader that everyone likes, you don't then do what the tough part of a leader needs to do, which is you know, there are tough conversations that you need to have. Um, there are at the end of the day, especially a role like Talon, it is a very performative-driven area where it can be very black and white on performance. I look back to my early days as a leader, I probably made wrong decisions when it came to performance and things like that and didn't have conversations because I wanted to be liked. So if I zoom out and today, right, I I don't know whether this is the right word, and I'll probably need to explain a little bit, but it's the best one that I can think of, right? I want to be like I want to be respected, and not in the terms of I want to be respected because of hierarchy or anything like that, but I want to be someone that people look up to as um they felt that I inspired them and helped them do the best possible work that they can do. And that comes from, yes, being a great person, being light, all that side of it, you know, building rapport, but that also comes from driving and motivating them and having those tough conversations and giving them tough feedback where it needs to be. So that's the type of lead that I want to be. I I want people to work with me and it to be career-defining opportunities for them. You know, the way that I look back at my two leaders at Trey, MK and Marianne, right? I look at both of that experience with them as career-defining and the growth that I had. And I tell you what, they had plenty of tough conversations with me, and I still like them, and we had a great relationship, but they also gave me that tough love as well. And I think that's definitely the leader that I want to be. And I'm still learning as I go along on how you become that person and how you lead in the right way. But actually, one of the things actually I quickly say as well is it's definitely like I'll always be the leader that leads by example. I'd never be a dictator or anything like that. If I say that we need to do something or that the objectives that we set, it's because I'm doing them along with you. And if you're struggling, I'll pick you up along the way. So I think that's how I view this and full circle. But it's one of the reasons why I've actually loved working with Paris-founded companies. The Paris culture is direct feedback, it has really taught me how to give and receive direct feedback in a comfortable way and have those almost uncomfortable conversations in a non-uncomfortable way. So it's really helped me get better at that side where I was definitely like not as strong on. That's the leader that I want to be as I continue to grow.

SPEAKER_00: 59:23

I think having those difficult conversations and I definitely would say that what I thought being a leader was when I was starting out in my early 20s versus what I know it is now at 34 is like drastically different. Drastic, drastically different. I mean, it's so far off, right? I had part of it, right? When I was young, I started Secure Vision My Company when I was 23, so a decade ago, a little over, I guess. I I really did think it was about inspiring, just inspiring. Yeah, really focused on motivation, helping folks become the best version of themselves. I had this goal where I wanted everyone to be better off as a result of them knowing me, being around me. I think most of the time I've been able to get that, make that happen, not all the time, I'm sure. But uh, I think I've generally speaking been able to help folks progress a lot, whether they stay with me or not. Um, yeah. But I think one one of the parts that I didn't really understand was the fact that like so much of leadership is situational to understanding the person that you are working with and really taking the time to understand their psychology, yeah, and and their values and communicating in a way that makes sense to them. Yeah. I think that there probably was like a little bit of arrogance of, you know, I have this figured out, I know the way we need to go. And if you knew as Much as I then you would do you would this wouldn't you know why why don't you see things that if you don't see the way that see things the way that I do, then you don't get it. Um I just like look back and I see how naive that is, and I think it's it's really understanding other people is a big part that I didn't slow down on, and then two like finding an appropriate way to give feedback, constructive feedback. Yeah, I'm curious. Like when you're saying that that's something that you've worked, you've learned a lot about with these companies that are are founded in Paris, like the direct feedback. Yeah, like what have you learned when you have to have a tough conversation with somebody that reports into you, and I'm sure to some extent again, it's like situational based on the person, but are there any best practices, or maybe telling it through a story of a situation in the past would be helpful? But I'm curious to get your thoughts on how you do that.

SPEAKER_02: 1:01:35

Yeah, I mean, to be honest, I think working with the French culture makes it very easy because it's just normal to have direct conversations, which makes it a lot easy. And I think uh the biggest thing for me is what that's helped with is having the conversations at the point that it's needed to have, right? I think the worst thing that you can do when you're having, let's say, performance issues, for example, is waiting and not having it at the moment that it needs to be had. Because then suddenly, when you're then trying to have that conversation, it's way too late, right? You're you're past it, it's not gonna have the direct impact with that person that it needs to have because it's in the past, it's sort of out of mind. So I think the biggest thing that I've learned, and what's been great, is that as soon as there's a problem, whatever it might be, you have that conversation. I think the other thing which you said, which I think is uh super important, is there can always be like a reason as to why something isn't going. And actually, I learned probably the hard way in that before, where there was performance issues, we weren't making hires, and just like the core fundamental work behind that wasn't happening. And I sort of went into that conversation more with direct feedback, and then as we then started to unpack and as the conversation went along, like I just started to learn that there was more stuff going behind the doors as to why this was happening, and actually, then the outcome was how do we help? How do we solve with this? And I think the lesson from that for me was like, okay, yes, there's a point where you have to have these conversations, but how do you create that safe environment where people feel comfortable coming to you first before these become a challenge? And that was definitely like a big turning point for me in terms of the type of conversations I was having with my team. Like, for example, what you said, one of the things I did, especially when I joined my last company, was I asked them, like, how do you like to be communicated with? How do you want to work together? You tell me, right? And I can then adapt, and then I'll tell you how I work, we can find a middle ground. But building that safe place, and then as trusts and as relationships were built, when there were challenges, they were coming to me and talking about things that they probably wouldn't speak to others about. And that made it so much easier because then I understood why, okay, you haven't done this today. I understand that. But then on the flip side, at the end of the day, we also have a business to run, we have to do things, so it's fine that fine balance between great, let's understand that. But now how do we solve this for the bigger picture? But that's the job as a manager, right? That's our role, right? We've got to find the right balance between our team and helping and supporting them, and then also the business side as well. But I think you're right, understanding people on an individual level, not everyone can and should be managed the same. I actually learned this from football as well. Um, Joan Klopp, who was the manager for Liverpool, other teams, I listened to one of his podcasts, and he said that he doesn't manage every player the same and he gives different treatment for different players. But that's because the most senior person in the change room that's got 500 caps for the country and won all the all the titles, doesn't need an arm wrapped around them when they've lost a game to someone that's just come through the academy system, it's their first game in the team, right? So it's about understanding that and adapting your leadership style to different peoples and to different environments and situations for sure. So I think adaptability actually is probably the way that I would summarize it.

SPEAKER_00: 1:04:56

Yeah, I think one of the things, like we talk about behavioral traits, like one of the things I think it's important to look for is finding people that are coachable. Yeah, yes, but I I think too, it's like when I was earlier in my career, I think I would consider more people coachable than I would have 10 years ago. Because I think it's like understanding that in order to get through to people, you sometimes you have to coach in different ways. Yeah, so it's both. It's like trying to find people that have some level of humility or self-awareness or ability to take feedback and change, but then also checking your own potential limitations or blind spots and really understanding do I have I developed the skill set and the awareness to be able to work with different personalities? Because I I feel like at this point my career, and this is something I actually had never really thought about before, but I would consider a lot of people coachable. Now, it doesn't necessarily mean that I can get great performance out of everyone. There, you know, I can't do all of the I mean, I can listen, I can understand, I can figure out how they work, and performance may still not work out. And I still, you know, look, we're pretty good at recruiting, you would hope, right? After like with my career, but I don't always get it right. And and when I don't, I usually I find out very quickly. Um and sometimes we have to part ways with people, but I do try to always assume, even when it's hard or when I don't see the solution immediately, that this person probably is coachable. Now, does that mean it's gonna lead to the outcome I need? I can't say for sure, but there's probably a way to get through to them. And if I haven't, it's just I haven't figured it out yet, right?

SPEAKER_02: 1:06:34

100%. Yeah, I would agree. I think the only thing I would add is um I think it's important to also like recognize your limitations and then match that to the person as well. Because I agree, everyone is coachable, but they might not be right for your environment or even the core beliefs that you have as well. Like if I look at some of my fundamental beliefs around resilience, around hard work, etc., those are core fundamental beliefs that I don't think I can coach someone, but I can coach people more on like the technical skills or that side of things. So for me, there's definitely like core fundamentals that everyone needs to have in who I would work best with. And then as long as they've got those, we can work on everything else. So I think that's definitely important. And then also I just say like the environment. Again, I'm a big believer is I don't think there's such a thing as a bad employee, but there might be a bad employee for that company or that environment. If it again, I go back to football as like a really good view or sports in general, right? You will have a player who was like a top performer at one of the clubs, and then they get that big transfer to another team and suddenly they end up performing. And you're like, how is this even possible? Well, it's because they're playing a different style of football or it's a different manager with a different management style, and they just don't fit into that system. It's not because they're a bad player, they just don't fit into that system. And I think that's super important with you know, when you're thinking about when you're hiring people, something I'm trying to think about more is every company wants to hire from the same companies, right, with a big brand, the big logos, etc. Just because they were a top performer there doesn't mean they're going to be a top performer for your company. So how do you truly measure that? And then the second part of that is again, if you're thinking about changing jobs yourself, like really understand like the values of the company, the values of the manager, the values of the team that you're going to be working in, and make that decision in is that the environment that you're going to thrive in as well.

SPEAKER_00: 1:08:28

I love it. This has been a really great conversation. I'm really thankful that you came on the show today. We covered a lot of ground. Yeah, I enjoyed it.

SPEAKER_01: 1:08:36

Thank you.

SPEAKER_00: 1:08:37

Yeah, I really did as well. To finish us off, I one more question for you. I would love to hear, I mean, because you've had a lot of really great experiences, both playing uh football, both working in tech, both very competitive, if not the most competitive industries to be in. Does anything stand out to you as the best piece of advice you've ever received?

SPEAKER_02: 1:09:00

Yes, it's so simple, but has shaped many decisions that I've made, and then even advice that I have passed down to other people, which is I'll give the advice and I'll give the context behind it. The advice is what is the right thing to do for them? And where this advice came from was so we had a candidate and they were at the final stage of the interview process, but we then interviewed another candidate early stage who we thought was also exceptional, and we wanted to get them through the process to then make a decision on both of them. But we already told the other candidate that we were basically going to move forward to an offer. And I was sat there like, what do I do in this situation? Um, and I went to my manager at the time and I said, Hey, the decision's been made, this is what we're going to do, right? We're not, I'm not coming to advice on like what do I do with the high manager or anything like that. I was like, what do I do in this situation with uh said candidate? And he just said to me, It's like, what was what's the right thing to do? What would you want? I sort of sat there and thought about it. I was like, I would just want them to tell me the truth and give me the honest answer. He was like, there's your answer. And I went and had that conversation, very honest conversation, you know. Yeah, they were upset, but they understood. And then the outcome was we got to the final and we ended up actually hiring that person. And now, if I tried to lie to them and give a bogus reason to us why we were delaying the process, we would have probably lost them. But as I was open, transparent with them, and we probably spent about 45 minutes on that call just going back and forth, me answering every question they had. Um, and then after that, kept them constantly updated throughout the way. So, whenever I've been in these crossroads situations where I don't know what to do between like a conversation with a high manager with a candidate, whatever it is, I always just take that setback is what is the right thing to do? What would I want in that situation? And whatever the answer is to that, um, is then what I go and do because it is generally the right answer.

SPEAKER_00: 1:10:53

That's awesome. Well, Reese, thank you so much. This has been a great time. I I really appreciate you coming on and sharing your insights. I know that our audience is going to be really excited about this one. But yeah, thanks again for coming on the show.

SPEAKER_02: 1:11:05

Thank you for having me.