EP 203: How Competitive Sailing and Global Perspective Shape Creative Hiring

Growing up in a small NYC apartment taught him resilience early, but traveling through Brazil and South Africa reshaped how he sees people and the world. From competing in sailing across countries to living nomadically, those experiences shaped a distinctive perspective on risk, trust, and opportunity. Colin Murphy now leads recruiting as Director at Method, where he focuses on what truly breaks through in hiring today by balancing process with creativity.

Book mentioned: The Road to Character by David Brooks

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Transcript

Welcome And Colin’s New York Roots

SPEAKER_02 0:46

Hey everyone, welcome to the show. Today we're joined by Colin Murphy. Colin is currently the director of recruiting at Method. And uh yeah, we're happy to have you here.

SPEAKER_01 0:57

Yeah, I'm glad to be here. Very honored. Thank you, James.

SPEAKER_02 0:59

Yeah, thank you. Thank you. So, Colin, let's get started with your background. We'd love to learn more about you. You grew up in Manhattan, right?

SPEAKER_01 1:07

Yeah, that's right. I grew up uh on the Upper East Side. I'm a born and bred New Yorker. So yeah, been here basically my whole life, except for college and a couple of years after.

SPEAKER_02 1:17

Nice. Cool. So what was it like growing up in Upper East Side?

Growing Up In A Tiny Apartment

SPEAKER_01 1:22

Yeah, no, I uh it's funny, I get that question a lot, and it was just what my life was, right? Like you don't think anything of it when you're when you're growing up, but I'm very I I look back on it very fondly, and I'm very proud to be in New York. I'm very I am a very proud New Yorker. So uh, but I you know, my the living situation was interesting. I I lived in a rent-controlled apartment. I was the fourth generation to grow up in this apartment. It's a one-bedroom. I shared it with my brother, my parents, and I think it's a very formative experience. Like setting was actually quite formative for my life uh growing up because you know, I shared a 50 square foot bedroom with my brother. My brother was seven, six and a half years older than I am, and it was a six by nine bedroom that was carved out of my parents' uh bedroom. So it was like semi-legal. We got we got attempted, evicted, many, many attempted evictions for lots of like this living arrangement we had. But the the kind of hallmark story of that time is my brother was taller than the room was wide. And so he like never was able to like lay down flat for like most of our childhood. Um, so yeah, and look, it it was very I think it's you know the first first inkling of like kind of a growing up in a resilient type of living situation.

SPEAKER_02 2:42

Yeah, for sure, for sure. Yeah, but uh I you said also like your folks had a place out in Long Island as well.

SPEAKER_01 2:48

Yeah, so it's kind of a tale, yeah, yeah, that's right. It's like it's like kind of a tale of two cities, right? Like I think uh and we'll we'll kind of cover this as throughout as well, but I think my early life until now is kind of a tale of two cities of both you know resilient situations and an immense privilege. So, you know, we uh my parents had a place out in Long Island that we'd spend summers um and I and uh so we you know we that was the choice that they made. It was either upgrade upgrade to a nicer place in Manhattan or kind of live in this shoebox apartment that was basically dirt cheap and have a second place to escape to on weekends, and they chose the latter.

SPEAKER_02 3:24

Yeah. Well, actually, that makes that makes a lot of sense. Because you were you said you were like fourth generation to grow up in that apartment, right?

SPEAKER_01 3:32

Yeah, that's right. My yeah, my great my my father was born in the apartment in the 40s. Um, and he was and I I know that he was living his grandmother was living in the apartment as well. So I think, yeah, so it's been in the family since at least the 30s, is to my understanding.

SPEAKER_02 3:48

Uh that's really cool. Yeah, that's really cool. Do you guys still have it?

Entrepreneur Parents And Startup Pull

SPEAKER_01 3:52

We just gave it up recently. It was a whole there's a lot of it's well, there's a lot of nuance to that type of living situation. But my my mom was living there. My mom's sick, is in is sick, so it's not she's not living there currently, and there's a lot of rules and laws around rent control departments, so there's a there's a whole there's a whole story behind that for maybe another podcast. Yeah, yeah, I hear you. I hear you.

SPEAKER_02 4:13

Um, but you said both of your parents were also they were entrepreneurs, so that must have been an interesting life experience growing up with two entrepreneurs.

SPEAKER_01 4:20

Yeah, yeah. So my my dad ran an architectural sales firm. He basically represented some Canadian companies who are very niche architectural products, like moldings and ceilings, and like they did very niche like crown molds and little features that you'd see in architectural products. So he was just like kind of a classic BSer New Yorker that you'd expect with a thick New York accent. Uh you know, hitting the phones, selling these like niche architectural products. And um, my mom started a fine linen business in the late 80s and kind of grew a brand underneath her name. So she, yeah, she, you know, very, very rare. Rare is maybe the wrong term, but um definitely a headstrong lady to to you know build her own business in the 80s uh and kind of grow it throughout you know the 90s and early 2000s. She would be a home on the later side for sure. Like her business was definitely one of her kids as well.

SPEAKER_02 5:19

Yeah, yeah, for sure. Do you feel like um your parents being entrepreneurs has anything to do with you working in a startup environment at this point of your career?

SPEAKER_01 5:29

I think so. I think, you know, yeah, for sure. I've only ever worked at smaller companies. I think there's an oriented, I've always had an orientation for that. Um, I really like the size. I know how much my parents loved the entrepreneurial gene, and I saw how much value it brought them. I don't know if I could ever go the founder route the way that, you know, not that they were like tech founders the way that we would like to think about founders today, per se, at least in our space. Um, but I think I think there is a there is a kind of a romantic aspect to starting your own company and being your own boss, which uh I maybe I I I reached the cutting edge of it by trying to balance practical making a living uh and being a little bit lower risk than they were willing to take.

SPEAKER_02 6:12

Oh, yeah, for sure. It's uh yeah, particularly in our space, right? Like in tech, it's uh yeah, it's a lot. Yeah, yeah. It's a lot of people. Yeah, it sure sure is.

Competitive Sailing And Winning Habits

unknown 6:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 6:22

So you also you were growing up, you got into competitive sailing, right?

SPEAKER_01 6:27

Yeah, so um, so basically the the place my parents had in Long Island was near a like a local club. My dad sailed on weekends uh in this kind of local circuit, and it got me there was a little you know summer camp sailing program there that got me into it, and I ended up being pretty good, and it snowballed there into uh joining this kind of regional team that was really well regarded, and again it ended up being kind of uh pretty good, and so very lucky that my mom especially like really heavily endorsed this hobby and passion. And most weekends throughout the year, even like during the school year, I would be training on weekends with this regional team and uh performed well enough to sail at these events all over the world as part of like kind of a junior team in USA. And that continued through my teens, and it kind of stopped at you know, college is a natural breakpoint for it typically, but yeah, it was you know, for a time as you graduate between different types of boat classes, uh, you know, in the in the earlier stage, I was sailing in like South America and Europe and graduated into this another boat class with that was with a teammate, you know, it's two people in a boat, and for about a year, two years, we won basically every event. Was that in the uh college or was that uh prior right before college, yeah, right prior to college. Yeah. So we were we the this guy and I were um the top sailor in the US for probably like a year and a half, two years. Uh he went on to go to Yale and win two time, basically the heisman of sailing two times, which is a very like rare occurrence in in the sailing world. So yeah, the the we yeah, it was it was a it was a blast, and just it was very cool to be brought over all over the world for these types of events.

SPEAKER_02 8:15

Oh, that's incredible. Yeah, it's a really incredible experience. And so that's what you um and you were sailing. So the the the success you had in like the high school years sailing, it's what set you up to be able to be recruited by Dartmouth.

SPEAKER_01 8:28

Yeah, that's right. So I was yeah, yeah, that's right. I I got recruited for Dartmouth. Um they had a couple spots on the team. I I had actually this, I mean, as you can imagine, the sailing community is super duper small. I actually, you know, I I sailed with the coach's younger brother. We were close friends, and he had actually coached me at many events in in the past. So there is a it's because it's such a small community, you kind of get to know everybody. And that was always my dream school. And yeah, I was lucky enough to be recruited uh at to Dartmouth. That's right. Oh, that's awesome.

SPEAKER_02 9:01

Yeah. So so it's like so with sailing, is it is it like a pretty straightforward race? Like whoever gets to the finish line, or how does it how does it work exactly? Like what's the setup?

SPEAKER_01 9:12

How much time do you have? Because it's uh there's a lot of it's not the most it's becoming bigger with all this. There's this thing called sale GDP, and there's like the America's Cup, and those boats are like super cool nowadays with the like fly out of the water or whatever. Um, but it's you the typical format is you do a couple races a day on a kind of closed circuit. So whenever I when I you know when I went to a regatta in like Turkey or something, it wasn't I wasn't sailing to Turkey. I like you go and there's like these little boats that you rent and you're like sailing in a closed circuit, um, kind of inland. There's a whole other breed called offshore racing. That's not what I was doing. Um, so yeah, but multiple races in a day in this kind of closed, you go around the course situation.

SPEAKER_02 9:52

Okay, so like how how much distance are we talking for not much, like uh a whole end-to-end race might be like a mile or two.

SPEAKER_01 10:01

Really actually I don't really have a concept of it, but it they'd be like 30 to 45 minute, maybe an hour long races.

SPEAKER_02 10:07

Uh 30 to 45 minutes, so I guess like well, I guess it depends on how like the windy it depends on the way, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 10:13

It depends how windy it is, too. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 10:14

So how fast are you going? So it's not it sounds like probably on some of these smaller shiks, it's not too fast.

SPEAKER_01 10:20

Not super fast. There's different boats, there's different there's a number of different classes of boats. Um, like in the Olympics, I think there's 12 classes or maybe 10. And they're not like some of them are much higher performance boats. I was in a boat called a 420. Uh, and then if you go to the Olympic route, which many people in this sport do because it's such a small community, uh, there's one called a 470, which is the closest proxy for 420. But it's yeah, it's just like a double-handed, you know, it has a mainsail jib, has a spinnaker, you know, not to get super jargony, but not that fast. Like not at probably like jogging speed, maybe a little faster when it's windy.

SPEAKER_02 10:57

Nice. Okay, cool. So, what like what what goes into making somebody great at this sport? Is it like super athletic? Is it more strategy?

SPEAKER_01 11:08

Is it like it's that's that's the interesting thing. Sorry, not to cut you.

SPEAKER_02 11:12

It's uh go for it, go for it.

SPEAKER_01 11:13

There's you know, I think this applies to many competitive and even professional applications, right? Where there's there's a concept of strategy and there's a concept of tactics. And then within sailing, there's kind of there's then you also have the conditions, and then you have what you can control, which is your boat, right? So you know how well you can optimize the parts that are in control in your control, and then how well you can predict what might happen with the with the course. So the tactics are what do I do relative to the people around me? And how do I kind of manage the area, my local area, and then strategies like well, what's the tide, what's the wind, like what keep your head out of the boat and see, look around and see like where you think the wind's gonna be, you know, later or like down the line, or how do you and how do you put yourself in the position to get to that first, right? So there's like not to unpack the whole sport, but it's I mean, I would love to hear more about it.

SPEAKER_02 12:09

It's really it's super interesting, man.

SPEAKER_01 12:11

So yeah, like so you know, I think the the answer to your question is ultimately ours. You it it's there is a there is a bit of conditioning. If it's if there's no wind, it's not highlighting the conditioning aspect of your uh of the or the physical aspect of racing. But when it's really windy, it is certainly a very physical sport. Um but ultimate the strategy part just comes down to hours on the water and reps. Like there's all these little hand movements to get to make your boat go faster, and you need to like have that dialed in, and that's gonna take hours, but all the strip the strategic stuff, like how to evaluate the course itself over time, is just I think it's just an hours thing.

SPEAKER_02 12:52

So, how do you predict like which direction the wind's gonna be going and stuff like that?

SPEAKER_01 12:55

I mean, like Yeah, it's it's yeah, and this is this this is a little bit of the nuance. There is there are patterns, right? And there are there are many times where you could just get unlucky and that just happens. Like wind shuts off, shifts totally different direction. Everyone wouldn't that apply to like all the boats or no, because they're you're like how think about your maybe you're separated by you know a quarter mile of distance, right?

SPEAKER_02 13:25

If oh, okay.

SPEAKER_01 13:26

So you're separated by the you're not like yeah, because when you yeah, when you after you start, you like you already start on a pretty long line. And so I'm trying to make a comparison. Um I can't think of one that comes to mind immediately, but you know, say say say the say the line is like a football field length, the conditions on one end, if it's if there's like a slight angular shift of the wind on one end of it, that that's gonna be a meaningful difference at the scale of a football field or two football fields of distance, right? So that's how do you put yourself in the position to take advantage of that slight shift? And then how do you triage when you make mistakes or you're not in the right position to not have that be as punishing of an outcome?

SPEAKER_02 14:06

Is why do they separate the boats by like that much? I mean, obviously they don't want the boats to hit each other.

SPEAKER_01 14:12

Yeah, there is a there is a physical limit to like how close, yeah, right. So you know, these you know these races that we'd have, there'd be like 60, 70 boats on a line. So these boats are like 15 feet long. Yeah, yeah. So they're wow. Um in college is different. In college, you get 18 boats on a line, and they're much shorter, much smaller races, like 20, 15 to 20 minute races. Uh the junior saline stuff, you get like 60, 70 boats on a line, it's naturally going to be pretty big distance in between.

SPEAKER_02 14:39

Wow, that's that's incredible. Yeah, it sounds like it's like a like a very much a strategy-based sport.

SPEAKER_01 14:45

Yeah. I'll say there's yeah, again, there's what you can control in the boat to make it go faster and how to control the boats around you. And then there's the there's the definitely a big strategic component.

SPEAKER_02 14:55

Do you feel like some of it like intuition or just like feel like just based on experience, you just sort of get a sense for it? Or is it all just like very kind of like a formula? Uh you see what I'm saying?

SPEAKER_01 15:07

Because I almost there there are some people who are like they're just they had the intuition. Some people were just better, man. They just they had the intuition, they knew how to make the boat go slightly. Like, if you're both going slightly faster over a 50-minute race, think about a Formula One. If you get if you get 0.1 seconds per lap faster, that's that's you know, five, six seconds faster throughout a whole race, and which is a meaningful amount of time. Same idea. It's like the exponential buildup of being slightly faster over a whole race is a huge difference. So some people were just really good at making the boat go fast. Some people just had a six sense also for the conditions on the course and would like always found a way to be in the right place at the right time. Um, and so, which is all to say that there is maybe there is a formula to it, and some people are better at cracking it than others.

SPEAKER_02 15:56

Yeah. Well, that's like it's kind of interesting when you think about like even success in startups. It's like while like having that edge of like that fraction of a second is the difference between first place and second place, and is the difference between like the multi, multi-millions or billion dollar valuation and like not having that.

SPEAKER_01 16:15

Yes, it's kind of great.

SPEAKER_02 16:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 16:17

And there's always a tremendous amount of luck involved too. I mean, yeah, the best person, the best sailor doesn't win every weekend, but they're the best sailor is typically in the top five to ten throughout the year at most events, right? So it's it's there's kind of a golf, there's kind of a golf comparison here too. I think there's a lot less luck in golf than there might be in sailing, but nonetheless, like you know, Scotty Scheffler isn't winning every single weekend, but he's typically in the top 10 every weekend. And that just in over time, you're just gonna get you're you're increasing your service area of potential wins over that time.

Chocolate Supply Chains And Nomad Work

SPEAKER_02 16:55

Right, right. It's like looking more holistically over several events. Yeah. Well, that's really cool. And so when then you were going out of college, you decided you were traveling a lot, right? For a few years, which is which is really cool. It sounds like you were sort of like working, I don't know if it was like part-time, but it was like just sort of like very flexible and you were focusing on just traveling and seeing the world.

SPEAKER_01 17:16

Yeah, you know, I think I I I've always been a bit of what's the word, um, contrarian. And as you can imagine, some like some of my friends from school were going like predetermined predestined for the iBanking and consulting route. And I didn't even know about iBanking or CS until like my senior year. I was like, whoa, everyone got these like big jobs, Goldman Sachs or whatever. I had not really been paying attention to it. I knew I'd always known I wanted to do my own contrarian thing, whatever that would be. This opportunity sort of fell into my lap to half play, half work for my first job out of school where I was looking at investment opportunities in the high-end chocolate industry. Super niche. Um, and basically evaluating the supply chain to see if there was any place that would make sense to uh you know, open a business, start a business, you know, improve efficiency, whatever it might be. Um, and so it was more of a research job to just analyze what the state of the market looked like. But it brought me all over the world. I spent time in Africa, I spent time living a lot of my time in Brazil. Um, so a very nomadic, very cool first job out of school uh that that did scratch the contrarian itch that I was searching for.

SPEAKER_02 18:38

Yeah, that's that's definitely I've never met somebody in that industry. So that's pretty cool. Yeah, yeah. So you so what what part of Brazil were you living in?

SPEAKER_01 18:46

There's a state, it's kind of the most, you know, Brazil juts out into the Atlantic Ocean. The most eastern state, furthest east, is a state called Bahia. They're used, well, there's 98% of this rainforest has now been um what's the word? Um dewooded or uh yeah, God, you know what's the forestation, yeah. Deforested, yeah, deforested. And so there's two percent remaining, uh, and there's all this ancient cacao that lives there.

SPEAKER_02 19:13

Two percent?

SPEAKER_01 19:14

Yeah, super sad.

SPEAKER_02 19:15

So sad, man.

SPEAKER_01 19:16

Super sad. So uh in in some of the remaining native primary Atlantic rainforest, um, there's like all this like ancient cacao growth there. So there was a farm that I was living on, and uh it was like kind of evaluating, you know, part of the job was like evaluating the state of this particular farm to see if there was any like possible yield or any changes we could make in order to yield um higher quality cacao product out of it. And so I was primarily living there uh for a lot of this trip, but then or this this job uh uh the the kind of mandate snowballed into looking at the entire supply chain from end to end, so from farm to kind of bar that you would buy at the at the store. Um so it brought me to a lot of other places in the world, like DR, you know, parts of Africa, Haiti. Uh it was cool, it was super cool.

SPEAKER_02 20:06

What was the culture like in Brazil where you were? Um yeah, just like people in general.

SPEAKER_01 20:12

Yeah, super. I mean, uh having had this travel experience, I think the the sentiment is consistent across all these places of travel is like everyone was just so welcoming. And it's I think it was it was such a personal unlock that you have these conceptions of like what a place might be. And everyone is just so nice and accommodating wherever you go and so hospitable. And I I think the the learning and takeaway is that wherever you go is everyone there, it's mostly just filled with people just trying to live their life as normal and just be nice, right? And I think that's that experience, you know, it's not just a Brazil specific answer, but that experience has really transcended like how I my outlook on life of uh perceptions you might have about a place, but it's like if you think about it, people just live there full time all the time, normally. It's not it's not it's not this like conception that people might have on the day-to-day.

SPEAKER_02 21:08

Sure, yeah, I 100%. Like I I've traveled a lot and it's definitely opened my eyes. And I but I also think it's like I try to sometimes see like where I I live in Northern Virginia, DC area, as like through a tourist eyes, like through a fresh lens, like I wonder what like the perception is of like people who live from you know, people visiting, like on what they think about us, right? Like you must find it like so crazy that we're like I'm in like essentially the capital of like you know the United States, right? Right, right. Um it must be kind of wild to to kind of think about, but yeah, it's uh that's really cool. And you were you were bouncing like so you were primarily staying in hostels, but then you told me you ended up living in a steakhouse.

SPEAKER_01 21:51

Yeah, I became friends. I became friends with a uh with this this guy who's a close friend of mine now who um whose family owns a Brazilian steakhouse, and you know, true to what I was just saying now, the friendliest guy in the world, he's like, Why why are you living in these hostels? Why don't you just come stay with me? And that was basically my my semi-permanent home base in Brazil for like almost a year where I was just living rent-free in this guy's steakhouse. I wasn't he was putting all my deals.

SPEAKER_02 22:18

Yeah, so you didn't have like a bedroom though, right? Like where were you?

SPEAKER_01 22:22

I mean uh they had a s they had a spare bed, it was you know caught in a room, but yeah, it was just like in a back room, the surrender back room. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah, and so you know, so so like I said, so hospitable. You know, I he never he refused any rent or he covered you know, he he treated us to every meal 'cause we're living in his restaurant, and it was like Oh, that's awesome. Yeah, it's just it was wild. It was super wild, super you know Yeah, not nothing more to say, right? It's it's so nice.

SPEAKER_02 22:50

I think when I was um I can't remember like maybe around 20, I was living in a boxing gym.

SPEAKER_01 22:55

Oh wow.

SPEAKER_02 22:55

Yeah, because I used to coach boxing Muay Thai, MMA.

SPEAKER_01 22:59

And uh just easier to not commute and to stay there.

SPEAKER_02 23:03

I was also broke, like a kid, you know. That's great. But but yeah, it was uh I know though, like I could have I could have paid for a place. I I think it was also just like I was like 1920. I was like, why am I gonna I'll just like sleep here?

SPEAKER_01 23:18

Yeah, these are the formidable experiences. You know, I I still wish I could do things like that. I think my life, you know, life gets to a place where you're it's not it's not cool anymore either. But I I do look back on those with nostalgia and I'm like really bushing it at the time.

SPEAKER_02 23:33

Yeah, for sure. I mean, like I think back to I was traveling kind of like in a nomadic, similar-ish situation in my early 20s, and like it was awesome, but it it now sort of would also seem a little exhausting. But maybe that's also because like we you get to a certain place in your life where your career is so demanding and you have kids and like that kind of thing, where it's like the idea of having the energy to doing all that. Like, I think our lives probably require just as much energy today, if not even like more work. But yeah, just the idea of like bouncing around all the time is just like no no no.

SPEAKER_01 24:05

Yeah, I don't know. I I I also think that we fall into a bit of a rat race, right? Where there is a pressure, and I think that's the same pressure I rejected post-school, right? Uh it's you know, they say, you know, the what you're there's the what you're supposed to do, which is get the good job, work really hard, climb up the ladder. What are the ladder ends is like very vague and open-ended, and uh kind of follow this template and process. And I do, you know, one day hope to be able to break the cycle, but currently I think like you said, having a kid and being in your 30s and kind of at the at this interesting nexus of our career, it's like, okay, let's let's work hard and see where this brings us. Uh unfortunately, we do need money to live, and that's so that's the that is the that is the friction that like lets us not be romantic about living on the road and and living this kind of more uh contrarian life type of life.

SPEAKER_02 25:06

Yeah, yeah, it gets a little hard when you have kids.

SPEAKER_01 25:08

Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_02 25:09

Just a little, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 25:10

Yeah, I even though I tried I try to convince my wife, but she's never she's not having any of it. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 25:16

Yeah. So so then you moved to to Africa. Where were were you living in Africa?

SPEAKER_01 25:21

That was really truly nomadic. So that was that was part of this project. Um, I took some time off, had the opportunity to like volunteer on this game reserve in South Africa, which is super cool. Yeah, that sounds pretty awesome. Absolutely highlight experience of my life. Um, I can there's a I can I think that's a good thing.

SPEAKER_02 25:40

So, how did you land that? Like, how did that even come together for you?

SPEAKER_01 25:45

Yeah, there, you know, by virtue of the cacao thing, it's kind of in the world of sustainability and reforestation and adjacent to conservation. And so part of the contacts from that job was also uh involved in this NGO uh called Africa Parks, which basically takes donor money and then invests in national parks in Africa. And it basically approaches these governments that don't have the resource to take care of these parks and says, Hey, like we will come and run the park and we will fund it and we will rewild it and we will run this whole conservation effort and community effort. So they do tons of really cool things like translocate animals from one park to another because you know this one's overpopulated with rhinos or whatever, and they'll bring rhinos to a different park to reintroduce the nativity of like the original park, wherever that country might be. So they have the whole hopefully I'm not butchering this, and Africa Parks listens and they're like, no, you completely blew the pitch, but uh they have a whole portfolio of uh of parks, you know, all across Africa. And I was working on one adjacent kind of park uh that's involved with this this NGO. Uh so I got the opportunity to live at the park for a few weeks and did some manual labor. I was like poisoning fence lines and so yeah, tell me about that.

SPEAKER_02 27:06

So you're poisoning fence lines. So, like what for?

SPEAKER_01 27:09

Like, what was that like so that yeah, I I don't really know. Like, I was there just like I was just there. I was just trying to I was there to do manual labor. Yeah, right. Like they're just like here here's the task list for the day, here's a bucket of poison, here's a Land Rover, you're gonna go to here's the map, go to this fence, and you know, drive along the fence line and spray that whatever with with like this poison. And uh, you know, that was like a that was like what a task could look like. Or there was a you know, there's an invasive species of some sort of plant that's in the middle of the prairie, and you'd like drive out to it and take a weed whacker and just weed whack it, and like meanwhile, like giraffes and elephants and like rhinos are kind of like walking by in the distance. It's like super that is freaking awesome! Super, super, super cool.

SPEAKER_02 27:53

Uh, how come you didn't stay longer? You just like you had to move on, or yeah.

The Scooter Trip That Kept Breaking

SPEAKER_01 27:57

Yeah, there I guess I I I I asked myself the same thing. Why didn't I? I had a I had another trip lined up, or I had another adventure, I should say, lined up, which was I've always wanted to do this kind of solo road trip. So I I bought this 50cc scooter named Daisy. I it had a little tag name on it called Daisy from uh a guy in Joburg. And I drove this 50cc scooter along the coast over a month, stopping at all these like there's a whole there's a very robust uh hostel infrastructure in South Africa. And so I had the map, and like every day I tried to make it to the next hostel on this list, but every day the scooter would break down because it's a 50cc scooter not meant to travel more than like you know, five kilometers at a time. But I, you know, the interesting thing about this experience was I I really never waited more than five minutes after my scooter broke down before someone would pull over with a pickup truck and say, like, what are you doing here? You have to come with me. Like, you I'm gonna I have I'm you know, you're insane. You're coming with me and we're gonna uh and so you know, out of the kindness of people's hearts, they would just pick me up, drop me off at a mechanic, and say, Hey, you're staying with me tonight while we get this fixed up. And I stayed with a bunch of strangers uh who like opened their homes to me during this trip. Very reckless. I don't think I would do it again, but right. I did have to sell the scooter halfway through this trip because it was so unreliable. And I but I ended up hitching pitching a ride the rest of the way through just people I met.

SPEAKER_02 29:27

It was freaking awesome.

SPEAKER_01 29:29

Super cool experience, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 29:30

Yeah, and then um you ended up in was it Cape Town?

SPEAKER_01 29:34

Uh yeah, so there was a trip from Joburg to Cape Town, which is like roughly a New York to Miami length trip.

SPEAKER_02 29:40

Oh wow, yeah. So you were trying to do that whole thing on a scooter, yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 29:45

The guy who sold it to me said it was totally doable.

SPEAKER_02 29:50

That's an insanely long trip.

SPEAKER_01 29:51

Yeah, I just took his word for it. Yeah, it was supposed to take a month. I mean, it did take a month. How many times did you have a scooter breakdown? I think I I think something along the lines of like six or seven times, and by that, and then I just sold it. I sold it in one of the cities I was in after that. Yeah, and I and I just hitched the rest of the way. That's wild, man.

SPEAKER_02 30:10

Yeah, so like you were doing like on the scooter on the side of the road, like on the side of the highway, essentially.

SPEAKER_01 30:15

Yeah, yeah, full on. Full on.

SPEAKER_02 30:17

Was were other people doing that, or was it like just you?

SPEAKER_01 30:20

Like people were on proper motorcycles, but not out definitely.

SPEAKER_02 30:23

You're just out there on a scooter, yeah. I mean, like trying to go like a thousand miles.

SPEAKER_01 30:28

Yeah, yeah. I I mean, my goal, I never wanted to do more than like a hundred miles in a day, but uh because there was there's a pretty there's a good infrastructure for it. Oh, for like this, like a side of the road, like you're not just on like no, no, no, no, no, not the side of the road, no, for where I would try to make each night. Oh okay, yeah. If if you had a reliable bike, this is totally doable. But I just my my mistake was the raw reliability of my vehicle, and that was that was the issue.

SPEAKER_00 30:56

But uh if you had a proper motorcycle, totally, totally doable trip.

SPEAKER_02 31:01

Yeah, that's awesome. I'm also looking up a 50cc scooter so I can like envision like a picture.

SPEAKER_01 31:08

Yeah, can you pull up a picture? Yeah. Yeah, here. I mean it's gonna be a little janky, but oh sorry, it's not gonna Oh wow. And I think there's a that's you? That's like actually you? Yeah, nice. Oh, that's a that's another busted scooter. I was like, I hope it's not that one. Yeah, this is me in the back of a truck because of course I was in the back of a truck because someone was picking me up.

SPEAKER_02 31:45

Yeah, of course, yeah. Do what you gotta do. That's awesome, man. Yeah, what a good experience.

SPEAKER_01 31:51

Yeah, it was great. It was great. I mean, it was super duper duper reckless. I would never do that again.

SPEAKER_02 31:55

Yeah, you gotta do some reckless stuff. I I mean, I I have some stories, like one of my favorite, like insanely reckless stories was like early days of Secure Vision. Like, at first it wasn't a scale company. Securevision is my embedded recruiting RPO firm. Yep. Uh and in the early days, I just had a few customers. I was working with uh Grubhub, recruiting for them. Uh WeWork at the time was growing insanely fast.

SPEAKER_01 32:17

I used to work at WeWork, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 32:19

Oh, yeah, really? Oh, so we were on their preferred vendors list. So I worked with uh Nick Worswick.

SPEAKER_01 32:23

Uh I was I was at a subsidiary. I was called Managed by Q.

SPEAKER_02 32:27

Yeah, they managed, yeah, they uh they acquired them. I remember that. Yeah, I remember that acquisition, yeah. Yeah, um, so yeah, I did a lot of work with them and uh Similar Web. I don't know if you remember it's an Israeli startup that scaled like super fast, and I think IPO'd recently or more recently, but uh um yeah. So, anyways, I had a few customers, but it was like more of a lifestyle business. Yeah, and like I think actually this was before we work in Similar Web. So this was still Grubhub, like very early days. I think it was like our first year in business. Yeah, it was, it must have been because like there was like things really started to take off with like we work in some of these other companies, like we were hiring a lot, but when it was just Grubhub, I remember there was this like we were we used to be a contingent firm, so it was like very fee-based. Yeah, so we didn't actually like make money unless we made a hire. And I think like the first year we ended up pulling in like$77,000 or something, and like, but there was like a couple of times where like we uh my girlfriend at the time and I like we ran out of cash, and I remember there was one time where we were like we like basically ran out of cash, we had like a little bit of money left, and so we're like, well, what are we gonna do? And there was a big party happening, like we were in Romania at the time. Random. We're at Romania at the time, and there was like a big party on the Black Sea in a town called Costanza. It's like a multi-day kind of like I don't know, party, like I don't know, like medium type of stuff. Yeah, yeah. And so we're like, well, let's just like let's just go and then we'll we'll figure it out. You know, we'll figure it out. Yeah. So we basically had like zero, like close to nothing in the bank account, and we just ended up going to this like big party on the Black Sea. And just like looking back on it, like that's so insane. Yeah, it's so insane to be just like yeah, yeah. We just like, yeah, we'll figure it out.

SPEAKER_01 34:12

It's gonna work out, yeah. It did. It does, it all and it always it, you know, I shouldn't say it always does, but more often than not, it it does, right?

SPEAKER_02 34:19

Well, I mean, like you have to figure it out, you know what I mean? Like you exactly, you just you have to, so it'll it'll happen. Like yeah, you'll survive, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 34:28

Yeah, I yeah, I I and I think that's what this you know similar, right? That to your experience, right? It's I think putting yourself in this situation is really foundational experience. I think it's yeah, man, I I think it's easy to look back and be and say how cool and fun that experience was. But my god, it was like very challenging as well. Oh, yeah. Yeah, we're on the side of the road and you're hoping that someone's gonna save you basically. And you know, luckily someone does, but the takeaway is being how important those challenging experiences are to like to create with being resilient, right?

SPEAKER_02 35:05

Yeah. It's funny, like it's like when we're younger in some ways, it's like we put ourselves in those situations, and then like when we're our age, we're like, we don't need like we already have enough, like we don't need to. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 35:15

Yeah, yeah, yeah. 100%. Although I use I do yearn for it. I do yearn for it a little bit, but not maybe not to that, not to that extreme, but I I do year for being challenged in it in kind of novel ways.

SPEAKER_02 35:25

I definitely want to like get back to traveling more overseas. Like, I I really do miss it. In the past several years, I just really haven't like post-COVID, maybe like once, yeah, once uh went overseas, and it definitely feels like it's kind of missing, you know. There's like this part of me that's just like I love I loved like being in the middle of like a random city or like a random place, just like at a coffee store reading, or just like just like I love the idea of just being somewhere new and learning from and like a new culture, and there's just something so special about that, like nothing really can replace that feeling, that experience.

SPEAKER_01 36:01

You know, yeah. And it's not even necessarily about I think it's just breaking the the day-to-day.

Travel As An Antidote To Autopilot

SPEAKER_02 36:07

You actually feel like you're living. Yeah, it's it's like you're not in this like pattern. Like I feel like so much of I'm I'm like super grateful and happy for where like what's happening in my life I am. But like there is this element of it's Monday before I know it, it's Friday before I know it, it's it's the end of the day before I know it. It's like I'm problem solving and I'm doing different things every day to some extent, to some extent, but it it does feel like you're sort of on this autopilot where life is just accelerating. And what's amazing about travel is like if you can travel and unplug from Zoom, it's like you you it breaks a path, you feel like, oh wait, I'm like I have to use my brain to like take in my surroundings, and it's it's different, right? It feels like time slows down just a little bit, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 36:47

Which is nice. I I think you can find it locally, right?

SPEAKER_01 36:50

I think it's a matter of things. How do you do that? Like not maybe not local, local. I still think you have to get in a car or a plane and go somewhere. I think it helps a lot. I guess when I say local, I mean uh in the US. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I hear you. Yeah, which is big country, but my favorite trip I've done of all time that I've done twice, like been super lucky to have done twice now is I did a Colorado River trip through the Grand Canyon.

SPEAKER_04 37:14

Oh, that's awesome.

SPEAKER_01 37:15

And and I've I really yearn for these really wilderness focused trips because I've done a few kind of river trips where you're just it is you're you're completely disconnected. There's no you're zero cell service for 14 up to 14 days for some of these trips. And there's no hope. There's no hope of even having service. So when when there's no hope of it, you truly are off the grid.

SPEAKER_00 37:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 37:37

And gosh, it's such a perspective driving experience to just be off the grid in nature. No one can contact you, and it's like, oh wow, my mind is so much more clear, my my thoughts are so much more open. The level of importance I add to things in my day-to-day that I've are just made up. It's not, it's made up urgency and it's made up uh importance because we're I think we're stuck in this pressure of ambition and professionalism and comparing to others. And there's nothing like going off the grid to anchor yourself to where makes the most sense to find that balance of what you want to achieve professionally long term and the type of person you want to be long term. And how you and like hopefully reconcile that through some sort of balance that makes sense.

SPEAKER_02 38:23

Right. It's like getting taking a step back to like remind yourself, okay, like what are my values and yeah, is how I'm living my life really aligned with that?

SPEAKER_01 38:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 38:32

You know, kind of because sometimes we it's easy to sort of get off course a little bit, right?

SPEAKER_01 38:36

Yeah, like there is always a money problem though. Yeah, the money, the whole money thing is really like a fortunate. It's so annoying. Yeah, it's just such the most annoying part of the whole the whole equation.

SPEAKER_02 38:47

Yeah, it's just like constantly adulting these days.

SPEAKER_01 38:50

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 38:54

Just kidding.

SPEAKER_01 38:55

If all if only we didn't need money to buy things to stay alive, then it's right, yeah.

Method’s Growth And TA Today

SPEAKER_02 39:00

It's like life would be so much better. Um so so yeah, so and then I'd love to talk to you a little bit about just where you are today, and let's kind of let's pivot a little bit. Let's talk about town acquisition and yeah, and um, you know, right now you're kind of because you're in a director of recruiting role at method, which it sounds like method is growing insanely fast. Just quick like lay of the land. Like how many employees do you have? How much are you scaling like headcount wise? Like, what's that look like?

SPEAKER_01 39:28

Yeah, I think we're growing traditionally fast. I think nothing compares to the AI company that can that can that can scale, you know, super duper fast, faster than ever. I think we're following a more traditional, like uh a 2020 or 2019 fast growth. Um, no, it's still fast, still crazy. But um, we are about over approaching 60 now. Uh I joined about a year and a half ago, around 20. I yeah, I'm leading talent. My background's mostly tech recruiting. I'm responsible for that, but also just kind of the whole like functional strategy right now. Um, sorry, I I missed the question though.

SPEAKER_02 40:08

Yeah, so that's that's good just to get to get a sense like for where you're at. But um, yeah, just like the size of the company, that kind of thing. But um, yeah, yeah. I mean, I guess I just want to talk to you about like, you know, you've been in recruiting, I think you said about a decade. Is that right?

SPEAKER_01 40:21

Maybe a little bit less, but uh you know, close enough-ish, yeah. Prior to that and the sales adjacent in a sales role. So I I kind of acquaint the two as calling calling eight to ten years. Yeah, yeah, for sure.

SPEAKER_02 40:31

Yeah, that sounds good. So like at this point in your career, I just want to get a sense for your top kind of takeaways or what you what you've really learned about TA and what you feel like is ultimately the most important. You know, I think one thing that stood out uh to me is you you're like you talked about how in a way recruiting is like remained really consistent in terms of the things that you have to do to be successful. It's more of like how we do it that's changed. But could you tell us more about that? Like just you know, because that was a really interesting I don't know, realization that you shared with me.

Recruiting Fundamentals Still Hold

SPEAKER_01 41:01

Yeah. Yeah. I I started so I started on the agency side, and I really the agency side in the end was not for me for a number of reasons, but I think what it I think what it taught me and is still true to this day is truly the fundamentals of an end-to-end search. Now, I prefer the in-house version of it where you're selling one thing, and so uh, my light turned out so oh so I'll yeah, I'll get to that in a bit. But I think you know, for all the in-house people listening, the the function has not changed, right? It's it's still a sales funnel, it is still you know, you have to source or you have to get people in the top of the funnel, you have to evaluate them throughout a process, and you have to sell them throughout the same process. So you're finding that balance of sell versus evaluate, and then you have to make the hire, you have to make the offer, and that nothing about the mechanics has really changed, in my opinion, in the last decade. Uh, the thing that has changed is how we approach each of those stages in in an end-to-end search. So sourcing nowadays. I've always worked at earlier stage companies, I've never worked at a company where we have this huge recognizable brand. We work as a weird is a bit of an exception at the time, but it was a subsidiary, so not exactly.

SPEAKER_02 42:15

Yeah, managed by Q is like becoming well known, I guess. But yeah, becoming more like we work.

SPEAKER_01 42:20

Yeah, I've never worked at over beyond a Series C, uh, and where it's like, oh, we are, I don't want to throw anyone under the bus. So we are this big, recognizable, cool company that pays well. So our inbound channel is super hot, right? Um, never had that. So for me, it's always been how do we build a sourcing machine or how do we how do we present this as a great place to work? How do we reach out to people? Um, and so that's that's changed a lot, right? I think and then some of the stuff of what I'm focused on in 2026 is around that part of it, and especially with all the tools that we have nowadays. How do we design a thoughtful process that both evaluates and sells? I don't think that's changed that much either. I think there are some fundamentals of like what evaluation should look like and how to make an unbiased, consistent, fair, reliable, scalable process. Lots of buzzwords, but I think all those buzzwords are true. Um, I think what has changed is the selling throughout. And how do we, you know, and there's more we can unpack that a bit more. Um so yeah, I I I hate to say it's like easy. It's it's super hard. This I mean, hiring is super hard, especially now. It's like as hard as it's been in a few years, in my opinion. But the fundamentals. If you could break it down to the fundamentals, exactly, then it's it's pretty there is a straightforwardness to recruiting that I think is just a matter of executing well at each at each stage of that end-to-end process.

SPEAKER_02 43:46

For sure. And so like right now, based on what you're doing in your career and that method, like what problems or opportunities are you currently uh solving for right now?

SPEAKER_01 43:59

Yeah, I think I it's a big sigh because I'm solving for so many different problems right now.

SPEAKER_02 44:05

Talk about like embedding some automations or like not even to some extent. And then, but you also talked about some of the most important things you're doing are like not really possible to automate, right? Because like we are in like this people business and yeah, you know, we can't do it too much. But I mean, just like looking at ways again, like changing how we do certain things. It's like the same high-level principles, right? But yeah, like what what are those types of things that you're kind of evaluating right now that you're looking at changing?

SPEAKER_01 44:33

Yeah, there's a boring answer here, right? And that it's like, how can we leverage AI to improve our life, work, blah, blah, blah, whatever. Um, I it's like it's so buzzy at this point that it's like almost it's a given, right? But you know, if we If if we if we start with a thesis, right? The thesis being how do we talk to the best candidates? How do we and how do we get the best candidates for method interested and sold and joining method? I my thesis is we need to be spending as much time targeting and talking to those folks. Because I I believe that we have a great team here, we have a great value prop. And if people get to know us, then they're gonna be really excited by what we're up to and who we are. But how getting them is really hard. So what I'm trying to do, or getting in front of them, I should say, is what's really hard. So what I'm trying to do is use these new tools to automate away as much operational overhead as possible so that me and my team, or my team and I, are spending less time pressing a bunch of buttons in ATSs and emails and calendar invites and coordinating and et cetera, and you building as much AI optimization into that piece as possible so that we can spend more time talking to great candidates.

SPEAKER_02 45:53

Is there any specific case study or tool or use case that within AI for recruiting that stands out to you or you feel like is most impactful?

SPEAKER_01 46:01

I mean, I'm ripping tons of cloud code or I should say really co-work lately. We have it connected to all of the other tools that people have. Like we have it, you know, we have it connected to Slack, granola, calendar, and Gmail. So for example, um instead of, you know, I used to update everyone whenever I scheduled it on-site or an interview with specific teams, right? I can create a cowork automation that once that calendar invite hits the schedule, it automatically sends a Slack to everybody uh that is relevant. It sends the LinkedIn to the candidate. That used to take me like two or three minutes to like copy paste the LinkedIn, blah, blah, blah, whatever. Put it into a Slack, be very thoughtful. And it's like, oh, that three minutes times 15 to 20 interviews a week just compounds over time. And I could do that for my whole team. And there's so many automations that look like that. Uh, we my CEO sends a weekly update email, for example.

SPEAKER_02 46:53

Yeah, you were telling me about this. It's pretty cool.

SPEAKER_01 46:55

Yeah. And it's for the internal team, it's a lot of confidential information, but it's really high, it's really great content to send to a candidate that's a later stage because it says, hey, you get a sense of what how the CEO communicates, you get a sense of what's going on in the business. So it would be really high value for that to be part of our fundamental process to share with candidates at certain points in their candidate journey. Yeah. It's a ton of overhead to send that, to make that decision. And it's a lot of redacting and it's a lot of buttons you have to click in order to do that consistently. So I created a cowork automation that once a week it scrapes to see if there was an email from the CEO. It automatically redacts confidential information, it creates a draft to all the candidates that I've set some parameters that identifies as late stage. It makes sure it hasn't sent it to them before or sent this version or previous version before, and it drafts me a forwarded email to all those candidates. And all I have to do is QA it and make sure it's going to the right people. And I and I can send it. So I've now embedded a very consistent white glove candidate experience and highly transparent business update email to them. And I've done it at scale for my whole team. And I've saved hours of work, and now we've had this great content piece embedded in our process. So there's you know, there's so many examples of things you can automate now that allow us to spend more time doing what we want to do, which is talking about a method, selling to great candidates, getting in front of a great candidate, or open just opening up our bandwidth to do a bunch of other cool stuff.

AI Interviews And Inbound Reality

SPEAKER_02 48:29

Yeah, that's really cool. Um what do you think about AI interviewing? Like screening top of funnel for inbounds.

SPEAKER_01 48:37

Um I think I you know, I imagine that there's places it makes sense. I think it's personally if if you're a 50 person company trying to present a high value prop in a white club experience, it's I don't think there's any room for that for a company our size. If you're running a super high volume new grad program, great. Like, sure, I get it. You're how do you if you have a really strong inbound channel, like great, go for it.

SPEAKER_02 49:07

Right, like a ton of like a lot of like a ton of inbound applications.

SPEAKER_01 49:10

It's like we spend most of our time sourcing. Yeah, yeah, no, totally. And we we do get lots of inbound as well. I think inbound's a very weird channel in 2026 where it's like there's a lot of noise, a lot of fake profiles, to the point where you know, two years ago I would have said it's a totally slept-on channel, and now I'm like, I'm not really spending much time going through inbound because it's very noisy. So it's kind of a sad reality. I used to be a big champion of inbound. Yeah, that's why it's like this anti-there was a bias for it. There are some biases against it.

SPEAKER_02 49:44

Yeah. That's I that's why I like the AI interviewer like use case, because that there's just like from a time investment perspective.

SPEAKER_01 49:52

Yeah.

Standing Out With Content And Events

SPEAKER_02 49:52

Like just like the outbound motion is just like I think from a like it's more strategic in nature too. And I still feel like, yeah, AI can help like with outbounding too. But like having this senior recruiter, like being able to like craft a personalized message or really understand the market, understand like where the best engineers work, or like what I mean, there's just like so there's like a lot more nuance to it. Yeah. Um, but I really like what you were saying in terms of like kind of creating your own automation, leveraging AI, and like using it for down funnel um to to kind of craft like draft. Like that's that's a really cool use case. I feel like that's like somewhat unique too. Like, yeah, because I don't I don't really know companies doing that. So it's like it's just like a cool thing that you can do to stand out, right? Exactly. It's creative.

SPEAKER_01 50:37

That's what the name, yeah. That's what the name of the game is right now, right? Is there's there's so many great companies right now. There's so many cool companies doing cool things, that's true, and they're that are all competing for a first mover advantage. And I think I think my theory, I don't know if this is right, is one of the reasons this market feels kind of like 2021, I think it was, where it was like these crazy offers, everyone going to big tech companies, yeah, like no zero applicants. Um, is that there's just a just there's just such a high distribution of cool, well-backed companies doing cool things. So there's just more opportunity now than there was a long a while ago. Yeah. And so all these great folks are getting picked up by all these companies that you know, these just new companies that didn't exist before. There's just an explosion, it seems like there's just an explosion of more businesses. Yeah. Um, but um, so exactly what you said before, how do you stand out?

SPEAKER_02 51:38

Like that yeah, I think I think there's like there's like unique ways to do it. I think like it's you know, people tune into shows like this where they're looking up content, it's like, like what's the best practice? What's best practice? And like, yeah, there are things that we can be doing to like, okay, like looking at others, but there's also like this element of not copy pasting and like what just being creative, like what you you're doing. Um, and some of it would almost makes it like best practice level in terms of effectiveness is that other people aren't doing it because you were creative and you're doing it. It's almost like partially more valuable because other people aren't doing it. So it's like I think it's also like a balancing act. Like, we there's a lot of things we want to do that other people are doing, but I also feel like sometimes what makes something great in terms of an experience is that other people are not doing it. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 52:26

Like, yeah, it does that. I don't know. It's just something that we're kind of thinking through. It's yeah, for sure. It's we we look at our peers, and of course, there's like companies we really look up to from what they're doing on an employer branding level. Sure, yeah, yeah. A lot of people are doing like the same stuff though, like yeah, no, totally. And we're gonna copy that because it's yeah, yeah. If we're not doing that, we're we're just falling behind, right? But you know, the the the modernness of these tools that we have are are opening up bandwidth to be creative in talent. Yeah, right. So how do we use that again, time being our ultimate asset? How do we unlock our time to be better than when we were locked, when we were stuck with this operational debt in overhead? Right. Um, and I for us, for me, for the thesis for 2026, it's leaning into content, leaving leaning into in person, leaning into events. I'm not an event planner, I don't know what what the hell I'm doing with events, but I we're just doing it. And like there's this mantra going around, I think it's you can just do things. Like we really you really can just do things. It's and of course you have to get the budget and the investment from the your leadership to allow yourself to like you know go forward, but we're just taking shots, man. And like we'll get our we'll figure it out, and we'll do we've we've we've hosted great events lately. We've we're we're investing more in in-person stuff, we're investing more in content. I literally last night was up on a replit account spinning up a what is method animation deck that I could send to candidates. Yeah, it's more than it's like more clear than any video content that we could have done that takes you know three months to produce. We did this like way super super simple MVP that took me a couple hours. And now I have like a deck I can send to candidates to unpack what it is that we actually do, and I can put that in my drip campaign outreach or whatever that I'm that I'm doing at the top of the funnel. That's awesome. Yeah, I love that.

Positive Intent And Kindness As North Star

SPEAKER_02 54:22

I love that. I wanted to talk to you a little bit about like, you know, we talked about TA, kind of your top takeaways, a little bit about what you're focusing on now. Um, but just to zoom out a little bit more, this, and I think this kind of meshes between professional and personal too. It's like more like life principle-based. Sure. Um, you know, you you talked about like intention, like how you kind of interact with people and thinking through intention. Um so what do you mean by that when you say like you focus on intention and and how you interact with folks?

SPEAKER_01 54:57

Yeah. Yeah, there I it I think it transcends the professional and personal life too, which is I default to assuming positive intent. Something that's always drawn me to earlier stage companies is there's no illusion that we're or there's no illusion that we're rowing in the same direction, right? When you're this small, there's no conflict of interest between business units or whatever that are at odds. Maybe there's a maybe at worst there's some scrabble for limited resources or budget or whatever, but I've I've never really seen that in our company our size. Um, so we can all from a baseline agree that we're we are aiming to achieve the same goal. And any disagreement in between is we are at least we're it is a disagreement of opinion about achieving the same outcome, which I love that. That's what that's what draws me here. Because if it if there's no room to assume anything other than positive intent, but in you know, in my and it kind of extends into my personal life, which is I'm very much about intention versus outcome. So I'm like an incredibly way too too fault, way too of a trust, too much of a trusting person. My wife like complains, gives a shit about this all the time. She's like, but like I don't know, I would I feel like I would hand someone money on the street and be like, hey, can you hold this for a sec while like grab this coffee? Like I just trust people, I don't know. And I I've trusted many people with things that end up biting me in the butt, but it's not because they didn't intend for it's not like sorry, I'm not making any sense. Yeah, no, you are actually. I totally get it. It's like for example, like I've lent my car to people and they ended up getting in a car accident. And it's like that or they they they were fine, but like the car is totaled or whatever. It's like that's fine. Like, I you didn't intend for that to happen. That's I'm not even mad. That's just a bummer. That's just a pro that's just a fact of life that accidents happen. If you and but if you intended to ruin my car, we'd have a huge problem, right? So when you have when you have that attitude, I think it opens up a lot of room for kindness, for trust. And I'd much rather live a trusting life and have a couple of times where it burns me than to be skeptical of everyone around me, right? And I think the travel stuff has a lot to do with that. But I think the learning from the travel stuff is that you there is room to be trusting and focus on intentions more than outcomes. Um, yeah, I don't know. And you know, there's lots of applications to it, but that's the high level.

SPEAKER_02 57:37

Well, so it's interesting is you're saying that it's like moving forward, like assuming positive intent opens up opens up like your ability to when you think about like different virtues or principles, like being kind or right, being honest or being trusting, like all of these things are kind of like because of assuming good intent and enables you to makes you feel like okay, I can live more more so by this code.

SPEAKER_01 57:59

Um well, I I just think I've seen the opposite too, right? Where due to your life experience, you are skeptical of others. And I think uh those folks certainly have many reasons to to feel that way, but I think it just is I think it's a limiting presence in someone's life to be to be so wary that it's just it's a it's a life of fear or it's an attitude of fear. And I'd rather just have the ad I'd rather not live a life of being afraid of what someone might do and just take it at face value of what they end up doing, whatever that might be.

SPEAKER_04 58:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 58:34

You also mentioned that like the ultimate value for you is kindness. I'm wondering like how that made it to the top for you. Why is that so important?

SPEAKER_01 58:43

Yeah. I, you know, um there's this book called I think it's called Road to Character by David Brooks. I think this is a played out trope, so this might be familiar to lots of people listening, but it's just this concept of living for your eulogy and not for your resume. And you know, the book's all about these beacons of character throughout history and what makes their character particularly um robust or strong or whatever. And I I think if I'm if I am living for my eulogy instead of my resume, then I would want to be looked back as someone who was kind ultimately. And I you know, I have a nine-month-old now. I think of the values I would rank for what I would want my daughter to turn out to be like, I think more than smart or ambitious or whatever, I think I would just hope that she's nice and kind to people. And so if that's the if that's my hope for you know my kid, I think it's important that I rank it for myself as well and embody that value as much as I can.

SPEAKER_02 59:49

That's really smart because that's that is something that I've I've thought about. I just like you articulated it, like made it more clear for me. It's like, yeah, we should be living our lives in the in the way of like what we want for our children. Like, and it's not just and it's it's also like being able to lead by example, it's like showing them the way because ultimately they're not gonna just model what we say, but they're gonna model how we act and the way we are, which is also what's terrifying.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:15

You know, you're like, oh god, yeah, yeah. You know, it's it's it's similar vein. Like one of my work principles is just never lose your cool. Uh and that I don't lose my cool at all. I mean, it takes a lot for me to lose my cool, but you know, having it I wouldn't say I'm the most patient person. So those are two things that are at odds with each other is like yeah, not losing your cool and not being patient in my personal life. It's like, okay, how do I reconcile these two? But I I hope I can I hope I can figure out the way to remain kind and maybe be able to do that. Patience is huge.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:49

Yeah, yeah, patience and like understanding and uh like kindness and all those types of things. Yeah, because like being a parent is what is like it will test you. Oh yeah, you test us in those.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:59

My daughter's great. I think it was you know, it's it was not nothing that's tested my patience has really ever been about her specifically. It's just about the the like the zero to six month age. My god, that tests her patience. It's like not her fault. She's just a kid. She's not a good thing. No, no, yeah. It's not what babies do. Yeah. This is just wow, that was that was certainly patient as it'd be testing. It would be yeah, that's just the for anybody. It has to be, yeah. Yeah, it's incredibly challenging. Yeah, yeah.

Building A Team Worth Remembering

SPEAKER_02 1:01:27

Um well, you know, I'd like want to get into a little bit more about your your future and what you want and how you're thinking about getting there. Like professionally, you've talked to me a lot about like before we hit record about like building something special, building something meaningful. Like, and again, I think it goes along the line of like you say, kind of living for kind of like from the perspective of thinking through like a eulogy versus like a resume. Um you know, kind of being able to reflect back and feeling like really good um about what you've what you've you've done. Uh so it sounds like there's some parallels there when you think about like what you want to build for the future. But yeah, I mean I guess like let me get to a question here. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I was like when you when you think about like building something special and that being at like the core of your professional goals, could you tell me, tell us a little bit more about what you mean there?

SPEAKER_01 1:02:23

Yeah. I think when it relates as it relates to talent, there's a there's a bit of a paradox in talent or a or a conflict of interest that happens, right? Which is your mandate is to build a team, and implicit to that mandate is there's a number to hit, really. Um, and you have to get you have to fill a certain number of seats. And I think the conflict of interest is in order for your performance to be deemed good, you need to make the hire. And so that can make you advocate for a mismatch. And because you're again, your performance is tied to the speed and yeah, quality of which that yeah, you have to build the company, right? But I would want to be more longer-term thinking than that. And my North Star in talent for method and for any future company I join is how do we how how do we build a thing so that when we look back on it, this was the absolute best group of people I've ever worked with. And answering for every hire we make, answering that question fundamentally of is this a hire that's going to embody that vision? Now, there's a lot of nuance and a lot of gray space in between that. Sometimes you really just need a person really fast to solve a business problem that's critical. And if that's going to help the business get to that point faster, that's a trade-off for, you know, that you that is going to still align with that long-term vision. But ultimately, how do we maintain this uncompromising commitment to our bar, whatever bar means? It's a very sticky term that can transcend in lots of areas. But how do we maintain this uncompromising commitment to whatever we call the bar to for that ultimate goal of look looking back on this super fondly one day and looking back and saying, wow, what we built there was really special.

SPEAKER_04 1:04:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:17

So that's the that's the that's the TA vision, right? Um, yeah, sorry, that though that's the I love it.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:26

Yeah. So um Colin, one of the things you mentioned to me is that resilience is just a core value and something that you think about uh at this point in your life. And uh could you share with us why that is?

SPEAKER_01 1:04:38

Yeah, I think you know, maybe it's a a matter of circumstance rather than than than a value that I I top down decided on. But uh, you know, I mentioned you know, I think I mentioned my you know, my dad was born in the apartment that I grew up in, and uh he he actually passed away when I was 16. And when you, you know, formative years in high school, your dad dies. It's like, you know, one of the funny stories about it is I never told anybody at high school. I just kind of powered through it because I was like wanted to like keep on this facade of being like this isn't gonna be the thing that defines me. Um, I don't know why I did that. I talked to my therapist about it, but uh it's just kind of a a straight, it was kind of a the natural thing that I felt was like the right decision to do at the time. Um, but you know, really difficult timing in my life, right? My my dad passed away uh in 2008. My mom lost her business in 2009. Turns out that fine linens are the first thing that people stop buying during a global financial crisis. So I think I it developed this period of time in life where I was kind of doing my thing and like a little bit on my own, where my mom was wrapping up her business, was very tied up in that. Um and so you know, that was just ultimately like my first four into training for being living a very independent, self-driven life of running into specific problems, whatever those might be, and relying on myself to to try to solve them, right? She had she had her business to take care of.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:11

For other folks that are you when you're going through tough times or when you're thinking about like you know, persevering during challenging times in a startup, or like as a parent, like what do you think what did that teach you about how to get through those those tough situations or or chapters? Like how do you approach it?

SPEAKER_01 1:06:28

I think I there's an aspect of this that's there's no one else but you who can do this, right? You the you have the res like this is your responsibility, there's nothing you can do to make it not your responsibility. And this is a very extreme type of forcing function in order to in order to do it, but. you all you know there is a for any difficult task ahead of you you typically know in your gut that who the right person to tackle that is and oh it's very frequently you and I think this life experience for me taught me to just you just have to white knuckle it and do it sometimes I think one of my one of my mentors in uh my previous job really impressive woman who um was our chief people officer of my last company but her one of her mantras was just do the thing and I think having had this life experience which is again an extreme version of it uh in order to uh was is is a very was very uh strong endorsement of just doing the thing where you run into you know I had to grow up pretty fast right I had to learn how to do my parents' taxes I had to do all the house maintenance and like be could become a pretty handy person I had to deal with like all sorts of paperwork that I've never run into before and I'm doing this as a minor or you know just out you know just in 18 to 20 years old. The second half to this story is that my mom ended up developing Alzheimer's so you know that's been the last eight eight or so years of her having of having that disease which is particularly shitty one to to get and it's you know it's just been more of that for my late 20s right of dealing with these um very trying circumstances but nonetheless high resiliency building experiences uh to to just learn how to do things and be independent and to to tackle them head on.

SPEAKER_02 1:08:22

And like what about this is like more holistically too like what type of person do you want to become and what are you going to be focusing on in this next chapter over the next several years?

SPEAKER_01 1:08:31

Yeah I think refine the craft I for sure you know even though we we where I claim that it's straightforward there's a lot of race space in between all the all the areas of the template of which now it can go end to end right so refine the craft flex into areas that I'm uncomfortable with like events and in-person stuff um and then maybe one day just get off the rat race whatever that means I think I want to be you know what keeps me what keeps me here is I I'm I'm loving building uh I am super proud of the impact that talent can make we made a couple of really critical hires end of last year and it's like I can see how the business has meaningfully moved forward as a result of that work. That's awesome. So to see to see you know seeing the impact is still very fun and very cool and I'm still very proud of of the impact that talent has on businesses especially at this stage long term I see you know as long as that continues to be true I I I see myself sticking with it and maybe how you know maybe the next phase is this goes from you know a 60 person company to a 600 person company. It's a very different type of problem. And maybe that still scratches the itch and I'd love I I hope it does. If it doesn't and I'm like I want to live in the Grand Canyon and be a nomad like I have a I have a whole other spreadsheet for my my renaissance life that doesn't involve an uh you know a full-time tech job um which we can certainly unpack but that's uh uh that but yeah I I I I do wonder if I'll one day leave the corporate world and run a lifestyle business like a coffee shop or something.

SPEAKER_02 1:10:11

Yeah that would be really cool thought about that too. It's awesome awesome yeah well hey Colin we're running up on time here I just want to say thank you so much for joining us today it's been a lot of fun uh getting to know you and like you're just like top takeaways with with uh with life and talent and all these good things. Um so yeah thank you so much for coming on the show and joining us today.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:31

Yeah James I I really appreciate the invite and being on it's it's I'm not used to talking about myself so uh I I I try not to as much as I can so it's uh but I I I had a great time.

SPEAKER_02 1:10:41

Yeah yeah me too it's just like really cool learning about um like sailing and like your travel stories are like really really unique. So yeah um well hey everyone thank you so much for joining us today and we'll see you next time