Ep5 From Hiring to Hunting: The War for Top Talent

Joe Blackburn  0:00  
You can care about your teammates, and you can have personal relationships, and that's very normal and probably helpful. At the end of the day, we're in it to win it, and if somebody's not in it to win it as the leader. The longer you tolerate that, the more you hurt all of your constituencies, clients, employees, families.

Jason Croft  0:16  
Welcome to the lion's edge, where top performers sharpen their teeth. Hosted by Joe Blackburn, founder of The Lion, who is relentlessly dedicated to helping business owners lead multi million dollar teams and me. Jason Croft, I transform unseen entrepreneurs into industry leaders by developing their market gravity. Each week, we reveal proven strategies and raw insights to help you maximize your business, multiply your wealth and make your family indestructible. Now let's create your edge. Welcome to the lion's edge. And yes, if you're seeing me here just by myself first, it's because, once again, Joe and I just started going, we hit record and started talking through, you know, things that are that are coming up for Joe and his clients and really out in the world, this idea of recruiting, Getting talent in, filling these spots, and all of the pain that comes from that right, pain, joy, all of that fun stuff. And it is, it's kind of across the board, with a lot of folks that that Joe's working with. But I'm seeing the same thing just across industries right now, that that hunt for talent, you know, we hear about, you know, mass layoffs at Google, Facebook because of AI coming in, things like that. But across the country, there are really these areas of, hey, we need talent so bad, and we can't get rid of somebody who's underperforming, because I don't know who in the heck we're going to get to fill that role. And so we dig in deep around that some solutions for it, how to approach that, and the biggest thing is to figure this out before you need it. There's some solutions and some help for folks who are in that situation right now. But this is really a good wake up call for folks who aren't scrambling for talent right now, and what you can do to prepare, because it will happen at some point, and Joe has some great ways of going about taking care of that before it comes up. Right?

Joe Blackburn  2:38  
All of them are in the war for talent. That's actually in our header war on talent. I mean, they just, you know, a lot of these people are in places that aren't abundant with great people. It's they're maybe smaller towns or geographies. So what they're doing is they're hiring people that are looking for jobs, and those generally aren't the best talent in your market, you know. So it's like a mindset shift from hiring to recruiting. When you recruit, you're going after the top talent and trying to recruit them over to you or your team or your business, and that's, you know, most of top talent, a lot of times, they're well compensated, they're happy where they're at. Things are going well. They're not out on posting on job boards. So like when I was, you know, in financial services, it wasn't like the people that we recruited were saying, I'm ready to leave, and if they were, it generally was a red flag, like, if they were running for it was almost like, Well, what happened there? And some of it was just general unhappiness and the allure of something different, and financial, you know, incentive and those things that's normal. However, most conversations would start with, I'll talk to you, but I'm not leaving. I'm not, you know, yes, I'll have a conversation, but I'm not interested. I'm just being nice. That's almost where all of them began. I have no interest in this, but I'm a nice person. We're in the same town, and, you know, then we started down the path.

Jason Croft  4:16  
How do you shift a company and a company owner into that mindset to go from, oh, we have these roles to fill, and number one is that you're you're too late already, right? A little bit. But is that an entire is that a new role to have someone in there, more in the recruiting, rather than the typical HR shuffling through resumes, somebody going out to find talent.

Joe Blackburn  4:45  
I mean, I, when I I essentially did pillars in the recruiting framework versus, you know, sales or marketing. So it's the same, I mean, it's the same mechanics. It's you. Know, like and trust, and then there is a pay component. And the pay component is, you're gonna have to compensate them however. You have to get ROI. So it's, it's just capital allocation, which is something we're gonna talk about. Where do I allocate capital within my business, you know, do I put it back into the existing employees? Do I, you know, buy someone new? I mean, I it's just in these size businesses where they're doing 138, $10 million they don't have HR, and if they pay a recruiter, I mean, that can work. We, we did that. And once in a while we would get, you know, someone, however, it was more like, who's the fit? And I have to go through that, know, like and trust, and that's a time, you know, the biggest thing for the person owning the business is the time commitment. I've got to make that part of my routine. And you know, as as an entrepreneur or owner of a business, you should always be recruiting, you should always be looking to bring the best people in. And, you know, you get up and try to get through a day, your top of mind is what's in front of you, not the talent that's in your marketplace. And some of these areas are scarce. They just are. So if you're gonna do the things we talk about, you're gonna have to first of all identify who these people are, and then use all the things we talk about to get in front of them, to see if they're a fit, to make sure that you know you're not bringing on an onboard antagonist. And we've got a client right now who is a recruiter, by the way, in rarefied air, and is crushing it. And he does it in a specific niche, in a specific industry, and he's crushing it. And he brought, you know, he's a recruiter, he brought in someone new, and it helps the company tremendously. But now you gotta deal with, okay, I'm bringing it. It's like adopting someone. They're coming into your family. So you've gotta make sure that that works, and you can't hold that person back, and you can't let any type of pettiness or anonymousity towards someone new, like anything else, you know, steer the ship off course. And it's, it's growing pains. I mean, that would be normal, you but the mind going back to the mindset, the mindset is, I'm always in the hunt for the best. I may have to win with the team I have. And you know, I've experienced this where you can't even terminate someone. So if you've got a D player or an F player that you inherited or that you made a mistake on, you want to help them find what's best for them, number one, not just terminate them. Give them. Do

Jason Croft  7:40  
you leave? You leave little flyers on there for for other, other

Joe Blackburn  7:46  
job? Yeah, I saw this one this crazy for you try,

Speaker 1  7:50  
try reverse psychology. Don't you go talking to this recruiter now, well,

Joe Blackburn  7:55  
but really, at the end of the day, is the leader you if you know it's just not gonna work, and you have the autonomy to make a change or to guide change. You know, you can go through all the performance management, all those different things, but most of the time they they know, however. You know, there is a scarcity component, especially in some of these companies where, like, we just don't have anyone else. So I don't want to go through that pain of onboarding, or I even identifying getting them here, onboarding training. I think they see it as a setback, and time wise, maybe, but long term, strategically, it's not.

Jason Croft  8:37  
I mean, there are hundreds of stories out there of when you rip that band aid, like the that incremental business or incremental, you know, hey, if they're getting the job done, pales in comparison to the toxic, you know,

Joe Blackburn  8:58  
right structure that they're putting leads into the fabric of everything, because it's tolerated.

Jason Croft  9:05  
And if everyone else's performances goes down like, Oh, if they can be that way, why even your top players have a little bit of like, oh, well, why am I trying so hard? Well, they

Joe Blackburn  9:15  
start growing a lot of resentment. You know, I'm carrying the load. We actually in our one of our it's more of an immersion. We have a situation in a $21 million business where they have a, you know, we're trying to build what's called a self organized team, meaning they hold each other accountable, and they organize and execute. And then there's peer pressure and performance leverage. Hey, you're letting you know your guys not performing. You're affecting all of us. That's a strategic move. If you want a team that operates without a lot of your input, and they have someone that does their job like their role. However, the team has some goals that are overarching, and this person, even though there's financial incentives. That just doesn't want to play in the sandbox. And so we had the leaders call and how many? There's four, five total. Four of them were like, we'll just do it. We can do it. We'll just do it without them. And one of them, who had a lot of courage, said, that's not right. Like, why should we have to do that? You know, Leadership isn't me going and doing it for someone. That's production, which is okay, because they wear two hats, but I was really proud of her. I mean, she just said, let's find a way and figure out how this person can do it. And what they're asking isn't a big lift, like for that person, they don't have to do a lot. It's a battle of will. They're just saying, I don't want to do this. So that's and that's tough. And they're in a, I wouldn't call it isolated, but they're in a geography that's not downtown Chicago, where, you know, you've got unlimited resources and lots of people. It's so they they're in that war on talent. I was, you know, pretty proud of that person and and we held a vote, we did the thumb, you know this, and we turned it from this to this, all right. So now we put 60 days in place. And if at that point, maybe you know, you have a tough conversation with the person who runs a business to say, this person has to go, and that's tough, but it's affecting everyone. So there, if you're looking for leverage in your business, orchestrate initiatives that, yeah, there's individual wins and individual comp, also there's overarching so that, again, I'll you know, like all of us went to high school, peer pressure works when I'm affecting more than just me, or other people are trying to influence me, because it affects everyone, especially the client, by the way We're talking, in this case, life insurance. So like, wow, you know, if, if I refuse to talk about it, and the person I just had in front of me walks out and gets drilled. You know, that's a problem. So, but from the talent aspect, it's also those things are easily picked up or they're talked about. So like, not only do you have to be on your front foot and going out in the marketplace and identifying it, you have to be an attractant like you have, you know, word of mouth works in all forums. So if you have a you know, the word is that's not a good place to be, or people don't like it, or the employees keep leaving, you know. So it's a two front war. I have to win with the team I have and attract the people I want to bring in. So that's a lot of what we're working on right now, and it's pretty much across the board every and I don't think that's isolated to the lion. I would assume all businesses are in a competitive space trying to find great people. It's

Jason Croft  12:41  
interesting in the shake up of AI coming in so much, you know, there's, there's part of that too, of of an expansion that, in a lot of ways, can take that pressure off. And maybe that's a little bit too, of that opening, like, Okay, what role can really be helped. So we don't need this person or something. But also in that shake up, if you're positioned where it can be remote and you can broaden that scope, there's a lot of folks who are losing their spots and are available now because of those kind of shake ups. And, you know, it's this, I think a net positive out there, easy for me to say, maybe, but a net positive out there with this shake up with, you know, having COVID come through, and it's so normal to be remote, and sometimes you just can't. But how much of that are you seeing that. Hey, we even need to get outside of our normal the way we're looking at this here, here's a here's a role. Let's put a person there. How are we broadening that to mindset too? Well,

Joe Blackburn  13:54  
a lot of our clients a hat. Well, it's either like they have skilled laborers, so they're in roofing, construction, HVAC, abatement, different things like that. So they have some skilled labor issues, meaning people that actually have to know how to do something. And then they've got service associates in some of the service based companies, where I think AI can play a bigger role. I know, you know, like Courtney, shout out to her. We call her Courtney GPT. She runs a 5, $6 million business, and they're utilizing it for a lot of day to day tasks, so they don't have to think through how to construct an email or a template or an so SOP or whatever it is. So you're picking up speed there and having someone that's, you know, agile with it. I mean, our, our would, my favorite STK put out something the other day to make it your companion. So I think that helps. What I'm seeing in it is it's still, I. Someone has to operate that. So I don't, I mean, you know, like Lauren, she does like, I'll just, like, type something into Slack, and then like, I get back a dossier on what we're talking about. Or she'll take a zoom that we talk in, that I'm talking and then do that. That's really helpful. Where, and this may take us down the wrong corner, where I see that being beneficial to these sizes of businesses, more than anything. It should create capacity for client connection. If we're spending less time there, we should have more time to build better client relationships. And that's where I think you're gonna if you're, you know, if you're running a big IT company, I guess, yeah, AI is great. Hell was it Fiverr, someone, the CEO sent a letter out like, my job's at risk. Your job's at risk. You better learn how to use this, or you're out. I mean, I summarized that, but it was hot on the internet a week ago, or YouTube, or whatever, a week ago. But he's sending, he's putting a shot across the bow like, Hey, we're gonna be able to be able to do all this stuff. I mean, a wise man once said, The only thing that can be commoditized is chemistry, and hell, who knows, they may build a robot that I don't know. I have no idea. But to your point, that should create capacity. And if you if you're looking for talent, I guess someone who has more experience there would be beneficial. But I see it as an opportunity to expand within prospect and client relationships, because I should spend less time thinking about what to say and, you know, leverage AI to give it back to me. And if you create your own GPT and you input all your stuff like we're doing, it talks back to you like you. Like you, oh yeah, which now I understand why people cry and are mad at me most of the time. Like, I get it. It's like, huh? Is that what I sound like? But you're like, There's no way. Surely not. Yeah. That's not what I meant. But it's, I mean, I think that's a and that's, that's not like happening over a five year period, that stuff's light speed.

Jason Croft  17:06  
Oh, yeah. Well, into your point too. Just like having opening that time for prospecting, it's opening that time for recruiting as well. Correct? It's a matter of, it's a little bit of a mindset shift though too, to go to, you know, audit your time a little bit and go, Oh, wow, I now have this net time. And instead of just sitting back, oh, thank goodness no, don't let that just fill with, you know, nonsense, be really purposeful, like you should be anyway, with pillars, with recruiting, with getting out there and being a part of this, and, yeah, opening up that time, because you're right. I mean, that's what, what I've seen. There's certain jobs, certain industries, of course, that are, you know, from massive company. I think that's where my head was, too, with, you know, massive companies, right, are laying off because of this in the tech sector. That maybe now that that higher level talent, if you can use them, could, you know, are they need

Joe Blackburn  18:15  
to do a remote it's a good idea. I like it. It just, you know, it's if it fits right, and if you so, I heard a statistic the other day, 47% of our day is spent in distraction. So I People tell me all the time their schedules crazy and they don't have time and blah, blah, blah, all that bullshit. We think we talked about this on one when we week or two ago, whatever. But if so, let's just do the math. If 47% of my time is in distraction on average, and I'm probably above average. So let's I'll give you 35 let's say 35% you're above average, and then I can utilize that tool across the board. I should get back 50% of my time, I mean. And then yeah, the question becomes, what do I backfill with? And if you're saying I don't have the time to go out and build the relationships in the marketplace with potential talent, there it is so great job, Jason, you solved that. I'm done. That's awesome, but perfect. The reality of this, it's more and you know, going back to old there was this old podcast called sales assassins. I've heard of it. It's pretty good, but it turned out it's Hall of Fame that Wi Fi on am I? You know, if I have to have a laborer, who are the other laborers, where do I get good service? If you know, the old axiom, I believe, is hire people out of the restaurant industry, because they're used to dealing with assholes all day long. I mean, that's what it is. I I was a busser. I know this. The waitresses wouldn't even share their tips with me. They called me college boy. It hurt my feelings. But you know, so am i into? The real question in my mind is, is that on? Is it switched on to when I identify it? Now I. I've got a client that has done a really good job at that in local market. You know, when he opened up his new location, he went out and got the competition's best person, and she's done pretty well. I mean, it's new, so some ups and downs, but all in all, he's in tune with that they're always looking for. Okay, who do we feel would be a fit based on the service or the, you know, whatever product, or how we're dealing out in the community. That's where I would start. And plus, the other thing is your best people probably know the best people like if you you know, if your best people, that's not like they live in a bubble. So incentivize them, or train them, or turn their Wi Fi on when they recognize it. You know, it's the it's not a bad thing to have competition within your own business. You want a competitive environment. Everybody wants to win, and we all want to win. Which are those are different things. Everybody wants to win. We all want to win. That means together. What you want to avoid is pettiness. Pettiness is when I self sabotage, or sabotage someone else, or my attitude goes in the toilet because someone else is there. So that's something that you have to be really aware of, and catch it early. Just little things, how they act in meetings, how they respond in email, who do they include? Who do they exclude? Like you can catch that stuff. So that's your kind of your internal war on talent, but I would foster some form of, hey, you've got an opportunity to shine. I'm gonna give it to you and give you the resources. And then when we all win. So it's a win, win. You win, they win. Client wins, and I win. It's a four way win. I don't know. I'm gonna take that one all day. So I think there's, I mean, there's a lot of rabbit holes here. It's just, it's, I would take it back to, do you have a mindset of hiring, who's available? Or are you really in the hunt for talent? Are you really looking and catching and pursuing people that would make your clients lives, your life the other employees lives like ever they better everyone.

Jason Croft  22:00  
Yeah, and I think that's the that's the benefit of a show like this, of being in the lion, being surrounded with people who are having this conversation, because it does, it picks you up, picks your head up, and go, Oh, yeah, yeah. And especially for those folks who aren't in a scramble to find somebody to fill a role right now, this is who this is perfect for, because you're going to be, at some point, we've had that happen. You should be right. You should be growing, and you're going to need this. So have that Wi Fi on like you talk about, sometimes

Joe Blackburn  22:38  
people have a dream they don't tell you about and then one day, they show up and tell you about their dream and say, I really appreciate everything you've done. I'm gonna go do this. So I will go to the great I just with a client. We just had that happen. Hey, I love you. You've been great to me, interval, part of the business. I'm gonna go do this. This is what I've always wanted to do. And they're and they're in a a very highly skilled based business. So he this person not only is a good team member, they've gotta, you know, I'm not a big welder, but or fabricator, but this person kind of oversees that and is the best at it. So that's a hard one to replace, high skill level, high talent. So now you got to go out and, okay, well, who else in in the area does it? And there aren't a lot. So you've got your there's where pillars comes in. You know, their dissatisfaction, I have to create it. I have to give them the change, the first steps, the vision, all those things that would lead to a better life, and it has to outweigh the complacency, and that's a tough call. So you got to put your work in,

Jason Croft  23:49  
yeah, because something that came to mind when you were talking about, you know, bringing this kind of fits with, with finding someone there, you know, outside, who's not looking for a job, but it also fits in. When you brought up, you've got this team, they're working towards a common goal, but you've got that one outlier who just doesn't care. It's interesting because on the sales and marketing side, we've learned that we're wired to run from pain. More than go to pleasure by X amount of percent. Like, it's just more and more and more, because we talk about that in sales and marketing isn't talked about in the HR world of like, okay, well, how do you introduce some pain if they don't?

Joe Blackburn  24:36  
Yeah? Oh, consequences, yeah. Well, that's a great topic, and maybe we could do a whole show on it. I There is, you know, I've been in organizations where the stick was brought out and it crushed them, because it just, it crushed every, you know, everybody's like, what? You know, what the hell. And I've seen it where. Work really well. I mean, and sometimes, even if it crushes the culture and the morale, you still get the result. And that's even worse, because now you have to live by the stick. So you want to be careful about that. I mean, you know, old school factory mentality was, that's where that would come from, productions down, you're penalized, correct, like we hit X amount of units. You that's factory mentality, right? And it's, it's a last resort. In my mind. It doesn't mean there aren't any consequences, just the way you again. It goes back to 1000s of years ago. I think someone said, put the sword down, because if you live by the sword, you die by the sword. So if you can get it done with influence and incentive and and building act, I said culture. You know, the the person who owns these size businesses is the culture. Sure they're being why? Like they are it. We actually do a whole thing on that. You are the culture, like you're setting the tone, you're setting the expectations. You're the standard. They're watching everything you do, you're the culture, so a variance of whatever you are is what you're gonna get, and it's probably below you, because they don't own that business, and they're not as you know, they don't wake up with the fire in their belly as much as you do, cuz you own it. If they did, they'll go do their own by the way, which is another hard thing on talent, because you have to have good number twos, people that are great, but they're not, you. That's a whole nother deal. But I that consequences. We've been having that discussion a lot. If there are zero, if there are zero consequences, people will pretty much do what they're allowed to do. Yeah. So there has to be, I think there has to be some form of, if we don't do this, then this, but just punitive with the stick. And I don't think that's what you're saying, but I think some people go there pretty quick. I'll just start cutting your pay and that, I don't know, I haven't seen that work extremely well,

Jason Croft  26:56  
yeah, and I think that's the thing. I think there's, there's a finesse to it of and it's a it's a more for some reason, maybe it is a different thing in from sales and marketing over to this. But I think that is a in the vast majority of us. Yeah, that works. Oh, we have a good I'm in a good environment, like who I'm working with. Oh, we have an option to win. If we all win, we get this reward the I think that's really the majority, like, cool, we can move forward. I think there, there needs to be that thing in place of for those outliers, who they're just not going to be moved by that. They're in inertia land. It's not till it's bad enough, they're not going to change. What is that?

Joe Blackburn  27:47  
Well, peace, I had this funny so I had this conversation yesterday, so here's how I would view that. And I've kind of so now we've gone in a loop, and that's good. So if I can establish alignment in my comp and culture of holding each other accountable and peer pressure, peer pressure is better than the stick. Some people are incentivized by money either way, but a lot of times, it's human nature to not want to let someone else down. That's pretty innate in all of this. Like, I don't want to let my mom and dad down. I don't want to let my friends down. That's actual peer pressure. I don't want to be thought of as let like. So the peer pressure isn't to be negative, it's that we can do this together, and I don't want to let you down because it affects you, your family, the business, our client, like there's leverage in that pressure. I would go that route first. And if we get into the situation where someone says, I don't care about you, I don't care about the clients, and I don't care about this whole deal. The really, the bigger decision is, do you tolerate it? Are you held hostage by that because of your fear of not being able to replace that person? So rather than try to be punitive, have some courage and fire the person, because you're not going to be held to their whim, that's where the real courage of leadership comes in. And it'll and the team will see that. They'll see that, hey, all of us are in this together. You know, it's, it's funny, because in these size businesses, people look at it as a family, like we are family, because we spend so much time together, and there's not 500 of us. So it has this family esque feel to it, and families are in it, thick and thin. You know, my wife has tolerated me for 21 years. She's still here. I think she's in Illinois. I hope she comes. I'm going there, so she has to fly back with me. So that's thick and thin. That's family. Teams are in it to win it. You know, team, there could be a you can care about your teammates, and you can have personal relationships, and that's very normal and probably helpful. At the end of the day, we're in it to win it, and if somebody's not in it to win it as the leader, the longer you tolerate that. The more you hurt every I mean all of your constituencies, clients, employees, families, everybody gets hurt more. So it's a courage call and a lot and not being so scarce that I you know this person in this specific instance is not irreplaceable, by the way, they're not so, and no one is really so. I to to your point, yeah, I can. I can get the stick and use it. I go that the route I'm talking about first, and if I just can't bring myself to fire him, then I have to get the stick out, and then I die by the stick. Now my authority has gone down to the only time I'm really gonna get something done is when the stick comes out, so I try to avoid it. I mean, now if you're a pure salesperson, because that some of these people were, I think, kind of delineated them. If I'm an eat what I kill salesperson, yeah, there's metrics on hitting, not you know that meaning I hit goal. I see goal. I'm below goal. But in the organization, even with 10 people, there's people that that's not what they do all day long. You know, they're transitioning opportunity or being asked to. So I want everybody playing and doing their best on what they can do and the overarching goal. And that way, when I'm down or when I'm not performing, someone on that team who we're developing will come to them and say, How can I help you what's really going on? Like, I'm worried about you. You're not yourself that type of conversation. I think you're better off to go that route first. And then if they just are, like, I don't care, my recommendation would be terminate them.

Jason Croft  31:35  
Yeah, a lot. And

Joe Blackburn  31:37  
just say, hey, this isn't what you really want to do. So go find what you do. You're not saying you suck. Get out. Hey, this isn't what you really want. This is what we're doing. You don't want that. Go, go find your thing. Yeah, that's not and I think in their minds, they're like, Well, I'm hurt. It's somehow negative or hurting. No, you're, you're, I think we talked about this on like, our first one, generally, when you have the conversation about someone taking a different path, they're like, thank god. Oh yeah. You know, I you see the relief in their face that like, Okay, now this is being brought to light, and I'm relieved. And yes, I'm going to go do that, and then you just walk them out and let them go.

Jason Croft  32:20  
Yeah, be free. Yeah, exactly. And again, that's the, you know, that's, that's why this game is hard sometimes, and that's why, that's what the thing is, we're all in that spectrum, right? It's, yeah, I prefer a hard conversation over years and months of Oh, should I and avoiding it, oh my gosh, let's just have it and be done. Some people aren't as comfortable with it, but that, that's the skill that you're talking about. You've got to do the reps and do it. Yeah,

Joe Blackburn  32:53  
it's it. It can get easier over time just because you start to realize after doing it, you know, multiple times, what I just said, No one. You're not firing anyone. Ever. People fire themselves. They're responsible for them. They know what's expected, and most of the time it's, you know, thank God. So all right, that's all I got today.

Jason Croft  33:21  
I dig it. That's it, all right, lions, there's your edge. Hope that helps. All right, you've just experienced the lion's edge. If this episode lit a fire, if you're ready to push past your current ceiling, there's more waiting for you want to see what it takes to become a member of the Lion. Visit jointhelion.com to discover how successful entrepreneurs become unstoppable forces, and make sure you never miss an episode by hitting subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. This isn't just content. This is your edge. You

Speaker 2  34:03  
This show is powered by media leads. Tired of being overlooked in your industry. Learn how market gravity can transform you into the leader everyone's talking about by going to media leads co.com you.