Thad Price is the CEO of Talroo, a company that’s transforming the hiring and recruiting landscape for essential workers.

On a mission to disrupt the talent acquisition industry, Thad provides leadership, strategy, and guidance to all departments in his company, ensuring it’s moving in the right direction with the right talent.

Join Jim and Thad as they unpack the problems and opportunities that small, medium, and enterprise clients face hiring and developing talented people. 

3 Key Takeaways

• Stop Being a Chief Everything Officer: When you’re starting a business, managing every task and wearing multiple hats — it's all part of the hustle. But eventually you’ve got to focus more on your strengths and free up time for what you do best, and that means you’ve got to ensure you have the right talent in place that you trust to handle the other tasks effectively. 
• Chase the Big Idea: Thad talks about the benefits of helping his staff believe that what they’re doing is bigger than their company. They’re helping transform their industry. They’re innovating. They’re creating positive change. When employees feel connected to a larger purpose, they're more motivated and engaged. 
• When It Comes to Failing, Walk the Walk: A ton of business owners and CEOs talk about how it’s ok to fail. But most of them, when it comes down to brass tacks, put high expectations on their designers and engineers to succeed at all costs. Failure can be a natural part of the creative process. But rather than just giving lip service to this idea, successful leaders actually empower their teams to push boundaries—and never berate them if they don’t succeed. 

Resources

Thad Price on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thad-price-2368b 

Talroo: https://www.talroo.com/ 

About Our Guest 

Thad Price is CEO at Austin-based Talroo, the data-driven job and hiring event advertising platform that helps businesses reach the candidates they need to build their essential workforce. With more than 17 years of experience in online recruitment and the job search vertical, Thad is a recognized thought leader in the HR/TA space. He genuinely believes that there is no industry that plays a more integral role in the economy. Thad uses his cross-functional experience to turn client feedback into innovative products that help companies hire better. Under Thad’s leadership, Talroo continues its mission of disruption in the industry.

About The Dirt Podcast 

The Dirt is about getting real with businesses about the true state of their companies and going clear down to the dirt in solving their core needs as a business. Dive deep with your host Jim Barnish as we uncover The Dirt with some of the world's leading brands.

If you love what you are getting out of our show please subscribe.

For more information on how we dig into the dirt check out our other episodes here: https://www.orchid.black/podcast

About Our Company

Orchid Black is a new kind of growth services firm. We partner with tech-forward companies to build smarter, better, game-changing businesses. 

Website: https://www.orchid.black 

Jim Barnish’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/grow-smart-grow-fast/ 

Orchid Black’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/orchidblack/ 

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@OrchidBlack 

All contents of this show are rights of Orchid Black©️ and are not to be used unless authorized by written consent.

Thad Price 0:00

But there can always be a winner in the industry if you provide three or four times as much value as your competitive set. And that's how I like to think about it. Right? We're did we're a value driven economy, right? People love value even as strong as a brand is, value is so important and ROI is important. So, you know, I would say before you invest in a new launch, First understand more understand what you're getting into who your audience is, who you're building it for what your customers are really saying, have some really interesting conversations.

Jim Barnish 0:38

What is up listeners, welcome to another episode of The Dirt sponsored by OrCAD black, where we give you actionable steps to maximize the value of your business faster. I'm your host, Jim barnish. And today we are going to talk about a rather emotional but important topic for how to maximize the value of your business, which is how to hand over the reins to a new CEO, when they can take it farther than you can. And that's hard to admit when it happens. Today, we're going to hear about this angle from the homegrown CEO himself, who took over the business from his former founder, our guest Thad price, his company towel Rue, a company that is transforming the hiring and recruiting landscape for essential workers. If you enjoy this episode, or our show in general, please leave us a review on Apple podcast or Spotify. It helps us to continue bringing you great content and spread the dirt. Now without further ado, let's dig in. All right, fad, welcome to the dirt.

Thad Price 1:43

Jim, great to be here. Thank you so much for the invite. Yeah,

Jim Barnish 1:46

it's great to have you here, man. I'm really excited about today. So let's let's just start off with who are you? What do you do? And why should we all care?

Thad Price 1:55

Well, I originally hail from outside of Northern Virginia. And today, I live in Austin, and I'm the CEO here of Tal Roo, and we help companies find hires to be able to be able to build their business and to take their business to the next. The next level. We spend all of our time today in frontline hiring. So there's a huge need in the industry in the industry today in the economy today, to really focus on frontline recruitment, to ensure that businesses have the folks in the on the frontlines to be able to grow and take their business to the next level.

Jim Barnish 2:27

So what kind of jobs? Are we talking to literally any job on the planet? Or is it a is it a certain type of job? You know, what do you Who do you guys serve?

Thad Price 2:37

Yeah, so spend all of our time and I would say warehouse, retail, service industries, trucking logistics, as well. So those are industries where we spent a lot of our time today really the the heartbeat of the economy in in, in today's world, some were some would, during COVID, there was a real focus on essential worker. So we'd like to say today essential worker and Frontline hiring.

Jim Barnish 3:03

So really a big part of what LinkedIn doesn't cover from a from a GAAP perspective, right, is that part of the idea is kind of like, you know, your your everything but LinkedIn place to go.

Thad Price 3:17

That's a great way to think about it. You know, these folks are using different services to find jobs. They're using different products and services sites. Our job is to surface those candidates and meet them where they are, turn the Internet into a giant help wanted sign. Yeah,

Jim Barnish 3:36

so they're using monster or zip recruiter or an agency or, you know, probably a variety of different things. You know, is that correct? Well, I don't want to make the assumption is that was that correct? Yeah,

Thad Price 3:48

they are. They are how we started originally was we actually owned and operated our union operated a job search engine. So you know, even if we go back to our origin story, we were one of the top and we still today are one of the top job search engines online today. Our our company was jobs, two careers, and jobs, two careers as a product under the tower umbrella. And when I joined Tao Rue, over a little over 10 years ago, now I was brought into focus on product with jobs to careers because I have a lot of experience in the job advertising and job board, marketplace. Industry. And our, you know, that was our origin. And what we found was as we moved up market, more enterprise businesses wanted different tools to treat job advertising, more like marketing. So if you think of job advertising, it's roughly like a, let's call it a $15 billion. Tam. total addressable market. It's funny people, you don't know that until you're in it's a big total addressable market. But from a marketing perspective, it's still you know, it's still small compared to other industries, but it's one of those industries that every business needs. Every business needs to attract the right talent. To be able to grow their business. And so from that perspective is a big impact on businesses and a big impact to the economy. But that was the genesis of towelroot was going from this point solution of jobs to careers owning operating one of the top job search engines online, to building a platform to allow enterprise companies to reach candidates where they are, turn the Internet into a help wanted sign, and really deploy a recruitment marketing approach to advertising jobs and attracting talent.

Jim Barnish 5:30

Just curious, you know, and there's a few things I want to go back to because you've been there 10 years, you've, you've evolved in your role in the business a ton. So there's a lot I want to go back to about about you. And on that note, but before we go there, you know, on the industry side, what just what was COVID impact on this labor market? And how have you helped companies adjust to what has become that increasingly challenging labor market? Like, is it? How does that operate? And how how has that specific challenge been overcome through some of the things that you guys have been doing?

Thad Price 6:08

So huge shifts in the labor market, you know, and one of it's one of the shifts started, probably, maybe, I would say, maybe five years before COVID, maybe four years before COVID. And that was this idea of gig employment. And the idea of, I want to work when I want to work, I want ultimate flexibility, I want to be my own boss. And I'm going to turn on an app when I want to work. And I want to turn off the app when I don't want to work. And that was already taking shape, right? Especially for frontline, hourly workers, because they wanted this idea of flexibility, which in many cases, they haven't, they haven't had in the past. And so that started taking shape, then, you know, as we as the economy shut down, as we were inside, and we were looking for services, and we were looking for delivery services, to be able to get our products, in order to our to our doorstep, there became a need for more, more folks to provide that level of service, whether it's Amazon, increasing their delivery services, ensuring that they were able to provide the products needed for us to ensure that our family was safe and, and cared for, based on the products or if it was food delivery, or groceries or anything for for for other needs. And so that accelerated a lot of this, and then you throw in the mix, this idea will i i need flexibility, right? My family is important die, you know, unfortunately, maybe lost a loved one. And you know how to change and what's important to me, and that's family and flexibility and taking care of, you know, taking care of what's important. And that really changed focus. So what happened was, pe was ultimately like, key for many frontline workers, then this started taking shape with well, flexibility as is as important as Pe. So if you throw that in a blender with this movement to more gig based work, you have this interesting, you know, you have this interesting concoction that we have today, which is the labor market. And then the third piece of that is throw in, you know, hiring that we haven't seen before, as the economy reopened. And so there's a lot more demand for for workers. And so it's we haven't seen well enough, you know, we haven't seen this and ever, and it'll be it'll labor economists will certainly study this for many years. But it is it still remains very tough today to attract frontline, the right frontline candidates to your open positions.

Jim Barnish 8:45

Did any of those market did any of that market trend behavior shift the way that you guys were positioning yourself to the market,

Thad Price 8:53

we had probably about about, we were one of the first to really embrace this idea of people want to work how they want to work. So we embrace the idea of gig gig gig based work and provided services early on to companies like Uber, Instacart, Lyft, DoorDash, those types of companies that were using tower to reach candidates and to reach audiences to get to work. And so we realized that there was a shift happening, you know, a number of years ago, and that that served as well. And from that perspective, it was interesting because those companies look at recruitment marketing and the idea of attracting a worker like consumer advertising. So they were very focused on Alright, if I if I attract and I invest to, to drive a driver what is what am I willing to pay in order to get that person to actually drive and that's equivalent to a cost per hire. Right. Ultimately, businesses should measure their cost per hire Just as they measure like a customer acquisition cost. And so what I would say to you is that, from a business standpoint, these businesses were very good at marketing, and very good at understanding ROI. Traditionally, as an industry, most businesses aren't very good at understanding ROI from people and from hires human resources that seem like a call center and not necessarily a profit center, although great people grow great companies. So we haven't quite connected that to what that means for your bottom line. And those companies were very good at it. But if we build product for those companies, and we were we were providing value to this companies, we could see that, you know, in the future, this could be pretty important for more enterprise businesses, that are really focusing on recruitment, marketing and treating the idea of attracting candidates more like marketing and focus on a customer acquisition cost or cost per hire.

Yeah, that's really interesting. And, and I get the the model on the Ubers. And the, you know, in the, in the other gig marketplaces, or really just other enterprise large businesses that you guys are serving. I am curious, and I'm sure others listening in, given that they're business owners are probably curious, do you have anything that any solution for a down market given that SMBs are such a large portion of that marketplace? Yeah, great

question. So lessons learned, I give you our lesson learned from last year, we had an amazing year in 2022, high interest from companies looking to invest to attract talent, but most of our customers, that's our customers, upper mid market, enterprise customers. Last year, when the markets started to start to deteriorate a bit, kind of do do the Cha Cha, we started seeing that, you know, enterprise companies weren't as bullish in their recruitment, marketing as they were because the pendulum went from higher at whatever costs to, oh, there's a cost, right. And we see this in marketing. It's just what happens. But when we, when we invested heavily in our customer base and invested heavily in marketing last year, what we saw is a large portion of the leads we were generating from our demand generation efforts are small businesses. And it makes a it makes sense, right, so much larger, total addressable market than, than enterprise in general. So, you know, we looked at a lot of the small businesses that were using our platform, and what we found was something really interesting. One was a lot of small businesses didn't necessarily have a recruitment process, you know, they got people applying for a job. And maybe they followed up with them that day, maybe they follow followed up with them a week later, it wasn't, you know, is kind of seen as sort of somewhat of a distraction, right, and you're only as good, especially in a tight labor market that we're in, you're only as good as, as, as quickly as you connect. That's just how it goes like leads like sales, right? You got a hot lead, you better call the hot leader, you've got a close but a close that customer, if not as that customer has gone to your competitor, lead generation, whether it's Africans to jobs, or whether it's, you know, sales related. It's all about speed to contact, it's just just the nature of the beast, you guys have read all those studies. And so that was one of the things that we experienced. And so we saw kind of high churn with, with small businesses right there, they weren't willing to invest as much high churn. You know, some of it was we were given them people quickly, and they were able to connect those into hires. And some was, you know, some of these just didn't, they just didn't have the right process. In our industry, there's been a product that came out of compliance. That's called applicant tracking systems. So applicant tracking systems kind of act as like, kind of think about it as a CRM, but it's really not a CRM, because now in our world, they have talent CRMs. But applicant tracking system was just a way where you could disposition a candidate across the hiring process. We'll applicant tracking systems originally were built for compliance for large enterprise businesses. And over the last, you know, over the last probably 10 years, you know, like anything in the world cost decrease, and their people enter. And they're applicant tracking systems. So companies that had like an applicant tracking system, they were pretty good, right, that that enforced process, they were able to connect with the candidates. So where am I going with this? What we found through that was, we had this huge lead generation source through our through our outbound efforts, where I would say anywhere between 70 and 80% of the leads were small business. And then we looked at the product that we had, and we're like, wait a minute, we can't serve 70 80% of these leads with the product that we have because it's built for mid market, and so it's a classic, like, product market fit issue. And so we took a step back, and we're like, alright, we got, we got to build something, we've got to build some of this service, because it's a big market out there. And then if you look at our competitive set in the market, you know, we, today we, you know, we would, we would compete with indeed, and ziprecruiter, some of our largest competitors, which are huge. We looked at that, and we're like, well, they have a lot of small business customers. So what how can we, what can we do? And so going back to this idea of like, speed and efficiency, we basically said, All right, what small businesses need is they need the ability to source candidates because no small businesses, I want to applicant tracking system, they say I need candidates, I need to make hires, what if we could build the what if we can enforce a recruiting process, enforce a recruiting process in a marketplace driven system that would essentially give you a personal recruiting assistant for, you know, 50 bucks a month for the software? And you're like that, that can work? Like what can we just decrease the price, and give a lot more value. So what we do is built, we do both product. And so our product is a couple of things. And the first thing is, is provide you branding. So if you think of this whole idea of writing a job ad brand is important for small businesses, right, you're proud of your brand, it's important to you spent time building it. And so we need to ensure that small businesses can showcase their brand. The second thing is small businesses don't necessarily know how to write a job ad, it's a distraction, you hate it, you copy and paste it from somewhere else. And you're like, you know, how do we write a job ad, it's small, a lot of small businesses aren't, don't necessarily have a HR team or a talent acquisition team to do that. So then we started looking at generative AI to basically use our data and build a job template, so that if you're looking to hire a store manager, for example, you could immediately start with a template that uses our data source, and immediately build a job right away. The key to that that we've seen when we looked at the competitive set was that the idea of building a job was kind of weird, right? It was like answering some questions, form fields, copy and paste. But it shouldn't be more like building a web page. No, the all there are tons of editors today, Squarespace and others where you can build a template or you can build a nice looking clean web page, even if you're not a web designer. So what if we could do that with jobs? And then the second thing we said was, no one knows how much to pay people. We have all this data, we process 220 million jobs a day. And we have a lot of data. And we know in real time like what the market is for for jobs? What if we can inform small businesses of how much they need to pay in order to be competitive? The third thing we said was, well, people can people complain about qualified applicants all the time? What if we could create a chat bot experience and surface screening questions in the chat bot based on the job automatically? Based on the requirements of the job kind of acting like a screening? Just you know, just as a recruiter, you call Hey, do you have these? You have these? This employer has these requirements? You know, let's answer these. And then if they're a fit, could we give them the ability to sync an ad an interview right on the small business owners calendar, you know, so basically go through the Chatbot, you pass the credentials and select 30 minutes to talk to small business owner and sync directly with Gmail or Outlook calendar. And then if we could do all of that we could really build like a personal recruiting assistant, and provide a great way to help small businesses based on our experience in the space. And so that's what we did. And so we're excited to see how this plays out. It's new for us. But I think today in today's environment, especially in today's environment, is small businesses are having problems, sourcing candidates, you know, you're having problems focusing on advertising jobs. And if we can, a lot of its process driven, a lot of it is just best practice driven. If we can build software around a best practice, then we can, we can help small businesses compete. Because right small businesses owners are the chief everything officer they're doing everything. And software should be the bridge to help them be more productive. And that's how we should think about software.

All right, well, now that I know that you guys have launched this solution, we should talk after this because that is definitely of interest for me and and our clients as well. So great. Let's, let's do that. So until then, some questions. So you guys, you guys launched this when you launched this over the last couple of months? Yes, that's right. Okay. And in terms of the way that you guys are launching it, because, you know, lots of people come to me like, how do I launch a new product? Right? How do I, how do I launch to a new market? Right? How do I do this? And this and this and all around expansion for growth? Right? So like, talk to me about what were the thoughts that went into how the how, now that you knew that the opportunity exists, you know, what was all the how.

So, it is there a lot of ways to do this, the first that I would say is, look at your current customer base, and see if there are opportunities within your current customer base do from your raving fans. So you know, we have customers that are small customers today that have been around with us for years, but what they were using, wasn't the best product for them. So I would say first, reach out to your customers have some conversations about what they like, what they don't like, how you can change the game. So I think that's the first piece of it. The second is, you know, look at your competitive set and see where there may be opportunity that, you know, that you're that won't be as Bloody from a competition standpoint. And we've seen that there are a couple of, we've seen that there are a couple of industries that we think are really interesting, that potentially aren't as Bloody, and a lot more opportunity, a lot more opportunity. I'm a value, I like to focus on value. So you know, when you think of what you can build, and you think about how you can be successful. You know, there can always be, there can always be a winner in the industry if you provide three or four times as much value as your competitive set. And that's how I like to think about it. Right? We're it we're a value driven economy, right? People love value, even as strong as a brand is, value is so important. And ROI is important. So you know, I would say before you invest in a in a new launch, First understand more understand what you're getting into who your audience is, who you're building it for what your customers are really saying, have some really interesting conversations. One of the, we have a, we have a product Advisory Council, and we bring ideas to them. And that's a great way to build to build a sounding board for your customers. And it's a great way to make sure you're not making the wrong moves. Right? Because it's in business. It's not necessarily what you do, it's what you don't do. That's how I like to think about it.

So when you guys did decide to launch with the customer set with the, you know, after beta testing it of course, which I know you guys did, like what, you know, how do you how do you allocate resources or figure out, you know, where do you spend, what amount of your time or the team's time on which product? And when? And, like, how did all that come to fruition?

Oh, that's tough. So, you know, the first called the dirt for a reason this called the dirt. Yeah. So, you know, where I think a lot of companies probably fail at this is, you have this great product idea, you want to fund it, and then you, you try to you try to do this with your existing team. And a number of years ago, we set up a team in there, their team is there like a tiger team, right? They come in, they build a prototype, they build it really, really well. And then you and then you move on it. And that's what that team focuses on focuses on big, big items that can transform the company. And they invest and they prototype and we get some feedback. And then we iterate and we iterate. I think that works well for our business to be able to have that small team tight team. I'm talking, you know, I'm talking five, six team members, where people have a lot of ownership, they have a vested interest in the company and in the product. And they want to, they want to kill it. And so I think where a lot of companies try to fail is they tried to like retrofit that into an existing team. And that doesn't quite work, you've got to have this idea of like, excellence, great culture, all of this, we're gonna do this behind the scenes, you know, we're going to do this not going to upset any of our other roadmap ideas. But this is a big bet. This is a long, long term bet. So I think you have to go in with that first off, and then once you have that, and you have the right people, then that all that all kind of works, but it all starts with having the right like anything in life, right? It starts with having the right team and the right communication and the right alignment.

So how do you how do you compensate the team? Call it a tiger team, right or like, you know what, let's just call the tiger team for the purposes of this discussion. and like how do you? How do you compensate, motivate iron them off? Have them be focused on what they need to be focused on without disrupting the culture? And what what's working so well with the rest of the organization?

Well, I think the big thing is, is you get them believing in a big idea. You know, it's bigger than bigger than this company, right? It's a very large market, we're going to transform an industry, we're going to, you know, really innovate the way companies recruit, especially small businesses and something you're passionate about. So many of the folks that have been involved with that team have been here for a long period of time. We have it paired where we have a fantastic product owner, who knows our company has been here over five years, that knows our company very, very well. We have another engineer, that is architect that focuses on design. And then we have other engineers that focus on moving the ball forward based on the design and what the business needs. Few other engineers there. So, you know, from our perspective, that's how we like to think about it. Now, if you have, yeah, that's very driven to building like a great product. And so I think so many businesses, you have to treat it like a startup, right? I think so many businesses will take this idea of like, Hey, I have this really awesome idea. And they worry, immediately they go, they go right into the negative, it's going to cannibalize my current business, or what about the people? You know, they but you have to treat it like, No, I'm going to fund this startup. And this could be a huge payoff. work could be a flop. Yeah, but I'm gonna fund the startup and I'm gonna go all in and fund it with the right people the right process, the right focus, and then see where see where the rubber takes you.

Yeah, that's so so your own product person your own devs? You know, kind of iron off that team? What about on the go to market side? You know, or are people focused entirely just on selling or marketing this new product? Or do they are they do they have some crossover? There's

crossover right now. crossover in this period of time, right. And that's the biggest thing is you have to have, you have to have people that really understand the business. And I've had experiences within this for the, for the context switching, right to go from especially to go from like, enterprise, mid market, small business, very different, and how you think about go to market very different about strategy. And so you have to have people that either have had experience in one or the other, but you can tell can switch. And that's you just have to be you have to. That's the hardest thing, the context switching, even with like a is, and business development and sales. Like it's, it's tough to have, you know, even though it may seem easy, maybe you've been in the business for 10 years, like me, it seems it seems easy to do, because it's natural for you. It's not natural for others, because you've been in the business so long. That's why it's natural for you.

You can't expect people to treat things like you do. Because you haven't been, you know, you haven't been in, they haven't been in the business like you have. Well, yeah, and it's, it's this trade off of how you build as, as users or revenue grows, right. And you mentioned that, like, I appreciate the honesty of, you know, right now, the resources are the same, because I can't afford to just have all these resources, marketing this new product, because I don't exactly know everything about the way it's going to be sold. We're testing some of that, right. And so like, then once you're through testing phase, you're able to allocate some of those resources who are probably better off for the new product or go hire people who are good off it like it's it's, it's it's not a magic thing. Like these are very thoughtful calculations on your part around how you're involving people and how you're motivating them. And so people listening in like, this is how to expand the right way. Right? It's like, you know, as far as you can drive resources, being only focused on that thing, great. But there are some sacrifices you'll have to make in order to not overspend, by having some of that move slower than you might like. And so it's a trade off. And I appreciate appreciate that that narrative there that I'm excited about this product, I'll tell you. If you want that as part of your go to market,

we are we're excited for you. The other thing that I would say that's been really important for us in our culture, you know, focused on innovation is the realization that we're going to fail. And so many companies, I think, come at it, funding a project funding division. And they don't think don't go in in it saying you know, It's okay, if this doesn't work out. You know, and there have been cases that we've stopped projects, there have been cases where we've stopped momentum, we've stopped, you know, certain things. And we've said, Hey, this isn't working. And that's hard for a lot of businesses and one company that I would say, that has had a lot of losers, but a lot of winners and probably more winners than losers, is a great example of it in their culture is Google. Yep. You know, they've, they try a lot, they build a lot of stuff, they have a lot of great engineers, and they build a lot of stuff. When they hit it big, they hit it big. But it's okay. Because culturally, they have a view in the world that, hey, we're going to try a lot of stuff we're gonna throw a lot of stuff into, well, we're gonna see what sticks. And we're, when it sticks, we're gonna go all in, or we're gonna go all in when it sticks. And I think that's a, that's culturally, if you have that ability with your team to have that discussions that, you know, we're gonna try some things. Not everything is going to be great. And I'll be the first to tell you, and be transparent about it. But when we find something that works, we're gonna go all in and it's the future. I think that's really important for a lot of businesses, because sometimes as leaders, we got to check our egos. It's okay to be wrong, it's okay to be it's great to be transparent with the team that you're wrong.

Yeah, I want to go back to something you said earlier, that I promised everyone I would come back to, which is, you've been there for 10 years. It has to do with that whole ego bucket in terms of how I would classify this, but also something that I get really emotional about, which is a founder, recognizing that it's time to hand over the reins to someone else. And you were that person that that founder recognized, it was time to hand over the reins to someone else, you were a homegrown CEO within your business. And I love those stories, because it shows so much maturity on the founders part, but also so much awareness. At the same time on how do I how do I take this thing to the next level? And so I like to like to maybe ask you a few personal questions about it. If you can't answer I'm sure, you know, just just tell me to shut up. But but you know, when you were taking the reins over as CEO, and you were having those conversations with the founder around what that would look like, you might have given us a little bit of insight into kind of the background of that and how it came, you know how you ended up taking over the reins.

I'll start with some career advice in general that I, you know, when I have one on ones with team members that I encourage people to think about, especially if I knew they're ambitious, and they're looking to take their career to the next level. The first bit of advice that I usually provide folks is is do the job the company needs really well do that job really well, I think, especially where a lot of ambitious team members, you know, where they, where they probably aren't as successful is they immediately see that there's another job they want to do. And, you know, conventional wisdom may say, Well, I just want to start doing that job. Well, that's kind of selfish, it's selfish, because the business needs you to do the job you are paid to do really well. And I think it's a, it's a cautionary tale with, you know, ambitious leaders is, you know, you may you may be here, and you may want to be here too. But, you know, some people would say, Well, I'm just going to, they're going to see that I'm doing this, and they're right. But they're also going to see that you may not be doing the job that the business needs. So you have to do both. If you don't go if you don't have the stamina to do both, don't, don't try to do the next job yet. You got to do both, you can't do one, you can't do the job you really want and not do the job that the business needs. So that's the first bit of advice that I would say. And so, you know, when I was I've always worked for founder, founder and businesses. You know, I think that, you know, when you think of the, the, the when you think of the risk associated when you think of the balance needed from all from a life standpoint for for founders, I think that they are totally under appreciated in the economy, because of the level of sacrifice that founders have to make in order to employ people, you know, cashflow everything that's needed to basically grow a business. And so I've always worked for founder of businesses, and they've been, you know, it's and I and I dig in, I treat it as my own. And I think that's one of the things that, you know, I'm proud of when I when I look at my career, from the move from product and engineering to where I am today. You know, I understand the industry because I've been in the industry so well. And our founder, has has experienced in the industry as well. But he's, he's an engineer. That's what he loves. He loves engineering. During he loves solving businesses with solving, solving problems with with technology. And that's really important to him. And that's what any, he's a teacher. And he loves teaching. Whether it's history, or whether it's engineering, whatever it is just anything in life, he just loves teaching. And so, you know, what I think of being a founder and pursuing your passion, a lot of people have shared with me, you know, how, what does that dynamic like, and I said, you know, I'm so fortunate to have the dynamic that I have, because the level of trust that I have with our founder is something that I haven't seen before in business. And I would encourage more founders to, to find, to find that, you know, second in command to really partner with, and that's what I feel like, I don't feel like, you know, I feel like a partner. And it's hard in many cases, to see that, I also realize my place, you know, I serve at your pleasure. And you have a vested interest in this. You're a founder, I have a vested interest, but I understand my place. And I understand that you've changed my life. And my goal is to change your life. And that's what I strive for. And I think a lot of folks need to think about that, when they're, you know, when the founder is actually like, taking their business to the next level and handing it over just like, has this person changed your life? If yes, then you have to change his life. That's how it goes, you're paying it forward. And beyond that, if you go in it from that perspective, you should change all the lives of the people in your company as well. And if you aren't hiring people, where you think you can't change your life, you shouldn't hire them. That's how I like to think about it. Yeah,

no, that's a really good way to think about it. Let me challenge you with something. So now put yourself into the place of the founder. Right, like, as he was handing over the reins, what do you think was the you may have already had this conversation with him as well, but well, you know, what do you think at the very least, was the most challenging piece of that for him?

Well, I think that probably the control piece, just in general, you know, when you think of founder cashflow, everything, especially as a founder and business, right, everything that's so important with business and saying, you know, basically focused, you know, in a certain, in a certain way. So that's, I think that's natural for anyone. Right? not specific to not not specific to my case. But I think this idea of like, okay, well, now

I'm now now I'm, you know,

I'm support, I'm supportive. But I think what happens is over time, and this happened a number of years ago, I think it's not something that you immediately do, you, you test, you give more than you get, what I mean by that is you give more control little by little, you reward. And it isn't something that you just turn a switch that never works. You know, you have to, you really have to find someone that I think that you're going to hunker down with that, you know, has the best interests of companies at heart, you've tested through the hard times, and, and the good times. And if you hadn't had, if you haven't had someone that you've been in the trenches with, in the good times, and the hard times, may not be the right decision. I think I think that's very different. The other thing I would say is when I joined when we had seven employees, or less than 10 employees, and so sort of a Swiss army knife, you know, doing a lot that scale, you know, that's important. And what I can say is I've been with other leaders that have, they haven't had all they haven't had, they haven't been in the trenches, and you not at that level before. And I'm unique, and my founders unique, because, you know, I'm not the type of person that I want to help. Because I've, I've seen all of this, and I've done a lot of this and I want you to I want you to I want to give you help. And you know, that's part of the one of the biggest things that's probably different about our culture than maybe some other some other businesses is that I want to I want to help, I want to be seen. I want you to turn I want to teach you just as you know, my founder was the ultimate teacher for me on the business and all things leadership. And I you know, and I want to, I want to help you learn and help you grow. And I think that idea of being you know, ultimate teacher is what's important in business to build successful business relationships, and also just successful team members.

Were there any setbacks or obstacles that occurred either during or after the transition? That made it that made it harder than you guys expected?

I would say COVID was probably, you know, like a lot of businesses, ya know, it was tough. And going through, you know, going through layoffs, right, sizing the team, you know, our business isn't our businesses and SAS. So, you know, we aren't as predictable, since it's more of a marketplace business, you know, even this year, you know, when we think about our business, and we think about, you know, we had tremendous growth last year, businesses a lot softer this year than last year, because it's a marketplace business business. And you know, it's cyclical. And so, you know, when the times are great, you know, like, like, revenue solves all problems, right? That's, that's how it goes. I think probably when, you know, we have to take a look at things and make those tough decisions. And I need a partner, because we all need, we all need someone to partner with when it comes to these decisions. Whether it's a founder, or whether it's a board or whether it's a CEO, or whether it's an executive team, we all need a partner that we can, that we can hash through these business issues with you can't go with it. You can't go at it alone. Yeah, that, that's, that's always challenging. Yeah.

Yeah. When you, I mean, I can imagine COVID was was a challenge, I mean, challenge for everybody, but, you know, add in your business and what you guys were going through, and, you know, how a founder, you know, I know, being one how a founder gets, when cash is cash flow isn't quite what it was last month, or last year, right. And the, the things that go through their mind, not just around the business, but around their family and and around, you know, their life. And, and so survival, right? Survival. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. What was there anything specific that weighed on your mind? During the transition? Right? It's like, you're taking care of somebody's baby, I'm about to be a dad, I cannot imagine how to take care of somebody else's baby. Right? Um, it's kind of the same thing. You know, more or less, yeah,

all the time. All the time, and a lot of reasons. And the reason why is because, you know, as I said earlier, you know, my life's been changed. And yeah, I as a type of person I am, I want to change his life. And part of it is giving him more time to do what he loves. But also part of it is from a financial perspective, and ultimately, it's about our financial performance. And when financial performance isn't strong, then then, you know, it's from my perspective on, you know, question is macro is execution is it alignment, what's really the driver of a lot of this and so that's probably going to weighs on me more than I think, making the right decisions. second guessing, you know, just what this what our founder would do, you know, in my channeling, channeling that energy, but ultimately, you have to make your you have to stand up for what you believe in, as well as a leader and, and people are wired differently, like, we're not, we're different people. And we all have a different leadership style. Mine is different. And I think that respect is what's important as well, to respect that we all have our differences, that we can disagree. But at the end of the day, you know, I go in it like any great leader and say, If I hate this is what I believe. These are my thoughts, this is why here are the three things why I believe this. If there's not a there's not consensus, then then I still execute based on what, you know, what needs to happen based on, you know, what my founder needs and wants. But we also have that ability to have that dialogue, that tough dialogue. But, you know, at the end of the day, you do what you do what you need to do, and I think that's where I think that's where ego can kind of take plays, when you don't understand the it's my way or the highway, then that's when the friction happens. And I think that you know, stronger minds prevail in many cases.

Now, now that you've been through it, is there anything that you would do differently if if the same situation were to arise where that you can tell the others so that they might not make the same mistake?

Yeah, I would see the big thing would be moving the Throw about, about well over five years ago, and everyone's like, big picture, big picture. Okay? You know, it's a product guy like Bill getting in the weeds figuring out what customers want Turn, turn the pain points into solving problems and through great product. Big Picture big picture. Biggest bullshit that's ever happened in business in my opinion. In that there's you don't know and qualifies it. And I'm here to tell you there's a qualifier. In the qualifiers, you can't think big picture, if you don't know what's if you don't want the if you don't know what's happening, you know, in the weeds, there's no way to adjust this big picture thinking if you don't know what your customers are thinking, what your team is thinking, if you're aligned, like and all of that's being in the weeds, and you have to get in the weeds and understand it and have a worldly view of your business. And where you're going may be misaligned before you can actually be aligned. And that's probably the biggest, you know, I learned that lesson. And you know, we're stronger for it. Because really, all the answers are in the weeds. You just got to you just got to just gotta get to.

Yes, strategies in the details, right? Because there's so much truth to that statement. All right, so I'm gonna flip the script for a second. I've got our founder, five as we start to close out the show, which is five questions, quick kick questions all about you. And your growth. All right. So let me know when you're ready. Ready? Oh, man, that was quick. All right. First one, what is the top metric or KPI that you are relentlessly focused on?

Dollar retention?

It's a good one. Any any any specific one between net retention or gross retention?

Well, from my perspective, since you know our customers expand pretty quickly. For us, it's all about dollar retention, our our churn rate is a little high, given our business, but the customers that go big, go big and they go in, they expand pretty quickly. So dollar retention is how I like to think about it. So net dollar retention.

Got it. All right, a top tip for growth stage CEOs like yourself.

So, you know, from my perspective, alignment is the number one is number one key across your entire departments got to be aligned around a common goal got to have everyone sing into the same page of music.

Nice. All right, a favorite book or podcast that has helped you to grow.

Well, early on in my career, you know, first founder I worked for in the industry. This is really interesting book, it was called the customer signs your paycheck. I read that book. And it's a great book. And it's just a classic about, you know, customers are the key. And whether you're in sales, whether you're in product where you're in marketing, you got to know your customers. And remember, you got to treat them that they're signing your paycheck. So it goes,

Ain't that the truth? All right. Piece of advice that counters traditional wisdom.

Well, I think I shared that earlier. And that is big picture. Right? Big picture, big picture. Details. It's always in the details. As we said earlier, yes. Yes, big picture is important. You have to set goals, and you have to set that big picture. When in order to do that you really have to have really inside view of your business. And you have to get into the details. And

yep, dang fun. All right, what is going to be the title of your auto biography?

Relentless.

Like it simple, like, just, we're

in a, you know, this industry is tough. You know, we're in a very well funded industry with, with big, with large competitors. And we've got to be relentless in our customers in how we treat our customers. We got to be relentless in building those products. And we've got to be relentless in growth in pursuing growth. And I think, you know, whether it's in life or whether it's just in business, and that's what it's all about. So it's not easy. It's not easy scaling a business. You got to have the fortitude to be able to do it.

Yeah, that's awesome. All right. So I am, as I mentioned, I'm about to be a dad for the first time. And in the last few episodes, I've shared a dad joke which seemed to go over pretty well with both our guests and our listeners. So sorry, but not sorry, I got one for you. So here it is. So why did the employee Earlier bring a ladder to the job interview.

No idea, because

they want to someone with high aspirations. That's good. I like that, Joe, you're gonna need to get some symbols in here or something like that. I'm like one of those. I like how you tied

it to the to the overview. So I thought you're gonna ask me, how do you make a tissue dance? Oh,

what's that? You put a little bogey in it. I like it. Nice. Actually, I have heard that one before. That's a good one. Well, that you've given a ton to our listeners today. And to me. So time for a little bit of self promotion. How can those listening help you out?

Yeah, we'll connect you can connect with me on LinkedIn. Just that price. Getting with Tao roo and connecting, we'd love to start a conversation about how we could potentially help your business and give you a preview of our of our small business products that may be helpful for you as well.

And if you guys are wondering what I think of it, I'm going to be taking a closer look in the coming week. So hit me up. Actually, by the time this launches, I'll probably have already taken a look. So hit me up. I'll let you know what I think of it. All signs are good. And that this was been a pleasure. Thanks for sharing your dirt. I know it's not always easy to share your stories, but I'm sure those listening really appreciate it. Yeah,

thank you so much. Great to be here. Thanks. Alright, and thank you all for dialing in.

Thank you. Thank you black for making this possible. Bad. Jim barnish out. See you later. If you love today's episode of the dirt, make sure you rate it on your favorite platform. And if you really liked us, go ahead and leave us an honest review. Thanks again for tuning in to the dirt