00:21:54 · Mark Sinatra
And once I kind of figured that out, and unfortunately for me, this is, you know, quite, quite embarrassing, but, you know, I didn't really figure that out until, well, I figured it out. I didn't have that set in place, I should say, till at least, you know, I want to say three to four years, you know, into the deal. Took me too long to get there. But once I got there, Mikk, that's when I was able to finally work on the business versus versus in the business. And when I say like more specifically, you know, I was able to devote much more time to growing, you know, organic revenue, to helping the sales team, to, you know, our marketing strategy and redesigning that, and then ultimately focused on, add on acquisitions as well. So stuff that really kind of moved the needle from a growth perspective. And it's no coincidence that, you know, our growth really then started to kinda take off. You know, once once I started putting really, really good people in in those right seats, it just unlocked the the entire business. But for the first few years, you know, I was just... I was fighting fires. I was I was reactive. And again, you know, I didn't really figure out and execute the winning formula until till about three or four years in.
00:23:31 · Mikk
[00:23:31] S0: You mentioned putting right people in the in the right seats. And you mentioned, like, once I got there. So can you maybe go more into detail? What what is the before and after? Because not having those people in the right seats or not not having those people at all, and then you... After when you have those people doing this thing, I'm asking because we had to let go one of our... Like, one of the c... CFOs of of of the company, And I'm in this position or we as a shareholders are in this position, we have to find a new person. So that's a very relevant thing for myself as well. And I'm sure many others listening as well, like, how can you find those right people, number one, and what it feels when it comes to the before and after when when you actually find them.
00:24:19 · Mark Sinatra
[00:24:19] S1: Yeah. Yeah. That... I mean, that's that's really the the crux of it. So I think, you know, come coming coming you know, the business had had been around for twenty years. Right? Had a had a strong kind of tenured team. They had been, you know, the company on average, you know, on double digits, in terms of years. But a couple couple considerations. One, you know, we were we were based in a pretty rural, market, and the industry was geographically fragmented. So, you know, we tried to sell into larger, more metropolitan areas, and that proved to be a bit of a challenge, like from a sales perspective. Like, we just weren't giving the credibility in the market from from prospects. So so I had to really think through, well, you know, how do we... We we have to to kinda upgrade the sales team was was a was a big part of it. And I certainly made, you know, several kind of mistakes in terms of, you know, trying to hire and and scale that team. And more specifically, you know, kind of thought, well, you know, should I bring in like a, you know, senior, kind of high powered, you know, leader from from maybe a larger competitor, Larger company. And sometimes, like, a couple couple lessons learned on that. One, it's it's tough, right, for a lot of leaders who are used to working for a larger company that have a lot more resources, a lot more support, a bigger budget to to come from that environment into what I will call more of a, you know, kind of nimble, agile, searcher led, you know, business. Very tough transition because it requires that leader to become much more hands on and to not have... They're not gonna have the extent of resources, that that they were used to. So ultimately, you know, I decided that, you know, I was probably best to run sales for for the time being. And ultimately, to get to the answer to your question, I figured out, you know, really the... A good approach to identifying screen and interview for talent that that kind of fit us. So a couple of things is, you know, obviously, I think most companies need to really crystallize and clearly define, like, their guiding principles and their values so that those new team members, you know, are, you know, great fits and they're additive to the culture.
00:26:58 · Mark Sinatra
When you think about these small medium sized companies, whether it's 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 employees, you know, one, two, three, four employees, that makes a huge difference, right, on the fabric of the business. And so you have to ensure, you've got to preserve and you've got to protect the culture that you're trying to build and ensure that, you know, any new hire is going to be additive to that. But number two is, you know, the the cadence and the pace of the work. You know, we were trying to like, you know, rebuild this this business, right? We we had a a really tough downturn, you know, a few years in, lost a large customer, and we had to like work really hard to rebuild the business. And that required a lot of, you know, a lot of work to do so, and folks who were able to work at that fast pace were the ones who were able to be successful and they really did well at the business. And so I started to use behavioral analysis when it came to screening and identifying what are those attributes that, you know, folks are either born with or maybe they're formed when they're a kid or when they're in high school. But like, what are those attributes and how can we better identify them in the hiring process? And what we did was, we kind of benchmarked and said, okay, well, who are top performers in each of these roles? Right? Sales, executive leadership, different operations departments. And let's see what... How they score, you know, on on these behavioral profiles. And we use a tool called predictive index, like, for years. Like, I've been using it for fifteen years. And it's one of those things where, know, it's just it's just part of the process. Right? It's just you should never, and we never made, you know, decisions solely based off of that, but it really helped really kinda unpack a lot of layers in, in, into the hiring process. And we figured out, like, the ideal profiles for different roles in the business. And more specifically, I focused a lot on, on like any anybody who is in a client service or a sales role on, on a, you know, really a particular combination of behavioral attributes where, you know, they had a leaning towards, you know, being extroverted. They also, particularly in sales, they had a leaning towards being a little bit more independent, versus dependent or overly collaborative.
00:29:43 · Mark Sinatra
But the most important part was, their ability to work at a fast pace and their level of urgency. And I found that as one of those behavioral attributes that really was a differentiator in team members that that did well at the company and they and they helped us grow versus team members that had a... Had trouble just just fitting in.
00:30:07 · Mikk
[00:30:07] S0: That's excellent. I... We have another sales guy joining on Monday, so I'll try to figure out the level of urgency, him being independent or dependent. So this was the reason I wanted to ask those questions, because we're a small team, 15 people, and we expect to grow faster than we... We've been able to do so far. So I think that's that's an important part. Another part I want to ask, like, day to day. Like, how do you... Because every single week I talk to so many people and... I mean, the market is tough. People are working hard. These are young people like folks leaving their great jobs in the BE firms or or folks who've been doing that for a long, long time. But people are working very hard, very fast pace. So how was your day to day when it comes to emotionally, physically overcoming this... What is the right way to put it? This crisis. Because that's that's also the same thing. Like, it it will break some people, and at the same time, will make some people. In your case, these tough times, these make you made you, and from there, you you were able to... Obviously, it was a little longer time. I'm not talking about the... A few year period, but it was a it was a long journey, but this this tough moment didn't break you. Let's put it in this way. So I'm asking this because there are some... Was close. Okay.