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Telling the stories of startup founders and creators and their unique journey. Each episode features actionable tips, practical advice and inspirational insight.
Greg Moran (00:01.522)
Welcome back Founders Journey podcast. Greg Moran, I'm one of the hosts Pete with my co host Peter D. Peter. We missed you last week on flying solo on last week's podcast.
Peter Dean (00:10.306)
There he has it.
Peter Dean (00:15.518)
Yeah, I was on vacation. It was wonderful.
But I'm glad to be back and talk to Jerry and his friend in the room with him. Ha ha ha.
Gerry (00:25.356)
Hahaha.
Greg Moran (00:26.266)
So we were we were laughable before we even got started here. So so, yeah, we'll introduce Jerry, who's our guest on the podcast this week. So Jerry, let me pronounce your last name right. Jerry's Gowdry.
Gerry (00:40.173)
Godori.
Greg Moran (00:41.642)
Godori, okay. All right, so Jerry Godori, we'll edit that part, but Jerry Godori, he is the author of a newly minted Amazon number one bestseller called Destination Employer. He's the CEO of Redbeard Solutions and has been around the consulting and search and recruiting world for a long time. So it's a really...
Happy to have Jerry here talking about his book and talking about a topic that is incredibly important for any startup founder, which is really, I mean, around this concept of your book, it's really branding your company as a destination employer and how you really build a recruiting system to recruit and retain the best talent. So Jerry, welcome to podcast.
Gerry (01:34.105)
Thanks for having me, I appreciate it. And on behalf of my office mate, Mercury, we welcome the opportunity to speak with you and your audience.
Greg Moran (01:42.846)
So what we're laughing about before we got started is that Jerry has a parrot in his office who likes to, what do we say, Jerry? Likes to use inappropriately bad language at the actual least, the, at the least opportune times, we'll just say it like that. So what we're really hoping here is that Peter and I are gonna figure out a way to communicate directly to the parrot, get the parrot to start swearing.
Gerry (01:55.045)
That is a fair statement, sir. Ha ha.
Gerry (02:00.814)
Yeah.
Gerry (02:10.045)
He's a rescue bird and the prior owner owned a construction company. So his repertoire includes every inappropriate comment you can imagine in male and female voices as well as the sounds of construction equipment. So if you hear alarms go off, not real. If you hear a truck backing up, not real.
Peter Dean (02:10.611)
Let's hope.
Greg Moran (02:30.719)
I love it. All right, well, we'll see what happens with the parent as we go. But Peter, you want to get us kicked off here?
Peter Dean (02:32.558)
This is great.
Peter Dean (02:38.19)
Yeah, so your book just came out, like, tell us about it, how it's going, what it's all about.
Gerry (02:46.649)
I appreciate it. It's been an incredible experience. It was released the first week of January at about three and a half, four weeks in it hit number one. The book is called Destination Employer. It's to empower typically startups and early stage companies, but it really applies to any size organization on how to consistently attract, recruit and retain top talent. And the way that we do that is we break a candidate slash employees experience with your organization.
down to 12 key elements, starting with their first interaction with your employer brand and ending with their exit interview and everything in between. We also utilize what we call the EFG leadership framework as a way to engage, fulfill and grow your team so they stay on longer and hit maximum potential. And it comes from 25 years being in the space. I started my career as a technical recruiter.
went to sales, to management, branch management. I was a management consultant in the technology services space for a number of years. And as part of that, I would take extended senior executive roles in companies. So I was the president of Appicero, which is a MuleSoft consulting company, started with them when they were five employees, left after a nine figure acquisition, things like that. So as part of that experience, I just, it was incredible and I took all of that and I boiled it down into the book.
Greg Moran (04:16.554)
So let's start to kind of drill in on that, because I think this is a topic that every founder, I think, needs to kind of understand and really be thinking about as a real competitive weapon, right? But when you look at early stage founders, or really founders at any sort of, at any kind of the earlier stages, and you start to kind of scale up, they rarely have the time or the money to really invest in
you know, really think about recruiting on the level that they need to be. They aren't usually experienced interviewers. How should they be thinking about recruiting at that early stage? Like how should they be thinking about building a model to start to attract, you know, great talent, start to actually land that talent.
Gerry (05:05.445)
Great question. I'm gonna take one step back from your question though. I think even before they think about building a candidate attraction engine and their recruitment processes, they need to think about what they want their company to be. What do they wanna be known for in the talent economy? Are we a unicorn? Are we a company that's built to last three years? Are we looking to be acquired? What type of candidate is most important in our organization? So...
For example, if you think of technology, what companies come to mind? Apple, Google, OpenAI. When you think of academia, what do you think of? Harvard, MIT, I'm from Massachusetts. When you think of business consulting, what do you think of? McKinsey, those companies have built a reputation around a core skillset, and people in that skillset know them and know that that's a place to be. So if I'm that hypothetical founder, Greg, I'm saying to myself,
What do I want to be known for? What do I want to be when I grow up? Then I'm starting to do something that the three of us do now already, and that's build a strong personal brand. People connect with people, not companies. So if you start with your personal brand, it gives you a chance to get your feet wet, understand how the process works, and then to build your employer brand off of that.
Peter Dean (06:07.148)
Mm-hmm.
Greg Moran (06:26.91)
Peter, I just want to jump in with a follow up here real quick. What do you think about it? So there's like three different brands you're talking about. There's a company brand, what the company stands for. There's a recruiting brand, what they want to be known for as an employer. And then there's a personal brand. How do you align those things? So that's a coherent message that's actually going out to a candidate.
Peter Dean (06:30.374)
Yeah.
Gerry (06:54.705)
That's a great question. So I word it slightly differently, but I say the same thing, personal brand, employer brand and your overall sales marketing brand. They need to be similar, but focusing on the employer and the personal as it relates to this conversation. I mentioned that we break the entire candidate slash employee experience into 12 key elements. All of those key elements intertwine for the entire experience, but four of them really align most especially to your employer brand.
Peter Dean (07:03.382)
Hmm. Right.
Greg Moran (07:03.647)
Yep.
Peter Dean (07:08.983)
Mm-hmm.
Gerry (07:23.641)
That's your company culture, your DEI strategy, your career paths, and the way, how can I say this differently? The way you structure your overall training regimen. So what I mean by that is, when you're creating that employer brand, you need to understand what your true culture is. You need to understand your DEI strategy so you can ensure that brand shows those things. So the people...
who you want to be attracted to you are attracted to your marketing and people who you don't frankly aren't. So the way that you do that, again, going back to the beginning is understanding what you want your company to be and then designing your brand around that. Your personal brand of the three has the freedom to be the least aligned, but it can't be in contrast. So for example,
Peter Dean (08:15.331)
Mm-hmm.
Gerry (08:16.993)
Redbeard Solutions, my consultant company, helps companies to implement the strategies that we're talking about. But that employer brand tends to be a little bit more serious, not super serious. I don't like to be overly serious. But my personal brand is very light. That said, there's nothing in my personal brand that contradicts the message of my employer brand. I'll pick something more formal, Harvard or McKinsey. If you look at their employer brands, they...
paint a very specific image. If you look at the individual personal brands of the folks comprised in those organizations, there's a wide delta of differences.
Peter Dean (08:54.53)
Mm-hmm. That's really interesting, because...
Gerry (08:56.613)
Did I answer your question? OK.
Greg Moran (08:58.862)
Yeah, absolutely, absolutely.
Peter Dean (09:00.038)
Yeah, it's interesting because when you started talking about this, when companies start at the stage, and let's say you're an engineer founder, a product type founder, you've done nothing. You have no experience in this. You probably focused on product and solution. How do you start thinking about that? I know when I started, I was lucky. This company, I shared an office with Greg.
Gerry (09:16.354)
100%.
Peter Dean (09:29.926)
I had HR people around me that were saying, hey, wait a minute, like, how are you hiring these people? It was, like, I didn't know how to hire it.
Greg Moran (09:32.918)
Is that the part you were lucky for?
Gerry (09:38.932)
It was the HR people to keep you in check. That's what it was lucky for.
Peter Dean (09:39.572)
I've been—
Peter Dean (09:43.686)
That too, but I didn't even know where to start. We're just making all these mistakes and then it really extends your runway of trying to figure this out. How do you get to even that square with someone? How do they fundamentally think I need this stuff? I mean, I need a consultant to help with this or I need, this is really important to me to be successful.
Greg Moran (09:43.765)
That's right.
Gerry (10:08.353)
Yeah, in my experience, most founders come to me or to someone like me once their personal networks and the personal networks of the founding team start to peter out. Exactly. So that's what I usually see them. The better time, well, actually, let me take another step back. A lot of companies in down times or in their early stages don't put any real work into their employer brand. And in my world, in my experience, that's a colossal mistake.
Peter Dean (10:17.59)
are tapped. Yeah.
Peter Dean (10:24.705)
Yeah.
Peter Dean (10:34.787)
Mm-hmm.
Gerry (10:38.249)
As I mentioned, I break it down into attract, recruit, and retain. It's totally okay to close the nozzle on your recruiting team if you're not recruiting. That's fine. But you never want to close the nozzle on your employer brand because your employer brand, your candidate attraction engine, that gives you options. It also sends a message to the workplace. So if I'm considering a specialist smaller firms, if I'm considering doing business with you,
Peter Dean (10:42.819)
Mm-hmm.
Gerry (11:05.077)
I'm going to vet you beyond your sales and marketing stuff. I know that's going to be on point. Sales and marketing stuff. I'm going to look one step deeper and see what message you're sending to the marketplace. So if you're a services company and you're telling me that you can finish a significant project in a certain period of time, and I start looking you up on LinkedIn and I see five employees and no real presence, I start to wonder how real that deadline is.
Peter Dean (11:09.91)
Mm-hmm.
Gerry (11:32.813)
So your employer brand and the personal presence of your team is relevant and important from day one. But as it relates to the employer piece, the earlier you start putting that message out, the more attraction and engagement you get from the folks that lurk in the background. We've all been in this game for a very long time. I don't think any of us is dying our hair white. That's all earned. So I'll say this. Top talent has options regardless of market.
Peter Dean (11:32.905)
Mm-hmm.
Gerry (12:00.021)
And rarely are they the ones that are going to leap on an open job ad. The only way you access them is if you create a presence in the places where they are. And that's all employer brand. And to make my overly long answer longer still, the way that we figure that out is if we've already got folks in that role internally, we ask them where they get their information, you know, Peter, what types of user groups do you belong to?
What associations do you get value from? What conferences do you go through? That sort of thing. If not, we ask our professional network the same questions. When we learn where that is, my recommendation is pick one platform to be your primary and another as a backup platform. Own the space, learn it, and as you get bigger and iterate, think about other platforms.
Peter Dean (12:48.846)
because you're, it's.
Greg Moran (12:48.986)
Yeah. When you say platforms, you talk about social media platforms.
Gerry (12:52.597)
Yeah, for sure. So like my primary is LinkedIn, my secondary is YouTube. For people who hate themselves enough that it might be Twitter or X.
Greg Moran (13:01.162)
Ha!
Peter Dean (13:02.311)
But it also could be, if you're a deep engineering platform, it could be other places. We had a customer that was really heavy in cyber, and the CEO did a really good job of having a brand himself in the cyber community. That attracted talent because that, again, connected to the company brand that was around what they believed in.
Gerry (13:08.439)
100% yes.
Peter Dean (13:27.522)
from the cyber perspective that related to that talent that wanted to work there. And then that translated into their, you know, their customer driven brand, which was a little different tweak of that, which is so true. And we don't think about that as a founder often enough, because we get funded based on the fact that we have good people and
But we think, oh, I'm just going to get good people through my network. I know Greg, he knows some people. It's good. And then you get tapped and then you're like, okay, where are you? Then you can hit a real wall is what you're saying. Yeah. This, this is absolutely important thing for people.
Gerry (14:00.505)
100%. And you know, when you mentioned cybersecurity, I do a lot of work in the cybersecurity space. I also do a lot of work in the government contracting space. Cybersecurity people are especially challenging because on top of the general apathy that any technical person has to technical recruiters, they're professionally paranoid by nature. So when you reach out to them, they're not thinking this is a job opportunity, this is a phishing scam. Government contracting is somewhat similar too.
Peter Dean (14:06.9)
Yeah.
Peter Dean (14:18.334)
Yeah. Yes.
Peter Dean (14:26.317)
Yeah.
Gerry (14:30.053)
There's never enough cleared talent to do the job. So these folks, they actively hide because they don't want 300 outreaches a day. So the way that we beat that, you mentioned creating a brand in the cybersecurity space. I go to conferences. I go to FCA conferences, DISA conferences, and EIA conferences. And nearly all of those conferences offer CEUs to engineers. So I go to those breakout sessions and I interact with people.
Peter Dean (14:37.771)
Yeah.
Peter Dean (14:53.065)
Mm-hmm.
Peter Dean (14:57.706)
Yeah, that's really cool.
Greg Moran (14:57.962)
So, Jerry, what are the... When you think about startups that are really starting to hit scale, right? What are the really common missteps you see founders or those companies make when it comes to whether it's the, whether the brand or just the way that they think about recruiting or retention? What are the big mistakes that they really need to avoid?
Gerry (15:21.773)
You just listed a couple of them, but the biggest one easily by far is starting too late. Recruiting is one of those funny things where everybody thinks they can do it until they do it. So the founder will think, oh, I need 10 AI developers. I'm gonna go to the market and get 10. We all know that skillset has been crushed. So if they go to the market now, they're one of a hundred companies looking for the same five people.
Peter Dean (15:29.047)
Mm-hmm.
Gerry (15:50.797)
So they start too late. That's the first part. The second part is they don't think about it strategically. There's still a mentality in many hiring managers that there's a tree in the backyard that can just pluck candidates from until they find the perfect person. The third piece they really get wrong is they don't think long-term about the person. I cringe a little bit when people talk about recruiting, not because I'm ashamed of being in the industry, but because it's not the right...
Peter Dean (15:59.883)
Mm-mm.
Gerry (16:17.305)
the right thing to focus on. The thing to focus on is retention. When I get that person to join my company, how do I keep them beyond industry norms? Because in tech now, it's about two years. It's not a long time to extract value from a relationship. In addition, when they do hit that ending, they tend not to do it the right way. So that person becomes at best apathetic, at worst an active enemy to the organization. So...
Peter Dean (16:32.078)
Mm-hmm.
Gerry (16:43.825)
I would say understanding that recruiting is a process, that building a candidate attraction machine takes time. Once they've got that machine actively creating interest, they've got to empower their recruiting team. So there's another big mistake, is when a company gets big enough to need an internal recruiter, they have a tendency to dramatically under hire. So they get their neighbors, cousins, rugby coach, who just lost his job and they figure, he's got people skills he can recruit.
Peter Dean (17:07.37)
Mm-hmm.
Gerry (17:12.813)
and then they have them set up a whole recruiting team. I say that tongue in cheek, they usually get somebody with one or two years of experience who should be on a team maturing, not developing your engine. But really the big thing is the retention piece. One of the mistakes again relates that is if they have 10 skills they want, they won't hire somebody without all 10. When the reality is somebody in the 70 to 80% match is better because they have more growth in your organization and they're gonna stay long.
Peter Dean (17:17.666)
Yeah.
Peter Dean (17:23.594)
Mm-hmm.
Greg Moran (17:27.092)
Yeah.
Greg Moran (17:43.898)
It's funny, about 15 years ago or so, I think it was, I wrote a book called Higher Fire and the Walking Dead. And one of the concepts we talked about a lot in the book was this concept of a desperation hire, right? And you talk about this when you say waiting too long, right? It's just that you've just waited until somebody turns into that walking dead, right? They're on the way out. It's obvious to everybody or they just quit. And now all of a sudden, you're trying to fire up this recruiting.
Peter Dean (17:43.993)
That's interesting.
Gerry (17:57.135)
Yes.
Greg Moran (18:13.598)
machine as fast as you possibly can, right? And it leads to that kind of desperation higher. It's like, oh my God, I gotta get somebody here.
Gerry (18:17.886)
Yeah.
Peter Dean (18:18.986)
It becomes your focus, 100% focus. You're like, this is my number one focus, yeah.
Gerry (18:25.251)
to what you got.
Greg Moran (18:25.474)
It is, but the problem is you're dealing with such a limited sample, right? You're only dealing with who's in front of you at that exact moment. That's it. That's the only thing you can actually choose from. And if that's not a good talent pool, you're screwed.
Peter Dean (18:27.442)
Yeah.
Peter Dean (18:35.039)
Right.
Gerry (18:39.253)
Yeah, there's two big problems. And you just hit it on the head. I've seen that more times than I can count in the 25 years I've been doing this. You just hit two things on the head. That's why I break attract, recruit, and retain into three separate steps. The attraction should never end. It should always have that nozzle on. I'm not talking about fake job postings like some organizations do, but that attraction should always be on so that when the time comes, you've got people to talk to. It's just a creative.
Peter Dean (18:59.295)
Yeah.
Gerry (19:08.001)
a matter of creating engagement. The second thing you hit on that's incredibly important is leadership. So I'm a former Marine Sergeant, leadership is hardwired into my DNA through countless pushups. And I'm old enough to remember personnel talks behind the barracks. That's the way we used to do it. But so I subscribe to a very simple, simple methodology. I call it the EFG, engage, fulfill and grow.
Greg Moran (19:28.062)
Ha ha ha!
Gerry (19:37.089)
If I hire you, Greg, and I engage you so that you feel heard and valued, you're likely to be open to me, receptive to ideas, and to shared ideas. If you're being fulfilled in your role, meaning that you get value and status from what you do and or what the company does, then you get a level of satisfaction. And if you're still growing in your role, and ideally have the ability to grow beyond it, then there's no reason for you to leave. And those people don't.
The problem we have as leaders is, frankly, typically through a lack of courage, leaders aren't willing to have hard conversations early on. They wait for them to get past the point where they're fixable, and now they're stuck with somebody who they could have easily saved, that they've got to fire. And in my experience, they fire too slow and they hire too fast before they've learned the lesson. And you're wasting that person's time because they're never gonna thrive with you.
and you're wasting your resources, which unless your startup experience is wildly different than mine, you don't have a lot of. So.
Peter Dean (20:43.05)
Yeah, this is that is like a cycle. You just mentioned one of the biggest cycles that. I've been a part of, unfortunately, uh, I know Greg and I have talked to this multiple times, if it's so hard not to fall into that hole. Like, how do you avoid it? Like, what are some things like my question? I think you answered the quote, my next question, but I'd be interested to know what, how do you avoid, like you were saying start early is one way to avoid it. So how, how does a company say?
Less than 10 employees start building that like framework early, you know.
Gerry (21:20.781)
Yeah, so given that all of us on this call today are very active on LinkedIn, we appreciate the importance of building a personal brand. So the first thing that you wanna do is to encourage your team to create a personal brand and be active. And you obviously need to lead that charge. That's the beginning of your employer brand. Talk about building public, you know, as much as you can, of course. Everyone has secret sauce that they value, wanna keep it.
Peter Dean (21:41.539)
Mm-hmm.
Peter Dean (21:47.106)
Yeah.
Gerry (21:47.853)
but share what you can publicly, start creating interest and engagement. That's the first step. The second step is to make sure that you're thinking forward. As a founder, I know it's hard to do. I've been a founder twice. I get that we work 25 hours a day. I get that we work eight days a week. I understand that, but it just doesn't change the reality that you have to have one eye on tomorrow always. You've got to be focused on the presence, present rather, excuse me, but you have to keep a forward thinking eye.
Peter Dean (22:10.893)
Yeah.
Gerry (22:16.409)
The more that you're able to do that, the more that you're able to proactively recruit. And by that, I mean you can establish these presences across the locations that you've determined are where your candidates hang out, and create engagement early on. That's how that happens. And now the three of us, we are more active than a regular person would need to be, but it's just not that hard. I'll use LinkedIn as an example. It's certainly not the only one. There's other places.
But it is the biggest business network in the world, so it's a good place to start. You can sit down on a Sunday afternoon, write up seven articles in a Google doc, schedule them out for the week, and there's your social media creation for a week. You wanna go even easier? Greg, I repost your stuff at least once a week. Why? It's great content, we both win. But it's still engagement for me. When my company does something great, I share something about it.
Peter Dean (22:45.91)
Yeah.
Peter Dean (23:10.57)
Yeah, you curated his stuff.
Gerry (23:14.933)
One of my recruiters had a baby. We posted the baby's picture on like a wanted poster and announced them as a new hire to the team. You know, it creates great engagement.
Greg Moran (23:25.618)
It is. It is. I do appreciate you reposting my stuff, by the way. Yeah, it's
Peter Dean (23:27.774)
Yeah, you definitely answered it.
Gerry (23:30.478)
Good stuff gets reposted, that's the way it happens. Ha ha ha.
Greg Moran (23:33.226)
That's right. So how has this changed in the world of remote work? Right. Because I mean, a lot is a lot of the dynamics behind recruiting have changed a lot. Right. And I think in two ways. One, remote kind of opens up the world to you as a potential recruiting source. And I think the other big thing is around the shift from traditional sort of full-time employment to more gig freelance.
How are those sort of broader macro dynamics really affecting the way that people need to be thinking about recruiting? Or retention for them?
Gerry (24:10.069)
Yeah, so I've been virtual since before it was cool. So I've been virtual for more than a decade. Before COVID, my clients would fly me all over the country for management consulting, for engagements, for all sorts of stuff. And if COVID was any blessing and it really wasn't much of one, but if it was any kind of a blessing, it really normalized us doing this instead of me hopping on a plane. So it saved me an enormous amount of time.
Peter Dean (24:23.436)
Mm-hmm.
Gerry (24:37.781)
But even before that with Appicero, Appicero was a MuleSoft partner. We did MuleSoft implementations. We built connectors, stuff like that. MuleSoft, which for those who don't know, it's part of the Salesforce ecosystem. We did a lot of work in the United States, but we had seven offices in India. So when it comes to remote work, I've got a lot of experience with it. And the biggest mistake I see there is that people treat the remote teams as an other.
Peter Dean (24:50.786)
Mm-hmm.
Gerry (25:07.433)
and they don't fully integrate them into their regular processes. And by doing that, you get less engagement, you get less output. So that's a really big difference. I'm sorry?
Peter Dean (25:15.975)
Yeah, they're gonna feel it.
They're gonna feel it. They're... Yeah.
Gerry (25:21.729)
Yeah, of course. And then surprisingly, nobody, they give you, you give them half measures, they give you half measures back. The second thing is to understand different cultures. So I had offices in India, I had team in Dominican Republic, we had offices in Central America, all these cultures are different, so you need to understand those and embrace those differences. But yeah, when it comes to remote work, the whole key very simply,
is to treat everyone as though they're in the same room. Make sure you're engaging with them fully. Make sure you're taking the time to understand what their outcome is. So I'm working with Stealth Startup right now. And are you familiar with build, operate, transfer as a concept?
Greg Moran (26:08.588)
I don't think so.
Gerry (26:09.941)
Yeah, so it is to outsourcing a project, what use on contract to hire is instead of a contract. So you've seen companies that have big captive offices in India like McKinsey, like IBM, they do a lot of data there. They're their employees, they're their internal company employees, they just are in a different country. Well, that model is typically only embraced by very large companies because it's kind of complicated with an international...
Greg Moran (26:24.094)
Yeah. Yep.
Peter Dean (26:24.184)
Mm-hmm.
Gerry (26:38.773)
and all that stuff. So what we're doing is we're bringing that same model to the mid-sized companies, like 200 million to a billion. We open the office for them. We find the talent. They're a part of the interview process, obviously, because it's theirs. It's their team. We get the team spun up because we have experience with it. We own all the outcomes. We do all that stuff. And as soon as the company's ready, they take the team over and we step out, project completed.
They wind up with an international office fully set up and all that stuff sometimes will stay on as like a PEO or to provide some additional management. But for the most part, we would separate at that point. So I mentioned that here because learning the remote piece is what makes that possible. We learned that at Appicero. So it's a skill we have and we did it for some of our Appicero clients is kind of a side thing. Yeah. If you don't stop, we'll just keep talking.
Peter Dean (27:14.786)
Mm-hmm.
Greg Moran (27:33.286)
Yeah, it's no, it's really good. I mean, it's, you know, it's funny. I mean, when we started, this is well before, you know, this was in, I guess, 2009, 2010. We were starting my last business. We, all of our recruitment was originally outsourced, or not our recruitment, I'm sorry. Our development was originally outsourced to Ukraine.
Gerry (27:36.629)
It's just.
Peter Dean (27:38.088)
No, this is important, yeah.
Greg Moran (28:02.662)
And then eventually, just for political reasons, ended up moving to Romania. But when I talk to portfolio companies, and the reason I bring it up is I talked to portfolio companies today or companies that we're looking at making investments in. One of the questions I always ask them when they're outsourced is when was the last time you met with the team? And I always get this like blank stare, right? And, you know, not on a Zoom call, when was the last time you physically went to India?
or you physically went to Romania or wherever it is, and you sat down with that team. And nine times out of 10, the answer is it's never happened, right? And I think that's kind of that missing link, I think, because when you're, you have that opportunity today to build these really global teams, but if you treat them, like you said, and I love the way you phrased this, as the other, you are really missing something. I think one of the things,
I look back on that experience. I was in Romania, I was in Ukraine, and then I was in Romania every quarter. The team was outsourced, but we were still sitting down with them every quarter. And it's not easy to go to Ukraine or go to Romania, but when you treat that team, I mean, it's even harder now to go to Ukraine, not so much Romania.
Gerry (29:19.438)
Hehehe
Peter Dean (29:21.854)
I'm laughing because it was very hard for Greg and he has a lot of good stories on why.
Greg Moran (29:25.358)
Oh, there's a whole other podcast like every, every single trip turned into an absolute, just beyond comprehension shit show. But that was a whole other story. That's just because I can't seem to behave myself. But the but that's the thing. Like, you know, if you if you embrace that team and you treat that team as your own, you're even though they're even though it's an outsource team, the retention is strong. You're building a
bring people onto that team is strong in your output. And I think it's just, it becomes kind of that missing link, right? If you put that wall up, it really can hurt.
Gerry (30:03.861)
It feels so painfully obvious. When I talk to people about it, I almost feel like I'm being patronizing. But you're right. So one of the things that I teach and talk about often is as much as is possible, you wanna understand what your team is trying to achieve at a personal level. So I'll give you an example. Years ago, I ran a sales team. Excuse me. And one of the people had just got married and they were saving for a house. And I knew that they talked about it and pried out of them.
Greg Moran (30:10.4)
Great.
Gerry (30:33.293)
put bamboo shoots onto their fingernails, they talked about it all the time, they're saving to buy a house. So what we would do is when we would sit down and go through our sales call, we worked out how much they had to save, what that meant from a production perspective. And every conversation we had wasn't, you know, Peter, I need you to make 20 more calls this week. It was how much closer are we to your house? Surprising nobody, that person jammed. They put it out, they knew we were on the same page. Why could it be?
Greg Moran (30:59.71)
Right.
Peter Dean (31:01.823)
Yeah.
Gerry (31:02.765)
clear that I cared about their outcome.
Greg Moran (31:05.682)
Yeah, yeah, I love that.
Peter Dean (31:05.686)
Mm-hmm. That's core to your EFG framework. Yeah, which I think is.
Gerry (31:11.225)
100%. Engage with them, make sure they're fulfilled, and make sure they're growing. Do you do that? There's no reason to leave.
Peter Dean (31:19.46)
If you're a founder and that's all you can remember, I think that's one of the most important things. Yeah.
Gerry (31:23.491)
100%.
Greg Moran (31:25.014)
Mm-hmm. Yep, absolutely.
Gerry (31:26.541)
100%. I talk often about, again, people ask me about recruiting and stuff because, you know, that's what they think of when they think of talent acquisition, but recruiting is so much secondary to retention. It's such an easy, it's easier to fill a bucket than it is a colander. When you get the retention piece down, it feeds your attraction brand too, because people see that individual come in and they see them grow.
Peter Dean (31:35.63)
Mm-hmm.
Gerry (31:53.901)
So if I know that Greg is a developer with three years of experience, and his aspiration ultimately is to become an architect, and that these are the steps he has to take to get there, I know how to frame my conversations with Greg. I know what buttons to push at risk of sounding transactional. And I know how to get the best from him, because he's winning too. He's gaining from the relationship.
Greg Moran (31:54.262)
Mm-hmm.
Peter Dean (32:12.354)
Yeah.
Peter Dean (32:20.046)
Mm-hmm. That's really powerful.
Greg Moran (32:20.511)
Absolutely.
Gerry (32:22.789)
One of the things I'd like to talk about there is natural ends. And that's something that we lose touch of in the startup world. Not every relationship is forever. And that's not necessarily a bad thing. In that hypothetical Greg example, if your next step is senior developer and I don't have a timeline for you that works for you, and you go find a role that does, the easier I make that transition for you,
the more likely it is when my architect role pops in two years or three years or five years, wherever it takes you to get there and you're available that you come back and everybody wins. So that's the other part of that.
Greg Moran (33:02.446)
Yeah, you know, it's I love that. And I think it's a I think it's a great place that kind of to start to wrap it up. I love what you were talking about. I know less last week, I week before I lost track of time. But I wrote about this concept of a talent ecosystem, right? And that ecosystem being like that world. And I think it for the three of us. And I'm sure all three of us have experienced this multiple times in our career. You sort of collect this.
ecosystem, this team, this ecosystem, right, that moves with you from deal to deal to deal to deal. And, you know, it's something that I see in the VC and private equity world all the time. And it's something that, you know, when you look at leadership, when you look at executive leadership in a lot of these roles to really understand who can you bring with you, right? Who's in that? Who's in that ecosystem? And I see this in my career. I've probably got 20 people that I've...
Gerry (33:39.205)
percent.
Greg Moran (34:00.338)
worked with on and off and multiple roles and some may be available, some aren't, but it's just this ultimate jumpstart, right? That you've got that team, that collection of people that they know each other's styles, they know how they work, they know what each of them can bring to the table and it's a trusted team on day one, right? And that's, it's just a really powerful thing. I think when you think about it like that, you sort of-
stop thinking about recruiting as a transactional thing, but really start to think about what is this gonna look like over the life of my career?
Gerry (34:37.173)
100% agree. You know, those relations, the future of work is remote and the future of work is building up a real professional network, the more that organizations embrace that they're in that their teams are long term partners, that they may come, they may go, they may come back again, the more what you just described becomes a reality. That stealth startup that I was talking about, about 70% of the leadership team looks awfully familiar to me.
Greg Moran (35:05.418)
That's right. That's right. Right. Exactly. That's it's awesome, Jerry. I think the book Destination Employer, where Amazon, right? Everywhere books are sold, they can buy it, I'm sure. And audio is on Audible. Awesome. All right. I got to download the I've got to download the Audible. So go out, buy the book, Jerry. How do they reach you? Somebody wants to get in touch with you, learn more about what you're doing or just connect with them. What are the best ways to do that?
Peter Dean (35:07.103)
Yeah.
Gerry (35:07.63)
Yeah.
Gerry (35:20.237)
Yep. Audio's on audible.
Gerry (35:34.457)
I am the least difficult person to find. So I'm on LinkedIn all the time. You can get me there. My email address, jrg at redbeard solutions. You can get me there. You can also get me on the dest website where our online self-paced program is placed. So if you wanna learn this more hands-on with downloadable worksheets and all that stuff, that's there as well.
Greg Moran (36:00.83)
Love it, love it. And we'll put all that in the show notes as well. So you want to connect to Jerry, just click on the link below super fun to have you. This is just a, it's a topic that every founder needs to be thinking about. You gotta be thinking about it on day one, that building your team and thinking about how your team is going to look or starting to build that team is gotta be something. If you're a founder, you gotta be taking it seriously, especially if you're going out, you're looking to raise money.
Gerry (36:05.343)
Awesome.
Greg Moran (36:30.802)
You're looking to really start to scale. This is something that every investor is gonna be digging deep on. You really wanna be thoughtful about this. And I think that your approach here, Jerry, is an awesome one. So great to have you on the podcast. Certainly really do appreciate it. We did not hear anything from the parrot, which is incredibly unfortunate, but you know, thanks. Give us a reason to have you come back. And...
Gerry (36:50.721)
It is!
Gerry (36:56.158)
100% hang up, you'll start. That's the way it's done.
Greg Moran (37:01.295)
And as always, if you found the podcast valuable, please share it, comment on whatever channel you're listening on, rate it. We'd certainly appreciate it. So next time from, we'll see you again next time on the Founder's Journey podcast.
Gerry (37:17.718)
Thanks.