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Welcome to Founder-Led, featuring founders scaling 7 and 8 figure companies who share the strategies and mindset driving real growth.
Brought to you by LinkedIn Growth Engine. We help established recruitment and staffing firm owners land new clients from LinkedIn by turning their executive content and insights into a trust building inbound lead engine.
We partner with $1M to $20M+ agency founders to build visibility, authority, and trust that drives pipeline, without turning you into a “content creator.” Over the last 12 months, we've helped drive $20M+ in booked revenue from LinkedIn.
If you're done relying on referrals and want prospects coming in pre sold, you're in the right place.
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Rohan
Welcome to founder Leg, where we sit down to some of the sharpest minds in the staffing and recruitment space. This episode is brought to you by Frontier Content Studio, a full funnel content agency that helps business owners go from hidden gem to industry icon by helping you grow your visibility, reach and ultimately, your business from LinkedIn.
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Rohan
So if you're ready to join over 30 business owners who are turning their executive leadership content like the podcast you're listening to into real revenue
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Rohan
while spending less than one hour per week.
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Rohan
Comment thought leadership below, and someone from our sales team will reach out.
00:00:37:20 - 00:00:46:07
Rohan
Now let's get to today's episode. Today's guest is Aaron Grossman, CEO of Talent Launch, a national network of staffing and recruitment firms
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Rohan
and CEO of Trejo's Health, a health care staffing tech platform.
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Rohan
Aaron's an
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Rohan
entrepreneur of the year winner and built and sold a tech company to bullhorn, the largest software company in staffing.
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Rohan
His model pairs big company infrastructure with local relationship driven brands to fix what he sees as a fundamentally broken industry.
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Rohan
So if you care about scaling through acquisition, shared services and the future of how staffing firms operate,
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Rohan
this episode's for you.
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Rohan
Let's get into it.
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Rohan
Well, Aaron, thank you so much for joining the show today. Excited for our conversation.
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Aaron
Thank you for having me. That intro got me all inspired and pumped up. So appreciate that.
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Rohan
Well, it's an inspiring story. I love it. You know, we could start off with a bit about your origin story, which is,
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Rohan
super unique. Maybe tell us about what those early days look like and how that led you to starting talent launch.
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Aaron
Well, first and foremost, I grew up when I was growing up, I never thought of myself as wanting to be an entrepreneur. I realized after all of these years that that's absolutely what I was meant to do. And, but, you know, when I, when I really kind of peel the onion back to, to to my journey, I look at two different, reasons why I think I became an entrepreneur the way I had.
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Aaron
One was my parents, they were very entrepreneurial people,
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Aaron
but they, they were never really successful at it. My dad had actually started a recycling business where he was recycling cans. He had his golden goat machines in the mid 1980s before anybody knew what recycling really was. So he was ahead of his time too, ahead of his time because it went bankrupt.
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Aaron
But and that kind of led into to kind of this, this one story that really, really, has always stayed with me over the years and, and was after my parents went bankrupt and, I think my, my brother and I were delivering the newspaper and back in, in the 1980s, no, delivering newspapers was something that teenage young, teenage, you know, children did.
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Aaron
And that was predominantly how that how that worked. And so my brother and I were delivering newspaper routes.
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Aaron
My parents, the I think it was the gas bill that they could no longer afford. So our gas was shut off and we had an electric stove. So I remember that week in particular because my mom would, like, boil, water off the stove and put it in the bath so that we can take a bath before we went to school.
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Aaron
Well, I was a big athlete. My brother and I were both athletes. We were both, big wrestlers.
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Aaron
And I didn't like waking up early to deliver the newspaper when I was training after school. And all of this. So what my parents ended up doing because they wanted to pay that gas bill
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Aaron
is they took over our paper routes
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Aaron
and, and paid off the gas bill.
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Aaron
But what they learned at that time is that they were independent contractors to the big newspaper publication in Cleveland, Ohio, and they realized they can charge the end user whatever they wanted to. So what they did is identify affluent markets in in Cleveland, Ohio, and take over those paper routes and start up charging to, you know, to, to the, to the people they were delivering to.
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Aaron
And they end up making over, over six figures delivering the newspaper every day. And they actually transformed
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Aaron
the industry into an adult profession shortly after that. And
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Aaron
the biggest lesson I learned from that is to think differently about everything. And and that that is stayed in my head,
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Aaron
repeats in my head constantly. And everything that I, that I put energy against is like, you know, let's understand why what's happening, why things are happening that way, but is there a different way then to approach it?
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Aaron
And that really is a testament to my parents and what they taught me. And then the other was being an athlete and being a wrestler, a wrestling college. And, you know, there's such discipline that's that's required from it. And, you know, you are the only person that goes on to a wrestling mat and you're going to either get your hand raised or not.
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Aaron
And it all is dependent upon the work that you put in, the skill that you have and the determination and mindset that you that you want to win that bad, that your hand raised and that really has, has, played a big part
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Aaron
in my entrepreneurial journey because, I mean, as most people know, when you start a business, it's never easy.
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Aaron
There's always pitfalls. There's always roadblocks,
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Aaron
a ton of adversity. And you got to learn that. That's just part of the process. Just like this, like wrestling was for me. I, you know, wrestling is a very hard sport. It's not fun to practice. It's fun to get your hand raised. And that's really about it. And, that's the same thing.
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Aaron
And in entrepreneurship, it's really hard to be successful. But it's really fun once you get your hand raised.
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Aaron
So
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Aaron
that's, that's kind of, that's kind of what sparked my
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Aaron
interest into, ultimately, you know, started my own company. I had no idea
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Aaron
the staffing industry existed when I graduated college. It wasn't something that you learned in college, necessarily, at least at the time in which I went.
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Aaron
And, so I actually found it. And what I've learned over the years is that I think if anybody's listening and your staffing and recruitment agency, I think most of us know that you tend to fall into this industry. It wasn't so something that you proactively search for.
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Aaron
I fell into it and, worked for, a very large company, Robert Half International, in the late 90s.
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Aaron
And I just fell in love with, with the industry because it's
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Aaron
you get to make money by helping people. And, that really inspired me, that it wasn't just making money to make money. I was actually, every time I made money, I was doing something of value to my community and to other people. And and that's that's really driven my passion.
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Aaron
Throughout.
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Rohan
Yeah. I love that. You know, a couple things came to mind. You talk about,
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Rohan
you know, choosing wrestling as a sport when you're in high school. I tend to play tennis. That was the sport that I gravitated to. Also a solitary sport.
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Rohan
And there is something about I think there's a correlation, of course, with like competitive sports and entrepreneurship.
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Rohan
But I think especially with like solitary activities like this where
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Rohan
you, you realize that, like, it all is on your shoulders. Of course, you might have a team and trainers and coaches, but when it comes down to getting in the arena, it's really up to you. And
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Rohan
the mental game is so important to you. And what separates a,
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Rohan
there's actually more separation between number three player in the world and number five player in the world for tennis, than number five and number 100
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Rohan
because the skill level is is very close.
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Rohan
It's the mental game and how they play. The key points differently and handle pressure. That makes all the difference when you're at that elite level. So yeah, I just thought about, you know, wrestling in tennis, how there are those similarities when you're kind of getting into the arena,
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Rohan
what we'd love to kind of foray into, you know, talent launch and the model there
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Rohan
because it looks like, you know, you are
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Rohan
you're acquiring these staffing firms with a long standing history.
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Rohan
You want to keep their local brands alive
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Rohan
while still, you know, modernizing them with technology. So how did you have that insight and see that opportunity?
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Aaron
Well, you know, hopefully I don't get too long winded here, but the back end story in this is that I won the NY entrepreneur of the year regionally, and you get invited to Palm Springs for the for the National award. So you know, the year, the year I went to Palm Springs, like we work was was a winter to remember that company.
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Aaron
Oh yeah. Peloton was was a national winner. So some very big brands were winning national awards. And when I first went to that event, I thought maybe I had a chance.
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Aaron
And then I learned what these companies were doing. And I'm like, I know nowhere near thinking big enough.
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Aaron
And that was really inspiration. Going to Palm Spring was the inspiration for talent launch, because I started thinking bigger about the industry and what what problems can I solve.
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Aaron
And one of the things that I,
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Aaron
I had learned is that the Net Promoter score, which really, you know, in a very simple way, just helps people understand what a company recommend working with you. What would, a talent recommend? Another talent to work with your agency. Right. And the scores were just terrible.
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Aaron
I think in one year, as I was going through this, how companies felt about our industry was actually a negative score.
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Aaron
I think it was negative for that year.
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Aaron
And and then when you do the research, there's 20,000 agencies, 99% do less than 50 million, 97% do less than 25 million. So a lot of these, it's a very fragmented space with a lot of competition. And these smaller companies,
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Aaron
what I've learned just, you know, either don't have the sophistication because of because of how they grew up in business or don't have the the resources, the financial resources to really build out, the things that are required to drive a great experience and a consistently good outcome to their customers.
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Aaron
So by default, it would feel like companies would use staffing agencies even though they don't like the experience that they're getting. And that was really the major problem that, I've been working towards trying to solve for. And that's, you know,
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Aaron
when you look at these smaller companies who don't have the resources or the this case to professionally build out and operate their business, what if we could do that, you know, behind the scenes with this company called Talent Launch where we could, you know, acquire, staffing agencies throughout the United States that have been relevant in their market for 25, 30, 51 is 75 years in business.
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Aaron
And how do we maintain their relevancy, especially with the with the advent,
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Aaron
we how do we continue to to foster the sustainability and relevancy of these agencies going forward? So that was really the the idea to launch is that we would
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Aaron
buy a company
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Aaron
and kind of rip out and, and what typically would be an antiquated engine and put in, you know, a modern engine with, with all the technology enablement that's being integrated into that tech stack.
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Aaron
So, a recruiter or somebody in the agency doesn't have to go to multiple platforms to do their work. It's all embedded into one platform, into one area. And then how do we build up support enablement functions? Like, you know, we have an internal marketing agency that all they do is provide content and strategy for staffing agencies, our portfolio staffing companies, or, you know, a managed services I.T firm or business intelligence that really provides really healthy intelligence to staffing agencies so that they can really understand their business and understand maybe those roadblocks, that you really can't find unless you look really close into the data.
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Aaron
There's learning, development, things of that nature that we've been able to pop up. So that's really kind of the the idea of talent launch is how do we
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Aaron
how do we help small agencies stay relevant throughout the United States that give them the sophistication and tools so that they can compete at the level of a national agency?
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Aaron
And that's really what what what we've been working towards?
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Rohan
Yeah,
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Rohan
I think that's really powerful. I'm reminded of,
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Rohan
you know, listening to podcast and you're talking about some of the big venture capital firms, right? And most of them had been around for at least, say, 25, 30 years. And then, you know, Andreessen Horowitz, launched, I think maybe ten years ago or so. And they're now up there in terms of
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Rohan
assets under management, in their portfolio with the big guys like Sequoia and Benchmark and
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Rohan
all of these companies.
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Rohan
And a couple of things they did differently. Our number one,
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Rohan
they shifted from
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Rohan
a single point of contact, like a partner being the point of contact for the founder. And only one person supporting the portfolio company success
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Rohan
to more of a managed service, very much like CAA did for the creative industry, where you had a full suite of marketing and, and hiring and talent.
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Rohan
They brought that
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Rohan
to the portfolio company they mentioned. And so now they have recruitment infrastructure and content infrastructure and hiring infrastructure. And that just made it much more of a value add, right, in terms of what these VCs were offering.
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Rohan
And now the second thing they they're really focused on is,
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Rohan
is their content arm and
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Rohan
really investing in like distribution and reach and Salt leadership so that they become known as
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Rohan
highly valuable, highly helpful,
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Rohan
partners and growth partners to these founders based on like the podcast and the guests that they bring on.
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Rohan
And so they really took
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Rohan
content seriously. And that led them to get all of this deal flow and differentiation and really build their brand. So goes back to your point of thinking. You know, thinking differently is, is one of the most powerful ways to, to provide value and, really start to differentiate.
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Rohan
So,
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Rohan
yeah, kind of
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Rohan
going into like talent launch a bit deeper.
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Rohan
Are there
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Rohan
any other businesses that had this like portfolio or this kind of like
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Rohan
holdco model, if you will, in the talent space where you modeled off of, or
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Rohan
is that the gap that you saw in the market that you thought there's real opportunity.
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Aaron
You know, outside, like true franchise or, you know, organizations
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Aaron
that there really I hadn't seen anything of substance,
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Aaron
doing what, you know, doing what we what we wanted to build towards, where where we maintain these brand, these brands where, you know, quite honestly, these brands could be doing similar types of work just in very different markets or geographies because these are local, regional companies.
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Aaron
One of the, you know, differentiators, of talent launch and it's portfolio companies is that we're really not in the business of doing massive volume with, you know, 1 or 2 customers. We work with primarily small mid-market sized businesses and the communities we service, and those are typically one site locations. We don't work with a lot of companies that have multiple locations throughout the United States, which allows us to maintain the integrity of that brand in their respective market.
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Aaron
We just want to supercharge them so that they dominate that market and stay relevant for years to come.
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Aaron
But yeah, I from what I've been told, we were solving a problem that no one had really solved before.
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Rohan
Yeah,
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Rohan
and the stats are powerful. I'm just seeing here, you know, 82% of staffing firms are under that $5 million
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Rohan
per year billings rate. And so they lack the tools and the infrastructure
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Rohan
to grow and scale beyond what made them successful, which were these like people driven operations. Right. And so it sounds like you're providing that
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Rohan
kind of critical infrastructure, that back office infrastructure that's going to help them grow and
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Rohan
focus on their zone of genius, which is those people based relationships
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Rohan
are there.
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Rohan
What would you say the entry point or what are the what is the most valuable
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Rohan
service within that back office suite of offerings? Or even like on the marketing side, that these talent firms value in talent launch?
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Aaron
Well, I mean, I think that there's a there's a lot of value throughout the different support enablement functions. But I think what is probably the most unique is our business intelligence.
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Aaron
It's it's our ability to really understand
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Aaron
all aspects of a staffing agency and, and be able to run data points against all of it to really figure out where in a, in a process, a workflow, where where there might be a bottleneck that exists that we need to optimize, through technology and whether and also then understanding,
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Aaron
you know, I would couple that with our technology team because we, we, we've built a lot of, custom automations within our, with our environment.
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Aaron
So when we, when we give our tech stack to, to a new portfolio company, they're getting a ton of automations that already have pre-built into these workflows that just help to expedite, the process and the ability to execute, while also, you know, maintaining the integrity of data. And as we are moving faster and faster into this AI world,
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Aaron
data integrity is is of the essence.
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Aaron
You've got to have clean, structured data to be able to really optimize how I can actually help support you. And that's something that we, we put a lot of time, energy around.
00:16:44:04 - 00:16:47:10
Rohan
Okay. Does that kind of parlay into
00:16:47:14 - 00:16:50:16
Rohan
the inspiration between, to produce health
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Rohan
or maybe let's just kind of talk a bit about that and what led you to starting that company?
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Aaron
Yeah. It's it's it's interesting. It's connected been a little bit different. So,
00:16:59:17 - 00:17:06:02
Aaron
before, you know, before I was even a thing, this was back in 2008.
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Aaron
I wrote a 20 page thesis of how I thought technology would ultimately evolve the industry and what I had seen in other, other industries outside of staffing was more of this customer centric approach to things where you could self-serve, the trip that you wanted to go on, go to TripAdvisor, you wanted to go to AutoTrader or whatever, to start looking at vehicles.
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Aaron
And before you would go into a dealership to, to actually make a purchase. And in staffing,
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Aaron
we we'd still always been operating in a very traditional sense where if you wanted, a temporary labor person and you called up an agency, the recruiter is responsible for going and sourcing that talent and giving you what they believe is the right talent for what you're for, for the needs you provided them.
00:17:56:18 - 00:18:04:21
Aaron
There's no self-service, really, and, in a meaningful way. And so I'd always thought that more of a customer centric
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Aaron
solution would involve the traditional staffing model, you know, in most agencies. And I say this with wild because I am a recruiter by trade.
00:18:15:01 - 00:18:22:11
Aaron
But, you know, recruiters have been the central part of how transactions are made within an agency environment.
00:18:22:14 - 00:18:31:06
Aaron
And, I've also believed in why I wrote that thesis is that it's also the biggest bottleneck, because there's a lot of friction to having that recruiter be able to
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Aaron
optimally ineffectual, effectively manage, a transaction especially, you know, the staffing industry is somewhat of a high turnover environment. So you're you're working through people to get to get to to get to somebody who can actually know how to do that job at a high level.
00:18:47:08 - 00:18:56:02
Aaron
And, and so it, it, I've always thought that that was a lot that was creating a lot of friction. So yeah, Freya's health
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Aaron
really is a customer centric hiring solution. It
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Aaron
brings, and the health care space. It brings clinicians
00:19:04:13 - 00:19:06:01
Aaron
and facilities.
00:19:06:06 - 00:19:21:08
Aaron
With the agency still being in the middle, but it allows them to self-serve in a much more intimate way and minimize the, all the responsibilities that a recruiter traditionally would have to be able to, to drive a transaction.
00:19:21:11 - 00:19:30:06
Aaron
We're just bringing it closer. We're just allowing technology to bring it closer, and bringing that to, to the forefront. So that was really
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Aaron
the precipice of, of Prius was wanting to build a customer centric hiring solution into the state. The traditional staffing agency environment.
00:19:40:11 - 00:19:47:15
Aaron
Now with the advent of AI, you know, one of our goals, appraisals, for example, is to, over time,
00:19:47:20 - 00:19:51:15
Aaron
replatform the business so that it's an AI native
00:19:51:19 - 00:19:55:03
Aaron
solution that's solving healthcare staffing.
00:19:55:07 - 00:19:58:15
Aaron
Because I think, you know, customer centric is step one.
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Aaron
AI is step two,
00:20:00:21 - 00:20:01:22
Aaron
and my and my.
00:20:01:22 - 00:20:12:12
Rohan
Team is there is there a specific clinical role that lends itself well for the self-serve model? I'm thinking of like a travel nurse where there's naturally more turnover built in. But are there
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Rohan
specific roles that make it more self-serve option more attractive?
00:20:16:12 - 00:20:24:02
Aaron
Well, yeah. I mean, so for one, you're right, the the traveler nurse, the traveling nurse, the traveler, traveling allied health care professional.
00:20:24:07 - 00:20:34:01
Aaron
We're just about to launch this for physicians, for locums. So advanced practitioners and physicians, which physicians? We have this briefcase model that basically
00:20:34:05 - 00:20:45:02
Aaron
enables the, the clinician to own all of the the relevant documents that are typically required for them to submit themselves to a job or in the physician's case,
00:20:45:05 - 00:20:48:03
Aaron
all those are really meant more on the onboarding side.
00:20:48:03 - 00:21:12:22
Aaron
So once they've been accepted for the job onboarding a physician into a facility can take months. I know one I heard last week someone waited 14 months before that physician finally got approved to work. Our goal with our briefcase concept is to help that physician have those have all those relevant files on hand. We can help manage an update so that they actually can start their jobs, a lot faster.
00:21:13:00 - 00:21:23:08
Aaron
So, so it really plays into all those three. And we also have for like right now we're moving, really into nursing homes and long term care facilities
00:21:23:12 - 00:21:28:07
Aaron
who a lot of them require, you know, float pool management. They have a lot of nurses or
00:21:28:10 - 00:21:33:01
Aaron
those that are providing patient care that might call off a shift and they need immediate help.
00:21:33:02 - 00:21:33:12
Aaron
And
00:21:33:15 - 00:22:09:18
Aaron
nursing homes, for example, are not necessarily high profitability, high margin businesses. And so when they when they have to use third party agencies, that really cuts in to their ability to be profitable, profitable as a business. Our goal with precious is actually for them to minimize the need for agency by optimizing their internal database and their clinical workforce so that they can easily take on shifts when when a shift opens up versus immediately going in and using an agency, an outside agency to do that at a premium cost.
00:22:09:20 - 00:22:26:14
Aaron
So that that's kind of what we're that's kind of what we're doing with Piraeus. We're really we we with the, with the briefcase concept, we really help to create speed and efficiency on how people either apply themselves to jobs or actually are able to start a job.
00:22:26:17 - 00:22:34:01
Aaron
And then we help companies and agencies re-imagine a database like a database today.
00:22:34:05 - 00:22:56:22
Aaron
Like, like, I won't give names of, of, of ATS, but, you know, databases are meant for the staffing agency to access their, their, their, static records of, of of candidates within a database. There's, there's nobody living behind them. And in our private marketplace concept with Piraeus, which I like to call database reimagined,
00:22:57:02 - 00:23:07:17
Aaron
they're these briefcases actually have clinicians sitting behind them and able to take actions proactively, to help, you know, become more intimately involved in driving a transaction.
00:23:07:20 - 00:23:09:03
Rohan
Okay. Interesting.
00:23:09:07 - 00:23:26:23
Rohan
Yeah, I see it almost. I think you described it as just like consumers use, you know, trip TripAdvisor to book a trip or to book a hotel, or you have so much richness and context to make a decision. It's surprising how little of that intelligence and context lives in
00:23:27:03 - 00:23:40:04
Rohan
these healthcare staffing databases, which are actually much more important, right, to make these highly considered decisions around, like the type of work we choose, like clinicians choose or hiring managers choose to hire clinicians.
00:23:40:04 - 00:23:40:13
Rohan
So
00:23:40:16 - 00:23:45:07
Rohan
it sounds it sounds like incredibly valuable. And it's also where the world is going, where how do you provide
00:23:45:12 - 00:23:58:10
Rohan
tools and intelligence behind the scenes to allow humans, like recruiters or business owners, to make decisions faster, cut down on costs, and really just give them superpowers based on this technology that you're building?
00:23:58:13 - 00:24:19:21
Aaron
Exactly. And one thing I'll add to that is, you know, the work ethic. And in our society, I think a lot of people would say it's fundamentally shifted. It's hard to find people like it's like recruiters in the healthcare space. That is a grinding role that takes a ton of grit, you know, a ton of hustle to kind of to kind of make that work and be successful.
00:24:19:21 - 00:24:20:23
Aaron
It can be very lucrative,
00:24:21:02 - 00:24:36:21
Aaron
but it's really hard to kind of to kind of find success in. And it's been much harder the last couple of years for health care staffing agencies who continually reinvest in a traditional model of hiring recruiters to create revenue. And what Piraeus really does,
00:24:37:00 - 00:24:40:16
Aaron
you know, what we try to say is say instead of putting your next recruiter higher Piraeus.
00:24:40:18 - 00:24:43:00
Aaron
And what we want to do is take your top recruiters
00:24:43:03 - 00:24:55:09
Aaron
and help them do more through technology so that they can actually be more productive, because those are the ones that you know are doing really well. And how do we how do we help them do more? That's really what the rails can do for staffing agencies.
00:24:55:11 - 00:25:01:17
Rohan
Yeah, that's really powerful. More productive and also improve. Job satisfaction doesn't need to be as much of a grind,
00:25:01:20 - 00:25:16:05
Rohan
right. It's just like they their work is more high leverage. They can use technology. They're making more placements. They're in their zone of genius more. And so it sounds like morale and overall job satisfaction will increase as well once they have these tools.
00:25:16:08 - 00:25:16:19
Aaron
Yes.
00:25:16:22 - 00:25:20:17
Rohan
Well, awesome. We'd like to kind of shift gears a bit and talk about,
00:25:20:20 - 00:25:21:08
Rohan
you know,
00:25:21:13 - 00:25:27:03
Rohan
business and entrepreneurship as this vehicle for our own growth and human potential.
00:25:27:06 - 00:25:30:13
Rohan
So talk a bit about, you know, how you
00:25:30:17 - 00:25:35:10
Rohan
how you explore investing in your own personal growth and development and,
00:25:35:13 - 00:25:47:05
Rohan
as well as your team to, kind of grow personally and, you know, it's going to like, really be your personal growth seems to be, you know, the upper limit for the company's growth and the businesses growth.
00:25:47:05 - 00:25:48:01
Rohan
So how do you think about that?
00:25:48:06 - 00:25:51:09
Aaron
Well, I think first I I'll just say that the purpose statement
00:25:51:14 - 00:25:59:06
Aaron
of of town launching really it's the purpose statement of how I live my life is to motivate the world to realize its potential.
00:25:59:09 - 00:26:11:12
Aaron
And it always has to start with, with me, like as a human or anybody else, like, how do I put myself in a position so that I'm constantly challenging myself so that I could become the best version of myself each and every day?
00:26:11:14 - 00:26:30:22
Aaron
And then if I can figure out how to create a path towards that, how do I surround myself with others who want that same, that, that same thing? And then how to how do we then influence our families and our friends and our communities to join in on that journey with us so that we're all trying to become our best selves and helping each other in that process.
00:26:31:02 - 00:26:32:05
Aaron
That really is
00:26:32:10 - 00:26:35:08
Aaron
my life's purpose and how I come into work
00:26:35:13 - 00:26:44:18
Aaron
every single day. You have to have a strong sense of curiosity to really, to really push yourself into those opportunities.
00:26:44:21 - 00:26:49:04
Aaron
And you have to be able to, you know, be okay with adversity being a part of that process.
00:26:49:07 - 00:26:51:21
Aaron
It is uncomfortable growing
00:26:52:00 - 00:26:59:20
Aaron
and you have to, you know, it's it's really every time I talk about motivating the world to realize its potential, everybody gets excited and inspired.
00:26:59:22 - 00:27:04:15
Aaron
But then I also have to reinforce that and to actually live that, it's really hard.
00:27:04:18 - 00:27:13:00
Aaron
It's not it's not easy. You have to put yourself in in a constant state of uncomfortability so that you can continue to put yourself in a path to growth.
00:27:13:04 - 00:27:17:08
Aaron
And one of the things that, especially a tail launch that,
00:27:17:11 - 00:27:21:16
Aaron
you know, I'm continually trying to infuse into our leadership is that,
00:27:21:20 - 00:27:29:09
Aaron
you know, I don't as much as I would love for every person we hire, I would love for them to spend a successful career with us.
00:27:29:13 - 00:27:34:11
Aaron
I've been doing this for 25 plus years. That's just not a true reality.
00:27:34:16 - 00:27:36:15
Aaron
What can be a reality, though?
00:27:36:18 - 00:27:42:11
Aaron
And what I've been saying since 2001 when I, when I started hiring my first my first employees is that
00:27:42:15 - 00:27:43:02
Aaron
listen,
00:27:43:06 - 00:27:51:05
Aaron
as long as you, align to our values of this business and you're supportive of how we want to grow those values,
00:27:51:08 - 00:27:54:07
Aaron
my hopes are that at a minimum,
00:27:54:10 - 00:27:58:13
Aaron
you can you'll you'll want to spend at least three years of your life with me.
00:27:58:16 - 00:28:17:21
Aaron
And in those three years, if after that, you decide, you get you get, you get burnout for whatever reason. Because human humans are your product and they don't always do what they say they're going to do. I totally understand if you don't want to make a career here. What I do want you to walk away with and what my objective and goals are, is that you will walk away,
00:28:18:00 - 00:28:23:00
Aaron
always believing that your time here with us was well spent.
00:28:23:02 - 00:28:43:18
Aaron
You learned a lot about yourself, what you're capable of doing, and you learn in a professional way how to do your job really well, so that the hope is that if you do choose to move on from, from from our business, that you'll be on a path to, to continued success in whatever you're doing. And I think,
00:28:43:22 - 00:28:52:05
Aaron
you know, initially when I talk to people internally about this mindset that I had, they're thrown off because like, how do you not how do you not want everybody to to make a career here?
00:28:52:05 - 00:29:09:17
Aaron
And I'm not saying I don't want to. I'm just a realist. I know that that's not that's not true for most, and, you know, but how do we teach people a really good work ethic? How do we feel? Okay. You know, pushing people to their limits while they're with us. It's not trying to be a test man at,
00:29:09:22 - 00:29:12:22
Aaron
task or, you know, what's the word, task manager or whatever.
00:29:12:22 - 00:29:17:02
Aaron
Like, we're trying to, like. Yeah, yeah. That's not that's not the intent.
00:29:17:06 - 00:29:20:11
Aaron
You know, some people might look at it, it's the intent and they're the wrong people.
00:29:20:15 - 00:29:22:21
Aaron
For me, it's I want to help you
00:29:23:00 - 00:29:27:11
Aaron
find your best self. And to do that, it's not easy. It takes a lot of work.
00:29:27:14 - 00:29:30:16
Aaron
It takes a lot of effort. And as a coach, we need it.
00:29:30:17 - 00:29:44:16
Aaron
We need to push you to those limits or pass those limits. And you might get frustrated. You might hate us for a moment. But at some point in your life, if you've found success outside of us, it just hope you look back and say, you know what?
00:29:44:19 - 00:29:45:23
Aaron
That was a big reason why
00:29:46:02 - 00:29:46:07
Aaron
I'm.
00:29:46:11 - 00:29:47:05
Rohan
I really like that.
00:29:47:10 - 00:29:54:17
Rohan
I was just listening to a podcast with one of the founders of Airbnb, Joe Gebbia. He's the chief product officer
00:29:54:20 - 00:30:03:12
Rohan
and, you know, one thing that he did is, of course, whenever he would travel, he would stay at various Airbnbs, right? Just to kind of get the local experience. And
00:30:03:16 - 00:30:07:21
Rohan
the podcast host asked him was like, do any like, what was your most memorable experience?
00:30:08:02 - 00:30:09:10
Rohan
And he's like, you know, there was this one
00:30:09:13 - 00:30:14:10
Rohan
time traveling to Japan and he stayed at this Buddhist monastery,
00:30:14:14 - 00:30:18:04
Rohan
and he was living with a monk at the monastery. And he noticed,
00:30:18:08 - 00:30:22:05
Rohan
yeah, the monk would meditate for like eight hours a day. And so he kind of fell into that rhythm.
00:30:22:09 - 00:30:26:00
Rohan
And so he'd meditate, you know, for hours every morning before he started his day.
00:30:26:04 - 00:30:27:06
Rohan
And then this one morning,
00:30:27:11 - 00:30:29:02
Rohan
towards the end of his day, the monk asked him,
00:30:29:07 - 00:30:33:13
Rohan
Joe, what is the vitamin that your heart's desires
00:30:33:17 - 00:30:36:11
Rohan
is like this, you know, philosophical. Got a question?
00:30:36:14 - 00:30:39:08
Rohan
But then he meditated on. He thought about it,
00:30:39:12 - 00:30:43:19
Rohan
and what came to him was when he returned back to San Francisco,
00:30:43:23 - 00:30:50:05
Rohan
to his team, he wanted to inspire them to do their the greatest work of their careers.
00:30:50:10 - 00:30:55:23
Rohan
So the work would be hard in the moment. But when they look back on their career, they would undeniably say
00:30:56:02 - 00:31:03:01
Rohan
that was really hard. But his most rewarding and fulfilling work we did of our lives, and that was what came to him in that moment of deep
00:31:03:06 - 00:31:04:01
Rohan
introspection,
00:31:04:06 - 00:31:06:09
Rohan
which is really inspiring others to,
00:31:06:13 - 00:31:12:03
Rohan
again, motivating the world, motivating others to find their own greatness and find fulfillment in the work as well.
00:31:12:03 - 00:31:12:12
Rohan
So
00:31:12:15 - 00:31:14:20
Rohan
yeah, I think that's that's a beautiful message.
00:31:15:00 - 00:31:18:00
Rohan
You know, Aaron, as we start to wrap it up here, is there
00:31:18:05 - 00:31:19:22
Rohan
one question I'd like to ask is if you can
00:31:20:02 - 00:31:21:22
Rohan
put a message on a billboard
00:31:22:01 - 00:31:23:10
Rohan
for the world to see,
00:31:23:13 - 00:31:25:14
Rohan
you know, what is the message that you want to get out into the world.
00:31:25:18 - 00:31:30:02
Aaron
Oh, that's a that's a that's a good question.
00:31:30:06 - 00:31:33:23
Aaron
When you when you say that like, like business wise or just,
00:31:34:02 - 00:31:34:09
Aaron
you know,
00:31:34:13 - 00:31:36:11
Aaron
because, like, one thing I've always say is like, you know,
00:31:36:14 - 00:31:38:04
Aaron
work to be your best self, like,
00:31:38:08 - 00:31:39:10
Aaron
try harder every day.
00:31:39:15 - 00:31:40:23
Aaron
I don't, you know,
00:31:41:03 - 00:31:43:10
Aaron
I mean, that kind of aligns to what I was saying earlier, but
00:31:43:15 - 00:31:47:17
Aaron
I just I have such a, you know, first of all, I love the United States of America.
00:31:47:17 - 00:31:48:15
Aaron
I love this country.
00:31:48:19 - 00:32:06:22
Aaron
And, you know, this country was grounded on the roots of grit and determination and, and, you know, not necessarily having a lot, especially way early on, not having a large safety net. But you could create whatever success you wanted to. And that still does play in this world today. I'm one of those stories.
00:32:06:22 - 00:32:18:06
Aaron
I didn't come from money. Now, my my parents were bankrupt and I had to work hard for everything that I got. And here I am, a successful entrepreneur here in this country. But I worked really hard to get it.
00:32:18:10 - 00:32:22:04
Aaron
And I want to I want people to embrace
00:32:22:08 - 00:32:23:14
Aaron
the struggle of work.
00:32:23:18 - 00:32:26:18
Aaron
Work can be such a rewarding experience.
00:32:26:18 - 00:32:36:13
Aaron
It really is if you look at it the right way. It's not about just collecting a paycheck. It's a place where you spend most of your waking moments in.
00:32:36:16 - 00:32:45:00
Aaron
And how do you make the most of it so that you become your best self by being a part of that, that that job in that moment or that business, you know, for whatever it is.
00:32:45:04 - 00:32:46:06
Aaron
I just hope that
00:32:46:10 - 00:32:48:15
Aaron
we continue to make people relevant
00:32:48:19 - 00:32:51:03
Aaron
in, in how we approach work so that,
00:32:51:06 - 00:33:03:18
Aaron
you know, there isn't this idea that AI is going to take over everything. It really should be supported when we have people in those right moments doing those right things who are willing to work their butt off
00:33:03:21 - 00:33:06:12
Aaron
to make, to drive a great experience and an outcome.
00:33:06:14 - 00:33:09:03
Aaron
That's. Yeah, a very long winded answer to what you asked.
00:33:09:07 - 00:33:09:17
Rohan
I love it.
00:33:09:21 - 00:33:16:09
Rohan
And, you know, just to wrap it up, maybe to grounded in reality and like the day to day for a minute.
00:33:16:13 - 00:33:17:12
Rohan
Could you share
00:33:17:15 - 00:33:24:16
Rohan
maybe a personal example in your own personal life as well as then like how you do it in the workplace with your teams
00:33:24:19 - 00:33:26:09
Rohan
of how you
00:33:26:13 - 00:33:33:12
Rohan
something may be in your daily routine that you use to cultivate grit or presence, to really prime yourself,
00:33:33:16 - 00:33:36:09
Rohan
to get after it, in the day.
00:33:36:09 - 00:33:40:01
Rohan
And then also whether it's like a team meeting or something like this
00:33:40:05 - 00:33:44:10
Rohan
where you do something or there's some sort of a routine or ritual to help others,
00:33:44:15 - 00:33:46:06
Rohan
to inspire that in others.
00:33:46:11 - 00:33:52:08
Aaron
Well, I'll start with at the latter with the team meetings, when I, when I'm running a team meeting, I almost always start
00:33:52:13 - 00:34:03:13
Aaron
with a motivational or inspirational video, whether it's, you know, finding on on Instagram or Facebook or YouTube something that's like, you know, less than two minutes long, but really has an impactful message to say,
00:34:03:17 - 00:34:09:19
Aaron
and then and then, you know, use that moment to really talk with them about what that means, what that means to me, how I apply it.
00:34:10:00 - 00:34:14:18
Aaron
I do believe in every meeting that I have. It's an opportunity to develop others.
00:34:14:23 - 00:34:25:06
Aaron
And so I try to, you know, I try to approach each meeting with that theme. How do I make this meeting valuable? Not just from the outcomes we're trying to achieve, but the development opportunities that come with that.
00:34:25:09 - 00:34:27:11
Aaron
You know, for me,
00:34:27:15 - 00:34:42:13
Aaron
you know, waking up every day and going, you know, you know, getting in the shower is really my time in which I think in which I think about ideas and I start kind of going out over what my day is going to look like, what are the big things I'm working on, and how can
00:34:42:13 - 00:34:49:20
Aaron
I think differently about what I'm thinking about all of them. Like I'm always trying to think differently and how I approach, or is there a different strategy?
00:34:49:23 - 00:34:57:19
Aaron
I don't know if this resonates, but like, you know, there was something that happened in high school wrestling that has stayed with me my entire life, and that was my
00:34:57:22 - 00:34:58:15
Aaron
my senior year.
00:34:58:15 - 00:35:01:21
Aaron
I dislocated my elbow and I was told I would never be able to wrestle again.
00:35:02:01 - 00:35:15:10
Aaron
And, I saw two different doctors. I finally saw a doctor that I was in. She was an Olympics for the figure skating team. And she there was a new innovative way that would allow me to get on the mat by the end of the year with one arm,
00:35:15:13 - 00:35:18:06
Aaron
and I ended up, pinning my way
00:35:18:09 - 00:35:19:13
Aaron
to the state tournament.
00:35:19:17 - 00:35:23:01
Aaron
I was on TV and and all of the staff, but, you know,
00:35:23:04 - 00:35:34:19
Aaron
I was I was so worried that I had, you know, my, my freshman, sophomore and junior year of high school, I didn't accomplish what I was capable of doing. And then my senior year, this happened and I'm like, I'm not going to have this chance ever.
00:35:35:00 - 00:35:44:09
Aaron
And I found a way to get on that mat, and I found a way to be successful with one arm. And that was what prompted me to get, you know, be able to wrestle at the Division one college level.
00:35:44:12 - 00:35:46:10
Aaron
And that moment
00:35:46:14 - 00:35:54:12
Aaron
is what keeps me going every single day, that there's always a way out of something, even when they're telling, you know, there's a yes, don't stop.
00:35:54:16 - 00:35:55:14
Aaron
You'll find a way.
00:35:55:18 - 00:36:08:20
Aaron
And, and that I lean into that quite a bit even. I'm 52 years old. That happened when I was 18. I still lean into it for me personally, and it helps give me the strength to really put forth the grit that's required to great success.
00:36:09:00 - 00:36:11:02
Aaron
Well, was there anything else in that question?
00:36:11:02 - 00:36:12:23
Aaron
I no, no, that's a great one.
00:36:13:01 - 00:36:15:11
Rohan
I think that's a great note to end on, so
00:36:15:14 - 00:36:19:07
Rohan
don't stop. Always find a way and
00:36:19:11 - 00:36:21:18
Rohan
motivate the world to realize their potential.
00:36:21:22 - 00:36:23:16
Rohan
Erin, thank you so much for joining the podcast.
00:36:23:20 - 00:36:25:09
Aaron
Thank you for having me. I really appreciate it.