The Talent Advantage: What Most Recruiters Get Wrong with Michael Solomon, Co-Founder of 10x Management

In this episode of From a People Perspective, Martin Hauck sits down with Michael Solomon, Founder and Talent Agent at 10x Management, for a candid conversation about what’s actually happening inside modern hiring.
Michael brings a talent-first lens to recruitment, challenging common assumptions about the role of recruiters, the responsibility of hiring managers, and why HR often gets blamed for problems it doesn’t control. Together, they unpack why reliability and judgment matter more than raw skill, how AI is changing hiring workflows without replacing human decision-making, and where expectations between candidates, recruiters, and companies are breaking down.

01:50 Icebreakers and first jobs
03:39 From nursing homes to Bruce Springsteen
07:47 Lessons from managing world-class musical talent
10:26 From music management to tech talent
14:12 Why talent should be the client
22:16 What actually matters when assessing talent
29:34 Contractors, expectations, and clarity
35:14 Living with AI uncertainty
40:18 How AI improves internal recruiting workflows
43:46 Boardy and the future of HR connections
54:30 Who Michael works with and closing thoughts

Creators and Guests

Host

Martin Hauck

Co-Founder of The People People Group & Host of From A People Perspective

What is From A People Perspective?

A podcast about fascinating professionals, how they got to where they are and where they’re going from the lens HR, Recruitment and People Operations hosted by Martin Hauck.

Martin Hauck (01:05)
back to another episode of from a people perspective. I'm Martin Hawk, your host. And today we've got Michael Solomon with us. Welcome, Michael.

Michael Solomon (01:13)
Glad to be here. I'm a people.

Martin Hauck (01:15)
You're people people person. ⁓ So you came to one of our dinners and had the ⁓ privilege to sit across from you during dinner and and ⁓ had a blast probably one of my one of more more entertaining dinners that we've had. was like, we like let's you were we were talking shop we were talking about all kinds of things. ⁓ And months later, here we are doing doing the podcast. So thanks for making time for this.

Michael Solomon (01:45)
really happy to be here although I'm at home but I'm really happy to be on the podcast.

Martin Hauck (01:50)
Where am I? ⁓ Love it. before we dive into the story and all that fun stuff, I usually kick things off with a couple of icebreakers is to get to know you a little bit. ⁓ this one will be, I'll save the, my usual one for last cause I think it's going to go in an interesting direction, but midnight snacks. What is that a thing? Do you do it? Where do you go? What's happening?

Michael Solomon (02:16)
it's a thing for sure. It's always in the house. And there's there's definitely like shifts in them. Like my recent thing is kiwis, but not just kiwis, whole kiwis with the skin. That's become my Yeah, yeah, I know. Like, there's these new kiwis that have sort of thinner skin. I just started this like the first time I heard that I made the same face you made. But I tried it and it's great. And it's so much easier than having to peel it and like whatever it's just it's great. So that's my newest one.

Martin Hauck (02:36)
Hahaha

Michael Solomon (02:44)
But at times, like, I would have like whipped cream with chocolate. mean, like the midnight snack train in my life has been long and diverse. Yes. Yeah.

Martin Hauck (02:53)
there's seasons to it. ⁓

What kind of Kiwis? So I'm a Kiwi, I like a good Kiwi, but the process of obtaining the sweet, sweet Kiwi is kind of infuriating at times. I like the idea of just biting into one.

Michael Solomon (03:09)
right in.

Yeah, I mean, it's definitely and apparently the nutrients are in the skin. So there's that as well. I've been getting these yellow Kiwis at Costco. And just you know, if you want them to be if you want to be a little riper, you just got to keep them out of the fridge for a while and they ripen up. Yeah, boy, I did not think I was going to be giving Kiwi recommendations today.

Martin Hauck (03:25)
Brilliant. Costco kiwis that.

No, this is this is how it is. ⁓ All right. First gig ever of all time.

Michael Solomon (03:39)
Mmm.

Well, my first, my first job was in a nursing home on loading boxes. That was, that was like the first one that was, that was kind of fun. But I would say it was kind of like my first professional gig was touring with Bruce Springsteen.

Martin Hauck (03:49)
Yeah.

Okay. The, the spectrum in which, yeah. Okay. which will, which we'll dive into what w what made the, am I focusing in on the most ridiculous, ⁓ things here? We should be talking about Springsteen, but what made the nursing home loading boxes part fun?

Michael Solomon (03:59)
It was a good way to start. Yeah, yeah.

think I was 14 or 15. And I'll tell you really to answer that question is the boxes that we were unloading would be like a full tractor trailer of adult diapers, which were giant boxes that weren't that heavy. So it felt very, I don't know, I felt very like strong moving these giant boxes all day that weren't that heavy. But it made me feel very Yeah.

Martin Hauck (04:46)
I love it. love it. I know the exact like mental place that you're talking about. Like, if someone sees that.

Michael Solomon (04:54)
We're two-year-old boys. want to, you know, we wanted,

I wanted to be a man and that was a, that felt manly.

Martin Hauck (04:59)
You're doing something in the yard and you're just like, just comes across like, someone sees me right now. They're going to be, they're going to be impressed. Yeah.

Michael Solomon (05:05)
Yeah, exactly, exactly.

I'd like to think I'm past that point in my life, but I don't think that's true.

Martin Hauck (05:11)
No, I did some yard work this summer. And there were a couple moments that I was just like, yeah, this is this this looks tough. This looks like I know what I'm doing. ⁓ So and finally, you have one album to listen to for the rest of time, you can't listen to anything else, album or artists. Sometimes people get cheeky and they're like, I can't pick an album. But what what's your go to?

Michael Solomon (05:16)
Like, yeah. Yes, exactly. ⁓

⁓ I would go with Radiohead for this. That's kind of my go-to for this question. think especially if I get the diversity of their catalog, there's ⁓ a lot of different elements and sounds and styles that sort of transcend time. So that would be my easy pick.

Martin Hauck (05:56)
Yeah.

That is a great answer from like, also a big radiohead fan, but I like the fact that like each song and and album is just so drastically different from the next one, but still has like their flavor of, you know, music. Good call. Yeah, I was just pointing up I got I got the kid a album in the back there. So

Michael Solomon (06:11)
Yeah.

that's what you were pointing. I was like, I thought you were like saying one second to somebody. was like me. Let me hold on. ⁓ Yeah. And, the reason that diversity is so important with that question is it really doesn't matter what your answer is. You're going to get sick of it. So you you might as, you might as well have somebody you'll get sick of more slowly.

Martin Hauck (06:26)
No, my bad, my bad.

Yeah.

Yeah. Yes, this is true. You can only listen to, to it for so long. ⁓ okay. Yeah, let's, let's dive into it. So you, you also shared apart from, ⁓ feeling strong, lifting giant boxes, ⁓ that your first real gig was touring with Bruce Springsteen. And I guess to set the stage and kind of like what, apart from that being a cool story, you're now in talent acquisition. You've been.

you've been running a talent recruitment agency for a set of time, you've written a book, you've done a lot of things. But from the sounds of it, you started your career in the world of music, and music talent. And I've always been curious about like pulling out threads and stories of things that are true in that space ⁓ that also tie into the recruitment and talent acquisition world. So I think that would be a cool

cool angle to take. But yeah, let's let's start off you you kick things off with Bruce Springsteen and how did you get to where you are now? Yeah.

Michael Solomon (07:47)
Yeah, and

while you asked that question, I thought of a way to like bring this all in. That's going to be I think it's going to be fun. there's a Springsteen movie out now that's getting a lot of attention ⁓ with Jeremy Allen White ⁓ and Jeremy Strong written by a friend of mine named Warren Zanes, a great book that was turned into this film.

touring with Bruce Springsteen, got to witness something that this film depicts. And the film depicts it 20 years before I met them. But it's this brilliant talent management relationship that exists. It's, it's beautiful. I saw it and I understood it because of my inside view, like I because I got to work there and I got to watch it, like I kind of got to see it and understand it. And that formed my perspective of what I wanted to do with my career.

which ultimately for the first half of my career was managing musical talent. That's sort of where I started and we still do that, but I don't personally work on it anymore. My partner does that. ⁓ But it was seeing this relationship. And what I'll tell you about that movie is the depiction of the talent manager. And this is not like an HR talent manager. This is like ⁓ a talent manager with a capital T.

Martin Hauck (09:02)
Yeah.

Michael Solomon (09:06)
is so beautiful because what it does and a lot of what the book that we wrote talks about is first he pushes back on his client john john landau in the scene pushes back and is i'm not spoiling anything and it's like bruce this is crazy you can't do this like and there's a number of times of like did the gently carefully trying to navigate that and then at a certain point he's like this is the talent and the talent is not going to move on this

And he does an about face and he turns around and then he goes and advocates for the talent to the record company and to the rest of the world. And obviously the rest of the story is history. But it's that relationship of like understanding talent at that highest level and that is a lot of talent. Recognizing it seeing the limitations of how you can manipulate it and then navigating that that started my career path which was managing musical talent. ⁓

Martin Hauck (09:39)
Hmm

Michael Solomon (10:01)
people like Vanessa Carlton, who we still manage, John Mayer, who we do not, Citizen Cove, Mark Broussard, like lots of, there's a 30 year old company now, the Clarks, who we still manage. ⁓ And moving from that as the music industry got disrupted and sort of being like, I have to figure out something else to do because I'm not sure music's gonna be a safe place. is 15 years ago.

Martin Hauck (10:25)
Yeah.

Michael Solomon (10:26)
And recognizing like the only skill that I had acquired in all this time, besides some executive function stuff was like managing talent. So I was like, what am I going do with this? And then the light bulb of the who's the new talent? Who's the new rock star? And it was software engineers. And it's like, oh, wait, maybe since nobody's getting on their side of the table, everybody's trying to exploit them. Maybe we can do exactly what happened in the entertainment industry and the sports industry 25, 50 years ago.

Martin Hauck (10:40)
Mm-hmm.

Michael Solomon (10:55)
in the technology industry. ⁓ And that was when we started 10x. basically, I mean, everything that we did was modeled after a talent agency in Hollywood. It was not modeled after an HR company. And my whole entree into the talent world to the HR world was I never learned HR. I don't know. Like, I know we're going to talk a little about internal and external recruiters. I'm an outsider. I mean, this is what I've done for the last 15 years.

Martin Hauck (10:57)
Right.

Yeah. Yeah.

Michael Solomon (11:23)
but I did it very much with an outsider perspective. So that was a long answer, but that's all.

Martin Hauck (11:29)
No, this

this is exciting. In a very geeky nerdy way for me, because this is exactly the conversation I've been dying to have. Because I've, I know I'm like, there's all these things that happen either in the like, let's call it artists space that are transferable to like, at the end of the day, you're representing somebody based on their skill sets as a recruiter. If you're an internal recruiter, if you're an external recruiter, doesn't matter at the end of the day.

you are coming to someone and saying this person is awesome. You need to you need to take a shot on them in some capacity, right? Like I'm probably making it that's the like fun, beautiful part about recruiting. So it's exactly kind of the conversation I'd love to kind of like double click on and didn't realize that like you had actually modeled it after sort of like, I guess that that looks and feels and sounds different than most

recruitment agencies just in general. I don't know if there's like a secret sauce to it. But like, what have you noticed over the years, like, running up against competitors and in how you've chosen to operate versus and what what advantages that gives you and that's like what what stands out to you.

Michael Solomon (12:43)
So I think what you just described in sort of the HR world is there's there's sort of two primary parts there's matchmaking and there's deal making. ⁓ And deal making is the part that gets sort of more interesting and more fun and also where there's more room for creativity ⁓ and where leverage becomes an important factor and. What what.

what our secret sauce is, is that we aligned ourselves with the talent. ⁓ The talent, the top talent is always the rare thing, like the best people. we just saw this year, we saw people getting billion and a half dollars, dollar offers, because they had the right skill set, talk about leverage. So our secret sauce is that we have, you know, every two sided marketplace sort of has to pick a side, right? Like Uber,

Uber picks passengers over drivers. They they do they don't treat like they have to keep treat their drivers well enough, but their business is the passengers. We treat our talent as that's our client, like internally, our talent is who we call our clients. We never use that out in the world. But like that's who we serve. And because of that, we stand out from our competitors, most of our competitors want to make a match. And then they want to drive the price down for the talent. And

Martin Hauck (14:09)
Yeah.

Michael Solomon (14:10)
and have the arbitrage.

Martin Hauck (14:11)
Yeah.

Michael Solomon (14:12)
There's there's there are obviously recruiters where they're getting a percentage and they also want to drive the price up. But again, there's a there's a huge conflict of interest inherent in all of this. ⁓ And I think if there's any secret secret sauce, it was just being like the most talented people are the ones who shouldn't waste their time dealing with the administrative stuff. They're neither interested in most cases, and in many cases not good at it.

And if we can take all of that stuff and take all of the pain out of contracting for them, they're happy to pay us a commission. And they feel and they feel like it's worth it. And then once we have the best talent, that's how we get our business is people have come to know that if you want people who can get things done very quickly, who are very high level, who you can see it on paper, and then you can see it in practice, work a great resource for freelance talent.

Martin Hauck (15:01)
Nice. And that's interesting. There's this, you know, as, as I'm sure lots of people are, I scrolling through some sort of app recently, I forget which one, so I'm not going to do justice to like the source or the credit. But there was this interesting and this kind of like frames kind of like the the mentality of it all. But there's this interesting conversation about this hospital had

you know, was having trouble with like the the changeover from when you know, a patient goes from one area of the hospital to the other area of the hospital and they were losing people more than they should like just statistically based on on things you know, like they tried everything that and then two doctors are just having lunch and they say like once is the other like they're watching like Formula One racing or like NASCAR and they're like, what if we got like a pit crew to come in and like assess

Michael Solomon (15:58)
Right. Instead of moving

them around, we just bring everything to them.

Martin Hauck (16:02)
Yeah, not even not even that. Like, what if we got them to come in and like, help us like figure out what's going on? They proposed it. They're like, now this is crazy. We're not going to have people come in and like, this makes no sense. And those who guys are like people are losing their lives like statistically way higher than they absolutely should. We're doing something wrong. We've tried everything. Why not? So they do it. And then in the in the exercise, like they get this, you know, Formula One team pit crew to come in.

And like, so no understanding, they're like, it's gonna take forever to explain all the processes. And they're like, no, like, you guys don't have like a standard operating procedure of like how this happens. Like every movement in a pit crew is calculated and structured and written down. And there's a standard operating procedure. And you guys are operating on human beings. And like, you're reaching over each other sometimes to like unplug a machine. And it's just absolute chaos. And so

When they realized that and they took all their advice and feedback, they just had this complete alternative perspective. And that's kind of what I'm curious about is like your alternative perspective for all of this. So it's like, first thing, obviously that that you've just mentioned is like the talent, the candidate, so to speak really is your customer, your client, they're the like, yes, you have clients, they're the ones that are paying the bills, it's not candidate.

Michael Solomon (17:23)
And boy do we need them

to be happy. I mean, we care deeply about that, but

Martin Hauck (17:27)
Exactly.

But first and foremost, top of the food chain is is is your candidate, I guess. Did that? Did this idea or concept of sort of like pulling from sort of like the, you know, actor and musician model just come right off the bat? Or you just like, I'm just gonna run with it see how it goes.

Michael Solomon (17:51)
The idea came from us as artist managers have a bad experience building a digital product where somebody disappeared on us. And we're like, where's this person's manager? Like we need, we need like, this is not a good experience. This is like a really talented art, you know, person who's doing amazing things, but like, they're not good. They're not, they didn't have good executive function. They weren't communicating. They would disappear. And we're like, this, isn't how this should be.

Martin Hauck (18:06)
Hmm.

Michael Solomon (18:18)
And also we wanted to have that screened out. Like we didn't want to end up with somebody like that. So ultimately what we did, we're like, this is an interesting idea. And we signed our first software engineer to our music management company. Like the first contract was you're signing to brick wall management. We didn't have a name for this other business. We didn't even know there was another business. It was an experiment. It was truly an experiment and took five minutes for

Martin Hauck (18:45)
See you for girls.

Michael Solomon (18:47)
for that experiment to work. And then that person said, I don't want to be your client. I want to be your partner. I can blow this up with all of my software engineer friends and my Harvard network and my Y Combinator network and my like, he didn't say it in this raggy way, but that was all there. And so that's where the company began. Yeah.

Martin Hauck (19:03)
Yeah, yeah.

That's wild. ⁓

and, and how, how long have you been doing this? How long have you been doing the recruitment side?

Michael Solomon (19:17)
I think 10 X is about 13 or four, 2012. It's going to be 14 years old this year. Coming here. Yeah. Pretty amazing. And we also got really lucky at the beginning when we launched the media loved even we didn't do anything to stimulate this, but the media loved the rock stars managers managing the new rock stars story. No one wrote those words, but everybody wrote that story. I mean, we had a seven page feature in the New Yorker about our company.

Martin Hauck (19:22)
Yep. Wow. 14. Yeah.

Michael Solomon (19:47)
when we launched this. it was a very lucky beginning. mean, every business publication had something on us, had us on. was amazing. I've never seen, I mean, we've done a lot of press campaigns for our music talent. I've never seen something that explosive for no effort.

Martin Hauck (20:08)
But I forget if it's day four, sir, the other one, but they just did that whole marketing campaign of like rock stars ⁓ in HR was like a Super Bowl commercial or something last year, I think.

Michael Solomon (20:20)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. There's even companies

that have named themselves like Rockstar Talent and you know, like there's...

Martin Hauck (20:25)
Yeah.

It's funny because if like looking from my lens on there was this like time period where at least in like the startup tech space in Toronto, there was this like allergic reaction to like people calling candidates rock stars and coding ninjas and they're just like, I was this I don't know you saw it as well. Yeah. ⁓

Michael Solomon (20:47)
Yes, yes.

Yeah,

there. Yeah, cuz yeah, and I don't know, it's the whole the culture of the technology world is really just bizarre, you know. tech bros and you know, it I went to a party in San Francisco a couple weeks ago. And some dude was talking to me and I thought I was on a TV show watching a like a caricature like I thought it was Silicon Valley like someone was like making

Martin Hauck (21:02)
Yeah. Yeah.

Michael Solomon (21:21)
Like totally satire. I could not believe, you know, like, he's got a couple be like, for Billy, like just, it was like, Whoa, yeah. ⁓

Martin Hauck (21:33)
Yeah, there's like this alternate reality that exists almost sometimes. what kind of like diving back into, I'd be curious to kind of get a sense of like the assessment of talent and maybe comparing and contrast that like when, when you choose to like represent a musician or manage your musician.

versus like what thing like, what was really important in getting good at that? Because you did that for a long period of time as well. ⁓ So how did you get good at that? I would say first, because I imagine, you know, not every person is going to be like, you know, rock star, literally, so

Michael Solomon (22:16)
No,

and that's part of the reason that I personally wanted to move away from music because I think it's virtually impossible to figure out now with the world the way it is. And I don't want to take us onto an entertainment conversation, but I think it's like virtually impossible to figure out what's going to break through. ⁓ I mean, it's insane how hard it is. So that's part of the challenge. the thing that

Martin Hauck (22:25)
Hmm.

Michael Solomon (22:40)
the commonality, the reason that we actually wrote the book that we wrote is because having worked with talent across musicians, directors, producers, and then tech talent, there's something that you're always looking for in, these folks. And it's basically, mean, in the simplest terms, it's somebody you want to work with. It's someone who's reliable. It's all the things that everybody in HR knows that often get pushed to the side when the skills look really right.

Martin Hauck (23:07)
Yeah.

Michael Solomon (23:08)
when they have

the right company background and they have the right skills and you're like, this matches on every level, people are a little less discerning on the things that matter most. I can I can like take a B plus person at a skill who's an A plus communicator and have just fantastic relationship with them. But you take an you know, somebody somebody who's if you flip that around, it just doesn't work. Like somebody who's

exceptional at work, but can't communicate and meet expectations. It just it's a disaster, which is why that's what we're always looking for is the skill which we can we can vet for both on paper and we can vet for with our existing talent we use we use the people we work with to vet new people. And they're very, very, very harsh because they don't want anyone contracting under our name who's not going to have a good outcome because it would hurt hurt them also.

Martin Hauck (24:04)
Yeah.

Michael Solomon (24:04)
So

they're very harsh, but the technical part is the easy. To me, that's the easier part. I don't I don't think that's so hard to do. I think that what's really plus when you're dealing with freelancers, if you don't like the person, it's easy to move on. It's the it's the the people you want to work with that give you confidence that can continually estimate, adjust own mistakes. I mean, my

I think the most important thing that I ask people in any interview is tell me about a time you made a mistake. About 60 % of people do a good job of that and about 40 % of people talk about something going wrong and then talk about how it wasn't their fault.

Martin Hauck (24:50)
Yeah. Yeah. There's interesting little tells in that moment too is like, love listening for when somebody you, you just ask them about the organization or the project or the thing they work on and you hear someone using I as opposed to we, whereas like,

companies are almost always large and you are almost always on a team almost always working with other people but then the person that just leans in and it's not like I'm not gonna hire this person because they keep using I statements but there is this element I would be curious to get your your take on it as well as like there's this element of like the person that is they're there it's like this is my time to shine I need to represent myself well but there is this balance of like

highlighting the fact that you didn't do it all by yourself and as opposed to like blaming others like it's hard. It's that classic like what's your greatest weakness? Like when somebody's like, well, I'm going to tell my weakness, but it's actually going to be a positive kind of deal. Like that's not actually the case. Like it's okay to just talk about how you shit the bed and, and, and the realities of it. And then talk about what you learned and why you're never going to do that again, or what you've changed as a result of it. I'd be curious to get your take on.

Michael Solomon (26:08)
I try when I ask some of those questions to lead with ⁓ examples of where I'm weak and things that I know I need to work on to try and model it and give them the chance of like, this is what I'm looking for. And also make them a little bit more comfortable to be vulnerable. You can tell when somebody's giving you the answer that they've prepared and there's no truth, there's no vulnerability, there's no, you know, I'm a perfectionist. ⁓

Martin Hauck (26:22)
Hmm.

Michael Solomon (26:39)
Like, really, that's what you're gonna come with. And for some people, that's true. And it's actually a problem. Like, like, but that's not really like, if you're going to tell me that, then you really better explain how and why that shows up and why it's probably what you're doing to work on it. I mean, that's the that's the whole thing about all these questions is it's like, you need to be willing to admit your fallibility. And you need to just see all of that as growth opportunity. Like, you know,

Martin Hauck (26:44)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Would you ever have signed or worked with a musician if you had never seen them play? No, it's interesting that we don't really do that very much on the hiring side. this is like, it was a leading question, but like, there's this like, it just weird to me that we don't follow that.

that model for hiring, is like, there's ⁓ like, it's just like, it at the end of the day, it's sometimes it's just three of the same conversation with some companies where it's like, I met this person talked about my career to met this person talked about my career. ⁓ Yeah, do you do you know why that is? Do you do things differently where you kind of like, force some sort of experiential aspect to it?

Michael Solomon (27:55)
say more I'm not sure I completely understood that.

Martin Hauck (27:57)
No, in terms of like the the process, do you have? Do you add in this element of like, let's see what this person can do.

Michael Solomon (28:05)
mean, for us as a, as a, as a company that's renting out talent because it's rentals, it's super try get out. We'll even for reasonable side projects, we'll do risk people and give them a money back guarantee on people. We know what we're selling. Like we know what we've got. but the, the, the, as a high, as someone who hires, I think that ultimately just the nature of full-time employment.

and at will employment. It's still used to I mean, we we hired someone last year, it didn't work out. Three months later, we let them go. I mean, that's, that's sort of the Yeah, I mean, it's not ideal. And we definitely, even if we're hiring to a W two to a full time, employment status here, we're still setting expectations that over the first three months, these are this is what we need to see in order for you to be successful in this job. And, you know, it's

Martin Hauck (28:44)
That happened.

Michael Solomon (29:03)
it's a lot easier to do that when you're when you can be clear about what your expectations are, and it's not fuzzy, and somebody can get to the end of three months, and be like, Well, this isn't working, right? We agreed this is what needed to happen. So but I do think and you know, this is my business is like, come start with contractors. First of all, you're to learn a lot about what you're doing. You're to learn a lot about the kind of people you want, or the exact skills you want for this and including the people who are working on it.

can help you refine exactly what you're hiring for.

Martin Hauck (29:34)
Yeah. There's this inch. I mean, I don't know if you've seen this, but there's this element of where you realize the client or the hiring manager doesn't even know what they want. And then the, the approach that you talk about was just like, bring on a couple of contractors. And then out of that process, instead of using the interview process, that's going to go on forever, because this person is going to ask to see more people, more people, more people, and they're kind of like,

forming their opinion of what they need from a hire through the recruitment process, which is atrocious. You can just bring on like immediate think about it like immediately start getting work done first off and then be like, Okay, we've got these three contractors working. Two of them are great. I wasn't even going to hire two I was going to hire one.

Now, now I see the value in that and third one doesn't make sense. And it was for a weird reason we'd never even thought of. Like that just seems like a better model. I don't know why we do it that way or why we don't do it that way. Yeah.

Michael Solomon (30:32)
Well,

and also in those instances where everything's fuzzy, I mean, we don't, don't even want to, we will, but we'd rather start with a discovery phase so that like, cause again, when everything's fuzzy like that and no one's sure what they want and they're not sure what done is or what good is. If you, if you just start without any planning on the front end, you never know whether you succeeded or not. So we, we definitely encourage, it doesn't have to be a separate phase, but like, let's, let's map this out.

Martin Hauck (30:47)
Yeah.

Michael Solomon (31:00)
at least to a degree or the next stage that we can all agree on expectations before we do it because otherwise, did we do we do we do a good job? I don't know.

Martin Hauck (31:13)
You're, ⁓ you mentioned earlier on, kind of were looking at the music industry and you're like, this is kind of going in a weird direction. Like what, is why you got into the talent space and it became this whole other business that you have now. Now we see the talent world kind of going through that moment in itself as well, to a degree, like with, I guess I'd be curious to get your take on.

Like what you've been doing as of late, like if has anything changed drastically with how you operate your business as of late and yeah, let's start there. Yeah.

Michael Solomon (31:53)
So I'm just gonna give us a little applause, a little internal applause. We've made it 40 minutes into this conversation without mentioning these two letters that we're gonna talk about now. That's unusual and it's very unusual for me because I talk about it all the time. So I think there's, in terms of the overall market, I think there's a bunch of things going on. I think...

Martin Hauck (32:10)
Yeah, okay.

Michael Solomon (32:19)
During and after COVID, you had all the big tech companies hire insane amounts of engineers, more as like a land grab and because everyone was doing it, and they weren't even sure what they needed them for. They just knew it was a limited supply and they went crazy. And then coming out of that, they're like, we don't know what to do with all these people. ⁓ Even before AI was a thing and they started shedding lots of people and that put a lot of supply into the ⁓ tech market, which is the only market I can speak to.

⁓ and we felt that because it's just supply and demand, you know, even though our people are at the top of the food chain and they're still in demand, you just feel it. Then getting sort of more to now AI is obviously becoming a factor in everything, both in terms of, of how we do business, like our internal search has completely changed. It's so much better than it ever was. And we were fantastic at it. That's what people come to us for.

They come to us and they say, need to do that. And we're like, here you go. And 95 % of the time, the first person we put in front of them is the one they hire. Like we're good at it. We're so much better at it now. Like that's been a really big upside. ⁓ so I, I love that on our, on the internal side and on, the professional side, lots of people are vibe coding and the word from our clients, our talent is, Hey, when someone comes in with a project that they want us to build out,

Martin Hauck (33:23)
Wild.

Michael Solomon (33:46)
let's ask upfront before we even do anything, was it vibe coded? Because it's not going to be like they think they have something and we're gonna have to start from scratch. ⁓ And basically, what I'm hearing from our people is they're becoming so much more powerful and so much more valuable. But all of the sort of civilians who are trying to do stuff are creating

Martin Hauck (34:14)
I'm trying

not to feel attacked right now, Michael, but okay. ⁓

Michael Solomon (34:16)
are create no, no, no, I mean, it's, it's

like, it's great for all the things that you're doing that works for but if you want to build a product if you want to, if you're building a startup, if you're not an engineer that's using it in a way that an engineer would and building all of the little pieces, you're building ⁓ a house of sand, that's a great demo, but will need to be rebuilt, which is fine for many businesses, that's all you need. Like, it's not it's not all bad. But I think that there's, I wake up every day and I read headlines and I read

Martin Hauck (34:20)
Yeah. Yeah.

Michael Solomon (34:45)
periodicals. And there's two things right now, which is coding is dead. Like, no one's going to need coders. It's only a matter of minutes. And the other one is actually AI is slowing down coders. And they're working at 20 % slower by using AI. And there's data to support that. And those are the two things that I see every day. I'm just sitting here thinking, all right, you know,

Martin Hauck (35:08)
Hmm.

We haven't figured it out. We haven't quite figured it out yet.

Michael Solomon (35:14)
AI is a little bit like, what was it? Yeah,

AI is a little bit like death. I don't know how or when, but I know I'm gonna die. And I don't know how or when but AI will take my job.

Martin Hauck (35:31)
You have to get comfortable with the eventuality of it. Or you spend your life like crippled in fear, I guess, right? You have to like...

Michael Solomon (35:38)
that's

and that's sort of what I'm saying is like business is great. Right now. It's not as great as it was three years ago, but it's really solid. And we're gonna keep going and keep doing what we're doing and and continue with the belief that the people at the top of the food chain, the best performers, the most skilled, the most capable will continue to be valuable.

Martin Hauck (35:47)
Yeah.

When you got into the talent space, did you sort of like immerse yourself like, okay, I got to take cues from other people that are doing talent acquisition recruitment in a particular way, like the influencers and the thought leaders like, like, oh, this book was great. It changed my perspective on recruitment. Or did you just jump in? You're like, now we're going to do it our way and

Fuck around and find out basically.

Michael Solomon (36:33)
more the latter but with a lot of learns along the way like the the clauses that have ended up in our agreements which were not you know like if i look back at our first agreement were things that were like ⁓ okay like literally somebody else would be like use our agreement and we're like look at that clause ⁓ and

Our agreement hasn't changed now in probably five or six years. Like it's, got it. We got it where we want it, but it was a lot of learning. mean, I remember when I first started this, I spoke to my uncle who was a CEO, like CEO for hire for a bunch of businesses. And I told him what I was doing and he had, he had worked in temporary help and he's like, do you have a buyout clause? And I was like, what's that? yeah, there was a lot of, a lot of on the job learning, but

Martin Hauck (37:15)
Hahaha

Michael Solomon (37:22)
It also isn't rocket science. If you have great talent and people need that talent, you're in pretty good shape.

Martin Hauck (37:29)
Yeah. ⁓ no, cool. Yeah. I mean, also proud of us for not talking about AI until like the, the 40 minute mark or so. So kudos, kudos to us. we could, yeah.

Michael Solomon (37:42)
We can talk about it for the rest of the time now if you want like

we already demonstrated a lot of restraint.

Martin Hauck (37:48)
Yeah. ⁓ I guess I'm, I'm, ⁓ I'm curious to know. So you, you, you went from, I think the more interesting thing and it does include AI is like, you, you said like, Hey, we're already great at identifying people internally. And what I'm assumed you mean by that is just

talent you already know, like you don't have to go to market and search for this person because as soon as the client is saying like, I need to you've got names and faces popping up in your mind.

Michael Solomon (38:25)
We have a roster. We have a bench. Like we're not, we don't, it's not that we'll never go to our waiting list for people who aren't on a roster, but rarely like we're, we're dealing with our pool of talent.

Martin Hauck (38:37)
Yeah. And, ⁓ and how did you get, is it just a simple matter of just having a high bar and having a lot of conversations with folks and then just keeping tabs on them and building the relationship? Or is there something like unique about the way you guys did it because of like the non-traditional background?

Michael Solomon (38:58)
I think it's the business model. think cause we aligned with the talent and our business model is that the better they, they do, better we do vice versa. Like that there were, we're partners. That's, think the secret sauce, ⁓ is that they, there's a, an element of trust there because everybody else is sort of like trying to tamp them down. And also, I mean, what I hear from a lot of our talent is that the other places where people do work freelance work.

They really treat the talent like the commodity, like the Uber driver, they're not, it's not very human, and it's not, a lot of these places like bid out jobs and then are like, you've got to do it for this price. And it's just, it's not recognition of the fact that ⁓ you're a very talented person who can create a tremendous amount of value in the world. ⁓

Martin Hauck (39:31)
Right.

Hmm.

Michael Solomon (39:57)
They don't treat them that way. ⁓ I'm always amazed that there's enough people that they can still fill their opportunities. But I think where we excel is helping to coach our talent when it's needed, ⁓ which I don't think other entities do. I think they're much more transactional ⁓ and really being aligned with them.

Martin Hauck (40:18)
Yeah. And how would you say AI has made you that much better? are there, is there like a specific thing that you do or use with AI to make that process that much better?

Michael Solomon (40:32)
The internal benefit for us is we built a great search functionality. It's private CRM custom built. ⁓ that's, that's great. And it does a great job. I told you the second go out with the output is, but it, it, took a few steps and now we made it so that we can like just have an instant, not just who would be good for this, but here's who's good for this. Here's the things they've worked on.

that are relevant. Here's why they'd be good for this. And it just makes it so much faster and easier for us.

Martin Hauck (41:07)
Nice, nice. Computer, Java developer, go.

Michael Solomon (41:10)
Yeah. Yeah. Computer

Java developer who likes early stage startups who you know, like we're, we're not just, that's what I'm sort of was saying earlier. It's not just skills matching. It's who's going to be good with this founder. This person is like really type a there. They, they, answer everything in two, two word answers. They're not giving any details. Who's good to work under those conditions versus this person is somewhere on the spectrum and they're going to micromanage every element of it. And who do we have on our

Martin Hauck (41:28)
You

No.

Michael Solomon (41:38)
who's going to be good and patient with that. Like, and that, that understanding is why I think customers come back to us over and over and over again, because it's not just like, this person has the right screwdriver for, for the screw I have. It's like, I like them and I want to keep working with them.

Martin Hauck (41:58)
Yeah,

I like the way this screwdriver feels. No. ⁓ So in terms of, I guess, the future and yeah, to your point, like AI is sort of like death. We don't know when it's going to happen. We just don't know when ⁓ from a recruitment lens, like, what are you keeping tabs on? Like what headlines are catching your attention? They're like, I should

pivot or maybe we should try this out. There's, definitely like a gold rush of like all these tools coming out, like, use this to do this. And, and, ⁓ I've been through a few cycles of that where it's just like, I kind of just want to wait for the dust to settle and then pick the winter kind of deal. But how, how are you looking at

⁓ all these tools popping up and all, and just in general, like all this innovation, so to speak in the recruitment space and, and what are you, what's catching your attention and what are you avoiding or trying to, what are you ignoring for? And for what reason?

Michael Solomon (43:02)
mean, the recruitment space just feels like there's so much noise being created by AI that I just don't want to pay attention to it because it's, you know, on the one hand, you've got everybody submitting everything to everyone. And so, you know, you, you post a job, you get a thousand submissions in five minutes. That's of no use. So people are building you software to screen that down to some smaller thing. And it's just,

I don't know it feels it still feels very samey to me like no one's really rethinking the big the big picture. Have you have you encountered Boardy? Have you heard of that?

Martin Hauck (43:44)
I know Boardy very well, yeah.

Michael Solomon (43:46)
Okay, Boardy, to me, and they pivoted and went in a particular direction, but Boardy to me, is what the future of AR of HR is going to look like. It's like you're going to get on the phone with an AI and you're going to, or you're going to upload your job description, and they're going to find out of the entire universe, three candidates for you. And it's going to be really good. It's going to be the three candidates you want.

Martin Hauck (43:58)
Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

It's just funny. I would been meaning to like do because I've used Boardy and I've chatted with the founders there. They're out of Toronto. ⁓ and, ⁓ I've been using them for quite some time and it's made some leaps and bounds and yes, like they're, they're dead focused on helping founders get access to capital and raise and whatnot, which is very important and cool.

Michael Solomon (44:20)
I didn't know that.

Clearly they needed to pick something, they needed to pick a vertical. They can't just introduce everybody to everybody. But I did like the idea of that.

Martin Hauck (44:36)
Yeah.

Yeah, when you can.

It was ⁓ like, hilariously, like, so for example, high Bob's this incredible software, like, they should be partners with the people people group, they are partners of the people people group. But I've known this for four years, and I was just trying to like knock on doors and just kind of like, Hey, hi, Martin, we should kind of like collaborate. Nothing, nothing.

And I just jumped on a call with Boardy and Boardy is like, Oh, I know this like account exec in San Francisco. He works for high Bob. I'm like, great. Yeah, I'll take the call. Had the call with him. He's like, Oh, I know somebody in marketing. They absolutely were they were just talking about this last week. And it turned into like a five figure deal and like lifetime value, probably a six figure deal for us. And it all came from from AI. So like, to your point, like, absolutely sold on using it. It's like

fun. It's still novel. And it's like, I set a timer on my phone actually to go off as soon as I dropped my daughter off at school. And the walk from school to walk home, which is five minutes, thank goodness, is is me on WhatsApp just messaging Boardy and I'm just saying, Okay, who can I be introduced to today or this week that would be like meaningful. I'm still doing it. And it's it's fantastic. Like

Michael Solomon (45:56)
You're still doing it.

even even though

they pivoted, it still works for non investor.

Martin Hauck (46:02)
it still works for non investor stuff. They've definitely pivoted. But like, when we do like, for example, when we do a dinner in a market, we don't have a ton of folks and I'll just message them like, hey, we're doing a dinner in a couple weeks. I'd like to know some talent acquisition folks that you know, would be worth you know, inviting to this dinner and they'll give me three or four profiles. I'm like, that one's great. Send an intro is exactly the ideal like, ⁓ virtual assistant or like executive assistant experience you'd

like but with like so much car anyways, as you can tell, I'm a fan. is podcast is not sponsored by Boardy. But since you brought it up, yeah. Yeah, there. Yeah. ⁓ there you go. Hey, Andrew, come on. ⁓

Michael Solomon (46:38)
Well, now maybe it should be.

I'm such a huge fan. I've turned a lot of people onto that product, including a friend who got a job interview through it.

Martin Hauck (46:48)
It's-

Yeah,

no, it's it's like meaningful, meaningful, like outcomes. We used it for our they were going down this path, like, it's still in the like, mess around startup stage of like, we're really trying to find their like, what makes the most sense for them to like lean into. But ⁓ it's been hyper valuable for me. So yeah, so keeping an eye on Boardy. That's that's a great tip. Yeah.

Michael Solomon (47:14)
I, yeah.

And I spend more time with my entrepreneurial brain about like what else in the world, not just in HR relating to 10 X does this technology make possible? Like I just, and part of what's making me a little insane is it's such a big possibility. And then almost everything comes back to

Nope, it's just gonna be one AI that does all of it. Like it's, you don't need the different, like you don't need all these different things. It's just, it's eventually going to just be your assistant that's going to do it all. And I, it gets discouraging. And it's also so exciting to think about what can exist in this, what, know, what, what, literally, like what diseases will be cured because people just start

Martin Hauck (47:48)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Michael Solomon (48:07)
asking AI questions about existing data sets. No new research. Like just like, take Parkinson's from here and take whatever from there and put it all together and any patterns emerge. All of a sudden, there's new stuff.

Martin Hauck (48:18)
Yeah.

No, I mean, I mean, I've talked about it a bit, but like, I was dealing with some like actual high blood pressure, like go to the hospital high blood pressure a couple, like, for the last 1824 months, and I've been using GPT and like, it's like you're fighting someone in the dark for a while, because it's like, you know, we don't know what's wrong, but your blood pressure is elevated, and then it spikes every once in a while. So don't, don't, don't eat anything tasty ever again. We're like, okay, great. But now,

Michael Solomon (48:27)
Mm.

Martin Hauck (48:47)
⁓ I was

Michael Solomon (48:48)
See

in our country, they would have just given you a pill. They said eat whatever you want, just take this pill every day.

Martin Hauck (48:56)
I'm hey, I'm I'm on the pill. And but on a low grade, but I've been like, working with chat GPT and just like constantly just kind of like looking at it from every angle. it's like bothering not a doctor. I'm not taking it like doctors advice, but I did go down this rabbit hole of like, is it this is it this this and started doing like breathing exercises and it's like

legitimately had a significant improvement on on my well being on my blood pressure on ⁓ just like stress in life and everything. It's just like the fact that like, and it seems like very eye rolling, like, you know, to be like, you're my breath work is the thing that's like, but if that's the thing and I and that and like I can it's it's just it's wild. Yeah, no.

Michael Solomon (49:34)
Of course, but.

Martin Hauck (49:47)
Lots of lots of great things out there.

Michael Solomon (49:48)
And unlikely

a Western doctor would have recommended that.

Martin Hauck (49:52)
Yeah, yeah, it wouldn't have been they're like, okay, yeah, I'm not gonna 100%. Right? Like, and so now I've got this thing to like punch at. And it's I'm still in the dark a little bit. But at the end of the day, it's like, at least I know what's going on and what what levers I can pull and whatnot. So like, those are actually the real like, helping hire people is great. But and it has a meaningful impact on people's lives and their careers and everything like that. But like, to your point, like,

seeing the impact that AI can have on a larger global scale. I guess I would challenge, and this will be my last thought before we sign off, but, ⁓ I guess my thought is that I don't know that like, I'm, I'm of the mindset that like, similar to like, you can get coffee anywhere. You can go to Dunkin donuts, you can go to Starbucks, you can go to Tim Hortons, you can go to the bespoke coffee shop down the street. I still feel like AI is we're going to have.

And maybe I'm misunderstanding your like statement on that side of things, but like, feel like there's still going to be so many different AIs and like people are going to pick their brand of AI that they're going to work with because it suits their style and flavor and whatnot.

Michael Solomon (51:06)
But do you think they'll switch like to their coach AI and then they'll talk to their travel assistant AI and then they'll talk to their, ⁓ cause I, what I'm imagining is whichever one you choose, it's not, I'm not saying there's only one that'll be your interface. Like in my car, cause I drive a Tesla, they added grok with one button. Like that's not, that's not the AI that I would choose normally, but it's one button and I am talking to it and having a conversation.

Martin Hauck (51:19)
Yeah, yeah.

No.

Michael Solomon (51:35)
And the ease of that is great. And if I could do everything through like in life, if I was just like, hey, I'm not gonna say any of those things, because something's gonna react. But hey, device, do this for me. Like, I'd rather have to do that than be like, oh, oh, I to go to the Fandango AI to do to get my movie tickets and have to go to the trap like, and I don't think that's what it's gonna be.

Martin Hauck (51:45)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah. It's probably, yeah. I see what you're saying. Yeah. It's kind of, I mean, the fact that I have to text people on different platforms is infuriating. that's part of the, part of the reason I feel like, well, well, in, if I want to interact with Michael through AI, have to go through grok or whatever, because that's what that's the one he's using and not even for any particular reason, other than that's the one you started with. All right.

Michael Solomon (52:28)
Right. That'll be interesting to see. I imagine there'll be cross platform communication because it would be very ineffective if you use grok and you can't communicate with somebody who's using Gemini. Like that wouldn't work. know, it'll have that part of part of the reason I think we end up here is

Martin Hauck (52:39)
Yeah. Yeah.

Michael Solomon (52:47)
very soon the AI is going to know every like, I'm going to want the AI to know everything about me. I'm going to want it to have my medical records. I'm going to want it to have my financial information. I'm going to want it to have my travel preferences. There's a trust thing here, but like if I could trust that, and I also sort of don't care, then this thing is making

Martin Hauck (53:03)
Hmm. Yeah.

Michael Solomon (53:09)
every decision ever request everything and it's learning from my style from it's read all my emails, it's read all my tax returns, it's like, it just knows everything it knows what cars I have. So when I need windshield wiper blades, I don't have to tell it. Like, I think there's a version where it's just one assistant.

Martin Hauck (53:29)
One thing. One AI to rule them all.

Michael Solomon (53:33)
Well, it may be several AIs, but I'm only gonna have one. You're only gonna have one. I don't mean that there's winner takes all in the field. mean, I'm not gonna be going between different ones, because they're all gonna be interchangeable.

Martin Hauck (53:36)
You're only gonna I gotcha. I gotcha. Okay.

Yeah.

Yeah. You need the people want the simplicity. Like you're not going to go back and like, don't store files with Google, but I use Apple for my photos kind of deal. Like it's all, yeah, that makes sense. Anything you want to leave the listeners with before, before we sign off here.

Michael Solomon (53:55)
Yeah.

I guess just be kind to each other. I've had a few experiences this week where people were just unnecessarily not even directly to me doing to somebody I know, just so nasty and like just know the world doesn't need that. Nothing gets better with nastiness. Kindness is is good. I don't know. I was a little preachy.

Martin Hauck (54:18)
No, that's fair. ⁓

No, that's I love it. I love it. And for folks just find you on LinkedIn if they they want to hear more and ⁓ any any like who's your ICP for for your firm like who should reach out to you if they've got a problem and you can solve it kind of deal.

Michael Solomon (54:30)
Yeah.

A ton of our business comes from venture firms who are introducing us to their portfolio companies. That's a big part. So even though venture firms don't hire the people themselves, they're happy to know we exist. keep their companies moving. And then mostly venture-backed are who we're doing business for. We work with mid-tier companies as well and occasionally big enterprises, but they have to be, you know, this is back into the HR conversation.

They have to be smart about procurement. If you're going to give us a 750 page agreement and require us to have $10 billion of insurance, we're not going to spend the time. We have people that are in demand, like it's not worth it. And hopefully the companies are learning that when they want the right people, because every time we've done business with a big company, it's always been someone who found one of our people and then told their HR department, don't tell me I can't work with this person. Just figure out how to make it happen.

Martin Hauck (55:14)
Yeah. Yeah.

Michael Solomon (55:32)
And then we get it done at a big company. That's every time how we get in. Yeah.

Martin Hauck (55:36)
hilarious yeah

so it comes back to quality finding its audience love it awesome

Michael Solomon (55:40)
Yep. Absolutely.

Thank you, Martin. This was really fun. Time to go.

Martin Hauck (55:44)
No, I appreciate

it. No, thanks, Michael. ⁓ Yeah. All right, folks. That's it. And we'll see you next time.