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Tevis Paxton on Startups, Sales, and the Secret to Making Work Matter
9 Plays21 days ago
In this episode of MustardHub Voices: Behind the Build, Curtis Forbes chats with Tevis Paxton, Director of Partner Development at HiringThing and veteran of the startup world. Tevis shares how a background in improv and a self-designed college major in "persuasion" laid the foundation for a thriving career in sales, partnerships, and go-to-market strategy. From the magic of white-label recruiting tech to the importance of context, alignment, and fun at work, this conversation is packed with wisdom for leaders building strong teams and scalable cultures. If you're into practical advice, startup storytelling, and a little humor along the way—this one's for you.
About Tevis:
Tevis Paxton is a startup guy, with primary professional focuses being: generating new revenue, strategic partner management, and launching new products. He's spent over a decade helping scale early-to-mid-stage startups and loves the opportunities and chaos that come with that.
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Transcript
Introduction to 'Mustard Hub Voices Behind the Build'
00:00:07
Speaker
Hello again, everyone. Welcome to today's fireside chat, Mustard Hub Voices Behind the Build, where we talk with people building, backing and running better workplaces. I'm your host, Curtis Forbes.
Meet Tevis Paxton: Startup Expert
00:00:20
Speaker
My guest today Tevis Paxton. Tevis is a startup guy with a primary professional focus being generating new revenue, strategic partner management, and launching new products. He's spent over a decade helping scale early to mid-stage startups and loves the opportunities and chaos that come with that.
00:00:41
Speaker
Currently, he's director of partner development at Hiring Thing, where he helps other software providers unlock recruiting, new hire onboarding, and ah HR workflow capabilities through their white-labeled platforms.
00:00:57
Speaker
Thanks for joining us today, Tevis. Hey, what's up, Curtis? Good to see you, brother.
Sales Skills from Comedy and Improv
00:01:03
Speaker
ah Before we dive in, man, you are into sketch comedy.
00:01:07
Speaker
i love sketch comedy. How does this spill over into your work? Oh, ae yeah. So I'm a sales and launching partnerships guy.
00:01:23
Speaker
um And I spent the over a decade doing both improv and sketch comedy. but um Having the ability to think on your feet as well as understand that different businesses might be in a new stage or new environment, five years different from what they were five years ago, ah being able to think and adapt. And especially when you're just on a sales or demo call, uh, comedy has really helped me out.
00:02:03
Speaker
Um, Specifically with Sketch, ah you kind of know the beats of what the jokes that you're trying to hit are. ah But when you're performing Sketch Live,
00:02:18
Speaker
Sometimes the different performers that you're with on stage, they're usually people that you really trust. ah And you find ah you tap into a vein in the audience of, oh, this is actually much funnier than what we we had planned for.
00:02:36
Speaker
or to put it into a business context, Oh, this is actually a bigger value add than what they were thinking or what I had planned for at the beginning of the call.
00:02:48
Speaker
Um, it really helps to unlock, uh, and be a little less, uh, robotic. I, you know, following that, uh, yes. And mentality, I think is, uh,
00:03:02
Speaker
is pretty helpful, especially kind of in the roles that that you play or that really that you've played in, it sounds like throughout us throughout your career. But I mean, we're talking today, i mean we're both part of the tech startups, right?
00:03:15
Speaker
Yep. I'm curious how you ended up in this world.
From Accidental Entry to Tech Startup
00:03:20
Speaker
Like what attracted you to working with startups?
00:03:26
Speaker
So I was lucky in that I fell into it. um I went to school. I was born in Austin, but I went to school at UT. And then um when I graduated, there was kind of a burgeoning tech startup scene.
00:03:42
Speaker
And I didn't really know what I wanted to do for a career. ah But in undergrad, I did an honors major where I created my own major and i did a little bit of communication, a little bit of game theory, a little bit of philosophy, and I called it persuasion.
00:04:04
Speaker
and So i it was it was really fun. And the the thought process when I was in undergrad was, I'm going to major in persuasion so I can convince somebody to give me a job.
00:04:19
Speaker
feel like that should be a major in most universities these days. Yeah. And surprisingly enough, I ended up in sales.
00:04:32
Speaker
ah That's where I started my career. And so- Isn't that surprising, like given that you titled the ah the the major persuasion? I feel like that's a straight line.
00:04:44
Speaker
it It seems like a straight line after the fact. yeah But again, when I was 22 years old and had no idea what I was trying to do in the world, ah moving into sales,
00:04:59
Speaker
um
00:05:03
Speaker
it unlocked ah something in me. And it in in part, probably because of some of the research I did in undergrad, turns out I was kind of good at it.
00:05:14
Speaker
And so I've spent ah over a decade now um building sales teams, building sales development teams, building new go to market functions for net new products within existing teams, strategic partner management.
00:05:32
Speaker
The the I had worked at a couple of larger organizations very briefly out of school, but then moving into smaller high growth, uh, startups,
00:05:49
Speaker
you can just feel it. There's an electricity in the air and it's so exciting and it's so dynamic and there's so many different things that you need to do that are outside of your stated, you know, job description.
00:06:05
Speaker
ah I realized that this was the place for me. So, so now, I mean, we're both in HR tech. How did you end up as director of partner development at hiring thing?
00:06:21
Speaker
What got you, what got you there?
Joining Hiring Thing and Its Mission
00:06:24
Speaker
Um, well, uh, So i started my career off, ah like I said, in sales.
00:06:33
Speaker
um And i kind of bounced around different local Austin startups. And then I wanted to reach out and do something.
00:06:51
Speaker
A little more, and it's tough with technology, but a little more tangible, um something that touches a little bit more of the day to day, what you see in an office. Um, and one of the, I really, the top of the funnel is getting applicants in the door.
00:07:15
Speaker
Yeah. And, um, I'm sure one of the things that we'll talk about is, you a company is nothing without its people and hope we get there. Yeah.
00:07:27
Speaker
Uh, and so i I like to approach problems either from like a bottoms up or top down. And there's different problems and there's different reasons to approach from that perspective.
00:07:42
Speaker
But I strongly believe that, you know, Like I said, a company is nothing without its people. And so the first funnel of getting people in the door, if you're getting better better candidates, a higher volume of candidates, and you're getting the right people to join the team, ah this is a tool that really has some real world tangible value to me Again, you got to get the right people in the door because that's what's going to unlock problem solving and growth and so on and so forth.
00:08:23
Speaker
So it just personal, obviously you felt the connection to to it at Hiring Thing. So for everybody listening, let's talk about what Hiring Thing is. I mean, I'm i'm super impressed with what the organization does. and know we've i mean, we've gotten to know each other a little bit, but give everyone a high level overview of what Hiring Thing is all about.
00:08:45
Speaker
Sure. Yeah. and So hiring thing, we are an applicant tracking system. ah But you probably haven't heard about us because our primary go to market function is we are the industry leading white label or private label solution.
00:09:04
Speaker
And What does that mean? ah We are the... So we've been around about 13 years. We have 16,000 plus ah organizations that are powering some or all of their recruiting process on our platform.
00:09:26
Speaker
Over 90% of that 16,000 is through what we call our white label partnerships. So... If you are payroll provider or you are a benefits administrator or you own some part of the downstream talent lifecycle and your end customers are saying, hey, we would like to get people in the door as well.
00:09:58
Speaker
ah Instead of spending two years and $2 million dollars building it yourself, ah you can call me at hiring thing and we can build insert payroll company or insert other software solution or insert whoever needs recruiting tools so and we can brand it your own we can plug it into your broader systems and you're off to the races to start selling recruiting tools I love that. So you you you don't need to name any names here, but tell me the kind of companies that, you know, give some so some examples in some of those spaces, you know, and maybe why they why they choose hiring thing versus some of their other options.
00:10:44
Speaker
Good question. And ah because of our white label nature, I'm actually not allowed to name most of the names. um But ah I really think about it in terms of four different categories.
00:10:58
Speaker
and So category one is downstream talent management tools. So that's payroll, benefits, administration, employee engagement, not unlike most of you.
00:11:11
Speaker
ah So they have, if you think about the talent lifecycle of like A through Z, um they have built out you know d through Z and we can help them out with ABC.
00:11:27
Speaker
ah Other category is vertical SaaS. So if you've built the go-to tool for anybody who manages a car wash business or anybody who runs a self-storage facility, yeah um you are giving them all the tools to run their business.
00:11:49
Speaker
And one of the tools that gets often overlooked is you need to hire people. um So that's another category. ah ah HR consultants.
00:12:01
Speaker
ah You've built a book of business in Kansas City and everybody loves and trusts you to build employee handbooks. They will also come to you for recruiting help, you can now offer this software tool ah to your end clients.
00:12:20
Speaker
And then lastly is franchises. So headquarters has a lot of opinions about what recruiting should look like, but they can't necessarily dictate that for each individual franchisee.
00:12:33
Speaker
ah but they can buy a tool and give it to the franchisees. And then they get reporting back up to the front and then it can all be branded as they would like.
00:12:45
Speaker
um And i would I guess I would imagine to some extent, maybe even some private equity or more complex organizational structures would probably find this so the effective tool as well.
Adaptability in Startup Culture
00:12:59
Speaker
Not so much. Yes. Yes and no. um there's ah There's a lot of different organizations. And this is one of the things that I spend a lot of my time on. And one of the things that I think is really important in building a like startup culture is being adaptable yeah and knowing what opportunities that maybe have not been explicitly drawn in the sand
00:13:32
Speaker
How do you train and encourage employees to think about, well, this is one notch away from what we say we do on our you know home homepage.
00:13:47
Speaker
This is two notches away, but we actually could get there a little faster. And what does that market mean? And can we unlock that? um So private equity,
00:13:59
Speaker
Not necessarily. What we do end up finding is private equity firms will realize that a subset of their business fits into this, and then they'll make introductions to each of the companies. That's really interesting.
00:14:19
Speaker
So anything, I mean, it definitely solves, you know, people problems for end users, right? Who engage with your platform either directly or through another organization. um You know, someone in sales, you know who works directly with your your customers, which you do,
00:14:35
Speaker
um what What people problems is hiring anything obsessed with for your partner customers or the end users trying to hire an onboard talent, right? I mean, I think you had a great description of like the D through Z and you're being bringing them a B, and C to fill ah gap, right?
00:14:55
Speaker
ah Tell me more about how you know how would you sort of qualify this you know in terms of you know some of that sort of greater... you know, gries greater people problems, I think that we all have to have to deal with, right?
00:15:09
Speaker
Finding the right people. So there's two lenses that I think through ah when starting to answer that question. um One is the immediate, ah hey, why is someone using an applicant tracking system or an ATS?
00:15:31
Speaker
um And in that lens, I like to use like jobs to be done theory. So like why would somebody want to use one of these tools? And generally there are three buckets of value that somebody would use an ATS for.
00:15:47
Speaker
um I want to get a higher volume of candidates, like higher quantity.
00:15:59
Speaker
and want to get higher quality of the candidates that are in the funnel and then time is money and my recruiting and hiring team if i can help them move through the and candidates in the funnel as efficiently as possible and so when you're talking to an individual organization They might have all three, they might have a really big pain point on one or the other.
00:16:28
Speaker
And so you just need to, I mean, this is kind of sales 101, but like you just need to ask them the questions for where the actual pain points are. And then any of those three broad buckets, we've got, you know, 13 years of features that we've built out for supporting any of those. Love that.
00:16:46
Speaker
so You know, that's super clear now, kind of exactly how hiring thing adds that value and, um you know, solve some of these problems. I'm a little curious, though, sort of just transitioning a little bit, you know, talking more about these kind of people problems outside of the recruiting.
00:17:08
Speaker
Yep. What are some of the people problems that you see in business today that businesses are suffering from, whether they're startups, small businesses, midsize enterprise?
Context in Solving Business Problems
00:17:18
Speaker
I mean, you deal with a lot of different customers doing a lot different, especially a lot of different types of customers, not just your partners, but I mean, tell me, what what do you see?
00:17:28
Speaker
So
00:17:32
Speaker
I think the...
00:17:36
Speaker
And this is a very generic or a broad answer, but I think if you think about it, it applies to a lot of other like sub categories of people problems.
00:17:50
Speaker
And i think one of the biggest things, especially um, is
00:18:02
Speaker
everybody wants to, you know, move fast and break things, uh, or like whatever cliche that, you know, you, you can like, that you've heard ah but I think, um,
00:18:15
Speaker
One of the things that I've seen both when it goes really well and when it goes very poorly is having a lack of context for either interacting with new hires or interacting with different departments with inside your team.
00:18:34
Speaker
who And a lot of people ah will say, hey, why are we having meetings? Why why did we spend 15 minutes talking about the history of this partner? And like this is what what are we actually trying to solve?
00:18:53
Speaker
But if you take that additional 15 minutes and you explain, this is why we built it this way. And that's actually a really good point. But we we workshopped that a year ago.
00:19:09
Speaker
And here's why we decided not to. um it is't and It is a time investment at the front, ah but giving that context to people different teams, especially, so I'm a sales guy primarily.
00:19:29
Speaker
ah But if I am explaining to my engineering team why I think a new feature is a important feature and they maybe disagree, taking that time to really explain the full context of here's why this is this is the feedback that we're getting from customers in the market.
00:19:53
Speaker
And here's why I think this could unlock XYZ revenue. and then also taking the time to listen to the other side of it of this is going to be a six month re-architecture of our data model.
00:20:11
Speaker
You know, like, or like, this is a much like, I know enough about technology from working in sales that I can, I'm getting better at communicating with engineers, but if it's the request that you have that you think is just build this button is actually $10 million dollars of engineering resources. you Sometimes. Yeah.
00:20:35
Speaker
Well, maybe I don't want that button as much as I thought did. Yeah. Um, It's also really, really helpful from a culture and ah you know just people status. so a anybody that I hire, i encourage them to shadow along with different departments, especially when they're first getting started.
00:20:59
Speaker
And so you'll hear all of the... um Like the usual, like marketing is sending leads and then sales sentence says none of them are qualified. And then sales closes deals and partner success has concerns about like sales is just pushing anything through the funnel.
00:21:17
Speaker
um If you take the time to meet with the people on those teams and know the full context of what they're trying to do,
00:21:28
Speaker
And also like the metrics that they are measured towards, then the next time when you go and you have an idea or a ah proposal, you can one, talk their language, but then two, you also kind of know what ocean they're swimming in.
00:21:50
Speaker
Yeah. Oh, my God. That would solve. I mean, if if people took that kind of time, that would solve so many. It's not it's not that hard. No, and still it is. It is a lot of time. You need to spend hours with every department.
00:22:08
Speaker
But that initial investment pays so much dividends, so many dividends after the fact. Yeah.
00:22:21
Speaker
Yeah, it really does. I mean, like you said, from a ah culture building, just relationship building standpoint, right? People can understand that we all have ah responsibilities.
00:22:32
Speaker
We're all trying to move the needle and in a particular way. um And, you know, we're all also, well, theoretically, we should be sitting on the same side of the table, pushing it in the same direction.
00:22:43
Speaker
um Sometimes it can feel like a push and pull. And yeah if you don't take out that time that you're talking about, and that context is lost, it can feel like we're you know internally fighting our own team members when you know in actuality,
Aligning Employees with Goals
00:22:59
Speaker
we're really working towards the same goal.
00:23:02
Speaker
So so i good context. I mean, the way... So a framework that I have kind of learned, I was lucky to learn early on in my career is Everybody that you work with is smart and hardworking and they care and they want to move the initiatives forward.
00:23:33
Speaker
And if you happen to be working with somebody who isn't smart and hardworking, like why are they still there? And so that's like, maybe we should move that person on to their next gig because like every organization says that they want to have smart, hardworking people.
00:23:55
Speaker
And so by a default, you should expect that everybody cares. Yeah. and if everybody cares, most of the like communication or people problems are,
00:24:11
Speaker
miscommunication. Like that's everybody has rolled up their sleeves and they are working towards the same goal. Yeah. and when there's, you think you're working towards a different goal with a different department or with a different individual.
00:24:28
Speaker
um
00:24:31
Speaker
That's just, again, it's context and communication, making sure that everybody knows like what the North star is. Yeah. Yeah. yeah A lot of times, and you know, that, that you know, you you brought up when there's somebody on the team who, you know, maybe lacks the motivation or, you know, just symptom is isn't in the right place. You know, that bad hire can really, really, really create some, some difficulty, right. You know, it can throw a wrench and all the team productivity, right. And in that growth. So, um, you know, finding people that are, I think, aligned with the same, you know, I think, um, North star, great way to put it.
00:25:15
Speaker
Um, you know, it's pretty critical. So, well, like i I was lucky enough early in my career ah to...
00:25:30
Speaker
I spent some time with... We had a new... Oh, he was like VP of all client relationships or something. And this guy was shark.
00:25:42
Speaker
Like he was the most most ruthless business person. And I was 23, 24 when he started. and he was just unreal at executing.
00:25:55
Speaker
And i was spending time with him after a trade show. And i was like, Hey, Charlie, um how do you, how do you do it?
00:26:06
Speaker
Like, what's the, what's the trick to being so good at business? and he kind of leaned in and he was like, business is not that complicated.
00:26:22
Speaker
Like you're a smart guy. Everybody that we hire are smart people. ah You want to raise revenue. You want to cut costs. You want to be more efficient. You want to like think about whatever the goals, like that's not rocket science.
00:26:37
Speaker
No. The hard part is making sure that people give a damn, you know, like the hard part is making sure people feel like,
00:26:51
Speaker
valued. And if you hired the right person for the role, which you should try to in every recruiting position that you're trying to do, they're going to figure it out.
00:27:02
Speaker
Yeah. It's how do you enable them and make them like see the vision? Yeah. And So you brought up a really good point there about really focusing around that why. So how, what was his advice or maybe what's yours? how How do you get people aligned with the organization's overall mission and goals, right? yeah I mean, this is something that has to start even before hiring, correct?
00:27:27
Speaker
Well, yeah. So before hiring, you got to figure out what the mission and goals are.
00:27:33
Speaker
Yes. Right. And that's, and that's the thing that I've seen at organizations, right? Like you, you can have, 200 extremely smart people. And depending on the department head that you talk to, you're like, Hey, what are we trying to do here? And they're like, well, we're trying to be the number one in this category.
00:27:52
Speaker
And then you talk to a different person and they say, well, we're really trying to clean up shop in this category. And if those are conflicting answers, you have a problem.
00:28:03
Speaker
Yeah. um I, I, that makes a lot of sense to me. And I would imagine that, um, you know, when you're bringing people on, when you're onboarding people, when you're training people, I mean, that winds up being then ah huge component, right? I mean, making sure that you have everybody aligned and in that particular way.
00:28:28
Speaker
um but then also that you're having your, your management, I think modeling the right behavior right? Carrying out their work in a way that that aligns with the the company's mission and value and and culture, you know, et cetera.
00:28:45
Speaker
um How do you get, okay, so let's say we've defined those things. How do you get the manager aligned with, you know, with your organization, you know, walking the walk and talking the talk for for the folks they oversee? Yeah.
00:29:02
Speaker
Well, one is just ah defining whatever that North Star is, right? And the way um another way to think of the North Star is every organization,
00:29:16
Speaker
every high-functioning organization should be able to explain what you do your unique right to win in less than...
00:29:31
Speaker
three sentences and those three sentences should be something that I could explain to my mom who does not know anything about technology.
00:29:42
Speaker
Okay.
00:29:44
Speaker
And so if you, that's like the North star is like for hiring thing, we are the leading white label applicant tracking system. We support any other software that needs a recruiting function and we have better technology tools and integrations than anybody else.
00:30:04
Speaker
um Asterix, mom, this is a software that helps people, helps company hire people.
00:30:13
Speaker
um So if you can have that North Star, your managers should know that Northstar and also agree with it. Right. So if they have, if they have pushback on that, that's actually good because a lot of the, so the people who are closest to the work know the closest to like closest of what problems that they are solving.
00:30:39
Speaker
And so if your sales manager that, that
00:30:47
Speaker
this is actually not the message that's resonating and this is not what people are buying this for. yeah Well, maybe we need to adjust our North star. Right. Um, but as long as, so you get managers on board with what that and North star is.
00:31:04
Speaker
And then from there,
00:31:09
Speaker
give them the tools to make their team successful. You know, this sort of, bleeds into a topic that i I really like to talk about because I get the impression that a lot of business leaders try to fix a problem in area like sales or marketing or ops or in their tech stack that that aren't actually the problem. Like a lot of these actual you know people problems are stem from inconsistent onboarding or not getting new hires, you know, fully connected or hiring against core values and and and things like that. You know, we talk about finding these right people, right? And if they push back, maybe they're not the right people or maybe something has to change, right? You bring up a lot of really interesting um points there. And I guess
00:31:59
Speaker
I find that ah there are a lot of instances where we have, or people feel like they've identified problems in sales, marketing ops. I mean, you name it, a bunch of different things. But when they're actually an alignment problem or a problem with the people or inconsistent onboarding, not getting, you know, new hires fully connected, how do you steer these organizations in the right direction? How can they, you know, how can you guide them to see that light or that North star?
00:32:30
Speaker
It's tough. yeah I mean, this is... I like the boss. It sounds really simple on paper. um Like, hey, let's figure out the North Star and let's move. But it's it is it's very much like sales.
00:32:45
Speaker
Sales is a
00:32:49
Speaker
simple job, but it is very difficult.
00:32:56
Speaker
In that, like you can break down sales into... I make a hundred calls a day or send a hundred emails. 10 of those, maybe give me the time of day of those 10 of those.
00:33:09
Speaker
I close two or three. And so if you understand those metrics of, well, I need to make 200 emails a day or 200 phone calls a day, like though that is a solved system. The,
00:33:29
Speaker
the if you can get the team fully aligned on process and what the end goal is, and also not to be too frenetic and just jumping ship every three months because, Oh, actually we heard a signal here.
00:33:52
Speaker
um once you If you can get the top level organization fully on board with, hey, this is what we're doing and this is why it's our unique right to win.
00:34:06
Speaker
From there, it really just depends on the department. right so like I know more about sales, but it's... this is our target customer. This is why we have a right to win with them for marketing.
00:34:19
Speaker
It's, you know, how do we resonate with these, these customers? What would be you know, rockstar,
00:34:31
Speaker
you know, white, white label or not white label like case study, and white paper case study. and um for engineering it's because we know what we're really trying to do in the market which features and tickets do you want to work on first right and and giving each of those teams knowing what the broader context is and say hey This is how, and for different stages of organizations, sometimes you're maximizing for revenue. Sometimes you're maximizing for growth. Sometimes you're maximizing for
00:35:14
Speaker
retention. ah You can have different, as long as everybody knows, hey, this this feature is going to be more important for retention than for growth. And like, if that's what the whole team is working on, then let's go after that.
00:35:31
Speaker
Um, you know, I, I, I'm curious but because you work with so many different kinds of organizations, you know, white label partners, um, who then have, you know, their end customer, I uh, uh, such a wide variety of end customers, you know, among those that, that probably you admire most, maybe, um,
00:35:58
Speaker
you know, are there common traits that kind of stand out, you know, with these leaders who really get to get it right when it comes to hiring and onboarding the right people for the right roles, you know, especially how you know, if you think of how this applies to values and and the culture of the organizations.
Traits of Successful Leaders
00:36:14
Speaker
um
00:36:19
Speaker
There's a lot of people who are getting a lot of stuff right right now. um And
00:36:26
Speaker
i because of our white label nature, I'm not allowed to mention. I'm curious of the the traits. Like, what do you see that they're doing that's exceptional? You know, what's that common common thread, you know, that that sets them apart, the ones building the great culture, you know, is there a formula?
00:36:46
Speaker
um
00:36:51
Speaker
Understanding the business and the metrics that matter.
00:36:58
Speaker
doing the work to make the people stuff happen for said business metrics. Um, so for like people stuff, a lot of it is, this this is a sales thing. It's also ah like a improv and comedy thing. was like matching and mirroring.
00:37:21
Speaker
And so,
00:37:25
Speaker
I've managed a healthy amount of sales reps over the years. And some of my best sales reps are not unlike myself, very outgoing. They will just chat for two hours.
00:37:39
Speaker
and Some of my rockstar sales reps are extremely introverted. And so when you are talking with them about like, Hey, what what do you want for your career? What do you,
00:37:55
Speaker
If you can meet them on their level and Matt, I mean, just matching and mirroring is very basic of like people like to interact with people who engage in the world in the same way that they do. Yeah. People who are like them. I mean, that makes sense.
00:38:14
Speaker
ah So matching and mirroring make it fun.
00:38:21
Speaker
And fun is also like a subcategory of matching and mirroring. So we spend 30% of our life at work. Come on, man.
00:38:33
Speaker
Like, you don't you don't want to dread it. thank you You want to have some jokes. you And like, again, this is how you figure, like, what does fun mean for different individuals? So make it fun.
00:38:45
Speaker
And then lastly, matter.
00:38:50
Speaker
so Make it matter can mean a couple of different things. And the two primary categories that I've learned when managing folks are, what is the like company purpose?
00:39:04
Speaker
Like, are we changing the world? Is this a thing that we like, is this a mission that I really want to get behind? Or does your role at this organization matter for you and your broader career?
00:39:19
Speaker
And, I got my start selling online marketing to self-storage facilities. Like no five-year-old is like, rather than a fireman or an astronaut, I want to sell online marketing.
00:39:34
Speaker
But I loved that job. yeah I loved it because I knew that my managers had given me the path for what it meant for my future career.
00:39:47
Speaker
And I also had the culture for everybody that I worked around with. And I was ready to take a bullet for anybody on that team because we were building not something...
00:40:07
Speaker
again, who really cares about an additional online marketing channel for self-storage facilities? But we knew that this was going to be a valuable like company and checkmark on our resume and doing it for each other.
00:40:25
Speaker
and everybody that i worked with on that sales team and so many people in ah and other departments are now like running teams in Austin. It was such an amazing experience. And so...
00:40:37
Speaker
Yeah. Magic engineering, make fun, make matter.
Making Work Enjoyable and Meaningful
00:40:41
Speaker
Um, Those are this, first of all, that is an amazing takeaway. If anybody's listening to this right now, ah or when we release this, um, definitely that part we have to, ah to make sure that we, uh, that we clip, you know, when segmented and and and blasted out, because I think that that's incredible advice. Uh, I don't think enough people do it right. I think that so much of leadership these days, uh,
00:41:09
Speaker
Robotic, you know, it's, um you know, we all like data. We all like using data to make good decisions, but we can't forget that we're also human beings. And as this world is transitioning, I feel like we're all in the middle of this, you know, time period, you know, this, this information age ah where we are transitioning.
00:41:31
Speaker
So much of what we do at work and in work, um you know using these incredibly sophisticated technological capabilities,
00:41:44
Speaker
we forget that we're we're still human beings, right? And relationships matter and people matter and we can still be smart and we can still, ah you know, be thoughtful.
00:41:55
Speaker
um But those key things that you just said, i think are um just ripe for any leadership's listening ear right now.
00:42:08
Speaker
um I do want to talk a little bit about technology because hiring thing is it's almost like it straddles this, um, you know, this world of like an incredibly human centric, you know, it's human resource at its core, right. Hiring somebody, onboarding somebody.
00:42:32
Speaker
And yet you found this like incredibly special go to market. I mean, that the, the, Over time, right this space, this category has become commoditized. There are so many systems and hiring things found this way to tap into that, not be afraid of that.
00:42:54
Speaker
right like and i'm Not afraid of everybody wants and needs this system. Let me go and build the one so they don't have to build it themselves.
00:43:06
Speaker
And we'll drop it right in there. So that fascinates me, by the way. And so you've taken this incredibly human centric, you know,
00:43:20
Speaker
concept. you You know created this like incredibly savvy tech play ah out of it. I'm interested to hear you know kind of your perspective on organizations making choices when it comes to their tech stack and software and you know the the ones that they use in talent acquisition you know throughout the entire employee lifecycle.
00:43:44
Speaker
you feel like they're making the right choices. What do you see people using? Are there things that organizations could do differently to actually drive results, you know, or to foster or reinforce culture change or development?
00:43:58
Speaker
Yeah. um Well, I wish I could say I was smart enough to come up with a white label go to market strategy. ah We started that years before I got here. And when i was going through the interview process to be the director of a partner development, it honestly took me ah a little bit before I really appreciated like how interesting our kind of unique position in the market is.
00:44:28
Speaker
ah so Definitely not me. There's a lot of people that are really extremely smart on my team that, ah that kind of figured out. You'll have to tag them when we, when we released the video, tag them on LinkedIn.
00:44:41
Speaker
Oh, sure. Um, the, the way I think about what software really any organization uses kind of goes back to that jobs to be done theory. and And so
00:45:00
Speaker
What do you care about as an organization and what are the either input or output metrics that are important for different teams? And so like just for sales, right? We internally, we use HubSpot as a CRM.
00:45:18
Speaker
Okay. And... For input metrics, I care about number of calls, number of emails, number of demos, number of contracts sent.
00:45:31
Speaker
But for output metrics, I care about revenue closed.
00:45:37
Speaker
And so you build the system to manage the inputs, but you build a culture and tracking organization to care about and track the outputs.
00:45:56
Speaker
Now, when we're talking about ah ah h r and like people organization, Those on the surface seem a little more nebulous, but if you start to scratch a little under the surface, you can actually build some pretty trackable things on that.
00:46:20
Speaker
um Retention. Growth in like individual employees growth in their careers. Uh,
00:46:34
Speaker
ah What is it? ah Like, will they recommend this company to somebody else? like Net Promoter, sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Net Promoter Score. um you there There are...
00:46:50
Speaker
various data fields that you can use to track if an employee is doing well or thriving or not. and Let me ask you then to to that end, right? a lot of these systems spit out a lot of data. Like, do you ever see a disconnect between what's being tracked and maybe what actually drives results? Like maybe they're, you know, people are following a lot of red herrings or, you know, a lot of noise and not so much some signals.
00:47:19
Speaker
So that's, that's a double-edged sword. um Because like with the cliche of like what gets measured gets managed. um And you do need to measure the, like, I strongly believe you need to measure the inputs and then you need to have a strong sense of humility when measuring the outputs.
00:47:47
Speaker
Now, This is specifically in regards to like HR fields. um You don't have to have as much humility with sales.
00:47:58
Speaker
Like, hey, did they do are we have dollars on the books or not? Right. But measuring net promoter score, like,
00:48:08
Speaker
Have we built a system that is going to just ah optimize for what we're hoping for? Or is this actually giving us a signal rather than noise for all of the chaos that is dealing with human beings? um
00:48:32
Speaker
It's tough. um I think the...
00:48:38
Speaker
I was actually taking a note on this. Um, so I think the two ways to think about this are consistently measuring the outputs and knowing what those outputs mean for, cause every organization is different and what do you care about?
00:49:01
Speaker
And also, giving yourself that humility and flexibility for this is what got us here, but this is, we actually maybe care about half of these metrics less and the metrics that are going to get us to the next stage are going to be more important.
00:49:24
Speaker
And so not being so rigid in
00:49:31
Speaker
what you're tracking basically. Yeah. You know, I, I, um, it kind of leads me into this, this question about, I'm curious just from your perspective.
00:49:44
Speaker
Yeah. And I think that the perspective is a good one because you deal with so many different types of organizations that do different, you know, different types of things. You know this isn't necessarily like vertical specific, you know, software or space that you're in.
00:49:59
Speaker
Just a common misunderstanding that you see amongst business leaders when it comes to their people dynamics, you know, and and and sort of thoughts on how to counter that.
00:50:11
Speaker
So as a personal belief, everybody thinks that their problems are super unique. They're kind of all the same. Every time I've started sales in a new industry and they're like, well, it's really difficult because we have to deal with gatekeepers.
00:50:29
Speaker
And then you have to negotiate on pricing. And it's really unique for our industry. And then you get started and you're like, okay, yeah, that's like, there's different terminology and you have to kind of know like the market trends, but it's all the same, like broad strokes.
00:50:45
Speaker
um
00:50:48
Speaker
I'm sorry. Could you, I'm answering the first part of that question. What's the, I lost Yeah, well, i just think that there's maybe a lot of misunderstandings, you know what I mean? Or something business leaders really kind of may not be getting it right when it comes to their people dynamics and and and how to sort of. you
00:51:09
Speaker
um So I think the areas that business owners.
00:51:17
Speaker
ever Yeah, just executives and business owners tend to struggle with is. um
00:51:28
Speaker
There's a
00:51:32
Speaker
<unk>s a really interesting ah psychological ah definition of two different types of problems. um And this is, i think, best articulated in um this book range by David Epstein that I read and recently.
00:51:52
Speaker
um So there's what's called a kind problem and a kind problem is chess.
00:52:03
Speaker
The rules stay the same. All of the options that you can do are the same every time you play it. And then there are what are called ah wicked problems.
00:52:18
Speaker
So there's kind versus wicked and wicked problems are, you have the same skillset, you have the same set of moves, but you do, you may or may not have access into what is happening outside of maybe the board is scaling. Maybe there's like different rules and,
00:52:44
Speaker
most business problems that people are people are working on today are wicked problems.
00:52:54
Speaker
Yeah. Where you can't take the same SaaS sales playbook that Salesforce used 20 years ago. Yeah. You can use it as a launching point. Yeah. But you need to be adaptable.
00:53:07
Speaker
Right. And figure out What are the changes in this market? What are the changes in our new feature set? but And so you have to be, you have to take all of the advice that you can get from everybody who ran before you and then be like humble enough and creative enough to make it work.
00:53:32
Speaker
I mean, especially with AI, right? Like there's, you gotta, you gotta be on your toes. You know, I ah i always like to to to kind of close or wrap up with, you know, how we, you know, you, but in particular, would give advice, right, to a business leader if they came to you, you know, looking to learn how to truly get it right, you know, from from day one when it comes to growing, retaining their team, building that culture.
00:54:00
Speaker
I want you to repeat those three things because I honestly think that's the message here and it's so impactful. Um, you know, so if somebody turns to you and asks you, what do you tell them?
00:54:14
Speaker
So if you're really trying to get your people side of the house in order, the three main things that I would recommend are matching and mirroring. So meet people where they're at.
00:54:26
Speaker
If somebody is an introvert, Maybe don't come at them as like, ah like I see right now. ah Make it fun. Yeah.
00:54:40
Speaker
We spend a third of our lives at work. And, and again, definition of fun depends on, you know, what that, if you're matching and mirroring, knowing what that person's definition of fun is.
00:54:54
Speaker
And then also make it matter. Yeah. and And so making it matter is, is this a thing that is going to change the world? And this is something that an individual employee really cares about?
00:55:08
Speaker
Or how does it matter for their career and their growth and their directory? um Like one of the things I tell every new hire that I employ is I have done my job poorly if you continue to work for me for the rest of your life.
00:55:26
Speaker
Like you should, if I'm doing my job correctly, you should grow on and manage your own teams and move into wherever you want me to help you move to.
00:55:38
Speaker
yeah um But if you're still here in five, 10 years, like I've dropped the ball. think that's a good, probably a really good sign of a leader. I like that. It's a good takeaway.
00:55:49
Speaker
I also really like the unique right to win. That is ah another really great, a great little nugget from ah from today. Thank you so much, Tevis. Man, I really appreciate your insights so much. i'm This has been a great chat. I've been super glad to have you here.
00:56:08
Speaker
I appreciate it Curtis. It's been a blast. Yeah. And thank you all for tuning into Mustard Hub Voices Behind the Build. Please share this fireside chat with a friend or colleague and be sure to like this episode and follow us from wherever you found it.
00:56:22
Speaker
Be sure to check us out at mustardhub.com to see how we help companies become destinations for workplace happiness and turn culture into a competitive edge. Until next time.
00:56:33
Speaker
Bye.