Transcript
Speaker: Welcome to Fractional Frequency, our take on talent, people trends, and the reality of building up businesses in an economy that keeps rewriting the rules.
Speaker: I'm Amy Crook, founder of Strativist.
Speaker: And I'm Erin Todis, managing director of talent delivery, which basically means I live in the universe of finding the right people to make an impact for our clients fast.
Speaker: Around here, we talk about the real side of HR and talent, what works, what absolutely doesn't, and how to build teams that can carry a business, not drag it down.
Speaker: We'll break down trends, share the behind the scenes of scaling a consultancy from zero, and probably overshare a little because that's where the good lessons live.
Speaker: So whether you're building, hiring, leading, or just trying to keep your company profitable, you're in the right place.
Speaker: This is Fractional Frequency.
Speaker: Let's get to it.
Speaker: I'm great.
Speaker: How are you?
Speaker: I'm really good.
Speaker: I'm really good.
Speaker: I've had a day of lots of exciting happenings and I'm super excited for this podcast.
Speaker: I have been looking forward to this all day because tonight we have Brianna Vargates joining us for a conversation today.
Speaker: Breno has fast become a great friend and partner of Strativist.
Speaker: And so I'm very much looking forward to sharing a little bit of our relationship and his story through this conversation.
Speaker: So let's get into it.
Speaker: As a quick intro, Breno is the founder of Talent Square, and he is currently leading their expansion in the U.S. market.
Speaker: TalentSquare is building a platform that automates outreach and fills talent pipelines with high-performing passive candidates using targeted performance marketing.
Speaker: They bring a fresh data-driven approach to talent acquisition, and we're so excited to dig into the conversation this evening.
Speaker: Welcome, Brano.
Speaker: Oh, thank you.
Speaker: It is my absolute pleasure.
Speaker: Well, let's dig in.
Speaker: I've given the 50,000-foot view, but tell us a little bit more.
Speaker: What is Talent Square and what problem was it created to solve in the market?
Speaker: Originally, Talent Square was created on the base of our work in social media advertising that we did as an agency manually.
Speaker: It started several years back when one of our large companies
Speaker: potential clients came to us and said, I need to go, I need to go multi-channel in terms of their talent acquisition slash recruitment practices, because they were not getting what they needed from their kind of a single channel of, you know, being the legacy job boards.
Speaker: And so we jumped in without really knowing what we were getting ourselves into.
Speaker: And then, you know, did a five years of massive learning in terms of, you know, how does practices of performance marketing apply to a quote unquote e-commerce product that is job vacancy or employer brand.
Speaker: And so tons of learning, tons of data collection, you know, try and fail, all kinds of things.
Speaker: And about 18 months ago, the three of us, which are still behind Talent Square today as co-founders, kind of looked at each other and went, well, look around us, look what's happening with this whole AI explosion and a lot of automation in e-commerce world.
Speaker: Should we, you know, should we do something about it, so to speak?
Speaker: Because when you have an agency, one of your key challenges is how do you scale it?
Speaker: So, yeah, we, quote, unquote, put some money together and started to code.
Speaker: We hired some IT, you know, some IT developers and started to code a platform that from the get-go, we had the ambition.
Speaker: And I still kind of like to compare it, what TalentSquare as a platform is.
Speaker: I like to say that it's a Shopify for job ads.
Speaker: Shopify did a revolution in terms of enabling as a platform, literally anyone to build a eShop.
Speaker: And that's what we are trying to do with TalentScore.
Speaker: We're trying to build a platform that will enable anyone without any tech experience whatsoever or any experience in performance marketing, for that matter, launch a social media campaign focused on job vacancies and employer brands.
Speaker: It's an incredible tool.
Speaker: And I love
Speaker: the accessibility of it too.
Speaker: I think about, you know, some of my big company experience interacting with more traditional job boards.
Speaker: And a lot of these job boards are offering, you know, branding campaigns and similar sounding solutions.
Speaker: But they've got, you know, five and six figure dollar price tags attached to them.
Speaker: And so I think there's something just really special about
Speaker: the accessibility and how easy it is to interact with the tool.
Speaker: I want to dig in.
Speaker: You mentioned earlier that there was a conversation with either a prospect or a client that sort of sparked some of this.
Speaker: Can you expand on that a little bit more?
Speaker: What was the aha moment when you realized or you and your team realized that existing tools or tactics for talent attraction and employment branding were no longer enough?
Speaker: Well, the aha moment, well, there were several of them.
Speaker: You know, one of the aha moments for us that kind of led to this automation building over the last year and a half or so, but the aha moment came along long before was, you know, once we agreed that we would help them.
Speaker: And we were very opportunistic.
Speaker: And so, you know, once in that particular meeting, once the client, so to speak, left the room, we kind of looked at each other and went, what the heck do we do now?
Speaker: And then we dived in.
Speaker: One of the aha moments came very early on where once we start to go and do set up the social media campaigns for, you know, job vacancies or employer brands,
Speaker: directly on Meta because their particular need was for those sort of jobs where the potential job holders were predominantly on that social media platform.
Speaker: One of the aha moments was very early on related to how complicated it was to do it.
Speaker: And we very quickly realized
Speaker: going, you know what, I'm not surprised that, you know, talent acquisition people or human resources professional are not doing this because it was intimidating.
Speaker: It was complicated, all kinds of approvals, you know, then the campaign was stopped by Meta for whatever GDPR reasons or this and that and the other.
Speaker: And so that was one of the things where we were like, oh, now we see.
Speaker: And that kind of sparked also when we started to automate and develop the platform.
Speaker: That was one of the key triggers for us to do so was we wanted to take all of the pain points that we kind of learned the hard way into the backend side of things.
Speaker: In other words, that our user of the platform don't experience them.
Speaker: And even now, you know, we have customers who launch campaigns through our platform, through TalentSquare platform.
Speaker: And, you know, there is very often a quote unquote back end kind of work that we do that our users don't see and we don't want them to see.
Speaker: But, you know, there are moments when a campaign of our customer is, you know, stopped or paused by Meta and we have to go in and, you know, see what the problem is and fix it and so on and so forth.
Speaker: So some of those things we still do manually.
Speaker: So that was one.
Speaker: The second one has been the second kind of aha moment.
Speaker: And I think that that has been so emphasized in the last 12 months or so is recruitment has to be multi-channel anymore.
Speaker: It has to be multi-channel.
Speaker: You have to have, you know, no matter what kind of organization you are, you have to have, you know, multiple touch points where you are trying to, you know, reach the candidates.
Speaker: And, you know, I'm not saying that job boards are obsolete anymore.
Speaker: No, quite the opposite.
Speaker: They play a, and they will play a role in the whole scheme of recruitment practices.
Speaker: But as long as they are the only one, I think that there is a huge limitations in terms of what they can do, number one.
Speaker: And number two, like you said, they are increasing on their pricing because their revenue is declining.
Speaker: So many other tools.
Speaker: So the aspect of multi-channel was kind of with us.
Speaker: And like I said, the last 12 months or so in terms of this AI element, you know, exploding, that just kind of strengthened our view.
Speaker: The last aha moment came just a few weeks back.
Speaker: And I will be very honest here.
Speaker: We did not think about that sort of a use case until I was at a conference, a talent acquisition conference a couple of weeks back.
Speaker: And there was this fantastic lady who was presenting her kind of a solution for talent acquisition in the AI world.
Speaker: And one of the things that she was talking about, and she opened up her speech with saying,
Speaker: The candidate experience and the candidate journey, especially for the passive ones, is changing and it's changing fast.
Speaker: They're moving from Google to LLMs, whether it's the ChetGPT or Perplexity or Gemini, what have you.
Speaker: And so she said, what if your ideal candidate types in ChetGPT, which are the top three, for example, fintech companies in my area that is worth the work for?
Speaker: And then she posed the question to the audience saying, how do you make sure that your company pops up?
Speaker: And you could hear a pin drop in that room.
Speaker: And then she didn't leave us there.
Speaker: And then she went even further and she goes, well, let's just say that you have enough content out there about your employer brand and about who you are as an employer.
Speaker: So let's just say that you will be one of those three companies that will pop up in the, you know, JetGPT window.
Speaker: What if that candidate chooses you and keeps on prompting about you?
Speaker: And the next question then he or she will type into JetGPT is, well, what's so special about the culture of the company?
Speaker: what kind of a text will pop up then?
Speaker: And you could hear a pin drop again, maybe even with the more intensity in the room.
Speaker: And so, you know, that world, the world of candidates and candidate experience and candidate search behavior is changing really fast.
Speaker: And that aspect of multi-channel and how
Speaker: you as an organization need to create more and more content because AI search is very different and it's based on the context, not on the keywords.
Speaker: So they're just very different than the, you know, the Google search or SEO search engine optimization search that's changing.
Speaker: So having multi-channel where in different faucets, you are creating and putting out their content and job ads being one of them,
Speaker: It's becoming more and more important in terms of to actually AI to be able to grasp your narrative and show the candidate on the screen what that narrative is, pulling the information from different sources.
Speaker: So that is kind of a very recent, but very strong aha moment.
Speaker: I can imagine.
Speaker: And sort of a follow-up to that, there's a lot of complexity there to unpack in addition to the complexities of dealing with
Speaker: just the meta experience with respect to running or building a campaign.
Speaker: Maybe in layman's terms, as much as possible, what systems or technologies had to be built at Talent Square in order to bring this vision to life?
Speaker: Oh, that's a good question.
Speaker: Well, one major thing that we had to do and we keep on building it and developing it is automation of the targeting elements.
Speaker: And so once and if you are launching a campaign on pretty much any social media and some more than the others,
Speaker: In order for your money to put to work and have a good return on the investment, so to speak, you need to make sure that your ads are being displayed on the devices of those people that are kind of your fit.
Speaker: And so, you know, our five years of doing the campaigns manually, besides other things, provided us with one great value, and that's the data from all of the campaigns that we ran manually.
Speaker: And so we use that data and now it's becoming our moat, our competitive advantage.
Speaker: We use that data in order to be able to automate the targeting aspect of the campaign.
Speaker: And what that really means is once a recruiter uploads a job description into our platform, our system is then able to look into the job description, read the job description, analyze what's the business vertical, what's the complexity of the job, in which geographical area that plays a role as well.
Speaker: and then look into our backend, into our database, and kind of grab the data that is similar to the campaign that the user is about to run from our past, look into which of those data made that particular campaign in the past most successful, and then utilize that targeting for the new campaign that the user is doing.
Speaker: So that's
Speaker: That's one big piece.
Speaker: You know, how do you automate this whole thing of, you know, pulling data and queries, et cetera, et cetera.
Speaker: Obviously, we have integrated some of the AI features, but at the moment, we have kind of a...
Speaker: quote-unquote simple AI features for the user to see, you know, we provide them with the ability to, we provide them with the ability to use AI to improve their job description.
Speaker: Of course, the prompts that we used kind of had to limit how far we quote-unquote let the AI go in terms of
Speaker: improvement of the job description because the job description itself provides data for the targeting.
Speaker: So we have some AI elements.
Speaker: However, what we are looking at right now is also integrating a visual creator in there because our focus right now is on sectors that A, very often...
Speaker: might not even have marketing department or might not have their branding manuals.
Speaker: And so we've had some clients, you know, manufacturing, logistics, transportation, hospitality, where they were excited about the tool, but then said, hey, can you help me with the visual creation?
Speaker: And we've got
Speaker: We've helped them to a certain extent.
Speaker: But again, the automation of it is something that we are trying to get to them.
Speaker: And so, you know, once the company would upload and we would like to get it to the point where they would just put their business website and the AI is able to detect, you know, all kinds of things from the website and then propose two or three versions of the advertisement.
Speaker: Wow, that would be awesome.
Speaker: Oh yeah, oh yeah.
Speaker: And I mean, the tech today, I mean, whether we talk about Nano Banana Pro, you know, by Google, or we talk about some other, even, I mean, even ChetGPT, the 5.4 version, the latest one, has some amazing graphical capabilities.
Speaker: To be perfectly honest, we are kind of, we are kind of putting that on a scale because the other thing that we are hearing from the market is that, you know, people are relatively quickly getting, quote unquote, sick of automated images.
Speaker: And so, you know, having the authentic images that are, you know, that have real people in them or real videos are kind of back in.
Speaker: So the question is, you know, how do we find the right balance?
Speaker: But again, you know, if, you know, there's a lot of talks around internal influencers, how do you turn your employees into your promoters of your employer brand?
Speaker: And so I'm in conversation with another really interesting company, Flockity,
Speaker: FlowKitty does utilizing influencers for promoting jobs.
Speaker: And so how could we integrate that?
Speaker: So there's, you know, the technology today enables you to do all kinds of things and, you know, figuring out how you integrate it, how you make it work together and how you make it work together seamlessly.
Speaker: So all the quote unquote troubles are in the part of your application that the user don't see.
Speaker: And the workflows are, you know, smooth, smooth,
Speaker: is one of the key elements.
Speaker: Yeah, you definitely succeed on that.
Speaker: It's so user-friendly.
Speaker: And from our very first conversation, I could just see so much possibility for the tool for our clients and
Speaker: in terms of like, you know, Aaron and talent delivery when it's one looking to like capture those passive candidates that maybe aren't going to a job board.
Speaker: And I've had enough of looking at LinkedIn messages and they're just, you know, scrolling on their devices and they see something and they're like, oh, that looks kind of cool and interesting.
Speaker: And then the employer brand piece is so huge from, you know, a talent and attraction perspective.
Speaker: And then I know you and I had even talked about,
Speaker: how it could even work from like a business development perspective to, you know, put in criteria that you're looking for a certain job titles, but not necessarily for a role for like, can we provide you with services?
Speaker: So like the potential for this tool is just huge.
Speaker: Yes, thank you.
Speaker: And I mean, you know, there's a lot of automation that's happening of a similar kind in performance marketing, especially in the e-commerce.
Speaker: What makes us kind of, I'd like to think that, what makes us stand out a little bit is, like I said, if you think about job vacancy as an e-commerce product,
Speaker: Because you can, right?
Speaker: What triggers the job vacancy in terms of, you know, the advertisement being displayed on the device of a person who is just scrolling, it's a different element than, you know, when you are buying tennis shoes.
Speaker: So applying the principles of performance marketing to job vacancy slash employer brand as a quote unquote e-commerce product, it does require different, you know, different approach.
Speaker: But, you know, generally speaking, the umbrella is, yeah, we are,
Speaker: There's no secret and we are very vocal about it.
Speaker: Our inspiration comes from e-commerce.
Speaker: Our inspiration comes from performance marketing.
Speaker: What we have done is we took a job vacancy and employer brand, turned it into e-commerce product and then figured out the way how to apply performance marketing principles to something that behaves like an e-commerce product.
Speaker: But in terms of triggering the user behavior, in this case, candidate is different than if purchasing tennis shoes or a new espresso machine.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And I love to just to build Amy on the use case after interacting with the tool in real life.
Speaker: I love the advisory component of it.
Speaker: It's not just an automation tool that's relying on me to put in really high quality content, because that's where a lot of tools in the market today, at least within the TA,
Speaker: kind of tooling stack fall down.
Speaker: Because what we find then is that teams are stretched for capacity and there's this garbage in, garbage out.
Speaker: We're putting in low quality job descriptions, low quality branding materials inconsistently.
Speaker: And the models have a hard time grappling with that.
Speaker: And so this ensures that you're going out to market with quality and something that's compelling, which is incredible.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: You know, it's so funny that you mentioned that I had my status call with my IT guys today.
Speaker: And one of the things that we were talking about as putting on a relatively soon roadmap for our development is a feedback feature.
Speaker: for when a user uploads their visuals.
Speaker: And so when they upload their visuals, what we would like to do is they will be able to push a little button on the screen where if they push the button, they will get an AI generated feedback on their visual.
Speaker: because, you know, we have over these years, we have learned, you know, what works and what doesn't.
Speaker: We kind of have tips and tricks.
Speaker: For example, you know, if you have, if in your visual, you have humans, engagement goes up.
Speaker: The call to action in terms of, you know, we're looking for you or what I'd like to call communication
Speaker: a little bit of a shock value in terms of your writing in the picture that forms the visual of the advertisement is a huge piece.
Speaker: Visual, you know, high quality visual, and I don't mean high quality in terms of pixels, but in terms of, you know, what makes you stop scrolling is 90% of the success of the campaign.
Speaker: That reminds me, Bruno, of when I shared with you the one I was considering using for the tool and you were like, Amy, this is very beautiful, but it's not good for this.
Speaker: So it's good to see that you're working on a way to like scale that feedback because not everybody's going to be as lucky as us to get you to look at the visual we're considering and give us some honest feedback.
Speaker: And I really appreciated it.
Speaker: We're trying, we're trying.
Speaker: I mean, you know, at the same time, and you ladies know this very well, you are on your building journey.
Speaker: While there are things that are very exciting and we're building, et cetera, it's a grind, right?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's a day in and out of, you know, and grind while trying to keep pace.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: I mean, I, you know, the one of my mantras, so to speak, with with building the company is we got to maintain the speed, because if we don't, you know, the speed that I'm observing in terms of development and I mean, daily happening and, you know, Claude and this and that and the other, it's just amazing.
Speaker: And I think that's a great- Oh, sorry.
Speaker: Go ahead, Amy, go ahead.
Speaker: I just want to chime in and say with the cloud coding that's come out, like I've now, one of my clients that I'm working with, I'm supporting them fractionally as a senior TA leader.
Speaker: And, you know, the recruiters are like coding.
Speaker: And I'm like, this is awesome.
Speaker: And this is where we're at.
Speaker: You know, you have to keep your skillsets sharp.
Speaker: And yes, we're in the same boat as you.
Speaker: Like we're always moving 10 steps ahead of what we're prepared for.
Speaker: You know, Amy, it's interesting that you say that because I'm going to segue just for a second here.
Speaker: You know, on one hand, the need, you know, for quote unquote regular Joe to be able to, you know, do, you know, cloud prompting and, you know, coding, et cetera, is great.
Speaker: And everybody or a lot of people are jumping on that train at the same time.
Speaker: So I have a little side gig.
Speaker: I teach at the local university in the marketing department.
Speaker: And our department has a advisory board advisory board in in at the university at the marketing department consists of ex-alumnies.
Speaker: Some of them are out of the school, you know, for 30 years that are now respected leaders, business leaders in the community.
Speaker: And so we invite them, there's about 15 of them, we invite them twice a year at the beginning of each semester to kind of give us an insight of, you know, what's going on in the business world, what are the things that we should adjust our curriculum or, you know, what we teach, how we teach and so on and so forth.
Speaker: What was really interesting for me to see last September, so 10 of them, 11 of them showed up for the advisory board and they actually came to us and said, look, what we are experiencing with the labor force coming, you know, as fresh graduates from university into the market, there are three skills that,
Speaker: that we need you guys, meaning us as academics, as those that are teaching in the class.
Speaker: There are three skills that we need you to focus on because they are terribly missing with the students or with the graduates that are coming out.
Speaker: And guess what they were?
Speaker: Number one, communication skills.
Speaker: Number two, this was a shocker for me to a certain extent, was human relations skills.
Speaker: And they said, we asked them, what do you mean?
Speaker: And they said, a proper handshake and eye contact.
Speaker: Oh, wow.
Speaker: And then the third one and then the third one was critical thinking.
Speaker: So that was kind of expected.
Speaker: But so, you know, there's we are going through this kind of a shift, you know, shift where I mean, literally anybody can code now.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But I think that we as mankind, if I can take it to that kind of a level.
Speaker: We'll need to find a balance.
Speaker: On one hand, the technological advancements, I think that we need to embrace.
Speaker: Otherwise, if you don't embrace it, you're going to be left behind.
Speaker: But at the same time, the human aspect of it and the human aspect of doing business will, I think, with all this automation and technology will actually become more and more important.
Speaker: And those that can balance while remaining human will be the ones that win.
Speaker: A hundred percent.
Speaker: And I was encouraged, you know, when I think about Davos conference, the conference in 2025 was very aggressive, like AI is taking over everything, you know, jobs are going to be completely diminished.
Speaker: And then this year it was much more, actually we've realized the value of like the human imprint on this work.
Speaker: And so, um,
Speaker: being able to balance the two is really important.
Speaker: And, you know, ethics has now come into the conversation in terms of how things are built out, which I think is great.
Speaker: But yeah, I feel like it was, it was not as quick to come to the attention of maybe like business leaders as it should have been that, you know, you are still, you know,
Speaker: Most of us, if not all of us, are building products for people.
Speaker: So people want to feel the human touch on what they're purchasing, what they're interacting with.
Speaker: So, yeah, I completely agree.
Speaker: It's a balance.
Speaker: You want to create the efficiencies.
Speaker: You want things to be super smooth.
Speaker: But at the same time, don't lose the connection because that's what's compelling for people to buy.
Speaker: Yeah, I mean, one of my...
Speaker: favorite, favorite people in the TA space, Vanessa Rath, who does a lot of work around AI tools in the recruitment and talent acquisition.
Speaker: And she's fantastic.
Speaker: If you guys could get her on, that would be amazing.
Speaker: Anyway, she has a quote and I re-quote her all the time where she says, AI will handle the task, humans will build the trust.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And I think that that's just so spot on in so many ways that, you know, and I also think that, you know, that balance regulations will help that as well.
Speaker: Europe is a little bit farther along in terms of, you know, the AI Act and what it does.
Speaker: At the same time, Europe has the tendency to kind of overregulate things.
Speaker: I know.
Speaker: On the other side, U.S. is kind of a wild, wild west.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Part of the thing that it's a 50 states and each state is kind of, you know, I am independent, right?
Speaker: They do their own thing.
Speaker: So the alignment of the regulation might be a bit more complicated.
Speaker: And again, it's about that balance, right?
Speaker: It's finding the happy medium.
Speaker: How do you take the model that Europe has taken and then the US and kind of merge them together?
Speaker: So I think there's a lot of forces in the next 24 months or so that will play a role to kind of quote unquote settle in.
Speaker: But I do hope I am a little bit more pro advancement than I'm that I'm pro regulation.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah, me too.
Speaker: But there does need to be some guardrails.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Just not quite the level of control that Europe tends to want to put on literally everything.
Speaker: Yes, yes.
Speaker: Brenna, you said something earlier about maintaining speed and agility.
Speaker: And I think that a lot of organizations, maybe all organizations are worried about that and losing relevancy if they don't move fast enough.
Speaker: Is there maybe a value or an organizational principle that you commit to or operate by at Talent Square that you think
Speaker: keeps that focus in mind for you and your team?
Speaker: Oh, that's a million dollar question, Aaron.
Speaker: Well, I'd like to say yes.
Speaker: It took us a while, to be perfectly honest, it took us a while to get to the mode of agility in terms of our product development from the IT perspective.
Speaker: But I can say that the last three or four months, roughly, we finally kind of figured out this two-week agile tact, kind of a repetition of get the features, get the features described, get the product specs, get the wireframes in Figma, and then start coding and then wash, rinse, and repeat every two weeks.
Speaker: I was in a corporate some time ago where I was witnessing how agile can work.
Speaker: And that was always kind of my ambition.
Speaker: It took a while because it takes, you know, it takes different mindset.
Speaker: It also takes an element of you cannot look for perfection.
Speaker: You can look for good enough, test it, put it in and then improve it as you go along.
Speaker: I think that that's kind of an obstacle when founders or builders get too hung up on, you know, until that feature is perfect, I'm not going to put it in.
Speaker: So that's one of the elements, one of the things that I have in my mind.
Speaker: Let's go for 80% of what we can do.
Speaker: Let's develop it.
Speaker: Let's put it in.
Speaker: We will improve it later in order to keep that speed.
Speaker: The other thing that is very important in my mind is get the right people on the bus that are able to handle that speed.
Speaker: And I don't mean handle that speed in terms of, you know, that they are in the velocity where they're going fast.
Speaker: Speed brings along a certain level of flexibility that you need to have, brings along a certain level of, you know, yeah, you
Speaker: You kind of have to give up on some of your elements of the idea when they become an obstacle and kind of give up for the sake of the team's progress, et cetera, et cetera.
Speaker: So the right mindset.
Speaker: And not everybody is built for that.
Speaker: Not everybody is built for being fluid.
Speaker: in terms of, you know, how do we work?
Speaker: So that would be another element, getting the right people on the bus that have that ability, because that comes with, you know, with certain level of flexibility, certain level of insecurity.
Speaker: You know, we don't know 100% what's going to happen in the next week or so.
Speaker: So that would be the other aspect that I would stress out.
Speaker: It makes total sense.
Speaker: Amy and I talk about this all the time and that I think we both had this, you know, a concept or an idea about what life would be like in a startup.
Speaker: And, and the reality is very different and is always changing week by week.
Speaker: I thought I'd be recruiting and, and I'm instead developing business and building relationships more often than not.
Speaker: And, and,
Speaker: No two days are the same.
Speaker: So that resonates for sure.
Speaker: And fielding my thousand voice notes a day with like, what should we do about this?
Speaker: What should we do about that?
Speaker: What should we do about this?
Speaker: Should we try this?
Speaker: Oh, ladies, you are preaching to a choir.
Speaker: The number of hats that we are all wearing while building it, you know, and I used to say that I was in consulting a long time ago and I really enjoyed consulting because of the diversity of it.
Speaker: I could be working with a client in the morning on a, you know, topic XYZ and then in the evening be with a very different client and working on a different topic.
Speaker: And I thought that was rather diverse.
Speaker: Shoot.
Speaker: I do that.
Speaker: I do that 15 times a day every day.
Speaker: From legal to ops, to sales, to relationship, to networking, back to ops.
Speaker: You know, finance comes along, which I hate.
Speaker: Oh, same.
Speaker: Bookkeeping.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: Brenno, I have to ask you too, you talked a little bit about the values for just flexibility, bias for action.
Speaker: As you think about yourself as a leader, what do you think your team needs from you most to lead them through this next season?
Speaker: Yikes.
Speaker: Decision making.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And when I say that, I don't mean that I hold all the decision-making in my hands.
Speaker: But when, again, it goes back to that speed, right?
Speaker: That speed needs you or that speed requires me, requires us to decide on the run.
Speaker: And if I start to contemplate too much or we start to contemplate too much and the conversation just keeps on going and going and going,
Speaker: I think that one of the things that I need to do as a leader, if you will, is to, you know, at a certain point, cut it off and to be able to find that right moment, which is, you know, that's art.
Speaker: And I'm definitely not the best artist in that arena, but it's art to find that right moment.
Speaker: How long do you let that, you know, conversation, brainstorm, whatever it is, discussion going and when do you cut it off?
Speaker: And that also, you know, cutting it off and making that decision and going and saying this way also very often means that some of the people that were involved in the discussion will feel like they lost something that, you know, they were not heard 100%.
Speaker: And so, so then, you know, that brings me to the second point, which is making sure that people understand, you know, that the direction is correct.
Speaker: one way, right?
Speaker: And that sometimes, you know, we'll make those decisions where not everybody will be heard.
Speaker: Not everybody's thing will be put into the, put into the, whatever we are trying to solve.
Speaker: So that would be the next thing.
Speaker: You know, one thing for a founder, for me, what's really important, and I've had some bad experiences myself as an employee before.
Speaker: And so I'm very particular about it, making sure that I have enough money to pay my people.
Speaker: And that goes into fundraising, that goes into business development, that goes in all kinds of areas where I want to make sure that people like the work, et cetera, et cetera, but people are compensated.
Speaker: And I have to say that has been hard.
Speaker: Our fundraising...
Speaker: For a long time, we were hearing no, no, no.
Speaker: Then we got an angel investor last November, and that was a huge breakthrough for us.
Speaker: And now it's to building more business and making sure.
Speaker: So that's another thing that I've never experienced before when I was in corporate, right?
Speaker: Oh, no.
Speaker: Never in it here.
Speaker: Once a month, your text message comes in, it's in there, and you go in your own way.
Speaker: So
Speaker: So the other thing and then, you know, it's so basic.
Speaker: Sorry, just to chime in a little.
Speaker: It's so basic.
Speaker: Like, of course, you want to pay the people that are putting in all this work to grow your business.
Speaker: But yeah, it's like a it's like a it can be from, you know, some months you're like, oh,
Speaker: okay, like we, like, what are we going to move around?
Speaker: What are we going to like juggling bank accounts?
Speaker: And like, it's tough when you're bootstrapped because that, you know, that's what we are.
Speaker: And I want to stay that way, honestly, like, I don't want to deal with investors.
Speaker: I don't want to deal with that, that performance piece, but, but yeah, it's, it, in the beginning, it's, it's hard to balance the
Speaker: I need some help and I need us to be able to accelerate in this space, but I also need to know that I have enough in my bank account that I can cover this for at least six months to a year, even if like, we don't have a big sale.
Speaker: Like these are the kinds of decisions that you have to make quickly.
Speaker: And you, and Aaron, you and I, you know, we talk about that all the time, like balancing scale versus like what we can predict we're going to bring in.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: And, you know, Amy, that's a great, great comment.
Speaker: Spark two other things.
Speaker: Back to Aaron's question in my mind.
Speaker: One is, you know, other things that are kind of expected or what I expect of myself as a leader, if you will.
Speaker: One thing is one another thing is.
Speaker: And now I lost it.
Speaker: It happens.
Speaker: It happens.
Speaker: That's found a brain.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I'm sure it will come back, but now I lost it.
Speaker: But there were two things that you, Amy, sparked with that comment.
Speaker: Was it about scaling?
Speaker: No, I lost it.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: We'll come back around.
Speaker: If it pops back in, we can come back around.
Speaker: No big deal.
Speaker: And maybe this will help spark it because I want to talk a little bit about just your vision and vision for Talent Square, the legacy that you're building through the company build.
Speaker: What would you say your hopes are for Talent Square, maybe three or five years from now?
Speaker: I want to be helpful or rephrase.
Speaker: I want my solution or our solution to be helpful to the businesses.
Speaker: And, you know, that's that's one of the key mantras for me is, you know, when I look at, like I said, you know, I we are focusing on companies that I believe those are the those are the types of companies or the sectors that make economy run.
Speaker: You know, it's the baristas, it's the sous chefs, it's the nurses, it's the truck drivers and so on and so forth.
Speaker: And I want to help those businesses to be better in terms of finding the people that they need.
Speaker: And so if I can bring a little drop in the bucket, you know, as that part of their multi-channel, that would help them not only to find the candidates, but actually kill not two, but three birds with one stone, which is find the candidates, present
Speaker: your employer brand through your, you know, how you present your narrative, who you are as an employer and our solution also helping them to be quote unquote found in LLMs.
Speaker: If those three things, our solution helped them to do in the next two to three years, maybe five, then I would be super happy.
Speaker: I would love to go global.
Speaker: We are focusing on US market at the moment, but my piece of my heart is in Southeast Asia where I lived for six years.
Speaker: And I would really love to go with the platform to that part of the world.
Speaker: And I think there's a huge potential.
Speaker: It's just, you know, prioritization.
Speaker: And by the way, Erin, you were completely right because one of the two things that was in my mind was prioritization.
Speaker: You know, one of my main challenges, and this has been
Speaker: my kind of a history for a long time, but now it's even more visible.
Speaker: prioritization is difficult for me, but at the same time, I know I have to do it.
Speaker: You know, I'm juggling 15 balls or 15, you know, 15 things in my arms and I'm having hard time juggling 15, whatever those 15 might be.
Speaker: But what drives me even more crazy is the fact that I look around me and I see another 40 to 50 other 10 people in my arms.
Speaker: that are on the ground and half of them are screaming, pick me up, pick me up, pick me up, right?
Speaker: And you look at them and you go, I can't because these 15 are occupying me and those are the biggest priorities.
Speaker: So I think prioritization is definitely one of the huge expectations of a leadership.
Speaker: And especially now, because I mean, you can be scattered all over the place, especially when you're building something from a scratch.
Speaker: So keeping that focus and keeping the team understanding what those priorities are is definitely one very important aspect of the leadership, with the startup anyway.
Speaker: Yeah, for sure.
Speaker: For sure.
Speaker: It's funny.
Speaker: It just makes me think because, you know, obviously we're in a community of founders and we, you know, speak to a lot of fellow founders all the time.
Speaker: And no matter what the product is, no matter what the service is, we're all the exact same person.
Speaker: I think we're all, we all have crazy work ethics.
Speaker: We're all probably borderline insane.
Speaker: And we're all trying to tick the same boxes and like just do right by people and contribute.
Speaker: And I just love that.
Speaker: It's been really eye-opening that there's no, it's not like corporate where you have your like personas in different functions.
Speaker: Like everyone that has started a business is pretty much the same animal.
Speaker: And I kind of enjoy that no matter what it is.
Speaker: Like we're all dealing with the same struggles and we're all probably,
Speaker: questionable when it comes to mental health.
Speaker: Oh, that's, that's, that's, that's without the doubt that we are very questionable.
Speaker: You know, Amy, you, yeah, you, you hit the nail on the head again with the, yeah.
Speaker: Well, with the mental health, but also, you know, one of the things that, one of the things that, and I would assume that with your corporate past, you might have a similar opinion.
Speaker: I really like my corporate experience now because I feel that it will become very handy the moment that the company gets to the point where it's going to start truly scaling.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: One of the things that I am, you know, I'm like you said, I am involved in.
Speaker: I'm sure you are as well with, you know, all kinds of startup founders, et cetera, et cetera.
Speaker: Those that don't have the corporate experience, I think that one of their biggest challenge is the scaling aspect, is the moment when you need to start setting up processes, you need to start setting up functions, you need to start setting up offices or something elsewhere, right?
Speaker: And that's where the bag of learning of 25 or 20 years in corporate will become very handy.
Speaker: So
Speaker: I definitely don't want to, you know, don't want to say, hey, corporate was horrible.
Speaker: No, it was.
Speaker: Oh, no.
Speaker: It was in so many ways.
Speaker: So, so interesting and such a great learning experience.
Speaker: And I'm just hoping that Talent Square or, you know, whatever we are starting will get to the point where I will be able to utilize that experience to scale it faster than the 22 year olds who are great in terms of startup founders.
Speaker: But then when it gets to that point, they kind of, you know, lose their direction because.
Speaker: Yeah, 100%.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, we were talking to somebody the other day about there's a lot of founders out there that are founders for like the lifestyle of like being a founder.
Speaker: But I think anyone who's like edging 40 plus who's like in this game that they've been in corporate, they've seen the benefits, they've learned a lot of lessons.
Speaker: and they're ready to kind of make improvements on processes or tooling that where there's a gap in the market.
Speaker: And that is, I think, more beneficial than living this founder lifestyle.
Speaker: I mean, I don't know who these people are that are like having this wonderful time setting up their own business because it's hard work.
Speaker: Like it is hard work.
Speaker: Aren't you like on a flight in the middle of the night, Brano, to like go to a conference and, you know, you're always busy like networking, talking, developing.
Speaker: Like it's, it's, you, you trade in your 40 hour a week, regular paycheck for 80 hours and you have no idea what.
Speaker: coming in it's it's it's an interesting slip oh no absolutely yeah i'm flying tomorrow at five o'clock so i need to get up at 3 30 but um but i am a morning bird so i don't i mean it will be just fine um and you know on the top of it in at least in my case um and we haven't touched upon that one i have three kids and wife
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: I mean, so if I think about the madness and the craziness of every day, you know, grind and this and then the other 15 hats, and then there is a huge hat that I need to put on at certain moment of the day, which is the other husband hat.
Speaker: And how do you put that on?
Speaker: Well, putting that hat on is not that complicated.
Speaker: What makes it complicated is the fact that how do you throw all the 15 hats away when the husband or the father hat on?
Speaker: And how do you not look at them for at least eight hours so you really devote time to your family?
Speaker: You know, and that I will admit to it.
Speaker: It's very hard for me.
Speaker: It's very hard for me to not to be the father.
Speaker: I love my kids and I love my wife and I'm very, very happy about my family.
Speaker: But it's time.
Speaker: But the whole thing of, you know, like the regret of,
Speaker: Well, when I put the father hat on or the husband hat on, the regret of looking at those 15 hats that I had to throw away for, you know, amount of time going, oh, my God, I lost my speed.
Speaker: But then at the same time, I kind of look at them with this little bit of an anger at those 15 hats going, leave me alone.
Speaker: Now it's
Speaker: You know, now it's time to focus on what's really important.
Speaker: So, you know, that juggle alone, it's just a huge, huge piece for me.
Speaker: And I'm learning.
Speaker: I'm not perfecting it, to be honest.
Speaker: You know, there are moments when I realize that, you know, this is the time when I should have done this to my kids.
Speaker: And instead I chose emailing, et cetera, et cetera.
Speaker: So I'm learning.
Speaker: My wife is a great feedbacker on that.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: You know, when I, when I, and she has patience up the Yahoo, but when I step outside of that line, she makes sure that she tells me, Hey, you need to stop managing now.
Speaker: It's time for this.
Speaker: So I'm very lucky in that regard.
Speaker: Yeah, 100%, like a supportive but honest partner is key because I think if we didn't have people, you know, reminding us that there's like other parts to life, it would be so easy to neglect the things that are actually the most important.
Speaker: And what I really love about how Erin operates, because she has two young girls,
Speaker: um she is very protective of you know parts of her day and that's not to say that I don't hear from her sometimes as possible days but like not not regularly and not you know we don't schedule important things during that time because your kids are only going to be young for a fleeting amount of time and then it's gone
Speaker: And, you know, I haven't, I've yet to see, and I say this, even though it's super corny, but I have yet to see a headstone that has somebody's job title and net worth on it.
Speaker: So, you know, you've got to, you've got to think about like the impact that you want to leave on those closest to you, as well as the impact that you want to leave in your role.
Speaker: And what I think is sort of peculiar, and I might add to that, is that spending time with family or doing anything other than the work will actually sharpen your axe, too, at times when you least expect it.
Speaker: Even just a couple of weeks ago, I was really kind of turning over in my mind how to approach a key prospect and open a conversation.
Speaker: I was struggling with it.
Speaker: And that evening we had some contractors doing some work at the house and there was a hole in the backyard involved.
Speaker: And my four year old daughter walks outside as I'm going to chat with the folks who are doing the work.
Speaker: And she just looks at him and goes, wow, that's a big hole.
Speaker: What are you doing?
Speaker: What are you doing?
Speaker: And it struck up a conversation and it was sort of an aha moment that I then went back and applied to that prospect.
Speaker: I'm like, I'm just going to inquire about what they're doing and open the conversation that way.
Speaker: And you know what?
Speaker: It worked.
Speaker: And it wouldn't have occurred to me had it not been for my daughter sort of illustrating that in that moment.
Speaker: So it's sort of funny how that works in that your brain's never really turned off from turning over the problems, but
Speaker: your eyes can be opened in ways that you least expect.
Speaker: Oh, Erin, that's absolutely a beautiful story.
Speaker: It is.
Speaker: You know, one of my struggles mentally with this aspect of, you know, turn off that working brain and now you focus on the kids or on, you know, them.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: part of me keeps on telling me or my brain is going but you're building it for them right you you're building it as a legacy that you leave for them and that's just I I am realizing more and more that's just the wrong thinking because especially my kids they don't care about it they care about my presence yeah you know care about what I'm building for them you know that hopefully 10 to 15 years down the road they'll take over or get some money out of it or what have you no no no they take they they care about now and and that's something that I'm
Speaker: I'm learning how to realize that it's now, it's the present moment that is the most important for them.
Speaker: I can explain to them, oh, but I have this and this to do because I'm building it for you.
Speaker: They don't care.
Speaker: They don't care about now.
Speaker: Because kids don't have that concept of future.
Speaker: You know, for them, everything is now.
Speaker: And I think there's also a lesson for us all in that, too, because we only have now as well.
Speaker: And maybe I'm getting a little philosophical here, but it is like nearly 10 o'clock at night.
Speaker: But I do think that.
Speaker: we tend to overanalyze the past and try and over predict the future but really we just have the day that we're in to like kind of do the best that we can and so I kind of love that about kids that they they don't think too far down the line um they just focus on the experience they're having right now and you know we can we we can learn a little bit from that
Speaker: And, you know, I mean, Carpe Diem, right?
Speaker: That's what that is.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And, you know, we can apply Carpe Diem to also to the business, you know, to the journey of building the startup, right?
Speaker: It's Carpe Diem, enjoy the ride.
Speaker: You know, that's the other thing that I kind of need to remind myself not to put too much pressure on me and then, you know, kind of move that onto the team as well is,
Speaker: enjoy the ride you know i even if if talent square failed tomorrow for whatever reason and sure i would be sad and and i would be disappointed and this and that and the other but when i look back in the last 18 months the learning and the experience and you know the people that i've met and and so on and so forth are absolutely worth the failure if you know what i mean so
Speaker: You know, carpe diem is definitely something that should be applied to, or at least in my book should be applied to also building the business.
Speaker: Just enjoy the ride, enjoy the moment.
Speaker: Yes, it's cool, but think about the past and the learning that you have done already.
Speaker: Yeah, I completely agree.
Speaker: And, you know, Erin and I have come from, you know, corporate backgrounds like yourself, and we have always been incredibly high performers, always getting that pat on the back, always getting that, you know, extra bonus, that promotion.
Speaker: And, you know,
Speaker: you know, we really had to redefine what success was when we moved into this space because no one's giving you a pat on the back.
Speaker: No one's giving you a bonus for the good job, but we need, it's like you said, falling in love with the process, just really appreciating every little bit of
Speaker: Joy that you get from interactions or the wins or and those wins don't have to be headline news like sometimes they're they're really small, but you learn to value them differently.
Speaker: And I do think that that.
Speaker: has impacted not just how I operate in a business setting, but also like how I feel about everything in general, just appreciating all of it.
Speaker: I'm with you.
Speaker: Like, I refuse to believe that like Strativist would ever not work.
Speaker: But at the same time, I am having the time of my life.
Speaker: This has been, this last, like, what is it now, Erin?
Speaker: Like seven, eight months.
Speaker: has been the biggest learning curve, the most joy, the most challenging that I've experienced and I just wouldn't trade it.
Speaker: I wouldn't trade it either and it would be much easier to say that if I had a million dollars in my account.
Speaker: I still wouldn't trade it.
Speaker: I'm with you.
Speaker: I've ended up on some hilarious algorithm for founders on my social media, which I keep spamming Erin with.
Speaker: They're all very hilarious, but also true.
Speaker: It's just a cycle of...
Speaker: doing the best you can.
Speaker: The wins are great.
Speaker: The contracts that you win and the money that comes in is awesome, but you just have to keep going.
Speaker: Yep, yep, yep.
Speaker: Just keep going.
Speaker: Just keep going.
Speaker: Well, I'm going to wrap us on one last question because we've got to allow Brano to have a little bit of sleep before getting up for that flight tomorrow morning.
Speaker: And so I think I'll use it to extract one piece of advice, Brano.
Speaker: So for listeners who...
Speaker: maybe have a novel idea to solve a problem and are considering building a solution for it, what do you wish you would have known at that inflection point in your journey?
Speaker: What would you share with somebody like that?
Speaker: One, if you think that it's going to be hard and that's why you're not starting, it's going to be twice as hard as you think it is going to be.
Speaker: But at the same time, if you don't try it, you will never know.
Speaker: And I am a huge advocate for jumping in, diving in.
Speaker: Go try it, test it out.
Speaker: And this is I have always looked at my career, if you will.
Speaker: Career might be a little bit of a cliche word, but my my professional journey as Jungle Gym.
Speaker: uh instead of a ladder and what i mean by that is i've always been keen on collecting experiencing and figuring out how they kind of connect together um in my career i wasn't i wasn't the one and there's a lot of people that you know go for the latter one right so you become an expert in an area xyz and then you build your expertise further and further and further and you have a ladder ladder career
Speaker: What I would say is, especially for those that are, you know, in their early 20s, and you know, they're kind of looking around going, I'm out of school, what am I going to do now?
Speaker: Go and spend time collecting different experiences.
Speaker: You know, don't jump on, you know, one trajectory and just remain on it.
Speaker: You have plenty of time to do that later.
Speaker: Because, and the reason why I say that is because it's understanding how those things that on the first and second side seem like they don't connect to each other, but they actually do.
Speaker: It's understanding those connections, whatever those might be, that will help you to then understand bigger concepts, bigger frameworks, you know, how things work.
Speaker: And so that would be that would be my advice.
Speaker: It's going to be hard, harder than you think.
Speaker: But at the same time, that shouldn't stop you go try it out.
Speaker: Because if you don't, you will never know.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And this is another cliche, but the line of like, you only regret the things you don't do.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's true.
Speaker: It's true.
Speaker: Like the older you get, the more you realize that every opportunity, every little side door, like that was leading you to more knowledge.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And you know, the other thing is that kind of goes along that theme, Erin, it's a great question.
Speaker: Um,
Speaker: especially with my students, I kind of see that they, you know, they're 22 year olds, roughly, they're ending their bachelor degree.
Speaker: What I see is these, they have these preconceptions about certain jobs or certain career paths.
Speaker: And like, for example, right, I had a conversation with a student of mine just recently where he was like, well, you know, I don't know what I'm going to do.
Speaker: I'm studying marketing.
Speaker: That's my major, yada, yada, yada.
Speaker: And I told him the same thing that I just mentioned.
Speaker: I was like, spend the next three years going things that have nothing to do with marketing.
Speaker: I said, go and work at McDonald's.
Speaker: And he looked at me with this look in his eye going, McDonald's, that's not why I went to university.
Speaker: And I said, look, McDonald's is one of the best companies in the world in terms of process management.
Speaker: If you learn about efficient processes and want to learn about why the scoop for franchise for French fries, you are able to use from both sides because on one side of that scoop, you have the large size element and then the other side you have medium.
Speaker: Those are the things that are absolutely genius that people don't know about.
Speaker: So if you think about McDonald's job as something that is, you know, derogatory in some way, you need to stop that thinking because those kinds, you know, those kinds of experiences will enrich you in terms of what do you know?
Speaker: So I think that that's, you know, that's kind of the element what I'm trying to say is go and try stuff.
Speaker: I mean, one of my best career or professional development periods was a period of about a year and a half when I did physical labor here in the U.S. I was working in a restaurant as a bartender, as a server and in the kitchen as a prep cook and a dish dog for 18 months.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Physically, one of the hardest things that I have done.
Speaker: There were periods where I would work 21 days straight, partially because I wanted the money, right?
Speaker: But in terms of what that taught me, not only have a huge appreciation for those that continue on the journey of physical labor,
Speaker: But also what that taught me about little nuances, how organizations work, how one thing leads to another, what are the codependencies between servers, bartenders, kitchen, and the dishwasher.
Speaker: When you are able to kind of absorb that and get that in, those experiences, the learnings will become so valuable later on.
Speaker: And so, you know, it's like collection of different experiences.
Speaker: It would be, you know, a mantra that I would say, just especially if you're fresh out of school, go spend two, three years doing things that have nothing to do with your education.
Speaker: You'll come back to that later.
Speaker: Yeah, because kids now don't have to work the crummy jobs that we had to work when we were 13 years old, you know, growing up.
Speaker: And, you know, I didn't get an allowance or anything like that.
Speaker: So I would, not that I'm doing like a poor pity me situation, but it did teach me a lot about, you know, being disciplined, being accountable, even the washing up jobs on the weekend or whatever it was.
Speaker: But it just, it set a foundation in me for having a strong work ethic and, you
Speaker: I did, you know, I did a stint after college too, where I did bartending.
Speaker: And honestly, like, I think that taught me a lot about mirroring and communicating, you know, just making sure that you are, yes, obviously serving the drinks, but like that you're creating an atmosphere that's like conducive to people having a good time.
Speaker: Indeed.
Speaker: And you know, that's a lot of business too.
Speaker: You want to make sure that the person that you're talking to is having a good time.
Speaker: And Brano, it is always a good time talking to you.
Speaker: Oh, likewise.
Speaker: Likewise, ladies.
Speaker: My absolute pleasure.
Speaker: Thank you so much for having me.
Speaker: Thank you for coming on and making time for us, especially in the midst of a busy series of engagements over the coming weeks.
Speaker: So please have safe travels.
Speaker: We'll be wishing you well.
Speaker: And thank you again for your time and pearls of wisdom.
Speaker: Thank you.
Speaker: Thank you so much.
