Transcript
Speaker: Ryan Hogan. This is your second time on the podcast. So thank you for joining me. Where does today's recording find you? Oh, today's recording today. One, thanks so much for for having me back. I feel I feel very, very special. So um today today finds me in L.A. And i don't know. The last time we talked, I might have been in Seattle, but Um, today living in LA and, um, still doing the talent Harbor thing, which is just amazing and chaotic. And and I'm sure we'll get in into all that. Um, and then just recently co-founded another, another of all things, another consumer product company. So excited to dive in. Awesome. Well, you just mentioned a couple of things about you, about your background, but for the benefit of listeners who might not be familiar with you, would you mind telling me a bit about yourself?
Speaker: Yeah. So a lifelong entrepreneur for me, it started, it probably started when I was born, but the the earliest memory I have is third grade. And i i was selling, um, if you remember those creepy crawl, actually, I think you do remember the creepy crawl. This was like our whole, our whole thing.
Speaker: I love it. I want to hear it again. I was hawking creepy crawlers in in third grade. And um you know this, the audience might not know this, which it's like the easy bake oven machines for boys. um And we got to make these like little gelatin creatures and and we can make them all colors. And ah I used to bring in all the flat colors. so I would have like red, green, orange, you know, you name it. And those were 10 cents, but I would take custom orders where I'd like make rainbows and everything else for a quarter.
Speaker: But Miss Price eventually shut me down. um you know From there, it was shoveling snow, mowing grass, um you name it. i I was probably doing, I had one of those books of like 100 best businesses for a teenager.
Speaker: um And then you know my real kind of first experience with entrepreneurship um as it relates to like scale and and actually building a business I had this company called run for Your Lives, which was the first ever zombie infested, 5k obstacle course race.
Speaker: And it took off. And this was back in the days of like Tough Mudder and Warrior Dash and Spartan Race. And, um, it took off, which was great. The thing that wasn't so great is like going from like, you know, ah hawking broken laptops, ah transparently broken laptops, not saying like I wasn't telling the people, but hawking, you know, broken laptops on eBay um to, you know, getting on this this zero to five million dollar journey over 18 months, completely different animal.
Speaker: Um, and unfortunately that ended in bankruptcy, not ideal. Um, but you know, for me and, and I'm sure entrepreneurs can relate, you know, without those failures, without those like painful, tough lessons, you just, you aren't developing the skillsets and, and the knowledge and the expertise you need to, to really have something take off.
Speaker: Um, for me, take off was hunt a killer. We started that as the ah live event, very similar to Run For Your Lives. But we realized very quick that the event was um was not going to scale. It was easy for us to put tens of thousands of people through a zombie race, but we couldn't have thousands of people standing around ah a simulated crime scene and interrogating suspects.
Speaker: And so we pivoted in the subscription box, ah grew and scaled that zero to 52 million in about four and a half years. Sold it a couple of years ago. launched a recruiting firm.
Speaker: um Oh yeah, and I've been in the Navy for 25 years. So that's that's the yeah that's there's a lot of things going on in that story. I appreciate that you hit on so many things and hopefully anyone that is really interested will go back and listen to our first conversation so we don't have to rehash too much of it. However, as you were going through that, you reminded me of something you said in our first conversation and it was something like,
Speaker: You have probably had, or you know you said it like this, I've probably had thousands of ideas, entrepreneurial ideas. Maybe 50 have made it to market and something like five to seven or whatever have been a quote unquote success. Am I recalling that roughly correctly?
Speaker: Yeah, I, I, morning I wake up, I've got a new idea. And, and like the reality is 90% of them are, are hot garbage. Like I, I use this rule of thumb where if I wake up with the same idea, like three days in a row, and I'm just as excited as the first day, like then I'll, I'll actually start to explore it.
Speaker: Um, and then from there it's like, you know, what's the market look like? How hard do I think it would be? yeah Just kind of weighing the pros and cons of the opportunity. um And then for me, it's always been about, you know, testing the market as quick as humanly possible. a business actually doesn't have to be there. The product or service doesn't actually have to be there. But just like soliciting some sort of feedback to understand if there's even a market for whatever that is.
Speaker: And then I i have this, you know um Dwayne, Dwayne the rock ah talks about this a lot of is he works best when his back's against the wall and so do I. And so what I would do to kind of force, cause like humans are, are naturally kind of lazy people. Like that's, that's like our, we, all of our defaults go back to, um you know, what's the easiest path? How, how do I get this done with the, the least amount of energy and resources?
Speaker: And so for me, like I have to like set the ball in motion so that something's constantly pushing me. So whether that's like filing the LLC or like getting a co-founder, whatever the case is, like starting to put those pieces.
Speaker: So I'm being like pushed into 15 hour days and and then here we go. You mentioned Talent Harbor. So remind me, what was your motivation for getting into recruiting?
Speaker: And then we'll go from there about the state of the industry and your perspective and so on as of today. yeahp For me, it was i had this business coach, my Vistage chair, Tom Leonard, and he came to me right as we were going through the transaction. So Hunt a Killer ran a very normal, um you know, banker led transaction. It took us about nine months.
Speaker: At the end, we had about three or four horses in the race. We knew that there was going to be some sort of outcome from that from those conversations. And so my, my Vista chair was like, Hey, before you sell, like you suck at golf, you're not going to be able to sit still.
Speaker: Go look at your favorite line item right now on your P and l go pick that and then go, go build a business around that. It's kind of like your next thing. And was like, oh, that's, that's really interesting advice. So I looked at my P and L.
Speaker: And my mind and and my eyes and like everything about me always goes to people. And so my favorite line items were the, the development, the coaching, the mentoring, everything that we invested into our people.
Speaker: But we had this one line item that was on kind of that similar thing and it was recruiting. And we spent about a million bucks on recruiting over that six year journey. And I was like, what a slimy, nasty, disgusting used car sales industry. Apologies for everybody that I just insulted out there.
Speaker: But the the reality is, is like the perception of recruiters based upon, you know, how they charge their business model, how they like, there's just not a lot of like trust and transparency. And so for me, that really reminded me of like the used car selling process before CarMax came about. And CarMax was all about adding trust and transparency into the buying process. And so they've got their hundred and 101 point inspection. They've got their no haggle pricing. Everything's printed. Everything's listed.
Speaker: And so I called Alana Burr, um, who was the best recruiter that we ever used at, at, um, Hunt a killer and she was, she had sold her shop. That shop had sold. She was post-turn out.
Speaker: And I was like, Hey, uh, I'm gonna launch a recruiting firm. You're the best recruiter in the entire universe. do you wanna join forces? She was like, say no more. So, um, we launched talent Harbor together.
Speaker: And fundamentally, everything that like we've burnt the model to the ground, we've burnt processes to the ground, like we've really started from scratch with the baseline layer of like, how do we put the right people in the right seats inside of the organizations that we serve?
Speaker: And even more so, like, how do we bring a new kind of breath of fresh air into this, uh, into this entire industry? And the model was really kind of the forefront. So traditional models are 30% and they get paid when when you hire somebody.
Speaker: The problem with that model is that they haven't actually closed their deal until they place a candidate, which means you are actually in their sales process. for the duration of the service that they're providing.
Speaker: And that, that is a, that is an imbalance in the incentives because all they care about is post areas, is is placing somebody so that they can collect their 30% commission.
Speaker: And does that mean you're getting the best candidates? Are they doing active outreach or did you just get the first three that they interviewed so that way they can go and collect their $40,000 check? And so we burnt that, that model to the ground and we developed this thing called RAS, which inspired by SAS and it's recruiting as a service. And so we're hundred percent transparent. We're a flat monthly rate. There's no contracts, no success fees, no hidden anything. We publish everything right on our website and we just do great work for great clients. Usually it takes us about two months and, um, and we're off to the races. So yeah.
Speaker: And how long have you how long has it been since you founded Talent Harbor? we We filed the LLC paperwork, oh, actually almost like three years ago um to the date.
Speaker: But we really didn't get started until about two years ago. I was at Naval War College at the time going through a 10 month in residence program. Um, I was also selling the company. Like I didn't sell until, uh, January, I think 24th of 2024. And so it was really the summer of 2024 that, uh, that we got started on this.
Speaker: Um, so we've been, we've been cranking kind of firing on all cylinders for the last two years. Okay. And what has the, what is your trajectory been like? Has it been all up and to the right? And then also, I suppose, what's the state of the business today? Are you bigger than ever or how do things look?
Speaker: Yeah, thing things are humming. like It's really interesting because are we up and to the right? Yes. like We have served 125 clients, which is insane over a two-year period.
Speaker: Here's here's like the good news and the bad news. The good news is we do incredible work and our clients come back and and everybody is happy and like we continue to grow. When we like zoom in on a month to month, the biggest issue we have is churn.
Speaker: You know, so the, the whole hypothesis here was, oh, we're going to follow a SAS model. Therefore we have M M R R. And the problem is, is like when you zoom out, it's up into the right. When you zoom in, it's, it's like this cliff that like constantly goes up and down because the reality is the clients that we serve do not have an ongoing need for recruiting.
Speaker: We've taken this model to um to a market that has an expectation to spend, you know, 30 to 45,000 to place one person. And for us, there's they're investing anywhere between call it like 12 to 18,000.
Speaker: Um, but if we find somebody, um in a month or two, then they go on pause. And so probably the most frustrating thing about the model has been, has been like, it's got a high churn, it's not true um m MRR.
Speaker: And so we're always thinking about like, what are other ways that we can service, uh, our clients and provide value and things like that. And that's actually the time that you've called me at right now, which is like, those are the hard problems we're trying to solve.
Speaker: I suppose, having been in the industry for a bit and knowing that technology has changed a lot, even in the times that you've been running the business, but also I suppose other things have changed. You know, we have cultural change, we have politics, any number of things.
Speaker: From your perspective, wherever you want to start, what is the state of recruiting today? Here's the interesting thing, because there's a lot of noise out there. Like ai is is everywhere. and And I think finally we're getting to a place of where people are are starting to settle down a little bit.
Speaker: AI through the client's lens, like if someone is going out there to search and they hear these tag, you know, these buzzwords AI and they see these like software platforms that can help them find the most incredible people.
Speaker: Here's the problem that that our clients have right now. Number one um is that the traditional way for a small organization to recruit is they go to and link LinkedIn, they go to Indeed, they go to ZipRecruiter, and they post an ad.
Speaker: What these AI platforms are doing right now on the candidate side is auto applying across thousands of open requisitions on all of these public websites.
Speaker: And so when clients come to us, it's not that they haven't tried, it's that they're getting anywhere from 500 to 2000 applications. And when you really start to kind of weed through it, it's about one to 2% the ones that are, that are worth talking to. And what we're finding right now is that the fundamentals of recruiting remain core to the process. And what I mean by that is real recruiting is having access to humans, whether that's a database or whether that's networks or relationships. It is already having that access to the talent.
Speaker: And then recruiting is a sales process. So once you have the access, then you have to figure out, okay, who are the ones that are most qualified? Who are the ones that we think would be a great culture fit?
Speaker: And then let's say we've got a list of 100 million people, and then we call that list down to 1,000 people. Now we've got 1,000 prospects, and that goes into the top of funnel.
Speaker: And we do it the old-fashioned way, which is we're reaching out via LinkedIn. We're reaching out via text message. We're reaching out via phone calls, via email. And we're trying to get these people we're trying to get these people on a call um to tell them about the opportunity and see if they might be a good fit for it.
Speaker: The problem right now is that you can't, like, AI is actually making it ridiculously challenging to recruit because they've automated kind of both sides of the equation. um And it's just pure chaos for companies to try and run this.
Speaker: So you reminded me of some of my past work experience that I don't think of often. But when I was doing my MBA, I worked with an executive recruiting firm and their big client at the time was Google.
Speaker: And so this was 2007 to if i recall correctly. And I was not there for a long time. You know, I was just working part time while also going to school and I had other jobs and any number of other things. So I cannot say that I was either important or that I was deeply embedded in this process.
Speaker: But The working with Google, you know, they were they were placing I think it was vice presidents or something typically. And at the time, Google had something like 10 or maybe 15 vice presidents and Yahoo, which at the time was more of a competitor than it is. now had something like 400.
Speaker: But in terms of revenue, i think Google might have been bigger. It was really more of like, when we say vice president, what do we mean here? And so vice president was sort of a higher role in Google than it was in Yahoo.
Speaker: And so they're placing these very important people. It would take something like a year and a half on average from when they started the search until when that person would finally start their job. And so was very expensive, time intensive, all of this stuff.
Speaker: But one of the things that I recall from that was that it was very, the the recruiting process was very heavily dependent upon networks. You know, who did you know that had gone to the right schools or had worked at the right companies and that, you know, not just wanted to make the Google money and all of this stuff and could do the job, but could fit within that culture.
Speaker: And so as people were going through, as the executive recruiters were going through the process for maybe some other client, they were building relationships that then might come up in the next search. And as you were talking, i was thinking about that and also thinking about, you know, it has been, as I speculate about recruiting and you hear about your friends or whatever that just can't find a job. And then you see all these job openings out there and there's this weird mismatch.
Speaker: I think I was more sensitive to the fact that in some ways, recruiting, it appears so much less human and and so much more automated.
Speaker: But I hadn't really thought about what I think you were saying, which is the relationships that really matter. And then of course in your business, then there're be there's as there should be in any business, there's a tension as well about are we doing right by our business, by our clients, etc.
Speaker: when we're building relationships and we're you know so making fertile ground for whether it's this current search or future searches. That's exactly right. And what's interesting about what you just said right there with, with the placement into Google, like there are certain firms out there that have alpha. I've got a good buddy out of Seattle that runs a recruiting shop and and he does executive placements at the Microsofts of the world, the Starbucks of the world.
Speaker: And they've got those relationships. So when they go and they charge 30% and that's a 85,000 to hundred thousand dollar plus check that these organizations are are cutting, like that's real recruiting. There are not many shops out there that can justify the 30% fee. It's just everybody has adopted it and you've got people that are kind of faking it. And then you've got like the legitimate shops that can place it.
Speaker: What you just said right there about, you know, a year to a year and a half process, that's real recruiting. Like that's the relationships, that's the network, that's the true vetting. Um, and that's the, that's the process that, that should be run at that level. So when you think about executive level inside of like major, major enterprises, a hundred percent.
Speaker: The reality is most shops are adopting that same business model, but they don't have that alpha. um And so they're they're posting a job description on some site, the same thing that the organization would have done.
Speaker: And they're saving that organization time for sure, which is there there is a tremendous amount of value in in the savings of time. But at the end of the day, that's not worth 30% of the salary.
Speaker: Whether we want to talk about the employers, the the clients of yours that you work with and or the candidates, do you feel like whether they're experiencing the same things that you've talked about, you know, that AI ah is is creating some problems on both sides? you know, create posting positions, recruiting for positions, but also in seeking positions, whether they're conscious of this or not.
Speaker: Do you feel like those employers and also the job seekers are experiencing the same thing that you, the same things that you've experienced? Yes.
Speaker: And i I would add to that, that they only, they only, um, they only know about it once they experience it. Meaning that like, if it, you know, we work with anywhere from five to 20, $20 million dollar shops.
Speaker: And at the end of the day, like there's not, they're not hiring hundreds of people at a time. And so when they come to us, like they've just kind of ran their, their own search, um, And until they experience it because right now you go to a website and there's quite a few out there and they're like, you know, guaranteed AI magic to help you with your recruiting. And it's like, oh, I'm sold on that. Like I can I can save 30 percent by going to this website.
Speaker: But it's not until they actually experience that pain do they really start to understand the dynamics and the challenges that AI is presenting. That's something that we do to educate. So I i like, you know, my my big thing is like, ah i don't know if we can curse on this, but crap posting, um, all over the industry and, and a lot of things that are happening, which is like, you've got, you've got AI that is now kind of auto posting for candidates and you've got AI that's like vetting. So you've got like AI vetting AI to get. And that just like, when you completely remove the human out of the process, because humans inside of an organization,
Speaker: is the organization of humans and organizations only exist because you can bring a group of humans together to solve really hard problems and to think that a that a robot can like replace the process to go out and find those incredible humans i think is a is a pretty naive uh thought process so um I don't think everybody is quite aware, but I think once they go through the process on their own and they see, you know, 500 applications and then they, they go through the first hundred and they're like, man, like I was looking for this background. There's like none of that in here. Like, are people not reading? It's like, no, they've got auto posters on right now that are just spreading their resume across thousands of jobs.
Speaker: It's interesting then to think about if I am $20 million dollar a year business and I'm hiring for my sales team, maybe, then if I go out there, maybe my HR team, somebody like that is hosting a a job and they're doing the initial reviews themselves, candidates, resumes, whatever it is.
Speaker: It sounds to me, and maybe even you said it explicitly and I'm just forgetting, that it sounds to me like it is going to be so difficult for that HR person or that HR team to actually find valuable candidates, reasonable candidates, because they're likely getting hit by so much volume coming through the job posting websites or whatever.
Speaker: And they have another job to do. And so I hadn't thought about this, Ryan, but actually it seems to me like your service is more valuable now because we have that flat fee and it's now your responsibility to be heavily focused on efficiency and quality, that balance there.
Speaker: Yep. And I think that's, that's why we're growing at the rate that we are. Here's, here's essentially, you know, the, what we are, we are an embedded recruiting team. And what I mean by that is recruiting is a true core competency. What, what generally happens in smaller organizations is you've got the head of operations, you've got the head of marketing and you're like, the the head of marketing comes up and they're like, Hey, I need two people. and And they get the approval on it. And the CEO comes down and they say, great, you've got approval, go hire them.
Speaker: Well, what makes that that person that is an world class expert in marketing? What makes that person a world class expert in recruiting? um And generally, like, especially at 20 million dollar and below companies, like they they certainly have an HR team. That doesn't mean they have a recruiter on the HR team.
Speaker: And so where we see ourselves kind of plugging into organizations is like we're an embedded recruiting team. So they plug in a competency. No, no long term contracts. We're not like, hey, you have to hire us for a year. But they plug us in when they need us and they get that recruiting partnership, the embedded recruiting team.
Speaker: And then they unplug us once they find it. And that's kind of our value proposition there is like, you know, our whole claim is, hey, recruiting is a core competency. There is a process that you need to run. This is an outbound process. This is a sales process. This is active outreach to passive candidates because our, my argument, I'll, I'll die on this hill is,
Speaker: The best people are cranking at some other company right now, and they're not spending their days looking at all the job postings. And we have to go find those people and then we have to sell them. So like, are we looking for the culture fit? Yes. Are we looking for the experience and expertise? Yes. So we are very much recruiting them.
Speaker: At the same time, we're asking them, someone that's not even searching for a job, to spend three calls with us and probably at least two calls with the client. to, um, uh, I won't say donate, but to invest time into a process that wasn't even on their roadmap. And so we have to also sell them throughout this process as well as well. So like real recruiting is a process. It's, it's not just posting the job boards and then seeing what comes in and, and, you know, hiring the best resume that you saw.
Speaker: Okay, so it seems clearer to me that the value proposition that your business would have for a potential employer. and And I'm wondering about on the job seeker side, you know given everything that you've seen about, you know, there are apparently millions or whatever of just open jobs that we can't seem to fill in the United States because ah we can't find the candidates or or who knows what.
Speaker: And yet there are probably millions of people that are out of work looking for jobs. And plenty of those people just can't get matched up. They can't come to the top of the ATS or whatever else.
Speaker: For the employer, the ah a solution, right, is, okay, hire Tallaharbor. What's the solution? What is a solution for a job seeker now that just can't find that job?
Speaker: I look at this as the same, you know, when I think about business development, what do I think about? I think about being out there. I think about who do I want to connect with? Who do I want to network with? Who do I want to have conversations with?
Speaker: And if I were, um, seeking a job or, or searching for a job for myself, I would be running the same exact business development process um that I would be to go find clients. Like, you know, would I go to, I don't know, some sort of like, it wouldn't be a job board, but would I go to some sort of marketplace and just advertise my services?
Speaker: um Or maybe like put some Google, some Google ads out there to like advertise it. Like, ah that's a, that's a tactic. um But there's there are better ways to do it. And those ways are building relationships.
Speaker: And I think the more that candidates start to humanize the process, because I think it's too easy for us to wake up and change our shirt and still have pajamas on beneath and and then just go hit the easy apply button or or subscribe to one of these softwares.
Speaker: And I don't think that's getting great people very far. And so if I were the one that was looking for a job um and I had a target company, like I would start to build relationships inside of that company. I wouldn't just easy apply. I would figure out like, hey, where do these people hang out? um Are there networking events? Where do people like these hang out? Where do hiring managers um hang out Um, I would start developing relationships with recruiters, um, that specialize in the vertical or the industry that, that's, um, I'm trying to go into and I would make myself as marketable as possible. Um, when I went to them, so I would have, you know, in, in EOS world, you know, there's this thing called the three uniques.
Speaker: I would run that same exact process for me. So if I were looking for a job inside the consumer space, you know, when I think about my three uniques, it it would be something like, um, You know, grew and scaled a, um, uh, grew and scaled a consumer product from zero to 50 million over, over four year period. Um, you know, extensive, extensive experience in, um, building teams, scaling teams and, and motivating teams. I would be thinking about like, what are the top three things that make me very specifically valuable to that vertical?
Speaker: And then I would go and just start networking with people. um I think the folks that are struggling right now are are the ones that are easy applying across to a thousand and then going on LinkedIn saying, God, it's a really hard market.
Speaker: It is a very hard market. um And it's a very hard market because everybody's doing the same thing. And so the idea is like, how can I be different than the other you know million people that are out there looking for the same job right now?
Speaker: He reminded me of a seemingly different conversation that was going on online, but it feels, in essence, quite related. And that is someone that I know, I forget who, had posted online about how the...
Speaker: the Yeah, Ryan, actually, it might have even been you on LinkedIn. Uh-oh. I think you had posted a while back about that a lot of businesses post on or they look for podcast guests.
Speaker: And really what they're doing is they're looking for clients. They just want to get somebody on a 30-minute recording and then they want to pitch them on their services in the 15 minutes that they have afterwards or whatever else.
Speaker: And you had talked about you see a lot of value for your podcast in building relationships, more or less. Like that might be a referral partner and a referral partner could refer five or 10 or however many other people, whereas a client is one client.
Speaker: And that's not to downplay clients, right? Now, I'm not sure that i said exactly this in the comments, but I recall thinking this, and maybe there were multiple other conversations online, that whatever it is that you're doing, it and let's just let's just stick with podcasting, and then we can go, we can I clearly see, I think the tie to looking for a job, whatever it is that you're doing. If the person on the other end feels like they're a means to an end, then it just starts to not feel like it's worthwhile. And I'll be honest, I have been that requester plenty of times.
Speaker: in my career. You know, I've wanted something from someone and they probably 10 times out of 10 got the sense that I was just, you know trying to use them as a means to an end. I'm not trying to say that I'm a bad person or anything. It's just that I've needed things and I have not necessarily built the relationship in advance.
Speaker: And that feels very relevant here. Like I if If I get laid off today, I really would be well served to have planted the trees of all of those relationships 20 years ago.
Speaker: And if I didn't plant them, then I need to plant that tree today because maybe it will pay off. It will bear fruit in six 12 or 18 months.
Speaker: That's, that's exactly right. And it's like, you just keyed in people, people can smell it when you want something like they can, they can, you can just sense it when it's like disingenuous or, or inauthentic.
Speaker: And that fundamental shift is key. So I've got a podcast called confessions of an implementer and it's no secret that like a majority of our referrals come from EOS implementers. We've got two other ecosystems that we cracked. Um, but like,
Speaker: i don't I don't care if if people send us business. like like What I care about is like meeting interesting people and having really interesting conversations. And that's what's at the forefront of this. And if I genuinely like the person, then like some sort of like continued relationship. If that relationship um turns into some sort of like mutually serving business development engagement, great. like that's That's incredible.
Speaker: But that's not the goal. like The goal has to be genuine and it it has to be like, you have to drop all the, all the, like, and i need this. Therefore I'm doing this.
Speaker: There's a great, um, who's, forget who I was just talking to about this, but there's this whole adage of like, you've got two salespeople. I think it was our sales trainer, but you've got, you've got two different types of salespeople.
Speaker: You've got one that is is living paycheck to paycheck. um They operate heavily on commission. um And every night that you know every night that they go home, they're trying to figure out you know how they're going to keep the lights on. So you've got that type of salesperson. You've got another one that just hit the lottery. And and the question I was presented is like, which one do you think is is going to sell better?
Speaker: And it obviously, well, maybe not obvious, but it's the one that that just hit the lottery. And why is that? Because they don't care. Like they're not, they're in it for like authentic and genuine reasons. And I realize that that's hard because, you know, when, when you have to put food on the table or like you just lost your job and you're looking for one, like there is this certain sense of like, um, desperation.
Speaker: Humans can smell that desperation and they can, they can kind of like sense like where your heart is in this. And and that's why I think I don't have good advice on how to get to the other side. i i think it's truly like a mindset thing. I think you have to, you have to change your mindset. Um,
Speaker: But yeah, that like there's a lot of truth to that. It seems to me like this comes back around to what you were saying about passive candidates as well. That if I am the recruiter and I reach out to you, then do I want something? Yes, of course. But I'm also highly motivated to place the right person.
Speaker: and not to waste my time in conversations that aren't going to get me anywhere. And I know there's, I'm sure there's a lot of quote unquote waste if we wanted to just say conversations that don't end up in a placement, right? But that's part of the job. So I'm not trying to be critical there, but I'm trying to help you in some respects and there there should be an opportunity. I'm actually, i hope, offering something to you as path. passive candidate and then you're not requesting anything of me, right? You didn't, Ryan, you didn't reach out to me looking for a job.
Speaker: And so the, I can understand at least from one perspective here, how a passive candidate would be at times so much more attractive than an active candidate.
Speaker: You just said something critical there, which is like help. um And our number one core value is go givers. And like, you know, we ripped it right off of the book. and And that's a part of our onboarding ad at Talon Harbor. Like we hand out that book.
Speaker: And it's this like... this like One, it's a mentality where it's like, we just want to figure out how to add value. We have this belief, this deep belief, and we've seen it validated again and again, that like the universe will take care of itself. If we live through this mentality of like, give, give, give, and and like we will, like we will consult clients before they're actually a client. So if we have a prospect coming through and they're like, Hey, I'm thinking this, here's kind of my problems.
Speaker: Like we will help them solve solve their problems with zero expectation of reciprocation. Like that's not, Like we understand that the universe is going to take care of itself and like whether they close or another person closes, we just want to put goodness into the world.
Speaker: um And like, I think that's what it takes. you You mentioned help. Like you have to want to help first. with zero expectation that there's anything in it for you. And I mean, I see this all the time of like people that are always like, well, what's in it for me?
Speaker: Um, like what, what can I get out of this relationship? How can I leverage this? How can I extract this? And it's just the wrong way to think about yeah because business is just people and like but humans are humans and no one likes to no one likes to feel like they're beholden or or owe somebody something you know just just help well i can say that you certainly seem to exemplify that at least from my perspective you know because when i reached out to you again about coming on the podcast that was a couple of months ago and and i forget exactly if you said this but
Speaker: Between what you said and then what I assumed, you were sort of like, I'm really busy. But yeah, totally happy to do it. Happy to help or have a conversation, reconnect or whatever else.
Speaker: And so, you you know, you made the time even though it wasn't immediate. Right. And I hope, Ryan, that this is of even greater value today than would have been in the past because that this also just occurred to me.
Speaker: In the last week, the podcast had something like 30,000 views, plays. And that's just on episodes. So you may have come on at the right time. We'll see how the episode goes. Dude, that's awesome, man. Congrats. Like that.
Speaker: a fellow podcaster. I am now incredibly envious because those are that's great numbers, man. Well, that was some, some very quick growth. So sadly i expect that we will dip, but you know, you, you may have waited for the right time and for the right reasons to, you know, to help and to hopefully reconnect and have a good conversation. But I'm, I'm guessing you can tell me if I'm wrong, Ryan,
Speaker: at the time that I reached out, right, it wasn't the highest priority, but you were still in some sense wanting to help to do something good. Yeah, ah a hundred percent. and And I also want to come on here with a clear mind.
Speaker: It's been a, it's been a crazy summer to to say the least, um mostly on the the personal front versus the business front. But, um but yeah, like anything, anything I can do to help. And it also sounds like it's,
Speaker: It's like perfect timing, which is great. See this, this is the universe like, pe you know, and it sounds a little woo wooey. People are like, Oh no, it's like, you know, it's money and it's P and L and it's this and it's that. Like the universe has a really strange way of, of working. And I believe in that.
Speaker: Let me come back around to artificial intelligence before we move on to other things. Perhaps have you seen that, you know,
Speaker: Have you experienced that some employers are slowing down on hiring, whether it's for certain kinds of roles or due to uncertainty, thinking that I can replace people with AI or anything else like that?
Speaker: ah We did. and and like we saw very strong signs of that. And, and I think that there was a lot of things that have played in over the last 12 months. i I would probably say that that ended just before summer.
Speaker: But we were seeing, um, the trade wars. We were seeing the Iran war. We were seeing AI, all of this chaos, putting so much uncertainty into the, into the sphere, um, created hesitation. And so what we found is that organizations weren't hiring, but they also weren't firing. And basically everybody was frozen. And and this happens like when there's chaos in the markets and there's chaos happening all around us, like generally people don't know how to operate. And so they, they do nothing at all.
Speaker: And then, you know, in retrospect, what you see is the ones that like powered through and grew their team and invested are like the ones that come out the other side on a, on ah a certain trajectory or a better trajectory.
Speaker: But that's what we've been seeing. I, this might be my hot take. I've yet to see any place in which like bots are truly taking over a hundred percent ownership of like end to end things.
Speaker: Um, do we use AI in our process? A hundred percent. There are so many incredible kind of unlocks to processes and, um you know, actions and different things, you know, but do we have an org structure of like bots and bots managing bots and like, you know, fully autonomous things happening? No. And that's kind of what's been promised to us, which had people kind of freeze because they're like, well wait a minute. If I don't, you know, if we're like six months away from me being able to like, why, why would I do that?
Speaker: The reality is, is that all of these AI CEOs out there. were raising their funds in public. Like, like those pitches to you were actually the signals to investors to talk about how big the market is and where they saw the market going and their products and their services.
Speaker: And you just happened to be, you know, you, you thought you were, you were like involved in it, but you, you were just a spectator and who they were actually playing with were the investors.
Speaker: And there's so many things wrong with that because like they've controlled entire markets with this thing. There's a great post about a year and a half ago where the CEO of um Perplexity came out and he said verbatim, the first two roles that this is going to replace is executive assistants and recruiters. I don't know why. you know, we're just catching strays over here. I was like, what do recruiters do to you?
Speaker: He said this a year and a half ago and he put like a two or three month mark on it. And what I did was i went to Perplexity's hiring page where they were they had like, you know, on their LinkedIn, they were hiring 500 Six of those roles were recruiters. And so what did I do? I took a screenshot of that post and I said, oh, how ironic that in two months recruiters will be replaced, yet you have five that you're hiring right now.
Speaker: It, it all was just talking points. Um, and so like, you know, when I look at how we're integrating AI and things that we're doing, you know, we've never jumped into, I, remember Uber when, um, I was in Boston.
Speaker: 2012, walked out of the hotel, downloaded this new app, hit a button. And for 20 bucks, this black Mercedes pulled up to the hotel and took me to where I was going. I was like, wow, this is crazy. That same black Mercedes now costs 120 bucks. So everybody out there that now is using these things for, you know, a thousand bucks a month.
Speaker: That's all being subsidized. The power, the energy, the the processing, the hardware, that's all being subsidized right now by investors. And so people that are getting locked into all of this, thinking that they're saving money and maybe they've got certain things, I think there's going to be a rude awakening over the next two to three years.
Speaker: So, you know, for us, it's been very methodical. Number one, we have this belief that, you know, we operate on HubSpot and we've got cutting edge applicant tracking software.
Speaker: not bullhorn um but we've got these platforms and what are they doing they're integrating ai so like why do i have to go build another platform if i know that the best of the best out there are going to continue to innovate and and integrate great technology into their existing software number one number two like yeah we use claude we use called co-work we use called code we use we use it all everybody has a license internally Everybody is trained up to a one-on-one level. We've got some people that are like, you know, building certain automations and we've got others that are just using it as a chatbot.
Speaker: But we believe there's a certain amount of efficiency because AI gives the normal human an exoskeleton to be more productive, more efficient, more effective. And so those are the strategic investments that that we're making.
Speaker: This was a little bit of a tangent, but you know I think at the end of the day, a lot of people are now starting to see that like, oh, this this isn't like replacing an entire human from end to end.
Speaker: Therefore, I need to go higher. I need to invest in this. um And right now, we're we've we've never been growing faster than we're growing right now. And yet I imagine there probably is a shift in the mix of roles that people are hiring for. So just to give you an example, maybe we've talked about this in the past, Ryan.
Speaker: Andy Grove, in one of his books, he talks about when email really started to be used in the workplace, that it became possible for a manager to manage more than about five people.
Speaker: Because he says something, I wish I could remember the the book, he but he says something like, you know, when whether I'm in the same office or my direct report is across the country, when they need to send me an agenda in advance, when they need to schedule a meeting, when we need to get on the phone, all this stuff has to be mediated by other people and it's slow.
Speaker: I only have so much time in the day to meet with the other executives, to actually do my job, the you know solo work, whatever it is that I do, and then to meet with my direct reports. So I can really only meet with about five people.
Speaker: But once email came around, he said something like, you know, he thought that you could just as easily manage, I don't know, 20, 25 people, something of that nature. And he said in large part, it was because I didn't need, for example, an executive assistant just to shuttle an agenda or a request or anything else back and forth.
Speaker: That it's not to say that for me as an executive, that it's not now more work to actually handle my own schedule, for example, but If I'm willing to take some amount of my time every day to manage my schedule, then, or to, you know, check the email agenda that's sent to me, then I can suddenly have, I can reach more people and I i can handle more management.
Speaker: And so coming back around to, i can handle more managing people, just to be clear. Coming back around to that, have you seen that your clients have a different mix of people they're hiring for because maybe some of the people they're hiring, the roles that they're filling are expected to be a little bit more independent than maybe they would have been in the past.
Speaker: Here's the two things that like I could I could confirm today. i think we're going to need more time to really understand like where where AI fits into the puzzle because it's gone from this. It is it is like replacing humans and and then it's it's like finally starting to get to a place of like no specific actions like so for instance for us where is AI useful.
Speaker: Um, some of the outreach, like if all we're doing is like sending an email, Hey, do you want to jump on a call? And, and we're sending it via these things. And then we go from that to like scheduling, you know, what, what parts of that can we automate? And those are the different things, but to say like, you know, this robot is going to.
Speaker: Look at all of these resumes, pick the right ones, do the outreach and then get them on the call. Like we're uncomfortable with that. So we're trying to figure out like, where do we keep humans in the process? And then like what things should and could be automated.
Speaker: Some of the things that we're seeing right now, it's, it's kind of twofold. we're actually seeing people look for greater competency. and And I want to use the EA that you just talked about there because I i think that's a that's a critical role. And and I think that that role is actually shifting a little bit, which is it used to be, well, let's let's go back 40 years ago. It used to be literally someone that sat right outside of the office of whoever that manager or leader is. And they would answer the phone. They would you know bring people in. They would get coffee. They would do that.
Speaker: Then like that kind of shape shifted. And so everything started, um with technology, maybe you weren't even sitting in the same office and maybe it was just scheduling meetings on your calendar. Well, now a lot of that is, is I won't say necessarily going away or being automated, but it's becoming more efficient. And so specifically with the EO EA role, like we're almost seeing that transform into a chief of staff role and, and chief of staff has like, Oh,
Speaker: Gosh, probably like hundreds of different levels, but we'll kind of keep it in three, which is like, you've got someone that is just a, a, an amazing assistant and can like get stuff done. And then it goes all the way up to like number two in the organization. So it depends upon how that, how that business is thinking about the chief of staff and the roles and responsibilities.
Speaker: But it it is an elevated role. And so when we talk to executives, it's less about, you know, I need someone to come in and, and manage my calendar, my email and book my travel. It's like a lot of these things are efficient. And so what else can they do? How can they integrate into, into my life? And also how can they see over the horizon? And that's where we really get into that competency because they want people that, that are able to kind of see a little bit further into the future, not just like, oh, the calendar is free here.
Speaker: Okay, um Jane, you can meet with you know Bill on this day. It's more so like, well, does this Bill even want to meet with Jane? like Who is Jane? um Is this worth Bill's time? And so starting to get people that that can think and think strategically about like how to manage some of these things are are becoming more important.
Speaker: And then the other thing we're seeing and and like this is important is like there's a certain level of AI fluency. And so like, you know, most organizations aren't looking for people to come in and and build them, um you know, agents like that's we're we're not seeing like, oh, you know, what and I need my chief of staff to be able to build agents like that's not the level of competency.
Speaker: But there needs to be some fluency of like, you know, Hey, do you have any experience with Claude? Like what level of experience? Um, which integrations, what have you done? Um, those are some things and some questions that, that we're getting from our clients and that we're starting to ask now.
Speaker: You're really sort of echoing some of the things that I have thought as well. So, you know, an example that I've used in the past, and this was not mine. I i didn't come up with this on my own. So forgive me for whoever was the the source for not remembering that.
Speaker: I think we can compare artificial intelligence, at least as we currently use it broadly, most of us use it, to the nail gun, the air nailer.
Speaker: that you know When the air nailer was invented, more or less, it was primarily being used or heavily being used by some roofers.
Speaker: And different roofing associations and all of that in different states were advocating against allowing roofers to use the air nailer.
Speaker: And they were saying things like, oh, well, you know, you're going to have a lower quality roof and you're going to have to replace it more frequently or whatever else. and the And yet in the states where they didn't have a lot of problems and also for the people, the roofers, the carpenters who were willing to adopt using the air nailer rather than you know pulling out the nail and hammering it in one by one, what they found was over time they were able to charge less and ah get a higher quality product.
Speaker: And even if you had to replace your roof more frequently because there was an issue, it was already cheaper in the first place. So it's easier to do the replacement. And now everybody uses them.
Speaker: And, you know, I don't know that this is the case, Ryan, but I'm going to guess that If I wasn't using the nail gun, that I probably had to take some time away from nailing down the sheathing on my roof or the you know the shingles or whatever else to go and get bags of nails and or buckets of nails.
Speaker: Or I had to employ someone. to do that. And with this tool, not only could I do the work faster, but also I just shifted around where I was putting my budget. I could perhaps have a higher quality worker.
Speaker: I could have maybe two people at a higher level, but the machinery was taking away some of the need for that more easily defined or easily replaced work.
Speaker: I actually, I love that analogy because like the human is still in the loop, but it's incredibly efficient now. Like, you know, going in and hammering nail by nail versus just like, boom, boom, boom, boom. boom Like that's, that's where I think we're at. And, and that's, you know, when we talk about this whole like exoskeleton idea of, you know, technology and innovation is making our lives, um, easier and more efficient and, and more productive.
Speaker: You know, those are the important points. i think for and this is changed like as you and I are recording this right now, things the the signal, even that the CEOs of AI companies are changing and they're changing rapidly um in the market. So we're getting very quickly. We're moving away from this is replacing humans to like, you know, this is enabling greater productivity across the workforce.
Speaker: And I think that's absolutely right. Um, and one of the gotchas here, one of the like watch outs is like, here, here's a great question. What, which like would need some thought, but like, what is the new entry level position?
Speaker: You know, cuz like, people are still going to need jobs and we still need to figure out how to how to bring people out of school and and put them right into right into some sort of a career. And what's been happening is like people have been slowing down on entry level positions um because work has become um more efficient to get done.
Speaker: And so like that's you know what tomorrow what does entry level position look like? You know, I I don't necessarily have the answer to that, but it's it's ah it's an important question because If nobody answers that, then we're going to have a whole bunch of amazing managers and leaders, and we're going to have kind of, you know, no, um, apprentices that came up and, and learn these things. So, yeah.
Speaker: I really like that formulation. and I don't think I had thought about it that. you know If I heard you correctly, Ryan, you're a lot of people are asking you know what happens when entry-level roles go away.
Speaker: And i interpreted what you're saying ah sort of as entry-level roles are not necessarily going away. It's just entry-level roles broadly are just taking a different form. And we just don't know what that form is yet.
Speaker: that's That's exactly right. That's exactly right. and And, you know, a part of the thing here is like, We don't know, all we know right now is like, we want to put exoskeletons on people that already know how to make decisions. So if we think about, for instance, the, the executive assistant, and now we're really thinking through like more of a lower level chief of staff, this kind of entry level for, for that, you know, what people want to see on a background is, is still 10 to 15 years experience executive assistant, because they already want that like baseline knowledge to be able to have a certain competency to like make decisions.
Speaker: And so right now there's a gap in that. Like right now it's like, well, when I hire someone right out of college, for instance, into whatever this entry level position is, like I can't fully empower them, um, to make the decisions because they don't know. And so I'm not getting kind of the same level of productivity.
Speaker: We're going to figure that out. You know, I, I think that there's a, what are the schools going to start teaching? And, you know, they're already, already starting to, to integrate AI and things like that. But there's, there's like, there's going to be just this morph of like, what does entry level look like? And what does that, that education and like experience build up look like into that new entry level?
Speaker: Um, you know, those are the problems I think we're going to have to solve and, and really start to work on in the near term. Ryan, I would be remiss if I did not ask you about something else in our remaining time.
Speaker: You have a physical consumable product that you have launched or become involved with. And so after all of this talk of software and the internet and artificial intelligence and so on, tell me about what you're working on there.
Speaker: Yeah, so i I, swore consumer off. Uh, consumer is the hardest business ever. Um, especially physical products. Cause you're like in inventory management, you're so trying to stay ahead of trends. You're like, there's, ah you got cashflow issues. Like consumer is like, if you wanna, if you wanna get into a hard business, go do consumer. Um, and so I swore off consumer a couple of years ago and I was like, you know i'm just gonna kind of stay in this space and it's gonna be incredible.
Speaker: And not that, not that I was getting bored per se, I wasn't even looking yet, but I was starting to to think to myself, like, you know, but two years, three years in the future, like, you know, is there a shot at consumer?
Speaker: My buddy called me two weeks ago. ah one, two, yep. Two weeks ago, two Sundays ago. And he was like, Hey, um, he, and he's crazy. His name's Brian McDonald. Um, he's self-proclaimed the funniest guy on LinkedIn.
Speaker: And he always posts these like just ridiculous, amazing ideas. And most of the time they go nowhere. um Most of the time they're just like, oh, they get a couple likes and everything else. well We posted this idea called curd and curd is a um whipped cottage cheese condiment. So it's a protein based condiment that has the potential to replace mayonnaise.
Speaker: And he called me and he was like, hey, I post this on LinkedIn and went viral. I looked at his post and it had like 300 and some likes and and like 200 and some comments.
Speaker: What I didn't see was the 1500 DMs that he had received as a part of that post. And when he started to talk to me about the people, um, that were DMing him, so, you know, back to the whole, like, you know, what percentage, like 1% of people, but those 1% of people were like people during my hunt killer days, I would have died to have gotten on the phone call with like distributors, um, retailers, retail buyers at like grocers that you and I both know, um are in his DM saying, Hey, send me a sample. Cause we'd love to put this on shelves.
Speaker: Um, investors, Uh, I can't talk about who's on, but like big names that you were like, you were, you talk to this person the next day after this ridiculous post. And, you know, had those conversations go. He was like, he was like, Hey, just let you know. Um, I don't have a product yet. Um, this is just an idea. I've been making this recipe in my home kitchen for the last five years and it's delicious and it's nutritious. And I feel like that's already a tagline. So we'll have to stay off of that. Um, but at the end of the day, um it was a really interesting opportunity.
Speaker: And so i was traveling that week and I said, Hey, um, I'll cut my, my trip a day short and I'll fly out to you in Connecticut. We'll spend the day just kind of thinking through if this makes sense. So leading up to that, I'd done a whole bunch of research on, on this industry. It's a brutal industry. good culture just sold to um good culture that cottage cheese brand just sold to el catterin for um i think about a half a billion dollars and good culture at like you know a two to three hundred million dollar company can't even keep their cottage cheese on shelves right now it is a brutal brutal supply chain industry um but i think we solved for some of this stuff out of the gate which is interesting
Speaker: And, um, just through the, a different manufacturing process that keeps it kind of arm's length from the true cottage cheese process. Um, and yeah, like it's an entire category and we can fight, you know, the best businesses out there and town Harbor is not, is not, um, any different, like, Talon Harbor picked an entire industry as an enemy.
Speaker: Like, you know, Under Armour, Kevin Plank, I won his business competition about 10 years ago, 13 years ago, and it gave me a certain amount of access to him. And like, it was interesting because Nike was the enemy. And like, that was their war cry. And he could point at Nike and everybody would get charged up. And it's like, yeah, we're going to take down Nike.
Speaker: What I have found is like when you can take down an entire industry, your war cry becomes so much louder. And so for Town Harbor, you know, our war cry is like, hey, the recruiting industry sucks.
Speaker: um And here's all the reasons it sucks. And here's the reasons that like we don't we don't even identify with that industry. um And here's the reasons we're better. Well, with this, like he's taking on, I guess we're taking on now an entire condiment industry. Um, and like what a, and we're doing it from the refrigerated section. So we can like point and laugh at like Mayo and, and every other sugary, ridiculously unhealthy condiment.
Speaker: And we're not even sitting next to them on shelves. It's such a huge opportunity. Um, and yeah, I'm, I'm pretty excited about this. When do you think you might be in market? Or do you do you know yet? Can you say yet?
Speaker: Yeah, we'll we'll be in market um four to five months. So this is, you know, learning the hard way, drinking through a fire hose. It is not a simple process. I was just out with my my old CFO yesterday and we were talking about manufacturing.
Speaker: i was like, oh yeah, I'd love to be on on shelves before Christmas. And he was like, dude, it takes me six months to manufacture soap. There's no way you're manufacturing ah cottage cheese, a brand new condiment in less than six months.
Speaker: So I, think realistically it's like February or March. Um, right now we're going through formulation. So we've had his formulation, which is in incredibly good. Like that was one of the things is like flying out to him to actually taste the product.
Speaker: It is so, so freaking good. Um, but that's not a commercialized product. So like lesson one in CPG is just because he can make it in his Ninja blender and, uh, you know, do it like that doesn't mean it can sit on shelves for, for 90 um And so these are the things we're working through. i think within the next three to four weeks, we'll have a co-man. um And I think it's going to take us four to five months after that to to bring the market.
Speaker: Well, it's fascinating from a number of different perspectives. And I think you had maybe first posted about it yourself just a couple of days before this, or at least I saw a post from a few days ago. So I'm glad that I was able to ask about it because it seems very new. I mean, I think you said two weeks ago.
Speaker: So it is very new. It is like so new. He thought about it. it Like he posted it three weeks ago. He thought of it three days before that. He's been making this thing for five years now in his, in his own kitchen. Um, during the pandemic is where he started like tinkering with things.
Speaker: But you know, he had the idea for a few days. He posted it post went viral. He called me a week later and now him and I have been jamming for, for about two weeks, but. He's, he's, he's a crazy marketer. Like he's been calling funeral homes to, to get mayonnaise, uh, cremated.
Speaker: And so, and he's recorded all these conversations. Um, and so there's a whole social media campaign of getting hung up on by, uh, crematories for, you know, not having valid death certificate or not valid death certificates for mayonnaise.
Speaker: Um, if nothing else, we'll be able to hold attention for the next four to six months. I am fascinated. i will definitely be paying attention and I hope that some people that listen to this will as well.
Speaker: So Ryan, departed a bit from some of our earlier conversations. So I don't know if you have one or two or more things you would want a listener to remember, but I do want to ask If there were one or two things you want a listener to take away, if they take away nothing else from this conversation, and is there something that comes to mind?
Speaker: The thing that that I found out the hard way so many times in life um was something, and this is really just broken record repeating something i already said, but recruiting the art of finding and retaining incredible human beings is a skill set. It is a competency that's developed over a long period of time.
Speaker: Um, and this isn't a promotion for town Harbor, you know, it's, it it is actually a promotion for the entire recruiting industry, which is I had never experienced the, the level of kind of night and day between recruiting on my own and then going with an expert firm. You know, when, when I started off, um, I think Hunter killer was the first company that got to a scale where we could cut those types of checks.
Speaker: I don't think we use recruiters with run for your lives. And it was night and day. So like I would post and we would hire people and, and, you know, they, they were good, but the level of talent, once I hired Alana that, that we were able to get, it was night and day. And I was like, Alana, how are you? And we use six different shops and and she hates it when I say that. Um, but, but she was, i don't know how many people she had, but we, um,
Speaker: I was like, how do you do this? And she was like, recruiting is a process. Like it is a sales process. It is an art, like it is going and hunting the people that you need for your organization. And what you've experienced for the last three years is like posting a job board and just getting all the people that are looking. I'm bringing you people that never would have, would have shown up to your door.
Speaker: And once I once that like clicked for me, I was like, well, this is you know, this is such an opportunity. And so what we did was we built literally the recruiting firm that I wish existed when I was growing and scaling Hunt to Killers so I could have saved some money.
Speaker: um And that's where we're at today. And this kind of becomes the platform. But. Yeah, if there's one thing, it's, uh, it's like, this is a hard process and finding help, whether it's us or someone else, but finding someone that's skilled in recruiting, I think is, is instrumental to scaling an organization.
Speaker: If someone is interested in learning more, whether it's about talent, Harbor, cururd or you Ryan or something else, where should they go after this? Yeah. Find me on LinkedIn. i I love LinkedIn. It's the only social media platform is a social, maybe professional media. I don't know what it is, but it's the only, it's the only platform that I'm on. Um, I love talking to people. I love just like kicking ideas around things like that. People are always in the DMS and and we're just going back and forth.
Speaker: Um, but yeah, find me on LinkedIn. It's forward slash Ryan E Hogan, or just search Ryan Hogan. There's a mustache on my pro. i actually just shaved it off, but, but there's still a mustache on my profile. So you can't, you can't miss the, uh, the profile pic.
Speaker: Well, Ryan, I appreciate you coming back. And as we said, hopefully it's a good time for a little bit of exposure. We'll see, of course, how much of a dip there is, but I appreciate you being here. So thank you for joining me again.
Speaker: This is awesome. Thanks so much, Eric. I appreciate the time. Thank you.
