Weekly Impact by Lay of The Land

Jim Haviland (00:01.09)
Hello everyone, this is Weekly Impact by Lay of the Land. is the, gosh Kris it's the 26th of August, 2024. I am Jim Haviland.

Kris Snyder (00:12.314)
And I'm Kris Snyder. Jim, it's hard to believe summer is almost over. I take my daughter to college tomorrow. My other daughter's already back to high school. It is the end of it. Heading into that fall time.

Jim Haviland (00:16.084)
Almost over, Yeah.

Jim Haviland (00:21.59)
We did our Shaker Heights block party, which is the hallmark of our ending the summer. We did the rocket car and the bouncy house. And I did not get in the bouncy house, Did not do it. My bouncy house days are over. So we've got a busy, we've got a couple things to cover here. We're going to talk about Rust Belt recruiting.

Kris Snyder (00:37.31)
I'd like to see it.

Jim Haviland (00:47.97)
Best in Tech, VC Fest, and if we get some time we'll talk about the flywheel. But let's start with number 180. This is our good friend, Taylor Evans and Rust Belt Recruiting. Kris, this is another great show. Have you spent much time with Mr. Evans?

Kris Snyder (01:10.172)
No, just reputationally, we really haven't had a chance to spend time, but love the story, right? I mean, I think I'm a grinder at heart, right? So when folks like, he has to come through and we also share in common, like I started with a lawn care landscape company in high school. He had a much better name, much better name. Mine was my buddy Kevin. So we were K &K lawn care and he was much more fortunate with Lord and Taylor lawn care. sounds a little bit better.

Jim Haviland (01:25.782)
Great name he had. Yeah.

Jim Haviland (01:35.302)
Maybe you put a little bit more time into the naming thing, Kris, because important things have names. you have to learn that still. It's all right. Yeah.

Kris Snyder (01:37.598)
I didn't know it at the time. But he kept playing up the name thing, right? So he went on to found his company and it was Evans Group. He made the comment it sounded more like an insurance company than a recruiting company. And then got found his way to Rustbell, which is great name, right? I think you feel it, right? When you say it, which is one of the most important things in kind of a brand and a name.

Jim Haviland (01:51.98)
Could be anything, yeah.

Jim Haviland (02:02.943)
We talk about all the time, and it also applies focus. mean, that he's actually building a company that's about manufacturing in this area. mean, I think that's, what a great blessing to have a name that confers exactly what you're doing all the time. And it's recruiting, not just filling in gaps. It's like real recruiting, because he went through all those journeys.

And he's been through it all, right Kris? He's been through the full boat experience of being an entrepreneur, good times and bad times.

Kris Snyder (02:37.128)
Yeah, we like to talk about step functions of growth, especially as you come through the five stages of development. So you start a business, you're in survival, you get a little bit better, get some more customers, you sustain, I get to scale, I get to, I just lost the success and then stewardship, right? Yep, yep. so, but those things don't, they're not just a linear step function. Sometimes you take a couple of steps back to take a couple of steps forward. And he had cycles in there.

Jim Haviland (02:53.391)
Success and stewardship, yeah.

Jim Haviland (03:02.262)
You know, it's like, like we've always taught people, you know, I love those in general that, that, that found that stuff we learned from, from Gartner on having a maturity matrix and having like, yeah, I mean, there's some areas you're to be maybe a little bit more advanced, some areas you're not going to be advanced, but it's a, it's a, it's a framework. It's supposed to be useful, not accurate. And, you just know that there's next, next thing coming, but he certainly has followed the guidance that I give all my clients is you've got to be that leader preparing for the next stage. And that's, that's your job. Your job is to be, to keep moving towards that next stage.

and he's been a great job with that.

Kris Snyder (03:32.52)
And then.

Yeah, well, intentionality, right? We love that thought. And he's implemented EOS with our good friend, Dan Rose. And Dan's not only his... Yeah, big shout out, Dan, because he actually, he brought him as a board member, mentor in that moment of, you know, this happens when we're trying to diversify the business. Maybe we move into an adjacent area. His story was moving in from, you know, recruiting to staffing, pretty common. We see it because it's kind of like you got clients to ask you about it. It's not exactly what you do.

Jim Haviland (03:42.934)
Great shout out to Dan.

Jim Haviland (04:02.626)
All

Kris Snyder (04:03.154)
You dabble in it, you don't know how to price it maybe, the processes aren't the same.

Jim Haviland (04:07.584)
And the people from a distance Kris probably don't know, don't really get the difference. It sounds like it's almost exactly the same thing, but it's a completely different workflow, completely different way of thinking about the market.

Kris Snyder (04:14.226)
Completely different. You got to carry payroll like he talked about, like staffing they work for you, those are your employees, you're lending them out, you're leasing them out, you're renting them out to others, right? And there you're still employee of record and brings with a lot of other complications. It could be a really great business, but it is a different set of focus, right? As you go and to serve it. So, know, Dan's questioned him with something.

Jim Haviland (04:35.655)
Think of all the processes you got to get good at, your focus in the world is so different. coming up that he asked the right question, Dan did.

Kris Snyder (04:43.709)
Yeah, how do you make money? Or where do you make your money? Something like that, right? Which is great, because it is the right question when you're struggling on the investment. Now, I've done something similar and I've watched clients go figure it out. It was more of a pricing issue than a product issue than it was the issue at hand that might have been there in the wrong business. So it's not always the same answer for everyone, but it is the right question and the right resolve to go back through and gut check yourself if that's the right business.

Jim Haviland (04:46.802)
Right. Right.

Jim Haviland (05:08.283)
Yeah. And Kris, this has come up a couple of times in clients recently where people tried to talk about what the answer to that question was. this is a, this folks, this is an Excel spreadsheet question. You're going to, you're going to answer it with numbers. You're to look at, look at, and ask a couple, know, a couple of different ways, calculate it, break it down different ways and kind of figure this out. You know, don't pretend you can just know this stuff. This is like something you think about and it's like, well, how we allocate costs, how we allocate, you know, where the revenue comes from, how hard is that revenue to get?

And those things intended to have numbers beside them. So don't be afraid to get, that's where the truth really lies quite often. In the end, we have to make money.

Kris Snyder (05:46.566)
Yeah, there is, I just don't want to, I do want to leave the door open for exploration because people like to talk about the vision they have, you know, however they got their vision coming off the mountain, filling out a book, whatever it is. But I still think often in the early days, you know, and that survival going into sustain and maybe even try to move forward, you got to do some exploration. You know, these are testable theories, they're big bets. And so I still like the courage to do it because you sometimes don't know if it's the right thing to do until you step into the ring and you take a couple swings.

Jim Haviland (06:13.93)
Well, and I, but I think it's still the, the place where I see people blow it in those bets is when they don't see where the opportunity is. That's why like, I teach the reverse income statement and building a model. Like what's, where's the opportunity, what are the things I need to make happen quite specifically if I'm going to make this work? What is my sequence of stuff? Cause it, cause you're not going to have infinite resources at this. You're going to have.

What's the test really mean? What are those testable theories we're going to put in place and how are going to keep track of that stuff? And I think that's really the model everyone can learn from is taking some discipline to it. Discipline exploration is going to keep you from falling deep into a well somewhere and not have anyone to be able to pull you out. He also talked about the gaps in our current workforce and how he's into robotics. And I think that those are great jobs to go fill at this point, like building the robots.

maintaining the robots, you know, that's, it's the future. isn't like, it isn't like an evil thing. It's part of becoming great. that, that whole, that exo scale that we can try to get to with manufacturing, have to get to robotics.

Kris Snyder (07:20.828)
Yeah, I would say let's call it skilled labor because it is skilled labor, right? And not trying to take away from any other type of labor. I think often in manufacturing, people lose sight of that. That this is more than just I'm going to get trained on the job. That these are folks that are professionally invested and trades invested. And, you know, I coached a couple of companies during the pandemic, the manufacturing space, and, you one, which was GNS Metals, which they do metal stamping and they're a great, company.

Jim Haviland (07:24.727)
Right.

Jim Haviland (07:30.42)
Yes.

Kris Snyder (07:48.542)
but they always had like 60, 70 jobs open. They couldn't fill them, right? And it's hard work. It's not, it's hard work.

Jim Haviland (07:54.722)
It is hard work. Yeah. It's a real job. You get to go home at the end of the day. You're not carrying it with you. You were talking before, getting up at 3 .30 in the morning worrying about stuff or thinking about stuff because you can't turn it off. That's so much the case. You're to sleep pretty good. You're going to get up on time and get to work and go do it. I did it with construction. I worked in little bit of manufacturing. I worked in restaurants for same things. Like, hey, we locked the door.

everything's clean, we get to go home, we're done. Although tomorrow at this exact time, gotta be back here to make it happen again. So the last thing I think it's interesting, our good friend, Jeffrey is going through a realization that business operating systems matter a lot, his own discovery that, my God, everyone that's really good is actually running a consistent operating system. And I think that's an interesting part of this story for this week.

Kris Snyder (08:51.518)
Well, in some of it, I'll give you, you see a red car, you buy a red car, and then you start to see more red cars. So I'll give some of that there. But I do think if we were, and Jeff did some of this work, I think it was episode like 50 or maybe 100, where he was looking for the patterns, the patterns between success and not, right? And he was coming up with things like mentorship, right? And in an operating system, like these are good patterns that we're seeing at 180 episodes in, you can see enough patterns, right? And I think.

Jim Haviland (08:55.606)
Yes, the frequency illusion, yes.

Jim Haviland (09:17.259)
Yes.

Kris Snyder (09:19.922)
That's been fun as part of this work. And at some point, I think we'll have to go back and revisit some of those episodes and use something like AI to help us, right? Because we have all the transcripts.

Jim Haviland (09:28.246)
There's some data, we could do some data, some data analysis on this, I'm sure. But I think, and I think it's, again, the thing I always hear is the intentionality. I am purpose made these choices. I tested these things. I found these people, I created a community. I did the community flywheel of like the right mentors. I mean, he talked about that again, having Dan Rose on both as both an implementer, but also as a board member and realizing, and he appreciates like those are the people that matter the most is you have the right people around you to make those kinds of things.

Kris Snyder (09:32.264)
Yeah.

Jim Haviland (09:57.322)
And last two things, Christine's an EO member, so that's a consistent part of a lot of the stories that we know that have been on the show. And something else I hear, and maybe this is my frequency illusion, but I hear a lot more people talking about sobriety being a part of their journey of going out and accomplishing what they want to accomplish. And he was quite open with that, which I appreciate.

Kris Snyder (10:21.81)
Well, I think, you know, there is probably some level of attention deficit disorder that links to entrepreneurs and founders, right? Haven't been tested, but I'm sure I'm not that too far off from the standpoint of can't sit still. Like, so, so I think that, that we know that that, that, you know, not to characterize, but like often we have those kinds of more addictive personalities and those things happen and the battles are, hard, but

Jim Haviland (10:30.204)
Yeah, totally.

Jim Haviland (10:35.509)
You

Jim Haviland (10:45.846)
Right.

Kris Snyder (10:48.316)
I think finding your focus and finding where you put your energy and love and time is what most of these stories end up in. Where does it really take off?

Jim Haviland (10:55.052)
Yeah. All right. Well, great. Great episode. So let's move on. We got a couple of things coming up in the land here, Kris. We've got a VC Fest coming up on the 17th and 18th. That is Jump Start's big show. And you're speaking at that with a great panel talking about going from seed to being awesome. I don't remember the name of the name of the video.

Kris Snyder (11:18.206)
Well, I didn't really understand the size, but they said there's like 550 guests that are going to be there. There's like over 200 founders in that number, which that's awesome to see the founders coming out. And then all stages, right? Back to your survival all the way through stewardship. So, and I think part of that, our story is we've got folks on the panel that have been there, done that a good amount. So hopefully there's no Q and A, which I thought was a little interesting, but we're taking questions hopefully ahead of time.

Jim Haviland (11:30.38)
Yep.

Kris Snyder (11:47.858)
We prepped today as a panel so we could actually get to know each other a little bit more, talk about some of the stories we're gonna bring up and, you know, it was a...

Jim Haviland (11:54.582)
Well, of course, you know, you know, John Updike pretty well because he's part of our journey.

Kris Snyder (11:57.276)
Yeah, he was.

from our Vox mobile days, right? As CMO and Bill Priemer was there from Hyland. And what's funny about that is John actually worked with Bill because he worked at Hyland software in his journey. Yeah. So we got, we got to have some of his crossover conversations and talk about it. And it was, you know, one of the things that came up was, I brought it up. That people don't think enough about bootstrapping as a point of pride. They often think about, Hey, I'm successful if I get to a raise. My comment was, look,

Jim Haviland (12:01.822)
Yeah.

Jim Haviland (12:06.124)
Yeah.

Kris Snyder (12:29.63)
I think there's so much more pride as a founder, further you can get without a series A or series B, the better off you are. I used our example at 90, right? Like we got to series A, bootstrapping it up, know, we pulled in customers, pulled in employees, right? Like we pulled in people to figure out how to take equity over cash to bootstrap to that place. And we did our series A, was $100 million pre -evaluation.

Jim Haviland (12:38.88)
Yes.

Jim Haviland (12:45.001)
Yeah.

Jim Haviland (12:55.168)
Yeah, a hundred million dollars at at, at, Pree. then, and, and think about what that does for all the people you got to choose as part of your stake, your stakeholder group in that, in that group, right? So that's, you you're, you're, all those people get to benefit from, from being part of that. And, and that's, and that's a great story to able to tell. And, and those are the people that really want you to win anyway. So you want that energy in the beginning, which you don't want is having a VC that doesn't care about you that much. Nothing against VCs. They're an important part of the ecosystem, but they don't necessarily, they're not paid to take care of. you

They're not paid to be your best friend. They need you to make money for them.

Kris Snyder (13:29.064)
Yep, they're just optimizing outcomes in this moment. So, yep, excited about that panel.

Jim Haviland (13:34.511)
That sounds good. then Best of Tech, we'll call it this one. We got that on the 24th of September. we're end of the summer, Kris. We're going back into networking in a heavy way. And the great thing about Best of Tech, we got a bunch of people to call out. Tech CEO of the year, Joshua Edmonds is up for that one. Chief executive officer of Digital C, he's been on the show. His show just recently played. That's a great one. Health Tech of the year for MetaView VXR, also been on the show.

Kris Snyder (13:56.082)
That's great.

Jim Haviland (14:02.466)
excited about that one. A couple of your clients, Fit Technologies and TRG have been the best IT services companies that are on the list there. So you got a good chance of winning by proxy in that one. And then our own Jeffrey Stern is up for the Community Impact Award for Lay of the Land. I think we'll have to call it there. We don't have time to go into your flywheel, but we have at some point we want to hear about the community flywheel as you envision it and how that all fits in.

Kris Snyder (14:29.158)
Well, I think you just you just talked about it. All the great work, right? People do come in together. So awesome.

Jim Haviland (14:31.884)
Right.

Yeah, man. That's exactly right. we'll good. So go out, watch number 180 Kris and anything else we got, got to cover this week.

Kris Snyder (14:44.4)
I mean, I think that's a wrap.

Jim Haviland (14:46.144)
All right, we'll get to it, my friends. Sign up for those things. All of the links will be in the show notes and we'll see you next week. Bye, Kris.

Kris Snyder (14:53.426)
right, Jim.