Episode 338: How To Hire with CareerPlug Founder + CEO Clint Smith

Welcome to another episode of the Above the Business podcast. My name is Bradley Hamner, your host. On today's episode, we have Clint Smith. He is the CEO and founder of CareerPlug. Many of you that listen to this, I know, use CareerPlug. So we've been wanting to get Clint on. He just released his newest book, How to Hire. We dive into all things about that and also just some best practices around team recruitment. I know many of you are wanting to be in— begin to be— begin, uh, sorry, let me fix that. I know many of you are either adding team members, have had some turnover potentially, or just wanting to scale your organization. And we talk about team quite a bit, and I just don't think that there's too many times that we can discuss it because it is a complex subject and an important one if you're wanting to grow your business. I think you're going to get a ton out of this episode with Clint. Without further ado, what if you could step out of the day-to-day and see your business from a whole new perspective? Welcome to Above the Business, where we empower you to rise above the daily grind and embrace a higher way of business ownership. It's time to build your business by design.

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Clint Smith, welcome to the Above the Business Podcast.

Thank you. Great to be here.

Great to have you. Uh, been a long time coming. Um, I've been looking forward to this conversation for a while. So for those that maybe don't know you and know your journey, we always start with background and origin story. So why don't you just take us back and then bring us kind of to present day as to kind of your journey in business and where you are.

Yeah, sure. I got bit by the entrepreneur's bug when I was in college and I started a tutoring business. It was kind of a larger scale tutoring business to help kids get ready for an accounting, intro to accounting class. And there was something about it. It wasn't even, the money was great, but it was also just the fact that I was helping a lot of people. And I created something from nothing. And I knew from that point that I wanted to be an entrepreneur. I, after college, I worked in kind of the investment banking world for a little while, mainly because I wanted to save some money and get some real-world experience. And I feel like I packed about 6 or 7 years into 3 with all the hours I worked. But after that, instead of going back to business school, I went off and I was working on starting my business and it's kind of like grinding, trying to get something going and it didn't feel quite right. So I, I got a job as a teacher and I taught 5th grade for a year and I think allowed me to settle in a little bit and not put so much pressure on myself. And then while I was doing that, I met my wife to be, and then my business ideas started naturally coming together and fast forward a year or two and I, I started CareerPlug in, uh, 2007. One of my first clients was actually State Farm Insurance. The original business I had was a recruitment marketing type business. So instead of having jobs posted, you know, and you're waiting for applicants to come to you, we flipped the process upside down and we found candidates that we knew that State Farm wanted to talk to and we created a personalized microsite for each one and invited them to learn more and apply. And this was like right The timing was perfect. It was right around 2008, the Great Recession. And there were a lot of people who I think were like, oh, you know, I never saw myself being an insurance agent, but they had gotten laid off by corporate America or wherever else. And they said, yeah, you know, I'm going to, I'll give that a shot. So had a lot of success with that, but then I really had a yearning of helping smaller business owners with their hiring. I had gone through some, some hiring challenges myself during that process, trying to scale up. I hired some of the wrong people and I forced myself to work on my process and get better at it. And I did. And I was like, you know, I want to have software that small businesses can use. I wanted to switch from a service to software. And the opportunity came up actually with State Farm again. I spoke with some people. I think it was one of the recruiting leaders within one of the zones. It was back when you guys had zones. And he said that State Farm was going through a transformation and they were trying to get the agents from being like the rainmaker, main salesperson, to becoming more of a sales leader and hiring staff underneath them. But they didn't really know how to help them with that. So I came to them with a solution. And they, they, they supported, it took about a year to get it through all the approvals. But we launched that in 2012 and had a ton of success with State Farm and still do. And then since then, I've, I've expanded out into other organizations. We do a lot in franchising and other association type groups, but really our focus is helping small businesses with, with hiring. And over the course of that, you know, we've grown. And I went from me being the main employee to me being the only salesperson to now me trying to basically get out of everyone's way, you know, cast the vision and help and have people that are better than me at all these things go out there and execute.

Man, that's crazy. I didn't know actually some of those details around your story. So I do have to nibble around some of the things going back.

Oh yeah.

When did you— whenever you said you had a lot of entrepreneurial ideas, but when did you decide to go, like, what was that moment like when you said, I'm going all in and, you know, you left the teaching job and you said, okay, you know what, I actually think that this can be a full-time gig.

You know, I had been stewing, I had 3 ideas and they were all around the kind of career space. I was one of those guys that people came to, to ask for help with the resume or get some advice. And I had a couple of bad ideas before I got to a good one. My first one was like a resume writing service. And later on, I came up with this philosophy that said, you know, I want to be in a business that has recurring revenue and with people that have money.

Yeah.

Resume writing service violated both of those requirements. So that didn't go anywhere. These were mostly just ideas in my head. The second one was a an idea to show people what it was like to work at, at an office, like a, you know, bigger company. This was before YouTube was even around or LinkedIn. And that one got a little further along, but I spoke with some people, some HR leaders, and they're like, look, we really need help attracting applicants. Like this, what you've got is cool, you know, being able to show them what it's like, but we don't know what the return on investment like that's going to be. So that That's when I came up with CareerPlug and I was actually, I, I left the teaching job and I got a job in Austin. I, I moved to Austin because that's where my wife to be, uh, was from and she wanted to move back there. And, um, you know, I actually got pushed in the pool by, uh, I, I was working at a small age, uh, graphic design advertising agency and I wanted to get my feet wet in the small business world and see what that was like. And I helped her grow quite a bit, but she decided she wanted to shrink her business back down a little bit and get, and get back into the business a little more than she was. And frankly, she was a little too far out of the business. And she's like, look, I know you have this business idea. I'm gonna let you go. You need to go start it. And I was like really mad at her at first, but then, I don't know, I'm grateful. She, she, she pushed me in and it, it's amazing when you do that. It's like sink or swim. It's like, all right, get up, What are you going to do today? How are we going to make this happen? And it was like a chance encounter. I went to some networking event and I met someone who knew the local agency recruiter in Austin whose name is Ginger. And then she introduced me to her bosses, Brad and Trent, who were, you know, up in the Dallas area. And that's how, that's how things got going really.

No, that's great. Well, there is, there was that moment obviously that you burned the boats, right? You said, okay, well, Oh yeah, I think that's awesome.

That was it. And when I had moments of, um, despair, I would go online and this was back when it was mostly like Monster and CareerBuilder and I would sort of like look around and see, are there any jobs out here? But every time I kept doing that, I kept seeing how bad the job postings were and how poorly people were advertising and representing themselves. And it, it almost like steeled my conviction to say, hey, no, this is something that people really need. I can get out there and help people with that. So. Luckily, I didn't go out and apply for any of those jobs that I was kind of poking around looking at.

You know, there's this concept by Dan Sullivan, The Gap and the Gain, in that, that, you know, as we're as entrepreneurs, as the business is growing, we're constantly— our goals, so to speak, move with the horizon, like they're always constantly moving out. And he talks about like you got to stop and turn around and kind of see, see how far that you've come. Do you ever, do you ever try to do that because, I mean, you built a really substantial organization at this point and have had a lot of success. I'm sure even just in this week— we're recording this on Friday— there are probably things in the business that you were frustrated with and like, oh, you know, that's irritating, etc. But like, to look back on that, I mean, 2007, 2008, that's 16 years, which is a long period of time, but it's also not a, not a, uh, not very short either. That Man, you've come a long way. There's probably no way you could have foresaw at that moment in 2007, 2008 how far things would have gone.

No, it's funny. Uh, I remember when we hit a million in revenue and, um, I thought that was the end of the earth. Like, I was like looking over the edge. I was like, all right, we made it. Can't go any more than that, right? And, um, I had a mentor at the time, a guy named Mark Willis, who's actually the the CEO of Keller Williams, great guy. And he told me that if you want to attract great talent, you have to make your circle around you bigger to be able to fit their circles inside of it. So I had to think about that for a second. I was like, all right, because like this circle with a million in revenue was everything really that I had ever dreamed of and that I wanted. And it wasn't necessarily out of my, like, greed or ambition, like, personally to try to, like, you know, make so much more, do whatever else. But I was like, all right, I need to keep growing. And I, and now I've hired some talented people and they want to grow. So my motivation actually changed a little bit. And I was like, I need to grow for them and grow for the organization and grow for our clients to be able to continue to innovate and do things. So It was a, it was definitely a mindset shift kind of to go to that next level. But I do look back sometimes and it's, it's crazy. What, what we've been able to do. It's, it's really not me. You know, I, I got some things going, but from there I really just got the right people in the right seats and we, and we've run with it.

You know, that, that last comment right there, I just want to share. I read something. Recently that said that the business can actually grow beyond you. Like, it can actually grow beyond your own individual, you know, skill set if you get the right people in, you, you, you know, set up the right systems, etc. Last question on that, because I think this is of interest to me, but hopefully it will be for our audience too. And then we'll kind of dive into some other topics. But how do you hold both of those thoughts at the same time, which is this gratitude for where you are personally and where the business is. And at the same time, putting yourself where you're not the smartest person in the room. So for instance, let's just use that example you just gave. We had a million in revenue, $84,000 a month run rate. That was like at the, at the moment. Then you put yourself in an environment where people are making a million a month. Probably, right? Or whatever that is. And you've probably continued to do that. So how have you been able to balance both of those to, I'm going to continue to strive, we're going to continue to grow, and yet at the same time be grateful for where you are and where the business is? Does that make sense?

Yeah. People. I need to make an effort sometimes to really give gratitude to people because I don't always need it, a ton of it myself. And I, you have to give people what they need. So that's, so that's one thing there. But like, for me, I, you know, I've always been I've always been someone that looks forward and looks about growing, hung up in the money part of like, hey, it's easy to get caught up in that game. But if you think about growth in a healthy way and your approach to growth isn't just about, you know, the next dollar or whatever else, but it's about reaching your potential. That's how I've been able to balance it. And really, you know, like our mission within our company, to empower people to reach their potential. And we talk about that internally and for our clients and their team members as well. So that's really what drives us is if I think if you have something that, that's, that's about more than just the revenue, that's when, that's the best way I think to strike a balance between the two.

That makes sense. Well, I'm—

you—

this is actually a really good segue because you were talking about people and just how important people are.

Right.

And we'll get into your book in just a little bit, but I'm actually kind of curious around because you've been in the space of attracting and finding talent, helping small business owners to find great talent, keep the employees that they have, putting employees first, culture, all of those things. Here's my first question.

Okay.

What has been the same that you've seen since 2007, 2008? And if you want to go back even prior to that, um, what's been the same then as it is today? So I'm looking for kind of principles first, and then secondly, what has really fundamentally changed since then to 2024?

Okay. The thing that stayed the same is that like there there's been ups and downs in the employment market, right? And there's times where there's tons of applicants coming in and then there's times where it seems like you can't find anyone. But the, the thing that's always been the same is that the, the best people, the best talent that's out there, they've always got choices and you've got to be able to convince them on why they should join you. There, there are gonna be times where it's gonna be easier to get more people in the door, but if you really want the best people, you've got to be able to tell a story. You've got to be able to have a culture and something that really attracts them. That, that I'd say, you know, we can get into like the how and some of the aspects of that. But on the other side of it, what's changed a lot, man, the speed at which things operate, right? Is what I would say. Like back, back then, you know, in 2011, 2012, it might have been okay to wait a few days before you got back to someone, right? And then take them and then have a process that could take a week or two to run through. Things operate so much more quickly now to where like if you don't, if you don't get back to someone within a day, within that day or two, like you're not, They may, you might as well, like, you know, tear up the resume, you know, or delete it. It's, it's just chances are they're already going to be off doing something else. It's just the, the game operates a lot faster now. So you need, um, you need to be on top of it more and you need tools that give you an advantage.

Do you also think, before we hit recording, like, you're in Costa Rica, I'm in Alabama, uh, Lauren was in, uh, Austin, I believe. And so remote has obviously changed a lot too.

For sure.

How have you seen that both be a great thing and a competitive advantage, but also at the same time, some challenges possibly both for, and maybe let's just actually speak about it from the challenges and the opportunities from the employer side.

Yeah. So we, a little bit about us there and kind of where we are today, you know, when COVID happened, we went remote just like everyone else did, right? But we were already flirting around with hiring people from outside of, so we were based in Austin and Austin has become like the new, you know, the second tech hub after Silicon Valley. So all these places were opening up shop in Austin and hiring basically every engineer or product type person around. So we were having a really hard time attracting people to our business. So we started hiring engineers from other places, you know, a guy from Louisiana or someone in Hawaii. And that was our first taste of it. But then when we went remote, I don't know, we adapted a philosophy. We were already allowing people to work from home a little bit like one day a week. And that really gave us some of the muscle that we needed to be able to transition into that COVID period. Pretty smoothly. And my team just loved it. And we started, we started hiring people from all over the country and we chose, we chose to fish from the bigger talent pond, you know, across the country. I hired a product leader from Indianapolis. There's no way this guy would have worked for us if he lived in Austin. No way. And we decided that that was, that was worth the trade-offs that come with having a decentralized workforce, which there certainly are some. You've, I'll say this, like if you're one of those people that has a hard time trusting others and if you're always wondering like, hey, what are these people doing? Are they working hard enough? Things like that. The remote setup is not going to be the best for you. Because you, and you know, like that's also a big part of like getting bigger. Like we have about 100 employees now. Like I can't keep track of what everyone's doing all the time and I have to like let go of some of that. But luckily we've put some systems in place that do help, you know, monitor that and give you a little bit of comfort. But, you know, the collaboration piece is something that you have to work on, right? I do think that it is harder to do that when you're not together in one room. We make it a point, like our leadership team, to get together in person once a quarter, and then we bring everyone at the company together for a big summit, you know, in the summer. I used to think we were going to save some money on rent, but, you know, it's, you know, we might save a little bit, but all in all, it's, you know, we do spend a lot on those types of things to kind of get people together. Yeah, it's overall, it's been great for us. And, you know, with me, we decided to go permanently remote. I always had a dream with my wife of living somewhere different and raising our kids in a smaller community outside of Austin. It wasn't necessarily Costa Rica. We looked around at a bunch of places, but Costa Rica just happened to be the one that we chose to kind of be part of a community here. We never really lived in a small town. And the remote first, the remote, you know, setup that we have allowed us to do that a lot earlier in life than we probably would have otherwise.

Yeah. This actually is, again, happens to be a good segue. I didn't know how we would get here, but I want to transition to culture. But before we do that, I'd love to draw a thread. Years ago, I hate to kind of admit this now, but it is true is that when someone either I was listening to a podcast or whatever, reading a book and somebody talked about culture, I'd kind of semi-roll my eyes and go, oh, here we go again, the culture thing. But the reality is it's kind of a real deal, right? It is a real deal. And I've seen that kind of play out in business and the— in life and in sports. And so, um, and other things. How have you been able— what are some things? And you just mentioned a couple of them. All right, we're going to get the leadership team together quarterly. Uh, we put some systems in place, um, to be able to kind of, you know, as an organization to scale to, you know, 100 people. And then we get everybody together once a year. But what are some other things that you all do maybe weekly that help with culture? And I'm kind of looking for like almost a tactic, so to speak, of something that you've integrated.

Okay. First of all, and this is a daily thing, we're really big on core values, right? We've defined our values. And we live them and we talk about them all the time. We begin every meeting reciting them. One thing that we do on a weekly basis, we hire, we hire for them, we fire for them, we promote for them, we recognize people for them. I'll talk about the one thing we do weekly for recognition is we have a Friday afternoon meeting company-wide. And there's, there's a couple of announcements where we celebrate work anniversaries and things like that. But, but it's really the, the meeting is set up for shoutouts. So someone will raise their hand and say, hey, I've got a shoutout for this person. I really want to recognize them for Speak Up, Step Up core value. Here's something that they did. Something wasn't working as well. And they, they, they said something about it. And now we've been able to improve that. And, and here's, you know, how things are so much better there. That, that is a real culture builder for us. And there have been some people who have been like, oh, we need to get rid of that meeting. We're too big now. It doesn't work. And you know what? No, we've stuck with it. It's, if you, if you calculate the number of people in the meeting and the time, yeah, it's, it's an expensive meeting, but like, you know, what's the price of your culture? Like that, that's one of the things that we do that's really important. And then another thing with recognition, when we get together for the summit, I started this a long time ago. We do, did you ever see that Office episode where they had the Dundies where he gave out the awards and they were at like a Chili's? It was kind of like a comical thing. You know, he was giving out these, these awards. Michael Scott was giving out awards to everyone. They were all kind of like tongue-in-cheek types of things. And we, we, we recreated something like that and we call it the Pluggies and, you know, career plug. And we, I took these, You know, like the plates that you put on a wall socket, you know, to go to kind of go around it. I bought a bunch of those plates at Home Depot and would just write awards out for people and I'd give them to everyone every year. And it was, it was, you know, comical stuff. And we still do that to this day. I don't, I no longer write all the jokes or give out all the awards, but we have like each manager will do that. And That's just something that we've been able to carry on a lot longer than I originally thought. It's, uh, and that's, that's again, all of that stuff ties back to like recognition, but then also just having fun together.

That is awesome. That is a great answer. I love like when we take a big concept, like a culture, and then say like, okay, well, I, I get that. Give us some examples specifically. That was such a fantastic thing because people can do that. You can do that. And, and, uh, you can, you can begin to architect. That's kind of language I'd use. Architect that into your culture and say, no, it's worth doing this 15 to 30 minute meeting and then really embedding the core values. Because, you know, the first thing that I did, the first time I ever tried to create core values, number one, I think I created like 15 of them. I couldn't remember them all. So that was a big mistake. And the other thing is I had this one big meeting thinking it was going to do like that was going to be it and we're going to plaster it on the wall. And the reality is it takes, as you said, like daily and weekly talking about them before it really gets embedded over a long period of time.

You gotta live them. And I, I talk about this in the book, Bradley. You've got, uh, we started out with like 7 and it was too many and we narrowed it down to 4 because my requirement was in order to hire someone, in order, like the way we measure culture fit is that, that they check the box on all the core values. And what we found was, you know, when we had 6 or 7, It was too many. They're, you know, what, what usually happens, oh, they've got 5, 5 out of, they've got 5 of them, right? No, they've gotta have all of them. And for us, the sweet spot was having 4. So we'd be kind, speak up, step up, keep growing, and work together, win together. Those are our 4. They're memorable. And we, we talk about them all the time. And it's, it's one of those things you hear about. It's like, when they're sick of hearing it is when it's finally starting to sink in. Like, it's not like you've got to find a way to do it that's not just saying them all the time. Like, you've got to incorporate it into everything. Like, we've got hiring scorecards. So it's like, hey, do they check the box on these things? When we do our quarterly reviews, those are, those are on there. Hey, are you living these values? We talk about the recognition that we do each week. That's in there. Like, they're We talk about it at the beginning of every meeting. You've got to just put some mechanisms in place to where it naturally happens, not just when you're around, when the boss is around, like everyone is. It's just part of the, part of the culture that you're talking about that. And I'll talk about one other aspect of culture, a definition I heard recently that kind of made me say, hmm, this guy said culture is the worst. Your culture is the worst behavior that you tolerate.

Wow. That's great. Right? Wow.

It makes me think for a second. That's the, if, if that's not a look in the mirror type of moment, then I don't know what is. And, um, I, I encourage all of you to think about that and say, okay, what, what are you tolerating? You know, who's that person on your team who's maybe a high performer, but, um, is just kind of a jerk. Um, you know, that, that's, that's a common, um, situation. But you've got to, you've got to really, you got to live the values. You can't just say it, say, oh, we want all these things, right? Like, I think Enron had like trust and integrity as some of their core values, but then it turned out the whole thing was a big lie, right? You've actually got to live them every day or else it's almost, you're better off just kind of putting things that are really what you're all about, right? If you're all about money, you know, But something about that, and don't try to act like it's something different.

So that actually really, I'm gonna take that and I'm gonna flip it the other way because I'm actually curious about this now. So let's say one of the things that you mentioned earlier about what has really changed is the speed in which, you know, you're the best talent that you're gonna want to find has options. You said that that is something that hasn't changed, but the speed in which people are looking absolutely has changed. And so if you let that resume sit for 3 or 4 days, you can pretty much chunk it if they're a top quality candidate. Okay. So with that, if we think about, and again, you may have a comment on this, on the number of steps in your entire recruiting system. Okay. So let me just say that from the time that you get a resume until the time you make an offer, all of that is maybe 10 interactions. Again, roughly, I'm just giving an idea. How do you then share with accurately a candidate who is just interacting with you and your organization for the first time in those limited interactions, give them a taste of what your culture is all about? So it's one thing for you to be— obviously we just talked about it from the perspective of I need to make sure Clint checks all the boxes of our core values. We are searching to see, do they live these things out? Do they already have these? Okay, that makes sense. How do we do it the other way? So I can show Clint, hey, we have a culture of fun, but a culture of accountability and a culture of success and a culture of all of these type of things that we— whatever that is that you want. How do you actually do that in the interview process?

Okay, what we do, uh, it's a great question. First, we try to put some of it on our careers page, right? And so that's kind of the level 1, uh, is, is having some information there. Now, I know some of your listeners are State Farm agents that work with us, and there are some limitations to how much stuff you can put on that page because, um, of what State Farm has. What I would recommend is this step 2. Before someone comes in for the interview, send them some information. So what we do is I have a vision that I've written out. There's a, there's a book called Vivid Vision by Cameron Herald, and I really, I'm sure you know about it, but I, that was sort of the model that I used to create my first version of it. Since then, I've tweaked it since then. But I send that to the candidates. I want to say, hey, here's what I'm trying to accomplish. Here's where we want to go. And then I include some stuff about our core values and things like that in there too. And then it's a nice test because you give them a taste of that, but then you see how they come in and react to it. Like when it's time, make sure you give them time to ask questions. Don't, don't go all the way up to the last minute and give them a good, at least 20% of the interview or more to ask questions. See what they come back with you. See what they, see what they talk about. See how they reference some of those things in the answer. If you're looking for a salesperson, right? And you've already given them some information about what your needs are. How do they turn that into something where they sell you on how, how they're going to help you get where you want to go? Because that's really what, you know, a lot of what sales is about. So like you're, you're basically giving them some stuff that will be a test. And, you know, it actually should be a weed out for a lot of people too, right? It shouldn't try to attract everyone. If it's attracting everyone, if everyone wants to be part of it, then you're not being specific enough and you're not, maybe you're not being realistic about some of the trade-offs and the things that, that might be involved.

Oh, that's great. Well, I really like Cameron. I've had him on the podcast. I'm a big fan of his work. Second in Command is a great book, but the one that's had the biggest impact on me is Vivid Vision for sure. Yeah, right.

It was a chapter in his first book or a double-double and then he You took it and wrote a whole book about it. And I was like, oh, that was, you know, I thought it was good.

Yeah.

Yeah. He's got good stuff. Um, okay. That makes sense. All right. So, um, I talked about this, but I'm going to ask it kind of directly. I know for many of my clients and members, they have openly expressed, and I was this person too. My recruiting system was whatever I decided I wanted it to be at the time. I was just completely winging everything. Every interaction was different. I was like, Oh, this would be a good idea. Let's do a Zoom call and then let's have them come in for a shadow day. But I'm not asking— I was never asking the same questions. It wasn't in the right system. There wasn't a template that I sent to get references. It was all over the place. And so I know many people, where do we start in actually creating a good system that we can reliably start to put things through? Which again, it's a really great tea up for your book, How to Hire.

Yeah, I lay a lot of it out in the book. But, you know, for me, I just think about like, if I got a blank piece of paper, I like to do these clarity breaks. It's something they talk about in the EOS Entrepreneur Operating System, kind of like spend, get away from everything and just get, I like to get a a legal pad and just go and just jot down my ideas. And I, you know, I'd say map out what you think the process should be, right? It's gotta work for you. And then get some resources, talk to some people. If you wanna read my book or talk to some other people who know a lot about hiring, talk to some other people who are in a similar business to you and learn about that. But just lay out the process and stick to it. Because first of all, it's going to make, it's going to keep you honest. It's, everyone has biases, right? You have someone say, yeah, they went to my alma mater. Oh man, they're going to be great. We can talk sports and do this. You know what? You may not be seeing a glaring spot on there that you would have caught otherwise if you would have stuck to the program and asked the right questions and asked consistently across the board. I would say that, that's the most important thing is just be consistent. And then also, if you ever, if you really do want to get above the business, right, and get out of the business, you want this thing to be able to work by when you remove yourself from the process. And you've got to be, if you even, even if you want to delegate part of it, right? Say, hey, I'll have, I'll have one of my senior people do the initial phone screen. Right. You've got to have the system set up for them to be able to do that. Otherwise, you're never going to get out of the game yourself. Hmm.

Yeah, that's true. Clint, I think we could end up, uh, just the way you talk, the things you hit on are right up my alley. We would end up making this a Joe Rogan 3-hour podcast.

I was thinking, man, I was like, I was like, we could go Rogan style with this.

Can I? We could totally go Rogan style.

Yeah.

Yeah, for sure. Like, I feel like I've got like a whole list of things I want to, I want to be able to chat with you about. Okay, well, we're going to have you back. I'll get in touch with Lauren. We'll get you back on because I got a lot of things I want to be able to touch on.

I'd love to do a part 2 sometime. That would be great.

Awesome. All right. People want to— I really do highly recommend people to pick up the book. I think you've just got amazing stuff. The company that you all have, have been able to build has helped so many people. You are a first-class organization. Obviously, it's very evident, um, the culture that you've been able to build. But where would people point them to if they want to connect, uh, pick up the book, obviously learn more about CareerPlug, how you guys help small business owners? Where would you point them to?

Yeah, so there's a— I think you're going to share a link in the notes here for a place where you can download our book, uh, my new book, How to Hire. Uh, you can get a free audio, uh, a free Kindle version, or, you know, it's, it's available on all the sites, Amazon, things like that. If you, if you're not using CareerPlug already, you know, we offer software that helps you with this entire process, right? And you talk about having all the steps and everything built out. It's there. You've got something you can use right out of the box, or if you want to tweak it and make it your own, you can do that as well. And the big thing, I think what's, what, where I've tried to differentiate our, us from other people out there is we, we, we employ, we employ and train hiring experts on our team. So like you'll have a partner you can work with that can consult with you, help you get your process set up, really give you some handholding to make sure and give you the confidence that you're doing it the right way. And you're typically not gonna get that if you're just going and buying some software from some other place. If you want to find me on LinkedIn, I'm also always able to help out and be a resource for you. And look, I've been there before. I know that it's the people piece is the toughest piece to get right when it comes to scaling. So if I can help out in any way, either through, you know, my company or personally, I'd love to do it. Awesome.

Clint, appreciate you. We're definitely doing a part 2.

Yeah, thanks, Bradley.

Appreciate you. Well, I tell you what, I really enjoyed that podcast with Clint. You know, I say that often, and, uh, but there are just some episodes I enjoy more than others. And I'm excited to be able to have Clint come back for a second episode. I think that we just scratched the surface, not only just on entrepreneurship but around team and recruiting and hiring. And it's a topic that we just discuss often. Obviously, we discuss it a lot with Alex whenever he comes on the podcast. But I think that there's just so many different angles to look at. And then also, you know, he's put a successful business himself helping other people to be able to recruit, hire, and, you know, retain, uh, A-players in the organization. So I love talking to Clint about, you know, what are the things that not only do they share people— share with other people to do, but also what are the things specifically that they do in their organization. So check them out. Go to How to hire.com, pick up his new book, and then go to, of course, CareerPlug. I mean, I know many of you already use that software and that service, but if you're not, go and check that out. As always, shout out to our podcast sponsors, Autopilot Recruiting, Coach P Consulting, Club Capital, and Today app. You know, maybe it's a perfect segue from the conversation from Clint over into Autopilot Recruiting. Autopilot, I know, works with and is very familiar with all the things at CareerPlug. And so if you want someone to be able to kind of help you even set some of those things up and then to be able to work through some of those processes, go to Autopilot, go to autopilotrecruiting.com and let them know that you heard about them on the Above the Business podcast. And of course, once it's time to bring those people on board and you want to train and develop them, you want to have a system and a process for doing that. By the way, systems and processes are very different things. Processes sit inside of systems, and our world systems sit inside of playbooks. But if you want help in knowing what are the processes, what are the scripts, what is the, even some of the mindset behind how to actually do things in your insurance agency, there's none better than David at Coach P. Go to coachpconsulting.com. Let him know that you've been listening. Hearing him and myself talk about him on the Above the Business podcast. As I record this, one of the tools that we just started implementing is kind of our project management and workflow tool specifically for Blueprint. And the reason I share that is because one of the things I really love about this tool is its interface and its interface. It's It's UI, um, it's beautiful to use, it's intuitive, it's easy. And I think you understand that yourself in the tools and the apps that you've used in your organization and even personally. Well, that's exactly the experience you'll get whenever you work with Today App. Go to todayapppro.com, todayapppro.com, if you want a place where your bonus your compensation plans, and even the word tracks that you use on a daily basis with customers to be able to close them, to work your pipeline, and be able to integrate that seamlessly with your CRM. Well, see, the perfect place to go is Today App. Go to todayapppro.com. Todayapppro.com. We're getting around time of this recording, but also the time of the drop is tax time. And for some of you, tax time is something that you know what's going to happen. You know where your taxes are going to be. But for some of you, it's an unknown. And maybe you look at it once a year, but you know that you should. It's one of those to-dos maybe that you have to be on top of your financials, but you just don't know where to start. Well, let me give you some— a suggestion. First place to start, go to club.capital, book a demo, talk to someone on the team if you haven't already, and begin to create a cadence and routine for looking at your financials on a monthly basis so you can get clean numbers and you can make better decisions throughout the year, but also understand what your tax liability or possible refund is going to be for that year. So it's not a guess. It's not a pie in the sky number. Go to club.capital.

Harder One.

Till next episode, lead well.