A Raw Week Scaling My Ecom Agency Past $250k/mo (team problems)

Everyone is trying to steal our employees. This week as a 7-figure agency founder has been stressful. That's why we exist. Wanted to call you and formally extend an offer to you. I— Oh, I'm so excited! So what's happening this week? It's kind of a shit show on the people operations side. We had 2 people leave the company in the last week. Which is part of the game. But, you know, losing a couple of people in tandem with hiring for 5 roles at once. The biggest thing that I've learned over the last 2 years is that you need to nail hiring and people. That is the biggest unlock to scale any business. Like, you need A-players and you constantly need to be recruiting and always looking because you just never know when moments like this happen. We're currently in a place where we're turning away business because we've hit capacity, because we don't have bandwidth, which on one hand, it's like, oh, that's so exciting. There's so much demand to work with you. But on the other hand, like, it blows. The go-to-market person. So I feel like my full focus right now is on all things recruiting, people ops, reference calls, hiring, etc. That is the, the main goal for the week. But a lot of other things happening. Have a couple workouts, investors, have the Forbes 30 Under 30 event and have a ton of meetings over the next couple of days. So it's basically just balancing figuring out this people bottleneck while just the daily life of building Platter. We are currently about to go to my buddy's house in the West Village. Village because I'm about to film the reflection video from the meditation retreat that I did, and I wanted to do it in a cozy vibe with a fireplace, and he's the only person I know in Manhattan who has a fireplace. So I'm gonna go over there and film this video. All this to just go sit in one spot and film a stationary video. Worth it. Crazy experience. What was your reaction when Elliot told you that he was leaving? When our director of growth told me a few weeks ago that he was leaving Platter at the end of the month, I think my initial reaction was, I'm not surprised at all. I'm excited for him, but it's bittersweet. I think one of the things you learn about startups is that a week in a startup is like a month or a year in a large corporation because things evolved so quickly. And so all because you join a business and have a role doesn't mean that things might not change, or you can either grow out of the role or the direction of the business goes in a different direction than maybe you thought it was going to originally. And I think it's something that Elliot and I had talked about several times in terms of what he wanted for his career, the opportunity to manage a large team, to have a huge budget, etc. Not necessarily things we could give him in the current state with the trajectory of the business. And so when he found a new opportunity, it was very bittersweet. You know, he was my, my real right-hand man for several years building Platter in the early days. He did so much good for the business. So for him to leave, it wasn't an easy conversation. I think in terms of the transition, you know, you have no choice but to figure it out. And I think we'll be, we'll be okay. But it's important to acknowledge that when things like this happen, it pushes you outside your comfort zone because you have someone who you trust who took over a big chunk of responsibility within the business and you have to reinvent kind of how you guys do things. But it's just another bump in the road that you continue to learn and grow from. And what was that conversation like with Cam when he sent you that text message? Yeah, a day or two later after Elliot left the business, I got a message from Cam that says, yo, let's talk. And it was like ambiguous. And I responded immediately. I was like, all right, what is it about? I'm not like waiting till tomorrow. And all I could think to myself was, fuck, here we go again. And I got on the phone with Cam and he was telling me how he got an offer from another company, which I've realized when a lot of your team members are getting offers from other companies, it's actually in a lot of ways a reflection of you guys doing good work because people see what you do and they want to take your people to basically replicate that. And there was no moment in time that he was actually going to leave the company. And with Elliot leaving, we were able to give him a promotion, which is awesome because it's so well-deserving for him. Ultimately, I think the business is in a very healthy spot. And while there's a couple bumps in the road right now from like a personnel perspective with trying to fill new roles and dealing with some departures, I think it's nothing we haven't seen before. And I'm still very happy with how the business will end in 2025. And I told the story like 10 times, and I was like, you know what, I'm just going to film a video about my experience, and if people want to know about it, it's like a more scalable solution. What's happening now? What part of, uh, CEO life is this? Waiting for a Lyft and checking all my notifications since I haven't been on my phone in an hour and a half. Shopify released like the craziest product update yesterday. So much shit. Yeah, it was the biggest update I've ever seen, I think. I mean, the other ironic part about this is like, you know how many people won't even see this update for like 3 months or never because they don't pay attention? What's up guys, it is 7 o'clock in the morning. I actually had this investor reach out to me a couple weeks ago who was following my boxing journey, and he asked me if I wanted to host an investor boxing class with Platter. So excited to meet a couple new investors and see how this goes. I'm ripping the subway uptown to the boxing event, but I was thinking about how great it is to just be able to expand my investor network because I posted some videos on the internet. So this investor wants to be able to host an event and bring his network together, which ultimately will, I hope, lead to more deal flow for Platter. This is just like a great example of expanding your network to build top of funnel. This is like best case scenario if you think about it. I basically was asked to I co-host a boxing class where I get to do my favorite workout and meet a bunch of new investors who invest in consumer brands to send me more deals for Platter. Can't think of a better way to combine the two. So do I just get to fight a bunch of investors now? Let's go. Craziest thing I've ever seen, to get 3 people to hit one twos at the same time. Yo, hey, we just finished up this founder's workout. Shout out Ben and Platter, Richie and IACap. This is a great workout. That is the most natural you're going to get for most of them. Great exercise, great workout. Looking forward to seeing you guys soon. Peace. I'm about to jump on a call with our fractional CFO to see how the books closed out in the month of November. I think we kind of crushed it. Obviously, I've talked about the people and the hiring challenges we're having, but I feel like there's typically a delayed effect with those. But I have to imagine that I'm probably going to be pleased with what we hear, but never know. So going to see what he has in store for us. I noticed this last month, things are picking up. Yeah. What's up, Kaelin? What, you got some good news for me? Things are picking up? Well, based on the retainer sheet that Mike keeps updated, it seems like Q1, if things launch accordingly, it's going to be a good quarter for us. That's the goal. Sup, dog? What's good, bro? Yo, so I interviewed the girl yesterday and we were talking about like her goals for her company, like her big-ass calendar. And I'm like, What do you guys use? She's like, Shopify. I'm like, yo, you need to connect with Ben. And she's like, this Ben? It was pretty funny. Got to be everywhere, always. Is it cool, bro? You guys are good. Yeah, we're getting coffee on Monday. Nice. Yeah, because I had another buddy who's good friends with her, like, make a comment to her because their website could use work. And she was like, we actually have a really good conversion rate. So I was like, you know what? Like, I'll just put something together regardless, because even if it's good, like, there's still opportunity to make it even better. It's kind of the point. Honestly, they have 50 people and they're doing like $500 million in revenue. It's a bigger business. Yeah. I'm not surprised. That is the most prime example of the like go-to-market sales motion that I've always tried to implement. Like, you listen to that. I got connected to this girl Taylor yesterday, actually, by my homie Chad. He put me in a group chat with her. She runs a pretty big business called The Big Ass Calendar for Jesse Itzler. And I've been wanting to meet her because we have a ton of mutuals. And I also think that website has a ton of opportunity for improvement. So he put me in a group chat with her, and then she responded a little bit later because she was filming a podcast. And coincidentally, it was a podcast that I went on last week. And at the end of the call, or at the end of the podcast, my buddy Zach, who I just got off the phone with, who is the podcast host, said to Taylor, yo, you should meet my friend Ben, who works in the Shopify ecosystem. And she was like, oh, this Ben? And like, it was just, uh, a picture of the group chat that I got put in with her by Chad. So it's like when you attack these relationships from multiple angles, all of a sudden these people will take you more seriously because it gives you credibility. So it's just, it's all optics, it's all leverage. And I'm meeting with Taylor on Monday, so hopefully we can build some sort of relationship out of it. Hey Sebastian, how are you? Doing good, man. How are you? I'm good. All right, well guys, here we have Tali as well. Tali is our dedicated recruiter, so she is our expert in graphic designers, video editors, UX/UI. So she is the one that is going to be finding your absolute rock star. Okay, we need it desperately. Uh, but perfect world, it's like we don't have to talk to them until we know they actually have the skills. Julia said no more meetings. Well, you're on camera right now because we're vlogging today. Tell the camera how you don't like meetings on your days off. When Julia doesn't have work, she doesn't believe that I should be doing meetings because I should be hanging out with her. You have to make a lot of money. I have to make a lot of money. This is how we get work done. This is Julia's mom. Oh, Bono wants to join. Oh yeah, it's the three of us. We're a three-person organization. First it was a kickoff process for a new recruiter to help us with the designer, and now we're on to reference calls. I think we got our guy for a new role, but I have two more reference calls this afternoon, and then hopefully hopefully extending an offer by the end of the week. Jonathan, what's going on, man? Hey, not much. How's it going? It's going well. I appreciate you jumping on today. His technical assessment was bananas. Yeah. And he just figured that shit out on his own, man. Like YouTube videos. Yeah, no, he sent us like pages and pages and pages of like information. My co-founder was blown away by it. That is a thumbs up for this guy, I think. Well, yeah, look, would love to— would love to learn a little bit more about your experience with— and just run through a couple of questions from there if that works for you. Got it. And then is there something that you haven't told me that you think I should know or a question that I should ask that I haven't? Yeah. Are you guys hiring as well for project managers? The answer is actually yes. Okay. I like where this is going. We actually have one that we are likely extending an offer to tomorrow, but we are— it's something that's being Yeah, but no, but the, the team is, the team is growing, so it's, it's definitely worth— I mean, I obviously haven't looked into your background too extensively. No, no, no, no, dude, this— you're not the— you know what, I've, I do so many interviews and so many reference calls, you can only imagine where some of these conversations go. It's very, it's actually very normal for this to happen. Shoot me over a note on email when we, when we hop off and we can We can open up a separate thread. That is absolutely hilarious. You get to see the behind the scenes of these conversations where I jump on the phone to interview a reference about a candidate and then the guy's like, wait, can I also apply for a job? I haven't actually looked at his background or anything, but ironically enough, we are hiring for that role. So this might be two birds with one stone. After talking to his references, after talking to him, based on his skill set, based on the feedback I got from them, it would be silly to not take the option call and give him a shot because I don't think we have anyone in the organization with his level of knowledge. And I think that it could drastically level up like the sophistication that we can provide to like these brands from like a CRO perspective. What's up, man? It's Ben from Plowder. How are you? Fabulous. How are you doing, sir? I'm doing well. I had a chance to chat with all 3 of your references. And I wanted to call you to see when you want to get started. And I can, you know, I can formally put that all together and get that over to you. I just prefer to deliver the news via phone call versus over email that we wanted to formally extend you an offer. The best part of the day when meetings are done, it's time to lock in for a few hours of work and then heading to the Forbes 30 Under 30 celebration dinner tonight to hang out with some of the homies. I'm currently on my way to the Forbes 30 Under 30 celebration event. While I've been walking, I was just thinking to myself about how manifesting something is very underrated. Like, I talked about this online a little bit, but I wrote down in my goals for my 20s decade, uh, in 2020, that getting on the Forbes 30 Under 30 list was a goal of mine. And I think it's important to celebrate the little wins along the way, to just like remind yourself that enjoying that process is very important. And as I walk to this event, I'm just thinking about how I literally told myself 5 years ago that this was a singular goal that I had. And I also knew that in order to achieve that goal, you need to build something that's meaningful and impactful. And I wrote this goal down when I still had a job. I didn't start a company yet. I think that's just a reminder that you need to just have a tenacity for life and just fucking go all in and go after the things that you want because nobody is going to do it for you. This is my friend Zach. He's equally as cool because he also got Forbes this year. The rule is that you go to a networking event, you need to meet at least one person in your industry. And I met a brand founder, so we can call it a successful day. Okay, we're both former software engineers, and when we started our company, we wanted to build our own website, but the tech space was just got too crazy. And then we hired this partner, and they're getting really good with the —looks like when you're coughing and spitting throughout, it's a dollar. And then parking and everything was a disaster, so finding a chargeable outlet outside was like really— That's why we exist. What an awesome night. 12 out of 10 people, really amazing. Some of the most extraordinary individuals building really awesome companies. Super inspirational. Time to go to the after party. Walking home from the Forbes Under 30 afterparty right now, and I wanted to share one thing that happened tonight, which was I had two different brand founders come up to me in a room of hundreds of people, and they're like, yo, are you Ben Sharf? I've been following your content online, like, I'd love to talk to you about our brand. That's still crazy to me to this day. Like, I have, I don't know, 200 subscribers on YouTube and a couple thousand followers on Instagram. This is your reminder: the vanity metrics do not matter as long as you are getting in front of the right people and resonating with with the right people. Like, I started laughing to myself when this dude was looking at me strange, and I was thinking, can I help you? And he walks over to me, he's like, yo, are you Ben? I was like, yeah, what's up? He goes, dude, I love your content. This is the brand we're building, like, handed me a product of his. It's what it's all about, man. As I walk home at 11 PM from this event, you know, not only am I grateful to have been able to participate in it, but for little things like that to happen, I feel like those are the signs along the way that you're on the right path and you just have to keep going. Yeah, that's the message. But clocking out for tonight, so we will see you guys tomorrow. I brought you one of our new, uh, products. Fuck yeah! I mean, you got good flow, but it's for hair growth. Wow, red light! Wait, I've never seen this before. Yeah, yeah, so it's great for like hair growth. Like, um, look at this. She's like, what is that? I want it. Yeah, I'm in. Wait, that's so interesting. How long are you supposed to wear it for? It's like 10 minutes per day. Let me morning, whenever you have time, just throw it on. I know this is before turkey. Oh, it's before turkey. This is like the natural way, not the artificial way. Non-invasive. Uh, no, but I'm saying like, is it something that someone like that should still be wearing, or it's less impactful because they already did the— like, I think probably it helps. Um, when did you launch this? It's not even launched yet. Really? Like, yeah, this is like not even launched product. Probably gonna launch it. And where's the port to Are you the first one to do this? One of the first, yeah. Yeah, it's kind of— there's a few companies do it, but yeah, it's going to take 2 years to develop this bad boy. Uh, all right, you want to go on the saw? Yeah, let's do it. What a day, boys! What? Look at the fucking view! Unreal. Good to meet you. Likewise. That's pretty much it. Enjoy your travels. Yeah, let's see what happens to my hair. Yeah, I know. I mean, I'm sure you can relate now with the size of your team. You're probably at meetings all fucking day. Yeah. Is it 35 full-time? Some are agency workers, but like basically like full-time. They work hard. Yeah, yeah, awesome. Yeah, so, um, yeah, we should We just, we have a new site, but we should chat about it. You guys should look at our site. I will. And we can chat, yeah. We have a bunch of really cool like CRO stuff that we're, like programs that we're building out right now. Okay. That I'll show you, I'll send to you in January. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, we can talk. Okay, sick, yeah, yeah. Let's chat. Cool. I wanna, I wanna just see my site though. It looks, I think it's decent. We did it overseas, but yeah, you know. I'll give you the unfiltered, What a time to be alive. Why? Just get to do cool shit for a living. It's fun. I think there's so many jobs out there that just suck. To meet cool people and build cool things. I don't know, I feel like everyone should do that. Do something that makes you happy. Why the fuck would you spend your life like doing something that you dread waking up doing every day? It makes no sense. People like complain about it. It's like, just change it. You just gotta work a little bit harder. Um, I have to jump on this call. It's a strategy alignment call with one of the recruiters to make sure they know exactly what we want for a certain role. So my director of design is jumping on this call to walk them through it. When I'm hiring, I'm hiring personality first. Um, you know, it could be the best designer in the world, if the personality is not right, then all the knowledge falls apart. I mean, that makes no sense to me. Personality-wise, person needs to be proactive, to help out each other, something like that. Dude, why is it every time we like start to finally get momentum and progress and we get like really good leaders in place and then this shit just like— I, dude, I can't imagine other companies of our size have dealt with the same number of critical health issues. Critical health issues. Yeah, like, like, like, like life or death type shit. Uh, progress. Is it progress? It's like one step forward, two steps back. What just happened? It's like I'm going to extend an offer to someone today, and I have reference calls for another person that we want to hopefully extend an offer to, but we just found out that someone in our company just got back a really bad medical report that I don't want to disclose more information on camera about. Um, a very important person in the company. So it feels like every time we're making progress, one step forward, it's a punch in the stomach. We're basically waiting for more medical results to come back to like figure out what's going to happen, but it's you know, some things are going in this direction and then others are going in this direction. And I feel like it's— this is a very good example of what these— what the reality of these situations actually look like. And you don't see a lot of this online. I'm excited about the new people that we're hiring, but I'm also like nervous and worried and concerned about the other situation that's going on. We'll see how it plays out. Of course. Where are you calling in from? Is there one project that you're most proud of that's publicly available? Dude, this was the project she said she's most proud of. Like, I don't want to sit here and badmouth people. It's more just like it gives you perspective, I guess, on like the bar for success, or at least how you track that. Someone might find this interesting, but there's levels to this game, I guess. But now I have a call with a new hire who started last week, and then I have a couple reference calls about potentially extending another offer. So we are absolutely on the hiring train right now. Time for another new employee onboarding call. He joined as a developer last week, and I'm just doing a quick check-in call to see how things are going for him so far since he joined Platter. Alex, what's up, man? What's up? How's your day going? Good. How are you? Great. Also just going through all of my onboarding, but yeah. Yeah. Aside from that, like, what tips do you have for me? It's very, it's very important that you feel comfortable questioning things, right? Like, I think oftentimes people assume that all because you're in a startup or like when you're in a startup, like all because someone told you one thing, like that is the truth and that's the way it should be. But like when you're a small company, like people need to be open-minded to hearing different perspectives for you to be able to push back on. Like, we should maybe think about doing it this way instead of that way. Obviously, there's like ways to go about communicating that. But I think it's very important that people understand in a small company like this that you're not going to have the same red tape that you have at a large corporation. So you can feel comfortable, like really voicing your opinion and stepping up and making an impact and like helping people. Right? Like there's people in this company that have just taken on much larger roles than we would have ever imagined because they've figured out that there's opportunities to just add value in ways that other people maybe didn't understand or didn't see. Of course. Yeah. So being open in communication in general. Yeah, it's important. It's— look, it's a fast-moving environment. Things that are evolving all the time. Like, you shouldn't be afraid to lend your knowledge and your expertise to everyone else, right? Like, we wouldn't hire someone if we didn't think they were exceptional at the work that they do. Got it. Awesome. We're stoked to have you on the team. And if you have any other questions, don't hesitate to reach out. I have two more reference calls to cap off the week where basically with every candidate that we want to extend an offer to, we ask them to provide 3 references. Ideally, it's someone who they reported to, someone who reported to them, and a peer where I can ask a bunch of questions to really try to get to the bottom of the type of person they are, the areas of improvement they might have, and then ways that we can set them up for success. And assuming there's no red flags in these 2 calls, going to finish the week with extending a second offer for another role. Hello? Hey Carly, this is Ben from Platter Calling. How are you? You know, giving her the tools that she needs to learn and to learn how to best, you know, complete her job function. Hello? Hi Amanda, this is Ben from Platter Calling. How are you? Last call of the week. This is it. Way too many calls this week. And then what? How much are you looking to make in the next role from a comp perspective? Are you just gonna like pick a number? No, no, we have, we have it projected in the model, which is— Okay, so what's about to happen right now? I'm about to call this girl and offer her a job at Platter, and she better take it because we need her. You want to do it, Trill? Yeah. You crushed your job interview process. I'm, uh, Ben Sharf's girlfriend, and We want to pay you. Do you want the money? All right. Hello? I had a chance to speak with your references. It's been a crazy, crazy week, but I wanted to call you and formally extend an offer to you. I will follow up an email likely on Monday with more details, but we're basically able to do add, which is the salary for this role across the org, like the project manager role. Um, oh, amazing. Okay, that's great. I, I mean, I'm so excited and thank you so much. Um, I have, I mean, I have a bunch of questions, but like, if you want, I could save them. Hit me, I'm all ears. No, no, feel free, fire away. Okay, well, I'm really excited about this and thank you so much. What a great way to start Of course. How does that feel? It's the little things like calling her at 4:30 on a Friday instead of a Monday morning. You heard her say it herself, she's like, that's such a good way to end the week. It's good. We're building brick by brick. Okay. I actually think that girl's going to crush it. To be good at that role, it's— you just need to be someone who's empathetic, who's a very good communicator. Who can critically think about problems, and I feel like I've interviewed enough people in that position before that when you meet her, you like, after talking to her, I'm like, this girl will absolutely crush it. So what's the reflection for the end of the week? The reflection for the end of the week is I'm cooked. But like, did you, how did you solve the hiring problem? I mean, like, what's the reflection? What's the whole situation now? I feel like I have to put my full attention into this right now. It's like we brought on a couple more recruiters. We extended offers to 2 new positions. No, we brought on 3 new recruiters, 2 focusing on designers, 1 focusing on engineers. We extended 2 more offers this week to people that will hopefully sign early next week and then start in a couple of weeks. And we're also facing challenges with existing team members about, you know, problems I had mentioned regarding competitors sending offers, people having health problems. It's just as your team scales and you have more team members, it just increases the number of people, which increases the probability that things will happen. I mean, it's not really any different than standard startup problems, but the goal of this video is to show you guys a behind the scenes of what the day-to-day looks like instead of you just seeing all the posts of people celebrating these massive wins as if everything is perfect all the time, because that is far from the truth. I'm really happy with the progress we made on the people front. I mean, extending two offers on a Friday afternoon is huge. And we have a couple other candidates we're excited about. I think the designer role is the one thing that's still keeping me up at night, but we're all hands on deck to try to solve that. But it's just another week in building. It's, it's like the nature of the game. It's ups and downs. We are going to continue to do a lot of the same things we're doing, which is sourcing candidates from many different places and ultimately trying to identify people that we think people fit in with our culture and have the skill set that we need to ultimately unlock the opportunity to sign more deals and grow the top line of the business. Yeah, I mean, the nature of the business is every time we hit a new inflection point, we have to hire a new set of people to unlock capacity to sign more revenue. So the team will continue to scale. But I think the biggest thing is, is the business continues to grow. At some point, we will bring on folks that are full-time on recruiting and hiring. But with any other part of the business, as a as a founder, it's your responsibility to build out a business unit and an operation until it gets to a point where it's a bad use of your time. And so this is a great example of you watching it unfold in real time as I'm now playing recruiter to try to just bring people on board. But look, I hope you enjoyed this video. It shows you the truth behind what a day-to-day looks like beyond just the, the post celebrating the big wins on the internet. I'm absolutely cooked from this week, honestly. I think a lot of good happened, but I'm excited to disconnect tomorrow, and I hope to see you guys back next week. Peace!