The Two Sides of Management | Jobsity COO, Santiago Castro (Podcast 225)

And the difference between managing managers and managing people, it's the difference between being a leader and being a manager. For me, when you manage people, I mean, you need a lot of skills. The most important thing on your work is track progress to keep people motivated. Like when you manage managers, you need more work in the inspiration side, in the mentoring side.

Today's Job City COO, Santiago Castro. With over 16 years of experience in the technology and software industry and 12 of those years at Job City, Santiago has performed a variety of roles including UX UI web designer, senior front end developer, technical project manager and account manager. Wearing all of these hats have provided him with a wide range of expertise and the ability to manage teams, create solutions and understand industry needs. Santiago is also an endeavor mentor to companies that are just starting and others that are scaling rapidly. At present, Santiago runs the operations department at Job City, creating a high level strategy for the company's success and leading a team of more than 400 professionals in their work on major projects for current and past clients like Zebra Technologies, Intuit USA Today, FreshBooks and McGraw Hill Education. And Santiago is calling in today from Ecuador. Santiago, welcome to the Second in Command podcast.

Hey Cameron, thanks for having me here.

Of course. How did you guys connect with FreshBooks?

I mean, so we have like different channels of, you know, of with our sales team. So with some of like our biggest clients, we reach them basically by referral. You know, we approach to tons of leads like every week, but. But most of the bigger clients are referrals from other biggest clients. So. And it's really interesting.

Well, the reason I even asked specifically about FreshBooks, I know that probably came right out of left field was I met the founder of FreshBooks, who's Canadian as well, at an event hosted by the Entrepreneurs Organization. I'm curious whether you and or your CEO are members of the Entrepreneurs Organization.

Yeah, actually. Well, my partner and CEO is part of the organization, so. But, but, but it's really interesting because yet, like I think he haven't met FreshBook CEO. So maybe they will meet someday soon.

Yeah, maybe it was like one degree of separation or something. Connected.

Exactly. That's cool. Exactly.

All right, so why don't you start off by telling us a little bit about what Job City is just for in case any of the listeners aren't clear on it. And then I want to go back into kind of what you got got you into the COO role because technology, there's not a lot of people that started really on the coding and IT side and kind of got into the COO role. It's a very different path. So tell us a little bit of Job City to start.

Sure. So yeah, Job City is a near shore IT stub augmentation firm. So, so basically what we do is we provide with developers, programmers or any role related to it to companies in the US in a step augmentation model. That means. Yeah, we place these developers or these engineers to our clients in the States and they work directly, like on the day to day with the clients and we take charge of everything else, you know, payroll, trainings, equipment and everything else. So it's basically stagnantation business.

Okay, and then where are you staffing from? Are you staffing all out of Ecuador? Are you staffing from around the world? Where does your talent come from?

Sure. So right now we staff from South America, Central America, Mexico and the Caribbean. So basically we are in all the Americas. For us right now it's really important focus on the time zone. That's actually one of our strengths. So yeah, and I mean the talent pool in Latin America, it's huge. So that's one of the key of the business.

The time zones make a lot of sense because I'm actually talking to you right now. I'm in Estonia and it's 5pm in Estonia. So what time is it where you are? About 9:00 o'clock in the morning.

Awesome. Didn't know you were in Estonia. That's nice. Right now it's 911 actually.

Yeah. So really it's tough to do business from Europe to Latin America, but very easy for you to sell into the US market. So that makes a lot of sense. And for the American companies then it's also easier to have all these developers in their time zones for the meetings with their normal team versus dealing with technology groups that are in India or Philippines or somewhere else.

Right, Exactly. But you know what time zone is really important actually that separates us from other talent pools or other markets like India, Eastern Europe. But the other thing that is really important and it's key to our business is like the culture, like countries and people from Latin America. Like we are in the same site like the us so like we like from when we are really young, like we consume a lot of the American culture so we see American movies, we hear American music. Like the second language in all countries in South America is English. So we like all of our workers adapt easily to the culture of the state. So that, that's also a plus besides the time zone.

Interesting. Now you've been with the company for a long Time, I guess. Prior to dealing with COVID were you a location based business other than your coders, were they remote or were they location based?

Actually it was a mix. You know, we started. So my partner, my business partner and CEO like started working from New York City. Like actually the company was founded there and I was working in Ecuador, in Quito. So when, and so when we just started like, we started like with people here in Ecuador, but then it like, I don't know, let's say one year after that we started hiring like in other places like Colombia, Peru, Argentina. And at that time we had like a hybrid work environment where we have like offices like in Ecuador and Colombia and then like you know, just people working from home in other countries. In some cities we had co working spaces. Even in the States, like in New York, in Houston, in Denver, we had a mix of offices and home offices. So after Covid, what happened is we got rid of the offices because of precaution and everything. It turned really well. It was a good solution and we adapt really easily to work 100% distributed.

Now will you go back to having offices or are you going to stay as a distributed workforce now?

We are going to stay as a distributed workforce now. I mean maybe what we are thinking is to open maybe two or three little spaces where mostly like management can get together, you know, because for me, you know, most of our talent are, they are engineers. And the profile of engineers, they really enjoy working like from their homes. And that's like a, right now that's a must. Okay, so but with the management team is different. You, you know, we also like to work from home, but we need these spaces, like to share, to discuss ideas. I mean for me it's different and it's needed basically for tasks that relate, that are involved with the strategy, you know, or creative thinking. So that's the plan. But right now we are 100% distributed.

Okay, so go way back to the beginning then. How did you get involved with a partner and CEO who's in New York and you're based in Ecuador? Were you going to school in New York? Were you working in New York? How did you guys connect?

Actually, the story is really simple. It's kind of funny because, you know, you mentioned this thing about the COOs and the tech industry and it's really kind of hard to like transition to be a COO in a tech company. I have a degree in graphic design, so I have not. I don't have any background with business or technology. I just learn everything by myself. So When I was young, I think it was my second or third job, I applied to a company, a super small startup here in Quito, and I just started working there. And one of the partners of that company was my CEO, Andres. So we kind of started working together, like myself as a super young junior guy that wanted to learn everything and he has a partner. So we started working like that and we get to know each other. And then, I mean, when the time was right when my CEO decided to like expand the company and scale the company, and I mean, we were really small at that time. Like, he put all his trust on me and he invited me basically to join this amazing journey. So that's the story. It's kind of simple. We met at work. Okay.

So meeting up that way and starting off as a designer starts to make a little bit of sense because you tend to have a little bit more, I guess, exposure to kind of the sales and marketing and some of the ops side of things. But how did you make the transition from the tech side into managing? Were you. Were you doing kind of coding yourself on the UX UI side and then you started managing people? Walk us through some of that and how it, how you grew it from there.

It started kind of organically. You know, I call it like by request, because when I first started, yeah, I was actually, I was hired to do like simple coding work. And I, I remember at the new year at university, I had like one or two courses of like basic programming. So I just like started like, to code really, like really basic stuff and, you know, keep, keep learning, keep learning. And. And then I remember then, then we created a team. Like, like the, the team that I was working with, it started to grow. So then like, the company at that time needed like someone to manage the other people. And. And it kind of came naturally to me and I just started managing the other people. At first it was one person, then two people, three people, and so on. And then I remember that the client that I was working with, it grew so fast I ended up like handling the client. And I guess. No, actually I am sure this happened because, like, I am more like, I studied graphic design. I am a really people person. And most of engineers, you know, have this other profile that they are not that people oriented. They are like engineers, you know. So I was the one that could take the opportunity and handle the team. And that's how like, I started to like managing clients. And from that point, I mean, it was kind of natural how like when we, at that time, when we talked with My CEO, so he needed someone to help with other clients and to run the company. So I just took the step forward and did it. I mean, it wasn't easy at all because I needed to learn so many things. But that's part of the challenge and I am really proud of it. So summing up, it was organically, I just learned. Learn and learned by the need.

That's actually what I was going to ask you about. Was it all easy? And I was sure that you were going to say, no, it wasn't. So what part of the trajectory for you moving into the COO role was hard? What part did you really have to work at?

A lot of parts. Well, I remember one of the hardest part is to like, yeah, I would say the money part. You know, actually also I think I'm good with money, but not. But I wasn't good with money in a professional sense, like a professional way. So yeah, I had to learn a lot of rules and information and the theory about, you know, finance, accounting and blah, blah, blah, because at first, like you do everything, you know. So like money handling and finance, that would be one of the challenges that I faced then. Well, this came after like when we started scaling like people management. I mean, again, I am a people oriented person, but that's different from managing like large groups, you know, and also to manage managers. And that, that was a, a challenge as well. To manage managers. Yep. All right. On the top of my mind, it's.

Almost like you're reading my notes. So my, my first question really related to that was, you know, you're at 400ish employees now. When were you only around 20 employees? 20 or 30? How was it five years ago? 10?

You know, it was so different. I mean, it's.

How many, how many years back would that have been? That you were maybe only 20 or 30.

With 20 or 30 employees, I would say around what, five, four or five years.

Okay, so four or five years ago you're at 20, 30 employees and then all of a sudden you hit this inflection point. What was it that allowed you to start to really scale from there?

To be honest, like mentality, just mentality. We got into this network that is called Endeavor. I don't know if you have heard about Endeavor. Endeavor is this huge organization worldwide that empowers and helps companies with their network with trainings, with mentoring, and it pushes companies to scale exponentially. There are huge companies that are part of the network, as here in Latin America, for example, there is Globant. That is one of the tech giants, the region and in the world. Rappi and. Well, there are a few more. I just can't remember the name.

Rappi is the. Rappi is the delivery service. Kind of like the Uber.

Yeah, it's a doordash. It's like a doordash of South America, but it's huge. So I think when we get. When we got accepted into Endeavor, I think there, our mentality. Our mentality changed, definitely. So at that point, like. Like, before that happened, we were thinking, like, okay, we need to be the best in Ecuador, the largest tech company in Ecuador. And after that was like, boom. No, like, we need to be the best in the region, you know, in South America. And so basically, mentality and obviously, a lot of mentorship, a lot of, you know, learning, like, how to scale in companies, how to handle, like, all the growth. But I would. But the mentality, I mean, that was just the trigger.

Yeah. I'm super curious. On the mentality side of things, was. Was part of that mentality growth that you no longer felt like imposters, you know, that you realized that you were, you know, not as big or as good as the others, but you were like, they're just. They're figuring this out as they go, too, right? They might be bigger, but there's. They're just people like us still figuring it out every day. Was there a little bit of the imposter syndrome that broke away, or was it that because you're surrounding yourself with these other people, you just started to raise your game and raise your thinking in every way? Or was it a bunch?

Yeah, I think. Yeah, I think definitely it was, like, the network, you know, and the people that we were surrounded at that time. And it's a funny story because, like, here in Ecuador or in Colombia or in Peru, I remember that when we have, like, business meetings or with other, like, business people, they always told us, like, oh, my God, you are growing so fast. Your numbers are incredible. You are the best. And we were like, okay, cool. Thank you. But then when we did the same in the States, everyone was like, oh, that's cute. Like, you have 500 employees and you are doing good. But, you know, we have, like, 10,000 employees, and we are like. We are like. Our revenue is, like, that high. And so we felt like, okay, like, we are not comfortable, like, being, like, the best in Ecuador, like, in the small region. Like, we need to think, and we need to think like these other people, you know, so it's the other. The people that we were surrounded. Like, we started to feel like, oh, my God, we can grow way more. They already did.

Well, they say that your income is the average of the five people you spend the most time with, and your physical fitness is the average of the five people you spend the most time with. And your business grows similarly. Right. Your mindset changes. So give me one specific thing then that changed on the mindset, or one specific thing that you did differently in the business because of that.

You think, well, definitely one strong point, and this is not part of my area, but. But that it was really important for the company, like, the. The. Like, how sales. The sales department, like, was managing things. I think that there was a huge change there in terms of, like, first of all, like, diversifying the channels of sales, then, like, sophisticating, you know, all the. All the tools and processes that we handle on sales. That was definitely a thing that changed, like, from one day to another after this, you know, this experience. And I get surrounded by these people and. And from the operations side, of course, I would say, like, the. I really changed my mind on, like, before this, I was really focused on doing things great and handling myself all things and be aware of all the results and meet the goals and everything by just by myself. After this, like, I learned and I switched to a structured mode, to a scaling mode, you know, so then I started thinking more, like, more on how this will work in the future when we are, I don't know, hundred employees, 200 employees. So I started to think in terms of structure, on scaling. What will happen, like, if, I don't know, if we have, like, 200 leads per week or. Or, I don't know, or 200 employees the next three months. So, like, I will call it, I turn my mind into, like, scaling mode, you know?

Yeah, that makes total sense, actually. And when you do start thinking about that scaling mode, you start hiring bigger people, you start spending on structure, you start coaching the team differently and setting bigger goals. Did you. Did you make any mistakes when you started to think bigger? Did you take.

Yeah, sure. Of course.

Any that were too big?

Not that big, but. But of course. And I mean, that's part of the business and that's part of scaling, right? So I remember that, like. And I would say, like, maybe two years ago or so, we were at this point where, like, we. We're hiring, like, a mix of junior people to mentor them and make them grow and like, more senior people. So I would say, like, wrong hirings. Just, like, using the old mentality on, okay, we need to, like, we need to Save money. We need, like, junior people. We train them, and then they will do the work. Wrong. Because, like, that worked when we were on another level, you know, when we weren't like, so big. So hiring the wrong people, but based on, like, when to hire senior people, that was definitely a thing that I learned. And it was really hard for me because, believe it or not, as today, I always, like, it's super hard to me to let people go.

Yeah, it's hard. I'm the same. I really like people. But sometimes, yeah, the wrong people are costing you way more money than they're making you. I was speaking with one of our COO alliance members the other day, and he's the CEO of a company. It's about 30 million in revenue. And we were talking about his. His team, and he's talking about the. That he had an entire. He said, I think. I think we're finally. All 70 of our employees are truly A players. And I went like, there's no way that they're all A players. There's no way that it's. God forbid they ever quit people. So let's just say they're solid B plus people that I'll agree to. And I said, what if you paid them all 20% more? If you could afford to go out and rehire for those roles and pay 20% more, would they be A's? And he's like, ah, you're blowing my mind. He goes, no, they'd probably all be C people. Right? Like, you can always kind of raise that bar. Right? So how do you decide. How do you decide when paying more for more talent is worthwhile or whether it's the loyalty to the people you've got is. Is worthwhile? What's the. What's the measure there or what's the decision based on?

Yeah, I mean, for me, like, the mix is always needed. Like. Like loyal people that started from scratch with the company. They feel really engaged because they grew in the company. And sometimes they get to a really interesting point and sometimes not, but. But it's really. For me, it's really needed that this mix between these people and the more experienced people that come, like, from outside the company, like more. Usually more senior people that comes with, that come with, I don't know, about 15, 20 years of experience that they are not that engaged. They don't understand, like, the initial dream, but they just are professional, do their work, and maybe some years later they become really engaged as the first group. So first, for me, the mix is always needed, and then to Be honest, I haven't figured out that, like, I don't have, like the. I don't have, like, the formula to know when starting, like, when to start hiring, like, senior, more senior people. But I mean, it's like, close your door, you know, and that happens to us like one year and a half ago that when we did, when we hired like, the first super senior people outside the company, we realize that, okay, now we are at this point, like, we need people that can manage themselves, like, without hand holding that. People that comes with ideas, with a strategy. And when you realize. When you realize that, you start thinking, okay, so where I need these people. And that's where the thing gets interesting.

Yeah.

So. But the mix, it's really important for me.

Well, you're right. It does come knocking on your door. All of a sudden you realize we need them. Like, you kind of just know, right? And I agree on the mix. I've always said my A players are racehorses, my B players are the workhorses, and the C players have to go to the blue factory. But you need a good, solid mix of agencies.

That's a good one.

You mentioned, you mentioned that it's one thing to manage groups of people, and then it's another thing to manage managers who are managing groups of people. It's kind of when you go from 30 employees to 100 employees, you know, you really are now managing managers. What are the key lessons you have there in terms of maybe for delegation and maybe for. For not having waste and, and for leading and getting results through people. Any key lessons you can share there?

Sure. Like, for me, it's super clear, like the most important thing when managing, like the difference between managing managers and managing people, it's the difference between being a leader and being a manager for me. So when you manage people, I mean, you need a lot of skills and. But kind of the most important thing on your work is to track progress. You know, to track progress to keep people motivated. But when you manage managers, you need more work in the inspiration side, in the mentoring side. And I actually lived this just one year ago. I started to learn how to manage managers, like one year ago. And then I was kind of struggling with how to do it. But like, you become a mentor, basically, you stop, like, focusing on checking results and track progress. You also do that. But it's. Now is not the most important thing. It's not the most important responsibility for you because that's like the manager's responsibility. But you need to teach, you need to mentor those managers how to run their people and how to work by their own without asking a lot of things to their managers or to their direct reports. And basically, yeah, you lead them to the manager's path with a lot of, a lot of mentoring. It's, it's kind of hard to describe but it's really, it's really related to, to leadership.

Yeah. You know what you're saying is that the transition I think is when you're managing people your man, it's like project management and task management. You're helping them get stuff done. But when you're managing leaders, you're growing their skills, you're growing their confidence, you're mentoring them, you're, you're inspiring them, you're being there as a resource for them, but you're not managing them as much as like holding them and helping them and growing them.

Right, exactly. And you know what, like it also depends on your approach. I know really successful companies that like managers of managers, micromanage managers and they encourage to their managers to micromanage their people and, and the company is still successful but like for us and many companies and mostly like tech related companies, for me the approach should be different and should be again to lead, to motivate the manager and mentor him or her like how to manage their team. But like just like an independent entity, you know, that's key because if not you will end like tracking progress of the manager and that's not the idea. Yeah, I don't know if that makes sense.

It makes total sense. And the next transition after that though is when you start hiring senior leaders who already know, they understand situational leadership, they understand coaching, they understand, you know, how to grow people and how to run one on one meetings and you know, they're good at the soft skills of leadership. How do you, how do you lead those people? Because I would imagine you're at that typically when you go from 300 to from 100 to 300 people is when you're really hiring your first true leadership team that have actually led teams before. What's it like? What's it like leading those people?

We started that phase like eight months ago or so like just to hire like leaders, like not like C level but like VP level. That's leaders, strategic people. It's similar to managing managers but different at the same time. I mean for managing like those leaders, I think it's really important to know how to communicate and make, understand and get to understand your vision to those people. Okay, so like a lot of like communication is needed and, and and how do you. How you translate that vision to this person is key because as you mentioned, this person already came with all the knowledge without experience. They know how to handle things by themselves, but they need to understand the vision and how. And then they just execute the, you know, the vision through static, through strategy. So that I think that that's one definitely like the, like putting really clear the vision.

You're giving a real good crash course on how a leader has to emerge from being a manager to a leader, to a leader of leaders, which is great. But I'm curious where you've gained some of these skills yourself as a leader, because this is not, you know, this is like a master's degree in leadership out of a university. Where, where were you gaining the skills during the work? Was it through the Endeavor program or.

Actually, it's a funny story, but as I mentioned earlier, like, I am a graphic designer that became a COO by just learning everything. I would say I learned all those things, like by two, like in two ways. First of all, like my CEO, he's like super important for me and he has been my mentor. So that's one. My CEO and CEO and business partner. He has mentored me with all his knowledge and experience. And then like reading a lot of reading. I. We try like to read at least two or. Well, yeah, two books per month. Two, three per books per month. You know, business related or topics related to leadership and management and that kind of stuff. But like books. Yeah, those are the two sources where I learn everything. I have a great list of books to recommend.

Do you have a favorite?

Couple business books, actually, one that I really love because I had one that I like. My favorite. Well, not my favorite, but one of the most important books that I read. It's like the bible of business, I guess you have read like, good to great. That's like. Oh my God.

Amazing.

Yeah. But recently I read a book by Laszlo Buck that. It's called Work Rules.

Okay.

It's mind blowing. It's my favorite now. And. And before that I read one. It's like the, like the net about the Netflix approach. That is no rules. Rules. Yeah. But then I read Work Rules by Laszlo Bo and it blowed my mind that that's my favorite. My favorite one right now.

Well, I'm going to, I'm going to grab that one. I'll listen to it this week. I've been waiting for a new one to be listening to in my workout, so that'll be the one. So I'm going to encourage you to read my, my first book, which was called Double, Double. And there's some, some key. Yeah, there's some key chapters in there that you might really like as well. Okay, so I want to just ask a. This is a strange question, but it kind of came up at the beginning. When you're a company that's based in Latin America and you're selling into the US Market, what have your big lessons been in doing that? In selling into, into the US Market and selling into the US Market as a foreign. Foreign company or with a foreign staffing. Any lessons there?

Yes, and I have like several advices, but the most important, and it can sound like cliche, but it's really, know your market. I mean, if you don't understand how people in the US run business, how they communicate, how is the, like the work culture there, like you are going to fail. I mean, it's so important to understand all the values and culture in America. And I mean, there are different, like working cultures in the States. You have the corporate America, you have the startup thing, but if you don't get it, you will fail. You need to understand that. And you can't learn that from a book. You need to live in the States or work with someone or for a company in the States. But it takes time. But you really need that scheme.

You need to immerse yourself in that. How about the there. There had been a, a strong push against hiring offshore with, you know, India a few years ago. And then the trend became very strong to hire into Eastern Europe. In the tech side, has the, has the US started to adopt the whole South American tech scene or are you new to that? Kind of. Even though you're kind of nine, 10 years old, are you kind of new to that emergence of. That's where a lot of the good tech talent is.

Yeah. For me, it's not like we are competing with other regions like Eastern Europe. I think that's one of the best examples. But at the same time it's the different approach. Definitely. So for example, part of our clients have their nearshore teams in two time zones. They have like, okay, Eastern Europe or India and South America. Okay. So. And what they choose to do this is because they know that they will use, for example, let's say Eastern Europe teams because like, yeah, engineers in Eastern Europe are really good. They use it for specific things, let's say, like solving super complex engineering problems. Okay. But then they use the South American teams to work on a daily basis, to communicate, to be part of their team, their activities for critical thinking because of the similarity in the culture, you know, so for me, it's not like. It's not that it's a direct competition between Eastern Europe, India and South America. It's more the approach you want to follow, you know, so every region has good part and about part time zone. It's a pain for US Companies to work with India because of the time zone. Eastern Europe, it is still a pain. South America, it's super smooth. So for me, it's a compliment.

Like the compliment you mentioned earlier that you have a hard time firing people. Have you gotten better at that? Or do you avoid that and try to, like, is it just. Or it just sucks, but, you know.

It'S part of business and I have improved, definitely. But I mean, it's. It's needed. It doesn't mean that I don't do it. It's necessary. And sometimes, like, time is of the essence that you just need to do it. It's more like I have. I have improved on how I feel about it. It's like, just more personal.

Yeah.

Yeah. I remember, like, what, like, eight, 10 years ago, like, I needed to get prepared and, like, like, mentally and be really strong and. And then after the firing, I spent, like, one or two days, like, kind of grieving. But I was young, so, yeah, like, yeah, you grow, you learn. And right now I, like, I still don't like it, but I do it like this. It's just experience, you know? But, yeah, but I think the. Yeah, the people orientation is the thing that, like, makes it a little bit harder.

I read something interesting a year or so ago in a book called the Hard Thing about Hard Things, and Ben Horowitz was talking about how when. When a company fires someone, they're often happy the person's gone. But he said the real work becomes. When you sit down and say, why did we hire them in the first place? You know, what did we miss in the interview process? What did we miss? The onboarding process? What did we miss in the leadership and process that we had to then fire that person? Because when we hired them, we were excited about them, you know, so what. What changed? What did we miss? What did we screw up? Which I think is quite interesting, for sure.

Yeah. Like when. Like, after a firing. Exactly. The first thing that you need to do is like, okay, what. What. What went wrong? And it's not like, just one or two things. Like, as you mentioned, usually it started from, like, recruiting and, like. And I know this because, like, like, our business is type of mentation. That we work with, with a lot of people and we recruit tons of people. So like if you miss, if you, if you have, if a process is not well calibrated or you are doing something wrong with recruiting, even when sourcing, like you can get this firings later and sometimes you just don't realize the problem. It was like at the start of the process. So. Yeah, but it's important to think about it. It's not like, okay, this guy didn't meet the expectations by yeah, no, like the work starts there. Like, okay, what happened?

Yeah, I think it's a really, really good exercise for leaders to put themselves through as well as that introspective process of what was our contribution. All right, I want to go Back to the 2122 year old Santiago. He's just getting started in his career. What advice would you give yourself back then that you know to be true today, but you wish you'd known when you were just getting started?

Invest in learning. Like that, that's key because it's like now I realize that you can learn like different sources. Like you see like I know going to college, reading books or going to programs, but what you are really doing when you invest in learning is you're buying time and like spending four years to learn something in a college or I don't know, going to a super quick program or hiring a consultant so he can teach you about something in two, three weeks. That's really valuable because time is the most important thing and, and you don't want to lose it like in personal time, time at work. So invest on learning. That's one then. Yeah, think about time. That, that, that would be another one like.

Yeah, I, I will tell you and I, I think the whole like investing and learning is so, so, so important that I, I even named my, the course that I launched a year and leaders, it's all about growing those manager skills. I'll send you a link to it. I'm also, I'm also going to send you my favorite poem later called Think Big and it's about this cat that kept thinking bigger because you talked about how important it was to think bigger as a company. And I think you guys have done that. So congratulations with everything you've done with Job City. I really appreciate the time today and you spending time with us on the Second Command podcast. So Santiago Castro, the COO for Job City, thank you.

Thank you, Cameron.

Every member of your executive team is both the custodian of part that they're responsible for but more importantly their essential goal is to make the company win, not just their department win. And when people understand that what's going to get the company closest to a win is to follow the priority that we've all agreed upon.