Episode 518: What Does It Mean to Build Out a Company with Jordan Franklin

Welcome to this edition of the million Dollar Mastermind podcast. This is where we pick the brains of high achievers from all walks of life and get their hard earned real world insights on winning. I'm your host, Larry Wydell.

We're talking with Jordan Franklin. And Jordan, thanks for taking the time and talking from again, Northwest Arkansas.

Yep.

And tell us, what does it mean to build up, build out a company? What do you say? You, you know, you tell people you've seen how we built out a company. What does that mean?

I think, I think there's a lot of aspects, right. So building out a company, you've got to take into account culture and really keeping that, but also building it out, making sure it's profitable, making sure that you have the right butts in the right seats. Right. So I always come back to that. I think you can have people that are individual contributors and maybe not leaders, but they're still the right person for your organization. If they're, you know, if they're a good culture, fit, smart, bring something to the table, they just might not be the right person in the seat that you thought they should be in. So I think those are the kind of things that we've gone through as a, you know, as a small business and really found to be the three most important.

Without naming names, give me an example of how you went in and kind of transformed a company. Helped transform a company.

Yeah. So, so we worked at the beginning, well, end of last year, beginning of this year, we were tapped by an organization for a, to go in and really help build out a team in. Which wasn't really in our line of, of recruiting or, or anything. Right. So we normally function.

You mean that wasn't in your, an industry you're familiar with or.

It was, it was an industry, but it wasn't, it wasn't the talent that we were familiar with. So like we. Norma stuff for like it, cyber security, that kind of stuff. And this was more on the engineering automation side of things.

Right.

Product side. And that just wasn't, it just wasn't normally what we do. And they were like, it's okay. I think, I think if we sit down and really become partners, we can train you in and teach your recruitment staff how to find the right candidates. And because we've heard that you guys are fantastic at what you guys do, we want to at least give you a chance to see if you can do it. And what do they need now?

I mean at this point you're, you're going in and you're not going to go in for all this for two or three people. Now how many people were they looking to staff up for?

So at the time their whole team needed about 700. We weren't going to get all 700 positions. Their internal staff was helping with some of it. But we were going to staff about 100.

Pretty. That's worth learning a little bit. So how did you go about that?

So we sat down, had lunch and learns their managers came in, did zoom calls. Extremely, extremely open. Honestly went through everything with us, really told us everything that they were doing, wanting to do where they wanted to go, what their strategic plan looked like and everything moving forward. We went from January until now we have staffed about 57 of those positions and only because we became a little too successful too fast because they wanted those hundred by December. And So we got 57 before. So now we're just slow rolling the last 33. 43. So yeah, so we're that. But we're on track to do it. And it's something we started from ground zero. They didn't have the right interview process or process and play at all. We came up with a whole workflow and everything with their team and our team and presented it back and forth and really came up with something that worked for both companies.

How long have they been going before you came along?

This portion of that organization was pretty new.

They didn't have an HR department and all of that. They didn't have employee manuals and all of that.

This portion of the organization, we were restructuring a new way to do interviewing to try to really make it more functional and not so antiquated from the way it had been.

Yeah. And I guess you that's just a matter of looking at what they were doing versus what you've learned as best practices in the industry. Probably. Right.

Yeah. And really working hand in hand with their HR team, our team, and they even had some recruiters too. So they actually had a full team. This is a little different than what we normally come into. They actually had a full team that we worked hand in hand with and then we worked also directly with the hiring managers as well.

So when you say you take pride or you feel like the thing is the 50 something people you've got, how well they're fitting and they're working there, that's how you, that's how you make your bones in the industry, I guess is like people actually fit when we get them in there.

Yeah. Yeah. It's really nice to see that they like it. Like today I Got a. I got a message from a candidate that's been there for a little bit. He was one of the first ones that got hired. And he messaged me and said, hey, I have a referral for another position that I know is open. I'm sending you their resume. I would love to work with them. So he just filled another one of those positions for us, and I didn't. Our team didn't even have to recruit on it.

Free money.

Yeah. And so he was. He. And he just. And he's just excited because he loves his job. So he's just talking about it and getting other candidates to come over.

So somebody enjoys working with, you know.

Yeah, exactly. Plus, it's somebody he enjoys working with. Yeah.

So when you go and give me an example of how you work with people to make them more profitable.

Yeah. So a lot of the times on that, I, I kind of relate this back to, like, the federal or the government side where it works on the. It works on the other side, too. But it's very easy to see on that side, on the federal side, when they go after, like a bid or something like that. I always say we're the brawn. Like, you guys are the brains. We're going to bring the people. Right. So we're going to go in with you on that bid and make sure that you're bidding it, Bidding the price on the people correctly so that we make sure we're getting the right people for the project. And when you win it, we're going to bring all the people to the project so that we can be successful together as a team.

I just had a light bulb. Go on. You're saying that there are people in Montgomery, Alabama, that are paid $100,000 a year. Who knew?

Just kidding. Right. There's a lot of people.

Just kidding. Just kidding. Alabama.

You can go down there and get a really nice house with a pool and everything. Yep. Just have to be okay with a Christmas at 73 degrees doubt.

Yeah. Well, there's a lot of places in the country where, you know, that's going on. So talk about. I still don't understand how you help them be profitable, you know, turn companies around and. Because that's a long way from sticking an employee in place.

Yeah. So we, we work with them in order to make sure that they're making, you know, the profit off of those people, that they can really turn around those projects and make sure that they have the right. Right. People for them at an equitable price. Right. And that they're. And we make sure that they stay within budget. So on those types of projects, we make sure that their budget is maintained throughout. Just say hypothetically, they go a dollar or two over on one person, we make sure that they're a dollar or two under on another person. So we kind of manage all of that portion.

How do you manage the productivity of these people though?

It seems the product have. They are still their employees, so they actually are managed productivity wise by the client. So if they're a consultant, but we also do direct hire, so that would just be their own employee. But a lot of the times, because we are another, another way that we help out is because we are always recruiting. That's all we do for 40, 60 hours a week. You know, when companies come to us, it's because they don't have someone that's dedicated to doing that all the time. Right. And they're not in the right networks. So they're spending. Whenever they go out and recruit a position, they're spending astronomical amounts of time wasting their own time and money going out and trying to find these people and then interviewing them. When we have the talent and the skill set to interview them technically and make sure that they fit within that technical skill set as well as the cultural skill set. And then that's saving money. Right. So that means that, hey, Mr. CEO, you can go do your job. I'm going to make sure that whatever positions you need filled are filled. I will get them to your doorstep. You just need to do a, you know, 20 minute interview with them and make sure that of these three candidates out of the 150 we screened, which one of these three are the. Is the right one?

Where do you send the people that are hiring? You said you're developing an app and a game plan for meter system up to that level. Where do you now, where do you send people who want to get, you know, starter employees, you know, basic staff, administrative staff.

Yeah.

That have a wide skill set and can be trained, you know.

Yeah. So I mean, we have a couple of companies we work with and then like for telecommunications, cable techs and things like that. Lower level. Lower level than what we staff. We work with a couple of different companies. There's a gentleman in Montgomery, Alabama. He's. He was like one of our first employees ever. His name's Trey Preston and he owns a company and we send a lot of the cable tech work to him and his company. Fantastic company. And then we just kind of send them out and ship them out to other, other organizations. And then eventually we'll feed them through gumption, my dash gumption. We have a platform that they'll be able to go through and see all of those kind of jobs. So those companies will be able to put their jobs into there.

What word would you say? How would you describe when someone has their company is properly built out? How would you describe that? How does that, how do you look at that? How do you analyze. You say that come when you reach this point, you're properly built. You know, your, your company is built.

Out, I think when it functions harmoniously. So I always call it a staffing stew because everyone goes in thinking that they need these, you know, square pegs to fit into round holes. And really you need, you know, the right people to kind of marry together and get all the skill sets that you need covered. Covered. And I think that's kind of different than this normal. Here's my org chart. I'm only doing these things even though I have skills to do X, Y and Z and could help out over here. So I think, I think harmonious would be the word, right? When a company can really function harmoniously is when you know that you have right people in the right seats.

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