HERE'S HOW WE HIRED OUR VP OF ENGINEERING!

What up, guys? It's Ryan Shank from PhoneWagon. Today I want to talk— I want to do a follow-up video. We did a video maybe about 2 weeks ago. Let me check my YouTube channel. It was about personas and the value of creating a persona. Whoa! Hey, hey there. I want to talk to you guys today actually about personas. Using personas can help you identify customers or potential employees and things like that. So if you were searching for a VP of engineering, which is basically gonna be like our lead developer onshore, in-house. I want them to sit right next to me, right there. You know, we just had a board meeting the other day and we're like, you know, we gotta find this person, okay? And you can't just put job descriptions up and expect, you know, the person of your dreams to just, you know, walk into the job and apply and then just, you know, by chance. I feel, I don't know what the number is, but I feel like it's super low that that actually happens, okay? So what we've done recently is actually create create this right here. We basically created a persona, right? It could be Chris, it could be Christine, it doesn't matter, okay? But it's like, you know, this is the person. They live in Brooklyn, went to Carnegie Mellon, they maybe work at Zocdoc, they're software engineer, you know, they play piano, their favorite food is Roberto's— Roberta's Pizza, they're from Newport Beach, they got a 2250 on their SAT. So I was also reading this book called The Compound Effect, and what the author did is he actually did this for who he wants to date. He wrote down the characteristics of an ideal spouse, right? Down to the smell of their hair, texture of the hair and everything. And he said he went super, super granular. That's, you know, what we did there. We said, you know, how much cash do they currently have in their bank account, character traits, things like that. And what I think happens when you do this exercise is you start to think about like, okay, this person, you know, because in my head I was like, all right, this is, you know, we need to find developer. All right, you know, where do these people do? I don't know, right? But then you start to like, all right, they eat this food, this is how— this is what they do for their workout, they have a spouse here, this is what their spouse does, this is like, you know, the online communities that they hang out in. Are they and like Twitch streaming channels, things like that, right? So you start to like think about it and then you can, you know, kind of go to where they potentially might be, you know, so we personified, if that's a word, who this person is. But I actually think the person that we're going to find is going to be incredibly similar to this persona that we created up here, okay? So one month ago, interesting, okay, so one month ago, July 19th, I created a persona. And what we were doing was we were looking for a VP of engineering, okay? 'Cause one of the biggest hires that we have had as a company was that we were looking for someone in-house to join us as a partner that was actually technical, that could bring engineering skills into, into PhoneWagon and could manage all of our developers. Because right now, as you guys know, we have just outsourced offshore developers. They're amazing. We just don't have— didn't have anyone in-house. So what I did was I wrote on that board right there from the video that you just saw, a persona of VP of Engineering. And guys, let me tell you how insane the universe is. So what happened was I had it on the board there. Someone was just walking around in this coworking space that we're in right now visiting a friend. He's telling his friend he works at— he was working at like a phone company. He's like, hey, you know, I kind of want to do my own thing or whatever it is. Said, oh, you know, but I need some salespeople. And his friend was like, oh, there's PhoneWagon. Like, there are a lot of salespeople there. They're kind of like a phone company. You should talk to them. That's it. Just was just walking around in the coworking space, saw us, and that's it. So what happened was he looks at my LinkedIn, right? Probably just checking out the company, whatever it is. And me like an absolute psychopath. I see that I get a view on LinkedIn from an engineer that worked at a company I'd never heard of. Instantly sent him a message. Hey, hey, what's up? So we're going to put the messages on the screen and you can start to see the conversation. But basically I was asking, you know, hey, what are you doing? What are you looking for? That sort of thing. And then we end up meeting up. You know, we met up a few times, ends up being like the perfect fit. Long story short, made an offer, hired a VP of engineering. And literally, there he is. Tommy is our VP of engineering that we had because of the universe, the power of the universe, and creating a persona. And then now, like, if you put a persona out there, because like I said in the last video, one of the things that happens when you create personas is you start thinking about other things about, you know, this person. So if you do it with customers, right, you start to understand, you know, like where they live, where they hang out, what do they eat, what do they drink, like who are their friends, who are their spouses and that sort of thing. And then you start thinking of them in different ways than, Oh, I, you know, I'm trying to meet an engineer. And the same thing can happen again with customers, with relationships, all of that stuff. If you think about the persona, who are you building product for, right? If you start to think about your customers, it's like, oh, I'm building products for small businesses. Okay, well, what kind of small businesses? Oh, I'm building products for a carpet cleaning company. Okay, who owns the carpet cleaning company? What does their spouse do? Who are their cleaners? Like, how often? What kind of like scheduling software do they use to schedule out the appointments for their cleaners? Where do they go on Friday nights? Like, does their kid— do they have kids? Do their kids play sports? Who drives their kids to sports? And then it's like, if you really want to get in front of them and you really want to build something of value for that person, personas make such an enormous amount of sense. And also what I think happens is you start to put this thought into the universe. These things are flowing. The universe knows that that's what you want. And maybe this is some hokey pokey type shit, but it worked for us. You saw it. Less than 30 days. Not only did we find our— the perfect VP of engineering, candidate, but also higher in today's first day. So I think that's absolutely insane. That was July 19th. It is September 10th. I had to make a follow-up video to the persona because I wanted you guys to see how insane that was. Hope you guys are out there making personas and putting into the universe what you want out of it. Okay. And that is going to be the video for today. So I hope you guys are out there. Thank you for following along our story. Smash the subscribe button, hit the little bell so you get a notification every single time we drop a video. We're dropping videos 5 days a week now, and we're going to be taking you behind the scenes, things that we're doing, conversations that we're having with employees. Uh, I got some really big news that we're going to drop press and massive videos on. You guys are going to want to hear that. Again, subscribe, follow us on, uh, on Instagram as well. Hope you guys are out there working hard, being pioneers, being Wagoneers. Peace.