Building and Scaling your Recruitment Business with Diane Prince Live on Shally's Alley

Hey, hey, hey everybody! You are live on Shelly's Alley. This is not rehearsed, this is a live show if you're watching it right now on September 12th at 1 PM US Eastern Time. If you're watching it at any other time after that, it's a recording. Welcome to Shelly's Alley. Today I have an interesting guest, very different than I based every other guest I've ever had in one particular way. And that is most of the time, I tend to focus with my guests on aspects of the broader talent sphere, like recruiting and sourcing and talent management. And sometimes, we get into workforce planning and the general human resources sphere. But today, even though Diane comes to us from the world of talent, her claim to fame is she is a business starter. She's the igniter, the spark that gets the businesses going. So she's essentially a coach for growing and accelerating businesses. Now, that could be a talent business, which is how I met Diane, because my guest, A&R Pug, when I asked her who 'Who should be our next guest?' instantly dropped Diane's name. I mean, there was like zero hesitation, um, and that never happens. People usually go, 'Oh, that's a good question,' and then they stop. And she was like, 'Diane Prince.' And I was like, 'Whoa, hold on a second, what did you just say?' So, um, the reason is because Diane and Julia worked together. Diane was, uh, one of— was— is, I guess, one of Julia's coaches or advisors in building the business. And I learned a little bit about what all that means in a call with Diane to prepare for this call because we never met before. And we hit it off right away. First of all, I, uh, literally was ready to buy 2 or 3 of Diane's services like on the spot. So if that tells you anything, anybody who knows me, you know, I'm very much of a skeptical, um, person and like to ask a lot of questions. So I was really, really impressed. The big impressive takeaway, I'm gonna flip the screen here, is, um, Diane has fashioned a niche business for herself specifically helping people who are already on the success path accelerate their success. And, and I'll tell the story, but I'm happy— I want you to also tell the story, but I want to say the abbreviated version of it. She had a business. It was a staffing firm, you know, a recruiting firm, if you will. She sold it for $28 million to a public firm. And from there, learned that the journey of staffing and recruiting leaders can be replicated if you follow some, some steps, some advice. So, she decided that that was her new calling, was rather than go start another business to— for doing recruiting, she decided to start a business to help you accelerate your business. Is that— did I get it right? Is that about right?

You did, you did, Charlie. And also, I do have a new staffing agency, which is—

oh, okay, all right, you did that too. Can't help yourself, right?

Yeah, my virtual assistant offshore agency. And actually, Julie also avails of our VAs too.

That was the service that I was thinking about buying. Yeah, it's a VA business, which is, um, if it's like everything else you touch, probably really well organized and well run. Um, so, you know, you bring together entrepreneurship, staffing, offshore, team building in a, in an EOS-style business coaching that is no nonsense. And to me, I'm, I'm the no-fluff guy. I'm always like the brass tacks and no fluff. And then you also have this sort of funny keynote— funny humor, not funny like, oh, that's funny, but like funny humorous keynote energy. Um, so I, I had a couple of questions for you. The first, the first one of those is, what was the most transferable lesson from your launch and sale?

From the, from the sale?

Yeah, from the launch, from between your launch and sale of that first company. What was the most transferable lesson that leaders should be applying right now? Okay, just one giveaway.

Okay, one is the fallacy of sunk cost. So if something is not working, stop doing it no matter what you've invested in it. Good start. You're always starting from scratch. Okay, so if it's money or time, it doesn't matter. If it's not going to get you where you want to go, cut it off and stick with what's working and cut off what's not working.

Nobody gave me that. I went to business school, I took courses in entrepreneurship, I have a double degree from a pretty reputable school. Nobody ever told me that. Ever. And so I spent $750,000, not all at once, but over a period of several years. I spent $750,000 on a business that wasn't working because I thought it would work. And after, I think it was 7 years, I was so invested in it not working that I just kept— I literally did exactly what you just said. I kept going because of sunk cost. I didn't call it sunk cost. I mean, that wasn't what I— that wasn't what was going on in my head. But what was going on in my head was, I've put so much effort into this, it has to work. Like, I know that it's got to work. And it was like a devastating decision when I finally said, you know what, this is not working. Like, I've put so much money into it, and it's just— I've put more money into it than I got out of it. And the best part is I was generating revenue and making money to the tune of $1.8 million a year on another aspect of the business. And I was still taking profits from there and trying to put it into this other thing because I knew it had to work, right? Problem was I was way too early to market. It was a training business, but it was online training and the world just wasn't— this is pre-COVID and the world just wasn't ready for that. And when I finally gave up, 3 other companies started doing the same thing, but they started from scratch and they're successful. And you have no idea how much I kick them. Like, and I think, what if I had stayed the course? No, I know that the direction I was going was just the wrong one. The other businesses do online training, but they do a completely different kind of training and it doesn't compare. We wouldn't even really have been competitive, but they're in the online training business. Which just took off. And I sat there going, these guys just passed me going 120 miles an hour, and I've been pushing this car uphill for 7 years. Yeah. So that lesson is— that hits home so strong. But what— tell me why, tell me why I did that. Why people do that. Okay, why do people just not— like, it's, it's a Logical. If I was advising someone else, I would tell them, yeah, stop doing it, it's not working. But I couldn't do that. Why? What was driving me?

Oh my gosh, I don't even know why people do that. And I heard that advice from my dad like the very beginning. And he's been in business, like he's an executive or he was an executive, like a corporate executive and not an entrepreneur. I think it's human nature. I think it's like, You know, I don't know exactly. I mean, I gotta— after this, I'm gonna Google why, why people do that.

It's like, I feel like I'm building this castle in the sand, and I'm like three-quarters of the way there, and a wave comes in and dumps it, and I start building the same castle in the sand in the same place. Yeah, why didn't I think to move the damn thing or start using bricks? Or like, I'm like, no, this, this vision of mine of this beautiful castle is gonna have to become a reality. So I'm literally gonna start over with another quarter million dollars And then the wave comes in again. And I'm like, wait, no, I wasn't ready. And I do it again, you know.

But when you said, Shelly, like when you mentioned kicking yourself, okay, another lesson that I've learned since—

not to do that.

Yeah, it's one that I've learned that you can't change the past, even no matter how recent the past is. Right? Because I used to think you can't rewind even 5 seconds. But you said 5 minutes ago, I can still change it. Now that I realize that, that can't be shades either, man.

Where's the 10-second back button like on the old TiVos? Can I get a do-over on that? So that's a really important lesson. Yeah, doesn't matter how much you've put into it or invested, basically if it's not working, now is a good time as any to stop. Whatever you put in, maybe you learned something from it, maybe you didn't. I think at the end of the day, I did learn a lot from that business, and it's probably going to help me be successful in my next business. I just have— I've, I hesitated for 5 or 6 years to start another business because of that, because of the, like, out— like, I'm the, I'm the kid that put the fork in the outlet and went, zap!

Ow!

I'm never doing that again.

You know what, Shelly, since I— before I started coaching, so I had a— I had— after I sold my second staffing agency, I started a clothing business, and that was a total failure. And it was really hard for me to kind of brush myself off. And it wasn't until I started business coaching that I could relate because I heard so many other founders' stories and stories of founders who had a failed venture. And it was so hard to just recover mindset. And it took me a while to start another business too. I was just, you know, after I, even though I had had success before, it's, it, it can really take a toll on you.

It can, yeah. I mean, I, uh, I started one that folded because of September 11th, the attacks. Uh, we, we were in business and we were doing really well and were slated to do a lot of growth. We had booked 27 Executrain facilities for the coming year, and then the towers fell and everybody canceled.

Yeah.

And of course, we'd already booked these, and so Executrain was like, y'all got to pay us because you signed the contract. And we're like, well, can we negotiate? I mean, I'm, I'm like, let me tell you, I could just go out of business and declare bankruptcy and not pay you anything, or can we work something out? So we work something out, but that one folded. Then I started another one which I sold, and then another one which got merged, acquired and merged, and I stayed there for a little while. Um, and then I started the other one that didn't work. So, you know, I had one failure that was entirely not anybody's fault. I mean, not— I mean, you could point fingers, but nothing you can do about that. And then I sold one and merged another one, and then I, you know, another one that failed. So now I'm starting on my fifth one, and I do have a little bit of track record, but I am doing a lot of other things right now. One of the things is I asked for help, right? Last time I was like, no, no, I gotta do it, and I like put my nose to the grindstone and just— but one of the things I did this time was, was I started looking for a, you know, virtual assistant, someone to help with accounting and stuff like that, because I just, that drags me down. So yeah, totally. Tell me about offshore teams though, because I've had it. I'll start with, I've managed corporate offshore teams. I've built corporate offshore teams in India and other places. I've coached leaders who have done that. And I know that corporate offshore teams can be successful, but me personally, when I tried to use an offshore VA, I failed miserably, not once, not twice, but thrice. And I don't want to do it again. That's why I was asking you about the service, because I don't want to do it again. What is— tell me about people who hesitate to build offshore teams because they've heard my nightmare and other nightmares.

Yeah.

And that is the single— yeah, that, that, right. So they hear about these nightmares. What's the single biggest mindset or shift that they need to make in order to succeed.

Yeah. And that's what I set out to do because I had the same failures and probably way more than 3 times. And I set out to— one thing I've learned from my businesses that I've successfully exited is how important team is. You cannot build an exceptional business without an exceptional team. So it's so important to have the right people in the right seats, no matter where they are in the world. And also, so I set out in this business, because we have so much access now to global talent, I set out to, I set out to solve that problem first for myself. And I thought, okay, how can I, how can I crack the virtual assistant code? How can I create a business where offshore talent is basically doing all the stuff that I'm not good at and all the stuff I don't want to do. So that was really what I set out to do before I scaled it. And it was in part, I learned how to best— well, I don't know if it's best, but I learned how to manage in a way that I hadn't known before, to manage offshore people. And then I found the right group of people, and I have an exceptional counterpart in the Philippines. I have a counterpart in India that are all— we are all— there are heads of different virtual assistant kinds of like virtual assistants in their countries. And so what we do is we have a co-managed element to it. So with— because it's so common that people have VAs They fail for different reasons. One common reason is because they're not really managed, and a lot of people come to us and they're like, I don't really even know what my VA is doing. So that, that's, that's really common. Also, you can find somebody and then they can kind of go away. There's a lot of challenges with it. So what we do is we have— we place people, we recruit, we find people. But also, I get to know— I'm here in the US, in Arizona. I get to know all of the virtual assistants. So it's not like just finding someone on Fiverr. We train them. We have best practices. We have office hours. We had the most fun office hours this week where everybody, all the VAs presented their businesses that they're working on, which was really cool. So we do a lot of training with our virtual assistants. They also have direct access to me. So like Shelly, if you had one of our VAs, if our team was helping you, then they would have access to me where they'd be like, hey Diane, I'm working on this. Whatever it is, I'm working on Shelly's newsletter or something like that.

How do I do it? Whatever. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Okay. So there's a little bit, so that, that makes it, um, I understand kind of the, the, the backup, they, they have backup, but what is the mindset that, that people have to shift in order to, I guess, accept that?

Yeah. Well, there's two. One is, one is the delegation mindset. It's that entrepreneur. Like, I have a lawyer, a lawyer who I work with, he owns his own law firm.

And can't be done right unless I did it.

Yes. And he also felt guilty to delegate. He was like, my— well, my first, it was his paralegal who's here and he's in Tennessee. It was his poor thing.

I don't want to give her any more work.

Yeah. He's like, he's like, he's like, he's only 25. I'm like, that's okay. Like, just to still delegate, give him stuff and challenge him. So then he started my client actually started delegating and then he became, he was like, okay, I get it. And then he started using A-Team, our virtual assistants. He started unlocking all this money because he wasn't getting all his billing out on time. So it's that, it's the mind, one is the mindset shift of I have to do it myself and the ability to let it, let things go if you do want to scale. The other thing is the mentality of, I hired someone from India and it was a disaster and I'm not doing it again, which is the same as saying I hired someone from Texas and I'm not— or I'm never hiring someone.

Yeah, I've never said— sooner again, I've never said India. Like, you know, and, and actually, I'll tell you what the countries were because I don't think it really matters, but India was one of them. Um, I also tried Nigeria and I also tried Philippines. Now, I didn't go out and say I'm gonna try Nigeria. I was looking for VAs and their resumes and their profiles, and I people that looked like they had competencies in the areas that I wanted. I was not looking at a geography because I wanted the quality first, right? It just happened those were the 3 countries.

So yeah, so don't lump— so, so one of the common mindset is just kind of lumping everybody in like they're all the same when there's actually billions of people and they're individuals. One of my VAs, we were having this conversation because it comes up often, and he was so funny. He goes, he goes, yeah, we actually read books too. You know, they're people, they're individuals. Okay, yeah, right. Right.

Yeah, that's a little—

most of our people have college degrees. Some of them have MBAs. And it's not just assistants too. That's another thing that, you know, we say virtual assistants because that's really like kind of a business assistant. They do everything, like they source, they do marketing. My VAs do all my sales for me. So really, I mean, pretty much anything that you can think of.

It is— it's an assistant. It's a multi-thing, you know. Multipurpose business assistant. It's, it's what you need. I mean, and now, you know, some people might be really good at sales and so they don't need a, you know, support for that. You know, in my case, I was terrible with like all the, the billing and the accounting of that and the, and the filling out contracts. And I would always have all these back and forths and, you know, with vendor portals and stuff like that. So I, that's one of the things I needed help with is someone that was very attention to detail could gather all the information and kind of keep track of it and stay on it. And because you got to follow up with people and check in, you know, on these processes and all that.

So, and also the follow-up too, candidates, if you're recruiting for the follow-up with candidates, and the follow-up if you're, if you're doing biz dev, the hiring manager prospects, because it's hard, especially if you're a solopreneur, it's hard to keep up with the follow-ups. And my VAs do all my follow-ups for me as well, so they really keep me on track so that You know, you're— if you're in my web, you're not gonna not hear from me, you know?

Right, right.

We're gonna be consistent.

Yeah, that's, that's true. So the mindset shift, uh, is get over delegation. Like, you know, you need to delegate. Just get over that. And then get over the, uh, they're, they're, they're not— they're not from India. Or, you know, just realize that they're people and they have multiple skills. They can do many things. You just have to decide. I guess the question then is decide what it is you want done. And then find someone who's good at that.

Right. And what we do too is like typically we start the first month is a lot of discovery as well. Like we want everybody to have quick wins, but then you'll realize, like people typically realize they're like, oh, can you do this too? Or, you know, so it's really like getting, getting to know each other. But the other— what the third thing I would say is, is a common misconception is looking at it. A lot of people look at it as an expense. I encourage people to look at it as an investment because you want to get an ROI from it. Like, like for me, even one of my keynotes that I did, um, they, they— it was the Colorado Staffing Association and they asked me if I wanted to speak at their conference and then they kind of ghosted me. I mean, I love them, don't know that, but like they, you know, they're just busy and they had other things going on and they probably would have forgotten about me had we not— so my, one of my virtual assistants followed up with them probably every single week for 3 months. And then we secured— and I got to be the keynote at their conference. And that was, you know, I mean, even just that was such an ROI. And like with recruiters, I mean, if you do— if you're doing, say for example, if you have like— you're doing direct hire and you have a, say you have a $40,000 placement fee, even a $30,000, you could have an entire, an entire team just, just getting one extra placement makes up for it, right?

Yeah, one business deal, one. Yeah, so it pays for itself. So I, I guess that's a third mindset shift then, the get out of the, you know, it's an expense, operating cost, rather an investment. Which is, you know, the same thing with when we started with the sunk cost, right? Because even though it's sunk cost It was an investment in learning what works, what doesn't work. And I can tell you right now, I know a lot about online learning systems, a lot more than almost anybody else that I know. I've even had conversations with people who are experts in curriculum development and creating online learning systems, and I know more than some of them. So I paid for that expertise. It's not what I want to do for a living, so it's not like I have a job if I ever you know, fail at this one. But I did learn a lot. And if I was to do that again, I now have all this institutional knowledge that I didn't have before. So there's an investment, right?

The $3 million MBA.

Yeah, exactly. It's— I invested in that. There you go. So, um, I heard something from you when we first talked, and, and, and, and I started reading on it and Following up, I'd never heard this before, the EOS, the Entrepreneurial Operating System. You say that you run on an EOS, I guess your own version of it, right? What do you keep from the EOS and what have you intentionally broken or bent to make it work better in our world?

Some, some of the EOS tools I really like. There are some like hiring systems and I like how— so we typically run our meetings based on how EOS runs their meetings, which I really like. And it's a way to keep everybody on track so that the— and also that the team can help each other to solve problems, solve issues. And the meeting agenda, if done right, then most of the time is working on solving issues. So you're not—

Not down with—

Going off on tangents. Yes. I like that. I like the visioning. I'm big on visioning. I have my own visioning. And I think you're gonna show my QR code 'cause there's a visioning exercise in there too. I'm very big on building things based on what you wanna get out of it, what you wanna accomplish out of it. So I have some of my, I have my own tools for that as well. Like take, you know, take parts of it, take what you like and leave the rest. I'm not like certified or anything with EOS because I like to do things my way as well. And one thing, one pitfall though that I have seen with EOS is if— make sure that things matter. Like if you're— because in the— when you're measure— when you're reporting on your metrics, for example, or your rocks, which are the most important things you have to get done in the next 90 days, which I love the rock system. However, you want to make sure that there's consequences if people are consistently off track, if they're consistently not hitting their numbers, because I've seen it operate before where people just show up to the meetings and they're like, not hit, not hit, not done, and there's no consequences. So you want to make sure that you do have some kind of consequences and also that your numbers, your metrics that you want people to hit are meaningful.

They're measuring something.

Attainable. Yeah. Yeah. Otherwise people come to the meetings and they're just like, oh, well, nobody hits their numbers. We don't have to—

So it has no importance anymore, has no value. Yeah. So are you pointing to a particular EOS system or software, or are you just— you've sort of made your own collection of applications that become the EOS?

I have used, I have used their software before, but we use, my team uses Asana and, or whatever our clients are using, we use. So we're not like that. Um, stuck, like we're not, we don't adhere to it that much where, but there are, there is great software out there that is, you know, software, right?

Yeah. So that's like a collection of, um, um, tools that are, they're part of like a central platform that, you know, you can use almost like, like an all-in-one, you know, meeting scorecard to-do process, stuff like that. Yeah. That's what, okay. I gotcha. That's what it is.

Yeah, but like anything, I think it's like take what you like, leave the rest. And that's why I don't like— I don't adhere to anyone's formula.

So what is, what is a big thing that you take out, like, that you don't put into the EOS?

Well, I would say that what, like, that one, what I said about like the metrics, just make sure that they stick. I usually, I have my own vision.

Oh, gotcha. Okay, right, that's not in the— I see. That doesn't go in.

Yeah, so that's the one thing that I created. Yeah, and then like, um, I, I— they have a, they have a good, um, system for hiring and also evaluating people that I really like, but I've added to that as well. Like, they have a, you know, you want to always want to look to see if people get it. Do they understand the job? Do they want it? Are they motivated to do it? And do they have the capacity to do it? So I love that from EOS, but then I will also add like some different steps to that and like to analyze your people.

Interesting. Yeah. So that's your, that's your secret sauce, which yeah, wouldn't be in there. Um, sort of a sidebar on this. I, I, as, as an advisor consultant to TA leaders and hiring organizations, I get asked a lot of questions about technology, what technology to use, etc. And in my travels in my 30 years doing this, I can tell you that More often than not, people, leaders buy tools and technology that look like they're going to be useful or promising, and then they give it to the recruiters and the recruiters don't use it. It happens very frequently. And there's not like a single, you know, I can't point to one app or one technology. I mean, I could— LinkedIn is one of them, but there's lots of others where, you know, it just the company buys it. I've been the highest ranking person in an organization in TA where the CFO bought something and said, y'all are going to use it. And everybody was like, oh my God, why do we have to? So there's all these, all these tools we get thrown at. There's always something new in the market. You know, every day there's a new sourcing platform or whatever, you know, interviewing, AI, whatever. Um, what advice do you have for, for people around kind of like don't get attracted by that, by that bright shiny object jingling in front of you, you know what I'm saying? Because I feel like I'm constantly telling people, you don't— do you really need that? Because they'll ask me, should I buy this? Well, do you really need it?

Is—

are you using the other thing that you— yeah, no, we're not using it, but that's because it sucks. Oh, okay, well, this one doesn't suck. No, this was supposed to be great. Okay, but did anybody even use the other? Are you replacing something that you want to make better? Are you, or are you just— what's going on there? And what's, what's your advice to that?

I, I love that question. It's so common. I mean, one of my clients, when he hired me, he had spent over a quarter of a million dollars, right? They were using Bullhorn and they, um, didn't like it. Like you said, they're like, Bullhorn sucks. And then they started— so they decided to create their own ATS, which is very common. And, you know, quarter of a million dollars in, finally they they let loose of the fallacy of sunk cost and learned the lesson the hard way. And then they brought in a new ops person who decided to figure out how Bullhorn works and realized that it actually does what they needed to do.

That's what they wanted it to do. Right.

So it's, you know, one thing is, and it's just so common. I mean, people just look at a lot of times, I have found that a lot of times the answer is with something that I already have. I don't need to buy something. I mean, this goes towards anything, you know, it could be even like an outfit. I look at my closet, I'm like, oh yeah, I already have those. But like, what do you have? Like, always look at how do I keep things simple? Because it is so easy now too with all the AI tools. There's so many. And if you're looking at implementing something, and actually we do have one of our, you know, one of our virtual assistants actually puts together tech stacks so that you can have an advisor help you.

That does that. Yeah.

Yeah. Because it's, and also if you are going off on your own, There are a lot— one thing that people assume that they need things that they already like, like enterprise type software, but there's startup versions to most everything now that are a lot more affordable. But really, I mean, it's just to have that discipline. Discipline is one of the things when I talk about my 5 steps to building an 8-figure business, discipline is one of those things. And it is like looking at every time you're like, oh, that looks great. I should, you know, I need to, I need to be using that. Look at what you have. And then also it comes from leadership because when leadership buys a new, a new tool and just kind of like throws it out there, you know, we're going to be using this now.

It happens a lot.

It happens a lot. And so leadership, like for with my team right now, our CRM, we're using HubSpot and I'm typically, so my team typically uses it, but I have to do best practices too. Like I have to be in there. I have to know how it works because if leadership isn't doing it and they're just kind of throwing it out there, it's not going to catch on. And then you need to have the training. But ultimately, too, people need to understand how it helps them. They need to see the value. And if they're doing it, so it's not like an eye roll, like, oh God, it's—

maybe start with that. Start with how does this help you before you even buy it?

How does it help you? And get them to have like figure out how your team, if it's a tool that you really want them to have, to use, figure out how your team can get some quick wins on it so that they're, they're using it from the beginning. They're getting quick wins so that they're using it how it's intended. Otherwise, it's just going to gather dust and cost a lot of money.

Yeah.

And also stick with it. Sort of like, if you can't have the one you love, love the one you've got. I feel that.

I know that's, that's something that I've had to do a few times, and I'm usually the progressive voice of reason, like, let's go ahead and move on to something more modern. I kind of think of it as a deck of cards in a way, right? Or Lego bricks. I just probably have a better analogy than this, but you know, there's never going to be an ace card that wins every hand.

Yeah.

Which is a single technology that's going to do everything. You really can't have a best in class of everything in one, in one, you know, whatever, ATS, CR, whatever. Right. And so that's where I usually look at, okay, well, what do we, do we really need? First of all, do we really need a CRM? If we have an ATS, can the ATS do what we need? If not, then okay, then we know we need a CRM. Let's get something. But a lot of times they're like, well, we want an ATS that has a CRM built in. And I'm like, hold on a second. Those two things are not the same. It's not— a CRM is, is tracking the relationship with a person. An ATS is tracking the process of an opening and closing of a wreck. They're not related.

Well, if you have though, because there's— this is a common thing that people get wrong though, if they're coming from enterprise, is that they want them both in one. Well, but, but they are both in one for third-party agencies.

So like, well, depends on— yeah, right.

Like Bullhorn has CRM, um, recruiter flow. They have CRM and ATS. So one, the one common thing that I'll see is when people start their own agency, they'll have like, they'll use like Greenhouse or Lever, but those are for talent. Those are not for agents.

That's an ATS. Yeah. So I would, not to counter your point, but I would argue that in the staffing agency world, they're all CRMs. They're not really ATSs because you're really, and it's a misnomer, honestly. I think it's a really big misnomer. They call it an applicant tracking system. Yeah, but you're not tracking applicants, you're tracking requisitions. And if you—

I'm going to argue with you on that because I've used it on requisitions or on applicants, which one? On applicants. A good ATS also track— will track applicants as well. So it'll track clients and applicants.

It should. Yeah, but you end up with, you know, when you go into a multi-tenancy kind of situation, not a lot of ATSs handle that really well. So if you're a search firm, you have multiple clients and you might need to have multiple, you know silos. So there's a whole nother level of complexity there. I think the CRM system is better suited for agency and the ATS system is better suited for corporate. But like I said, a CRM that has an added ATS, usually not the best one. An ATS that has an added CRM, usually not the best one. So sometimes you do need a separate one and sometimes you can put them all together. But the mistake a lot of people make is that they then buy the CRM, the ATS, the sequencing, the enrichment, the— and then before you know it, they got 27 tools. And not to name names, but this one organization had a requisition management software, and they had a different one for finance that they did for talent. So you literally went from a CRM to an ATS to an HRIS to an internal requisition management system to a finance system. It like just this giant loop and it's like, what? And whenever it conflicts, you know, A conflicts with B or whatever, it's a nightmare.

So by the way, by the way, it might— so like a little like shout out to my team too because they, they figure it out. So I'll be like, right, right, right, right, right. You know, like we, we did decide that we were going to move from spreadsheet to a CRM and they figure it out. They're like, they do, they do all the— I, I I do not like software demos. That's like one of my versions of personal hell is watching a software demo. So they do that stuff for me and they will analyze.

And they'll evaluate. So you see, that kind of answers the question, which is if you're the leader, don't go out and buy every app and then force your team to do it. Have someone, you know, like you delegate it. Like that's a good answer to that question because If the CFO says, I'm gonna buy this tool and everybody has to use it, the recruiters are going, why do we need to do this? What we already had was already working.

Yeah, and they don't— then the recruiters don't have buy-in, and it's, it's—

and or they don't use it, or they use it incorrectly, or they— so that's, that's actually a really good answer to the question, is make the decision at the appropriate level, right? If, yeah, if it's, if it's an app that's going to help people at level 3, then have level 1 and 2 You know, recommend but have level 3 decide. Don't decide for level 3, you know. That's a really good answer. Um, talking about scaling, or let's kind of talk a little bit about that. What piece of advice would you give agency owners that actually makes them uncomfortable most of the time but ultimately saves their business? Like, you know, the uncomfortable truth. Yeah, it could be— I'm sure there's many, but, you know, just pick one.

Yeah, a lot of it is letting go, letting go of perfectionism. Because I mean, that's why I've been able to build businesses like I have, because I'm not a perfectionist. And there's definitely downsides to that. So I need to have people around me and I need to have people on my team who are perfectionists because that's, you know, details are important. I'm not a detail-oriented person, but I think that letting go makes a lot of people really uncomfortable. Uncomfortable. And you know, what if they say the wrong thing? Or, well, sometimes they're going to. And sometimes, sometimes my people say the wrong thing, but a lot of times my people will say— I'll be like, oh, I wish you wouldn't have said it that way. And then they end up closing the deal. So I'm like, I'll be like, okay, what do I know, right?

They read the right— they read the room.

So, you know, also like sometimes people, they're gonna do things, they might not do things the way they exactly the way you would do them, but you might not be right.

You know, but they might, right? They might actually get them done better or faster or, or more of it or whatever. So I, I guess the uncomfortable truth or, uh, advice that I'm going back to the trying to answer the question myself here based on what you just said is, um, learn to let go of the things that you feel like only you can do. And, you know, find out if they can do it. Let them do it.

Don't just And things will not— if you want to scale, things will not be perfect. Things are not going to be— I mean, and I mean, by the way, if you do them all yourself, they're not going to be perfect either.

That's a good point, because the more you do, the less well you do it. So that's— so my friend Amanda Janala, a friend and colleague, we've worked together actually multiple times, um, is, is very fond of the saying Perfect is the enemy of good, which I think kind of summarizes the concept of if you're trying to get it right, so right that it's perfect, you probably already passed the point of like you should have turned this in a while. Yeah, yeah, it was good enough and then you just went too far. Yeah, that's hilarious.

Control thing too, you know, it's, it's a mindset thing and a control thing, you know.

I'm hearing a lot of mindset, mindset, mindset.

Yeah.

Okay. So, um, for people out there that are maybe thinking about starting a business, this is— and this is actually a pretty opportune time or climate for that. People have come to me in the past and said, yeah, what do you think about me going out in there, hanging my own shingle, starting my own, you know, staffing business, etc.? And sometimes are the right time, sometimes are not the right time. It seems to be when there's this like boom of activity where people just all of a sudden think, oh, there's lots of job openings, I'm gonna go start a business right now. And I don't know if that's necessarily the best time or not. I also think that people are like, oh, hiring the market right now is really bad. It's not a great time to start a business, but that's exactly when Julia started. So, um, like, I guess, let me try to put this back into a question. For those people out there that maybe are, you know, they're solopreneurs, but they're thinking, I'm going to start a search firm. I don't want to do consulting anymore. I'm going to start my own search firm. What should they ask themselves? Like, as far as, is it the right time? Is it? Yeah. What I'm saying is it may be good, a good time if it's a boom, it may be a good time if it's a bust. There's no real answer to that. So what should they ask themselves?

Well, and Julie is a great example. So one thing, ask yourself, and if you go on my code and my QR code, there's a visioning exercise. So the first thing is what do you want to get out of your business? So like for me, the reason why I started a staffing agency is because we wanted to build a business that we could scale and exit. That was it. That's how we chose staffing, because that model can do it. So looking at like, what do you want to get out of your business so that you're building a business around the life that you want?

Okay, so you wanted to scale and exit. You didn't want a business that would grow and be your retirement plan, which would have been a different model. Got it.

Correct. Correct. Could have been. I mean, you know, but so, so look at always built it differently.

Yeah.

Yeah. And it's so entrepreneurship, I believe, is So individual, it's, it's an individual kind of, I don't know, unique, whatever I'm trying to say. But I think, you know, it's an individual pursuit and it's a creative pursuit, I, I believe. And I'm glad you brought up Julia because when I was coaching her and coaching other people alongside her, it's been fascinating to me because you'll have two different entrepreneurs in the same exact niche building the same exact thing, and one of them will say the market's terrible, the market's too soft. Yeah, I'm having, you know, it's— I'm struggling. And then the other person will be saying, like, Julia, I just—

this is the perfect time, right? All right.

So it's, it's again mindset. It is. But you do have to have— I mean, timing is a real thing. You know, if you start selling typewriters, you're probably not going to do very well if you're doing that right now in 2025. So timing is important. You do have to have have a market. So I'm not saying that that's not important, right?

So you have that. But so what is the question then? Is it, what's my market?

It's— well, that's part of it. And also in my QR code, there's a niche, there's a niche exercise. So you, you have to make sure that you do have— that there is, that there is demand in your market. But it's also, is it right for you? I mean, some people— like, my dad is a huge, a huge influence on me. He worked his way up at it. He was a corporate executive for 35 years. And he's like, I could never be an entrepreneur. Me, it's really hard for me to work for other people. I'm so entrepreneur. I'm such an entrepreneur. You know, I mean, a lot of my friends aren't. They've been at corporate jobs for years. So I think it's knowing yourself because nobody can answer that question for you. It's just like people ask, well, how do I know when I should quit my job? And so, so some people will build their businesses on the side. That's always been really hard for me. Like when I first started my first business, attention was kind of divided, right? Yeah. So I'm always like all in, even though it's more stressful. Everybody's different. So knowing yourself, because it's not going to be easy.

It's know your market and know yourself. What is your market? And know how you would— well, I guess 3 questions then, really. What's the point? Are you trying to scale to sell or scale to have a retirement plan? Or are you not trying to scale? I mean, that could be another one. Could you just be a lifestyle business where you want enough? Exactly. You want recurring revenue that lasts a while and you don't want to— Yeah. So what's the point of the business? Does it fit you? And what's the market? If you have the market, it fits you, and you know what your exit path— whether you have one or, you know, you know if you have an exit path or not, and if you do, what it is— then it doesn't really matter what the economy does. Not the economy. The timing is different than the economy, right?

I mean, you know, and I mean, timing has a factor to it, and then sometimes you need to know when you, when you pivot or not. And but if you, you know, if you look at— did you ever read Good to Great? Do you know that book where they talk about like how Sony is— Sony is an example of a business that started with a vision of putting Japan on the map of being an economic power. It wasn't electronics. And I think they started with doing like kitchen appliances. So it's like, so it's more about the vision and what you want it to me. It's always about like the vision of what you want to get out of it. And then, so your why is one thing, your vision, and then strategy is another. So you can—

your why, your when, and then your— what's that? The what? The goal?

The how? The how? How can— the how can change. I mean, your why can change too. That's your vision. And that's why I always look at mine quarterly and assess, is this still what I want to do? Is this still my vision?

So assess your vision quarterly. Answer the why and answer the how.

As in, like, is the how still— is the how— do I still see the how as a way to get to my why? If not, you can all— you can change the how.

Everything comes back down to algebra. That's crazy. Uh, well, folks, here is the QR code once again to download the— we'll actually do the exercises. And so, take a snapshot of that. I also wanted to— something that I haven't done, but I need to learn to do more is promote my own business on the show. So, I'm going to put up a QR code to the downloadable that I just published, which is an AI browser guide for anybody that's in talent acquisition or recruiting. Scan this and it is a free download. Multi-page document that goes through what AI browser is and what it means to us in recruiting, because there's a lot of confusion around automation and this is not really automation. This is really an actual AI browser.

Yeah, so I'm going to snap your code right now.

Yeah, snap the code, free download. And then of course, please subscribe to my podcast, which I also don't do enough. Asking people to subscribe is, uh, Yeah, I'm like, it's self-promoting, dirty. I don't want to self-promote, but there I am, you know. So please subscribe and download. And then we're ready for my last question for you, which is you've coached founders, executives, entrepreneurs. What is that? What is the— is there a very common or most common blind spot that you see in leaders that holds their teams back? Like, what's the biggest blind spot?

One of the biggest blind spots is holding on to the wrong people and not realizing, like, not realizing how important it is to have the right people. That's one of the most common things that I, that I get.

So it's going back to let that go. Some cost, let it go. And if it's the wrong person, let them go too.

Yeah, even if they're nice, you care about them, and it just—

even if they're your favorite, whatever.

Yeah, it's such a difference once you— when you have the right people. It's— that's what our businesses are, are our people. And you have to do what's right for the business. And, you know, I see, I see, I see founders not paying themselves and holding on to people who are like salespeople who haven't done a deal in a year, and they're holding on to them because they feel guilty. So that's a huge blind spot is keeping the wrong people for too long.

Oh my gosh, that's a good one. You know, I think that doesn't just work for entrepreneurs. I think that also works for business leaders as well. You know, we sometimes just hold on to that employee even though we're not the owner of the company. We still hold on to that one employee. We probably could be moving them somewhere else where they'd be better. They'd be better matched, they'd be better, they'd be happier. You know, just move them somewhere else. You don't have to let them go necessarily if you're, if you're a larger company. You can find them a home elsewhere. But I think we do tend to hold on to people because of those loyalties. And it actually may be misguided loyalty because if your loyalty is to making sure that you take care of your people, and that person would really be in a better situation if they went somewhere else in the company, where they would be happier and more valued, then that is actually in their best interest.

Well, and they're affecting the other people too, like the people who are the right fits in the right roles. It affects them when there's underperformers or people who are a wrong fit. Yeah.

Yeah.

Wow. One other blind spot, what I want to say is that surprises a lot of people who aren't entrepreneurs is finance because A lot of entrepreneurs are terrible with money and they're visionary and don't really— like, I work with so many people who they have no idea what their breakeven is. They don't know if they're profitable. They don't know their numbers and they have a lot of shame around it. So I just want to tell people that it's very common. So try to, if that's you, try to let go of that Shame and look for clarity. Look for— always be looking for clarity, and, um, answers come once you have clarity.

Yeah, that's good advice. Yeah, especially if it's something you don't know how to do well, don't be ashamed about it. Just really get someone that's, that's good at managing finances, because that is— yeah, that was one of the things I was looking for to outsource— not outsource, that's not the right word offload or, you know, delegate because I recognized that about myself. So the businesses that were successful, they always had somebody that was really more closer to the numbers. Yeah, because I just wanted to see where we were going, what was going on, but I— it shouldn't be my decision, you know, on the day-to-day accounting because I'm not the best person for that. Yes, especially if it aligns with, you know, the I'd say, damn the torpedoes, put it, you know, let's go all in. And then I'd, $750,000 later to have to, you know, so yeah, so there you go. I should have probably done that too. Anyways, I, we could talk forever. I, this is great, really good advice. I, I do need to make sure that we always end with the two questions that we, that we traditionally end with. One of them is, give us something to think about. What should we ask ourselves as we play this recording back?

Okay, so for— I'm gonna do something for business owners. Okay, um, if— or it could be for anyone really, but if you, um, had a blank sheet of paper and you could start from today, what would you do? What decisions would you make if all the other— just like erase everything, erase everything, starting from today, what would you do and how would you build it?

Okay. Great question. And then, of course, always got to end with who should be our next guest?

Have you had Benjamin Mena?

No.

Oh, okay. Benjamin Mena.

Okay. Well, that was easy. Awesome.

Because Julia already said me, so I was going to say Julia, but no, Benjamin. Totally Benjamin Mena. He's amazing.

You'll love him. Wonderful. Yeah. I will reach out as soon as I can here. Thank you for that. Well, uh, one more time, folks, if you want to get in touch with Diane, there's the dianeprince.com, and of course we have the—

sorry, it's—

I said.com, but it's.co, right? I wrote it correctly, I said it incorrectly.

dianeprince.com is like a realtor somewhere or something.

Oh geez, okay, so if you find a realtor, that's not it. dianeprince.co, and then there's the QR code. For Diane. Here's my downloadable QR code. So we're full of QR codes today. And please subscribe. And with that, I bid you farewell. Be kind to yourselves, and please join us back next week. Our guest next week is Steve Bartell, founder and CEO of Gem Software. And yes, it's a repeat offender, and that's because we didn't finish an argument that we had and we need to just kind of wrap it up. So he's coming back. It's gonna be a happy time, fun times. We'll see you guys all next week.