Ep064: Crafting a Winning Small Business Hiring Strategy with Corey Harlock

In today's episode of Building Texas Business, join me as I welcome Corey Harlock of Key Hire Solutions to discuss his transformational journey transitioning from hospitality management to revolutionizing small business recruitment strategies. We explore Corey's grassroots experience and how reflecting on skills and networking empowered changes benefiting businesses, employees, and communities. From precision management to respectful rejection, Corey shares recruitment nuances and emphasizes reputation's role in success over time. As remote options demand adaptation, Corey relates relatable career anecdotes and perspective-shaping reads. His insights illuminate relationship-building, timing, and vision for seizing opportunities in fluctuating job markets. SHOW HIGHLIGHTS

• Corey discusses his transition from the hospitality industry to recruitment, highlighting the impact of hiring on small business owners' lives and the broader community.
• We explore the importance of reflecting on skills and the value of networking in Corey's journey to founding Key Hire Solutions.
• I emphasize the significance of managing the entire recruitment process to improve hiring success rates for small businesses.
• Corey explains the importance of treating candidates with respect throughout the recruitment process, including providing clear communication in cases of rejection.
• We examine the current job market trends, including the scarcity of candidates and the rise of remote and hybrid work arrangements.
• Corey advises on the critical nature of timely decision-making in the hiring process to secure top talent.
• We discuss how to hire for future growth, highlighting the need to find candidates who can scale with the company and align with its values and culture.
• Corey shares personal anecdotes about his early career, his move to Texas, and his reading preferences, such as "The Energy Bus."
• I recount the importance of meaningful connections in business and how books like "Barbarians at the Gate" await on Corey's reading list for inspiration.
• Corey offers advice to business owners on upgrading their hiring standards to attract professionals with the capacity to significantly grow their business.

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Chris: In today's episode you will meet Corey Harlock, founder of Key Hire Solutions. Corey's goal at Key Hire is to improve the lives of business owners by improving the talent they hire, so they can focus on what is important to them. Corey, I want to thank you for taking time to join me here on Building Texas Business. Corey: Oh, great to be here. Yeah, good, good. Chris: So you're the founder of Key Hire Solutions. Tell us a little bit about what Key Hire is and what it's known for. Corey: Key Hire is. It's a business solution for small business owners. So we really target those small business owners five to twenty five million dollars and the reason we kind of the goal and mission of Key Hire is to make the lives of the business owners better by improving the talent and the capacity and the experience inside their business so they have time to focus on the things they want to focus on Whether that's getting a better night's sleep, spending more time with their family, going out and getting more sales, improving their business. And we can improve the lives of the business owners. They can be more focused and more happy at their business. It in turn improves the lives of their people in their business who then can go out and be more successful in their personal and professional lives and in turn that reflects on the community. So we really do see a holistic hesitate to use the word global because it's really community focus. But if we can do right by the business owner, they can do right by their people who can then go out and do right by their community and their families and their surroundings. Chris: It kind of builds each segment, kind of builds on the other right, correct. And when you tell a story that way, it emphasizes how connected it all is. Corey: Has to be yeah. Chris: So how did you get started with this, or what was a little bit about your background led you through your journey to get to Key High? Corey: Sure, yeah, I'm a recovering hospitality guy. I worked in restaurants for years and years. I did high-end, fine dining in boutique hotels out in Banff, alberta, canada, in the Rocky Mountains for years and years. That's where I met my wife and one day I came to the conclusion I was. I didn't want to be in that game anymore, and so I went through this kind of reflection process and said what skills do I have? And I kind of came out with three areas, three things I thought I could, that would could transition from the hospitality world into other worlds, and one of them was marketing, one of them was sales and one of them was recruiting. And at that time I was working six days a week and I had one day off a week and I made a promise to myself I would have coffee with anyone on that one day off a week and for about three, three months I just had coffee with. You know, you send out a help notice to your network, right? I'm looking at making a change. Here's what I think I can do. Does anyone know anyone I should talk to? And people get back to you. So I started having coffee and I ended up with this guy named Bob Scott who was a partner in a company called Questus recruitment in Calgary, alberta, and told him about my hospitality experience and in hospitality, a large part of what you do because of high turnover you do a lot of hiring. So I thought I was pretty good I thought I was good at it and he told me about how they had this great hospitality program at recruitment. He then also went on to tell me that none of us know anything about hospitality. So they hired me to build at this hospitality program and so that was my foray into recruiting and that was agency recruiting and I was with them for a number of years and it progressed that the main owner was a guy named Morgan Art and so eventually I created a company within a company called Questus hospitality recruitment and then Morgan and I partnered in that and then I bought him out, went out on my own and changed the name of the company of the hospitality recruitment network and did that for a couple years and then we got transferred to Houston. So I closed the doors and came down here. But I never liked the agency model. I mean it works for some people, but for me it just didn't, because it was so transactional and oftentimes you would work with business owners or corporations and you could see the problem they had or the disconnects or how they could be better. But as a transactional agency recruiter they just find you people right and don't bore me with that, just give me some. Chris: Yeah, I don't want to be better. Corey: I just need people. So you know, oftentimes you're putting people into a situation where you kind of didn't know how it was gonna work out and there's a lot of big failure rate in that type of recruiting and key hire. I wanted to create it to work with those little guys on a long way around. But I wanted to create it to work with the small business owners to really help them and impact them and work side by side with them and allow them to leverage that experience and improve their experience and their business and then their lives of their people and their lives of the community people in the community yeah. Chris: So I mean, I think one of the things that employers maybe don't realize on the front end, but certainly at some point come to realize how expensive recruiting can be for your business, from not just dollars out the pocket for a recruiting fee but you spend time away from your business doing the recruiting, sure, you have the onboarding, you have all these things until someone can be highly productive and, quite frankly, from the the hiring side, you know the transactional agency model. Sometimes you don't think they really care, like said, they just want to place them once they get a fee. Corey: So there's this bad taste about even having to engage in the process and I think where I never aligned with that is when my motivation is to get paid and your motivation as a business owner is to make your business better. Those don't line up in the big picture right. There's a big disconnect in there and what do you do then, I guess? Chris: or what have you done? Key hire to you know. Bring that right in the line yeah, that and that's the question. Corey: So when I built the business, the three kind of core values I wanted to that I thought were important were the value of the time of the small business owner, because, exactly what you said, I don't think anyone starts a small business or starts a business because they love to hire people. They have a passion and something they love to do and part of growing a business is hiring right. Chris:Well, I can promise you everyone that's come on this podcast, as a business owner has said, how important it is to have good people, and right means hiring good people, not missing. So, to your point, though, they think about the passion, the idea that's the core to the business, but they all acknowledge down the road that hiring good people is the key to success yeah, and so I agree with that. Corey: And you golf, I do so. I haven't golfed in a while, but I used to golf quite a bit. I was never very good and I've probably hit tens of thousands of golf balls. Could I be an instructor, golf instructor? no, because I probably hit 10,000 golf balls wrong yeah right, and just because we hire every day doesn't mean we are experts at hiring. It means we've hired because we've had to and so we wanted to honor people's time. We wanted to impact their business through kind of experience and talent. But we also wanted to create a pricing model that was fair and equitable for both sides. And that was the biggest key for me was, you know, not having huge fees, not have a business owner feel like man, I paid up a lot or I've invested a lot in trying to get someone and the results were me yeah so we, the model of key hire is, you know, we get paid for the work we do, but we guarantee the hire and the work we do is a lot more exhaustive than what a traditional agency might do. And so, if I break down those three criteria, on average our clients pay less than 15% per hire, if you wanted to compare it to the agency model. Right, sometimes they're less than 10% and I think that's great because I want them to get value and we show up as a fixed cost on the P&L. There's no surprises, there's no gotchas, it is what it is. You can budget for what we do and we have monthly fees that are very affordable for the business. But the second piece of that is, you know, making sure that we're valuing their time. We dive into the business and we spend, you know, 8, 10, 12 hours inside a business before we do anything. We want to create an action plan for that business owner. You know we're an in-sourced solution, so we become their fractional department of talent. So we want to make sure we understand the business almost as well as they do before we go to work for them, so we can tell their story in the marketplace, right? Chris: Correct and be looking for the right fit from a cultural standpoint, mindset standpoint for that company right. Corey: Exactly. And then the you just touched on something really important, right? There's the kind of three things we want to break down. We want to break down the experience they need in their business. We want to break down the culture fit, because that is super important. If you have a small business, if you have 20 employees and we're bringing someone in, that's 5% of your culture. And if that's not aligned or we always like to say, if we're going to put someone on your bus, we want to put them at the front so all the people behind you are saying, wow, that's a really great, they're really good at what they do and they're a really good fit. I need to raise my game right. Rising tide raises all boats, so we want to make sure we're doing that. The third and most important and overlooked element is capacity. So many people hire for their current needs because they're in this kind of fire drill. I just need someone and they look good enough, right, reactionary, correct. So we want to get in there and build capacity in the business. One of our favorite phrases is we're not hiring someone to run your $10 million business. We're hiring someone to run your $50 million business, currently doing 10. So we want someone who can bring the experience and the capacity to build process and procedure and has leadership capabilities to scale. Chris: Well, I, you know, full disclosure for everyone out there. I can speak from experience. Have them work with you now for the better part of 2023. It's a totally different experience, in a good way and dealing with the hiring and recruiting and acquisition of talent, Love the investments you made in learning our firm and our business, and how can't imagine how much time I didn't see you put in behind the scenes to make sure you were bringing us the right candidates and cutting out the first two rounds of interviews, just to you know. It is a huge time savings, you know, for us. Corey: Yeah, well, I think we put two people in here, and, if my memory serves me, you guys have conducted a total of four interviews to hire those two people. Chris: Yeah. Corey: And I bet you the total man hours on that would be two, four, probably in the neighborhood of 12 total man hours to make those two hires from Boyer Miller. Yeah, I would say max. Chris: Yeah, so it does seem like. Well, obviously there's a model that I think has value you know talk about. Maybe. I guess you know what led you to that. Because in my mind, what you're doing in the hiring process is innovative. I don't know anyone else that really does this. What? Corey: was it. Chris: I guess, based on your experience, that kind of led you to this. What feedback did you get? You know, would you draw upon? Corey: The agency model is kind of go out, hunt, kill, throw it over the fence and then turn it over to a company who may or may not have a really effective interview hiring process. So, selfishly, I thought if I can control everything from beginning to end and understand the needs of the business and the needs of the candidate and manage those expectations, you would have a bit of better success rate and you can learn from what's happening. You know, a lot of times we'll go through the process with someone, like we did with you for the first role, and we didn't get it right the first time. But because I was there and managing the process and a part of it, I could hear the feedback, I could learn about your company more so that I could be better at going into the market, telling your story and identifying who's right for your business. So I think what's different is if we're going to work with you, it's required that we manage the whole process. We will never when people say well, look, you just bring us the people and we'll take it from there. That's a hard no for me, because for me to do all that work you know you talked about stuff behind the scenes For us to do the 10, 12, 15 hours of work behind the scenes before you give us an hour of your time. It doesn't make sense, right To just say here, I've done all this work, here's what it is Now, give it to you and then be blind about why didn't it work? Why was it a fit? Why was it a fit? Chris: Right. I guess it prevents you from learning and adapting and getting to that success point, because you said you earlier, you guaranteed the hire. Corey: Yeah, and I can't guarantee someone I was an involved with from the beginning to the end. And the other thing is we keep people on time. Yeah, because timing is a big issue in terms of getting people on board in this marketplace. So if we're driving that process and kind of, you know, tapping our clients saying, hey, I need to hear from you, we need to get this done, and they expect that right, if that wasn't part of the agreement and I'm just this pushy guy who don't worry about it, you've done your part, we'll let us handle the rest, it doesn't make sense. So we just want to control the process, because this is all key hire dots. We just do talent strategy acquisition and develop processes for hiring. This is what we're expert in. So in our process, the data says the process works pretty good. Right, we have a 90% success rate in terms of putting people into companies and getting them to their six months and beyond. We have some people that have been working. I have a client the second client I ever signed seven years ago, the person I put in one of the first people I ever put in a business as operations manager, is now the VP of operations seven years later and the owner is still aesthetic with that person. Chris: That's awesome, so it brings up a good point. You clearly have built your business off of key relationships, partnerships with companies and others. What's some advice you can give to other business hours out there about how to go about building those relationships so that they're sustainable and help kind of grow your business from them? Corey: And when you say relationships, you're meaning just within their own markets. Chris: We're both, I think, within your own market and maybe beyond. You've done that to kind of grow your business off of relationships, so what? Are some of the things that you would say you found to be successful in helping you do that. Corey: Well doing. Whatever your product or service is, you have to deliver it well. Right, and I think that's the goal of every business that gets set up. But I think one of the more overlooked things is reputation is one of your biggest recruiting tools. Your reputation in the market, your reputation amongst your peers, reputation cross market who other people might interact with you but the big one is the reputation you have with people who have applied to your company and whether they were hired, interviewed or not. And let me give you an example of what I'm talking about. We don't post jobs, but I know a lot of business owners do, and that's kind of what you have to do as a business owner to try to attract people. So you post a job and 50 people apply to that job and 49 of them don't hear anything ever from you in return for that application. Those 49 people are three or four times more likely to never reapply to your company, even if you get successful and become a big company, they have a bad taste in their mouth and they will not apply to your company and they will tell people I mean, I applied to those guys and they never even come back to me. That's reputation in a really important market, the candidate market. Now, if you were to create a template that just said hey, thank you for your application, your experience looks really good. Unfortunately, I don't think it aligns with the job we have right now and I wouldn't want to put you in a situation where you weren't going to be successful. But I would love to keep your information here on file and reach out. If something more suitable does come open in our company, all the best. What's that person going to say now? Chris: You're definitely going to feel like you cared enough to reach back out. Corey: And you'll be one of the one in a hundred that took the time to reach back out. I can tell you this I've interviewed people and I believe in the good, the bad and the ugly. So throughout the interview process I might come to the conclusion they're not the right fit, and I'll have a conversation with them at the conclusion of our conversation and say here's where I land on this. I don't think this one's a fit, and here's why. You're obviously very good at what you do and I get that, but what we're looking for is really specific and I don't doubt you could figure it out. My challenge is we don't have time for you to figure it out and I would not want you to start a new role where the expectations are super high and you're disappointed and we're disappointed. I don't want to do that too. And man, I bet you 99% of people say you know, corey, that makes a lot of sense. Thank you for being honest with me. Then some of them and I might say 10% or less will follow up with this. I get it. I'm not right for me, but I have someone you should talk to. I've just told them they're not getting the job, but because I took the time to be honest and respectful and clear about why they say you sound like a good guy. Let me help you. Chris: That's amazing yeah. I can see how that would be right. So let's, talk a little bit about just what you're seeing out there in the job market. I mean, you know. Corey: I was talking a minute ago, you know, here we are, and you know, kind of starting a new year. Chris: What are some of the things you think employers should be looking for? And then maybe the other as a candidate, you know what kind of things. What should the expectations be Right, because I think a lot has changed even in the last 12 months about you know those two topics. Corey: Sure, a couple of things. The unemployment claims are going up slowly and they've been talking. I think we're supposed to be going into recession what for about 18, 24 months now. So if it's going to happen or not, it's still unknown. It feels like we're dipping a bit, but what's important to remember is, even in our current market, which feels a little softer than it was, there are still fewer people available than there are jobs open. And I think that number sits around like 0.7, 0.8 people per open job, really Okay. So we're going to be the thick of it and now that the people coming up in the system, there are fewer of them, right, Like we're past the baby boomers and there are just fewer people and there are more open jobs. So even if we get into a bit of a recession, there's never going to be that well, there's going to be so many people apply for this role that we'll just pick right. We are, for now, an imperfectity in a situation where it's a candidate driven market and they can be choosy. So that's something worth knowing. Chris: And just to kind of tag on that, I would have to believe that some of the flexibility and work remote has contributed to that as well. Correct? Corey: Yeah, so I'll touch on that in just a second. So we understand we have fewer people that are going to apply or we're going to be competing for people. If you're excited, I always tell my clients if we're excited about someone, I can promise you someone else's too, because they didn't just apply here. But that's one of the advantages using like a key hire, because we kind of go out and get people, even if they're not looking, and we can kind of get in the rear and have a conversation and engage with them. Chris: That makes sense. I mean it's a competitive. Corey: But if someone has decided to make a move, they're not just talking to you, and if they're good, more companies than yours will be excited about them. So speed matters right. It's the, I think, the stat is. Most candidates, when they start looking for or interviewing for jobs, are off the market in two weeks. So you have 10 business days to get it done. Chris: That's not a lot of time. Corey: But it can be done, right, when we do. That's part of the process that we have, because that's one of those key elements and landing that, those people you want. So then you touched on so we have fewer people and now we have these classifications of schedule that didn't exist what three years ago? Right, we have remote, we have hybrid and we have in-office schedules. Now, they always existed, but they were never prominent and they're the remote. People were told they weren't able. We can't afford to have you working at home, we're not set up for that. Then overnight was like hey, go work at home, we were set up for that. So, people, you we hear this right like, well, I've always wanted to do this and I was told I couldn't. And now the big companies are calling people back, they're starting to. So there's a movement back to the office. But there's also a movement amongst individuals and people out there saying, well, I don't need to go back to the office because I know there are other jobs out there that will let me work in the office, and so this is a conversation we have with our clients a lot. I think I had this with you guys. Chris: Thanks. Corey: It was about the. So if we have an in-office role, we need to target people that are, if argument's safe, in a 10 10 mile diameter from our office for make the commute, have the commute make sense. Now, if there are a hundred people in that diameter or radius or a diameter, right, that's the whole. So there are 100 people that can do our job in that diameter 10 10 mile diameter. There's only about 20 of them, 20% that are willing to come to the office. So we've taken our candidate pool and chiseled it at down to 20 out of 100. Now we have to have those 20 people. We have to a find them, be, make sure they have the skills we need and See, make sure they're even open to a new role. Right, 10 of those people are probably gonna say, no, I'm not even interested. Right now we're down to 10 people. If we move to a hybrid and I think I need to practice by saying there are two types of roles there's flexible and inflexible roles. So if I'm at a machine Turning a metal part, I can't do that remotely. That's not a flexible role, sure. But if I am in in accounting or an administrative function or sales, those are flexible and we can allow people to have that flexibility. So if we move to a hybrid role, we can expand that diameter a little bit, say to 20 miles, because if people only have to come to the office Two or three times a week, they might drive a little longer. But we also might increase our talent pool by 3x. Now we maybe have 300 people and we have 80% of 300 to draw from, because there's 20% of those are like I only want remote. But the people that are in office and the people that want hybrid will look at increases. Yeah, right, the interest correct. So now we're at 80% of 300. We're at 240 people versus the 20. Now if we go remote within the city say look at, I want someone remote, but I need them here in Houston because I want to bring him into the office once a month or twice a month to do whatever. Now we have, you know, 10x. Now we have a thousand people and the people that like being in the office won't be interested. So we have 80% of a thousand people. Yeah, so it's just a. For me it's working, the probabilities of it and whatever you choose to do is fine, man, I think what I'm hearing a lot about hybrid is. People are saying things to me like this a lot more. I'm happy to go in the office, but I want the flexibility if I have a doctor's appointment, just to work from home that day, so I can go to the doctor and come back and I don't have to drive all the way in the office and all the way back. So people are looking for Hybrid is starting to take on a bit of a different. If I could get a like one day or two days from home, or have the option like, if I have stuff going on, if my son has an early game on Thursday, if I could just work from home that day so I can just like get my work done, not be stuck in traffic, and then go see my child's game or performance or whatever. Chris: Up to 30 minutes for game time instead of hour and a half. Corey: Right, because they can you. So I think Hybrid, the definition of hybrid, is shifting and changing a bit. I am hearing more people saying yeah, man, I just want to. I'd really like to be back in an office. I like being around people. This remote thing just doesn't work for me. It's not going to go back to the way it was, but I think it's going to normalize here a bit. Chris: So let me ask you this from a company standpoint. I think from what I've experienced talking to friends, you know, read it in Wall Street Journal or whatever the companies are saying. Look at this, the fully remote Maybe or hybrid, that bias towards remote is a roadie. Our company culture because our people aren't too bad, there is much. What are you hearing from employees and the candidates about their view of Building culture or fostering culture and the need to either be any office some versus Really think it can be done fully remote. What's the kind of the censure getting in the candidate pool on that topic? Corey: I think it's easier to do in a smaller company. You know, I have a client now. They're 20 people, but every morning they have. They're all remote, but every morning they have a video call and they talk about who's working on one and what, who needs to interact with who and so. So they do it that way. In a larger company, I see it being harder. Chris: Yeah, it's just yeah, and there's just. Corey: There's more moving pieces and more departments and more people that have to get connected. And trying to get 500 people on a video call every morning would be hard, sure, but I do think and it might boil down to the person, chris, you know, some people are at home and they just do what they do and those I always say these employees, the people that just want to go work in a in their office and close their door and say, yeah, please don't bother me, I don't want to talk to anyone. They're super valuable people. If you have them in the right role and if they're working remotely, that might be just fine. But then there are some more Dynamic roles in the company where you do need that interaction and I think that's where that hybrid piece is Important to say, hey, we do need you in the office and I know your company culture here is really built around human interaction and keeping people close together. And, yeah, it's important to be able to walk down the hall and knock on someone's door. So I think that's where the hybrid model if you can pull someone in instead of a fully remote to a hybrid and kind of transition them there, you're gonna get that kind of dynamic Interaction and you're gonna foster culture more and people get to know each other and kind of on a personal level as well as a professional level. But it's, I don't know that there's a One answer, because every company needs to figure out Every company's per. I always say every role is perfect for someone. We just need to be honest and really define what that role is and what the company is and what the culture is, and then find the Person who's looking and craving that Right, and so I think a lot of what a lot of people will do is Find people and tell them what they want to hear and then when they get in the door they kind of think well, maybe I don't know if they told me the truth here. Yeah and then they start that relationship off a little bumpy. But if you're clear, like you guys are, about what you are and who you are and how you, you see the people interacting. People are either gonna love that or they're not. But that's all you want, right? The bet getting a hell yeah or a hell no, that's, that's a gift. There's value in both, right. I mean hell knows as valuable as a hell yeah, because you're not gonna waste any more time if you put it up front, say this is who we are and what we do, and if that excites you, let's talk more. If that doesn't sound exciting to you, probably not, for you. Chris: There's another place. It's right for you. Corey: Yeah, for sure there is. That's what I told you all the time. That make you bad person. Chris: There's just no different places they're gonna fit yeah that's exactly it. Corey: I think we do get a little people get a little hurt or whatever when they get rejected by someone, but sometimes that's Best thing that could to get happen. Chris: Yeah, any. You just thinking about the business owner out there, make you know, with the pressure of making some hires or filling some roles, trends, that you're seeing any pointers you might add you know, provide, say you know if you're gonna, if you find yourself in the need, you know hiring. Here's some things to focus on to make sure you get it right. Corey: Yeah, so what? The business owners I deal with? And I love working with business owners as they're always passionate, smart, driven people and they're all different personalities and I love speaking with them and learning from them. That's kind of that the secret behind why I started key hire to? Because Hang out with business owners is a really Awesome experience, just to hear how they think and what they do and why they do it. I love hearing the stories and I love be able to take those stories out and tell people about them, the if I could give them a piece of advice and I'm speaking to small business owners here right. But so we're always looking to bring people in with capacity. So don't hire for current needs. Hire for what you need five years from now. That's number one, right? Remember the phrase we're not hiring you to run our business currently. We're looking for you to run our business 5x Currently doing with our current revenues. So if you do that, you'll redefine what good looks like. And I have a client in Birmingham. His name is Edgar and he runs one of the coolest food manufacturing businesses in Birmingham. I worked with him four years ago and he wanted he had a role within his business that he thought he needed and after we did our diligence and spending time, I flew it to Birmingham, spent two days with them. I said I think you're too small on this. You know, we got a dream bigger and so we redefined the role. We found an amazing guy and put him in there and Edgar loves him and he's now his director of operations. Right, he wanted him to do this kind of smaller role, but I said no, we need to hire someone with the capacity to take over your whole operation. So I'm working with Edgar again, but I asked them this question. I said when we talked four years ago, you thought you had a really great team and then we put this new person in there, a professional, someone who had more experience than you needed today and was a true professional at what they do. Did that change your definition of what a good employee looks like? And he didn't even hesitate. He said absolutely, and I could see it in them. The way he viewed his hiring was different. The people he had hired since we worked together were Different. They were. They were just bigger, better, more capacity. They had that level of professionalism. And I guess what I want to stress is you have to grow your business a certain way, right. You hire your friends, your relatives, your neighbors your relatives are your neighbors and you hire a team that you hope can get it done. And if you're successful here's the paradox if you're successful, your business will outgrow the ability of all the people how who helped you get where you want to go. That sucks, because now you want to grow and all the people that helped you get to this level of success Don't have the jam, they don't have the capacity, they don't have the experience, the draw upon To help you get to the next level. And it's a horrible position for a business owner to be in it. And I've said to them all. I said the hardest. I don't care how long you've had your business and what you've gone through. The hardest decision you will ever have to make is looking across the table from someone who helped you get where you are today and telling them Thank you for everything you've done, but I don't think you can get me where I want to go from here. Chris: Yeah, it's. I've seen it happen time and time again Company out grows their capacity. Corey: Yeah, they just, and they're not. They're great people doing the best job they can. They just don't have. You know, the busiest business They've ever worked in is your business today. The business business they will ever work in is your business tomorrow, and they don't have anything beyond that to say, oh, this process is broken, or here's where our constraints are, or here's what we need to change. When your only input becomes ours, you've run into that wall where you think, okay, we need to upgrade process procedure, we need to include automation if people don't understand how to do. That's kind of your real limiting factor, that's your biggest constraint. So if I were to give business owners advice, it's that right, understand what 2.0 looks like in terms of your talent and capacity and experience. And I never advocate for like abandoning those people who got you where you are. You have to treat them well, but there will become a point where they could turn into a constraint to your growth and I've had lots and lots. I mean that's the other part of what we do, right, we sit with business owners and we walk them through these, like how to have these conversations with someone, and we can help them leave the company gracefully. We can reposition them within the company. There's lots of things we can do, but we always want to make sure we're treating them with respect, because they've probably given you blood, sweat and tears to get where you are and you just don't want to. I don't think I've ever come across a business owner who's like yeah, I just need to get them out of here. They're like it tears them up. It's a hard decision to make. Chris: Yeah, no, I can see that. That is great advice, though, for anyone that's out there running a business about to start one that you got to you know. There's another analogy and you're a hockey guy, I'm not, but I've told us before it's kind of the same to business. Is you look to where the keep your eyes on, where the pucks going not? Corey: where it is right. Chris: That's it, yeah, so they're always looking forward and what do you need to be doing to drive forward? And talent, your talent's the key to that. Corey: Well, I don't know how much time we have, but I can give you a kind of a quick walk through in terms of the kind of growth through a business that we've identified. Let's do that and then we'll wrap it up. Okay, so we've identified kind of five stages of growth through a business owner, and so the first one we've identified is what we call the paralyzed business owner.