Even shops with healthy cultures and deep pockets are experiencing turnover and struggling to hire. Look at almost any research and you'll see that a competitive salary is an important part of the equation, but not the most important. So there are opportunities to get to yes with a reasonable salary if it's partnered with great benefits and flexibility. But even that's not going to be enough. We've got to let go of some old beliefs and reinvent our companies. Because otherwise, we probably won't want to work there ourselves before too long. Read on fearless leader!
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Carl: ... recording.
Gene: We are recording, by the way.
Carl: What. I'm going to click on something because... There it is. This thing is just a jerk. There we go. Change, turn, and face the strange. God. My singing is horrible, dude. You probably know this. Oh, what are you drinking? Yeah, the water. Death water. You're drinking Joe Cliff.
Gene: I don't know. It was in the fridge. I stole it.
Carl: Gene, I want to apologize for the way we started the show last week.
Gene: Oh my God.
Carl: I know a lot of people aren't going to see that for a while, except that I'm going to post it everywhere. You're a good person, man. You're a good human.
Gene: Thank you.
Carl: I apologize for my harsh, cruel behavior.
Gene: Cruel.
Carl: You said it was, let me get this right, the most... I wasn't listening, but I think you said the most hurtful, passive-aggressive insult ever. You didn't say hurtful. You definitely said passive-aggressive, but I wanted more from what I had accomplished.
Gene: You wanted recognition.
Carl: Yeah. A trophy, and just most passive-aggressive insult, but most detrimental passive-aggressive insult.
Gene: It's like winning a Golden Globe.
Carl: Yeah, right. It's a Golden Globe. I didn't want that shit.
Gene: You want the Oscar.
Carl: Hell yeah. I think I got a booger hanging. That's better.
Gene: All right, man. We're doing these a little bit out of order, so do you want this one... This one goes Friday and the other one goes-
Carl: Yeah, the other one we just hold on to.
Gene: ... next week or the week after.
Carl: And evergreen or whatever. So this one, yeah, this one goes Friday. We keep in cycle with the newsletters. I think that works great.
Gene: We're time traveling a little bit here.
Carl: It's exciting.
Gene: Kind of like Loki.
Carl: Gator Loki.
Gene: Wasn't that cool?
Carl: Gator Loki is my favorite of the Lokis.
Gene: They even had little frog Loki.
Carl: A frog Loki.
Gene: You didn't see that?
Carl: I missed the frog.
Gene: Sorry. No. Frog Thor. My bad.
Carl: Frog Thor.
Gene: You didn't see that?
Carl: No. Where was that? Was that in the...?
Gene: Yeah. When he's climbing down the stairs to go to the little secret hideout, down the ladder, there's a little frog Thor. I just saw a thing where they even brought Chris Hemsworth back to do the grunts and yelling for the frog.
Carl: Well, he is still under contract.
Gene: They were like, "Get back here."
Carl: Oh, man. That's pretty classic. Gene, I want you to know that I prepared today.
Gene: Oh, goodness. So you think it will be a good show?
Carl: No. I'm not saying that. I'm just saying that I prepared. I tinkled, and I didn't drink a fizzy beverage. Prepared.
Gene: Well, I am drinking a fizzy beverage so if I just disappear, you'll know what I'm doing.
Carl: Oh, you're going to be burping.
Gene: Tinkling.
Carl: Our dog burps. Sherlock burps really loud.
Gene: Dog burp. I don't think I've ever heard a dog burp.
Carl: Oh, man. I don't know if it's a golden retriever thing or what, but they eat and drink so fast, and then they're like [inaudible 00:03:52].
Gene: I got it.
Carl: You're like, "You okay bud?" He's like, "Yeah, I'm good."
Gene: That's a good one.
Carl: "Just making room. Just making room."
Gene: All right. Well, let's kick her off.
Carl: That's what we do. We just say, "Let's kick her off."
Gene: Let's kick it off.
Carl: Kick it off. Kick it.
Carl: I like the music now. I'm sorry. I know I gave you so much shit about it.
Gene: I told you. You just got to let it grow on you, man.
Carl: I like it now.
Gene: Yeah. It's a little breathey. A little chill.
Carl: Yeah. It takes the edge off, which I think is what people are looking for in a podcast is don't be too out there. Don't make grandiose statements or try to help with a problem.
Gene: Don't [inaudible 00:04:59] anything.
Carl: Don't do any of that stuff. Gene, what's going on, dude? How are you?
Gene: I'm good, man. It's a bright and early Tuesday.
Carl: Woo.
Gene: But you're probably watch this on Friday, so.
Carl: Yeah, well, I won't watch it.
Gene: I don't either.
Carl: I refuse to watch anything we do.
Gene: Yeah. I'm the same way.
Carl: Yeah. My therapist and the judge both said.
Gene: And the judge.
Carl: The judge is my therapist, so that's kind of cool. Yeah. If I'm going to get in trouble for jumping over the barricade, which looks like a hurdle, I'm just going to say, I think it's important that the judge helps me understand why.
Gene: Is it Judge Wapner or Judge Judy?
Carl: Oh, no Judge Judy. Judge Wapner. Good Lord dude. We keep going back there.
Gene: I used to watch that. Yeah, it was good stuff, man.
Carl: You know why they went under, don't you?
Gene: Mm-mm (negative).
Carl: Retention and recruiting issues. They just couldn't keep anybody on the show.
Gene: I know. I don't know that I would want to work for somebody like that.
Carl: Would you want to work for yourself, Gene? Look at these transitions, baby.
Gene: No.
Carl: They are just so good.
Gene: I would not.
Carl: Gene, let's set this up for the viewer or listener, or perhaps the transcript reader. Hello, transcript reader. This is the ongoing conversation around how our shop's going to make it through all of this work coming in, large quantities of their team leaving, and difficulty in hiring new people. Last week, my hot take was lean into turnover.
Gene: Right.
Carl: Lean into it. Celebrate turnover. I think that's absolutely right. You have to realize things have changed, and I think that's where we start this week. A lot of people running shops have not accepted that the old stuff's not going to work anymore. They're still leaning into it. I think for me, it's like when you're trying to get a lighter to light that's out of fluid, but you don't know it. I'm sure just one time, and you know what, damned if on that third time it doesn't just for a minute, but still not enough to get the fire going, Gene.
Gene: Although, maybe that's all you need. Just that one time.
Carl: See.
Gene: Nice analogy.
Carl: That note card is gone.
Gene: So much for preparing.
Carl: Yeah. That was it. I did one note card, but have you noticed that? You're still running a shop. I think this is the other thing. You got a smaller group. I think with a smaller group, you can make it through this easier. I've talked to some shops that are a hundred, 200 people. They're the ones that are seeing like 20 people leave.
Gene: Yeah. I can't even imagine. I can't fathom the turnover and the processes for bringing somebody in at that point, even beyond like 50 people. I think when you're smaller, you could definitely shuck and jive a little bit easier. When you're smaller, you are also doing the work. You're one of the owner-operator setup. You're one of the team members. When you're a hundred people, and you're in a manager position, all you're doing is managing. All you're doing is bringing in talent. Completely different. I don't even know that I'm qualified to speak on bringing somebody into a team like that other than if I'm on the team myself.
Carl: Well, we're finally in agreement on something, so there you go. This is a big part of it. A lot of people look... Even in the newsletter, even here on the podcast, they hear something and go, "Oh, I'm going to try that." You have to realize it's in the context of who you are. If you were a 10-person shop and those people have been with you for a long time, you might lose one, you might lose two, but you have to ask yourself, it's not always about hiring. Hiring is important, but sometimes if the main reason people are leaving is because they feel like either they're not being treated fairly because the market's changed, or other people are making like 30% more. That's what you hear a lot right now.
Gene: Right.
Carl: If you shore that up. Raise your rates. Rates haven't been raised in two years. We talked about that. Raise your rates. Distribute that money. Shore up the current team and then, if you're smaller, see if you can't finesse your process a little bit. Where can you streamline? Where can you take out waste so that you don't have to add new people? You don't need to get on this train of I can't hire anyone if you're in a situation where you may not have to. I think a lot of people get caught up in just the frenzy and the drama. It's hypnotic, but at the same time, maybe you can slow things down a little with clients coming in. Maybe you can get more things going.
Gene: That's a good point. Every time I've heard of somebody bringing on new team members, it is the two scenarios. One is to replace someone but then, like you're saying, it's because you've gotten more work, and you need to spool up someone else or another team or whatever to handle new workload. Yeah, do you have to take that work right now? Can it be put off? We do that because there's me and some contractors and if we can't handle it right now, it has to wait. I don't have the luxury of, "Hey, let's just bring some people in." It just has to wait. I've never had a problem with somebody not being able to wait. Usually, they're like, "Okay, whatever."
Carl: Yeah. Again, that's going to depend again because you are going to have some clients, like when we were doing the fantasy sports stuff, there's a draft that has to happen two months before the league starts and if you miss that, then you are going to lose money. If you're going up against CBS and Yahoo and all these things, and you're not ready when they are, people are just going to pass you by and go on. Yeah, but for the most part, I think most of us are in that situation, but I think the other thing is to realize when we look at this with retention and recruiting like we just talked about with smaller shops, some shops are pretty close.
Carl: They already had great culture. They already had people that wanted to work for them. Maybe they just need to tweak their salaries. Maybe they just need to tweak their process. Maybe they just need to slow down a little the way that things are coming in and adjust the flow. Again, raise rates. Do those things, maybe they're close, and others, I think, need to just hit it with a sledgehammer, the reset button. Other shops are just not there, and they're going to have to figure it out. I think there are a lot of things you can do while you're going through that process, but for the ones that are way off, I think one of the biggest things you can do is look at how you look to somebody who might come in.
Carl: This was one of the things in the newsletter, is would you want to work for you? When you see the positioning of your company because most people position their companies for clients. That's because you didn't have to worry as much about building the team, but now that you have to sit there and go, "Okay, we need more people. We're going to lose people." You don't want a revolving door. You want to do that culture check and make sure everything's cool, but I think positioning is just as important for your team. I've been in this conversation before where brand is how the outside world looks at you and culture is how your internal team sees you. Your brand and culture have to be aligned because otherwise, somebody is lying.
Gene: Yeah, and we talked about that. We talked about the dusty ping pong table.
Carl: Yeah, exactly. Your brand, if you're saying that you're doing great stuff, then your culture better believe you're doing great stuff too because it's just flips of the coin, man. I think that's a huge way to make sure that you're keeping the people that you have and getting new people in because if those things are out of sync, everybody's going to feel it, and they're going to go somewhere where it's lined up.
Gene: How about this... You've got this written in here about the junior talent, bringing up junior talent. What have you seen happening? I know Sparkbox does this. They are specific about it and how they bring people up. They have a whole program. Apprenticeship is what they call it.
Carl: Yeah. Well, apprenticeships are great. Now, apprenticeships take a while. I think that's part of why... There's a lot of junior talent available specifically around digital project management. I was speaking with somebody yesterday who's a UX designer who just came through Google's authentication program or certification program and went through all of that, so there's a lot of talent out there that is fresh. But a lot of people, I think, feel like, no, that's not going to work. I think they're trying to fix right now, and they're not thinking about near. You've got now, near and far.
Carl: I think we can't just be focused on now. We have to be thinking about what's coming up, and I think that's why reinforcing experienced hires that you may be able to hold onto for three or four years with juniors who may take three to four years as well but within that six months to a year, they can take some of that pressure off. I think that's really critical. You mentioned Sparkbox and their apprenticeship program. There are a lot of people who are going that route now. You were part of Iron Yard. You know that can be a tricky situation, but there are some more schools out there now that are putting people out.
Carl: I think eventually you're going to have to look at some way to grow your own talent. I'm really shocked there's not a Google university and an Amazon university and an Apple university where they're growing this talent instead of just grabbing it from others.
Gene: Yeah. That is amazing that they're not doing that. I guess they have the deep pockets to just snag whoever they want. Do you put a little bit of the blame on... Blame's probably a weird word, but sure, they're big companies. Fuck them. Do you blame them for a lot of this-
Carl: No.
Gene: ... raising employee rates and siphoning up talent?
Carl: They're definitely the reason. They're definitely creating impact, but they don't even know we exist. That's like a fricking bug blaming us for stepping on it or almost stepping on it.
Gene: You're right. Yeah.
Carl: I think we have to blame ourselves if we're going to do blame. Why is the blame game here, Gene?
Gene: Sorry.
Carl: What if instead, I'm going to reframe this. It's what I do, but instead of thinking about it that way, what if we just acknowledge that yeah, we followed in their footsteps. We thought we could do what they do and we just can't. It's not who we are and the people that work with us, and we talked about this recently, may end up wanting to go on and work for them.
Carl: That was from last week but the thing is we have to acknowledge that we're never going to be able to pay what they pay. We're never going to have those same benefits, but we're also never going to have people glued to their desk. Part of the reason why at Google they do your dry cleaning and they have those master chefs and they take care of your dog and all these things is because you're not going anywhere.
Gene: They don't want you to leave.
Carl: We talk about asses in seats. They glue them to the seat. None of them work there, but I'm going with it.
Gene: I forget who I was talking to.
Carl: This happens to you a lot.
Gene: Daniel Burka or somebody like that. They went to work at Google, and he was like, "Man, this is so awesome. They send a bus to my house and there's coffee on the bus and there's Wi-Fi on the bus, and they have a desk on the bus where I can work on my way to work." I was like, "That sounds pretty fucking horrible."
Carl: It actually sounds like you're already working.
Gene: I could see somebody like, "Let's maximize the time between their house and the office and give them a way to work on that 45-minute drive." Holy crap, man. Can I just listen to a damn podcast or something? Can I read the newspaper? Do something else besides work the moment I get out of bed.
Carl: Well, especially when you realize that a lot of these companies that do that are the same ones that they put out the propaganda. It says, "Time off is super important. You have to recharge." But then if I'm in San Francisco and I call a friend who's at Apple and I say, "Hey, do you want to grab a drink tonight?" "I'd love to, but I can't get out. I'm going to be here till midnight."
Gene: I know.
Carl: I hear that shit all the time from people who are in those types of companies. Also, it could be they just don't want to see me. I'm just now starting to realize my daughter said she had to work until midnight. She doesn't even have a job. All right. I got it.
Gene: I remember touring the Apple campus and whatever building we were in, there was a slide that went from the fourth floor... It was a slide that went down to the first floor, but there was a layer of dust on that slide. I remember looking to my friend who was with me, touring it, and I was like, "There's dust on that slide, man. They don't use that thing." It was just like, "That is a prop if I've ever seen one." We have a slide in our office. What the hell?
Carl: I also think that maybe somebody said, "You know, if we get people to use the slide versus go down the stairs, we're going to save three hours a year."
Gene: Oh, I know.
Carl: Multiply that by 40,000 employees all going down the slide, and then somebody said, "But the insurance." Then the dust started to gather. That is the story of the slide.
Gene: You just made the shareholders some money with that slide, buddy. Yeah, it's so stupid. Anyway.
Carl: Then marketing came up with let it slide. It's going to be amazing. Everybody, we did T-shirts. Let's go. You know what happened? Digital agencies would suddenly put slides in their office if we thought it was a real thing they were doing at the bigs. We would totally start doing that instead of all the other crap.
Gene: There's some agency that's a member that's got a slide in their office, and they're like, "Fuck you guys."
Carl: Oh, man. I wanted to say really quickly that the other type of opportunity you have there, and this gets back to The JellyFish Model, what we were trying to do at nGen. When you're talking about the small shops in the large shops is this ability to scale up and scale back down.
Carl: Right now, if I was running nGen, I don't know which size we would be. Would we be 50, or would we be 15? I don't know, because it would also depend on the quality of the talent that we were bringing in. I think that's super important. A lot of people are just trying to find somebody who's got the skills that are required for the project. I think that's really dangerous because you can scale up or scale down depending on the type of shop you are.
Carl: Also, there are a lot of agency alliances that I've been contacted about. A lot, three probably in the last four months, where people are saying, "We're trying to create this collective. We're trying to do this thing where we know we can partner together, since we can't necessarily grow our teams the way we want to." The reason that people are doing that and the thing that I think people have to be super careful about is just hiring to hire because if you go through a massive hiring... I was talking with a shop a couple of days ago that had lost about almost 30 people. Now, this is a shop that's a few hundred people. They had lost almost 30 people, but they had hired over 70.
Gene: Wow.
Carl: I said, "What is the process? What are you going through?" They're slowing down on some things. They're slowing down in terms of the amount that they're asking people to do. They're making sure the salaries are covered. They're doing a culture check to make sure everything's good there. But the danger becomes if you just flood... For them, it's maybe 15 or 20% new people coming in, but that starts to erode the trust of the current team, because they're in a project, and they're like, "I don't know three of these people. I've never seen these people."
Gene: Maybe they're replacing me.
Carl: Right. But the thing I think that happens that comes out of that when you start to get just that much new at one time is that you start to bring in people who may have the hard skills, but they don't have the soft skills. This goes back to a design leadership camp, one of the first ones we had, and 30 design leaders from really large organizations who have design teams of like each one had 20 to 50, some people had a hundred designers just on their team. I'm talking Disney. I'm talking American Express. These types of organizations.
Carl: Somebody asked the question, "How many of you fired somebody in the last year because of a hard skill issue?" They didn't have the skills to do the job, and not a single hand went up. "How many of you fired somebody because of a soft skill?" You know what, like 13 hands went up out of 30. I think this could be the next wave. We're going to build these teams, and we didn't pay enough attention to the soft skills, and now we got to fire people because they're just not good people, or they just don't get along.
Gene: That was the rub with some of these code school graduates, was they knew some nuts and bolts, but they didn't quite know how to communicate with the other team members. They didn't know how to ask for help. They didn't know how to speak to clients.
Gene: On one hand, I get it but then on the other hand, it's like, well, it's a six-month program. How do you expect them to have work experience that a four-year veteran in the industry would have? I get it, but I think someone who has come through, whether it's been... They've got some skills. They've been hired, and they worked in a junior role for a while. They built those skills because they have to versus someone who's force fed some information and then shucked out there. Where did they were going to get it from?
Carl: This is interesting because I think a lot of people do tests. That person I was talking about who just went through the Google certification is like, "Yeah, I had to take this test. That was kind of weird." Those tests don't show how you perform under pressure. Don't show how you help a teammate. Don't show how you treat a client. Don't do any of those things.
Carl: I think maybe there is something where you could put people... I don't know if the apprenticeship programs do this, but put them under a little pressure. Put them in a contest. See how they do. Don't play games. Make sure everybody's getting compensated or treated fairly or whatever, but I think that's it. When the shit hits the fan, who is still being a team player and saying, "We can do this. Let's take a deep breath," versus "Fuck it. I'm out"?
Gene: Yeah. I'm going to get my resume updated. Right. I think that's the key. If I were looking at hirers or people, I would probably look towards that in someone over the hard skill.
Carl: Did you say hirers?
Gene: What did I say?
Carl: If I was looking at hirers.
Gene: Hirers. I don't know.
Carl: Is that people who hire?
Gene: Maybe. I don't know what I meant. If I were looking at hiring someone.
Carl: Oh, man. I've said so many stupid things on this show, and now I'm coming at you. Oh, yeah.
Gene: I don't know.
Carl: Well done.
Gene: I would look to those soft skills first, I think. Try to figure out a way to develop them or uncover them or whatever over the hard skills, because I think you could teach people stuff.
Carl: I think an important thing when you're bringing somebody new in, and it's difficult now, because it is totally a seller's market. They have the ability... I remember at the turn of the century, when we were in 2000 and all of those IT techs could demand a signing bonus. That was a real thing. If you were a COBOL programmer or FORTRAN 4 and nobody did that shit anymore, you could demand a $20,000 signing bonus before you came in to Y2K proof shit.
Carl: It's definitely not at that level right now. We used to be able to have chemistry checks with people. We would invite them to come hang out with the team and do stuff. You can't do that right now, or maybe you can start to do that again. I think the other thing is we would have people work on a test project because if you ask somebody to do a test while they're working somewhere else. That's the thing. Somebody is going to have to make a commitment to you to come on because more than likely they're working right now, or they're going to leave probably a lucrative freelancing gig.
Carl: I think if you don't have somebody work on a project with you for two months, you're not going to see how they react to different situations. The timeframe has changed. Unfortunately, this feature is being added. The budget is screwy. How do they react to all that stuff? I think that's really important.
Gene: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Agreed. All right, man, it's related unrelated, but still the same. You sent me the link of the week.
Carl: The hot link of the week. It's not hot because it's a hot take. It's just the link of the week.
Gene: It's kind of hot.
Carl: I screw that up every time. It is an article from Karl Sakas and Karl is a member in the community. He does a lot of agency consulting and stuff and has hung around with us for quite a while, and I've say, this thing got 12% of the clicks on the... I think it was something like 50 or 55 clicks, which is a lot.
Gene: That's a lot.
Carl: This is all about establishing your client waiting list, which I think is super smart. The basics of what Karl is saying... It's so funny. I sound like I'm talking about myself in the third person, but is that if you've got work coming in too fast, put up a velvet rope and I think that's important, and you mentioned a little bit, Gene. It's saying, "Hey, we're a smaller shop." Even if you're larger, you can do this. Say, "We only take on so much work at a time. Right now, we don't want to grow a team really fast and put inexperienced people on your team. We are in high demand. We can put you on the list for a deposit, and we will get started within the next two months or within the next three months."
Carl: As you're trying to dovetail projects and all that, it gives you a little bit of a grace period. I think there's even more you can do with this, which is having certain types of projects that you put in that are beneficial but may not necessarily be necessary to have them separate out. I think discoveries or definition phases can be a wonderful way to slow things down a little. I know that sounds manipulative. I know it sounds that way, but the reality is if a client wants to start, and you can scratch that itch, and you can go even deeper to make sure you're really getting everything well-defined before you get started, then they get to start, you get to understand what it is, and you get to roll them in.
Gene: If you were drawing out your process. If you're doing this thing like you were saying, redefining your business, looking at your process, you would likely pull out that requirements phase, whatever, and make it its own phase anyway.
Carl: Yeah. You should. I think you should.
Gene: The best case scenario you'd be doing that before you did anything else because you want to make sure, yeah, there's good chemistry. All the I's are dotted. T's crossed. Everything's in place. You want all your content, whatever. All that shit. You'd pull that out anyways. I don't know that it's manipulative. I think it's smart. If your production team is where you're having a hard time filling roles, which is what we're talking about, why the hell would you try to overburden them? Pull that part out. Spend some extra time on it. You're right. The client's going to love that shit, and you're paying great attention to them.
Carl: When I say manipulative, I meant you can slow that down a little. You can say, "Hey, what if we do this not this Thursday, but next Thursday. We'll get back to do the workshopping." To that point, I think also you're right. It's developers. It's designers. It's project managers. It's producers and the people who are managing that production. I mean no disrespect to anybody who does discoveries. It's a little more learnable. It's a little more of your personality type. I haven't heard anybody say, "I'm struggling to find people that I can hire to workshop a good discovery." I think that's a trainable thing that you can totally do.
Gene: It is, and if you have a problem with too much work for your team, you definitely not missing people on the front end. You've got them there. Put their ass to work. Make them figure some out or track some stuff down or whatever.
Carl: Yeah. It's also one of those things that clients love. They generally love getting in there and getting to talk through it and getting everything out. I think that's really, really important.
Carl: Another thing that we had great success with when we were trying to slow down the onboarding, is just homework assignments for the client. Just say, "Hey. We really need to understand a little bit more about how the company's structured. Could you find out for us what has the sales trends been in the last six months? We want to make sure that as we're creating the metrics for success, that we're looking at reality of what you've done in the past." They'll probably say yes, and then go dark on you.
Carl: It's one of those things. If you know that when you really need a client that they're going to disappear, you can use that to your advantage. Again, okay, it's manipulative, and I don't care. It's glorious. You can totally go in there and say, "Hey, we really need this, this and this, or could you set up a call with this person? We want to make sure that we're fine-tuned." The other thing is it really will benefit the project. It's not like you're doing something at their detriment.
Gene: I think a good process is one that you can manipulate. I think that's the mark of a really solid process-
Carl: Flexible, yeah.
Gene: ... Yeah. That's a better word. Flexible. It's what you'd want. If you were engineering it out, you'd try to engineer it, so you have a lot of flexibility in how you did things and put your projects together. That'd be the best case scenario. You should absolutely take advantage of it. This client list seems like a great way to do it and then yeah, like we're saying, you just roll them into pieces, parts wherever you can.
Carl: Well, I think the client waitlist, the really great part of it, and I did something similar. I think the way Karl describes it really makes it easy to understand, but we always called it the velvet rope strategy. Yeah, occasionally we let somebody skip the line if we knew this was a great opportunity, but it makes people feel special to know that they got your attention and framing it we only take on a certain number of projects at a time so that we can focus on those clients versus trying to just make a bunch of money. I think that is a great message.
Gene: Well, that's like the article says, what's the alternative? You just pass it up. That's not good for business.
Carl: I will say this. One of the things in the article is Karl talks about, if you can't do it, think about a referral.
Gene: Absolutely.
Carl: I think that's cool, but I never had success with it. We were a referral partner to Happy Cog. We were a referral partner to... I'm blocking on their name now, but a really big... Metalab. We were a referral partner to them.
Carl: The thing that we found, and maybe this is different depending on the client, but the people we talked to really wanted to work with Happy Cog. They really wanted to work with MetaLab and when they got us, we were like a consolation prize, and it never panned out. I think if you do have something that's a trusted partner that you work with a lot versus a network, maybe it can work. I'm a little skeptical on that one. I think there's also some potential backlash if something goes wrong with that recommendation, and then you're still dealing with it, almost like it was your client.
Gene: Right, because they're going to hold it against you. These are your friends and they screwed me over.
Carl: Well, my friends did screw you over.
Gene: They did.
Carl: I'm not going to kid you, Gene.
Gene: One day [crosstalk 00:34:41].
Carl: Okay. What happened? We have radio silence. That's not good. I was joking, and I think maybe my friends really did screw you over.
Gene: I'm just trying to figure out who your friends were.
Carl: Oh my God, so am I dude, so am I. No idea. There are people who said they were. That only lasted until the second injunction.
Gene: It's that Judge Wapner again?
Carl: Oh my God. Oh my God. With him and whoever the dude was out in the hall.
Gene: What's your hot take for the week?
Carl: Hot take of the week, Gene. I'll tell you what my hot take of the week is. If you're running a larger shop, I think you need to have a recruiting team, a dedicated recruiting team, the same size as your biz dev team. If you have three people working on nothing but business development, I think right now you probably need three people working on nothing but recruiting because you're at a size where you need that amount of work coming in. You're going to have to be at a size where you can protect against that kind of turnover or that lack of skills in-house. I think talent needs to be an always-on pipeline.
Carl: I also think that there are opportunities even within the recruiting networks and this is from conversations I've had recently where you can talk to a really reputable recruiter and say, "Hey, I know you normally get 20% of the year's salary as a fee but what if we go ahead and do more of a quantity deal where you cut me a break, and we'll keep working together a lot, and you can work with this internal team who's also going to be making sure that we don't stall out, so we'll give you more signal if you give us a better deal." I don't even know if 20% salary, I just made that up. Come at me, people. That's fine. Because Gene, we actually did have some letters that came in. They call them emails today.
Gene: Not if you print them out.
Carl: Not if you print them out. I think that's it, man. Have a biz-dev team. Look at that size of that biz dev team. Make that the same size for your recruiting team. Always be recruiting. Always be recording. Always be closing. No, always be recruiting. Then also look at some of those other existing networks of reputable recruiters and how can you maybe cut a deal.
Gene: I dig that. Awesome.
Carl: It's good stuff.
Gene: Well, it is really good stuff. That's all I got. That's all you got unless you got more.
Carl: I like how you know what I got.
Gene: You got it.
Carl: You know what, you do know what I got and that's all I got. All right, everybody, we'll see you next week.
