welcome to show me yours in this episode we interview Melissa shrugs founder and
CEO of financial Talent Group Melissa started building her business postco and
in a remote environment something that many business owners uh have experienced over the last several years and has some
incredible learnings about what it was like to take a company that was fully remote and transition it into a hybrid
Workforce both the learnings and challenges the mistakes that she made along the way she really pulls back the
curtain on this one and it's a great conversation let's dive
in hello everybody I'm Rihanna Werner here with Jason Sheffield hey everyone
and we are your co-hosts of show me yours today we are here with my dear friend Melissa Scruggs she is the CEO of
financial Talent Group here in Colorado Springs Colorado but I believe you actually do business like National like
within the state within the state the state of col okay very good um Melissa and I have known each other
since we were babies like professional babies at least yes we were so little
back then when I first started my HR career it was probably what 25 years ago
or so you were one of the very first recruiters I ever worked with um and in
addition to that that when my husband moved here from New Jersey Brian um
Melissa got him not his first job but his second job second job the first job
that he had when we were dating the second real job in public accounting yes
yes exactly when he got when he very first got his CPA so yeah and we've done
a lot of business and have grown a friendship all of these years yeah long
time long time and it's it's fun to watch people grow in their careers over the times I mean you were an HR Director
I was a recruiter recruiting manager for an organization and our paths have have
kind of stayed the same and parallel but have grown and changed so much now we're both small business owners I know isn't
that crazy how that's worked like our careers are very similar but very different and we've always kind of just
stayed parallel and been able to share a lot of of life and business together M
which has just been such a fun adventure lots of Consulting and advice on personal side and business side and yeah
it's been amazing and how many events have we gone to oh man we've done a lot lots of events so um thank you for
joining us today thanks for having me really appreciate it one thing I'm learning is it takes a certain level of
courage to come and join us on this couch and talk as a business owner
about mistakes that we've made but I think it's probably one of the
most important things for us to connect on um because you know I mean you and I
privately have had our moments of right but sitting here sharing those
moments of ah with the rest of the world I think it's transformative yeah
it's vulnerable but but important and I think it's to be able to share your story um as I mean this is a market that
is mostly small to midsize business business and a lot of people as they're leaving the workforce are starting their
own business and I think it's important to hear from other people on mistakes that have happened or transitions that
they've taken so that you can maybe avoid some of those pitfalls I think it's so important paints a picture of
reality and I also think it brings in this energy of everyone makes a mistake like it doesn't matter like the goal
isn't not to make a mistake I think sometimes it's also to realize you're not alone yeah like I don't think you can start a business I don't think you
can be a business owner I don't think you can do that without mistakes and sometimes the mistakes are what leaves
you feeling really lonely and thinking like I'm the only one that screwed this up so half of it is just realizing I'm
not the only one I am not the only one that's for sure it's so funny you mentioned that Jason because yesterday I
had a small business owner give me a call he had seen me a couple days ago at a presentation that I had given for a
whole bunch of small business owners and he called me up he's like I just had to call you you made a comment during your
presentation that it's really lonely being a small business owner and he's like like I'm feeling so lonely right
now and I didn't know where else to turn but because you said that and you acknowledged that he knew that he could
come to me and rely on me and I thought that that just like it says a lot right it does and it is a it's a lonely place
and knowing that you have colleagues to go to and approach that understand what you've been through and just have an ear
is really important it is it's sometimes it's kind of scary going oh my gosh like what do I do but having someone like to
go I just need to vent or you know I just need to have someone you know run my idea to make sure I'm not losing it
you know that's important yes and we've had lots of those great conversations so and I always love the moments where you
like run an idea by someone like you or when I run an idea by by a trusted colleague like you and they're like girl
you are way out of your mind and I'm like I thought it was a great idea they're like no terrible stop what
you're doing now like have another cocktail and let's rethink let's run that idea again oh then the ideas get
even better yes they do exactly okay we're going to do a quick
fire question with you and I'm going to start off now Melissa your business is a little bit newer you've been in
operation 18 almost three years three years oh my go gosh was a toddler it's
still new just business even though it's it's almost 3 years I feel like every day is
a new day's A new challenge that comes up I've been in this this industry for
about 22 years but gosh I think every day you learn something new oh you know
absolutely especially being three years so you know I modify and change and you can't get your feelings hurt because
it's a you know it's not for the faint of heart but yeah it's it's still new but yes three years three years my
goodness so because you're in the newer startup
realm I'd love to ask you as you've been starting your business and kicking into high gear what's the craziest thing
you've done to get your business off the ground this is funny I'm sure I'm sure
there's a lot of of crazy things as I reflect back of like wow we all do crazy
things to start our business and especially when you start out it's just you have this idea and you think that you've you've got your business plan and
everything thought out it just things just don't always go the way you planned but my boys laugh at me because they
started my business with a 4 $ burner phone and a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet
and um um one note to start everything I'm doing and then making calls and
letting people know I'm out there but the B boys Laugh at My burner phone which is why I just went to the grocery store got my burner phone and set it up
I laugh at your burner phone but that's now my that's now my main number for this so it did start I'm like okay this
is getting real so I need to now like make that legit number but the boys would crack up at my burner phone so that's probably the funniest thing but
it worked it did it worked I you know I mean it's a lowcost entry into what we do so you have a computer and you know
some membership things that you need to get involved with but gosh you know I don't need to have a huge phone system I
have a phone system now but yeah 40 bucks got me going whatever it takes whatever it takes
yeah okay so with Burner phone seg W into the conversation that means AKA
Melissa is a badass and if you need CIA recruiting underneath your belt there a
gal to go to um so actually Jason I'm going to have you ask you I want to know
what book do you gift most to people o oh
um we just received a book from a friend we did did and I started reading it I'm
trying to remember the name of it what was the name of that book what I ate in a year yeah what I ate in a year um
there is one um that I I I haven't gifted it in a while but it was Who Ate My Cheese that's a great book I have
that right upstairs yeah yeah that used to be it's I haven't given a book in a while but it used to be one of my
favorites um I love do you remember I don't remember who that's byy we should look that up and say it's an older book
um but there's a couple of small leadership books out there as well I cannot recall the names on those either
that I think I mean everything now is just online so that's why I haven't given it I more share links yeah of um
you know things that I think are inspirational or um leadership or just impactful to the day or the environment
I mean we're in a you know an economic environment that is just supercharged on
so many different things and you know opinions and politics and what and so if I can find things that are inspiring
that help are relative to people in the day I'll send that over saying okay just reflect for just a minute and I think
it's important for all of us to take a step back so I'm not answering your book question you did I like that the okay
who ate my cheese ate my cheese or move my cheese move my cheese my chees who Moved My Cheese who ate it who I ate the
cheese I love cheese I will EES the cheese cuz you eventually eat the cheese but who Moved My Cheese yeah that's the
book okay great okay I'm GNA have you pick a card any card okay we're going to
leave the next question up to fate okay would you rather spend a goodness would you rather spend a week
in jail or Ser serve two years of community service oo yeah I would probably do the community
service um and I I mean whether I was in trouble
or not I think it's important to give back and understand what's going on in the community and you know the more you
get involved in things the more you can share your time I mean you don't have to have a lot of money and sponsor a lot of
things but your time is worth something and I love doing things that give back in the community and that are meaningful
to me and my family and and even my business but I think it's you know being able to give my time to things so I'd
say community service I agree with you wholeheartedly it's like there's no would you rather there oh I want to go
to jail lock I might have felt like that last week though when I all these things are
going I'm like please lock me away take the burner phone away in episode to Heather McBroom had
actually kind of a similar question which is so funny we were talking about how vacation could or jail could probably be
a little bit of a vacation yes it's a vacation for sure yeah but not for very long term I just just to get my head on
straight and and move on just a week yeah just a week put money on my commissary col it make sure you make
sure you fill my wine glass while I'm in jail though good coffee and wine okay before you go we go to jail together
let's go ahead and learn how to like do make our own jail Brew so we're prepared
only jail vacation there's a theme here if you're getting
that all right thank you for being such a great sport in our rapid
fire they definitely lend us some fun conversations let's get down to business
because I'm dying to know this from especially you um it's been an
interesting start to your business for you it's been a Whirlwind both really
good and really exciting and you've grown exponentially I mean you've just
done a wonderful job in expanding the business um and I think on the surface level like
normal humans don't see the mistakes like they just see you're just
exploding but you know show me yours what what mistakes what trip-ups have
you experienced so far yeah I would say which one there's so many but you know it's like you have Growing Pains is you
know you have an idea you start a business you put a plan together um you think you think everything out and it
changes daily um especially in what we do it's you know in the in the Staffing
business it's you know you're dealing with people and so it's with people's lives change and what they need and the
economy Everything Changes um and how you service everybody
and but I think for for us it's it's really trying to adapt and minimize some
of the issues but the biggest issue I would say is how I started my business and and it works for some but we started
with contractors versus actual employees and um It's just tough there's
just a lot to do when contractors are doing other things outside of yours they're
not committed to you um you don't have the dedication that you would need to grow a business where someone's working
with you on your business 8 to 5 Monday through Friday um that's probably been my biggest thing and you know we
everybody learned from it everybody grows from it um my business probably could have grown faster I don't I don't
I mean things are meant to be I truly believe that but um we we would be in a different place and probably grown
faster if I would have had dedicated people now we do have we've made a transition from contractors to employees
um just because you can you know you can actually establish processes and procedures and expectations for them
full-time and so we've transitioned to full-time employees which has been amazing it's you know as we grow our
databases and and all of the technology that we have to make our lives a little bit easier and um expand on our branding
and customer service which is so important to us it's been fantastic um but the F first year and a half almost
two years we were strictly contractors that were were working with me so that would be my only change and my only
Pitfall for my business um there's a lot of legal things that go on with that is you know you
what they have access to and protecting your assets within your business and
when they're contractors there's not a lot that you can control on that so um that's what I would say but I think it
works you have to look at your business and figure out what works because I truly think that contractor model works
well um in the right situation um with the right parameters with the right lockdowns on your technology I mean
there's just so many things that you can do and that was the other thing is that we had a we have a CRM that we took off the shelf um that apparently doesn't
track a lot of those things it's it's there but you just need to have parameters in place to protect your assets and um some I I would say that
some people are working with contractors you just have to evaluate what they're doing and what impact it has in your
business and what you're doing and like I said it works well yeah um for our business especially on the sales side
there's different challenges that come into way into play I'm so curious to dig into this a little bit more because it
feels like there's been a real boom in how to start businesses um that's that shifted within like the last five years
especially like postco and I'm curious is was your Workforce remote were they kind of throughout the country were they
local how did you kind of go about finding those contractors that's a great question um everybody was remote okay
which again you think about some of these businesses and being lowc cost center you know you can work remote you don't need to have a physical office
space um you know you can uh all of your information is cloud-based you don't need to have a lot of technology to do
it so everybody worked remote um everybody started in in the state of Colorado we did have some folks that
moved around to other states um but we just support the state of Colorado so um again being on the T same time zone yeah
Monday through Friday 8 to 5 was probably our biggest thing in making sure we do it but everybody worked remote we've recently when going to um
an employee format um have space now that we rent so we are in an office on a
hybrid schedule and it works well in um cultivating a culture uh getting everybody on the same
page ramping people up having quality conversation just being around each other socially um so we have just
recently in the and since November um rented space so that's been good but we started out fully remote and it worked
well it you know I think organizations really have to evaluate what they want
out of their business and you know with this whole return to work Focus um there
are a lot of people that are pushing back on that that don't want to be in an office um and and you know businesses
really need to evaluate how they retain employees and attract top talent and the flexibility
that they offer and what that looks like because that's a big topic of conversation and that's kind of the benefit of of 1099 in contract employees
is they get to have 1099 contractors are not employees well sorry H here yes but
if they're working for your company right like a$ 1099 or contractor they get to have that sense of
Independence they get to write off their bit because now that you're remote I can write off my office I can write off my
internet you get all these advantages they get the advantages yes so they kind of the workforce really shifted through
Co and I think a lot of people that were very used to being like a you know a W2 and that shift to 1099 but then the
control quote unquote that the organization has over that individual also shifted yes and that began to kind
of create this crunch so it's interesting that you started in that environment and now you're going to kind of a more
in the office traditional type of how is your team and how's your Workforce
adapted to that so we're hybrid so I I think that people need flexibility right
and and organizations need to Define and understand from each employee what that means does it mean that you need to
leave early to go to you know Bobby soccer game at 3:00 and I'll finish my work at night or um I'm going to work
from home a couple days a week it's different for every organization we work from home 2 days a week so
everybody has that flexibility to do that um to the biggest thing that we've come together and our in an office with
a hybrid schedule is for our branding and for our culture we need to be on the same page our brand the financial Talent
Group brand and customer service and being known for excellence is very very important um it can be tarnished very
quickly if people are on a different page the the Staffing world can be pretty competitive and aggressive in
different ways and we need to make sure that we are setting ourselves apart from the competition and the best way to do
that is to have employees that are being trained on you know the same brand and
and the culture and whatnot but to be in the office so we can you know feel that energy from each other but still have
the flexibility because you know the staff I have has young young children so they do need to make sure they have time
to take care of kiddos or have that life work balance I think that's really important too is um most employees have
have been pretty prevalent on what they want and that is I want to have a profession um but I need to have a
personal life and the two of those need to come together so how do I have a make a good living have a great career but
not sacrifice everything in my personal life so that's that's the goal that we're all working towards doing and um
making people feel happy and accomplished they're developing and they're giving back to their organization and they're successful
while allowing them to continue having that great life workk balance and doing things their family that's important to them so going back to your brand I think
this really important I'd love to understand and kind of dive into this a little bit more looking back
through your Evolution you've been establishing your brand all along why is that from the
transition follow where I'm going okay from the transition of having contractors who were remote work what
were the hiccups there in establishing your brand as you evolved into higher in
on employees and then creating this hybrid environment what were the hiccups with the contractors cuz clearly there
were right and what is that Evolution and what are you experiencing now yeah
yeah that's a great question so I would say with a contractor again you you cannot dictate they have projects that
they work on so you cannot dictate anything else time frames meetings any of that stuff um and they were never
working full-time right and they shouldn't like they're working on other things but for me I needed full-time um
one of them would work in the evenings and then work on the weekends which was frustrating to candidates because they're getting a call saying hey you
need to meet with me for an interview at 10:00 on a Saturday morning when they don't want to do an interview on a Saturday morning so that's where that's
where um things started you know dividing from where where we are at and
offering from our brand that we want to make sure we are taking care of candidates and offering top-notch
service which means you have to accommodate what what works for them as well and um you
know when you're a contractor you have other things that you're working on and so this particular contractor it worked
well to recruit at night and on the weekends because there were other things that they were doing during the day and
it would what it worked for that person but it does not work for our business and where we're going so it came to the
point that we need to find something where we are working Monday through Friday um trying to find people that we
bring on that we really know we have full-time dedication to who we are and what we do and our identity is out there
our brand identity is out there so having full-time employees being in a
place where we can work together and understand where someone can work
with me specifically I've been doing this for a really long time and kind of training and developing and coaching on
where we're going and so that's where the hybrid schedule came in is that we're going to do that a whole lot better and faster by being near each
other for a certain amount of time so what I'm hearing is you you're bringing in the cohesiveness of professional
level Services professionalism and communication right right so you guys are marching down the same path
therefore creating that brand identity yeah within internally as well as to your your customer that's right yeah and
you know like I said contractors work you just have to really assess on how it works for your business but contractors
are I I think it's a great model um for where we're at as a new organization trying to move forward and get on the
same page we weren't going in the right direction fast enough and um having everybody
working fully remote it's it's hard to you instill what we're trying to instill in everybody and be on the same page of
how we communicate with people and timing and being cognizant of we have
two clients you know organizations that hire us to find them top talent candidates that come to us to say hey
help me find a great role we have to be cognizant to all of those things and especially you know if you don't have
the candidate you don't have anybody to place with an organization it starts with the candidate and you have to treat
them I mean they are they are king and doing what's respectful for them and you know making them feel top of mind that
hey we get what you're looking for we understand how we can add value to what you're doing um and that's timing and
how we talk with you and when we talk with you uh having phone calls not just shooting texts across with people and so
I think the whole approach from where contractors are at it can be different for everybody so good or bad it doesn't
matter it just wasn't working for us so we brought people in and it it has paid off it has been um fantastic we continue
to grow um we're moving space again to a bigger office bringing on to um one more
person next month and we'll Target um uh a person a quarter for the balance of the year so I love where we're going but
we're on the right page and putting you know process just our road map right that everybody's on the same page and
doing the same thing Wonder um just being able to duplicate processes and um
coach and train and Mentor it's really been great yeah so really quick I want
to kind of jump right into something that the complexities of actually
working with contractors is quite difficult to understand tear apart and
apply for an example for me I work with people all the time on this like while
you can determine that a contract or relationship is good for your business
not always legal right tearing that apart and understanding if you're even
allowed to bring an individual on as a contractor is quite complex in itself
you just can't pick and choose and then that relationship forward because if you
bring a Bonafide valid contractor into work with you while your liability is
reduced your control is reduced which means you can potentially put your business at risk correct um but there's
other compliance-based um considerations too I mean when it comes to the
contracts like you lose control of your processes which we just heard from you
what other experiences have you had when it comes to contractors and things you
didn't think of when you thought that the contractor relationship was right is going to be ideal again it goes back to
how you want to be known your brand um and our business it's it's so much about customer service
and you you need to respond to things the same way you need to have a
sense of urgency um a way to escalate things and just a way to approach
business and and that again with a contractor you can't you can't control any of that when you go into something
it's like great we've got these people they have these skills they're wonderful but when you know you have you know a
customer satisfaction issue that's not being resolved because it's not important to one person but important to me but it's not their business it's my
business yeah um that's the thing is there's no ownership and again good or bad good or bad but you really have to
have the professionalism and and folks that understand that hey I I see this I appreciate where you're at and what my
role is at let's let's make sure we're being mindful of what the their end goal is and that's where we started to divide
on some different things but you know to have control you need to have employees because you can't enforce that to a
contractor and and I think it's a great model and certain things but as an organization I would tell someone really stop and evaluate what you want and
where you're going um the use of them understanding the legalities behind
contractors as well you know so you're approaching it Ro solid contractor agreement that's written by an attorney
everybody written by an attorney don't go to Google for that agreement because
it can bite you right in the toes the knees and the rear end you have a rock solid written
agreement and number of other yeah agreed yeah but so that was the biggest thing that's I would say that was our if
I were to redo it again again it was cost effective um you think about it as being simple but at the end of the day
to grow a business and really make sure that you want to sustain where you're at and move forward and be consistent in
the service that you offer you have to have actual employes yeah what
challenges did you experience in transitioning your Workforce from contractor to to hybrid and in that how
many of your contractors also made the transition with you to now moving into working as employees oh boy good
question good sound effects Melissa now we
get like we all need a beer right now and just check it like here we go I think the the the biggest
transition is just getting your arms around your business and what you have um we implemented
um a CRM to you know have a database to track all of our Communications with candidates and clients um having a a
contractor consistently put information in that was one of our pitfalls it just didn't happen so that was the thing is
you just don't know who you're working with um because some of them put information in some of them put half the
information in um we're in an industry where you need to have a lot of documentation from a legal perspective
um and that that wasn't happening um you know going a lot of people are in emails
and texts and phones that's not necessarily documented anywhere um so that was the hardest transition was just
to say okay we need to get our arms around this but not knowing what was there because one kept everything in her
email um or on her phone another one kept a lot in email um and may more
inconsistent but overall it was just trying to get my arms around the business especially with the the staff
that we hired like say okay let's we need to reach out to people we need to let them know we're in a new plan new transition so that was the hardest thing
um I think the other piece is the ramifications of a contractor and ending
those relationships um is everybody thinks that they're a business owner and they have the rights to your assets that's
the toughest part yeah and um again back to the contracts we have good contracts in place
but for some reason people feel like they they don't apply to them even though you have a contract yeah um but
that that's probably been the biggest thing is that people feel like they can go out and you know while they've worked for you they've been you know quietly
creating their own business and now they're all going off and doing this business and calling on my business it's been tough so again it's finding going
back locking down assets making sure you have really clear things in place and I
think we did it's you know but the business I mean I
think this is speaks to such the challenge that when you're starting something you're building the parachute
as you're falling so the initial system that you create is not the system 6
months from now correct or so it's evolving but it's evolving in a way that you don't have control over correct CU
that individual is building their part of the parachute corre cuz they're solving the problems trying to make business happen so all of a sudden you
have this Patchwork parachute abely right they take their part cuz they were
doing it out of your purview out of your site that's right so how much of the that Workforce transitioned into hybrid
did any of them come over with you um so the contractors that I had we ended those contractor agreements so we've
hired employees and so those employees are new to us from so we we ended the contractor
M um status and went with employees so that's completely different so two contractors are doing their own thing
and then we have uh employees that are now working for our organization and I guess I'm curious did any of those
contractors become employees yeah uh no they did not so you had a staff turnover yeah 100% at what point of the three
years when did your staff turn over uh this last November wow mhm yeah and you
know it was a strategic thing again and trying to figure out where we're going and you know trying to figure out it's
like gosh at some point you just feel like you're in quicksand and you should be moving faster than what you are and
you keep getting pulled back you take 10 steps forward and 20 steps back because someone didn't document something and
now you've got to go fight a customer service issue and deal with an upset customer an upset um candidate on things
that we probably could have mitigated if we would have handled a little bit defending this is a very high touch
industry phone calls yeah and I think so many people are accustomed to oh I'll
send an email oh I'll just send them a text it's done just because you send a text or an email doesn't mean you
resolve the issue right if anything sometimes you're adding salt onto the wound you need to actually get people on the phone and understand what's going on
to know what we're dealing with and what we need to fix yeah you know and people need to feel like they're important and
you know it's that's a whole thing again it's a philosophy on how you do things and that's when we are starting to
expand things out and we now have a uh cloud-based phone system which is fantastic um no more burner phones every
no more burner phones that's the other issue is everybody worked from their cell phon so every this people are putting these contacts in their cell
phone so they still have all this contact information um but again it's it's just
trying to work through things and I think that sometimes to save cost
because all these things I did was to save cost I should have slowed down a minute and just figured out okay these
things need to come when do I do those before I execute because I could have saved myself a whole lot of pain and
Agony and money well I think that's the balance you got to figure out just a moment ago you said you know you feel
like you're in quick sand but then we've got the the the opposite you know
tugging at us like no you've got to slow down to go fast it's right slow down to go fast and it's just this internal tug
of war okay I feel like I'm drowning right now if I slow down I'm going to drown even further but it's going to help me go faster and then it becomes a
whole cluster and the the Mind psyche and what do I do you just have some late
nights I I grab a bottle of wine and I have a couple of late nights and really it's just because you're still very
involved in your business right in a small level you are very much driving the business I call the Strategic
tactical approach is that you're in the business driving it but you're also moving it forward and you know during
the day it's important that you're driving it forward and in the evening is when you're going back and trying to fix some of the pitfalls that you found or
that we know we need to go forward and creating those repeatable processes and documentations and systems that will set
us up for Success so that people can move faster right and it's you know I always tell my staff I like I don't want
you to be able to slow down and overanalyze things this is what we're doing this is how we're going to go after it these are the trainings that
we're going to do along the way be confident and Empower yourself right um but I think it's you know put yourself
on the other side what how would you want someone to treat you and they need to be transparent confident professional
confidential um and I think that that makes us better at what we do and sets
us apart so all of those reasons have brought us full circled where we are today but I think people again just need
to assess where you're at there there is some money involved um you know do you
what what are the risks and I think if you go in knowing the risks and and I clearly went in knowing the risk I
didn't think that I would end up where I am today U but it's okay like it's a learning lesson I wouldn't change
anything um I've made some great relationships with with those contractors and they're off doing their
thing and it's fantastic um but our business is is where it needs to go and I think that's the important thing with
a small business I think we started with this is it evolves almost every day something new comes up and you have to
be able to Pivot to address it and and not get stuck on yourself going oh my God just like okay what do we do we've
got an we've got a situation we've got an opportunity how do we address it instead of looking at it as a problem
here we go we have another problem and then nothing gets done and you're so frustrated that you you know you don't
move forward so I want to ask this piece and then we can get into maybe some of your advice and and learnings but I find
so often staff turnover is one of the biggest disruptors to to an organization
and it's one of the things that um most business owners are fearful of because
firing and letting go is so challenging and so kind of walk us through that
process of going and Having the courage to go through a staff turnover knowing that you can you had to kind of shrink
down to then get big so your question um and this is kind of our business as well
is there are lots of small business have lean staff and if you your your staff is
your business and if you don't have butts and seats it's hard to function and I think sometimes organizations feel
like they have to have people in the seats even though there's a lot of things going wrong they fill held
hostage they don't address issues as they should and they keep them in the seat which makes the situation even
worse so true so I'm going to put my HR hat on like like randomwood um so I
think that as as organizations you have to really you have to pay attention to
your employees because it could it could make or break a business honestly and so if
if having clear processes and procedures constant feedback good feedback
opportunities for coaching for employees so they know what they need to do to do a better job it helps your business um
but documenting things and making sure you have those conversations and if you do all that stuff and and the person's
not in the right seat on the bus and shouldn't even be on your bus then have that conversation too right I think it's
important to follow all those things but at some point if if what you're doing is just not working it is the scariest
thing because now it's starting it's almost like I'm starting over you know
and communicating that because now to the community it's like okay we've got we got all new recruiters right um you
get me and then you get this other person and this other person um but it's how you communicate that but not being
afraid because I think it puts you in a worse situation if you are afraid to pull the trigger or you let your staff
kind of Drive how you deal with things there's always a solution there's I talk
to a lot of organizations like oh my gosh I think Susie's going to C quit and she's the one doing my payroll and I
can't let her quick but she's not doing a good job and she continues to make mistakes well coach her and figure it
out and if you have to make a decision make a decision but make sure people are cross-trained into what that person's
doing so that you don't feel held hostage and that's hard for small business especially when you have a three person or four person team like
you can only cross Trin so much yeah um but I think that if you are risk averse
and want to move things forward you you just have to pull the trigger it puts a lot of time on my I mean I've had
some really late nights uh and no weekends right doing it but it's because we're it's for the greater good and you
ramp people up thus the reason we're in person um or hybrid I should say because
it helps us get on the same page faster talk through some um strategy that we
have our initiatives Change Daily um so that we're we're doing the right thing but it is it's the scariest thing um and
I think the biggest thing for me was the you know volume and trying to get to people but the perception of someone
saying wow they have 100% turnover in their staff what's going on over there exactly um and it is what it is but at
the end of the day we want to make sure we have a great service that stands out and it will all work out it just works out and you can't be afraid but I tell
you it's scary and there are a lot of of business owners that that do it they just do and you know you just have to
figure out where you're at and um make sure you have the right resources but but have a plan you don't just overnight
just say okay I'm done that that could be a detriment as well I think a lot of small business owners need to realize if
you keep the wrong person in the the seat it's expensive it's expensive and it's longterm and that longterm is your
choice however if you let go of that wrong person in the seat and you hire the right person for the seat then it's
just temporary but you get the op option an opportunity to choose and even in your
situation you know you you had the contractor you decided to make this organizational switch you plan you you
you know you figure it out ahead of time you come up with a plan and you can even do that with performance issues and that
wrong person in the wrong seat you can say okay we've got an issue I see a potential something coming down the the
pipeline here here's my backup plan just in case and you should always have a
backup plan but I think a lot of people forget about that well we're so busy being in our business and being in the
moment that the planning doesn't happen and we assume that okay I got everybody
in the seat everything's going to be good when it's not good if you're not in touch with your staff and you don't know what's going on that could be even worse
so I think again it's as a small business owner you're in a strategic and a tactical role and you have to be
mindful for both just BEC most people start a small business because they do really well in their profession but you
have to be able to set it up execute get help around you and Elevate up into your
business and that's two very different roles I would say that's probably been my biggest challenge is is coming up and
out of the business and being in that strategic role but it takes trust with your staff and empowering and letting go
and you know like oh my gosh if I if I don't have control of this someone's going to make a mistake mistakes happen
right but help people understanding and have some good process and and procedures in place so that they can
avoid some of those pitfalls will things happen yes it's how you recover from that mhm that will give your clients
confidence in what you do so so true so looking back through all of these
experiences what advice would you give a business
owner it's interesting because you say you wouldn't change it but what advice would you give to a business owner kind
of looking at a similar situation as you with contractors and making this Evolution into becoming an actual
actual business yeah I I think the biggest thing is to surround yourself
with experts so you need legal you need accounting you need HR um Insurance all
these people that are experts in what they do that you that can truly guide you and help be that sounding board
that's really important because they will help you put the right things in place or help you think about things and
yes there there's money attached to some of these things but I think it's it's getting a real really good Network
around you that helps keep you on top and relevant yeah because there's
there's marketing things to consider I had um um a marketing guy that he's
fabulous that works with me and he said you know what we need to stop what we're doing right here and before we do all
this stuff at your website we need to stop and do some analysis so he ran all these things and all these tag words and
keywords and competitors that are within the state and said okay this is what we need to do on your website now but that
was not my Approach like I think I'm a marketing person but his approach is like okay so you've got me digitally
handled as well it's things like that it's just knowing who to go to and sometimes we don't know who all those
people are so if you if you know an HR person or you know a legal person or a finance person they'll know all the
people that you need so surround yourself with professionals that that you respect that will keep you honest
but that you can also reach out to and help help you move your business forward I think that's probably the most
important thing and I've been I've been in this market for a really long time so I had that Network i' probably didn't
engage that Network at the level I should have at the beginning I should have because some of the pitfalls that
I'm having right now could have probably been negated back in the day when I started yeah you I think that's true for
all of us entrepreneurs though we're just so excited to go and get our things start right you don't think about
setting up the structure for anything and when you do think about it you you think dollars and you're like well I'm kind of bootstrapping right now it's
tight and so I don't have the budget I need to eat as well and and I think you know just stopping for a second it's
this slow down to speed up is we do a great job and we know our profession but
we've got to be able to set it up correctly and move forward um in the right way and know what our stepping
stones are some of the Milestones um trigger points in your career to what you know do we we add these things or we
have this much more money to work with or you know like you guys in your organization has been fantastic and you went after gr dollars which has helped
your organization put some amazing things in place and so I think it's being aware of what's going on and
there's a lot of of financial help out there for small businesses that can help give you some of the financial resources
to maybe move faster or put some of those different resources in place that you might not have if you're just trying
to fund this on your own which I think a lot of us do absolutely yeah you bring up Grand dollars there's some great
options for example I mean the Comcast rise Grant paid for this whole entire
podcast setup that you're sitting in now and they're giving us a commercial we get a commercial this
podcast would not be happening without the funding of a grant and there's so many more opportunities out there
there's more coming more that's coming from so so I'm curious in this your
entrepreneurial Journey what do you feel like is the worst advice you heard or what is the the thread of do you really
want me to go there what is the what's the advice that you think you hear out there I'm not going to say names but I
have a very specific situation what's the what's the bad advice uh it's a huge
Pitfall um Financial advice Financial advice um there's a lot
that you have to look at from a small business that you can have advantages or not and um I I now use um the CPA firm
right the partner to uh brw tax um we transitioned midpoint last year probably
the best move we've ever done um prior to that I was working with this cost- effective this is all money driven like
some of the things you think you've got the right things I made a choice just for financial decisions and it put me
behind financially um a couple years because it was not there are strategic things you really need to look at to say
okay if we position ourselves here and take advantage of these things your business will continue to Excel and grow
but financially you're putting your resources in the right places I did not have that I do now I do now and I feel
fantastic about brw techs I think they've done an amazing job of they do my accounting every month um which
before I was doing on my own so not only am I running my business I'm doing my own bookkeeping which is so FR you can
do it but it's like oh dear God um you're doing that but I think it's just
really having some that you trust to say this is the structure we get where you're at today this is the structure
we're striving for these are some of the financial Milestones you need to look out for and this is the time and when it
needs to happen right it's super simple to have something laid out like that I did not have that for the first couple
of years um which it's either here nor there again it was financially driven on that decision so I own that but I would
say that's a really important part of this because Grant dollars are at place um at play for what you're doing um the
way you run your business what you put in your business um are are and again you have to be strategic but you want to
be smart about those things too so we are in a much better place now a lot has happened right and we're almost on our
three-year anniversary and I feel like the last since October a lot of good things have
happened and a lot of scary things and having a 100% turnover on my staff like wow yeah but we've made some Financial
transitions we' brought on staff we we have um office space now we have a
cloud-based phone system where people can reach us and everything is tracked and now we can we can um you know
forward phone calls to another person if someone's on vacation when I was before is like hey put it you know um it's just
way better we're smarter than we were sounds like you're putting on your big girl panties oh my gosh boy have I ever
um but you know it's it's important because I'm still in the business but tough decisions have to happen but we've
learned a lot and it's been a lot of good things in the in the last um you
know since October and we are we are set up for success in 2025 I'm so excited
for 2025 yeah are I feel really good about where we're going well I think
that's a perfect note to end this on with the exception of one thing yes I want you to tell our audience how in the
world can they do business with you oh oh what a fantastic question if you were ever looking for top talent an
organization that wants to work with for a for professional staffing you whether
it's Consulting to make sure you have the right people um how to hire when to hire um what to look for that's us um
whether you're an individual trying to confidentially quietly find something else or just you know needing someone to
hold your hand through the interview process or to find that next job that sets as well so we help businesses and
um individuals pair up and find work we mostly focus on the financial and accounting space at all levels from an
accounting clerk to a CFO uh we do do SE Suite um uh we do retained and um
retained search as well as contingent search so retained search is where you
um are paying a fee upfront and you're committing to one agency like ours and they kind of hold your hand through the
whole process um a contingent search is where an organization uh would engage an
agency like our and not pay a fee until they produce top talent that you hire um
our service does not cost a candidate anything and I think that's the other thing for a candidate is to be aware of
that because there are some organizations that will ask a candidate to pay a fee and that's not what they
that's not industry Norm so um we are set for you know customer service we want to make sure that when people work
with us they feel like they've had an excellent experience um we want to be the best and the best and and it's tough
when you're working with people um but with our experience and and myself being in this industry for 22 years we've got
um a couple others that have been doing this four years each so we've bring a lot of tenure to the table and we plan to continue to grow with that but um
trying to to work with candidates and clients to make sure they have an amazing experience and end up with top talent that lasts a long time how can
our viewers and listeners uh get in touch with you great question so you can visit our website we are at Financial
Talent group.com so all of our job postings are on there contact information is on there as well um you
can reach uh us directly on our office line um 71921
74062 and if someone wants to reach out to me directly email is is also listed on our website um for all of our
recruiters including myself so that's wonderful Melissa thank you so much for joining us today you for having me this
has been fun thanks for pilling back the curtain and getting Hest oh boy we pulled back the curtain yes you show it
us yours [Laughter] hey everybody thank you for joining us
for another wonderful episode of show me yours be sure to share the news with
your friends we're here we're uh we're live we've launched um you can find us
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like share follow do all the things you're supposed to do that all those other video podcasters and pod want you
to do we're right there with them but we're slightly cooler probably because you know we got more it's the man bun
more fun thanks again and have a wonderful day and we'll see you on the next
episode of show me yours [Music]
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