The real path to scaling your business in 43 min

Summary

In this insightful presentation, the speaker emphasizes the critical role of talent acquisition in scaling a business beyond the limitations of personal capacity. Drawing from personal experiences and successful business strategies, the talk unveils the often-overlooked 'Talent Acquisition Funnel' and its three key components: attracting, nurturing, and interviewing the right candidates. The speaker shares practical tactics and scripts to streamline this process, ultimately arguing that leveraging the skills of others is the secret to achieving and maintaining substantial business growth.

Takeaways

• 💼 Leveraging others' skills is crucial for scaling a business.
• 📝 Many conference attendees leave with too many notes and feel overwhelmed.
• 💡 Key to scaling: don't try to do everything yourself.
• 🚀 Layla has scaled multiple businesses to over $100 million using this approach.
• 🏢 Her businesses include Gym Launch, Prestige Labs, and Allen, spanning various industries.
• 🔍 Key elements for scaling: who, what, and how.
• 📈 Talent acquisition is just as important as client acquisition.
• 🎯 Use specific job titles that resonate with potential applicants.
• 📊 Diversify your hiring methods beyond just networking.
• 💬 Nurturing applicants through a structured hiring process increases success rates.

Q & A

What is the main focus of the speaker's presentation?

The speaker focuses on the importance of scaling a business using other people's skills rather than trying to do everything oneself.

What is the speaker's background in business?

The speaker has scaled four of their own businesses and hundreds of others, having taken home about 1.2 million dollars a month on average since the age of 24, and has a net worth of over 100 million by the age of 29.

What is the core piece that the speaker believes many people miss when trying to scale their businesses?

The core piece that many people miss is the understanding that they do not have to do everything themselves and should leverage the skills of others to scale their businesses.

What is the 'licensing model' mentioned in the script?

The licensing model is a business approach discovered by the speaker accidentally where instead of physically going to gyms to sell, they taught gym owners how to do it themselves, which led to easier scaling and less dependency on the speaker's physical presence.

Why did the speaker initially struggle to scale their business beyond $400,000 a month?

The speaker struggled to scale beyond $400,000 a month due to a lack of capacity on their sales team. They couldn't hire fast enough to contact all the people that were opting in, which was a bottleneck for growth.

Outlines

00:00

🚀 Scaling Businesses with Outsourced Skills

The speaker emphasizes the importance of leveraging other people's skills to scale a business beyond personal limitations. They share their journey from attending conferences with a notebook full of ideas to realizing the necessity of delegation. The speaker, who has scaled multiple businesses and achieved significant financial success, introduces the concept of focusing on the 'who,' 'what,' and 'how' to scale a business, which is the core of their company's approach at acquisition.com.

05:02

🔑 The 'Who, What, How' of Business Scaling

This paragraph delves into the speaker's personal experiences and learnings in business scaling. They discuss the transition from a service-based model to a licensing model for their company, Gym Launch, and the challenges faced in scaling due to sales team capacity. The speaker's mentor introduces the concept of a talent acquisition funnel, which mirrors the client acquisition process, and this realization leads to significant growth in their business.

10:04

🤔 The Importance of Talent Acquisition

The speaker highlights the often-overlooked aspect of talent acquisition in business growth. They discuss the light bulb moment when they realized that scaling was not just about client acquisition but also about bringing in the right talent. The speaker shares their experience of scaling their business from $400,000 to $4 million a month by focusing on talent acquisition, emphasizing that a business is only as good as the team behind it.

15:06

🛠️ Crafting the Applicant Generation Strategy

In this section, the speaker discusses the first step in the talent acquisition funnel: applicant generation. They compare it to lead generation in marketing, stressing the importance of job titles that resonate with the target applicants. The speaker provides insights on avoiding common mistakes such as using insider language, abbreviations, and generic job titles, and emphasizes the need for specificity to attract the right talent.

20:06

📣 Effective Distribution of Job Ads

The speaker addresses the common practice of relying on personal networks for hiring and its limitations. They suggest a multi-pronged approach to job advertising, including outbound methods, paid ads, organic content, recruiters, and team referrals. The goal is to create 'Endless Options' for potential candidates, ensuring a diverse and qualified pool to choose from.

25:06

🌱 Nurturing Applicants for Business Growth

The speaker introduces the concept of applicant nurture, drawing parallels with lead nurturing in sales. They emphasize the importance of a positive hiring experience, the impact of speed in the hiring process, and the need for a systematic approach to sorting and communicating with candidates. The speaker argues that a well-executed applicant nurture process can significantly influence a candidate's decision to join a company.

30:08

🎯 Refining the Interview Process for Talent Acquisition

This paragraph focuses on the interview process as a critical component of talent acquisition. The speaker outlines a five-step interview process designed to accurately assess candidates and align expectations. They stress the importance of scripting and having clear objectives for each interview stage to ensure reliable outcomes and hire the right people for the business.

35:09

🏆 Overcoming Fear to Achieve Business Success

In the concluding paragraph, the speaker challenges the audience to confront their fears and biases that may be hindering their ability to hire effectively. They present a stark choice between remaining comfortable with mediocre success or facing fears to achieve greater success. The speaker encourages taking action on talent acquisition strategies to avoid business stagnation and potential failure.

Keywords

💡Digital Marketing

Digital marketing refers to the use of digital channels to promote products or services. In the video, the speaker mentions not discussing digital marketing, but instead focusing on the concept of scaling a business using other people's skills, which is a broader strategy that encompasses digital marketing as one of its components.

💡Scaling

Scaling in a business context means growing a company to a larger size, often in terms of revenue, market share, or customer base. The speaker talks about scaling to over 100 million in sales, emphasizing the importance of leveraging other people's skills to achieve this growth rather than trying to do everything oneself.

💡Talent Acquisition

Talent acquisition is the process of attracting, interviewing, and hiring new employees. The video emphasizes the importance of talent acquisition as a mirrored funnel to the client acquisition process, highlighting that the speaker's success in scaling businesses was largely due to improving their talent acquisition process.

💡Licensing Model

A licensing model is a business strategy where a company allows others to use its intellectual property or services for a fee. The speaker describes transitioning from a service model to a licensing model, which involved teaching gyms how to sell using their methods, leading to a significant ease in scaling their business.

💡Arbitrage

Arbitrage refers to taking advantage of a price difference between two or more markets to buy and sell an asset and profit from the difference. In the script, the speaker mentions the arbitrage opportunity in Facebook ads, which allowed them to generate a large number of leads at a low cost.

💡Capacity

In a business context, capacity refers to the maximum output that an organization or system can produce or handle. The speaker identifies a lack of sales team capacity as a barrier to scaling their business, realizing they couldn't hire fast enough to handle the influx of potential clients.

💡Funnel

A funnel, in marketing, refers to the process of guiding potential customers through a series of steps, ideally resulting in a sale. The speaker discusses both the client acquisition funnel and the talent acquisition funnel, using the latter to address the issue of hiring the right people to scale the business.

💡Value Acceleration Method (VAM)

The Value Acceleration Method (VAM) is a process mentioned by the speaker that is used to achieve repeatable outcomes in business. It involves identifying the 'who', the 'what', and the 'how' to scale a business, and is part of the speaker's strategy for helping businesses grow.

💡Portfolio Companies

Portfolio companies are businesses that are owned or managed by an investment firm or individual. The speaker discusses their experience with portfolio companies, emphasizing the learning that independent of industry, entrepreneurs often lack the 'who', 'what', and 'how' to scale their businesses.

💡Revenue Growth

Revenue growth refers to an increase in the income that a company generates from its business activities. The video script provides examples of revenue growth multiples achieved by businesses in the speaker's portfolio after implementing the VAM, indicating the effectiveness of the method in driving business expansion.

💡Profit Growth

Profit growth is the increase in a company's profits over time. The speaker cites profit growth as a key indicator of successful business scaling, with examples from their portfolio companies showing significant increases in profit after applying the strategies discussed in the video.

Highlights

Leveraging other people's skills to scale over $100 million in sales.

Importance of not doing everything yourself to avoid feeling overwhelmed.

Key to scaling businesses: the who, the what, and the how.

Acquisition.com recruits the who, provides the what, and shows the how to scale businesses.

Transition from a service business model to a licensing model for easier scaling.

The light bulb moment: lack of talent acquisition, not client acquisition, was the barrier to scaling.

Scaling talent acquisition leads to significant business growth.

You need a team to build a large-scale business; one brain is not enough.

Importance of having a robust talent acquisition funnel.

Six ways to acquire employees: network, outbound, paid ads, organic content, recruiters, and team referrals.

Applicant nurture is crucial to getting them bought in before they buy.

Speed is critical in the hiring process; top candidates find a job in eight days on average.

Personalization in communication with candidates increases engagement.

Omnichannel approach in candidate outreach ensures higher response rates.

Structured five-step interview process for better candidate evaluation.

Scripting and clear objectives for each interview stage ensure reliable outcomes.

Learning to sell is essential as you're always selling, whether to clients or employees.

Building a business that doesn't rely on you requires creating leverage through others.

Fear of hiring smart people can prevent business growth; it's crucial to overcome this.

Successful talent acquisition leads to significant revenue and profit growth.

Transcripts

there we go you guys having fun

digital marketing not going to talk

about that today

so today what I wanted to talk about was

how I scaled to over 100 million in

sales uh using other people's skills so

I think that a lot of the time we come

to these events and I've come to a ton

of these events and the speeches are

phenomenal but there's one core piece

that I want to focus on that I think a

lot of people typically Miss which is

not having to do everything yourself and

I think that a lot of people especially

like myself maybe seven years ago when I

would go to a conference I would take

away so much and I would have this

notebook full of paper just all my notes

on it and then I'd be like oh my gosh

how am I going to do all of this and so

if you feel like that my goal with this

presentation is that you don't feel that

way after listening to this today am I

echoing

no just me okay cool that's all that

matters

so what I want to share is really the

secret that's been responsible for

scaling four of my own businesses and

hundreds of others

and so if you don't know who I am I'm

just going to give a quick 60 second

resume

um so since the age of 24 I've taken

home about 1.2 million dollars a month

on average and I'm now 30 and I say that

not to boast but to give you a reason to

listen to me today because every time

that I'm at a speech I'm at a conference

the main reason or the main thing I'm

asking when someone's talking is why

should I listen to you and so if you

want to make more money this is how

I personally built scaled and sold three

businesses so gym launch which was a

service business Prestige Labs which was

an e-commerce business and then Allen

which was a software business

and then by the age of 29 I crossed 100

million net worth

and by age 30 which is now our portfolio

does about 200 million dollars in

Revenue per year

and is comprised of brick and mortar

chains e-commerce B2B SAS B2B Services

B2B services and e-learning

and so what I've actually learned

through not just scaling my own but

especially since we started taking on

portfolio companies is that independent

of Industry typically what entrepreneurs

lack in order to scale their businesses

is the who the what and the how to scale

and at acquisition.com which is our

company what we do is we recruit the who

we give them the what we show them the

how and once the entrepreneur has all

three their business will scale by

default because the right pieces are in

place

and that's how we scale businesses from

10 to 100 million but of course it was

not always like that right so if we

rewind back to 2016.

uh this is me and Alex if you know my

husband who speaks next

um and these are ads that we were

running because what we did is in 2016

we started our company gym launch and

the way that we started it was

essentially we did the marketing for

gyms and we would fly out ourselves and

we would sit at their front desk and we

would sell people into their locations

and so we were doing that and we did it

for about 11 months as we were living

out of the extended staying at like

clients houses

um we really had no money and it was

that was basically like the eating

moment right

and what we figured out after 11 months

is that we couldn't continue to do that

nor could we continue to pay other

people to do it either because they also

hated eating all the time it's like

you're basically flying out to people's

gyms you're sitting there you're selling

people into those gyms and then they're

basically telling you to off

because they're like I see how much

money you just made on my location

and so what we realized was like hey

maybe that's not the right model of all

of our customers paid us

and so we switched to what we call as a

licensing model okay so the licensing

model was essentially uh discovered by

accident because we called up all the

gyms to tell them hey this we're

not doing this anymore and they were

like hey no I need your help and so we

said okay cool well we will teach you

how to do it we're not flying out to

your gym to save your ass and they were

like cool I'll pay for it and that was

Denmark and so we switched to this

licensing model and everything fell 10

times easier because you guys know what

it's like when you get the right offer

which is why Alex's book is about it's

like once you get the right offer it

feels like things are finally starting

to get easier right

and we finally started to gain traction

after we made that fundamental change

but then we hit this point where we

couldn't scale

and we ended up continuing to bang our

heads across the wall

across the wall and we couldn't break

past four hundred thousand dollars a

month and it was extremely frustrating

um anyone here ever felt that way you

just can't break past certain Revenue

sucks

and so after two months of setting sales

targets and not hitting them something

occurred to me

which was that the reason that we are

missing those targets was not due to the

lack of client acquisition right

it was actually due to capacity on our

sales team

we actually couldn't hire fast enough to

even contact all the people that were

opting in this was back in the day when

Facebook ads were so cheap there was

such an Arbitrage we had hundreds and

hundreds of people contacting us and

applying every day and we could not

reach out to them fast enough

and so just when I thought maybe I

figured out what the issue is maybe it's

playing with a funnel in sales

one of our best reps quit and I was like

my life

so I called my mentor I'm gonna call Bob

today I was like Bob I have no

idea what I'm doing I'm 23 I've never

managed people I've never built a

business I have no effing clue even what

I'm looking at I don't even know is this

a problem

and he was like Layla what does your

talent acquisition funnel look like

I was like the is that you know

like I have no idea

and so he explained he said layla it's

the mirror of every business

see if you want to keep clients coming

in the front door then your talent needs

to continue coming in the back door

and so the reason that we couldn't scale

was not due to lack of client

acquisition it was actually lack of

talent acquisition

you guys are all familiar with this

right

funnel

lead generation lead nurture sales I

would think anyone at this conference

probably knows what that is right

but what about Talent acquisition why is

nobody talking about that

application generation application

nurture interviewing

mirrored funnel

and that was the light bulb moment for

me when I literally put those two

funnels side by side and I was like oh

that's my job

and so as soon as we paired the talent

acquisition with the client acquisition

we scaled from 400 000 a month to four

million a month in 20 months

we didn't change our funnel we didn't

change our sales we changed nothing you

can ask people who saw gym launch they

were like trying to dissect our funnel

it looked like the URL was not even

right

it was because we scaled our talent

acquisition

and then we lived happily ever after

with perfect loss

not actually but Talent acquisition is

what broke us through that barrier of

400 000 a month and took us to 4 million

and what we realized through that

process is that we've always been really

one hire away from all the growth we

wanted all the leverage we needed all

the sanity that we thought we lost in

building the business and all the

lessons that we didn't have time to

learn ourselves

does anyone feel that way it's like you

don't have time to learn all this

yourself

and so here's a thought experiment for

all of you

if someone could come in and do

everything you did in your business

today

and you would have to do nothing and the

business would grow the same

why are you necessary

the answer is that you're not necessary

I'm not necessary

your job is to find the people to do

that

and so your number one job as a leader

is to find the people to help you build

your business this is a mindset shift

that most people can't make and that's

why they never scale

they continue to hit their heads against

the wall thinking I need to work harder

I need to figure this out why can't I

one brain cannot build a 100 million

dollar business

it takes tons of brains to build that

and after all if you wanted to win the

Super Bowl you're not like I'm gonna go

win the Super Bowl alone right

you're like I need offense I need

defense I need special teams coaches

trainers

in other words you need marketing you

need sales you need product you need

customer success teams HR teams it teams

Finance

you need a team

and only us crazy entrepreneurs are the

ones that are crazy enough to think that

we can do it alone

after all Steve Jobs was not the person

who built the iPhone right we know that

Steve built the team that built the

iPhone

so I'm sure you're thinking that's great

for you and Steve Layla but what about

me right

that's what we're going to talk about

today in the short amount of time that

we do have

so if you want to get repeatable

outcomes then we need repeatable

processes we call ours the value

acceleration method or the vam

acquisition.com

and these are the real metrics of

businesses in our portfolio who have

implemented the van since money is what

most people want

this is the revenue growth

there's the profit growth 2.5 x 1.1 x

2.6 x 1.3 X 2.8 x 9.8 x

average in the first year Revenue growth

1.8 x profit growth of 3x average in the

second year 2.3 x Revenue 4.7 x profit

clearly it works

so the van really comes down to three

things it's the who it's the what and

it's the how

okay today we only have time to talk

about one and so we're going to talk

about The Who

so let's Dive In

all right if you can acquire customers

which I assume many of you can if you're

at this digital marketing event you can

acquire Talent

there are three Key activities in the

talent acquisition funnel okay you're

familiar with these the applicant

generation the applicant nurture and the

interview process

so we're gonna start with applicant

generation what is applicant generation

it is lead generation which is getting

people to want to work for you not

getting people to work for you getting

people to want to work for you

if you can market and find customers you

can market and recruit Talent it is

literally the same skill set anytime

someone who's a fantastic marketer tells

me I just can't find good people I'm

like me you just don't see it yet

you have both the skill set uses is used

on both sides of the funnel

and so here's an example for you is that

the job title is the equivalent to the

headline it is as important in capturing

the attention of your applicants as the

headline is in capturing the attention

of clients and ads

okay let me explain so here's an ad from

our company gym launch or the one that

we sold okay notice how we say gym

owners we're not saying personal

trainers we're not saying Fitness

enthusiasts we're not saying yoga bar

owners right we're saying gym owners

people who identify with being a gym

owner

what does the person you are already

looking for already call themselves

it's the same when you're at putting an

ad out for a job people put names out

that make no sense but the question is

the person that you're looking for the

intelligence level they have the work

ethic they have what do they call

themselves already

and so going deeper into that there's

two pieces to the lead generation

there's the at and then there's where do

you put the ad

so the ad here's what most people do

one is they're unclear on who they're

talking to they just like throw out they

like Google something and they come up

with a job title and they're like that's

what I'm gonna call it and the reality

is is that they're not really thoroughly

thinking like what does this person call

themselves where do they live what do

they do for fun how do they dress what

do they look like like they're not

really envisioning it as much as you

would for a client and what you want to

do is you want to be in a narrow Focus

to think what does this employee look

like just to the same extent that you

would as what does this client look like

the second is that people include

abbreviations they use Insider language

and they use way too many words

that doesn't mean much until I tell you

what it should look like

so here's what we do one is we're

specific we always know exactly who

we're talking to the moment that I get

on interview with someone I could tell

it right away I'm like this is the

person who isn't the person even just by

the way they dress because I've already

decided in my mind what it looks like

so I'll give you some examples so we had

a company that was searching for an

analyst

two and a half months in can't find an

analyst I'm like guys this is not hard

to find this is one of the lower level

roles in your company

and so I look at the ad and I was like

well what kind of analyst are you

looking for they're like well we need

someone for more experience I was like

yes and what kind of analysts they're

like well financial and I'm like why is

that not in the title

the moment that we put in senior

financial analyst getting super specific

on who that person is literally within a

week they hired the person

the moment after we changed it

the second piece is that typically

people get lazy they don't think about

this when you're advertising to acquire

clients you're not going to abbreviate

things yet people do that in job titles

the irony of this is that anywhere that

you post a job title that's specific for

jobs Indeed Glassdoor LinkedIn they down

regulate you for abbreviating

so you can't actually abbreviate it's

just going to show you to less eyeballs

the third is using Insider language so

this is an example from one of our

portfolio companies she came to me the

CEO and she was like Layla we need

Student happiness lead and I was like

is a student happiness lead

and she was like you know there's

someone to like you know invest in our

customers make sure they're succeeding

like make sure they like the product

make sure they're doing well like you

know get the customer journey in place I

said that's ahead of customer success

and she's like well we don't call them

customers we call them students I said

that's good once they come in but to

advertise for this person nobody knows

what student happiness lead is so again

the moment that we changed it literally

within a week she got her ahead of

customer success

uh last two which is customer support

representative versus customer support

Rockstar so this is something that back

in 2016 when I was advertising in gym

launch to acquire people if you put

Superstar Rockstar you know badass

people would always apply and you got

more applications now it's the opposite

which is they actually down regulate you

for using those weird words so that's

one thing you don't want to do anymore

and lastly similar to that is sales

representative versus I see this all the

time sales rep 100K minimum base again

it's going to down regulate you on the

platforms you don't want to put the

actual uh salary amount in the title

and not long ago this actually happened

to me and I was reminded of this myself

which was I was looking for a customer

success executive

how many people how many people here in

the room have heard of a customer

success executive at a PE firm

I'm gonna be like one they don't exist

really not really okay I got nothing so

for the one person who did raise their

hand you're a unicorn

so I changed it to portfolio operating

partner I called him my friend he said

Layla what PE firm advertises for a

customer success executive and then I

realized I was like I'm calling it a

title that fits with my old company not

my new company a PE firm doesn't use a

language right as soon as I changed it

before the operating partner I got

inundated with resumes and I hired a guy

within a week

so the bottom line if you see the

pattern here is that you have to keep

the main thing the main thing you have

to remember who you're talking to people

get this when it comes to acquiring

clients but for some reason it's

something that's left out when you're

thinking about acquiring employees

and so that is how you do the ad now the

second question to that is how do you

distribute the ad

what most people do is they ask their

Network we talked about 25 30 businesses

a week that are doing anywhere probably

usually below 10 million right and the

number one way that they acquire

employees is that they ask their Network

the number one problem they have is they

can't scale

so here's why it doesn't work

one you exhaust this fairly quickly and

people get annoyed if you continue to

ask them to use their network over and

over again

two is that you will give someone the

role even though they're not qualified

because what are you comparing them to

maybe one other person that you've

gotten through your network you don't

have options

and then typically you end up hiring a

bunch of like-minded people

because they come from one group of

people rather than having diverse

thinkers

a lot of people talk about diversity in

terms of like how we look at ethnicity

and all that I talk about diversity of

thinking is what you want a company

and so if you wouldn't rely on your

network to get clients then why would

you rely on it to build your team

I don't know

so here's what we want to do instead

there's six ways that you can get

employees the first is your network you

can when would you use your network when

you are in an industry-specific Niche

where you have a network right so say

that you're in wholesaling and you need

to find someone that it's a very

industry specific role maybe for that

role then you would reach out to your

network to try and find somebody

the second way that you can acquire

employees is outbound

typically you're going to use outbound

when you don't have a brand

okay if you don't have a brand and

you're a small company and you need a

special role or a higher level role

outbound is typically the way to go

the third is paid ads So Paid ads are

best used when you have a high volume

highly transactional role that you're

trying to fill so think about like Molly

Maids it makes sense that they run ads

to acquire Maids because it's such a

hard position to find and fill and that

is their strategic Advantage their

strategic advantages not even

necessarily their marketing it's the

fact that they can actually keep and

acquire mates

the fourth is organic content so I would

consider this brand or inbound

so if you actually are already putting

out content think about how you can use

that to your advantage to acquire

employees not just clients

the fifth is recruiters so again if

you're small and you have a lot of cash

flow I don't see a problem spending on

recruiters to get a couple high level

rules because they will edify you before

you can edify yourself

and then the last is team referrals

because people who are referred by a

teammate are five times more likely to

stay

the reason that I say that there are six

ways to acquire employees is because I

lived through only getting them through

my network

so when we first build gym launch

amazing team but it wasn't the right

team to scale the business because what

I didn't realize is I was just picking

from whatever I had there which was my

network so for example that sales team

the first sales team that we ever had

that flew out to all these different

locations to launch these gyms

they were my friends from college

and then they brought more of my friends

from college who brought more of their

cousins and aunts and uncle and then it

just turned out to be this whole network

of people who all thought the same they

all acted the same and we continued to

feel like we were the smartest people in

the room

and so I had to learn it the hard way by

having to do

a lot of self-reflection on what makes a

good culture on how to actually inquire

the right kind of employees and how to

build a really strong Talent acquisition

art

and as soon as I did start using all

those six methods we tend Endless

Options

and that is what I tell people I'm like

you want Endless Options because think

about if you had endless lead flow in

terms of clients and you also had

endless lead flow in terms of employees

and talent

how much better would your business be

and so the bottom line is we want to use

every method available to get the right

person cast a wide net and create

Endless Options

Endless Options

and that's the distribution

so if we do those two things then we get

lots of qualified applicants right

that is applicant generation

now the second piece to this is

applicant nurture okay what is applicant

nurture

it is getting them bought in before they

buy

right just like you wouldn't just have

someone opt in and then immediately take

a sales call there's a nurture process

in between we do the same with employees

and so get this 68 of candidates state

that the hiring experience has the

largest influence on whether or not they

take the job I see this for myself all

the time we recruit for R we have 12

portfolio companies that we're

constantly recruiting for I see the ones

that have a great experience they get

the best candidates the ones that don't

one of our companies has the highest

revenue has the hardest time acquiring

candidates because they still haven't

locked this in

and it's obvious that if you generate

clients you must have a solid lead

nurture process to get them and get the

hardest our highest Roi however most

people don't actually acquire or apply

this to applicants

so the average hiring process takes

about 23 days the top candidates find a

job in eight

so speed is King

and most people believe that the

experience itself is the interview but

that's like thinking that a sales

process is nothing but the sales call

itself

and so to get the lead nurture process

what you have to understand is there's

really two sides to this okay there's

the sorting and then there's the

communication

so sorting here's what most people do

wrong okay one they don't really read

the resumes because that sounds boring

as right

they don't really look at the past

experience and check to make sure they

actually work there because again that

would be time consuming and boring as

they don't really look at the length

that somebody's at a job because they're

just skimming the resume because again

it's boring as they don't look at

the fact that they hop jobs they ignore

the lack of progression and they ignore

literally all the red flags

you're so focused on relieving the pain

you feel because you want to fill this

role that you accommodate

here's what we do we read every resume

which is boring as

we take out everybody who has unmatched

experience who job hops who's never

moved up who hasn't done in a long time

had a business similar to ours

it's a ton of work

but How likely do you think it is you

could find a winner if you did that

very

and so just so you know if I get a

hundred applicants for a role I'm

typically going to screen seven to nine

and then maybe move two to three passes

screening so that means 100 people that

have applied for a role that I'm only

going to move two to three to a full

interview

these are average stats too

and so the bottom line is that this is a

volume game and if you don't have

Endless Options you can't play it

and so that leads us to

how do we get in touch with them

so we've got the Sorting we understand

that we have to do the boring work now

what about the communication what do we

say

here's what most people think because I

have thought of myself too

which is if they really want this job

they're going to do these 27 steps in

order to get it right

they should respond to me after one

attempt of reaching out I emailed them

well didn't email me back

I don't need to follow up

they should follow up with me

and they should already know about us

because we're a big deal

right and then I'm not going to give any

communication on next steps because they

should understand this because

it's not complicated

I'm gonna go really slow and not get

back to them because I'm really

important and busy

and I'm going to make it extra

complicated it's only get the Smart Ones

right how many people do this

it's like we think this should I think

this should sometimes always be doing it

and I'm like I'm doing it

again right

here's why this doesn't work one ego

thinking people even know who you are

right like I think that people know who

we are and like then I'll hire someone

they come in and I'm like oh we're at

the store and like someone came up and

said they're like people know you guys

it's cool I'm like you work for me

and you don't even care right

second is laziness which is making a

good process is hard saying people are

stupid is easy think about how many

times someone builds like a software for

example I saw this all the time in SAS

and they'd be like these stupid

customers can't even figure out how to

click the button I was like I can't

click figure out how to click

your button it's so complicated

right terrible ux

the third is assumptions

which is assuming that all these people

think about is you

right and working for you they're

thinking about finding their dream job

they don't know if it's you especially

nowadays there's so many options out

there and listen you're not just

competing against the competitor or the

similar business you're competing

against side hustles side gigs you know

opportunities they could pursue on their

own

starting their own business

and lastly is Distortion which is

assuming they don't have other options

let me tell you if somebody

doesn't have another option you should

not hire them

and so what we want to do and what we

want to understand is that's not just

customer experience that we need in the

business it's candidate experience

so there's four aspects of the

communication that if you can embody

these you can get the best candidates

okay so this is the applicant nurture

quadrant the first is speed

same day next day

would you leave a lead in your pipeline

say it's a two hundred thousand dollar

per year deal would you just let it sit

there for 24 hours

they opted in they said they want what

you've got two hundred thousand dollars

would you just let it sit there for a

day what would you say to your

salesperson

if you're like follow up the

now

right

yet we're trying to get employees that

were maybe paying a hundred thousand

dollars a hundred fifty thousand dollars

two hundred thousand dollars a year and

we won't even call them for three days

we're like I'll get to that on Friday

the second is volume which is

understanding that you need to have a

hard choice at the end of the day the

reason that you want volume is because

you are more likely to make the correct

decision if you have two to three

candidates to choose from

if you don't then you're just going to

pick whatever seems right it's like the

same as dating right it's like if you

live in a small town

a girl who's like you know maybe a

six-son in Newport is like a 10 when

you're in like Oklahoma or something but

you go to Newport and you're like

I got all these tens over

here

the third is personalization

right and so again if you had an

Enterprise client worth two hundred

thousand dollars per year opt-in are you

going to send them an automated text

message

no so if you have somebody apply to be

say your CFO who's gonna get paid 300

000 a year why wouldn't you send them a

personal text a personal email

but people don't they just like Oh

indeed in LinkedIn they send these great

little templated things I'm like that

looks like

you know they're like you really

want me to work for you and you send me

this template people can tell

and then the last piece to it is that

you have to take an omnichannel approach

okay who hears had a sales guy who's

been like I mean I emailed him and you

know they didn't email me back

right and you're like dude call

them

it's like we do the same with candidates

but we don't see it we're like I emailed

him and he didn't email me back I'm like

call him get him on LinkedIn get

him on Instagram like you see his

Twitter

right like they have options if they're

good employees they have Endless Options

too

and so when you do both

you can actually get a hold of the best

candidates fast and actually hire the

people that you need to grow your

business

and here's what happened when we did

this with one of our companies we

implemented an applicant nurture process

it was a course business they were on

decline the revenue is down about 60

percent they were doing 1.8 million a

month when we started with them

everything was on fire

they had no brand no brand awareness

nothing to work with in terms of

acquiring Talent

and we had five missing roles we had a

CFO we had a VP of sales we had a head

of customer success we had a head of

Tech and then we had a CEO

so over the next six months we kicked

off the recruiting process implemented

the candidate nurture for all the five

roles with heavy nurture

we filled those slots within six months

the CEO felt immense relief and by the

way the CEO is a world-class marketer

because he wasn't putting out fires all

the time because he actually had a team

that business is now doing 12 million

dollars a month

18 months later

team by the way didn't change anything

about the sales and marketing

weird

so not everyone's going to explode like

he explodes but if you could even have a

tenth of that maybe go from 1.8 to 2.8 I

feel like that would be worth doing this

so that is applicant nurture now the

third piece to the funnel is the

interview process

okay so this is selling them on the

company and the vision and the impact of

their role

so just like you sell customers on life

after they buy your product you also

sell employees on life after they take a

job with you

and so as you level up in your company

people always say like oh you know I

stopped selling Etc I'm like you never

stop selling you just change who you're

selling to you sold to your clients now

you sell it to your employees

so who here has actually sold a client

but you did like a really shitty sale

like they weren't sold well and so they

just were like a client for forever

anyone yeah so right

that's what you get when you don't sell

an employee the same not bought in

not engaged not loyal

and so the question is what does the

ideal sale actually look like

there's again two elements to this

there's the process and there's the

scripting so we're first going to talk

about the process

here's what most people do might sound

familiar one overestimate your ability

to judge character

what I like to say is that everyone

thinks they're really good at judging

character until they have to hire people

because what you find out if you're like

me and you've interviewed literally

thousands of people and hired thousands

of people in your life is that nobody's

that good at judging character nobody's

going to be a time out of time

the second is that most people conduct

one to two interviews because again it

takes a lot of time you just need to get

someone in you're in a lot of pain I get

it

third is that utilize usually only one

person which is usually yourself to make

the decision

didn't mean to click

fourth is that you delegate it to

someone who doesn't know the role

because oftentimes we're like well

this I'm so busy

running this business somebody else can

go hire these people

which leads to number five which is

thinking that is a waste of time to do

hiring as a CEO and leader

and so here's why that doesn't work

one is there's a reason that the top

companies have robust interview

selection processes in fact the top 26

identify with having robust interview

selection processes

two is that companies that are reactive

and fragmenting with their hiring

process are in the bottom 14 of company

performance overall

I don't think that's a coincidence

three is that 63 of candidates reject a

job due to lack of information during

the hiring process

I see that all the time

and lastly is 85 percent of people lie

on their resumes

I checked that like six times I was like

seriously

so here's what we do we do a five-step

sale essentially

the first is the screening what you can

think of in terms of the screening is

you can think of this which is if you

had an Enterprise client are you going

to schedule a 90-minute call with them

without doing a pre-screen

no you're going to make sure they

actually have the money that they can

actually pay and then you're going to

push them to the next call

it's the same with the interview process

that is the purpose of the screening

make sure they're not a crazy person I'm

gonna blow up your business

the second is the expectations and

culture interview

okay expectations culture it's literally

aligning expectations making sure the

pay is right all that and making sure

the culture is there

third is the skill test interview

skill test interview is making sure they

can actually do the job

this is again one that most people Skip

and we're going to get to what you can

actually do tactically so that you can

actually make sure you don't skip this

part

fourth is the alignment interview which

is like is what you want is what I want

same thing

and lastly if you are a big enough

company if you have over 30 people

typically then it's a CEO interview

and so after implementing this process

in my last company gym launch

we doubled our acceptance rate we had a

50 reduction turnover and we had a

hundred percent time to productivity

increase

time to productivity is like time until

that person's actually producing the

role has taken it over

that's pretty good because what all that

means is that you save money

and so the bottom line is it actually is

going to cost you more not to do this

than it does to do this but in the short

term a lot of people think the opposite

though this is going to take my time

this is so many interviews Jesus

this on stage but like in reality

in the long term it's going to save you

money

which brings us to the last element

right which is like okay I get the

process now Layla but what do you

actually ask them

scripting

screening call

first thing and you guys just screenshot

this if you want it because I don't want

to read all these out to you that'll be

boring

first is you want to clarify the role in

the company right what you're going to

see is that this is going to be in every

step of the way clarify the role clarify

the company right

why do you want this job what attracts

you to this company are you flexible

when could you start

non-negotiables that's what you want to

hit on there so you can just weed people

out immediately make sure I'm not a

psycho

the second is the expectations and

culture interview

okay so for this one this is

understanding are they a right culture

fit for the role a good example of this

might be you know what do you consider

your ideal day to look like they're like

you know wake up around nine maybe work

for an hour or two then like go do

Sports this I'm like dude you're not

gonna work at this company like

we're working at six

right so these are where you want to ask

questions to understand does your ideal

see in this dare ideal scene align and

that's gonna be different every company

I might just said that for some of you

that might make sense that's fine

the third is the skill test interview

this is the one where most people go

wrong because they're like well Layla

how am I going to test skill on a COO

it's an operator role I'm like what were

the problems that you had last quarter

that if this person was there they would

have solved

ask them those questions so what you

want to do is present the problem you

had last quarter ask them how they would

solve it literally you could do that

with any role and I have hacked this

because I came up with so many different

tests over and over and over again that

were like tactical and I would like send

them out little papers and all this I

was like this this takes way

too long what's the problem that I had

last quarter that this person would have

solved give it to them right there

the fourth is Clarity or is the

alignment interview which I look at this

one as basically saying are we aligned

on what the future looks like you

wouldn't get married to somebody if your

vision of what marriage looks like and

their vision of what marriage looks like

we're different would you

so if you want to retain someone for a

long time and not incur the cost of

turnover then you've got to do the same

with your employees which is

understanding what they want for your

future what they want for their future

and what you want for yours and are they

aligned

and then the last one if you are a big

enough companies to say you have over 30

people I find this helpful which is the

CEO interview right which is edifying

the importance of this role helping with

a personal career pack aligning the

trajectory and then setting expectations

if you don't have a company of over 30

people I don't think you need that one

the bottom line is that we want to have

a script and objective for every

interview

okay when you say the right things and

you have a clear objective you're going

to push the wrong people out and pull

the right people in

if you can script and choreograph the

sales process to acquire clients then

you can script and choreograph the

interview process to acquire Talent

it's funny because a lot of people like

they would never let their sales person

get on the phone without having a clear

script and yet they let their employees

and themselves get on the phone all the

time with future employees with no

script

if you don't have a script and you don't

have a process you would not get

reliable outcomes

and so I love this quote by Mark Cuban

which is learning to sell because you're

always selling in business

and so just like I said in the beginning

just because you're not selling new

clients doesn't mean you're not selling

to your employees and I think as we

continue to build our businesses if we

want to build a business that we can

truly sell we can scale it doesn't rely

on us then this is the skill that we

have to learn

and so here's what happened we did this

with one of our portfolio companies

we had a niche certification business it

was stuck at like 400k a month notice

that number a lot of businesses were

stuck at that point

it was a charismatic founder he was like

a genius with a thousand helpers really

good guy but like couldn't take his

hands out like very controlling

um kind of like one of those like if you

want to get it done do it yourself type

person

he had like an operator in there who was

one of his like best friends and nobody

had scaled the company past that point

and so what we did was we kicked out the

old operator we kicked off the

recruiting process we found a new

operator who had scaled a business past

that point we gave the what and the how

and we scaled that business to 1.2

million dollars a month within six

months

didn't change the marketing didn't

change the sales in fact they literally

had the same ad in the beginning and a

year later and I found that out later I

was like you've been running the same ad

on Facebook

right they changed nothing they got a

different person in there

and so that is the interview process

which is the third piece

so what we covered

is really why Talent acquisition is the

missing funnel in your business and how

every problem you have can be solved by

the right person

how to attract the right applicants

using the right ads and the six ways to

get Talent

how to nurture the right applicants

using the sorting and decision-making

processes

and how to sell the right people using

the interview process and the five steps

and Scripts

so here's a quick reminder of why this

actually works

money

money

I know that's all that anybody cares

about like I swear this will make you

more money

this is the boring that will make

you more money in the long term before

any tactic and it pains me the amount of

people that come to these conferences

and they're such genius

marketing and sales people but they

won't do this and so forever

they'll build a business to maybe five

or maybe 10 million and then that

business eventually Capps because they

can't hire people and then they go do it

again I see it all the time

so the reminder is that you don't build

the business if you build the people the

people build the business

Zig Ziglar

so

If we're honest

actually is going to do this

a few psychos

the reason I know that a lot of people

won't do this is because my own CEOs who

I'm invested in their companies

I can't get them to do it

it is easier for most of us to continue

to do the work rather than to find other

people to help us

see what happens in the beginning we

build a business what we typically do is

we train ourselves to work very very

hard

but we do not train ourselves to create

insane Leverage

and the question is really like why do

most CEOs never actually create leverage

why are they constantly bottlenecked by

themselves

they refuse to give up control

they believe the lies that their brain

tells them to keep them safe from

imaginary threats that don't even exist

anywhere about their brain

right what if I hire them and they're

actually worse than me that'll happen

what if I hire them and then we make

less money and I can't afford them

sometimes happens too

what if I hire them my current team

hates them because they're

better than my current team

definitely will happen

what if I hire them and they see them

not even as smart as I've seen happens

to me all the time

what if I hire them and they steal from

me

some people will do that

so here's a thought experiment that I

would ask all of you to really think

through

which is what if you let your fear

prevent you from implementing this

process and hiring smart people

seriously like what if you never

do any of this

what does your business look like in

five years if you never do this

best case in my opinion is you become

the genius with a thousand helpers which

what does that look like typically

mediocre success is like people like wow

this person is really coming up blah

blah blah and then like eventually they

like stagnate Plateau de Quan

right

because you can only get so far with one

brain

worst case you aren't here in five years

seriously like I say this because I'm

like I'm not lying I see so many

people go out because imagine if you

have to carry the weight of your

business for five years by yourself

because you can't hire people

one brain cannot grow a hundred million

dollar business I stand up here talking

about how to build one I didn't do it

myself half the time I'm like I

feel like a fraud because it's all these

people on my team

so the choice is really yours that I

would give you today which is you can

remain comfortable get mediocre

or you can face fear and succeed

to learn more about how we grow

companies you can go to acquisition.com

or you can search Layla hermosi on

platforms

there's stuff

that's all let's give it up guys

[Music]