Founders Cannot Outsource Recruiting

Growth Newsletter: https://levelingup.beehiiv.com/subscribe Need marketing help? Visit: https://www.singlegrain.com/ and https://npdigital.com/ Want to recruit great marketers? Find them here: https://marketingschool.io/hire Neil and Eric break down why founders can’t outsource recruiting, how “A players” attract more A players, and why the first hires become your company’s DNA. They share a real hiring story (an “expensive” bet that paid off), a simple test to spot weak links on a team, and why replacing instead of micromanaging unlocks self-managing teams. You’ll also hear practical retention ideas for top talent, plus a quick take on YouTube growth trends, packaging vs. over-optimizing metrics, and why niche, high-intent audiences monetize better. Sponsored mention: Karrot.ai. Key takeaways: -A-players hire A-players, fast. -Don’t manage harder, hire better. -Views are vanity, revenue is strategy. Chapters: 00:00 Founder-led recruiting matters 01:00 Co-founder recruiting leverage 02:10 Expensive hire, huge upside 04:51 Naval’s “team interview” test 06:11 Replace, don’t micromanage 07:10 Small team, better results 08:01 Retain talent with alignment 09:09 ABM ads and landing pages 10:01 YouTube trend: simpler edits 14:30 Brain-rot views vs revenue 18:31 Wide TAM vs BOFU content 19:12 Growth metrics and focus 21:36 Entrepreneurship is a game 𝗔𝗕𝗢𝗨𝗧 𝗧𝗛𝗘 𝗖𝗛𝗔𝗡𝗡𝗘𝗟 Welcome to Marketing School, one of the top business podcasts with over 61 million downloads. Each episode delivers actionable marketing tips and strategies from two entrepreneurs who truly practice what they preach. The show is hosted by Eric Siu, founder of Leveling Up and Single Grain, and Neil Patel, co-founder of Neil Patel Digital and recognized by Forbes as a Top 10 Marketer. 🎙️ Learn More About the Hosts Eric Siu – Leveling Up: https://www.youtube.com/@LevelingUpOfficial Neil Patel: https://www.youtube.com/@neilpatel 📩 Free Resources Ubersuggest: https://www.ubersuggest.com/ Answer The Public: https://www.answerthepublic.com/ ✅ Subscribe for Daily Marketing Insights!

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Finding customer information shouldn't mean digging through emails, call notes, and spreadsheets. HubSpot's Starter Plan brings all of those details together, so it's easier to track what's happening with every deal and what to do next. It pulls information from calls and emails. Then it gets to work, logging and summarizing them. Right after your call ends, HubSpot pulls next steps from your call notes and drafts suggested follow-ups. And it stays up to date for you, so you can build demand, win more deals, and spend less time on repetitive work. Your records, insights, and next steps are ready for you to act on. And you don't have to miss a beat searching for any of it. Try the Starter Plan for $10 a month. Learn more at hubspot.com. I don't know how involved are you with recruiting, but Naval said founders cannot outsource recruiting, right? It is literally the most important thing. The early people are the DNA of the company.

• 0:42Speaker 00

  And the thing is, the important size at which a company starts changing is not some arbitrary number like 20, 30, 40. It's the point at which the founder is not directly recruiting and managing everyone. The moment there are middle layers of management, then you are somewhat disconnected from the company. And your ability to directly drive a product team that can take the company from zero to one goes away. So we really cannot outsource recruiting. People think you can, they hire recruiters. Maybe you can outsource a little bit of sourcing, but I would argue even that's difficult. So the non-obvious reason is that the best people truly only want to work with the best people. That's what it is. And you know what that feels like? And you won't tolerate working. Like the moment someone starts to like not have the right data, you're just, you've moved on to someone else.

• 1:22Speaker 01

  Ah, yes.

• 1:22Speaker 00

  Yeah. So I'm curious, how do you do it? Cause I know you're not that involved with recruiting.

• 1:28Speaker 01

  Mike is. It's one of his best skill sets.

• 1:30Speaker 00

  Okay, which Mike?

• 1:32Speaker 01

  Mike Camo.

• 1:32Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:33Speaker 01

  He spends a lot of time.

• 1:34Speaker 00

  Mike's really good with people.

• 1:35Speaker 01

  He's one who also got Mike Gullickson. Technically JJ got us Mike Gullickson.

• 1:38Speaker 00

  So he closed.

• 1:39Speaker 01

  Mike Camo closed him.

• 1:40Speaker 00

  Yeah. So he's a good, so that's a big reason why your executive staff is so strong.

• 1:45Speaker 01

  We closed Mike Gullickson before I met him. I met him after he signed up.

• 1:50Speaker 00

  After Mike. So yeah, it's good. So Mike is your co-founder that's on top of recruiting?

• 1:55Speaker 01

  Yes. And for all leadership roles, he double checks.

• 1:59Speaker 00

  And I wouldn't even say, I mean, like, you know, I don't think you care, but like, I would say what I've seen you recruit in the past yourself, it doesn't usually work, like, not usually, but a lot of times it doesn't work out.

• 2:08Speaker 01

  Unless it's marketing roles.

• 2:09Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:10Speaker 01

  Marketing roles, sales roles, I can recruit extremely well at.

• 2:13Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:14Speaker 01

  And I will stick to those. So for example, Nick Roshan I recruited.

• 2:17Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:18Speaker 01

  Okay. So when we were interviewing Nick, it was me, Mike Camo, my co-founder, and Nate. Remember Nate, who used to do sales?

• 2:25Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:26Speaker 01

  And I went to dinner with Nick.

• 2:30Speaker 01

  And I was like, this guy's gonna be good. He's gonna, he can, he can close.

• 2:33Speaker 00

  And he was a paid media person at the time?

• 2:35Speaker 01

  Uh, account manager.

• 2:36Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 2:37Speaker 01

  So he was managing accounts for iProspect.

• 2:39Speaker 00

  Had never done sales before?

• 2:40Speaker 01

  Never done sales, but I'm like, this guy will close. He's actually our number one sales guy, right? Globally. So then, you know, I remember at the time, because we just started up. If you look at our current employee count, Chad is our longest standing employee. Nick is number two. He's been there almost for day one.

• 2:55Speaker 00

  I don't know who Chad is, yeah.

• 2:56Speaker 01

  Chad, uh, runs all of content.

• 2:59Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 3:00Speaker 01

  So, at that time, it was expensive for us. Nick was not a cheap hire. I don't know what his salary was, but it wasn't a hundred grand or anything like that. Like, it was multiple six-figure.

• 3:10Speaker 00

  And this is first year?

• 3:11Speaker 01

  I, I think, including commission, all that kind of stuff. It was gonna be expensive hire, right?

• 3:15Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 3:15Speaker 01

  Because he was already somewhat seasoned. I don't know exactly what it was, but it wasn't like a cheap role where he was in a position making a hundred grand a year or anything like that. Uh, and sales is commission-based, so you can make more if you do really well. He's one of our best sales reps, or is our best sales rep from a revenue generation standpoint. Nick, at that time, Mike, I remember saying, ah, he's expensive. He's just like, ah, this is gonna be tough for the organization. Can we afford it?

• 3:42Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 3:43Speaker 01

  And I said, we need to hire him. And I remember sitting down with Mike and Nate there, and I'm like, he's in sales.

• 3:50Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 3:50Speaker 01

  If it doesn't work out within three to six months, you cut. We'll know within three months. But I'm like, I'm telling you, this will work. And Mike's like, I believe you. He's like, I believe in, I believe Nick will work too. We both felt that. I didn't have to convince him that he felt Nick was the right person, and he didn't have to convince me.

• 4:05Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 4:06Speaker 01

  And we're just like, screw it. You just go for it. Like, when you know someone's right, and you can only get so many right people, you just go and get them.

• 4:12Speaker 00

  Yep. And to some people, it's like, oh, it's a gamble. We can't afford it. But like, that gamble will pay off exponentially. And sometimes you go for it. Yeah. And I don't care about budget or whatever. It's like, once you got that feeling, like, we would call it the fuck yes feeling, pardon my language, but you know, you know. And that feeling is right a vast majority of the time.

• 4:30Speaker 01

  And then when we started working with Nick, he doesn't have a patience for working with incompetent people. So then, he started... Uh, helping us recruit better people in our organization. He helped us recruit JJ. Technically, he tried getting us, uh, a guy named, uh, John, I won't say his last name. And John wouldn't end up coming, but John referred JJ, who you met back in the day.

• 4:59Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah.

• 4:59Speaker 01

  JJ, uh, was, I forgot what his role, uh, I prospect was. And Nick was like, yeah, he's good. So we ended up getting JJ. JJ was great. JJ helped level up and bring in like one of our best operations people. Um, Tracy, and then from there, like it just kept snowballing. He kept bringing in more and more people.

• 5:19Speaker 00

  Yep. That's what happens. So going back to the point, good talent likes to work with good talent.

• 5:24Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 5:24Speaker 00

  One final thing before we move on from this one. So, uh, the, the, the tweet says, so one good test, and I didn't actually think about this before. But one good test is when you're recruiting a new person, you should be able to say to them, walk into that room where the rest of the team is sitting. Take anyone you want. Pick them at random. Pull them aside for 30 minutes and interview them. And if you aren't personally impressed by them, don't join. When you do that test, you instinctively, instinctively flinch at the idea of them interviewing randomly a certain person. That's kind of in the back of your mind. Okay. Maybe don't talk to that person, right? That's the person you need to let go because that's the person keeping you from having this high functioning team that all wants to impress each other.

• 6:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 6:03Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 6:04Speaker 01

  And when you just have those people, they figure out how to make a business grow.

• 6:07Speaker 00

  Yeah. Yeah. You don't need to tell them what to do.

• 6:10Speaker 01

  Uh huh.

• 6:10Speaker 00

  You can be the bumpers. Like, have you, have you done the bowling with the bumpers? You're basically the bumpers.

• 6:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 6:16Speaker 00

  So they don't fall into the gutter. Yeah.

• 6:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 6:18Speaker 00

  Yeah. So.

• 6:19Speaker 01

  My, my favorite thing is someone asked me today, hey, uh, one of our executives is going to someone else in the marketing space. They're not a competitor. You know about this. We talked about this a few weeks ago and.

• 6:35Speaker 01

  They're just like, okay, we got a few other people on our team that they're managing. Who wants to take this over and manage these people? And I was just like, no one. We should have people who we don't have to actually manage like that and really oversee on a day to day basis. They're like, yeah, but some of these people need to actually be overseen. And I was like, cool, what does this tell you? This tells you that you need to end up replacing them with better talent and be fair to them and give them severance and stuff. And at first I told them, have you actually talked to those people and tried to get them to improve? They're like, yeah, we've tried, we tried training them, we've documented things, they just can't, they're not the right fit. I'm like, yeah, so the key is not to manage them. The key is to just put in the right people.

• 7:19Speaker 00

  The best people are self-managing.

• 7:22Speaker 01

  Yes, dude, I had this conversation with Salo who runs our marketing because we have someone who is going on maternity leave and they're not, or she's on maternity leave and she's not going to come back after. And I'm like, all right, that's cool, that's fine. And we made some changes in our internal marketing team and he's like, dude, what should we be doing? How many people do we need? And I want more people. I was like, Salo, the key with really good marketers is you don't need a lot of them. You just need, or the key to a good marketing team is you don't need a lot of marketers, you just need good marketers. And I'm like, you're telling me how you need like 10, 20 people? I'm like, we just need four or five really amazing people and that's it. Small team, nothing more, and we can crank.

• 8:04Speaker 01

  And we've been slowly shifting to that for over a year. And our teams have been getting smaller and smaller and the results have actually been getting better and better. And then we mix in whenever we need hourly contractors and we mix in our own agency to help here and there.

• 8:21Speaker 00

  They call it two pizza teams at Amazon, right? You want to have a team that can be fed by two pizzas, right? And so, anyway, today we kind of talked more about people, but one thing I want to talk about too. So we have, you know, I was talking to someone on the team today earlier, right? And he got an offer that was basically two times his salary. I'm like, why didn't you just take that? He's like, and so he's like, look. I'm getting hit up every single day by recruiters. It's a very high, it's a very hot market, especially in AI right now. And like, so you're, you're, you're talking to these people. He's like, I'm like, why, why didn't you take one of these? He's like, because the difference is you care about my family. And you let me, you're, you're not like micromanaging my hours or whatever. There's no like, I don't need to relocate or anything like that. Right?

• 9:04Speaker 00

  I'm not saying this is going to work for everyone, but I didn't know that that level, like people care about different things. So it's really important when you're talking to A players on your team, constantly going into, hey, Neil, what do I need to do? Like, we really value you. What do we need to do to keep you working at single grain forever? Is it money? Is it more time? Like, what is it? And you just constantly go to that every 90 days, every 180 days or so, you're just going to them, right? Cause you never know who they're talking to. And they're actually, it was a competitor I was trying to poach them, doing something similar to what we're doing on the software side. So smart on them, right? But, you know, it's like, yeah, I will never sacrifice money for like, I'm like, what if they offered you a half a million dollars? He's like, wouldn't matter. It's, it's family first, but like, you know, it's different for every person.

• 9:44Speaker 01

  Speaking of marketing, you have this topic in here, 21 million YouTube video reveals a new trend.

• 9:50Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 9:50Speaker 01

  I'm curious on that and the link doesn't work for me, but maybe it'll work for you.

• 9:55Speaker 00

  No, it's, it's, it's gone, but I, I, I kind of remember it. So, um, this is from Patty, Patty, Patty Galloway. So Patty Galloway, um, I'm going to go to his Twitter. So he was showing a, um, a thumbnail of like a Red Bull video. Okay. And this Red Bull video, it's the, the thumbnail is just like, it shows a mountain and then there's like a helicopter. Okay. Neil's about to fall asleep. So, uh, and then basically it's like, it's not some crazy packaging or crazy intro, whatever. It's just, it's a very interesting video, right? It's no like, we're going to try to like, do all these jump cuts and things like that.

• 10:33Speaker 00

  It's, so he's just saying that the, the meta now, the way you play YouTube is it might be a longer form video, but like, a lot of people enjoy the vlogs. For example, right? You, you don't need to do any crazy cuts. And so, um, that's what he's saying is, is a little different with the game now. And I'm, I'm trying to find it right now, but, um, that's kind of the high level. And he's showing like his, I, I would recommend following him on, on Twitter too, because he's done all of these videos. I'm trying to find it still right now, but, um, all these screenshots are like 12 million views on this video, 121, 121 million views. So like, I think the key thing is if you want to win on YouTube. Look, this is the midwit meme, okay? So on the left side and the right side, it just says, "Make good videos my viewers want to watch."

• 11:13Speaker 01

  Uh huh.

• 11:13Speaker 00

  In the middle, it's like the algorithm has shifted, got to 10% click-through rate, 10 minutes AVD, optimal posting time, hyper-analyze every second. So he has a lot of these examples where he's like, the video just takes off because it's a good idea, right? And the comment I've gotten from our YouTube strategy team, I was like, "Guys, why isn't the Marketing School YouTube channel growing more? Like, are we idiots?" And so, the one guy that gave us comments on it, I think his name's Josh, he was like, "No, like, I watch all your stuff and I liked all the stuff that you and Neil talk about, but the problem is podcasts are a commitment, and there needs to be a big sense of novelty with it, right?" And I'm like, "Well, we talk about the newest trends, we're talking about this type of stuff. What's happening right now, I started digging in more and more to my brand team, we have two full-time editors.

• 11:59Speaker 00

  One editor is doing one video per week, okay? Full-time. The other editor is-

• 12:05Speaker 01

  Only one a week?

• 12:05Speaker 00

  Yeah. The other one is doing one video per week. I just found this out this week. And I'm like, "What?" And then I went to our, we have like an agency guy, he's like manages a bunch of editors, I'm like, I'm like, "What are you delivering, right?" And like, you'll see this, right? And he's like, "Well, I find out, for what we're paying each month, we're getting like 20 net new pieces of content, and then we're also not posting on time for socials." So I just opened up my Instagram grid, right? Because that's a good proxy. Because I know you have a good amount of clips from this 80 minutes, I know I have a good amount too. But in the last 10 videos that we posted, there are only two clips from this podcast. The other eight are from PB Launch, which is doing a great job, they're very good with shorts.

• 12:49Speaker 00

  And so, my point of saying all this is that,

• 12:53Speaker 00

  one, if you go to Patty Gattaway for long form, yes, have interesting videos, sure, right? Just make good videos.

• 12:57Speaker 01

  But why even just pay those people? You should just not pay those people.

• 12:59Speaker 00

  We'll come to that in a second. So, because this is new information to me this week, right? But on the other side too, you need to have people who have been there, done that, and you need to have a brand manager that's on top of things, right? Because I don't know who your brand manager is, but like, I was talking to Raghav, who works for Gary Vee now, he used to- Work at Single Grain, so he's like Gary Vee's right hand man when it comes to creative and brand. He's like, oh yeah, you like, he's like, you're missing a brand strategist that's like on top of everything. We had that, but they weren't on top of everything, right? And so all that to say is like, there's only one person to blame, me. But if you want to get this right, it's like, I think we have the right long form stuff. You have to make sure you have the right people that have taste and are cutting up the right moments too. Been there, done that people, going back to talent again.

• 13:40Speaker 01

  But why do you need two people? You could get it all done with one person and

• 13:44Speaker 00

  That's what I'm saying.

• 13:45Speaker 01

  You, they can be done for way cheaper.

• 13:47Speaker 00

  That's what I'm saying. Frictionless Growth Marketing hosted by Sonya Thompson is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. Frictionless Growth Marketing hosted by Sonya Thompson shows how modern brands grow by removing the friction in their marketing and customer experience that pushes customers away every single day, often without leaders even realizing it. Each episode delivers practical insights, real brand examples, and conversations with marketing leaders, showing brands how to win with the new rules of growth, identity-driven marketing, cultural relevance, and frictionless customer experiences. Listen to Frictionless Growth Marketing wherever you get your podcasts.

• 14:23Speaker 01

  And you're paying two people in the United States?

• 14:25Speaker 00

  No.

• 14:26Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 14:26Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah.

• 14:27Speaker 01

  So it could be one person for probably less than what you pay the current person. And they'll do multiple clips a day.

• 14:34Speaker 00

  Yep, but this is what happens. And so again, the only person to blame is me, right? But what I would say is if you have a brand manager, like who brought the brand manager? I did, right? But if the brand manager hasn't been there, done that, and they start to hire whoever and they don't have experience there, what ends up happening is you're under attack, right? And that's why I think, that's when things, the growth slows down. So this is a good microcosm of that.

• 14:54Speaker 01

  Yesterday I was, I did lunch with someone who's a YouTuber, social media guy. His name's Marcel. So he's like in like the self-help space, okay?

• 15:08Speaker 01

  Does well, has tons of Ferraris, nice home, yada, yada, you get the point. So he tells me about this YouTuber that he's working with, this couple. They're getting more views than Mr. Beast right now on a daily basis. They're, they're literally the most popular YouTuber right now, not for total number of subscribers, but

• 15:27Speaker 00

  Views.

• 15:27Speaker 01

  When you just look at views.

• 15:28Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 15:29Speaker 01

  And I said, what kind of content is it? And he's like, brain rot, right? When he says brain rot, he means it's like random content that just passes time, like entertainment. So I was like, okay, what are they gonna do? He's like, dude, he's like, just imagine the brand deals. He's like, if I get him a brand deal. He's like, you know how much money they can make? And I was like, they're not gonna make much money at all. He's like, why? I was like, brands don't want to be associated with Brain Rock that much. Because it doesn't convert. It doesn't actually drive real revenue.

• 16:02Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 16:02Speaker 01

  If you look at Mr. Beast, a lot of his revenue comes from his own products like Beastables and a snackable of burgers or whatever it is.

• 16:11Speaker 00

  Lunchly.

• 16:12Speaker 01

  Lunchly.

• 16:12Speaker 00

  Uh, Beast Burger shut down.

• 16:14Speaker 01

  Beast Burger shut down?

• 16:14Speaker 00

  He just opened a theme park, though.

• 16:16Speaker 01

  Oh, that's cool.

• 16:16Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 16:17Speaker 01

  But I know he does a lot of the chocolates, whatever the.

• 16:19Speaker 00

  And he does toys now, too. Yeah.

• 16:21Speaker 01

  Okay, I've seen the toys as well. But that's how he monetizes really well. Sure, he has sponsors, but he's built such a big brand, it's very rare to get those sponsors. And the sponsors don't make him that much money. It covers a lot of the cost for the videos. It's not a massive profit organization. It's a high revenue generation from uh, everything that he does. But when you look at his content, people are like, oh, I got Brain Rock content. I'm just gonna go get sponsors. I'm like, no. You're better off creating content around a specific vertical, having a fraction of the views, having less than a million followers, and you probably can make more income. It's very hard to replicate the Mr. Beast model or the Kim Kardashian model and make a killing.

• 17:06Speaker 01

  If you look at all of them, none of them make enough money from brand deals. They made the majority of their wealth from their own products. And if you're known for content for Brain Rock, it's hard to create your own product that's applicable to everyone.

• 17:20Speaker 00

  Yep. So if we go back to this piece over here, okay, so he actually, here's the thumbnail. This is a 16 million view video, okay? So, "Private tour of an Indian billionaire's secret wildlife rescue center." Okay, so like, I know some people want the payoff, so I'm gonna give you a payoff at least for one of these. So, here's why this video did well. Three key components. One, a big swing idea built on existing format. Two, access packaging. People need to know about this, right? And also like, private or whatever, okay? Three, video design for retention and satisfaction. Okay, that's fine. But going back to your point. What ends up driving more revenue? You look at this podcast, for example, right?

• 18:00Speaker 00

  Earlier this week, I was, we were supposed to connect on, there's a publicly traded company that wants to do a creator deal with us, right? You and I keep getting these influencer deals on the side, even though that's not our main business.

• 18:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 18:10Speaker 00

  So we know our audience is more valuable. So all that to say is that I know for on the podcast side, on the audio side, we do well. But there's no reason the YouTube side shouldn't be doing well. So I'm actually doing a, those of you that are listening to or watching this right now. If you want to help the marketing school podcast, if you can find a way to clip this long form, find the right moments and prove that you've been there, done that, don't just say you want to work with us. We will consider that, right? Because we put effort, well, we get to eat lunch after usually. But we put a lot of effort into this, knows like live streaming this right now and all that. Like we've been doing this for like eight, nine years or so. And the fact that we have sponsors on the other side for audio only, I know this can go far. There's no reason why it shouldn't be able to.

• 18:47Speaker 01

  No, I agree with that. It's just finding the right person who can package it all up and make it all make sense. And if you look at what Eric and I do is we try not to optimize views. Are we saying we're as good as Mr. Beast in getting views? No, we're not. Are we saying that we can get a million views? We've created content that goes viral and gets millions and millions of views. It doesn't monetize well for what we do and it doesn't make great money. So we choose to not go that direction.

• 19:13Speaker 00

  You know what I think we do wrong with YouTube though? This goes for both of us is I think the types of content we make, the bottom of the funnel is the right, not the bottom of the funnel necessarily, but it's the right content. But I forgot where I read recently, but I've felt like this for years. It's like you do need to have like a set of like wide TAM content. So the algorithm kind of respects you. And then you have, you know, some of this other like maybe bottom of the funnel type content.

• 19:37Speaker 01

  I'm seeing something. So, okay, so when you, when you think about bottom of funnel and top of funnel content, I probably got less views on social media this year than I did last year. So remember I've told you RFP numbers for my business in the United States. So in 2023, I'm going back two years at this point, we're at 16. 2025, we were at 25, which is 56.25% growth. 2020, no, sorry, 2024 was 25. So 2023 over 2024, that's a 56.25% growth. 2025 now, the month isn't over, the year's not over, we're at 39. Right? Remember last year was 25.

• 20:22Speaker 01

  This is in the United States. That's generating a fifty-six percent growth exactly.

• 20:28Speaker 00

  Mm-hmm.

• 20:28Speaker 01

  At the beginning of the month, I told my team if they just hit thirty-nine, you know, I would be happy, I'll be okay with not having the point two-five percent.

• 20:38Speaker 00

  So you're over the moon now?

• 20:39Speaker 01

  No, they already hit thirty-nine and there's, and when they hit thirty-nine, there's call it twenty-ish days left in the month. Cause those numbers are a few days old.

• 20:48Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 20:48Speaker 01

  Um, this is December twelfth when we're recording this. I told them, guys, guys, we only need forty-one and it'll be a good year. And then no one responded to my text messages. So I waited a day and then I sent again, I'm like, guys, let's get forty-one. What do we need to do again? No one responded to me.

• 21:08Speaker 00

  At least you know how people respond to how you work now.

• 21:12Speaker 01

  Uh-huh.

• 21:13Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 21:13Speaker 01

  And they know it well because when we were starting in November, we're just like, all right, you know, it's been a tough year because of tariffs. If we just get a forty percent growth, you know, forty-five percent growth, somewhere around there, fifty, that's good enough, guys. That's close enough to last year, law of large numbers, slower growth. And they're like, yeah, we think we can do it. And then as they started creeping up, you know, they said, Neil, you're just gonna ask more. We shouldn't tell you the numbers.

• 21:40Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 21:40Speaker 01

  Cause no matter what we hit, even if it's above what you told us a month ago, you're just gonna wanna keep having more and more.

• 21:46Speaker 00

  You know, I, I talked to someone on my team recently. I said like, look, there's, um, no matter what you do, like, whether it's you're running the company or people working for a company, people will try to game metrics or all this thing, or game how to work with you, right?

• 21:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 21:57Speaker 00

  And that person was like, Eric, I would never try to game anything with you. And I'm like, what are you talking about? Like this whole thing is a game, right? If I, if you're trying to meet this profitability metric, you're gonna, you might look to cut costs here and there. Or if, if like Neil, for example, is pushing you all the time, then you know, maybe not to give him the metrics as, uh, as quickly. Maybe you delay the metrics a little bit, so he's not gonna always be, you know, pushing you for the next one, the next one, right? Everything is a game and I, I think people don't wanna accept that.

• 22:21Speaker 01

  No.

• 22:22Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 22:22Speaker 01

  And that, that's just how entrepreneurs are built, where it's like, we enjoy the game.

• 22:27Speaker 00

  That's where we're gonna end, cause I really need to pee, so goodbye, guys.