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Welcome to the Never Been Promoted podcast, where we're all about helping you cut the tie to all that holds you back. The excuses, the fears, the people, that sense of entitlement. Cut the ties so you can unleash your inner entrepreneur. Your host, Thomas Helfrich, is on a mission to make more entrepreneurs in the world and make them better at entrepreneurship.
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Welcome back. Thomas Helfrich, your host. We are on a mission to help you get better at entrepreneurship by cutting the tide to all that shit that's holding you back. That's right. It's a gorgeous metaphor. It's a good color tie too, and my wife wasn't super happy the first time I cut it. But it doesn't matter because it's done now, and I've cut a tie to a tie. Anyway, I want I know you're always wondering, and I like to make a little joke. Does water really taste better out of Stanley? Fuck, yeah. It does. I wish Stanley. I wish Stanley sponsored me. That's why we do this because I actually think it does taste better. Anyway, pretty cringe. Love it. But, hey, before we get going here, I want you to guys know that if this is your first time here, I really do wanna help you get better entrepreneurship. Now the way to do that, you can spend a whole bunch of money on classes and you should probably find a mentor, Or you could just kinda listen to a bunch of entrepreneurs, micromentor a little bit with it, learn from each of their mistakes and their kind of successes, failures. And in the end, you could do it. Just go to youtube.com/@neverbeenpromoted. Give it a follow, like. And if you listen to the podcast, 5 star reviews are favored over any other. And if you don't think it's 5 star, hit me on LinkedIn and tell me why. Let's get to the stage, mister Kaleem Clarkson.
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Where'd he go? Here he is. Oh. You know? Oh, let's get that bass music going again. Good again, Brandon. Oh, oh, you get you get on it. Come on. Yeah.
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You're not It's good. Right? I'd I'd like to think son? I gotta, you know, Chris Carter I'm sorry. Carter Voxy. Like, he this guy made this music, and I was like, dude, that's really good, like, like, funk. He's a bassist. He's traveled, like, all the time.
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Bass, Thomas. More bass.
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Not more cowbell. We need more more bass.
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Thanks for coming on, Clem. You you're an Atlanta person like myself. How are you? I'm okay, man. Appreciate you. Glad I didn't have to deal with that traffic today. 95 degrees hot
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and hot. I had not stepped outside outside of taking the daughter to a bus stop. It is pretty much I live in a basement. I mean, that's it could have rained today. I don't know. Bro, what happened to your tie? Well, it got cut off. Right? I cut the tie and all this stuff holding me back. I You know, people people hold on to things. Right? These I we'll talk about this because this is actually very core to what we'll talk about with remote work and how to actually use it correctly to build a business. And and I think any business could do it for the most part, but the the thing that, you know, you I like you know, people hold on to stuff. Right? They hold on to fears, beliefs that aren't really true. Mhmm. Excuses, senses of entitlement, like the world owes you anything. And Nostalgia. Exactly. All this stuff. You gotta get rid of it because you gotta be kind of free to move forward correctly. And one of the things people always held on to, right, recently, right, in in your world is, oh, we need to have an office. We need to see people. I think that's one of the biggest ties as you build you're an entrepreneur. You're building your company. If you don't need to have people in an office and you can find the right people to perform, this is what we're talking about. Like, what what what a like, an organizational scale win not to have to drop tens of 1,000, if not more office space. So I just set it up. You talked about yourself. Get you know, you you know, you're the founder of Blend Me Inc. Right? You're or cofounder on on what your your founder get mad at you. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Cofounder.
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Yeah. My partner and I, we we started Blimey Inc in 2013 as a side hustle. My partner, she has her master's degree in organizational development and human resources from Yukon. I'm a former front end developer, front end engineer, and, you know, spend a lot of time doing operations, director of operations at a a large university here in Georgia, Kennesaw State University. It's about 45,000 students. So I learned a ton about operations. I was there for about a decade in the faculty development center. So really working with faculty on how to be better teachers. I, you know, helped helped a whole bunch of senior consultants who were faculty, award winning faculty. They would actually go and consult with, each of the new faculty on how to write a syllabus, for example, how to, flip the classroom, for example. So I learned a ton a ton about how to, navigate a practice from from that. So, yeah, we started in 13. It was a side hustle at first, Thomas, and then I'm I'm a full time engineer at a company, enjoying life, fully remote thinking like, yo, maybe Google is in my future in 5 years or, you know, some unbelievable coding job. Right? And, number 1, I found very quickly that people are geniuses. So shout out to all my former employees over at oomph. Wonderful, wonderful development team. If you need something done high level, go check them out. But, March of 2020, man. March of 2020 happens. We start noticing a lot more of our our website statistics rise up a little bit. And then all of a sudden people started reaching out, you know, a little bit, but it wasn't a lot. So we're talking this is still March, but we're noticing a significant uptick. And I was I was struggling at the time. I gotta we got we gotta speak truce here. Right? We gotta Right. We gotta bleed on the table. If you if you don't, no one bleeds it. It's hard. I was bleeding. I was bleeding. I was developing in Drupal. And, you know, from my perspective, I didn't feel like I was performing at the highest level. You know? Like like, I was I was the worst coder on the team, and and it's tough to be the worst. You know, like, even if it's expected. Like, the team was great. They were supportive. They understood I was coming from a higher ed. Like, they gave me all the resources I need to succeed. But in my own mind, being a former college athlete, I hated being the worst.
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The horrible feeling when when you're so used to being good Yeah. Great. And then all of a sudden, you're like literally, like, you know, people looking like you suck. You're like, wait. Wait. What? I don't suck at anything. What?
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And they were so good. Like, they they lifted me up. They were like, no. That's great. You're doing good. I mean, they were they were unbelievable, but I still couldn't shake it. And it was I remember just having these one on ones with my manager. Shout out. Shout out, Rob. But I just remember, like, yo, I just I don't like this feeling. He's like, no. Don't worry. It takes time. It takes time. It takes time. You're gonna be okay. It takes time. And I just couldn't accept the fact that I wasn't great at coding right away
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compared to all How old are you, Akhil?
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This is 2,000 this is 2020. So I'm 40 this was I would have been, what, 44 at that time, 43?
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Alright. So we're the same age. So I I discovered that right at the dotcom quickly Mhmm. That not only did I not have a passion to sit in front of a freaking computer all day in code, I would just completely outmatched by these people who just got it. And I was like, but, you know, I do do better than them. I talk about stuff way better. So I went I immediately was like, man, this is gonna be awesome. Make money. I'm like, oh god. No. I can't do any of what they're doing. Yeah. Yeah. Why do I do it? It was an eye opener. It was an eye opener. But, like,
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everything hindsight, 2020, like, I just needed to stick to it. Like, there was a situation where they just, like, keep sticking to it. You're gonna be fine, but it wasn't until my so I'm in this mode of just feeling sorry for myself. Although, again, I have to keep emphasizing this. The rest of the team was very supportive and was like, now you're on track. Just continue doing what you're doing, and you'll naturally get better, and you'll be there. It just takes time. I'm very impatient. So I was kind of in the dumpsies. Well, sure enough, when you have siblings, they kind of come in and they pick you up when you're down. It was my brother. My brother calls me up. And this is like March. I don't know. 20th, maybe. Maybe early April. And mind you, we decided to go to Maine. That's the last part I'm I I I'm originally from Maine. During the pandemic, we decided to fly back to Maine because people in Atlanta were tripping. Alright. People in Atlanta were shooting guns over water and toilet paper. We all forget about that shit. But people in Atlanta in 2020, I remember on the news, people shooting over water and paper,
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paper towels and toilet paper. We had multiple murder Krogers at that point. Like, you just had one murder Kroger. We had lots of murder Krogers. We had lots of murder Krogers. We had lots of murder Krogers. Sorry about that. Guys well, let me let me catch some people up. This is a quote. There's a store. There's a thing with Kroger. And if you don't know, Kroger is a grocery store. Store. It's a nice grocery store. We love Kroger. And by the way, we're available Kroger for sponsorship. We're not slandering your name. No. No. But I love Kroger. Love. Listen. Here's my ear. I like Aldi. It's cheap. I like Kroger next, and then we go to public third. And not that it's bad. It's just it's an order of cost. Alright. So Right. But there's a Kroger that's had so many murders in the parking lot. It's labeled murder Kroger, and it's people know it. It's actually if you Google it, you'll see it. So don't go there. Find murder Kroger. So so
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I'm getting up. So we're in Maine and and I'm feeling in the dumpsies because I'm not, you know, keeping up as quick as possible. And and we're coding Blue Cross Blue Shield at the moment. So we're coding bcbs.com. Like, you know, Blue Cross Blue Shield. So we're coding that during the pandemic. So there's a lot of pressure. And my brother calls me out of the blue, and he's like, so what are you gonna do? And I'm like, what do you mean what am I gonna do? I'm what do you mean? He goes, about blend. And I'm like, what? Nothing. I'm I'm I'm a developer. And he was like, you're no damn developer. I was like, what the fuck? Well, I'm sorry. What what are you saying? You could drop that, man. It's fine. We can And he was like, you're no damn developer. And I you know? I was like, all defensive. You don't know me. I've been coding here. I've been working. I've been a part of the Drupal community for 12 years. Blah blah blah blah. You don't know? And he was like, nah, man. That's not what I meant. Like, you taught yourself to code because, you know, when you put your mind to teaching yourself something, you you generally do it. He's like, but that's not your superpower. He's like, your superpower mean your name, Kaleem. It actually means speaker. And your superpower is leading, speaking, telling stories, thinking ahead. You've been talking about remote work since 2013. And a lot of peep you know, there's a small community of us who were talking about the remote work in earlier. I'm not the only one. But there was a small and he was like, look. You've been thinking ahead. You've been thinking forward. You've been telling stories since since I I can remember. Your superpower is that. Your superpower is leading. And I was like, wow. Like, he hit me. And sometimes you need people to hit you with those truth bombs, you know. And, you know, we got off the phone and and, you know, it was a tough time, man. Like, the pandemic was a tough time, and I was feeling the pressure like a lot of people. And, yes, I'm a remote work expert. We are fully remote. But, like, a lot of people always say, Cleen, you must have loved the pandemic. No. A lot of people died, man. Of course, I didn't love the pandemic. But at the same time, as a remote work expert, I need to see people. I'm a very if you can't tell, I have this energy. I need to be around people. So I couldn't do that. So even for me as a remote work expert and professional, I couldn't be around my people. So I was feeling kinda depressed, man. I'm not, like like, really down. And, you know, when my brother told me that, like, it made me feel good, but then it also made me feel even more depressed, man. And I'll never forget this. It's it's again, it's March late March, early April, and up in New England, up in Maine, it snowed again. Actually snowed almost. We stayed until June, but it actually snowed Mother's Day. But it snowed again. Not surprising up there, by the way. And it's, like, 3 in the morning. I just couldn't sleep. And I woke up, and I go outside, and I pour bourbon. I know it probably shouldn't have been drinking at that time, but I was like, what am I gonna do? I'm wide awake. And it's cold out, and it's snowing. And all of a sudden, Thomas, man, like, I just started bawling crying. My chest started feeling tight. Like like, I've never had an I don't know if it was an anxiety attack. I don't know what it was, man. I don't know if it was my brother's words mixed in with, like, the frustration of me trying to keep up with, like, these bomb ass coders. Shout out, Phil. Shout out, Phil. Like, all these unbelievable professionals, and it just hit me, and I couldn't breathe. And all of a sudden, I started sobbing. I haven't and it was an ugly cry, Thomas. Like, I don't know if you've seen that Dane Cook stand up years years ago, but when he's talking about, you know, when the snot starts coming out and stuff. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. I hadn't had one of those in probably 10 years, and I just did it and it all came out. And, you know, I went inside, and I was like, well, where did that come from? Because I I was happy. I was there with my in laws. I love my in laws, by the way. Having a great time. You know, we're fully remote. We're hanging out. We're seeing our kids. We're seeing the family. Socially distance, of course. But, like, I'm having a really good time. So I'm asking myself, why are you just why did you just have a breakdown? So I opened my journal, and I don't know what made me do it, but I wrote the first question down of what drains me. Mhmm. What drains me was the first question. Then the second question was, what what is it that you don't like? You know, what's the thing that you hate the most? And then another question was just all about negative things that weren't positive. And I remember the first thing I wrote down of, yeah, what what frustrates you the most, I think. And I said, I remember not being able to do what it is that I want to do without because I don't have the resources. That was, like, number 1. Right? And then I started asking myself, what is it that you love to do? Like, the next set of questions. And the first one was like, I love talking about remote work and how and work life integration because we talk about
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work life integration versus work life balance. Right? Like, together, you integrate versus I think it's a better word, by the way, because because there is no balance. When you work from home, you work more.
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Yeah. That's simple. So it was that moment, Thomas, man. Like, there was that moment where I was writing those things and, you know, there were some other things in there. Freedom, autonomy to travel, and autonomy to visit my family while working. So there were some other things in there. Yeah. And the next day, I basically, you know, called my partner, and I was like, what do you think? You know, do can should I should we try should I dive in full time with Blend? Mind you, I have an engineering job. Well, you know, interestingly enough, I have a difficult conversation with my supervisor, and he's like, hey, Killeen. Like, you know, I know you're frustrated, but, like, let's let's get it going. I'm like, alright. I'm gonna get it going. And, basically, I didn't do it well enough, and I got fired on my day off.
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Is it fired or asked to leave? There's a difference. No. It was it was unbelievable. Basically,
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he was they were like, Halim, like, all you gotta do if you're like, the issue was, like, I would take on too much work. I would say, I can take 15 tickets, but I would only be able to complete 8. You know what I mean? But, like, when I wanted to get the like, when it was time to assign the work, I was like, no. I can do that in less time. Like, I can do it. Come on. Let's go. And it would take longer. So he was like, hey. Look. Just only take on the things that you know that you can do and then subtract some. So I was like, okay. And in my mind, my brother, everything, I had the journal. I had had that moment. And he's like, okay, so how many tickets do you wanna how many tickets do you wanna work on? And I was like, 15. And he was like, don't do that. He's like, are you sure? I was like, no. He's like, now look. If you take on 15 and you can't complete the 15 tickets, we're gonna have to have a more difficult conversation. And I was like, no, sir. I could do it. Knowing damn well I couldn't do it. I mean, bro, you hadn't done 15 tickets yet. I hadn't hit 15 tickets. 15 tickets this year. Yeah. Right. It's
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like it's like you're sitting under the bench press going, I'm gonna do 400. Like, you're Exactly. Like, what you know? Because, like, it was a part of me. Like, I I didn't wanna give up on them because they took a chance on me. Right? Like Right. You know, I I just I was all mixed up in my Wait. Wait. So when you had the the kind of, like, emotional, like, recon I don't wanna call it breakdown because it's it's just a reconnection to yourself. You're like, yeah. I mean This was prior to the conversation of being, like Correct. Correct. Oh, so you knew it was common. So, like, you're not you know, like, you got instincts here. I've had that where you're like, something's off, and, like, 2 weeks later No. No. No. What I'm saying yeah. Like, my body didn't feel right.
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And then, you know Good. A week or two later, right, the conversation came up Yep. Like, with with my boss. And I was like, okay. Should I just do what he says and pick the 5 tickets and do a great job and continue to kind of fake your way not fake your way through it, but just, like, not be emotionally connected as much as you were about this thing. Because now the the thought of my brother saying, bro, that's not your superpower,
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it it's hitting me because he's right. He knew exactly how I was feeling. He is. And you're trying to make a living, support a family, do all the things with it. And and and I've been I know exactly how you feel, and I I think I always try to find these moments for entrepreneurs out there that are maybe where you are, where you were. Mhmm. I have had the same thing, and and then the job that I was in was, you know, a half $1,000,000 plus type of job. Wow. Even I felt like I wasn't enough for it. Like, I didn't feel I was really making way. Because the money doesn't fill it. It doesn't. But, also, like, you know, you get in an environment and you're doing the things you're doing the way you know how to do them, and you just realize that, like, this is, like, not even that like, even if I got this, there was and I think I was doing okay, but, like, you just kinda feel it coming. And when you feel it coming, you should also know that no matter what kind of money you make or where you are, that's a good thing. It is a good thing. Laid off. It sucks not to have any exit plan, but the truth is you're doing your you don't half of America hates their job. It's like that's a gulp. Yeah. It might even be higher than that. It might even be you're right. It's and and that's what that means. A third of your adult life is is you're angry effectively. Then the truth is half of your awake time as an adult, you're angry, and I assure you that shit spills over to the time that it's not working. Yeah. And so why would you stay in something that makes you unhappy? And and I it doesn't mean that you just quit today. It but you got forced into it. The thing I want people to take away is when you recognize that it's not a fit, it's not a superpower, you need to go align a superpower and do something about it. And this is where your excuses either come in and you you don't do achieve or you say you listen, I'm gonna go take classes. I'm gonna start the side hustle. I'm gonna go do it. Sometimes you're thrown into it like you. But the point is that is the calling in the moment that you you identify that you're about to go waste your adult life.
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Thomas, you hit you hit it right on the head because I was happy with the job that I was doing. The people I'm again, I can't say this enough. The the agency that I was hired with, unbelievable agency, they were lenient. They were also like, bro, you're doing fine. And then with all entrepreneurs, you're right. It's the pressure of supporting your family. So that pressure was there. And and I think this is really important because in entrepreneurship, you're gonna hear all of these stories of, you know what? Just go all in and do it. You know, you gotta drop everything and do it. And and honestly, I I I don't subscribe to that model. Like I said, we started Blend in 2013 as a side hustle. So I'm in year 7 of a side hustle. LinkedIn is already up. I got thousands of followers. We're talking about it already. We're writing articles. We consulted with companies at this point. So that side hustle allowed me to be prepared That's right. Yeah. For when that next moment of of questioning what I'm doing to make that decision. So that's number 1. And number 2, if you don't have a supportive partner Mhmm. Luckily, my my significant other, she was very supportive, and we could survive off just one salary if needed be. I wanna point something out here. Could have been noodles with noodles.
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Could have been noodles and noodles surviving. So we, we we got a slight delay, so I'm sorry I stepped on you there. I wanna I wanna emphasize that point, because as much as I kinda as much as trash talk corporate, She's like, I wanna point out that my corporate job for 2 years while you built your company paid for it and kept us afloat while we were sinking. And I'm like, I am totally clear on that. I get it. And and that's part of it. But at some point, if you have that part you know, and how you did it, at least you maybe had a conversation. I just said, hey, honey. I'm gonna be an entrepreneur now and didn't look really for a new job, and I didn't really need that.
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Listen. We went to therapy. Support system. We worked through it. We worked through it. Yeah. I think the main point is the 2 things you gotta have is number 1, you you gotta have some sort of traction. I believe you need to have some sort of traction. And I think most, you know, most, lean startup books that you're gonna read these days or entrepreneurship books are gonna probably agree that you gotta have some sort of validation before you jump into the pool. Right? But then not only do you need to have some sort of validation, I do believe you gotta have a support system for your family. Because, look, jumping in and not having any support and just praying that it's gonna work out, it could really ruin your life. I mean, if if if you're not you're not It will. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Hope is not a good strategy there. Alright. So let's dive in. So, one of the questions that came up from the, the chat here,
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can't find it, is from Dan. I know Dan works, like, I met Dan not actually a couple weeks ago. He's asking kind of, like, the aspect of workers do you like, I I don't quite understand the question. I'm hoping you do because I think he does some remote work as well. How would you answer the the question he had what aspect of workers does do you work do you work with or provide, and how does that system work? Yeah. So at Blend, we are a remote work consultants. We are an HR consultancy
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for remote and hybrid organizations. Prior to the pandemic, we only did HR consulting for fully remote companies. Ah. Prior to the pandemic, we would only work with fully remote companies from an HR perspective. Because, again, my partners, master's degree in organization development human resources, and myself in in operations. So a lot of times we use the phrase people operations instead of HR. Most of the times we do, because we feel like it's more modern. So what do we do? So we work with companies, startups, small businesses. Basically, any any company with less than a 1000 employees, we work with them on a project basis. So if you need a new handbook, if you need everything around the employee experience. So that excludes, like, traditionally HR. A lot of people think about recruiting. They think about payroll. They think about benefits. Those are all critical. Those are all critically important. But we focus on what we call the employee experience, which is your employer brand. So what does your employer brand look like? Are you attracting the right talent? How do you hire people? What's that hiring process look like? So what applicant tracking system you're gonna use to collect talent? Are you gonna use an offshore company to help you, grow grow yourselves? How do you onboard? That's a big one remotely. How are you gonna onboard your talent? What type of modules are you building so that they can ensure that they know how to do the job? Then you go into engagement. How engaged are they gonna be? Right? Like, how are you gonna maintain, a happy culture? How are you gonna maintain productivity? How are you gonna maintain the fact that they're connected with their work? And then there's 2 more. And then performance evaluations. So how are you gonna measure performance? Really critical. And then how are you going to train and develop your employees? And then how you off board? So that is the whole what we call the employee life cycle. And that's your employee experience from the very day that you're hired to the the last day that you leave the company. So what we do is we help organizations with what we call the remote employee experience, by enhancing those different areas, and we can do that on a project basis. So you need a new handbook? Okay. We'll figure out how long it's gonna take, and we'll we'll estimate the cost for you, and there it is. But then we also offer fractional HR leadership. So if you're a start up or a small business and you don't have an HR person, or maybe you're trying to just to promote your executive assistant to HR, we want a 100% advise against that. As a start up, especially if you're looking to get in the getting funding or VC funding, once they decide to give you funding, they want you to go hire immediately. So you wanna ensure that you have people that have experience
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Well, that that was the question it has. It's it's the trigger. So it's you're about to get funding. You're sitting on a load of cash. You're you're struggling with like, there's usually a trigger. And the and the point is, like, you could do some of that or all of that. But what about the company that's are you helping companies that have been traditionally remote? They went to full obviously, because of kind of COVID, they went to remote. And now they're trying to sort out this hybrid, and it's not working. Like, they're trying to get people back. So what what do you do in this environment? I I would say we would work with any organization that that is either
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remote, currently fully remote, or currently hybrid, or they've already committed to transitioning. We're just not the company that's gonna try to convince people. It doesn't work. We're seeing that with the forced return of offices right now. Yeah. So, yes, we we will work with those types of companies, and we'll we'll work with them in an HR perspective in the employee experience, how to improve all of those things. So the last thing is we charge a flat rate. So, well, yes, we do have workers. Yes. We do have workers. So we have 7 consults. So we are not a Yeah. We are not a staffing agency to be clear. We have 7 different consultants on our team. They've worked at former Google, former Tesla, former DoorDash, some other companies out there. You could check out our website. They are consultants on our team, and we deploy them to other companies on a part time fractional basis. So that's what we do. It's not a it's not a outsourcing company. They're part of our team, and they're the same 7 people that we we deploy in assignments.
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So so my wife's in HR. So she's the director of HR for a company right now. She would she could potentially use someone like you. So if you're an HR of 1 or very little, she listen. I need to get I'm I'm I would like in this year to help me I need to focus, let's say, on a new implementation of
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some system, let's say. I need someone to come We're gonna implement a new onboarding pro Yeah. Like, I need someone to kinda take over the handbook,
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the performance evaluation piece of something and say, I need a little scale, and then you say, hey. It's this much. She would go get approved for the budget to get a, basically, instead of a full time employee, like a 6 or 7 month contract to help me get this out, knock this out. Okay. That's how you do leverage it. Is it you you guys are, you're not there to stay. You know, you're not a you're there to help and move on to the next customer.
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Yes and no. I think that's relatively accurate. I think so for an organization that has an HR team, we could come in and augment their current staff. So a huge project, a huge initiative comes in. Oh, someone goes on maternity leave. Oh, great. We can hire someone from Blinn to serve at a in a part time or interim capacity to fill in that void. Or if you have people that, the project's just too big, maybe you got a team, but they're just already overloaded. We can come in and kinda take that, work off their plate. So another option is one one one last thing. Another option is if you are a startup and you're like, we don't have HR, we're we're we just got a seed round, but we're going after VCs to get our series a. And we know when we land a series a, we're gonna have to hire a bunch of people. But, you know, maybe we should get this HR person in now to build our internal communication strategy. What different tool like, what tools we're gonna use. Write our handbook. Write our hybrid remote policy now so that when they hire, they're great. Well, a fractional person, I've been a fractional people operations executive for a company out in New York called GMI. They make socks. They make socks. I could basically be I've been on with them for over 2 years. Fractional basically just means not full time. So, I mean, some people might wanna transition that role to a full time role and grow the team. And, yes, we we applaud that. But some organizations are like Killeen. Fractional's great. You know, you have we have what we need. We're gonna just keep you as the fractional director of of people and and move forward. So, originally, we designed it to transition out like what you said, but then we realized some people don't if they like the service and they don't wanna take on a full time person,
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why not just keep offering it? No. That that's that's great. And and, we we have a slight delay. So if I step on you in this audio, I apologize. It's just like, just enough where it looks like your pawns. I'm like, keep that. And so, what what I see here though too is, right, there there is definitely a need for a fractional, piece because, and you see this is and when a company goes from, let's say, solopreneur to small business and they're just hiring they're promoting people because they've been there and they they've trusted them the longest, that's usually where the seed of a lot of problems come from. And it's because you don't have someone that's kinda directing traffic, making sure the roles are done. And and I see this even in my small organization where I've got people doing some stuff they probably shouldn't. But since we're people strapped, they're doing it. And I'm like, but if I move forward, I know I'd have to split that roll off, And and and Yes. I wouldn't know how to properly do that. And this is where you guys would come in and say, hey. That role, that person, I could do they love to do this. They're capable of doing this right seat, right, you know, right person. Yeah. We need to hire for this specific thing. Alright. I have a question. Salary analysis I see all the time are and I hear about this, are companies trying to hire the the unicorn. Okay. And, I mean, this is such a problem. They don't wanna pay enough, and they wanna have everything under the sun for this in person, and they're always disappointed. 1st, how how can you help a company what's going on so they can know that's actually going on in their in their company without them realizing it? And 2, give them some advice what to do about it outside of hiring you. But, like, that's a big problem is is hiring to the unicorn. So I see this whole time. What do you do about that?
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Let me just kinda clarify your question. Are you asking, an employer wants to hire somebody, but they have this idea of the perfect person? Is that is that what you're asking? So the let's see the job description. There's,
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not one person could ever have that much. Yeah. Talent.
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Yeah. I think we're seeing it a little less, honestly. I think Good. I think I think the pandemic has done a lot of good things. I think the results of the pandemic, people have looked into different things that that there's some positivity from it. And one of the things and by no means are we anywhere near closing the gap on equal pay between men and women. Like, we got a long ways to go still. So, like, I gotta clarify that. But we're starting to see some small you know, seeing the gap close, a little bit. And I think people are a lot more in tune. And one of the stats that came out of, the the the pay gap is that a lot of women will not apply for jobs that they don't see themselves qualified for. Whereas men, we're just a bunch of assholes. We're gonna just lie. We'll apply for any job even if we're not even qualified for it. So, I think that along with, alternative certificate alternative education, I think, like Microsoft, Google, all these companies that are coming up with alternative pass for, for training. I think a lot of people have realized they have to reduce the requirements in the job descriptions and make them, more more easier for people to kinda get in at that level. So the advice that I would give to a client that's looking for that unicorn is a, okay, we put the job ad out. I mean, you have the data. That's what I love about, like, to 2,024. Like, there's data. So it's like, okay, we posted the job. There's no applicants. What do you want me to do? Right. Like, we're not gonna Or worse,
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there's a 1,000 applicants because everybody qualifies in some level for that job
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because Well, I mean, you wouldn't wanna make it wide open. Right? But, I mean, your question was the unicorn. And and and generally speaking, like, I think most companies have realized they have to reduce some of the requirements, so that would be my that would be my my piece of advice is like, look. You have to drop the requirements. And a lot of times, obviously, for us, you know, sometimes when you're dealing with hybrid companies and they're like, oh, well, we want this. This role is important. We use this role 5 days a week in the office. That's usually an easy one. Like, what? You're not gonna find the unicorn because all the unicorns want flexibility.
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Right.
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You know? And I get zebra on that one. Like
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Yeah.
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Yeah. Look. If you want the top workers, and I think this is just a general statement, if you want top talent and you're requiring 5 days in office, you're actually not going to get the top talent. Because the top talent's like, look, I can I can state my demands, and you're gonna you're gonna, you know, give me the demands I want? So I don't know. If if you're not offering any type of flexibility and you want the best in whatever field, there's a good chance you don't have the best on your team. Right. I agree.
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Listen. This time of show, I always tell people, like, okay. Who who is it should get ahold of you? How do you want them to do that?
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Yeah. You can reach out on LinkedIn, of course. LinkedIn is our our our big space. Love talking about LinkedIn there. You can check, check out our website atblimeinc.com. You could submit forms there. Let's see. All the social webs. I mean, I'm on the Instagrams. I'm on you know, I've been using threads a little bit more, checking that out. And, you know, getting the YouTube, getting the TikToks. I'm on all the stuff. Kaleem Clarkson everywhere.
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You're the guy on threads. Okay. I'm I yeah. Well, we got Fred. I'll take that one off topic. I'm trying to figure it out. I just like This is so bad. No one ever sees my But I'm getting followers. I don't get it. Like, there's
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Right. It's great. It will be great eventually. I it's better for me. Much money behind it. Just too much Yeah. For me, the other alternative is just not it's just it's just taking a a different turn. So I would think to x and the trolling nature of x. Yes. Yes. But, yeah, I want I'll talk anything remote work even if you just got a question. Yeah. Let's talk. And in in hybrid, you know, we we believe if you're gonna do hybrid right, we did add hybrid as an option because before we we wouldn't work with hybrid companies, but we feel if you're gonna do hybrid right, you need to be remote first.
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Yeah. The mindset agreed. And and I think, you actually I think, I'll extend I think some people should grab you for, you know, continuing education workshops. You should like, come have you talk because I think, like, you're commanded the topic and, and and just your overall content. Like, you know the space super well, and and I and I think getting you in front of an audience is a smart thing to learn a little bit more about it. And and I think people can get just even 1, you know, 30 minute speech with you would give them a bunch of nuggets of ways to think that they probably never thought of. So I think Oh, thanks. Extending your call to action to hire you, so to speak. Oh, I appreciate them. Yeah. I've I've had great opportunities to to do do a lot of speaking engagements with the keynote speaker for Make A Wish Foundation.
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Spoke at South by Southwest and, you know, tons of other companies too. So, yeah, you can reach out, and we have a speaker package, and we can give you all that information. So appreciate that plug, man. That's great. Listen. I listen. Yeah. I I don't expect you remember all your plugs. That's my job. Okay?
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You didn't tell me about it. I just was stalking you earlier today. That's awesome. Awesome. Alright. Colleen, thank you so much for coming on. I'm gonna hang out in the, in the, periwinkle room, but I I really appreciate you coming on and and taking time out of your day to join us here on Never Been Promoted. Anytime, man. We we gotta get together for a beer too. We're both in Atlanta. Why not? Listen. I don't drink anymore, but I'm happy to drive you around whenever you wanna go. I can I'm a drinker. Hey. You know what? Friend of mine.
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There's so many great nonalcoholic bars now. How many? Unbelievable. So good. I love mocktails. I didn't even realize I did. I have my first mocktail this year. Unbelievable. A 100% agree. And had way more fun than I thought. Like, you can have unbelievable fun. Like because cause really, most people don't realize it. I've realized this, Thomas. Drink is just a thing to do to wet your mouth while you're having a good time. So It's a habit. It's all it is. Habit. Yep. Anytime. Just don't have the first one. It's easy.
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Alright. I'll see you in a little bit. Thank you so much, Killeen. Killeen, thank you so much for coming on. Our mission is clear. Help entrepreneurs get better at entrepreneurship. There's a ton of stuff you gotta do as an entrepreneur. Hiring remote workforces, hiring people in person, just HR to mark all the stuff you have to do. Today, learn something from clean get time with them if you're thinking, hey. I'm about to hire people. I really don't wanna get an office. I'd rather, you know, I'd rather keep that money or go invest in an extra employee because that's really the difference and the advantage of scale is when you can hire remote. And, you know, we didn't touch much on it, but remote doesn't just mean US. It could be anywhere in the world, and you need a strategy and a methodology to bring those people in correctly. So they're, they're gonna perform, and they know what they need to do, and they can they can thrive in our culture. Once again, thank you for listening to, the show and watching. Until we meet again, get out there. I want you to go unleash that entrepreneur, cut all the times, start by 1 by 1, all this stuff that's holding you back.
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Thank you for listening to the Never Been Promoted podcast. If you liked today's show, subscribe at youtube.comforward/at never been promoted. Until next time. Get out there and go unleash your inner entrepreneur.