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Intro: I’m Paul Higgins, an ex-corporate executive turned business owner who, for five years, struggled to grow a cloud Consulting business whilst battling a chronic disease. With the help of mentors and experts, I got the business model right, built a sales and marketing engine, and developed a high-performing team that ended in a successful exit. I received a kidney transplant from a mate, and now on my second life, I dedicate my time to helping other Cloud Consultants go quickly with less effort to enjoy life. Detecting an accent, I'm an Aussie working globally from Melbourne, Australia. I interview successful Cloud Consultants sharing their scaling story to give you inspiration and practical tips. I have dedicated experts for Cloud Consultants on the show to save you time and money by working with the right people. If you want to scale quickly with less effort to enjoy life, you're in the right place. Let's get started.

Speaker 1 (0:55): Hi, I'm Paul Higgins and welcome to the Cloud Consultant Show, episode number 478. Today's topic is avoiding common hiring mistakes and you'll learn three key things, but believe me, a lot more. The first is the one question you should ask in every interview.I've never heard of the question. It's an absolute ripper, you want to hear it. The second is what candidates are looking for in the next leader. So whether they research, what are they doing to know that you're the right fit? Because let's face it, the top 10% of talent will be picking you as a leader rather than the other way around. And the third is how to get the pink flags. The red flag's obvious, but how do you get the pink flags in an interview?

Speaker 1 (1:32): If it's your first time, welcome and if you love But you hear, please subscribe. And this show is for cloud consultants. So if you consult and implement a SAS platform, you're in the right place. And you can get a summary in the show notes and you can get a full transcript as well at Paulhigginsmentoring.com. If you're a regular, I'd love to hear from you. Just email me at [email protected]. It means the world to me when you do. And also suggest any topics you'd love me to cover. Or you might even want to be a guest yourself or know someone. Please do that. 

Speaker 1 (2:07): And before we go and interview with Josh, I'd like to talk about our two sponsors. One is the cloud consultants collective. It's the world's only revenue focused collective for cloud consultants. It's where you go as a peer to get your answers quick and fast, much better than Google or YouTube. Don't believe me? Try it for yourself. Go to the cloudconsultantscollective.com to join for free today. And the next is workflow academy. Are your top performers feeling overwhelmed? come by their workload. Do you worry about their performance? And even worse, that they may leave the company. We have an innovative solution that can help. We partner with Workflow Academy to provide you a highly talented junior talent who can support your top performers to ensure that they get great results. It's game changing. You can learn more, learn more about it at Paulhigginsmentoring.com/WFA. So that's WFA today.

Speaker 1 (3:00): And our guest today is Josh Matthews. He's the president of Salesforce Staffing. It's the SalesforceRecruiter.com. It provides Salesforce partners to, oh sorry, helps to unlock the code to attract, hire and onboard the top 10% of Salesforce professionals in the United States. He's got 20 years experience. Actually, he says 24 in the episode 24 years as a recruiter and leader in staffing teams. He's interviewed over 7,000 candidates from all levels from Salesforce admin up to and through to C-suite. So what we'll do now is hand you over to Josh Matthews from thesalesrecruiter.com. Great to have you here Josh.

Speaker 2 (3:44): Thanks for having me here. Really appreciate it Paul.

Speaker 1 (3:46): Yeah, well I know we've had some fantastic conversations and now what I want to do is make sure that you listening or watching can learn more about what Josh does and why don't we kick off with that. So who's your ideal client Josh and what problems do you hope to solve for them?

Speaker 2 (4:01): Sure, so great question. So our ideal client are Salesforce partners as well as customers but the majority of clients that we serve are Salesforce partners in that 10 to 50 person size of company. And the reality is right now Paul it doesn't matter how charismatic you are, what a great leader you are, what kind of vision you have for your company. Attracting top performers it's really difficult. There are over 3000 postings going up on LinkedIn in the United States for remote positions every single day of the week, that's seven days a week all year long. And so you can imagine that these folks have a tremendous amount of competition. And their ability to cut through the noise, access and identify the top talent, it's particularly difficult. And when they don't, they really suffer. They really suffer. And so the problems that we solve are, you know, one, they're able to deliver the projects that they commit to with their clients, they're able to say yes to more business and consequently grow their business. And when they get the right kind of employees, and I, by right, I mean, amazing, outstanding, awesome life-changing employees, right, they can really reduce their turnover, they can improve their morale and ultimately spend a little bit more time with their families and doing the things that they love that might even be growing their business or finding new strategies to grow their business. And they can often feel smaller teams and get more efficient production out of a smaller team as long as they're hiring the top people for those roles. So that's what we do. 

Speaker 1 (5:29): Yeah, it's brilliant. And I haven't spoken to Salesforce partner that isn't in the, but everyone wants at a time. As you know, you know, well, a couple of people that I've recently mentored, we've had to let someone go and I'm like, you know, would you hire this person again? And they're like, no, I said, well, why are you keeping them? Right. And once they change someone out that wasn't the right fit to someone that was, you're right. They got a smile back. It's like the clouds left and there's only such fine, right? But like you down in the middle of the world and Florida, right?

Speaker 2 (6:00): It's totally man. Everybody knows what it's like to be in a bad relationship. I mean, if you're 25, you've probably been in a crappy relationship at some point and you may have even wondered like, how do I get out of this? And then not done it because it's difficult because it's painful because you know, you're going to have to face things like loneliness or, you know, who's going to be your pal for all of these activities that you're used to doing. But once you get through that, like, oh my God, I had no idea how much joy I had that was buried and stuffed down inside of me that was just being blocked by being in not that this other person. It might not be a bad person, but just the wrong person for you at that time. And it's absolutely no different for leaders in the Salesforce space or for that matter, any kind of industry. And we can certainly feel held over a barrel, right? Well, I've got to get this stuff done. I can't let them go. They know everything. How am I going to train someone? It's going to be too expensive. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Excuses, excuses, excuses. But there are none. There are great people out there that want to work for really great companies. So you just got to find them. 

Speaker 1 (7:02): It's totally. And if you're listening to Josh and I and you’re not a Salesforce partner, the things we're going to talk about can still apply to no matter what SaaS platform you're supporting, right? Josh is an expert on Salesforce and the ecosystem, but the same rules apply. So, we sort of talked about some of the areas that people make when hiring, right? And we've all made them. We've all got skeletons in our closet with hiring the wrong people. What are the things that you know now, doing this for so long, and I'm not talking about your age, I'm just talking that you started very young. What are the things that you see people make the mistakes? And let's do the flippers how to avoid them.

Speaker 2 (7:39): Sure, yeah. I know it's a really important point. And just so you know, I have been doing this for a long time, I'm not particularly young, I’m 50 years old, but I have been doing this for 24 years, I think I'm in my 24th year of doing this. And the reality is that the most common mistakes that people make are either hiring too fast or hiring too slow. So we're faced with a challenge right now, for instance, in the Salesforce ecosystem where even though people are layoffs with Salesforce, there's some uncertainty in the market, that's normal by the way, like it's nothing to get overly concerned about, the market always corrects itself, right? But the reality is, is people can get pretty nervous and they can take too long to hire someone and then they lose a great candidate. The other thing that they can do is they can rush hiring someone too fast. fast without stepping back and truly evaluating them. So that's a very broad answer. So let me be a little bit more specific with you. Companies that don't know how to move too fast, they're just not planning and blocking their time. So if you know that you're going to be interviewing people, it's so critical that you protect a certain number of hours in any given week for the next two or three weeks to conduct these interviews, to create space, so that you don't seem like you're rushed, like you don't have time for these people, you're not missing out on top candidates. And for the top candidates that you do want to attract, you're not putting them off. Like why would I want to work for this disorganized leader? That's not going to improve my life. By the way, I've got a job, right? So what's better about this for me? So you're going to really put people off. And then hiring too quickly, look, there's nothing, most leaders tend to be more what we would call judging personalities if you know anything about MBTI or Myers-Briggs type indicators. Then those are people who feel much more comfortable after a decision has been made than researching and spending time to make that decision. And I fall into that category to a degree, right? So the reality is, is we can like, oh, yeah, I love them. They're great, right? Or we can become overconfident in our interviewing abilities. You know, I'll talk to clients and I'll say, OK, how would you rate yourself as an interviewer scale of 10, five average? And they might say, oh, I'm probably an eight or a nine. And the next question, OK, how many people have you interviewed? I've been doing it for years. Right. Answer the question. How many people have you actually interviewed? Oh, I'll bet I've interviewed 40. Like, OK, well, where did you get your training? Oh, they don't know how to answer that because they haven't had any. They just followed some poor practices from the people who hired them. And then they were giving some questions to ask. And the reality is, is maybe they're not good questions. Maybe they don't know how to interpret the responses. We talk a lot in my business about pink flags. Everyone has a red flag. The Chewing gum, the badmouthing their last client, they're talking smack like whatever it is. Everyone knows a red flag. 

Speaker 1 (10:30): Yes

Speaker 2 (10:31): But the pink flags are the ones that we've got to worry about because those are the red flags that have either been whitewashed, but not very well, or reflecting an issue in another aspect or part of this person's life bringing it. So we can rush to judgment. Oh, they're attractive, they're friendly, they're well spoken, right? But if you're not deep diving on their accomplishments and then getting really, really narrow about what aspects of the successes that they had were actually their work, right? Oh, I secured a $2 million deal. Who else was involved? How many people were involved? Oh, there were five other people involved. Oh, you worked on the deal. Oh, you did the PowerPoint. Oh, you didn't land the client, right? These types of things. So I think the number one tip here is recognize that there's always going to be some sort of bias, right? You and I, we hit it off right away. That's called instant rapport. We like each other. We get along, we speak the same language, so we're going to fall in together nicely. But the reality is, if I'm hiring you or if you're hiring me, we need to pretend for a second that maybe that's not the case. Maybe we should push ourselves in our questions and our reasoning and think, okay, I've got to find something out about Paul that's difficult. Right? That's, that he's hiding. He doesn't want me to know right now, but it's going to come up. And with that in mind, the number one question that I recommend, candidate's ask, by the way, clients can ask this question too. It's a really simple one, which is, let's say I made you an offer tomorrow, it's a great offer, you're excited to start and you start, let's say you started on Monday, we're just using imagination land here for a second. What I'd like to know is, what am I going to find out three months from today? What am I going to wish I knew today that I'm going to find out three months from today anyway, right? If I hire you, I'm going to find this out. Why did you just tell me that right now? And when candidates ask this question, sometimes there's shock with what they learn. Oh, you're being bought out by an Indian owned company with no roots in the United States or no roots in Australia and your leadership and your managers are all going to change. It's going to impact your decision or maybe you're going to find it out that you know what, I am  a perfectionist but sometimes I negatively impact my work and I can be slow to delver. You’re gonna find it out so I'm going to tell you now. So if everyone can be a little bit more vulnerable and really think about not just being wooed by a nice smile, or a fancy resume, or top school or university, or 20x certifications for that matter, everyone can make a much better decision.

Speaker 1 (13:09): Yeah, I think that's brilliant. And obviously there's two paths here. One is you can go and recruit directly yourself or the other is to go some through someone like yourself, right? So how much of what you just talk through are you doing versus how much is the client doing when they hiring a top salesforce down?

Speaker 2 (13:28): Well look, I mean it's a it's a combination, right. Everybody needs to be involved and everybody needs to do their part equally well. And so part of what we do is we help advise our clients on what types of questions they should be asking and what order they should be asking them. As an example, a lot of times candidates show up for an interview and they save all the questions for the end and by then they're so concerned with these two or three questions that they have that they're not really paying attention to the interview. They can't relax. And when someone's not relaxed you can't get the most quality information and trust out of them, right? So as an example, you might say hey, we're gonna talk about you, but right now take 10 minutes, take 15 minutes, ask a way. You're going to answer it anyway. Ask a way. Build some rapport. Give them an opportunity to put their mind at ease so that you can have a more comfortable experience. But to answer your question directly because I'm not I'm promise, Paul, I'm not trying to avoid it. Reality is is what we do is first we we attract and identify we identify the top candidates, right? We attract them. Often we just already have them and then we market them. That's a that's a business style in head hunting as well. Right? Like we've got an amazing person, right? I've got a guy right now. He's got 13 certifications, two MBAs, one from Cornell. He's got 10 years of experience. He's an amazing guy. I've met him in person. I love this guy. Right? It's an easy sell. I can just bring that candidate to a variety of companies and they can have an interest in hiring. But the reality is we're screening them first with phone screen and then face to face video just like this. Like we're doing right now. It's in depth. Right up a profile, but we're paying attention not just to the interview and to the resume. We're looking at their behaviors throughout the entire process. We're looking for how open and honest they are. We're looking for accountability. We're looking for passion for the ecosystem, passion for their business, and we're looking for their accomplishments as well. We put that all nicely together, and then there's an expectation with the clients that we serve that if we bring someone like this to the party, there is an interview. It's not going to be, yeah, let me look at the resume, Josh. I've got other clients. I don't need to do that. We brought you the best of the best. You've got to talk to them. I'm not trying to sound cocky here, but it's a waste of time. Now you're talking about wasting everybody's time. Then they need to go in and find out if there's the cultural fit, put them through more of a technical ropes course and identify where their weaknesses are, if any, and then make a determination. Then of course we're there on the back end to help negotiate salary, compensation, benefits, packages, start dates, and help them through what we call the red zone, which is that point right before your offer and actually showing up for work on your first day.

Speaker 1 (16:10): Yeah, and you know, at Coca Cola, I figured how many people let's you know, there's like 200 there. I don't know how many thousands of people there are that work for the Coca-Cola system. So we had extensive recruitment processes and practices and you said 40 before I don't know, I'd be like in the maybe in the thousands of people that I've interviewed through my career. But one of the things that really moved the dial for the Coke company was when we used to do a day in the life of. So if you've ever seen your roles, you'd actually get an external company and you go through a day in the life of being a CEO, for example, which I must admit a a candidate, it was very stressful indeed. And so and your true person came out, right? There's no hiding in that environment. And then what we do for more Junior roles, we do basically like a mini day in the life of that have to present a particular problem and come back to you know So once again, there was nowhere to hide. So does any of that or do any of the partners employ something like that to pick the right talent?

Speaker 2 (17:14): Yes, they do. Not a lot of them, some of them do, right. I mean you're gonna you're going to see with the larger partners and with the more attractive brands in general that candidates have more patience for that type of a process, but there's also and this is a challenge for your your silver level Partners and sometimes even your gold and I know that they changed all the all the names of that already, right? But I'm just gonna be old school here for a couple minutes, but the reality is when someone decides like, I might contact a candidate, or someone on my team might contact the top candidate, they're not even looking. But I present with them a compelling opportunity that gets them interested excited, right? And now they're in the loop. They're starting the interview process with us and or with the client. But by the time that happens, you've got this very short window because they can start thinking, well, if I'm talking to them, what else is out there? Right? And if someone's in the top 10% of professionals for what they do, be it architect, Salesforce administrator, consultant, project manager, BA developer, or practice lead, whatever it happens to be, they know in this economy, regardless of what's happening, you know, globally or with Wall Street or even with Salesforce for that matter, the reality is that they're very keenly aware that there are a lot of opportunities out there right now. Okay. So all they've got to do is raise their hand and now they've got 20 phone calls a day coming at them. And I'm not joking. Right? Some of these people can get 20 plus calls a day or emails or LinkedIn messages every single day of the week. That means that they're not going to patience or time to be able to dedicate a half day or full day to an interview process like that. If everybody asks that of them, they'd never be able to keep the job that they already have because they're working, right? People have jobs, right? They're making money. So it's not as relevant a process now unless you're looking at very senior roles in the 250 to 500k plus range senior leadership.

Speaker 1 (19:13): Yeah, great. And what are the Salesforce partners, some of the best ones that you're working, what are they doing to be more attractive to a client or a candidate?

Speaker 2 (19:22): Yeah, great question. Look, a lot of things that a lot of the partners are doing are now taking for granted. But if you looked at what they're doing compared to the rest of technology at all, they would look stellar and amazing and stunning, right? But in Salesforce ecosystem in general right now, a lot of companies are doing unlimited PTO. I take the time off and they'll make you take the time off. I've heard about you know, like pet sick days of all things. Bonuses, of course, are extremely attractive. So giving people an opportunity to receive bonuses, not just on how well the company does, and a lot of them do that, and not just on your billable hours like a lot of partners will do. Look, there's something to be said for that. But someone who's striving and striving to hit that next tier of bonuses, they might be working 60 hours a week. Then they're going to get burnt out. Then they might not stay forever. But tying bonuses to their individual performance is just as important as just tying it to the overall company profitability. So bonuses help. And I think, in general, particularly when we're talking about people who are deeply experienced, giving them as many tools as they possibly need to be successful and giving them as much room as they need to be themselves and do things the right way. After all, that's why you're hiring them.

Speaker 1 (20:43): Yeah, that's great. And you know, we've all gone through COVID. No one's enjoyed it. Has that changed the appetite by the candidates from where they work. What have you seen from that perspective is where candidates want to actually work these days?

Speaker 2 (21:02): Well, look, in salesforce, I'll just share with you that in the four and a half years that we've been in business, we've placed three people on site ever. Okay. Everybody else has been remote or predominantly remote anyway. I mean, I think after all, isn't that why so many people are curious about the software, curious about this industry? So, remote, it goes without saying that that's pretty much a necessity. Particularly, if you're out there, if you're part of your core base who listens to your show and they're in that 10 to 50 person partner space, right? The reality is they already know this. If you're based in New York City and you want something to show up, you got to pay New York City prices or LA prices or Silicon Valley prices or Seattle prices and that includes 250, 300 a month in parking, 500, 600 a month in parking if you're in Sydney, right? Like it gets really expensive to have a life and to have these people on site and you've got to ask yourself for what? Now, I do think that it makes sense to have junior people in some sort of cohort that's working together with mentors and being in an office absolutely has its advantages. But if you're looking to get the best person that you possibly can, they're probably working remote. And now you have out the whole world, at least the whole country that you can find. And you'll probably save money and get a better candidate to begin with.

Speaker 1 (21:31): Yeah. And I know you from a geography point of view cover North American predominantly in Canada, the US. Are there any unique differences between the two countries that you've found?

Speaker 2 (21:41): Yeah. It's really small, man. Yeah. Look, I mean, yeah, I mean, it's like Canada is really small. They don't pay as well. They can't, right? So I've got some wonderful Canadian friends. I've had some wonderful Canadian employees, I have consultants operating out of Canada right now. It's a wonderful country. The reality is 90% of Canadians live within 100 miles of the United States border. That's got a lot to do with how warm it is, right? And I actually got my starting recruiting working for a company out of Point Clair in Montreal. So I'm a fan of Canada. But the reality is is that not all companies up in Canada have the buying power that companies in the United States do. And so where I see Canadian companies sometimes struggle is, they want a large pool of candidates to pull from, but they may have rules around how much compensation they can offer, right? And consequently, how much they can build their clients, right? So they can't, if it's a Canadian partner and they're building a Canadian company, that Canadian company is not paying US numbers, right? So everything's just a little bit less expensive and consequently for Americans, less attractive. Now that's not always the case, I've worked with a wonderful company for a bit called Suridian, they're an HR software company, some of the best leaders ever. I'm a huge fan of the VP that I got to work with, just a wonderful guy. We were able to help support them. And so like when you need the best of the best, you're going to be willing to pay because you'll see the value and ultimately every employee should either earn you money or save you money. Like we don't know that then we shouldn't be in business, but that's the reality. And you do get what you pay for, not always. If you're a fool, you don't. But if you're smart about it, you usually should be getting what you pay for or more. And so there are some differences there for sure. And then there's just a lot fewer people who live in Canada than the United States in general too.

Speaker 1 (24:38): So when a candidate is profiling an owner of a Salesforce Partnership or people within it, where are they doing their research? Where's there go to place to find out more? 

Speaker 2 (24:50): Yeah, I'll tell you what. That’s a good one, Paul. I’m gonna make it easy for every listener here right now, ok? So if you go to  Salesforce Ben and you type in Salesforce Career Checklist, you'll find an exhaustive article that I wrote specifically about this. And it includes research in the app exchange, Glassdoor, LinkedIn, their website, Google, Google News. You really want to find out what's going on. Anybody can go and read someone's website. Now you're putting this very focused 400 words on their home page that’s giving you just the information they want you to know. But sometimes if you type in, you know, XYZ company news in Google, this is where you can start getting into the heavier information, right? Like, oh, wow, the CEO is being sued for this, that, and the other thing. This has been going on for three months. They're being sued by four different individuals, employees, that CEO is on their way out. Something's going to be shaking up, oh, hey, I didn't know that they were in talks with Accenture and that they're going to get bought and that's going to change the landscape. It's going to change my manager. So that's really important. And something like just, if I'm going to share one thing, I'll just talk about Glassdoor. Look, the reality is, is not always, but usually if a company has one or two stars on Glassdoor, there's usually a reason for it. It's usually means you probably shouldn't work with them. But you also have to give some, you need to be thoughtful in your research. And by that, I mean, look at the dates that these things were filed. As an example, you might find a company is three stars and you've said to yourself, well, no, up all, this is a three star company. I'm only going to work for a four and five star company, but what you might find is that some stuff went down a year ago. There were six people that gave reviews inside of a 15 day period. It was a little bit of a coup. They had to do layoffs because maybe they came to someone like me and said, we got to get rid of the people who are underperformers and replace them and all these people got pissed off and angry. I mean if you want to see angry, just jump on Twitter and listen to the diatribes that people have about how terrible it is that Salesforce is laying off all these people. It's like, I'm sorry guys. They over hired by thousands and thousands and thousands of people. Look, they let go some great people, they’ll be fine. The great ones will be fine. They let go of people that had no business getting hired in the first place. I stand by that. There's nothing wrong with that. But if they are talking about why they're a terrible company because they're doing this to people, they're not doing this to people. They're doing this because they have heavy investors and they're not performing from profitability standpoint, even close to Oracle and Microsoft and other large tech companies and they're trying to do right by their shareholders. It's people who actually fund the entire business. So you've got to be really careful about why someone's ratings on Glassdoor are going down or why the chatter on Twitter and other social media channels. You've got to look carefully and you have to be as objective in just like Paul. Just like we were talking about how you have to try and find out why are they saying this. What does that actually mean? Am I getting sucked into this idea? Jordan Peterson talks about it's like if it's not your idea, you don't own the idea. The idea owns you. And you might be serving the idea instead of vice versa. So you need to ask yourself, well, am I going to get all sucked into this chatter? Am I going to just believe everything that I read on Glassdoor or in the news? Or just because my friend Jenny worked at this company and didn't like her boss, I should never work for that company. Even though I know Jenny's lazy.

Speaker 1 (28:50): Yes, yes, correct. And I think if you're sitting here and you’re thinking, you know, I've got to find a key role at the moment. And you're looking at the options of do I do it myself or do it with Josh? I think what you're learning is that A, the candidate's going to be screened and prepared really well. But the other thing is that Josh has got unique knowledge within the ecosystem that you can't find on Google or Glassdoor or whatever, that is going to position your company for top talent a lot better than maybe what your current profile, because you can't go and change your social media and change everything overnight, right? But the conversations that Josh is having with top talent can change overnight. So I think, you know, there's always two paths in the world. I was lucky. I came from the Coca-Cola company where we used to just buy, because we made lots of money. We used to just buy the top talent or the top experts to help us. We didn't try to reinvent the wheel all the time. And for you, you can, you know, there's two paths that you can go down. But I think this is putting a good case forward for the path of, you know, getting an expert that lives and breathes this, has been in the industry for 24 years, has been doing this for four years, and really knows what they're talking about because it is unique. Now, you don't do this every day, and 40 interviews versus how many do you do a year? How many times do you do a year?

Speaker 2 (30:07): I don't know how many I do a year. I calculate, I've done at least 12,000 interviews, at least 12,000. Right? Like at least, and I'll tell you something else, everybody on my team, they've all been technical recruiting for at least eight years. There are some sizable sales force staffing firms out there, and they definitely fill and service a, you know, there's a purpose for them, and I'm glad that they're out there. But the reality is, is, you know, if you really look at the numbers, and all you have to do is click on LinkedIn, click on Insights, and start looking around, right? And you'll see that people's average tenure is around a year, right? Or maybe a year and a half, that their average age is around 23 or 24, their first professional position. I don't know if I would try, if I need to hire someone to run this company alongside me, I don't think I would trust that someone who's been out of college for only two years. Like how are they going to actually get this person to open up? I think it's difficult. That doesn't mean it can't happen. It's just unlikely to happen. 

Speaker 1 (31:01): Yeah. Yeah. Great point. And the last question I want to ask before we go to the rapid fire.

Speaker 2 (31:06): Sure.

Speaker 1 (31:06): Is the next 12 months, give us a bit of a forecast on, you know, I know this is a bit like a piece of string, but, you know, wage demand, is going to go up? Is it going to stay stable? Is it going to drop a bit? Like what's your view? As an owner of a business, so I need to be budgeting more or less?

Speaker 2 (31:24): Look, I mean, you should always budget more if you want to make more, right? I mean, that's the reality. Like you got to spend money to make money. And it's just that you got to practice in private, what you want to be rewarded for in public. Like it's just how it goes. And there's risk involved in that. At the end of the day, if someone uses me or someone like me in the ecosystem is deeply experienced, and they have to spend 20, 30, 40, 50,000 dollars to land the top candidate, that person's going to pay for themselves and for the fees so fast.

Speaker 1 (31:56): Yes.

Speaker 2 (31:56): So fast, not just in peace of mind, right? Like your business will just earn a lot more money and you'll build a better reputation. And when you start attaching numbers to that, the returns are not 3x. They're 10x, 20x, 30x. It's massive. Okay. As far as like what do the next 12 months hold? Look, I'm the guy who thought Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera and Lady Gaga were never going to make it. I saw Nsync on TV and I thought those guys will never make it. So there are certain things that I'm not good at predicting at all, right? And I own that. And I've never really been a big fan of trying to be one of those talking heads who's predicting the future. But what I can tell you is salesforce isn't going away. Okay. The demand for people for top quality talent, it's increasing. When you have 3000 jobs up every single day for remote jobs in just one country, the reality is, is there aren't enough people to do all of the work. There's going to be some changes to the ecosystem in the next three or four years. Chat GPT-4 and other subsequent versions of that will have a massive impact on the lower entry level admins. It's not going to take a certification necessarily, not too far down the road to handle some of the work that is the work's going to become commoditized. But if you are customer focused, if you're looking for people who are engaged with stakeholders, who can ask tough questions, who know when to push back in a friendly, nice kind way, there's always going to be value for people like that AI or no AI, it's just a reality. You're going to need that. And those people will all look, the top 10% of people are always going to be just the top 10%. Wherever that moves or slides around a little bit, and there's always going to be a value to them, they're always going to cost a little bit more. They're always going to make you more. So big predictions for the next 12 months. I predict that people will start loosening up, people will stop feeling quite so uptight about the changes of the economy. I don't think that we're looking at a crazy market crash like the GFC back in 2008, right? I don't think that's happening. If things are a little bit tight for some clients right now, that's normal. The typical sort of negative cycle in the economy is anywhere from like 52 days to about two years, right? But the typical one being around 52, 55 days in the global market debt. I think once there's another presidential election in the United States, we're always going to see a little bit of an uptick again. So that will have an impact. But at the end of the day, people still need to sell. And if anything, they need to sell more. And the number one CRM for selling is Salesforce. So life is good. Keep going and go crush it, right?

Speaker 1 (34:33): Awesome. So we're going to get to the rapid fire now. So I'm going to ask you four questions. And you're going to give me rapid responses. So the first one, what are the some of the daily sales habits you do to help you your business?

Speaker 2 (34:44): Yeah, so first one, I meditate in the morning. I actually picture wonderful things that have happened to me in the past. I breathe in a lot of light and energy. And then I imagine the future state that I want to be and it only takes me about nine minutes. And I do that every morning with my girlfriend outside in the sun. And that sets me up for success as far as actually future planning, like daily activity things. Look, I hold everybody accountable and I hold them to a high standard regardless of whatever the task is. High standards always.

Speaker 1 (35:13): Yeah, Brilliant. And where do you go to find out more about growing your business?

Speaker 2 (34:44): Well, look, I work with an executive coach, a business coach named Trevor. I've been working with Trevor for over two years. He comes from the Tony Robbins group. He's one of their elite coaches. He's not the cheapest guy in the world. But he is worth every single penny, tenfold, twenty fold over so having someone look anytime your business leader, you need to be held accountable. And you can have accountability groups. I've got an accountability partner for four years. He's going up here from Portland, Oregon tomorrow with his wife. We're gonna hang out for a few days. He's a wonderful guy He's been a friend for 20 years. So having accountability partners and really having a coach, someone who can just help you kind of pull out the cobwebs and get really crystal clear about what you need to do. They don't have all the answers, okay. But they can help you figure out like one, what you really want, then you can figure out the how later on And I was a friend chat GPT's your friend and some sort of mastermind groups are your friend as well.

Speaker 1 (36:08): Awesome. So one wish, what’s one wish we could give to thesalesrecruiter.com?

Speaker 2 (36:14): One wish yeah, oh gosh I look I wish it was easy to train recruiters to be badass like everyone on my team. It's not you know, one of the big things about having a scalable business is, complexity is the enemy of growth, right? And what we do, it's complex. You know, as an example, I mean, Jesse's been with me for four years. Stephen's been with me for combined, I think, five years, known him for eight. It takes a lot of time to get really, really excellent at head hunting, recruiting, and basically becoming a human lie detector, right? Which is what we have to do to de risk our clients hiring. My wish is, I wish it was easier. I wish there were more excellent recruiters, they were easy to find.

Speaker 1 ( 36:54): Right. And the last one is, what do you know now about running thesalesforcerecruiter.com that you wish had known earlier?

Speaker 2 (37:02): Oh, gosh. OK, it's not necessarily about the business, but I'll just tell you professionally. What I know now is that difficult emails should never be emailed.

Speaker 1 (37:10): Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 (37:11): You should always have a phone conversation, whether it's with a client, whether it's with a candidate, whether it's with a vendor or a business partner. It took me a little while in my career to learn that any time it might look like you're throwing some under the bus, even if they screwed up in a massive way, sticking it as a written record and then having that CC with anybody else, it's going to hurt more feelings than correct problems. So I think having good communication being patient, most leaders, again, are judges, they want to do things fast, be included. But the reality is, is if you can just hit pause and say, look, I'm going to be patient, I'm just going to talk to this person and try and understand them first. And then we can figure out a way for it's generally much better for all leaders and even ways.

Speaker 1 (37:56): Great. And I think, you know, ultimately, just because you can doesn’t mean you should, and just because you can do an email because it's fast, it doesn't often mean that you should. So great way to finish it. So I know you've got lots of resources. So as I said, theSalesforcerecruiter.com is your main site. You've got a podcast, which is the Salesforce career show. You've also got the Salesforce professionals on Twitter, which is, you know, the largest Twitter group for Salesforce partners in the world, which is brilliant. And go and check out Josh's profile as well. We'll have all those links in the show notes, but it's been an absolute pleasure having you on. Well done for what you do, but also really appreciate that you're sharing your learnings with us today. So Josh, great effort and thanks for being on the show.

Speaker 2 (38:41): Paul, thank you so much. It's always a pleasure to talk to you. And this was really special to be invited to your program. I love it, I listen to it, and I wish you and the rest of your crew the best success.

Speaker 1 (38:51): Brilliant, thank you.

Speaker 2 (38:52): Bye for now. 

Speaker 1 (38:53): What a great interview with Josh. There was just so much gold there. I'll keep it short because the episode is a little longer than normal, but he just had so much value to give that I kept it going. Why don't you thank him for what you've learned. Maybe that one question that he mentioned, which is a purler, just go and take a photo of this episode. Mention him on LinkedIn. He'd love that. Also, if you know any peers that are looking to hire or they need someone of Josh's capability, please go and share this episode with them. Check out our solo shows. If you're scaling your cloud consulting business and want a great blueprint on how to do it, save you time and money. Just go to paulhigginsmentoring.com/blueprint to get your free copy of the book today. And please take action to scale quickly with less effort to enjoy life more.