How Better Hiring Decisions Create Better Companies

TRANSCRIPT SUMMARY:

00:00 Why Every Business Is Really in the People Business
01:25 Leadership Lessons That Started at Sixteen
05:30 Growing Up with an Executive Coach as a Father
09:45 Taking Over the Family Business After Tragedy
12:40 Why Integrity and Attitude Beat Talent Alone
17:45 Learning to Hire Through 10,000 Candidate Interviews
22:30 The High Cost of Keeping "Talented Terrors"
26:30 The Hiring Question That Reveals Everything
31:50 Splitting One Business into Two—and Doubling Revenue
36:00 Building a Hiring Platform and Acquiring Integrity First
47:40 How Better Hiring Creates Better Business Results
56:35 The Power of Focus for Every Scaling CEO

FULL TRANSCRIPT:
Jeff Holman (00:00.803)

Welcome back to the Breakout CEO podcast. I'm your host, Jeff Holman. I'm with Intellectual Strategies, a law firm that helps startups and scaling companies grow and take care of their legal needs. And I love talking with my clients. And so I thought, how do I get more of my client stories or stories like my clients, because I can't share my my clients' confidential stories. How do I get more CEOs sharing the stories that are kind of behind the scenes? So that's why we do this podcast, the Breakout CEO. And and today I'm really glad to have Fletcher Wimbush with with us.

to share some of his story about his company discovered. Fletcher, hey, welcome to the show. Yeah, I'm I'm really glad to have you. We're gonna have to at some point get to some of this stuff if you got in the background on your screen. I I suspect that's part of your platform and and and we'll we'll talk about some of that before we're done.

Fletcher Wimbush (00:34.904)

Thanks for having me, Jeff.

Fletcher Wimbush (00:47.414)

Yeah. Well it was actually a turning point for me to to you know, really lean into this. But yeah, you know, what

Jeff Holman (00:52.311)

Awesome. We're gonna we're gonna get into that. so you so we were talking before the show, you've been doing this or versions of of this business for the last, you know, thirteen plus years, helping companies hire the right people. Have I got that right?

Fletcher Wimbush (01:07.384)

Yeah. Yeah, that's it. That's the goal.

Jeff Holman (01:10.723)

I I will I would say one of the things that the the maybe the most recurring theme that I've seen over the last we're probably on episode eighty by now by the time this one publishes over the last eighty episodes is they're not all the same, but but most every CEO who talks about the success in their business talks about the people, talks about building the team, sometimes, you know, making some team corrections and adding the right people or acquiring or

Fletcher Wimbush (01:21.198)

Yeah.

Jeff Holman (01:40.005)

you know, transitioning. And and so I've been not surprised, but but I've been pleasantly, I guess, glad to hear how important people really are. what is the w what have you seen being in the people business? How would you characterize this for for a lot of these companies who are really in the early stages of building, trying to get, you know, trying to get to the next level?

What do you see with with the people in those businesses?

Fletcher Wimbush (02:12.565)

Yeah. Well, I I think I mean it's the absolute foundation of everything we do in any organization is is none of us are in the business of whatever it is. We're not in the business of building homes, we're not in the build this business of doing marketing, creating leads or providing legal services or whatever it is, right? I mean, we're ultimately all in the people business. And you know, I I realized I started thinking about that when I was sixteen. I wrote my first papers around that topic.

And that's a whole nother story about why I became interested in it, but mostly because I was a lead I've found myself in leadership positions as a young, young person and you know, really began thinking about this concept. So so I I I that's been my life's mission is you know, focused on, you know, how do I how do we get the right people in our organizations? Because when we do that, great things happen, right? We create we win, we create results, we accomplish goals, we build amazing products, we

Jeff Holman (02:48.593)

Mm-hmm.

Fletcher Wimbush (03:09.057)

deliver excellent service, you know, and then but more importantly, we you know, end up in an environment around people that we like being with and we enjoy working with and we're winning when you win with the team, you generally like each other, you know. So

Jeff Holman (03:17.296)

Yeah.

Jeff Holman (03:22.617)

Yeah. Yeah. I was just thinking about that this morning actually. I was thinking, you know, in business, sometimes we're like, who can I who can I go into business with? Who do I want to work with? Who would be fun to be with? And the thought came to me, it was the first maybe the first time I thought of it this way is is who would be willing to who would be willing to risk it all with me? You know, everybody wants to win, but who would be willing to go into business and risk it all? And maybe that's because my personality is a little bit more risk tolerant. I'm like, I'm like, who would risk who would risk it, you know, risk their

Fletcher Wimbush (03:40.183)

Yeah. Sure.

Jeff Holman (03:52.333)

interest a little bit with me and and I wonder what that would be like. Yeah.

Fletcher Wimbush (03:55.906)

Well, that's a culture match thing, right? So your your internal culture is like, hey, I I wanna I wanna go for the gold. I wanna leave it all out on the field, right? You know, whatever that mentality of like, I'm willing to put it all on the line, to risk it all, to accomplish my goal, right? And so, yeah, you're looking for somebody else who is also like minded like that. Not everybody is willing to do s do that. Some people are like, I need a safety net, right? And that those people don't think that same way. And that doesn't mean they're not a good person, doesn't mean they're not.

Talented. They're just not a right fit for maybe Jeff's mission. Right. Yeah.

Jeff Holman (04:28.879)

Yeah, d d different roles even maybe, so so that makes sense. I have to ask though, you you say si you were started writing papers at sixteen? I don't hear I don't hear that very often. I mean, a lot of sixteen year olds are writing papers, but they're writing, you know, papers about the the books they read in their English class. What what what was prompting you to write leadership type papers at sixteen?

Fletcher Wimbush (04:37.341)

Huh.

Fletcher Wimbush (04:47.957)

Yeah. Well, I mean, our our our school made us write a paper to graduate from high school, but you got I think I don't remember the parameters, but you have to pick like your topic, right? You know? And my my father was a executive coach, business coach. He subsequently I've been I've been evangelizing his ideas for the last thirteen or fourteen years, but he had

Jeff Holman (04:57.093)

Yeah. Yeah.

Jeff Holman (05:02.747)

Okay.

Fletcher Wimbush (05:15.699)

heavily influenced me as sort of a young man. I've actually got my my daughter here bringing me some lemonade. So thank you. I need that. She can hear me that I've been talking all day. My voice is scratchy. so no. so she you know that I had that influence and then I found myself naturally in leadership. I was captain of a football team. They elected me student body president. I I pulled a like a Trump in my high school I like you know out

Jeff Holman (05:21.101)

Awesome. Enjoy.

Jeff Holman (05:25.955)

I love it.

Fletcher Wimbush (05:42.242)

did all the kids that had been like in student body and like straight A students. I was not a good student. I was not a good yeah. Yeah. I I my my slogan was you know, Wimbush, Australian for president, you know, after the old Foster's slogan. So you know, and they they elected me. And I and I went and I like, you know, platformed in all my classes and stood up in front of the whole student body and they they, you know, they elected me. And you know, I was on a change, you know, I'm gonna

Jeff Holman (05:47.973)

You you you showed up and you're like, I think I'm gonna do it.

Jeff Holman (05:57.905)

Okay.

Jeff Holman (06:08.752)

Yeah.

Fletcher Wimbush (06:11.285)

fight the power here, you know, kind of a platform. And but no, I I you know, I really, you know, began that I I took it seriously. I you know, as much as that's kind of, you know, it's kind of like, you know, I'm gonna go do this crazy thing on a whim, you know, you know, I I really took it seriously and I began really thinking about these things. And so that's what inspired me to write the paper along those lines. I had an influencer. I had been in leadership roles and I had and then I had to write this paper to graduate.

Jeff Holman (06:13.371)

For sure.

Jeff Holman (06:40.213)

Okay, so it was so so I don't feel so behind the curve then. This was high school, but it was but it was a paper that maybe was above and beyond what normal high schoolers were thinking about at the moment. So yeah, your dad influ so your dad was a was an executive coach. That's gonna be an interesting upbringing if he's sharing things with you because he's getting I mean, on this podcast, I'm talking with CEOs about their experiences and sometimes you know things

Fletcher Wimbush (06:51.223)

Yeah. Yeah.

Jeff Holman (07:09.317)

go wrong and they talk talk about and other times things go right and they talk about how excited they are about that. Like you were you getting these types of tidbits and insights from your dad growing up? Did you hear these things as he as he experienced them and heard them from others?

Fletcher Wimbush (07:24.535)

We you know, we talked a lot of shop, right? You know, at the end of the day, right. And and but not just that too. I mean, you know, life lessons and and but my dad was a true coach, you know, he he he wasn't there telling me what to do or this is you know, this is what you should do or how you should do it, or this is the best practice. It was more of like, I got a problem or here's an issue and it's more of like, Okay, what do you think you should do about it? You know, so he was really that kind of a guy.

Jeff Holman (07:26.639)

Yeah, yeah.

Jeff Holman (07:42.32)

Mm-hmm.

Jeff Holman (07:48.953)

Okay.

Fletcher Wimbush (07:52.458)

And did that really, really well. Now he was really smart. He probably could have told me what to do, you know, in many in many cases. But he was also really smart because I'm a high D if you you know, for all the disc people out there, like I'm I'm not really gonna listen to advice anyway. So he was really pretty clever that he would, you know, lead me to my own conclusions, right? And you know, if I was really off base, he'd probably tell me, you know, you get your head out of the sand. Yeah, don't

Jeff Holman (08:09.967)

Yeah.

Jeff Holman (08:14.81)

That's interesting. Yeah, my my dad was more the type of and and is maybe is not t these days so much, but growing up it was like, Jeff, the line is here, my line is here, you're not getting anywhere close to this line in the middle. So

Fletcher Wimbush (08:29.645)

Yeah. My parents tried that with me, but it didn't work very well.

Jeff Holman (08:33.994)

Well, yeah, I I will I will not divulge how successful it worked with me. but well that's interesting. I mean w very interesting context. Do you think that helped lead you into the business that you're in? Just having those kind of ongoing conversations, the coaching, because cause when you're in the people business, I and as you mentioned, every every business is the people business. but when you're in the actual people business, helping people hire people and build teams, build culture.

do you think that was influenced by some of the stuff that you you talked about with your dad?

Fletcher Wimbush (09:07.895)

yeah. I mean, i again, it was a I I ultimately took over and became his chief evangelist, right? He he passed away right when I I took over after he passed away. We had been succession planning quite loosely. There wasn't any sense of urgency around it. I had a successful career and as as running commercial dish machine company, nothing glamorous. I was once also a professional dishwasher. but

Jeff Holman (09:24.879)

Mm-hmm.

Fletcher Wimbush (09:32.518)

but I was quite successful in leveraging the ideas and the things that he taught me. So I took a business unit from basically worst in the company out of a hundred to one of the best out of a hundred business units. Subsequently, like 10 plus of the people who had worked for me had went on to have long careers with the company and also and moved up into leadership roles, and many of them into very, very senior leadership roles within the company. So, you know, I I had the opportunity as a young leader to.

actually affect a business unit and then multiple business units and to by the metrics drive success and then all but more importantly with the people drive engagement build culture to the point that that the people on my team became more successful than I ever was in the role in my leadership role with the organization. unfortunately he he he was way too young and

He was, you know, 64 and got a rare disease. And within nine, was like nine to twelve months, he he had passed. And you know, the guy's one of the healthiest guys you ever met. Never drank, smoked, he exercised ri rigorously, you know. and just one of the nicest human beings you could ever meet, way nicer than me. and I don't know how I turned out this way, but you know, he he, you know.

Jeff Holman (10:36.408)

Wow, sorry to hear that.

Fletcher Wimbush (10:54.717)

So we had kind of gone down that, and that was an inflection point for me in my career. and I'd always wanted to work for him. I always like, Dad, like, come on, let me come work for you. Let me come work for you. No, no, no, no. And and then when you know I had this crossroads, like continue my very successful career where I was at, where I was winning and it was fun and I was doing good to then go take over what at that point was this very, very small

behavioral assessment company. And that's why I I came to realize why he didn't want me to to get involved. He wasn't making any money. Right. So so I that went to no paycheck and just back to the the grindstone and had to grow f basically a business from virtually from scratch.

Jeff Holman (11:27.098)

Yeah.

Jeff Holman (11:31.95)

Ha ha ha.

Jeff Holman (11:42.52)

Is that the precursor or the or the origins of the business that you're in now? Okay. Okay.

Fletcher Wimbush (11:44.3)

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's the origins. Yeah. Yeah. So so yeah. And then that that, you know, allowed me the opportunity to be with him every single day to this day. I get to be with my father and share his ideas.

Jeff Holman (12:01.22)

I love it. I love it. what what's what's maybe one of the more impactful ideas that you continue to share today from your father?

Fletcher Wimbush (12:10.417)

it the the cornerstone for me it it in everything when it comes to people is hiring people for integrity and attitude. So, you know, a lot of times that's disguised in culture. It is part of often it's a big part of what people say mean when they say, Hey, we have a good culture or I'm hiring for peop people to have a culture fit. Although you have the great example where there's a little bit of a difference there. So you your culture is let's win at all costs, but I bet you.

Part of that culture is like I wanna hire I wanna I wanna do that with people with integrity and who have a good attitude, right? You know. I don't think you wanna do this with somebody who's shady and like, you know, not honest and you know, and in a

Jeff Holman (12:43.704)

sh for sure. Yeah.

Jeff Holman (12:48.93)

No, no, no. I don't need high drama. I don't need I don't need issues. I don't need to solve no, no.

Fletcher Wimbush (12:52.235)

It's a grumpy grouch, you know, or in a negative Nancy or whatever you want to call right? You know. so we don't typically want that in our organizations. I mean, you know, maybe one exception to that would like Wolf of Wall Street. I mean, fine, go, go ahead and just hire the most unscrupulous salespeople you can ever can. You'll probably be successful until you go to jail.

Jeff Holman (13:11.992)

Yeah, ex exactly. Well well I love that. thanks for sharing that. So so how did you turn this business around? You said you you got into it and you're like, maybe surprised a little bit by the financial, you know, status of the business. W w what did you do to start to turn this around?

Fletcher Wimbush (13:31.169)

I locked myself in a room and I worked my ass off. You know, that was the that was I mean, that was the basics of it, right? You know.

Jeff Holman (13:33.742)

Yeah. the the truth right there, right? Anybody that wants to be successful, that's where it starts. Work as hard as you can.

Fletcher Wimbush (13:39.63)

yeah, so yeah, exactly. You know, I just did whatever I had to do. But you know, for me, and this is still part of our core values, is I leaned in, you know, I I thought, you know, I learned a lot, I think, or I thought I knew a lot, but I was only like 31, maybe. So I also had this bit of an imposter syndrome. Who's gonna listen to this young guy? You know, what the hell does he know? Right? He has no experience. And I did have some experience, but I still was very young as a leader or as a person, and I still am, I like to think, fairly young.

But you know, you know, so I really leaned into studying a lot of the other thought leaders in the space around hiring. had some exposure to them before, but I leaned into those. And then I just leaned into regurgitating what I learned. But then also practicing what I learned. So pretty early on, we we I spent a lot of time with assessments. We were definitely we're our core assessment product, which now we are so much more than that, but

Jeff Holman (14:23.002)

Mm-hmm.

Fletcher Wimbush (14:37.385)

And w and still we still have this product, it's an amazing product, is really focused on the kind of higher level type of hires. So, you know, mid-level like professionals to like very senior level, right? To like say CEO. So we spend a lot of time consulting with our clients. They they have a candidate, they take the assessment. I have got it, Jeff. You know, okay, here's your candidate. We get let's talk about your candidate and let's talk about the results and let's talk about what that means and what to do next, right? So we end up having a lot of these highly consultative conversations with our clients. So

I started bringing in a lot of the ideas that my dad had had shared and his book, Hiring Talented Team Players. I'm a big fan of top grading. that's the the Murt. sorry, Br Brad and Jeff Smart and Lou Adler, I'm a huge fan of, and actually have had the great honor of collaborating with him on some projects here just recently in the last couple of weeks and and months and been working with him. He wrote a book called Hiring with Your Head, Win-Win Hiring, Performance-based.

hiring, there's kind of different, you know, coin terms that he's used, Mark Murphy, hiring for attitude, and several others. So I really leaned into those things. And so I began sharing alongside, you know, some of the things we're doing in the assessment space of other ideas around hiring and began to to formulate those. So when actually my dad taught me this, you know, if you want to learn something, you want to master it, you you you see it, you watch somebody do it.

You you do it yourself. So I I did it. I s we started doing recruiting work. This was not part of the business. So we started doing retained search work. So actually started like sourcing candidates, interviewing candidates. I ultimately interviewed over 10,000 job candidates. I'm also Mark Malcolm Gladwell guy. that that doesn't pick up on you. No. so I I I did it. I practiced it a lot, right? And then I started teaching it.

Jeff Holman (16:05.06)

Mm-hmm.

Jeff Holman (16:09.434)

Yeah.

Jeff Holman (16:17.892)

Well

Jeff Holman (16:22.02)

Ha ha ha.

Fletcher Wimbush (16:32.981)

And that's where you get to that, hopefully, like to think and getting closer to a level of mastery, right? and that was our my MO and that's what we did. And we just started learning and then regurgitate practicing and putting it, being right in there in the trenches with people, and then just freely sharing everything we've learned and best practices and consolidating it down so that hopefully others can take advantage of these these ideas too. And

Jeff Holman (16:38.542)

Yeah.

Jeff Holman (17:01.742)

Yeah.

Fletcher Wimbush (17:02.101)

That that was the cornerstone. That's when things, you know, really, you know, have taken off for us every time we've doubled down on that idea.

Jeff Holman (17:11.746)

Okay. Yeah, I'd love to get into that. There are a couple of things that strike me though. First, you know, when you take a business, you mentioned you got into recruiting and that that wasn't part of what you were doing before. You added this in. Anytime you add in another service, you kind of start saying, Well, did I just change a business? Did I just add another business model on top? Or so I I want to talk about that for a second, but but also you mentioned, it seems that you mentioned a bunch of people who you've you know, maybe call I I don't know, you can clarify.

They sound like they're probably experts in the space and you're like, hey, I want to get to know you guys. I wanna collaborate with you guys, I wanna work with you guys, learn from you guys. did you did you did you kind of build your own sort of advisory network this way? How because what was the what was the kind of course that you took to get connected to all these people within your industry?

Fletcher Wimbush (18:03.735)

You know, I didn't build a relationship with Ru Lou Adler until recently. And so he he's eighty years old now, and he happens to live down down the street from me in Laguna Beach. And so that was kind of convenient. but the other guys are just I just studied their content, man. I just read it. I I don't know them. I'm just a fan, you know, and I but I just leaned in, I just learned it, I practiced it, I read it, I watched

Jeff Holman (18:10.083)

Yeah.

Jeff Holman (18:24.994)

Okay.

Fletcher Wimbush (18:29.421)

the stuff, but I mean mostly I read their books and I just I've read their books many times now at this point. I reread them regularly every few years. And and I always learn something new or punctuate something different. And you know, I out there, I try to you know give them all the credit in the world here. you know, my kind of ultimately what I evangelize is a amalgamation of a handful of the, you know, kind of some of I think everybody's best ideas. You know, a lot of them cross over too. They're kind of similar in many ways, too.

Jeff Holman (18:57.272)

Yeah. Do you think that's more accessible for i in your industry? Because a lot of the people who are who are out there are probably also writing and sharing thought. There the c there's kind of a lot of thought leadership in this field, right? Where you're no?

Fletcher Wimbush (19:10.197)

I I don't know about that. I think there's a lot of thought sh leadership in business leadership and like kind of you know strategic and how to be, you know, how to be a great leader. Now, talent acquisition is a piece of it, I think one arguably one of the most important pieces, but I I I think people overlook that. I think frankly, people don't give enough attention to talent acquisition in their leadership strategy. They think about like

Jeff Holman (19:18.65)

Okay.

Fletcher Wimbush (19:39.522)

Having missions and core values and great KPIs and measurable expectation, these are all super important things. I've used all these strategies to help me be successful in many endeavors. But at the end of the day, if you are not great at attracting and assessing, evaluating and making phenomenal hiring decisions, you're in trouble. So it's like the chicken and the egg problem. If you don't do that, then well, it doesn't really matter how good your core values are.

Jeff Holman (20:02.138)

W Yeah.

Interesting. Where where do you think people get it wrong? Do they cause because, you know, your dad, you mentioned he was an executive coach, right? He was helping coach people. And I think a lot of leaders oftentimes start there and they say, if I could be a better leader, then my business will do better. And I I I get the sense that that's a part of it, but if you if you do that without without addressing the people part of it too, the team part of it, that sounds like that's a that's a big miss.

Fletcher Wimbush (20:34.963)

Or a a leader is a leader of people at the end of the day, right? So if you've you know, if you've accidentally let problem generators or talented terrorist into your world and you're not doing anything about it, then it's gonna become a problem and it's gonna hold you back. And it's it's a slow process to to recover from that. It doesn't ha happen easily, you know. It it it's actually the

The results are very immediate when you eliminate a problem person from your organization. That's number one. But in terms of like rebuilding, finding somebody else and then getting them fully assimilated into your culture and your system and your process, it takes a year before you know that whether or not you got the right person at the end of the day. You know, you could you could find out really early it's wrong, like you know, week one, they like, you know, do something stupid. You know, you could be like, Well, maybe that was a big mistake. Like

Jeff Holman (21:28.014)

Yeah.

Fletcher Wimbush (21:30.445)

you know, already calling in sick and s making excuses or doing weird things, you know, you can you can let those people go, you know, pretty quickly, but but it really takes a long time to ultimately, you know, f for people to settle into organizations and to be able to make a large impact. They can make an impact right away, but to make a very significant it takes time.

Jeff Holman (21:49.988)

Yeah. Did you have a couple of experiences where you I mean ki kind of worst case, best case, where you've seen this play out with either your team or or teams that you've worked with?

Fletcher Wimbush (22:03.731)

well, I let's see. That's a that's a good one. I mean I think back so w we hired a talented terrier when I was in the dish machine business. And the guy was president's club sales guy, you know, year one. but

Jeff Holman (22:19.045)

Mm-hmm.

So talented. That's the talented part.

Fletcher Wimbush (22:21.993)

We very talented. he was extraordinarily disruptive. You know, that drove out other maybe more tenured or appreciated people, but people we did appreciate, right? out of the organization. He also, because he was not on the always the up and up on things, he created a lot of fires.

That were distractions for the leadership team and other people within the organization. I personally had to threaten to fire them like at least three times. So there was a lot of emotional baggage and damage done. And it's hard to measure some of that. Although some of it, you know, when you see other people leaving or the the distraction around all of that, you know, was it really worth it? No. And

Jeff Holman (22:59.725)

Mm, yeah.

Fletcher Wimbush (23:17.237)

The moment that person leaves the organization, everybody breathed a sigh of relief. They didn't go, shit, who's gonna, you know, where's my next sale gonna come from? They didn't say that. They said, thank Lord, he's gone. Right. So I, you know, those are those are, I think, often the the cases, right? When you end up with a problem person, in this case, he was a talented terror. He was really good at what he did. And and a lot of organizations put up with talented terrors.

Jeff Holman (23:25.573)

Yeah.

Jeff Holman (23:43.171)

Mm-hmm.

Fletcher Wimbush (23:46.721)

And these people, you know, rain, you know, rain terror across the the the org, right? So it's not worth it.

Jeff Holman (23:51.492)

Yeah. What about on the other end of the spectrum? I don't know if it's been a fast reveal or a you know, slow baked, you know, development where you've seen seen people really come through and be real team members or or show the performance. Like what what does that look like in a in a team?

Fletcher Wimbush (24:14.625)

Yeah, well I I I Weston who's been with me now

Nine years, maybe something like that. at this point. you know, we hired him as an intern to help us do a lot of technical data and at statistical analysis from the assessment space. We do a lot of statistics in this in this world. And I actually like hired somebody else, like really high caliber and like, you know, well paid. And you know, the guy lasted like three months. I was like, that ain't gonna work, you know. and then then

you know, impact to to Weston and you know, hired him as like as entry level as he could possibly be. And he is one of the most remarkable human beings I've ever had the opportunity to work with. And right away he made an impact. He did more than that really high paid guy did in three months. He he did he like ran circles around the guy in terms of production. So you know part of that I it's just Weston. He's just an amazing human being, but you know he just got the work done. He just put the nose to the grindstone and just

Jeff Holman (25:16.463)

Yeah.

Fletcher Wimbush (25:18.017)

did what it took and just figured it out, right? as opposed to complaining or overstrategizing or like, you know, maybe the work was beneath the other guy, right? Kind of thing. I don't know what the problem was exactly. You know, it's a long time ago now. But but you know right away made a human impact. And right now he's I mean he runs the company at the end of the day, you know. With he he is the brain behind this business.

Jeff Holman (25:41.433)

Yeah.

Fletcher Wimbush (25:47.458)

Yeah, I didn't

Jeff Holman (25:49.186)

How do how do CEOs, you know, other CEOs, what what advice do you have for them to to help them identify more quickly whether someone's a talented terror or a or a great performer like Weston?

Fletcher Wimbush (26:03.287)

Well, nobody nobody ever likes this advice, but it's really, really good. I've done it ten thousand times, so it's hard hard to argue with me on this, but you will people will. it's really simple, you know.

Where whoever that person is, you know, Joe, you know, where did you work before this? Or, you know, what was your last role? It was at XYZ company, great. What did you do? I've got the context behind enough context to understand what you know this person did. Hey, if we get to the next step in this process, can you get or who is who is your direct supervisor when you were at XYZ company? It was Jane, great. What was her role? Something credible I'm looking for. And if we get to the next step in the process.

Can you get Jane to hop on the phone with me for a few minutes to talk about the time you two spent working for me? And this is the moment of truth.

Jeff Holman (26:56.362)

It's either a yes or a hem and ha and avoid avoid the question.

Fletcher Wimbush (26:59.829)

Yeah. Yep. It's it's exactly that, right? And I'm pretty persistent in helping them overcome the hymns and ha. I'm just gonna I'm gonna try to give people the benefit of the doubt. I get it, you know, it's been a long time, but this is like the modern world. I'm pretty sure you probably still have their cell phone number in your cell phone number, or you can find them on LinkedIn or Twick TikTok or something. I mean, it's not rocket science to find pe other people. You can call somebody you know. I I don't really care.

Jeff Holman (27:17.444)

Yeah, yeah.

Fletcher Wimbush (27:26.221)

You know, HR has a policy against it. That wasn't my question. I mean the the excuses go on and on and on. The only one that kind of works is they died. But then I just seek for somebody else. There must be somebody else in the organization that, you know, at that time that could provide you a credible reference, you know, right? You know, so but you do that over the last ten years of somebody's work history. And you can even do this with young people. I mean, they're nineteen years old, like a teacher, a coach, shit, their parent. I don't care. Like

I've talked to a number of people's par parents and asked them and you'd be surprised, you know, the mom or the dad will give you a pretty good, like, you know, honest assessment of their kid, you know, like these I mean many of them will. Some of them might just, you know, I don't know, maybe

Jeff Holman (27:57.252)

Somebody, yeah.

Jeff Holman (28:09.978)

But they can't help it. They've got their opinions and they want to share them. Yeah.

Fletcher Wimbush (28:13.259)

Yeah, exactly. Right. So but there are always a reference that's credible no matter what level. And you know, the person who cannot get a credible reference, multiple credible references from their past history, right? That's a scary sign. Like, you know, your mother our mother's taught us all pretty well. You know, if you got nothing nice to say, don't say it at all. So it's the absence is that's all you need to know. Like, Jeff, you can't get your past boss to hop on the phone.

say nice things about you and it's your last one and it's the one before that and it's the one before that and it's one before I mean I could excuse like, okay, maybe there was a mistake. Maybe the one gal or guy was total psycho, you know, like, but you're telling me now it's like the one that for that and there are always different excuses too, by the way. Right. It's never like like that was a bad boss and I'd rather you not talk to him. It was like that was a bad boss and I'm talking that one doesn't work there anymore. The HR has a policy against it. I can't I'm not in touch with them. you just gave me every excuse under the book. Like

it done add up. A players don't act like

Jeff Holman (29:13.498)

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, you're I I'm I'm thinking back on on a hire I made earlier. gosh, fifteen years ago maybe. And no, more than that. It was maybe eighteen years ago. I hired somebody. Looked very looked great on paper, great resume. And and I called his employer, his past employer. And this is the in the legal field, right? So he's he's a he's a newer attorney. Older older attorney entered the law later in life after

after 20 years in engineering at companies like Intel and stuff like that. And and I called the law firm, you know, down the road from me who he'd been working for. And and their answer to me was, you know, hey, you know, would you hire him again? and their answer to me was, yeah, w with the right job came up, we'd hire him again. And I realized later that this attorney was being very

politically correct with me, if you will. And and I'm like thought later. I I asked one of his partners I think later, I'm like, what he really meant was we don't have any types of jobs like that for him at our law firm. So he was not a good fit, but he might be a good f

Fletcher Wimbush (30:24.471)

Yeah, yeah.

So so so you'd ask like, well, what would that kind of job be like? You know? Yeah. Yeah, yeah, right. It does take practice.

Jeff Holman (30:30.308)

Yeah, I I learned later to ask those follow-up questions. So it was interesting. Yeah. Yeah. Well that was that was probably my interview number four, not not nine thousand and four hundred and eighty-seven. So yeah. I

Fletcher Wimbush (30:45.045)

Yeah. You you don't need to do it that many times either, by the way, to get good at it. But you do it a handful of times, again with intentionality, right? Then you get good at something. If you're just blown in the wind just ask I don't know what to do, so I just kind of randomly stumble through it, well then you randomly will get results, right?

Jeff Holman (31:00.91)

Yeah. Nope. I think we've all been there. That's part of the growing pains here. So I'm glad you're sharing those things. The other thing I I w I want to get into with you if we can is some of the some of the growing moments of your company. You know, some of those points where you where you maybe had turning points or pivotal decisions you made. do you have a few of those from the from the history and the growth of the company since you've been there?

Fletcher Wimbush (31:23.519)

Yeah, well, I mean, we talked about a little you know, the number one thing, I mean, early on, right, we so I was this little assessment company, I was desperate for money. We decided to start doing recruiting, which served a bunch of purposes for me. I made more money, I could afford to keep doing the the thing I really cared about with the assessment thing and but it it became very convoluted, right? We were doing two we were really running two kinds of businesses and the moment we realized that and we separated the teams and we sort of

Jeff Holman (31:38.128)

Yeah.

Fletcher Wimbush (31:53.442)

turn them into two separate businesses, we immediately began doubling in revenue. And so the the lesson for me there was just focus, right? So because we we were doing too many things in one business. They seem related, but they weren't, right?

Jeff Holman (32:06.21)

Uh-huh. So this is kind of the the coaching side, the recruiting side. And you and you people do that because they're like, well, I need to double revenue. But the the irony that you're explaining is that when you when you finally separated them out, that's when you really doubled revenue. Right. I mean you might have had some revenue growth, but by separating them you you got the you got the exponential growth or the or the you know the multiples.

Fletcher Wimbush (32:22.027)

Exactly. So early on it sort of it did kind of work, I guess, right? It did serve a purpose, but they both were held back, right? From their true potential.

Fletcher Wimbush (33:06.249)

Jeff.

Fletcher Wimbush (33:52.855)

Mm mm.

Fletcher Wimbush (37:29.591)

Fletcher Wimbush (38:17.291)

Hey, back.

Jeff Holman (38:18.661)

I'm not like my it my entire internet just went down.

Fletcher Wimbush (38:21.805)

Yeah, well it always happens at the best times.

Jeff Holman (38:24.175)

So wow. Sorry about that. I'm gonna s I'm gonna s ask that question over again. You might have been answering, I'm not sure, but

Fletcher Wimbush (38:26.637)

No worries.

Fletcher Wimbush (38:30.647)

Sure. Okay. Yeah. Now I forgot it. I was I got I moved on to emails.

Jeff Holman (38:37.038)

so okay.

So we're talking about hiring people and we're talking about getting into some of the breakout moments that you've that you've been dealing with. I had a slight glitch in my internet, so if if the audience notices that, that's that's why this is a little bit disjointed here. But you were talking about you know, separating the businesses out. You'd added the you'd added a second business in order to, you know, add revenue, kind of survive, get to the next level. And then eventually you said to yourself, I gotta I gotta separate these out and you

Fletcher Wimbush (39:00.791)

No.

Jeff Holman (39:10.743)

And that's when you doubled revenue. Like who was on the team and how did you how did you know to do that at that point in time?

Fletcher Wimbush (39:17.163)

Well, I I was yeah. So I I I I'm I'm an EO entrepreneurs organization member and I was part of their their accelerator program. And you know, I I I'd I don't know, maybe a couple of years or at some point I'd really sought out that kind of how do I find my mastermind, my peer group, this, you know, how do I learn how to be a business owner? I didn't know how to be a business owner. I mean, I was a leader in a relatively big business prior, which I learned a lot from, but that didn't teach me how to be an entrepreneur.

Jeff Holman (39:22.813)

Mm-hmm.

Jeff Holman (39:35.579)

Yeah.

Fletcher Wimbush (39:48.856)

So, you know, I I sought that out. And that was an idea that came, you know, I think that was formed for me reflecting monthly on my business, challenges, wins, what was going on. essentially, you know, in that journaling type of a, you know, format and then sharing with my peers and then learning from smart people, hearing what they were doing and some of the ideas and and continuing just to be a student of entrepreneurship and

It dawned on me. We we actually I think we processed the idea, you know, at one point with the group and you know, I said, Here's what I'm doing, and this and that and I got some feedback from my peers and and coach and

Jeff Holman (40:28.797)

But they're like, Fletcher, you're running two businesses.

Fletcher Wimbush (40:31.135)

Yeah, and it it and they were the they're you know they're they're really good about not giving hard advice, but you know, that then became the epiphany. I like, you know, I gotta get focused and I'm running two businesses. And so then I put into motion like really separating the teams and as much as I could. It was still we're still very small, right? But I really did. We really separated it. We really we created two different business plans, you know, we made sure that people were focused on tasks and jobs.

And I think we hired a couple of people so that you know that they would join the respective teams. And we began to treat them like two separate businesses and doubled like the next three years on each on each side of the business. Right. So each business itself doubled right year over year for a couple of years there. and yeah, so that was just eye-opening focus, right? it you know matters a lot.

Jeff Holman (41:29.595)

Yeah, that that's amazing. I mean, three years of doubling growth, that's that's a that's that's great growth, right, for any business. that's like that's like investable VC investable growth there in a way. So so what has it been easygoing since then or or you know what what what did you do when you kind of hit the next plateau or the next obstacle in your growth?

Fletcher Wimbush (41:35.201)

Yeah.

Fletcher Wimbush (41:54.454)

Yeah, well, that's a that's a good that's always a good one. so we did two other two things. One, we started the journey of building we were so we were this we have this fractional recruiting, retained search business, and then we have this talent assessment business. And so you know, and then we'd spent a lot of time doing education, teaching people about best practices, and you kind of see my thing back there.

Jeff Holman (42:10.738)

Mm-hmm.

Fletcher Wimbush (42:23.157)

That is always our the cornerstone of how we serve customers. We just always give first, give first, give first. Everything's free. You can Google me. My content is endless out there. You know, all the ideas you can jump on my schedule. I will give you my time freely. You can talk to me as long as you want. but so that's that that was like the underpinning. That's the foundational core value here, right? Right. We're gonna just share these great ideas, which then feeds both sides of there. But you

Jeff Holman (42:47.485)

Mm-hmm.

Fletcher Wimbush (42:51.949)

You know, it came to a point where like the the assessment business was really limited because of its narrow applications. Like what our tools are phenomenal and pretty like mid to high level, typically more white-collar type of environments or like management, leadership types of roles. Some it they have some, you know, a great audience or great, you know, application for a certain kind of hire, which

didn't lend itself to great recurring revenue, didn't lend itself to higher tickets, so bigger customers, bigger sales. And I I really had a dream to be able to build a SaaS platform that could end to end automate all these great ideas that we'd been evangelizing for all these years. And so we set out on that journey. We were making some money and we were like, all right, you know, like.

Jeff Holman (43:44.122)

Yeah.

Fletcher Wimbush (43:51.264)

I'm still young and dumb and I had enough money to do whatever I needed to do. And so I you know, I said, you know, we're doing this. And that was the best and worst idea ever. I mean, if you if you wanna like spend a lot of money, go do create a SaaS business. But

Jeff Holman (44:05.415)

Well what what year was this? 'Cause 'cause the depending on the year, like you could have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars versus trying to vibe code it today. Like the th there are so many, so many options now.

Fletcher Wimbush (44:11.723)

Yeah. Yeah.

So so many options, right? So this was like starting back in 2019, we kind of started the journey. You know, we didn't really get a viable product until probably just like three years ago, like 2023, right? 2022, 2023, and 2024 was an inflection point for us. I mean, we've since then been growing 30 to 40 percent year over year because we finally got a product that really has strong product market fit again.

Jeff Holman (44:21.992)

yeah.

Fletcher Wimbush (44:41.047)

So we, you know, we kind of dabbled and we grew a little bit. Now in that journey, we acquired a company. And so that was an important component piece that you know allowed us to service the full life cycle of client of employees. Now we have great solutions from hiring your very entry level, you know, from a janitor to a CEO, we can solve those problems. And when we we acquired a company called Integrity First, and that was crucial, and it was very aligned with our core value with

Jeff Holman (45:03.387)

Yeah.

Fletcher Wimbush (45:10.317)

who like what we think are one of the most integrity and attitude being the most important attribute that you can find to hire. There there are others, but this is like without that, the motive as Warren Buffett would say, the motivation and in and the intelligence will kill you, right? Really smart, motivated people will will figure out a way to get you, right? You know? so

Jeff Holman (45:29.638)

What'd the business look like right before that acquisition and then right after it? Just curious.

Fletcher Wimbush (45:33.174)

It had stalled. You know, we we had really had stalled out at that point. And so well up until like right at those things almost happened kind of at the same time. We were like, okay, we're gonna go down this this journey of creating this end-to-end recruitment automation platform that follows all the best practices that we learned and have been evangelizing and still evangelize to all these, you know, all these days. And but it it had really stalled and but that you know.

Jeff Holman (45:40.57)

How how big was your team?

Fletcher Wimbush (46:02.135)

kind of reinvigorated us, it opened up a whole nother market. It tapped into a mark a much larger client base for us. So the the applicability to that. And it also created a network of partners that that we never had before and it gave us another thing to talk about that opened a door that we could never have opened without it. Right.

Jeff Holman (46:23.214)

Okay. So you really added added a new service offering, maybe expanded, you know, target markets or geographic markets and and the team I I imagine grew, the revenue grew, and and you just did you I mean it sounds like what you feel like what what you ended up with was more of the the complete package as opposed to what you'd had before was two two different packages and you're like we gotta we gotta run these di differently.

This acquisition wasn't wasn't adding on a second disparate package. It was adding, it was complementing. Got

Fletcher Wimbush (46:55.605)

No, because it fit into our suite of assessments and into the whole idea of like, you know, of of all the different things we're gonna do throughout the recruiting process. So but it just it filled a gigantic hole for us and it created a conversational piece that really unlocked a lot, which led to us doing a webinar with captive resources and on Saint Patrick's Day this year that drove thirty three hundred live attendees.

Jeff Holman (47:07.74)

Yeah.

Jeff Holman (47:21.904)

Hmm. That's a lot. What what was the what was the topic what was the topic on?

Fletcher Wimbush (47:24.161)

That's a lot. That's the biggest stage I've ever been on. don't hire your next work comp claim. So there's your next work comp, a workers' compensation claim. So there's an there's an interesting story behind all well. So high turnover. well, people who've been on the job for less than one year have a

Jeff Holman (47:33.616)

Sorry, don't hire what?

Jeff Holman (47:38.934)

okay, got it. Yeah.

Fletcher Wimbush (47:54.37)

Disproportionate probability of turning into a work comp claim. you know, you're a lawyer, maybe you know some of this stuff too, but when you turn over an employee, your your the probability of having some employment-related claim just s shoots through the roof, it's kind of an obvious no-brainer thing, right? You terminate the person for whatever reason. They hate you, you hate them, I don't know, whatever, you know, or it's tot really benign, but when you turn somebody over,

Jeff Holman (47:58.863)

Okay.

Fletcher Wimbush (48:22.145)

There that is an inflection point in a in a relation in a relationship, employer and the employee relationship. And if for some reason that doesn't go really well, then they may retaliate against you.

Jeff Holman (48:34.49)

You know, I I have seen that with some of our small clients where in certain industries it seems more prevalent. when when an employee quits or they're terminator for some other reason, there there are a few clients where there's just this surprising ratio of people who file unemployment claims versus those who don't. And you're like

Fletcher Wimbush (48:55.425)

Or wait wage an hour, harassment, or work comp claims. Right.

Jeff Holman (48:59.492)

Yeah, yeah. And in i in the business I'm thinking of right now, it's really unemployment claims. And I'm like I'm like, these people all like voluntarily terminated employment and then even up to a year later they'll go back and they'll file unemployment claims and you're just like th they're you're not gonna win this. You don't know what you're doing. Like this is is probably fraudulent, you know. but

Fletcher Wimbush (49:20.402)

It well it is. I mean, you know, technically they're not entitled if they voluntarily to resign, but yeah.

Jeff Holman (49:24.644)

Yeah. But not but not every industry's like that, you know, th that I've seen. But i there's so there's some industries where where the claim the claim rates are just surprisingly high. So s

Fletcher Wimbush (49:35.81)

Yeah. So there's a strong correlation between turnover. So now if you're in a sector where you have very high turnover, well, guess what? That means you have a lot of people who are less than so if the person's less than one year on the job, they have a much higher probability. It's like thirty to forty percent of all work comp claims come from people with less than one one year on the job. So that is the largest cohort of costs in a work comp program.

Jeff Holman (49:49.499)

Yeah.

Fletcher Wimbush (49:59.522)

comes from people who are less than one year on the job. Well, if you have really high turnover, 100%. So that means you have 100 employees, you hire 100 employees every year to keep your workforce filled, that means you have a ton of people who are one year less than one year on the job. Your probability of having a high frequency of claims or and the severity of those claims and the cost of those claims is just through the roof, right? So if you solve who who you hire, if you don't hire people who have lack integrity, then you

Jeff Holman (49:59.654)

Yeah.

Fletcher Wimbush (50:28.683)

The number turnover goes down, and subsequently the frequency and the severity of claims go down. It's really simple. And this has been studied. This is when we acquired the company, it was amazing. I was a customer of this company when I was in the dishwashing business. Serendipitously landed in my lap. cut my customers started saying, Hey, you know, do you have a replacement for this product? They're kind of going away or they're doing something. And so I just called them up. I was like, What's going on, guys? And they're like, We're done.

Jeff Holman (50:35.194)

Yeah, it just statistically, yeah.

Fletcher Wimbush (50:56.569)

We're retired, the owner was old, or whatever. And I was like, Well, this product's amazing, you know. I like this product. You know, by the way, yeah, this is the same product I used to use back, you know, 10 years ago, whatever. Like, my god, this is amazing. Like, well, how much you want? And whatever. We made a deal, right? You know, it's like, well, I'll I'll keep it alive for you. You know, I I'm I'm gladly this fits into my quiver really, really nicely. And so it was a really fun

Jeff Holman (50:57.564)

Mm.

Jeff Holman (51:09.126)

Yeah.

Fletcher Wimbush (51:23.645)

Acquisition for us. It was very again, it c created this whole nother kind of dialogue. It it it really completed the end-to-end vision that we'd hoped to be able to accomplish and and be able to solve problems for people at every level of their hiring. We already had the high-end stuff, now we had the the stuff for the more frontline workers, and we had this great narrative and we inherited three scientific journal articles and and that that that

backs up what this does. Plus we've been able to do some of our own research and all sorts of case studies and opened up the door to a whole bunch of relationships that we never would have even explored, which led to these really large audiences and great, you know, conversations with new customers that never would have occurred, right?

Jeff Holman (52:11.163)

Well and then you've also taken and you've you've created the platform you you've made a platform out of this too. I imagine having that that whole suite makes the platform I mean, there's more content or whatever to put on the platform, but it makes it more attractive to people who are saying, you know, I I don't wanna I don't want a one off, you know, one function platform. I want the the platform that that covers the life cycle. Did you s is it was that did that come into play for you?

Fletcher Wimbush (52:23.628)

It does.

Fletcher Wimbush (52:33.729)

That was a big part of it, right? That that was why we built the platform. And again, it filled the hole in the plat and and what we what we're trying to do there. And subsequently, yeah, we we can really take people from the beginning of the journey of, you know, I need to find somebody through to all the way to hired. And we do that leveraging like six to seven of the most predictive things that you can do.

Jeff Holman (52:40.325)

Yeah.

Fletcher Wimbush (52:59.701)

in the hiring process, we provide you the tools to effectively automate all of those things as much as needed or required or appropriate for that for the situation. And so that that just turns into a remarkable, it's a remarkable, remarkably better experience for good employees, good candidates, a remarkably better experience for the HR recruiters, the hiring managers, the executives, and and produces real meaningful results in terms of

Jeff Holman (53:23.451)

Yeah.

Fletcher Wimbush (53:27.991)

high quality hires that drive revenue and are not toxic.

Jeff Holman (53:34.242)

Yeah yeah.

Fletcher Wimbush (53:38.818)

Well, we we work predominantly with executives and CEOs and the C suite to introduce these ideas and then inevitably we work with their HR or their recruiting team. So whoever, you know, is is doing that, but we touch all you know from the suite C suite to the HR slash recruiting function within an organization, even to the hiring manager. So just yesterday, right, we're we're try we're consulting with their mid level, you know, or hiring managers in

Teaching them best practices around hiring. So they get this full kind of wraparound education and suite of tools. So we end up touching all the key players within an organization.

Jeff Holman (54:19.504)

Okay. Is there a typical like customer profile that that that you see, like certain industries or revenue sizes or or employee counts that that come to use this, or is it is it you know, agnostic everybody can use it at any any level? How's that work?

Fletcher Wimbush (54:34.551)

Yeah. It's it's at any level. we do a lot with really, really small businesses. We got like a lot of house cleaners and dog sitters. They run these a lot of people, really small businesses, franchise groups we do. So a lot of these are very, very small businesses. those, you know, really great because we have turnkey solutions for them. It's just turn it on and here's your playbooks, right? But but all the way up to a thousand employees typically, although we have some larger clients with tens of thousands of employees. And so but we love that, you know, say.

fifty to five hundred employees, closely held, you know, companies where where the executive team cares about the quality of the people and they care about the health of their company and they are people minded in their how they're how they're running their organizations.

Jeff Holman (55:20.144)

Yeah. Well I've got a few more questions to round this out if if if you get time for it. I'm curious to know where the business is headed in the next maybe three to five years. But before we get there, my my other two questions are do you see the what kind of difference does it make for your team to be involved in the people business with with their customers? Like

Fletcher Wimbush (55:24.045)

Sure.

Jeff Holman (55:46.958)

I would assume that your team I would assume you see it differently and that probably also your team members see it differently. do you feel like your team operates at a different level than most companies because of the business that they're in?

Fletcher Wimbush (56:02.985)

I I mean it's part of our culture, right? I think, you know, they they don't fit here if they don't sort of align with these ideas very well, right? So, but I I think they take a lot of pride in in what they're doing and they we get an endless amount of compliments on the quality of service. You know, we kill people with service and good ideas. We always give first, and you know, you know, people write their write a check.

Jeff Holman (56:06.596)

Right, right.

Fletcher Wimbush (56:32.567)

You know, for that, right? We you know, yes, we ask people for money, but at the end of the day, how often the customer's like, How do I pay you? We hear that more often than not. We haven't never asked them for money. They're like, How do I write a check to you?

Jeff Holman (56:42.256)

Yeah. Yeah.

Jeff Holman (56:47.396)

I h I I like this, I want more of this.

Fletcher Wimbush (56:49.505)

Yeah. And we're like, okay, finally here's the price. You know. No. And our our all our pricing's all transparent. So like y you don't have to ask us, you know, you it's all right on the web, right? You know, you we don't we don't hide it. So that's also part of our philosophy. Like we're we are so transparent. We we don't like they don't they don't bother to look, but you know, they could if they wanted to. but you know, it's fun when they're like, Hey, how do I pay you? Right.

Jeff Holman (56:53.436)

Well how is the platform how

Jeff Holman (57:10.137)

It's

Jeff Holman (57:13.7)

Yeah. What what is having the platform done for your business? Well like what's the did you y d is this part of the thirty, forty percent annual growth that you were talking about or okay.

Fletcher Wimbush (57:22.209)

Yeah, yeah. Th these last couple of years as this product this reimagined what we call the D discovered, you know, platform as as has launched, you know, really significant growth for us for the last couple of years as as it hit product market fit, probably, you know, two and a half, three years ago, you know, the and now the last two years we've really hit our stride and we've been pulling out all the major competitors from rip Rippling, UKG, Pelocity, Bamboo Bamboo HR. We

We smoke all of them in this area. you know, all these products, the HR space has lots of end-to-end products. And, you know, I I'll be biasedly, you know, say like we you want to we want to be careful about buying the bundles. Those products are great typically at payroll in HR, but they are not talent acquisition machines. And yeah, we've done a great job.

Of helping people decouple and and still have an end-to-end solution too at the same time. So fully integrated, like there, there's they don't skip a B, right? but there's a myth around these kind of end-to-end solutions, like, well, it's all in one package. Well, talent acquisition is such a different animal than HR compliance and payroll that those companies don't understand it like we do. And

Jeff Holman (58:42.533)

Yeah.

Fletcher Wimbush (58:47.453)

It's been really exciting to see customers' eyes open when they try it and they go, I get it now.

Jeff Holman (58:56.058)

What would be the what would be the first notable result that a lot of your clients would see? If I were to pick this up in my law firm or one of my clients, you know, w forty employees and they're selling what you know, whatever product or service they sell, what what would what would they notice when they when they first start using your product?

Fletcher Wimbush (59:14.049)

I was talking to a CPA firm owner this morning and she's like she was just using Indeed alone by herself and she was paying Indeed. She went to us. There's zero advertising dollars spent. She has more applicants, more quality applicants, and the candidates she went from like totally overwhelmed to high quality candidates on her schedule in under three days.

So the speed at which you could they could go from I I don't know where to begin, I don't know who to choose, and I'm overwhelmed by the options who none of them look very good to I'm excited to talk to these like two or three candidates. Cause they've been vetted and there's yeah, huge difference.

Jeff Holman (59:58.15)

Hmm. Huge difference there. you you don't have to filter through two hundred two hundred indeed applicants for a for a whatever job you've posted.

Fletcher Wimbush (01:00:04.683)

Yeah, but only one percent of them are probably people you might be interested in, you know, something like

Jeff Holman (01:00:10.852)

Yeah, yeah. That that would be a big difference. Well well with this with this all working for you, you know, your team going working away, the platform d you know, helping grow the company, what's the outlook for you guys? Wh where do you see this going in the next three to five years?

Fletcher Wimbush (01:00:26.657)

Yeah, well, I we want to just keep, you know, cranking those numbers up. I mean, we want to keep the thirty percent a minimum, you know, year over year growth. We'd like to, you know, hit hit maybe another, you know, inflection point there, right? you know, we'll continue to to move up the food chain and continue to work with larger and larger, larger companies. you know, we don't have a lot of aspirations to work with mega companies, but we like to continue to move up and, you know, work with solid, privately held

you know larger organizations who appreciate people as an important part of their business. And so we expect that to continue. We're not we're fully bootstrapped, always have been. We have no outside money. you know I I don't want to do anything else for the rest of my career other than help people solve this problem. So

expect us to just continue to chug away. You know, I I think Canva is maybe a good example if anybody knows like their story. I'm a little bit you know influenced by by them. I mean they they they've been privately held, bootstrapped, never raised money, you know, type of an organization. And they did what they did really, really well, creating kind of great creative marketing type tools for the world. And and it was out of love, you know, this is this is what I'm gonna do.

So I'm gonna c we're gonna continue to improve, we're gonna continue to grow, and we're gonna continue to touch and affect and share really amazing ideas and enjoy the journey. I don't you know.

Jeff Holman (01:01:45.306)

Yeah.

Jeff Holman (01:01:58.212)

I love it. I love it. You've built you've built a you've you've built a situation where that sounds like that's all possible. And and not everybody gets to enjoy building and living out their this their ideal situation. So congratulations on on being able to do that.

Fletcher Wimbush (01:02:12.781)

Thank you.

Jeff Holman (01:02:13.034)

just as one last thing, a lot of CEOs who listen to this, they're they're on the same journey. You know, they've they've experienced some of the things you've experienced, they've experienced some things you you have yet to experience, maybe, and and they and they have yet to experience some of the stuff you've you've experienced already. What what would you say to people who are on that journey? how would you connect with them or leave them with an insight that that might be useful?

Fletcher Wimbush (01:02:39.063)

To me, focus has always been the thing. I talked about that early in the journey. I I still have to refocus oftentimes, right? So in that's sometimes I struggle, sometimes I stray, right? You know, probably more often than I should. but you know, every time I get really, really laser focused and I clear the noise and I stop chasing squirrels and things like that, good things really happen for me and organization. And that clarity starts with my own personal mission and you know, vision and what I want.

You know, really to me, that's to raise my two wonderful kids to be well adjusted, amazing, happy, kids and to be a really, really active part of their lives. That's kind of the cornerstone. There's more to it, but like that is the driving force for me. And so, everything aligns with that. And then business is is is a vehicle for that. And the fact that I love what I do and I'm so passionate about that, that's super important. I mean, I guess if I ever stopped, I would do something, I'd quit, I don't know, I'd sell it, whatever. But as long as that's

you know, important but then and that's but that's part of focus, right? Like I love this topic. I love this subject matter so much. I'm constantly thinking about it and that's just fun for me. Like

Jeff Holman (01:03:48.879)

Yeah. Well, when you work when you work at something you like and you get to work with the people that you like working with, it's it's that much better. Well, Fletcher, thank you so much for for coming on the show, spending time with us, sharing your insights with us, and letting us enjoy a little bit of the behind the scenes of your journey.

Fletcher Wimbush (01:04:05.911)

Thanks for having me, Jeff.

Jeff Holman (01:04:07.695)

Yeah, it's been great. And for for all of you in our audience who've joined us today, thanks for thanks for coming and being a part of the Breakout CEO podcast.

Jeff Holman (01:04:18.256)

Very cool. Thank you so much.

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