The Real Reason Scaling CEOs Keep Panic Hiring

TRANSCRIPT SUMMARY:

00:00 Avoid Hiring Too Late
01:18 Three Companies, One Talent Mission
04:13 The First Executive Decision
08:18 Recruiting as Strategic Partnership
11:22 Set a Date and Leave
20:00 The Virtual Workforce Advantage
24:31 Common CEO Hiring Mistakes
28:13 Why Support Teams Fall Behind
34:05 Where Process Meets Creativity
37:24 Beyond Generic Job Descriptions
41:06 The New Employee Marketplace
42:45 Getting Time and Peace Back

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FULL TRANSCRIPT:

Darren Tompkins (00:00)

People will hire very quickly just because they want to put somebody in a seat.

Jeff Holman (00:03)

So they wait too long and then they hire too fast in the end anyway.

Darren Tompkins (00:05)

You're left holding the bag because now people are going to doubt you as a leader. It creates a peace of mind, which is what we all want in business and in our personal lives.

Jeff Holman (00:15)

Welcome back, everybody, to the Breakout CEO podcast. I'm your host, Jeff Holman with Intellectual Strategies. I'm so glad to be here with you. I've I've had a little bit of time off, so I've I've I feel like I've been away from this. You guys won't know that because you're listening to these, on the regular, but I've been away for a little bit. And so it's so so good to jump back in today. I'm I'm here with Darren from Vader-Rey. Darren, it's so good to have you here with me.

Darren Tompkins (00:38)

Thanks, Jeff. Hopefully you'll be on the mid soon and look forward to this. yeah.

Jeff Holman (00:42)

Yeah,

yeah. I I mentioned it, Darren. And I should have said your full name, Darren Tompkins, right? So glad to be back and and talking with talking with you, Darren, and with the audience about about you know, CEOs going through these scaling growth breakout moments i i in their businesses. You you run three different businesses that are all kind of geared towards the same human capital issues, the same types of of solutions for

for CEOs that are growing a building. Give us give us a you know, an overview of the of the land here.

Darren Tompkins (01:18)

Yeah, so Vader-Rey Companies is three companies kind of rolled into one. it's Vader-Rey Recruiting, which is you know trades up through C-suite type stuff. We're located in Houston, Texas. So there's a lot of oil and gas engineering and data center development going on here. We have Vader-Rey Engineering. We're set up as like a PE firm where we do 1099 project staffing, everything again from project executives down to guys that are pouring concrete, turning wrenches, whatever you need. And we have Vader-Rey Virtual Professionals really

Something we've been pushing for a long time here, which is remote staffing opportunities. So I have an office that's in the Philippines. Most of my workforce, my internal workforce is there. We have a partner that works there. And we're really helping CEOs and owners just get their time back, whatever it is that they hate to do. for some people like me, it's social media, it's video editing, it's accounting, it's all the back office stuff. That man, if I could get somebody else to do this for less than the cost of what it costs for a

babysitter per hour. will this help me make my business and my life, my personal life better? I'm very big believer in that. And so all these three things kind of swirl together to make Vader A companies work.

Jeff Holman (02:30)

my audience probably knows a little bit by now that I don't push it a lot, but I do fractional legal work where we step in and we're, filling those gaps, kinda kinda like what you're doing, although maybe not quite the same, fractional is a little bit different from from some of these other recruiting full time positions. But i i and and in my business, especially in the podcast, I I've got a team of several VAs l also located out of the Philippines that are working with me. What a what a great resource and I'm so glad to have them on my team. It's

It makes a huge difference to be able to to tap into talent. I wanted to y as we as we talked before the show about this a little bit, I was reminded of so I was, you know, out out of town last week with some other CEOs and people, some friends. We were enjoying nice houseboat lake. And one of those one of those people on the boat was actually a former guest on the show, Greg Skow. He's maybe episode eight or ten or something a while ago. But Greg says something that I think

relates really directly to what you and I are talking about today. And that was as his company grew and he Greg was in the in the space of acquiring a company and then they got another company. They like windows and doors and steel structural steel and glass. So they're they're acquiring these companies. But he didn't talk as we were talking actually just a few days ago, he he wasn't talking so much about the companies themselves, but about how it was acquiring the right talent and and having the opportunity to to kind of

bring in the next level of talent as his business grew that was really one of the big unlocks for for their businesses, being being able to get the right people at the right levels for the business. You see that every day, don't you?

Darren Tompkins (04:13)

Yeah. And I think I would say that's the first major executive decision anybody makes that is a CEO or grows their own company is I've reached my peak limit of my knowledge of whatever the hell that is. I need to go hire a guy, And that's the really the first time where you let it go, go hire somebody to to help you out. whether that's MA like your friend does, or it could be recruiting, or, you know, I just need to know about AI, whatever it is. You know, that's that's a very important first step to scale.

Jeff Holman (04:43)

Yeah, w what do you where do you see people recognize this? Because I know a lot of people, you know, we work with a lot of small startups and scaling companies and and it's hard. Well, if you go back and listen to past podcast episodes, almost every one of them at some point will say, you know, I it took me a long time to get my first person or to feel comfortable hiring or handing stuff off, delegating. Like that's a that's a common thing. Where do you see people, you know, making that that decision? What what is it that pushes them past

their inhibitions to hiring better people, if I can say it that way.

Darren Tompkins (05:18)

When it affects your personal time. Okay. If you're working sixty hours a week and you're killing yourself and it's affecting how your friends and family interact with you, hire somebody. Go for it, man. that is how I built this company. I'm fifty-two, but I have little kids. I have a five and eight-year-old, you know, they're in early elementary school. Yeah. School's right down here, it's a mile away. I get up every day. I drive to school every single day.

I cook for them every single night. We have soccer practice happening here in a little bit. I want to be involved in their lives. so when it came time to like once I hit that 40 hour threshold and I knew I had like 20 hours more a week that I had to get something done to make the company work, how do I offload some of this in, you know, the most cost effective way possible, but with the most maximum impact, right? So it started looking at these things that I don't like to do. Okay, we need a marketing team. Okay, what's the cost of that? Well, if we use virtual professionals,

How many hours can I get back? I'm very fortunate that my wife is an excellent CFO. She has a full time job at BP, but she's a spreadsheet queen. She's awesome at it. So I was able to form the company with her as a as a you know 50-50 kind of ownership, where she could do all the stuff because I suck at math, you know. I don't like that th the numbers thing. But my, you know, my internal drive has always been there's always a guy for that, you know, whatever it is. So

I would say whenever it affects your personal life, depending some people, live to work. They love it. They they want to do eighty hours a week. Go for it. That's not me. and that's most that's most people that obviously come to me for help are people that want to get their time back. And that's what that's what scaling really is, is getting your time back.

Jeff Holman (07:05)

Is there a mental block to it too though? Some something deeper for some people? 'Cause I I it would be super easy if s if if everybody just said, Well, I got a number, it's forty, forty-five, sixty, I'm just gonna flip the switch. But but I don't think everybody operates that way. There's sometimes there's those deeper things that keep you from doing it. You know, it it's I don't know that it's a lack of trust. I think it we might perceive it as I don't trust people, but it's really it's really like, hey, like this is my baby. I'm how do I

How do I give my baby to somebody else to, for for ten hours a week or whatever it is? Do you run into some some non time issues that keep people from handing stuff off?

Darren Tompkins (07:45)

as Americans, where I'm going to talk about Americans, we we have the a the you the the sayings that our grandfathers told us. one of the big ones is if you want something done right, do it yourself. And I think a lot of founders, especially when they're holding on to something tangible, that's that's just you can't ever really get it out of their head if that's we can help you with that. And it is a trust thing. So in recruiting, it used to be just a churn and burn. We'll get a client in.

We'll move on to the next one, right? And a lot of the big big shops, that's how they work, because it's all a numbers game by then. Recruiting is more nowadays of a strategic business partnership, to understand what's actually going on. Because if it's if you come to me, Jeff, and say, Hey, I need a new director of finance, okay, we can totally do that. But what's the long term plan for that person? You know, are is it just one person? Are they going to build out? That needs to be a big cultural fit, which it which comes into your this is mine, how do I

y imbu my vision on other people, especially if you haven't hired that first person yet. Long term strategies are are the way the world works now. anything short term means you're gonna have a short term business. And when it comes to these partnerships, it's key, man. It's it's it's networking and and who you can who can make the referrals, you know. I started this company not by cold calling but by referrals. I I was working at W two with in a on a multinational scale.

I had friends that were needing recruiting help. That is a long established relationship where it's like, hey, if I go do my own thing, you're gonna come with me, right? And the answer was always yes. So that's how Vader A companies developed. It was I had we we haven't taken any loan money. There's no VC here. It's just been bootstrapping from my own relationships that built this. And that's the way we work now. We don't do any cold sales, it's all who do we know and who we can network.

Jeff Holman (09:38)

let's let's dig it out a little bit more to I'd love to hear the background of this 'cause there's there's a story there but getting from getting from your W two to running these three different complimentary companies. I'd love to love to share that with the audience. What what were you doing before? What was your W two when you were

Darren Tompkins (09:57)

So I had a I had a couple of different careers. I had career in the military, which I got out of after thirteen years. I was an oil and gas and engineering support in IT. I have a degree in GIS and satellite navigation. when COVID happened, obviously there was a stoppage on a lot of a lot of different things. And I was looking to make a change where I could transition into like a true executive. I had known someone through the nut through philanthropy here who had their own recruiting boutique firm.

where basically she had laid everybody off and was like, Hey, can you do you think you can come in and help me build this out again? Yeah, I could totally do that. I have the I have the connections here. even though I'd never been in recruiting with so I got a kind of a down and dirty education on what to do and what not to do. I got poached by an international firm because the other boutique firm had kind of capped out what what we could do. And then while I was in there, people just started calling like hey I heard you moved here. I don't want to pay their prices.

What can you do for me on the side? So it was I I have a one of my favorite things is side hustles become become main hustles if you do it right. And if you're lucky too, right? so I approached my wife in 2023 and said, Look, this is what we can be doing this year if we do it ourselves. pick, give me a month where I can, you know, pull the the ejection for the at the W two. She says, How about this month, which is actually almost to the day.

three years ago that we started this company. really? And, you know, there's a lot of things if you go you leave a W Two, one of the things I tell everybody, set that date and don't deviate because you will find any reason to stay in your W Two if that's your desk your destiny. Well, you know, they're promising more PTO next year, or let me stay till March when bonus happens. You know, it's never a good time to leave your W Two. But you got to figure out what what will work for you personally. and then once you're out of it,

What's gonna keep you from going back and keep you motivated to build out your thing? For me, being a visual guy, I had what I called the pile next to my bed, which is I had a pile of all the old Josebank shirts, the crappy khakis, the cheap belts and the shoes that I had to wear at Cubicle Land to remind myself if this doesn't work, that's what you're going back to.

Jeff Holman (12:11)

Pile. I like I I thought the pile, this sounds like a this sounds like a military term. P P means something, I mean something.

Darren Tompkins (12:19)

A pile of clothing that I never want to have to wear again. I'm that's that's what it was. It eventually all that shit got donated to the Salvation Army and it's all it's out of my life forever. But that was it's just something going back to the relationship thing, making that work, making the referrals work for you and being comfortable in your your new life, which is where I'm at now. Yeah.

Jeff Holman (12:39)

Okay, so I think you said three things. It was set a date and don't deviate. Yes. the pile was there one more that I missed there? Three

Darren Tompkins (12:47)

No, no, no, that's good. Yeah, those two are really big big for me. And I do consult with people that are trying to leave their W two, trying to figure it out. it's just if you're a family, that's one you know, thing you need to think about. You know, if you're a single guy, there's other things that you need to think about. I I t I talk to people all the time that own recruiting agencies that are going back to W twos because their their personal connections have dried up or people leave the companies that they're servicing, you know, that's always a risk.

They want to go back. I'm like, good luck, man. That that sucks.

Jeff Holman (13:17)

Well, i is that common also for for some of the people that you're recruiting? Because I I I see that I've been doing fractional stuff and fractional courses, I don't know that's the equivalent or a variation, but we're we're filling in with some expertise on teams where they don't necessarily have the budget for a full time hire. So we're stepping in and we in our case we bring a legal a small legal team with us and do a lot of stuff. But you have COOs and CTOs and even CEOs doing this.

Or you can hire the full time and use somebody like Vaderata to do that. But one of the things that I see as I look around the fractional industry is that you I don't know. I don't know what percentages. I used to say it was 75 or 80 percent. I think it's I think it might be decreasing now, but there was a lot of fractionals who were really not fractionals. They were they were interims. They they were like, until I get my next full time gig, I'm gonna step in and I'm gonna be a fractional. But

But we would actually get clients coming to us saying, Hey, I've hired two fractionals, but they both left after six months because they went and got full time jobs. And so it's just y they weren't really hiring someone committed to filling that role for the term they needed. Do you see people that you're trying to recruit also maybe you don't have that same problem because they don't have that fractional mentality. They're they're looking for a job and they're they're not jumping back and forth or or switching in between, these interim and permanent roles.

Is there anything like that though that you run into with what who you're recruiting?

Darren Tompkins (14:48)

There is and it's a money thing, right? So we do run across contract jobs. I was a contractor for a long time. And here in Houston, the economy is riding what does a barrel of crude oil cost today? You know, if it's $100 a barrel, everybody's hiring and they're investing in new technologies. When it's sixty dollars a barrel, they're laying everybody off. I personally had a two and a half years at Energy Transfer, one of the largest oil and gas companies now, where I was a contractor, ten ninety nine guy.

there was no determined s end date for what I was there. I had a project, but I'd finished it. That was within eight months, but they kept me going for the the remainder of the time. That's almost been like fractional because I was it was in a project management office. But that whole time they're like, yeah, man, we're bringing you on board. Don't worry, don't worry. But it was almost like the pay is excellent when you're a contractor, but of course you're 1099, so you don't have any you don't have any insurance or benefits, yeah. But but it worked for me at the time.

But when they let me go, it was a complete surprise because they were supposed to transition me to full time. This was at the beginning of 2014 where everything took a nasty hit in all all areas. And it took me almost a year to get hired back on. The virtual professionals is almost like that because we don't put a there's not really a minimum or or a cap on the on how much you use somebody. It could be five hours a week, ten hours a week, depending on what the job is, up to forty hours, you know.

And with Vader A, we employ this entire team full time anyway. So if you come at me, Jeff, for a recruiting job, yeah, I'll give you six weeks of free V VP time if you need help getting your calendar together or organizing whatever. I mean, that's just like part of our whole package and how we roll everything up.

Jeff Holman (16:33)

Well let's let's get back into your your your own story of building Vader A, recruiting and and the other businesses. but then I do want to get into some of these things like the th like how do you some something like how do you what types of issues do you see that scaling CEOs run into when they're trying to recruit? Is it is it they're trying to find the right types of pre people to hire, the right engagements? Well but we can get into that in a minute. Let's get back to your so you started this.

Twenty twenty three you said, almost to the day that you you launched this. what wa what was easy about it and what did you find that didn't work quite like you expected?

Darren Tompkins (17:11)

What was easy again was the actual having the starting capital and the work projection that we could get into business for ourselves. 'cause we had people that were before we even started the company asking us for help, right? The rel yeah.

Jeff Holman (17:22)

Relationships.

Darren Tompkins (17:23)

The relationships. Yeah, that was easy. What was hard for me was trying to figure out what I'm supposed to do in the day to day. that first six weeks or so, it's kinda like looking around, like, okay, it's four o'clock. Am I supposed to still be working or should I be doing something else, folding laundry or whatever, you know?

And so you you carve out your time as you see fit based on the needs, and again, I think it's probably different for everybody depending on what you're trying to do, whether you're building software or starting a construction company or or any of that stuff. Yeah, I found that when I was in the W two, like three thirty in the afternoon, man, I like look at the clock, my God, I've got forever left in this day.

Now when 330 hits, it's like, okay, kids are going to get out of here in 30 minutes. Can I get to the gym? Can I do these other things to get my own time back? versus being on somebody else's clock. I had great managers, owners all throughout my career, people I really looked up to, but I never really liked working for them, you know? that was just a click, something in my head I just couldn't switch off. Did you ever have to deal with that? I did.

Jeff Holman (18:35)

Yeah. I'm not a great employee. I've I've I've Yeah,

Darren Tompkins (18:38)

Terrible boy, yeah.

Jeff Holman (18:39)

yeah. So well at what point did you say to yourself, I think we oughta I think we oughta expand what we're doing, what we're offering to our clients. How like when did you know that you were at a point where you wanted to bring in some of these other offerings?

Darren Tompkins (18:54)

Yeah, so we're it's recruiting is pretty simple in the mission, right? We need to find people and get them hired. that my determination came when I'm doing the functions of a recruiter, which is sourcing people, doing the interviews, getting that. Again, when I hit that 40 hour mark, it's like I've still got these other companies I'm supposed to be helping out. You know, I'm out of time. So that's when it was like I've got to hire a recruiter. fortunately I was able to get ahead of the game and get somebody on board quickly. again, she was in the Philippines.

She has her master's in HR, Jeff. I'm like, I don't have that. I don't even have an HR degree. and it's like, okay, now I got a subject matter expert who knows more about this business than I do. and the the team over there has just been brilliant and helping me figure it out. Cause they'll come at you with your their own questions and recommendations. when you hire subject matter experts, let them be the experts in whatever you need to do.

Jeff Holman (19:47)

So you started hiring your own virtual help, if you will, before it was that before you started doing the IT types of staffing or and the

Darren Tompkins (19:58)

No,

no, no. That was just the very beginning. I I was involved in a mastermind group, a couple of different ones, where I got introduced to virtual help, right? and again, when I found out that I could hire somebody for less than the cost of a guy mumbling my grass, I'm like, wow, they can do accounting, they can do video editing, all this other stuff. That's how I was like, now I get it. Because in recruiting, it can be very expensive. And people will shy away from this service all the time because they think it's prohibitively.

Expensive, depending on

Jeff Holman (20:29)

Yeah, everybody hears it's thirty or forty percent of the first year salary. That's

Darren Tompkins (20:32)

Right.

Jeff Holman (20:33)

where I come up with that number. Yeah.

Darren Tompkins (20:35)

And if it was you and me meeting, John or Jeff, if if I said, Hey, why don't you come to my office, we'll talk about this potential partnership. And I brought you to the midrise office where here's my director of sales, recruiting, the pretty receptionist, come check out our expensive cappuccino machine, check out that view of the galleria, you'd be like, Well, no wonder this crap is so expensive. Yeah, look at all this overhead. Yeah. We cut out all of that when we've we formed this company and we pass those savings on to our clients. that's the bottom line, you know.

we're faster, we have the same processes, we have a great network and we can find another right hire at a fraction of the cost. Because again, it is shocking how much people will charge for this stuff.

Jeff Holman (21:17)

Yeah, yeah. Well, d did you have the vision then from the from the beginning to to form these different divisions of of Vader or did that grow over time?

Darren Tompkins (21:26)

That grew over a short time. the recruiting is obviously where we cut our bones, we did the website and everything. But then it was like the hourly workers for project, I mean, there's so much construction that happens here in the Houston area and in in Texas in general, where it's like, I think we can tap into this business too, because we're working for full time people, we're staffing them full time, but they still need part-time or contract help. So it was easy to be like, We already offer this service to you. How about this?

And that's how data ray engineering lifted off. And again, like I told you earlier, I'm like, well, we already have these virtual professionals. Why don't we offer that as a sweetened deal thing? Which has worked, but honestly, the people come to us for that are small business owners, people that need social media help and video editing and that type of thing, getting their website together, that type of stuff.

Jeff Holman (22:15)

Not necessarily the executive help.

Darren Tompkins (22:17)

You got it. Yeah. Or but or a lot of it is I need my calendar organized. I don't want to pay.

Yeah, whatever it would cost here for an executive assistant.

Jeff Holman (22:26)

yeah. I meant I meant executive level higher.

Darren Tompkins (22:28)

yeah, yeah, yeah. Gotcha. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Not on the virtual side, no. Yeah, yeah.

Jeff Holman (22:33)

So no, that makes sense. But did you find that th could those are like if I if I put myself in your shoes, and I've because I've seen a lot of my clients do this, they're like, hey, I've got this business and I'm gonna add this other service offering or product offering, and we're just gonna double our revenues. And then they say, wait a second. What I didn't realize when I made that decision a year ago was these are actually two separate businesses. This isn't like the business models are separate. I would I would expect, and correct me if I'm wrong that

that doing the IT outsourcing is a different business model than the recruiting? Or or are they the same?

Darren Tompkins (23:07)

It c it is, but we just put in the three different buckets of depending on what needs to be done, right? we wanna be known as an all in one s all in one stop shop. And that's where what we've been building here. I don't want to hire two other general managers for the businesses because I still have time because I'm offloading a lot of other stuff to manage them all. And you know, with this business, I I mentioned I'm trying to hire a sales executive right now to kinda get us to that next level. Yeah.

I don't want to deal with fifty employees and all their problems and all this stuff because it's gonna take away from my time with the fam, and yeah the stuff that I really wanna do that people are gonna remember later on. And, you know, one of the best days of my life will be when I log out of LinkedIn for the last time and never have to and never have to look back at.

Jeff Holman (23:56)

Yeah, well that's funny. Do you have a date for that? 'Cause you did say set a date and don't deviate. Is there a date for not logging on to LinkedIn again?

Darren Tompkins (24:04)

Yes,

it will be when Izzy graduates high school, which is thirteen years from now.

Jeff Holman (24:10)

Nice. I love it. I love it. Well let's get in Darren, let's get into into some maybe some discussion about where CEOs who are already busy building their own business go wrong. Where do they where do they try to start out with recruiting and and run into roadblocks?

Darren Tompkins (24:31)

So there's there's the people who are in startups, right? Jeff, you start a company, and you're like you get some you get a big loan from the bank or something like that, and or whatever the the capital is and you're gonna build out a team, right? Yeah. And they're like, Okay, I need to hire a COO, I need to hire VP of sales and you know, maybe another big thinker guy. Bro, that's you. Like you should be doing all of that. You know, the people you should be hiring are the people that are gonna be doing

the sales, but in a business development side of the house where they're actually going out and trying to bring in new blood where you're doing your inside sales thing. and you know, putting the marketing team together and that kind of stuff. one of the things that CEOs will mess up is quick hiring. And I've I've been guilty of that in the past, where, all right, well, it's September 14th.

We know things are gonna start closing down or people are they're gonna start turning off the switch at after Halloween. You know, we gotta get somebody in before that. Without having an actual project date in mind of how they're gonna use that person as an entrepreneur to make money for the company. And they end up sitting around. That energy transfer job was a classic example. I got hired on to lead a project where I sat around for six weeks and did nothing. You know, and my boss knew I was doing nothing, but he didn't want me to take another job. So they offered me and brought me in.

People will hire very quickly, just because they want to put somebody in a seat and that's really the wrong thing to do. That's

It creates a terrible culture because if something goes wrong and they're gone within two weeks, people are gonna be looking at you like, why the hell did you hire that guy in the first place? and you're left holding the bag because now people are gonna doubt you as a leader. And, you know, making sure that the right butts are in the right seats is is something that's paramount for you to do. The other thing is they take too much time. we have a client right now in the Subsea Engineering, they brought us on on a retainer month to month to lead their recruiting space.

Recruiting process, we've got it down. We're loading them up. You can't get the damn hiring managers to interview people. they're busy with their day to day and their project deadlines are coming up and now they're like they got fifty resumes they got to go through, even though we're sending them a certain amount, they're still doing their own internal referrals, right? Yeah. Things get messed up and they realize that that project kickoff is happening without the without whatever the mechanical engineer or whoever that they need to hire. And they're panic hiring at that point, you know.

Jeff Holman (27:09)

So they wait too long and then they hire too fast in the end anyways.

Darren Tompkins (27:12)

Anyways, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Because they're they're trying to meet a budgetary requirement that somebody sets, the time and the date is what every project is about, and and the in the the budget for it, and they panic, whether it's the beginning or the end. And a recruiter can definitely help you plan that out if you get us quick enough into the process.

Jeff Holman (27:33)

Do do you see any any unique problems or issues in companies? I like to call them scaling companies, but those those companies that they've that they've they've maybe made it out of startup mode. They've found their customers and they've got a their their services and products are starting to sell pretty regularly. They and they're just scaling now. They're they're hitting 10 million, 20 million, 50 million. And those cause those scaling stages of a company are really rigorous on the team, right? There's a

ton of demands, you're trying to you're trying to do everything more and hire more at the same time. Do you see any specific issues with those types of companies at that stage?

Darren Tompkins (28:13)

all the time, man. what what we see typically see is Jeff Holman's company, they're killing it. They're we're it's tens of millions of dollars in in new work this month, right? But their support services, they haven't hired anybody in six months to help them out with legal, with IT, with whatever, you know? And all of a sudden there's this big desert between here's all the work. We've got people that maybe can hire can do some of this stuff, but

invoicing and supply chain and everything get crushed because it's just not a good balance flow, you know? And that's that's an only gas especially because there's so many vendors and so many projects and everything else, you leave your support in the dust. because like with the barrel of oil, the support s services are what usually get cut off when the the budget isn't there, but they're still sitting on great

Contracts. They just can't start yet. But they fired everybody all of a sudden and now they're scrambling to get that workforce back.

Jeff Holman (29:14)

So everybody that that makes that makes a lot of sense actually. People saying, Hey, we're entering scaling mode or we're in scaling mode. W scaling relies on new new clients coming in. So we gotta focus our the majority of our efforts on selling, closing, onboarding, but we don't necessarily get into the fulfillment and and and I think that's that might be contributing sometimes to a company not surviving the scaling stage, right?

Darren Tompkins (29:39)

So I I that was me. So if you checked out my LinkedIn, I I'd recently closed a company that I founded called Headlock Hot Sauce. Okay. and that was a COVID project, head home and some people made sourdough. We made hot sauce, but that was pro wrestling.

Jeff Holman (29:53)

Did you say headlock hot sauce?

Darren Tompkins (29:55)

Headlock hot sauce.

Jeff Holman (29:56)

That's that's some imagery right there.

Darren Tompkins (29:58)

It's awesome. I love Pro Wrestling. We own a Pro Wrestling Ring, all that stuff. wow. But what happened is in 2024, February 2024, I never answered my phone. It's just I screen everything, you know, because you get so many BS calls nowadays. But that day, for some reason, I took the call. And it was a local Fox News producer who was following up on Fox Business article about.

the changing health lifestyles of people in their palates, right? Yeah. So she's like, Hey, can I do a video interview with you? I tried Tabasco. I tried these other big ones, but they sent me to their PR firms. We're on a big time challenge with getting this out to the air. And she happened to live here in Houston. I said, Yeah, come to the heights and we'll we'll do it. Yeah. Did that video, it took a week and it just blew up. It went national. It got went overseas. and then when a few days we got contacted by Fox and friends.

They had told us to come to the studio. This is on a Thursday. We couldn't do it because we had friends from Europe coming in. But we agreed to go to go on camera live on that Sunday. And we were heading this is a Sunday. That Wednesday we were heading to Mexico for a big spring break trip. You know, we were Grand Vale us, big we put a lot of money into this thing. Okay. And we did the, you know, the two minute interview or whatever and

Tried to go back to bed and bam, bam, bam, sale, sale, sale, sell, sale. Yeah. everybody that saw that were doing it. It's like, we're not ready for this. what the hell do we get ourselves into? So we had product and we we have a warehouse, we have a filament center, but they couldn't get them in time. So we set up a literally in this house. The kitchen was boxing it up. We had shelving units, we had vans that were taking all the product to to the UPS store essentially. But what we took was

We've got all these new sales coming in, but we weren't ready financially to support all that. and we limped along for a while because, you know, the trying to get somebody to buy a consumer product is tough to keep them as a repeat customer. Yeah. Yeah. We tried to go into retail, but we just didn't have the base set up because we had all these sales happening, but we just couldn't get the factory to sync up with us. You know, we weren't making it ourselves.

Jeff Holman (32:11)

Yeah.

Darren Tompkins (32:12)

Ultimately, there's some other things with the tariffs and everything that crushed us. But sure that was a very grassroots experience for me to be like, crap, our sales are awesome, but we need to make more, but we're leaving the country. how are we gonna fulfill all this stuff? Yeah. You get

Jeff Holman (32:26)

Interesting. Yeah.

Darren Tompkins (32:27)

caught up in the in the sales process. People love to make big sales, right? But then it's like, well, we still need to put stuff in people's hands. Can we do

Jeff Holman (32:35)

I I I've got this picture of somebody, I don't know, pouring water into filling the boat with water as fast as they can. But the you know y

Darren Tompkins (32:43)

Right. Yeah.

Jeff Holman (32:44)

you're gonna use some water on board, but you it depending on the type of boat you're on, right? But if you put too much water on fat too fast, you're just gonna sink the boat. And that sounds like that's what happens if you don't have the right people into, you know, manage the water that's coming.

Darren Tompkins (32:57)

Hundred percent true, man. Yeah.

Jeff Holman (32:59)

So well that's interesting. I d I didn't know you. Headlock hot sauce. I'm gonna remember that. It's a catchy name.

I hope he's still on the trademark or something. I the

Darren Tompkins (33:06)

Yeah, we got it all. We get it. Maybe we'll bring it back. We'll see. But yeah, we keep saying as long as Vader Ray keeps trucking along, that'll be a side piece that we'll we'll discuss, every year whether we want to bring it back or not.

Jeff Holman (33:16)

Well if if you need an intro, there's a guy here in Utah who has a who has a hot sauce that I I I haven't talked to him s directly about it, but he has his he has his gig and stuff, but when he goes to an event he'll take his hot sauce with him and it's a I think it's a side gig. He's still still

Darren Tompkins (33:31)

give

it away all the time as gifts. You if we do our first contract meeting, I'll bring gifts for your whole office, you know, and people love this. I love

Jeff Holman (33:38)

I love it. Well, so so let's get back into scaling companies though. So what are the things that that people see when they get this right? Like if I'm scaling a company and I'm able to balance out the, you know, the sales team and the back end support team, or I'm able to to to get the right executive level person on my team to like like what is the what are the results that you've seen in companies when they get it right?

Darren Tompkins (34:05)

Yeah, and it it's actually I never s want to say anything simple, but entrepreneurs, whether you're a CEO of a billion dollar company or you've got your small staff, the process is always here, right? Companies are process. Creativity is here. These are the people that are getting your stuff sold or they're coming up with ideas to get it out there. It has to meet, man. brilliant artists are terrible business people. People that are just process people will never get their name out there because they're not creative enough. And so

When you have a blend of especially when it comes to an executive team that can peer across that entire battlefield and make sure everybody has the right armaments to do their jobs, that's when it all comes together like a symphony.

Jeff Holman (34:45)

Where do you see that? this is I don't think I've I've heard the balance, right? You y tons of people are doing EOS and they talk about the visionary and the and the the integrator, right? And and it's like I don't know that that's exactly what you're saying. So I've I've heard of that kind of balance. But when you say process and creativity, I don't know I've heard anybody say it that way, but it actually sounds it makes a lot of sense that you have to have both of those. Where does it did you

Is that something you came up with or did you get that from a book? Wh

Darren Tompkins (35:17)

It's just I'm a creative person. you know, I I do a lot of writings and stuff. I found that process, especially in recruiting, recruiting is a process, man. If you follow the process, we'll we'll get you an ace every time, you know. Okay. The re the creativity part comes in marketing your company to other people, you know? Why is Jeff Holman's company so much better than these other clowns, you know? and what's gonna make it awesome?

And so you have to understand the creativity of how am I going to schmooze somebody, especially if they're working for somebody else right now, to come work for you? Is it going to be the pay? Sometimes. Is it going to be what you offer and as far as your culture goes? Because that's the only reason people leave their companies is for money or culture nowadays. And how are we going to sell that to If you're just going to put down on paper, here's the bullet points of why you should go talk to Jeff.

Half the time they're gonna blow that off, right? we have to get creative in how we find the people for you, but also how we talk to them to get them to to come work for you. And then we have to instill, because we're in a strategic partnership, yeah. How are you gonna convey that to that person too? Because if I build you up to be this awesome, cool visionary and they show up and you're just like working on your phone the entire time, you know, it's just the creativity and the process didn't work. And that's how it kind of works, whether you're talking about

sales or marketing or IT that's process driven, right? Yeah. But you still have to g give people leeway to be creative to solve problems in your company. So it's almost like this tornado of things that have to happen to

Jeff Holman (36:55)

That that makes a ton of sense to me. Walk can you walk me through an an experience where you've taken an taken a CEO or somebody at a company that you're that's hired you through this process and help them, see beyond the process of it? 'Cause I think a lot of people say recruiting, HR, and they're like, we just gotta get a job description out there and put it on the sites and see who comes in. It like don't a lot of companies just follow the process for recruiting and you're saying you gotta go beyond that, right?

Darren Tompkins (37:24)

You give us a job description if you if you approach us to to go find somebody for you, we're probably not gonna use that job description. Okay. Because it's gonna be a generic job description you've had in your HR files for whatever time, right?

Jeff Holman (37:37)

Or Chat G B T created it last week.

Darren Tompkins (37:38)

Whatever, right? Yeah. But you have to understand, okay, let's say we're trying to find a a mechanical engineer, right? For whatever oil and gas company or wherever. Okay. What is the age group you're really trying to go for here? And is what is on this job description gonna be appealing to that group? Is it early is it, you know, early career, mid career, senior career? Everybody wants something a little different. They wanna see it on black and white before they just go for it, right? so we we

As you should be tailoring your resume to the job that you want, we're tailoring the job descriptions to the people we're trying to attract. That's where a lot of companies falter. Yeah. Because, there's no incentive for an HR generalist to post that job because they're just going to put on Indeed or their company website, wait for people to apply, right? Right. You're you've got to attract the right mentality of the talent. And that's where you get into the the creativity of the process.

Jeff Holman (38:34)

What what does that look like though? Like i in this example of a mechanical engineer, you're not just gonna say, Hey, we need somebody with this many years of experience and this this field and specialties or credentials. What like what do you say or what is what what's a client of yours gone to to to say that?

Darren Tompkins (38:51)

Yeah. So for for example, we we have a client, a marine terminal, it's in Galveston, Texas. I don't know if you know anything about Galveston. It's an island that people don't realize it's an island off of way southeast Houston. It's a very challenging place to get somebody to want to work oil and gas. Because just a few miles up the road, you have much bigger companies that are paying more for the same same job.

Jeff Holman (39:16)

Right. But there are nice beaches in Galveston, right? I've I've been to

Darren Tompkins (39:19)

They're

terrible. my God. Have you not seen a football Galveston? It's the worst. Like it's the muddiest, ugliest water ever. Okay. and it's a very tourist driven economy down there because you have the cruise terminals, you have the the Landry's, you have the beach properties, all that stuff. That's really the only reason people go there. So how do I finagle somebody, convince them to go work in Galveston when in Houston, 40 minutes away, we've got

All the big shops, the BPs and the chevrons and all that that are probably going to be paying more. You have to understand the audience because it's very hands-on down there because everything's crammed into each other. And in oil and gas, there's so many levels of red tape. You could hire a director of engineering, right? He may never put on a set of overalls. He's sitting in an office somewhere just writing policy, you know, and SOPs and doing audits. Yeah. Down there, it's way different. Like they require the hard hat.

You're out there every single day, meeting with everybody, garnering that team spirit that we talked about earlier. It's a very different person that we're trying to market this job to.

Jeff Holman (40:24)

You would then say to these people, hey, you you you don't if you don't want to just sit behind a desk, you wanna get your hands dirty, you wanna be a part of the process start to finish, you wanna make a meaningful difference and be a part of the team, you're you're gonna start introducing this type of language i in addition to the credentials.

Darren Tompkins (40:41)

Exactly. Exactly. You have to go above and beyond what's on the the the basic credentials, right? So how do we market that? Even though we know maybe they're gonna pay as much as other companies or maybe they're not. Then you sweeten the deal with with understanding what the what the talent wants. Do they want an extra week of PTO? Do they need some work from home flexibility if it's like a you know, just an office type day? you try to figure out what their needs are. Before COVID, before COVID, it was what's called an employer's marketplace.

Which means, Jeff, I'm hiring you for my company. Here's your cubicle. Here's your laptop. You know what the pay is going to be. Don't ever talk about it. Don't ever talk about PTO or additional time off. That flipped in COVID where hybrid and remote work became a big deal. People understood, I got a I got a great quality of life at home. Why the hell would I want to go back to the office five days a week? My wife is partly at BP was remote for two years, They're slowly bringing them back to the office, but we still have a good quality of life here.

you have to understand that there's gonna be give and take where we are now in the in the workforce. There's a lot of hard-nosed people out there, BP included, where it's like, hey, we're leasing all this property and we have all these service companies that support us. Your butt's coming back to the office, you know, because we're we're expending people that don't understand the the fire rescue service and all the catering and all that stuff, you know, it's all covered by their leases. yeah, so the gist of what I'm getting at is

You as the employer need to understand the type of employee you need to bring to the table. And you as the pro potential candidate need to understand what you're getting into. and it's not so black and white anymore.

Jeff Holman (42:17)

Before I let you go, Derek, I want to ask you how does how how does doing this process right? 'Cause we already talked about a little bit what what do you see when a company does this right? What, what impact does that have on the company? What's the impact this has on the CEO of a scaling business when when they get this right? Where what's the transition that they're able to make or, you know, the what do they do differently once they've hired the right person for the right job?

Darren Tompkins (42:45)

They get their time back, is what we started this conversation with, right? They don't have to micromanage. Micromanaging I was a terrible employee, especially when you micromanage, 'cause I was just like, man, I'm just gonna leave, instead of having somebody you're looking over my shoulder every five minutes 'cause I'm a trained professional in my job, right?

Jeff Holman (43:01)

I had the same thing. We hit we had I've been at places where attorneys would one attorney would rewrite stuff. Didn't y you could take it and give it to him, he'd rewrite it, you'd take it back and write it the way he wrote it, he'd rewrite it back to the way you had it. It was just he wanted to rewrite and and literally every attorney I know that ever worked for this attorney, he they would after about six months they'd be like, I don't care what I give him anymore 'cause he's gonna rewrite it, rewrite it, rewrite it, and then I'm gonna do by the time he's exhausted

Then I'll give him what what he needed the first time around. And it w

Darren Tompkins (43:32)

Jeff Jeff, how how old are you?

Jeff Holman (43:34)

I'm I'm almost I'm actually fifty in two days, so

Darren Tompkins (43:38)

Congrats. I'm fifty two. We equate everything in business to the movie office space, do we not?

Jeff Holman (43:45)

It's a good reference, yes.

Darren Tompkins (43:46)

TPS reports and Inatech, that is ingrained in my mind. and if you're running your company like Inatech with where you have three or four different bosses, man, you're never gonna get anywhere. Yeah. but it going back to it, yeah, it it's it creates a peace of mind, which is what we all want in business and in our personal lives, of yeah, I can go to sleep tonight. I know it's just gonna get done for the next day. now there's always gonna be hiccups in the road, you know. But if you've done the hiring right and you're

competence in your employees, especially in your immediate senior staff, is there, it'll make your life a little bit easier.

Jeff Holman (44:21)

Yeah, that makes sense. Well, this has been great, Darren. I really appreciate your time and and digging into your expertise and sharing it with the audience here. what's what's one thing, just to end on here, what's one thing that that some of our audience might not realize about the recruiting and staffing process that that you've been able to reveal to some of your clients as as they've hired you?

Darren Tompkins (44:43)

What I've been able to reveal is our process is very fast nowadays as far as getting you quality people, right? The bottleneck is always in trying to get you to interview and hire them. that is is just the way AI has helped us out. And, you know, how quickly our our team can scale because we're not always necessarily staff staffed up to meet Jeff Holman's needs, but we can get there real quick nowadays. You know, it's just

It can we scale as you scale, because again, we don't do one offs. We wanna be with you for a long time.

Jeff Holman (45:15)

But Darren, really appreciate you coming on the show, sharing your expertise with everybody. it there's a there's a there's kind of a secret to talent, right? Where companies that get it right, they remove the drama from from the team. They they empower people to move faster. And and whether that's, you know, somebody that hire on your own or somebody that Darren hires for you, like like there's total power in having the right people on the team to help you scale. So

Really appreciate you being on the show and glad that you're able to join us today.

Darren Tompkins (45:49)

Thanks, Jeff. This has been great.

Jeff Holman (45:51)

And thanks again to all of you who've who've joined us again on this episode of the Breakout CEO. Be sure to follow or subscribe on your favorite podcast platform. And if you enjoy the show, a rating or a review goes a long way. Our mission is to promote the stories of breakout CEOs in scaling SaaS, e-commerce, and tech companies to equip peer CEOs with valuable perspectives.

Thanks again for joining us on this episode of the Breakout CEO. I'm Jeff Holman, and I'll see you next time.

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