Scott and Ryan, welcome to the Get Hired Up Podcast!

Ryan Smyth & Scott Calderwood

Thank you!

Maureen Farmer

I'm delighted today to be talking to two industry experts in very different fields, but somewhat complementary. We're going to be talking about lessons learned from the CEO portfolio company. And we're going to also be talking about resources that organizations need, especially after an acquisition of a portfolio company, and how CEOs the challenges they face and the resources that they deploy and and the ingenuity and innovation that they use to to bring these resources into the organization, especially during the first 90 to 180 days. I'm going to introduce first briefly, Scott Calderwood. Scott Calderwood is the president and CEO of Calderwood search partners and with over three decades of experience spanning diverse corporate capacities and entrepreneurship. Scott stands as an accomplished business leader and sales expert, specializing in facilitating mid to senior level placements within the realms of technical sales and marketing. He adeptly orchestrates Executive Director and management recruitments Scott's Hallmark lies in delivering superior client and candidate service through his unwavering professionalism, fervor and collaborative team ethos. Scott's practice is firmly rooted in the unwavering commitment to help others succeed. Also joining me is Ryan Smyth. Ryan Smyth is with carbon 60. He's the Executive Vice President and CFO and Ryan joined the team in 2019, leading carbon 60s finance organization sales operations, corporate IT and security. Ryan has over 20 years experience in the technology sector, where he has been actively involved in the successful completion of over 100 m&a transactions. In 2011, he co founded wireless evolution Inc, and as CEO grew the business from zero to over 100 million USD prior to negotiating a successful exit in 2018. Ryan as a CPA holds a BBA from Simon Fraser University, and is a graduate of Harvard Business School general management program. Welcome you both to the Get Hired Up Podcast.

I would like to start with a few questions for Ryan. And Ryan is going to talk about the transformation and transition into a CEO role post acquisition and some of the lessons he's learned and some of the challenges that he's encountered. And then we're going to bring Scott into the fold to talk about some of his innovative solutions that he's been able to deliver to the marketplace. So I'd love to start there. Ryan, when you talk a little bit about your lessons learned, maybe the top two or three lessons learned as a CEO of a new portfolio company.

Ryan Smyth

Well, thanks very, there are many lessons to be learned and many mistakes to be learned from and, and, and built upon. I think when in an operating company that's been just been invested in the investors are excited about their investment. And they also have high expectations with timelines, targets, metrics that are expected in the business case that led to them making the investment. So for that reason, time is of the essence. And what I found looking back as there was always less time than I thought there was going to be for every stage in in growth. So what that led to was the thought of if it's possible to make progress today, or to make a decision to move something forward, do it and don't delay. And typically that taking action, even with imperfect information is better than waiting and trying to get to a perfect state of information. Typically, when investments are made, whether by private equity, tier one banks, you know, secondary mezzanine type financing, I've seen them all there is expectation around growth in the private equity space. And so for that reason, prioritizing growth has to be there, there's lots of things to work on. But prioritizing growth in the business is important. And there are things that are required to grow, you know, starting out with a product portfolio and making sure that you've got something that you can sell but typically that isn't placed by the time investments of this nature have been made, you're gonna need to hire a Salesforce as strong when in place, the hiring of the VP of sales, the CRO role is is critical as you begin to move the business from being typically founder driven sales to a team of salespeople that are selling supported by in the tech space solution architects and the tech the technical background that's required to scale the business beyond what a founder can do by themselves.

Maureen Farmer

So Ryan, in your experience, would you say that the majority of the portfolio companies that you've been involved with have been founder-led or a combination?

Ryan Smyth

More towards the founder-led, and that can transition over time, often the founder has accomplished what they're looking to accomplish, and they want to move on to something else that has caught their interest. And you've earned the right to do that with founding the company going through the early growing pains and getting to a stage of getting the scale of institutional investment that they've gotten to. In other cases, the founder wants to continue to build and go through multiple stages and growth. So it would just give towards the founder led, although there is cases and where someone like myself would come into play is also where if the founder does want to exit, other executives can come in and take the company to the next level.

Maureen Farmer

So Ryan, what are the key differences in your opinion between a founder led portfolio company and an acquisition that may have had a series of of CEOs, for example, leading the charge?

Ryan Smyth

Well, the founder led organization has typically been wrapped around the founder were at one point they were employee, number one, they employed themselves in the business. And they've added to that, but the business is very much wrapped around their personality, their skill set and scaling up to a certain level very often that leads to limitations. Some folks want to work through those and add to their executive team to grow the business. Others that's the stage where they go to repeat the process and do that creative part of thinking out a new niche, building out of business, and then bringing in others others to run it. So the difference I would say is the professional procedures and methodologies and processes that are necessary to scale are different once you pass that phase one of founder led scaling from the ground up to a more institutional investor set of expectations and scaling beyond what one person can accomplish, regardless of how talented they are.

Maureen Farmer

So, you talked about prioritizing the growth post close. And you know, we've got to have a great product to sell, we need to have a market to sell it to. And then we need to have a sales force to deliver those products to the marketplace. So I'm sure it's not the only one, what are a couple of other priorities post close in addition to the sales team, and that function that needs to be shored up to be successful in the first few few quarters in the company are men in the calendar.

Ryan Smyth

The entrepreneurs are surprised by the level of rigor that's expected by a professional board. Private equity investors need to have information in order to assess how their investment is doing to update their investment committees bring in additional funding, it's critical for them to get good, reliable, timely information. And many entrepreneurs think that their finance department, their system, and QuickBooks, typically that that might be sufficient to meet the needs of institutional investors. And it rarely is. And it's typically one of the first hires that a private equity board will require is bringing in a CFO and building out a professional finance team. I've done that a number of times with private equity recruiting and support. And it always ends up supporting the CEO very well as that it sets them up for success. Typically a second in command type person that is a CFO isn't looking for the limelight, necessarily, but what they're looking for is to is to be part of the conversation and support the CEO, as he's going in to speak with the board and other new investors, major customers, eventually looking at either an IPO or another recapitalisation or two along the way. Those kinds of things, having that professional level of support is critical. Because as soon as the data starts to crumble, if it's not if it's not the financial data, if it's not properly supported the credibility of the CEO, and their business case, goes with that. And they're not able to accomplish what they would like.

Maureen Farmer

Yeah, obviously very important. And in your experience, just trying to get a sense of your the cross section of your experience, what would be the delineation between organizations, you've led to growth versus turnaround, or is that a fair question? Would you say that there is a combination of turnaround and growth, or there's clearly a mandate to turn it around before growth?

Ryan Smyth

The majority of organizations I've been hired into has been for growth reasons. I have done a couple of turnarounds. But the majority of investments in the technology space is there, the investors are looking for a platform on which they can build with additional investments and sophistication up to a specific future milestone under a specific timeline to accomplish investment objectives. So that's what I've been able to do a number of times. Along the way the path can be winding there can be times where the sector changes or the economy changes, that causes that investment to get put under pressure. And how you respond to those pressures is critical to be able to get to the end goal that was originally established.

Maureen Farmer

So talking about that end goal you talked about at the very beginning, the timeframe that a lot of organizations underestimate the importance of that timeline. And we talked a little bit at the very beginning about the sales force and about the product. So in your experience, how long does it take to ramp up a sales team? In a typical company, once you've taken over as the CEO?

Ryan Smyth

I wish I could give a fast answer that it would it happens quickly. But the truth is, is one of the hardest things to do is transition from a single person who's the founder, knowing most of the customers selling to them directly transitioning that knowledge of this specific niche, and getting others to sell it at some degree of competence. So for that reason, it's a 1218 month journey. In almost every case, I've seen it not just in companies I've been involved with, but where other companies that I'm aware of in the industry is it's a 12 to 18 month journey.

Maureen Farmer

So basically, what you're talking about here is is scaling sales is what you're doing, you're scaling the sales function in order to—

Ryan Smyth

And that is why it is important to start early. Because you're thinking about investors that maybe have a five year timeline. If it takes 12 to 18 months to get to a competent sales organization, you've taken that five years and you've shrunk it to three years, let's say three and a half years to accomplish the the growth goals that they've set out for you.

Maureen Farmer

Okay, so the ink is dried on the contract. And though that's an oversimplification, when do you start that process, Ryan?

Ryan Smyth

Well, if there's if you know what needs to be done, and there's nothing else to wait for is get started on day one of building out that sales team and and figuring out who is going to support you, in growing this business, I've seen companies wait too long, both trying to hope that incumbents will be able to do the roll and then they're clearly not able to or bringing in someone that doesn't hit their 9180 Day milestones that they've set out that time is of the essence and getting moving with the with the growth engine.

Maureen Farmer

Could you have walk us through maybe a little bit of your process. So we get a sense of, of what the early days look like and that transition into a fully functional scaled sales team, as an example, because I'm sure there are other functions that need to be sourced as well. But if we think about sales, being the the lifeblood of the organization being one of the most important resources that we need to bring into the company as soon as possible, what are those early days look like?

Ryan Smyth

Well, part of part of it is understanding the customer base you have today, because the customers you've got today are going to be a source of referrals, they're going to be a source of upselling, they're typically their use case of your product is typically going to apply to other companies in the marketplace. So really understanding the current customer base is is critical. And then from there, taking the time to build the right profile of sales leader, because ultimately, this is starting with sales leadership. And then it transitions down into the rest of the team. And with the wrong sales leader, it's very hard for great reps to be great. And they end up failing in the in the process. So that is getting a really good profile of what are the transferable skills and transferable knowledge pieces that this person can bring, and what are must haves of the role. And really staying true to that. And then having the right recruiting partner to get to that to that hire is important. Having someone that just has a Rolodex of people that they're just rolling through for every single role is not going to get it done, you're going to have to have someone that knows you pretty well as the hiring leader, and also knows the requirements. So the role is going to be deep asked you questions you don't really want to answer or you haven't thought of, and eventually getting to a really in depth match between you and that person that's going to help you scale the business.

Maureen Farmer

Well, this is a perfect segue to invite Scott into the fold of this conversation. So Scott, I would love your perspective. And maybe if you could respond to what Ryan has said, based on your decades of experience doing this very thing that we're talking about here, which is scaling sales teams and technology companies.

Scott Calderwood

Yeah, absolutely. I completely agree with Ryan's timelines 12 to 18 months if you got a brand new team, new brand, you know, taking over and making that presence is definitely 12 to 18 months, a typical professional salesperson that's joining a well branded or organization recognized is a good solid six months to ramp up, you know. So those timelines absolutely make sense. And what Ryan was talking about with finding that right fit is something that we firmly believe in our experience is that you can have the best most qualified person, join your team. But if they're not a cultural fit, if they don't align well with the leader, or the team or the other staff, they're likely not going to work out, it's going to be a failure. And so what we've moved towards fairly quickly, actually, is really focusing in on the cultural fit. So my team always do a kickoff call with the hiring leaders to really learn the soft points of the position. And that makes a much better experience for everybody. Putting the person in a spot that's not a good cultural fit, is going to fail for everybody, the hiring company, the route Penny, even for my firm. So getting that right, fit is important.

Maureen Farmer

So, I'm very curious about culture, because culture means different things to different people. So talk a little bit about the objective, the assessments or the the, how you evaluate culture, how do you how do you calibrate that with your client company? How do you know? What's the right culture for them?

Scott Calderwood

I've been blessed with a pretty good gut feel when it comes to fits.

Maureen Farmer

For those who can't see the video, Ryan is nodding his head. Yes, yes.

Scott Calderwood

Yeah, but one of the tools that we use that we really like is a quake, it's a behavioral assessment, and there's quite a few behavioral assessments out there. And so if it's a, you know, a high priority role, our clients will often engage in this. And the hiring team, whoever's involved will go through and respond to a survey about the behaviors and attributes of who they are looking for, for the position. And then when the candidate is going into the final part of the interview process, we'll put them through it, and they respond as themselves. And then we align. And it's very interesting, because if you have several hiring leaders, and they're looking for different cultural fits, it can be very challenging to find the right person. So with Ryan's permission, I'll tell a little story about when we were working together, he was the CFO, I think it was for a member of his team that we are hiring, or that we were doing the search for. And there is Ryan, and two of his reports that were part of the deciding factor. And we have them fill up the job survey with McCuaig. And his two reports were right on track and Ryan was had different expectations altogether, which caused us to have a conversation and a meeting. And so what we did is we went back and we did the job survey together with everyone on the phone, and they debated each question. And then it actually came out that they were fully aligned once they had a chance just to talk through a few things about who they were looking for, which created a great hire at the end of the day.

Maureen Farmer

Love to pause for just a moment here, just to get a little granular here, in terms of what that looked like. So Ryan, what, how did you differ from the others on the team relating to this particular hire?

Ryan Smyth

Typically, I have a higher expectation of ownership of the role than maybe others do. So I'm looking for them to push to the point in putting me out of a job, you know, you know, I follow a little bit of not that I'm a Warren Buffett, but I admire the man. And he delegates to the point of, you know, to tell the maximum point he can, I don't maybe go to that extreme. But I really try because I think it creates maximum growth for the individual and supercharges the organization when you descend, decentralize decision making, and everything doesn't have to come through me now that takes time of teaching, good decision making to people and making sure that they don't, you know, make some too bad of mistakes, but...

Maureen Farmer

So, what would be an indicator that that would not be the case? Is certain behavioral competency, or what would it be that would indicate to you that they weren't Warren Buffett worthy in terms of delegation and decision making? Is there a particular data point or a couple of data points?

Ryan Smyth

Maybe Scott can add on top of this, but what I look for is raw talent in the person and desire willingness to work hard, so I'm looking at their track record how hard they have to work to where they are today. What are their aspirations, and then I do simple hacks and I'm not going to give them away acts to test the level of intelligence of the individual and their ability to push me in a debate or a discussion. And those hacks work out pretty well. You know, it gets you past things like language barriers and appearance and all these biases that are, we all have them. But when you do these more deeper tests, it cuts all that away. And it really gets to the core of who is this person? And how are they going to fit on my team. As a result, I've been able to have very diverse teams of all different cultures, backgrounds, I love it that way. Because it means that the best decisions are getting made

Maureen Farmer

Through that diversity of thought and practice and an experience. That's fantastic, because a lot of people, both on the candidate side, and I'm Scott, and I've had this conversation before as well, on the candidate side, as well as on the client side is is trying to determine what is the best approach to candidacy? If you're a candidate, if you're a CEO candidate, how do you approach that conversation? And I appreciate your candor, Ryan around how you do that to a certain degree. Because I think people feel, at least in my experience that it's formulaic. And I don't believe it's formulaic. I think it's relationship based. And obviously competency based. I think that the Fit factor is absolutely critical. And it's interesting to see how different business leaders come to that from different different perspectives. So Scott, you you you have these assessments that you use, I know you have another solution, I think we're going to talk about today.

Scott Calderwood

Yeah, sure! That's actually something that Ryan and I, Ryan had a need for many, many hires. And, you know, a lesson learned early on is that I would engage with a company, we'd do great work for them, they would hire four or five roles, thrilled with the candidates that we placed. And then someone like Ryan in the CFO position gets the invoice, they have a little heart attack, then all sudden, the recruitment is paused, and they go back to trying to find candidates themselves or, and, you know, the piece that a lot of companies don't realize is that the recruitment costs may seem like it's high upfront. But if you hire the wrong person, the costs are much, much higher than, you know, the fee for getting it right in the first place.

Maureen Farmer

Oh, I agree. 110%. Absolutely.

Scott Calderwood

Our firm really values the relationship of partnering up with the company, I know that the word partners overused, but really, we like to be working in an environment where we're an extension of the HR team. And because when we're going out in the market, we are representing that company where they're brand ambassadors. And so the more that we work with a company, the better we get to know them and the better work we can do. And so we took that concept and understanding and realize that if we have regular business with a client, and we're doing regular searches for them, that we have scales efficiencies, because the the work gets a little bit easier for us, because we have a greater understanding. We're not starting from the ground up. And so we put together a model, I spent some time in the records management world, and we put together a solution called records management as a service similar to software as a service. And, and we applied the same concept to recruiting called a talent management as a service. So the solution was this, we we worked out the hiring range, the salaries, our fees are based on a percentage of the salary. And we worked on a range and went kind of below the middle range and set a monthly fee. So we charged a monthly fee, and that included one placement a month. And the concept is is that you would sign if you're hiring 12 People in the year, you'd sign a 12 month contract we we charge this fee once a month. But in the case with Ryan, is we filled those positions very quickly and found ourselves at the end of the contract. So we felt that, you know the contract, contracted amount, and it wasn't quite 12 Because we started in the middle of the year. And we finished those positions. But we would still only bill once a month even though we had filled the positions early. So it it provides cost benefits to the hiring company. It's also discounted rates that you can experience because we did a flat rate. So we went back and we add positions on for the monthly fee. And it just worked really well. So we'd give by reducing our costs, but we gained by getting a long term commitment. to client and working with them directly.

Maureen Farmer

Yeah, there's tremendous value in that.

Ryan Smyth

Yes. So to support what Scott is saying is that in scaling a company, not having the people is a major constraint on growth. On the other hand, if you have the people, you can grow, when you're small, when when we were small and still are to a certain degree, the capacity of the people and culture and the recruiting team internally is very limited. So if you have to hire at one point, we had 15 roles we needed to fill. And that's very hard on an internal team, and have we not had the expertise of Pinnacle, we wouldn't have been able to meet that demand. So that's, that's one part of it. The second part of it is as the from a finance perspective, having a regular recurring bill is much easier to handle than large spikes. At the scale, we were at recruiting bills for percentage of salary, if you hired a whole bunch in one in one month would blow out the p&l and create, you know, stress with the investors and things like that. So this crazy under much more even model in line with how our revenue model which was which was also on a monthly recurring basis. And the third thing that was a benefit is, in my experience, recruiters typically have an area of expertise, they might be able to be good at finance, they might be good at sales, they might be good at certain types of technology, but not all of them. The benefit I found in working with Scott was that he was able to bring a number of recruiters to the table all with different areas of expertise that far outweighed the individual skill of single contributors on my team. So for those reasons, it was a win win for both organizations. And we were able to hire a large number of people for a reasonable cost faster than we ever could have done ourselves.

Maureen Farmer

Excellent. I would love to take a moment here to talk a little bit about a statistic that Scott had shared with me a few weeks ago, to a lot of people don't understand, retained, versus contingency. I would love for just a moment to talk a little bit about that. Because Scott, the statistic that you shared with me, relating to the efficacy of a contingency arrangement for an organization was quite surprising. And given the work that I do myself, I do encounter a lot of client companies as well as individual candidates that don't really understand the difference. I would love. If you remember that conversation.

Scott Calderwood

Yeah, yeah, no. So we moved when I started in the recruitment business, we started out with contingency search as an option contingency means that the recruitment firm is only paid after they successfully placed someone. And so there is no skin in the game for the hiring company. And, you know, often they will engage multiple recruitment firms, or you know, they'll still be candidates coming in from the outside. And what that means is, it's a really a Race to Zero for further recruitment firm, or firms in that manner. So the success rate in the contingency model, I believe the industry success rate is 30% is what I've been given. Yeah. And if you think about it, you're only paid if you're successful, it's a race, you're going to go get as many resumes as you can, they're not going to be well vetted. They, you're going to throw as much as you can at the hiring client, and let them sort through them, and see if there's anyone that that will really work out. But you're not looking at cultural fit, you're not looking for the very best person in the market, because the best people in the market are often employed. And they take a lot of effort to get a hold of, especially post COVID. So if you if you compare that and if the going gets tough, it's a tough search, you know, as soon as the firm gets an easier search, and everyone's paid based on a percentage of commission or the success, so they will change gears and that's why you get the lower success rates. And you also get that position needs to be filled again and again.

Maureen Farmer

And other behaviors where you know, the recruiters are ghosting their candidates and the clients are ghosting the recruiters and it's I don't think it's as an effective as is obviously the model that you have described here. Ryan, do you have any any feedback on the contingency model? Have you used it?

Ryan Smyth

I have seen it in use. I don't like it. And I would say what I look for the most in a search firms contract is how much do they stand behind the higher meaning some of them was 30 days. I don't hire those companies. It is I don't hire those companies. Six months I might think about it. I'm looking for someone that's committed to multi year success of the candidate and you can't get there with a contingent base, multiple firms all talking to the same candidates and confusing them can't get there that way. That's excellent to have that deep relationship that Scott's talking about to get to the end, the interests are aligned.

Maureen Farmer

That's excellent feedback. And I hope anyone listening here today, whether you are a company needing resources, or you're a CEO candidate looking for the next role to really understand that. And this is how I counsel my clients, and I hope that this is appropriate, Scott, you'll give me the feedback. But what I say to my clients, and many of my clients, our CEO candidates, as well as corporate CEOs as well, but if they are a CEO candidate, I counsel them to ask the recruiter if they are retained, or if they are contingent. And other a few other questions. I won't go get into it because of the sake of time, but I and they and they they asked me can you ask that question? And I say yes, just ask it very politely. Because it's really important that everyone respects one another's time. And if you have a sense that this is going to be a long drawn out process, as you know, as it might be in a contingency search, I think it's important to set everyone's expectations up front. What would you say, Scott? And Ryan?

Scott Calderwood

Yeah, well, expectations up front are absolutely important. Like we always have commitments on, on both sides of how we're going to communicate and how we're going to progress. Because, you know, for a candidate, especially in the C suite, or you know, at any level, they need to understand what the process is to if they're going to engage, you know, tying this all together, if you look at, you know, any retained search that we do, we're really interested in cultural fit, we take the time to understand, you know, all the soft points of who we're looking for. And we introduce that candidate, if we do all of our homework we're very comfortable with, you know, that we've done a good job, and we put our money where our mouth is. So, you know, the one thing that we offer our clients is a five year guarantee, wow, you know, it's a full replacement in the first year, and then we do a significant discount that tears up over five years. And we can do that because we're comfortable. And five years is longer than the norm, I think out there for how long you see people staying. But if we're a good partner, the company, we know them, we've done the search, there's efficiencies there as well. But you know, if you have a really good cultural fit five years really isn't necessarily that long, either.

Maureen Farmer

That's excellent, I wasn't aware of that. That's wonderful.

Ryan Smyth

You're never going to hire perfectly. So that's another thing for whether you're a CEO or a CFO looking at rates, you're going to be paying for recruiting. Remember that it's if you're having to pay again, the full rate the full freight to have to hire for a failed hire, the cost is just escalates, very, very high. So it's not just about the rate you're paying. It's also an I as I said before, to me, it's the most important thing is how long are they going to stand behind that candidate. And Scott has done that on a couple of occasions for me, whenever there's been an issue, stood behind it. And we're very happy with the replacement candidate that were put in place to backfill those positions.

Maureen Farmer

Excellent. So we're coming close to the end of our call today. And before we get into a couple of fun questions, I would love to ask each of you if you could give your top one or two top lessons learned in your respective profession. So for you Ryan, as we'll just call it a generically CEO for portfolio company backed by private equity. And Scott, in terms of your profession with your recruiting firm, top one or two lessons learned. Let's start with you, Ryan.

Ryan Smyth

Sure. I was thinking about this since our earlier conversation on lessons learned. And I think I would actually move the there's one that I didn't talk about, I'd move to the top of the list. And that is culture and how it Trump's Strategy and Finance and sales. In my experience. Teams that like trust value each other can scale companies successfully, and teams that don't have that cannot. So what does that mean as the CEO it means to deal with unhealthy conflict quickly and sorting it out isn't easy. Sometimes it means someone or more than one has to leave the organization. But unhealthy conflict cannot continue, especially on the senior team because it'll permeate the rest of the organization. Flipside is a team that likes and trusts and values one another, that will permeate through the organization as well and drive energy throughout the organization. So putting a lot of effort into who's on the senior team, building culture and camaraderie on that team is critical. It sets Some example for the organization, it helps connections form below the senior team throughout the organization. So that's number one. Number two, would be prioritizing growth, because it does take 1218 months, Getting Started day one and building out that business development function is is absolutely critical. And then getting the finance piece of the supporting data reporting good information and make decisions support business cases, be credible with the board is those that would be the third thing that would make for a successful portfolio company assuming that it has product market fit, which likely already does based on the investment having happened.

Maureen Farmer

Sure, and all the due diligence that goes along with that for sure. Okay, that's fantastic, Ryan. So Scott, I'd like to move it over to you, for top lessons learned in your profession so far.

Scott Calderwood

Absolutely. And, you know, I'll go to what Ryan said right at the beginning, because that was one of the best lessons I learned was, you got to deal with difficult situations head on. So I live by the motto of you should always eat your crow while it's still warm.

It really takes a lot of stress out of your day, if you just get it over with and deal with it and or other from other people or days. But so the lesson is directly about recruitment is the realization of how important cultural fit is not with the company with the team and the hiring leader. If you don't get that right, there is going to be a lot of problems. But one of the biggest things that we live by is when we have a new relationship, or we're renewing or doing something is having a strong communication agreement of everything from you know, if we introduce a candidate, what's the expectation timelines that we're going to receive feedback? Are we going to an interview, communicating with the candidates doing debriefs on both sides, all of that is really important because candidates are often not treated like people. And you know that that is we're a very candidate focused organization. So it's very important that they're given proper feedback and treated with respect. We fired companies that were our clients, because they just treated people poorly. And we can't represent that.

Maureen Farmer

Well you said before that you're the brand ambassador for your client. So and then the reciprocal is true as well, because they are representing your firm in a way as well.

Scott Calderwood

Yeah, absolutely. So we look for feedback, and we provide it back and forth. But one of the greatest things that we've done in the last while is that are communicating back to our clients. So we provide weekly updates Now, clearly, listing all of what we've done. All the different communications, the feedback that we're getting why people are interested, why they're not interested, it's made a big difference. Because we were we have one client who they have very, very difficult requirements. And they made it clear to us that this was going to be, you know, this will not be easiest will not be short. But they every week, they see all the work that we've done to find these unicorns for them. I think the latest report showed that we had over 10,000 results for these multiple positions that were doing. Just keep going because we knew what we were signing up for they were with us, we really liked them. And so it's a good communication back and forth. So it doesn't matter that it's hard, but we're getting good feedback and communication. So I think the biggest difference to us.

Maureen Farmer

That's fantastic. I've not heard of that before.

You'd asked earlier what lessons from us, for us CEOs. And I think communication, really prioritizing that is very important for that role. It's the least amount of doing in that role. And the most amount of communicating is what I've found. So with candidates, it means a lot to hear from if it's the CEO that's hiring, that that CEO takes the time to meet them quickly, communicates personally afterwards and can be a really differentiating factor. Our CEO at carbon 60 Does that regularly and it has made a big difference for us in hiring and I try to do it from from my chair as well be quick interview within hours, not days, not weeks, and do that. And I would say as well. On top of that is making sure spending the time on communication on a 360 basis, which means with customers scheduling time regularly to be talking to customers. CEOs that spend time in their office grinding away at the financials for some reason is not the best use of their time. You need a CFO that's for you. Having regular SSL team meetings, even if you're not getting a lot out of them, making sure that your team has ways to connect with each other regularly town halls where there's actual data shared Not just ticking the box, but actually sharing, confident what you would think is confidential information, trusting your team and sharing that with them, I've found has gone so far with building trust and excitement in the team about where we're going, and then commitment to regular one on ones with your team where you're prepared and they're prepared, and you get things done together. That really is the as the rancher ends book speaks of the discipline of getting things done is tied into that communication piece across all of those dimensions.

Maureen Farmer

That's excellent. This has been an excellent conversation. And I really appreciate both of you coming together to be guests on the Get Hired up podcast. Before we sign off a couple of things. How can people get in touch with you?

Scott Calderwood

So I own Pinnacle search. I'm one partner Renee greener, and I've just launched a new brand called her with search partners. And so my email is very simple Scott at Calderwood search.com, that Scott with two T's and or through my phone number 403-800-6651.

Maureen Farmer

And Ryan?

Ryan Smyth

Sure, glad to connect with with folks, my phone number is 416-220-2199. Welcome a call or text and certainly over LinkedIn might be the easiest way. My email address is more complicated, but I regularly respond to messages on LinkedIn. So feel free to reach me there. It's my name Ryan Smyth.

Maureen Farmer

Great! Last question. And this is a fun question. We put together a list of restaurants for our listeners so that they can have a trusted list of restaurants to frequent as they're traveling around the globe. And so I would love for each of you to name a restaurant that we can include in that list. And we'll include all of this information as well in the show notes. So let's start with you, Scott, what would be one of your favorites.

Scott Calderwood

I have more favorites from when I was younger that are no longer around. But top of mind, in Salt Lake City, there's this little Mexican restaurant called the Red Iguana. It doesn't look like much from the street, but they'll get a big long line out front. It is just excellent. Awesome.

Maureen Farmer

That's great. Well add that to the list. And Ryan, how about you?

Ryan Smyth

Well, in Toronto, I went to a restaurant recently called Byblos that I really, really liked. It was Mediterranean food that was just top notch.

Maureen Farmer

That's awesome. Well, thank you both very much again for for joining me on the Get Hired up podcast. And I wish you a great weekend ahead and maybe we'll get to do this again. 

Scott Calderwood & Ryan Smyth

Sounds great, thanks for having us!