Destination Employer – Keys to Building Winning Teams with Author, Gerry Gadoury

Building and leading successful teams requires more than just filling positions; it involves aligning personal missions with company values. Through transparent communication and clear expectations, Gerry offers strategies to prevent poor placements that can disrupt team dynamics and morale. He also explores the deeper principles of leadership, accountability, and consistency, advocating for self-reflection and creating a growth-oriented culture. This episode is packed with Gerry’s seasoned advice on developing leadership skills early to reap long-term benefits for your organization. Don’t miss out on these invaluable lessons!

And now the number one audio program that helps you to hire, get hired and soar higher in the Salesforce ecosystem. It’s the Salesforce Career Show with Josh Matthews and Vanessa Grant.

Josh Matthews: 0:23

Jerry and I are having a laugh because you’ve never met someone worse with names than me, and it took three takes to get his name right. I’m sitting here with Jerry Goddory, author of Destination Employer, and this is an incredible book that he authored. It just got published. Was it in January, jerry? January, yep, in January. Well done, I read half of the book all the way through and then about skimmed the other half. I got to tell you, if I wrote a book about recruiting, it would look like Jerry’s book.

Josh Matthews: 0:52

So today, stay tuned because we’re going to talk about how to become a destination employer, how to elevate your career as a business leader by being able to hire the right way. That means working with your recruiters in the right, with the right style of engagement, doing the things for your company culture that will attract top candidates to you so that they’re chasing you down, and then developing a pipeline also of top performers so that you can get away from reactive recruiting and get into passive recruiting, which is going to absolutely change the level of quality of your team but also the quality of your nervous system, because you won’t be so stressed out right Trying to find people. Welcome, jerry.

Gerry Gadoury: 1:37

Thanks for having me on the show, Josh. I really appreciate it. I couldn’t have done the intro better myself than maybe the pronunciation of my name.

Josh Matthews: 1:52

Fair enough. So, jerry, you’ve been involved in recruiting and consulting, and you also have experience in the Salesforce ecosystem, so we’re very grateful to have you here today. Now, if you are just tuning in, this is actually a video. It’s on Josh Force on YouTube, but it’s also on the Salesforce Career Show. This is the Salesforce Career Show. If you’re listening to the podcast, you can check out the video, so you can see Jerry and I interacting live by going to Josh Force on YouTube. All right, jerry, what made you decide to write this book?

Gerry Gadoury: 2:20

Yeah, great question. So I’ve been doing this for 25 years and recruiting, management, consulting, leadership consulting and I’ve seen the same mistakes get made again and again and again. Now this book is really targeted towards smaller businesses, startups, early stage SMBs. The concepts work all the way up through large companies, but I focus there because it’s easiest to execute change in those smaller orgs, to get them to do it right Absolutely, and at the end of the day, they need the most help.

Josh Matthews: 2:54

I mean large companies. In general, they already tend to be destination employers. It’s almost impossible to have an organization that has 5,000, 10,000 employees without people knowing about you, knowing somebody who works there, having a lot of reasons why it makes sense to work there, whether that’s stability, opportunity and growth, cutting edge tech, whatever it happens to be. So I’m with you, my friend. Any companies that are in sort of that three to 500 people are in that. You know that, that range. So you wrote this book based on your 25 years of experience and you and I are kindred spirits, I’d say, because we both got our start in headhunting and recruiting about the same time. Now you are a former. You came from the military originally correct.

Gerry Gadoury: 3:44

Yes, okay, talk about that. Yeah, so I did signals intelligence in the Marine Corps, which is a whole lot of wearing earphones and letting the static destroy your hearing and a little bit of very exciting stuff. But that really fed my passion for technology and for security cybersecurity. So when I got out of the Marines, did a couple of other things. I wound up as a technical recruiter in an IT firm and that’s how I really got started here.

Josh Matthews: 4:11

Okay.

Gerry Gadoury: 4:11

Moved through that to sales and management, branch management and all sorts of stuff, to where we are now.

Josh Matthews: 4:17

And you have a company that does consulting, where you actually implement the methodologies of destination employer with these clients, correct?

Gerry Gadoury: 4:25

Exactly correct. So Redbeard Solutions is my company’s name and, to your point, we implement the destination employer strategies and the point being, for the smaller companies, it’s to help them to better work with the support networks they build staffing firms, digital marketing, things like that and, as they grow and start to in-house this stuff, to teach them how to do it right, because I’m sure you’ve seen this in your career, josh, one of the biggest mistakes I see so often is an organization grows to the point that they want to internalize their recruiting efforts. So what do they do? They go get some recruiter with two, three years of experience who should be on a team maturing and they have them build the whole process and surprise, surprise, it doesn’t work out for them.

Josh Matthews: 5:07

Yeah, I see this constantly. In fact, I’d say that the majority of the clients that we serve have internal recruiters and a handful of them are very good and most of them are adequate for some of the basic needs. I mean, they can find an accountant, they can find some hard hats for the factory floor, whatever it happens to be. But when it comes to specific targeted, high-tech, challenging markets and I will say, the Salesforce ecosystem where I spend, almost all of my time it’s a really tricky.

Josh Matthews: 5:41

It’s an isolated tech stack and it’s very hard for sort of your generalist I’ll say young or inexperienced headhunter to get their arms around and be able to build that network, to really understand the nuances of it. We’re somewhat isolated from other areas of technology and recruiting. So, yeah, it’s tricky. Look, I couldn’t agree with you more about this because I’ve seen it so often. People get someone they’re like we’re going to say, look for the cost of two placements from Josh, I can get a full-time recruiter here and it’s like okay, but you know we spend a hundred thousand dollars on software every year. Like, are you going to spend that and give that to support your internal recruiter? No, why not the actual cost of doing a good job? It’s so much more than just the person at the desk. It’s all of the tools, it’s all of the knowledge, it’s all of the marketing, it’s all of the know-how, isn’t it?

Gerry Gadoury: 6:42

Yeah, but let me go one step beyond what you’re saying, and this is the real problem. There’s two business skills that, for reasons I’ll never understand, everybody thinks they can do. One of them is recruiting and the other one is leading. Everybody thinks they can recruit and because of that they don’t value recruiting. So they bring in that person because they look at it as a barely skilled job and they assume that anybody can do it. So obviously, if this person’s been doing it for two years they’ll be fine. So a big part of what I try to get through in the book is that a recruiter is a truly skilled person and for those harder to fill roles the Salesforce ecosystem being a great example, you know, best of luck, Mr HR generalist, part-time recruiter, finding snowflake experts or MuleSoft consultants and understanding what they do well enough to qualify them. It’s not going to happen.

Gerry Gadoury: 7:33

Not because that person isn’t skilled, but because they haven’t taken the time to develop these skills.

Josh Matthews: 7:40

Yeah, and I’ll tell you something else, and I saw this. I’m going to read a little quote from your book right now, and it was one of the tips. And this is one of the things I really liked about your book is you made it very easy to see practical things that you can do right now with your tips in italics throughout the book. And this tip says the more authority a recruiter has to push back on managers during the job order intake, the more critical thinking will occur prior to engaging with candidates. If the recruiter is only an order taker, then you’re robbing yourself of an opportunity to craft more compelling job descriptions, ensure the right qualifying criteria are in place and that the right skills and experiences are being sought after.

Josh Matthews: 8:18

This stood out to me so well. So well because the other challenge with bringing on inexperienced internal headhunters or internal recruiters is they are 100% employed by that company. When you’re 25, 30 years old, the idea of pushing back on the CEO or the owner or the president there’s no way you’re going to do it and they don’t, and it’s fair enough, right? So they’re not going to push back. When you’re a third-party, experienced recruiter, you can say look, jim, sally, whatever your name is. I understand what you’re trying to do here, but I’m telling you patently there’s a better way to do this.

Josh Matthews: 9:07

I’m concerned that you’re putting this position in a high-risk situation for failure, where you might believe that you’re hiring the right person and it takes three, four, five months to discover that you’ve made a mistake. Now you’ve lost five months of work. You’ve lost two months of recruiting, you’ve lost all of the business and the results from that time. So let’s take some time right now and allow me to push back on you and challenge you and ask well, why is that necessary? Well, why do you really need that? Or have you considered maybe you just need an architect for a month, and then maybe five hours a month for oversight and let’s get someone more affordable in here, things like that, right? So I was going to ask if you agree, but you’re the one who wrote it.

Gerry Gadoury: 9:53

I’ll slightly qualify what you say. I just said in that a good external recruiter does that. The unfortunate reality is many of the external recruiters working especially for the larger, you know, international firms and national firms. They’re not better, they’re just as order taker ish as that internal person is and there’s two ways we combat that.

Gerry Gadoury: 10:15

again, I tend to focus on smaller businesses, but but if you’re the ceo of that small business that’s big enough to have an internal recruiter number one, higher right. Number two create a culture that that business that’s big enough to have an internal recruiter number one hire right. Number two create a culture that leaves that door open where that’s expected. Number two if you’re not there yet or you’re still working with niche recruiters like Josh’s firm, if you’re still doing that type of stuff, make sure your recruiters do that. If every time you give them an order they say, yes, sir, right on it, it’s not the right recruiter there’s no way.

Josh Matthews: 10:48

No, there’s no way. There’s a competitor we have and I don’t know if they’re still doing this, but they set up their website so that all you have to do to get candidates is upload you know, attach document of the job description and then they’ll send you candidates.

Gerry Gadoury: 11:12

No conversation. That’s the type of business that’s going to end our industry. So really quick, funny, relevant story. My very first job selling in this industry. One of my early clients was Monster.

Gerry Gadoury: 11:20

Remember Monster Board when they were the thing I was driving to their office when, on the radio yes, we listened to the radio in those days On the radio they were running an ad about how they were going to put agencies out of business. I was going there to visit my five database consultants on their site and they’re going to put us out of business and I laughed about it, but, but, but. What we need to focus on is is engagement and value. What you just described is how AI takes over. If there’s no interaction, no pushback, no consultativeness, what value do you have?

Josh Matthews: 11:58

Agreed, so okay, so that’s and that’s, guys. That’s, that’s a half of a page from out of 170 pages in this book, right? So there’s a tremendous amount of value in this. I also saw some other things that I really liked, and it had to do with what, basically, when should you pull the trigger on a good candidate?

Josh Matthews: 12:20

And you shared a little an old hunting tip, which was never pass a buck on day one of the hunt that you’d be happy to shoot on the last day of the hunt, right? In other words, don’t lose the solid candidates you have today for the perfect candidate that may never come. This is the you know bird in hand to in the bush another hunting example, but fair enough, because you know we get the title headhunter for a reason. So how many times have you seen this happen? And if you don’t know the number, it’s okay, but I’m imagining it. It’s not dissimilar to my experience where companies and clients have lost incredible talent right, either because they’re still waiting for the unicorn right, or their tempo is off right, and you talk quite a bit about hiring tempo. So maybe just talk a little bit about what hiring managers should be doing from a tempo standpoint once they begin the search so that they don’t miss out on the top candidates that have a lot of opportunity. Whether they’re working right now or not, it’s a competitive landscape for their skill set.

Gerry Gadoury: 13:26

What do you recommend? 100%. So first question first, that number would be beyond counting. I’ve seen so many managers lose great candidates for just that reason. But the second part and this goes to the EFG leadership framework that we talk about in the book we want to train our organizations to make decisions at the lowest possible level that it can be competently made, and the reason for that is twofold. Number one, it gets done quicker, to our point here, in a minute. And number two, and this is just as important, you’re training the next evolution of managers when you do that. So the longer it takes to get from presentation to offer, the more likely we lose the candidate. So from a tempo perspective, you want to understand what your internal interview process is and be able to share that with your external recruiter and the candidates, and you want that process, whatever it is, ask yourself, how can I shave a day? And if you’re asking that question to be more efficient, you’re in the right place.

Josh Matthews: 14:25

Yeah, I love that. One of the things we recommend to all of our clients once we start the search is, from the minute we get the search, pick about three or four days in the future and go out for two weeks and block out three hours each week for interviews Just block it off. I’ll tell you, I had this. I’m going to share an experience. I just had, this Friday, signed a new client interesting role. I had my team start working on it right away as soon as we even heard about the idea that we were going to be signing with them. We found a fantastic person. But before we send anyone across, we want that thorough job description, we want to engage with the hiring manager and they have a fractional HR person helping this tech company. This is a consulting company, 50 to 100 people, something like that. They had a fractional HR person as intermediary.

Josh Matthews: 15:20

So when it came time for me to say, okay, great, we’re all signed up, we need to schedule a meeting with the hiring manager in the next 48 hours, it was, yeah, she’s traveling for business. It’s like, okay, for how long? And it was like 10, 15 days. It’s like, okay, she has a phone, she has a laptop. Like we don’t need to. I don’t need to see her. I need minimum 15 minutes. Ideally it’s 30 to 45 minutes, but even 15 minutes will help us get to the heart of things. And she just kept pushing back and of course I don’t let it go because we’ve got these fantastic results. No one fired in the last five years that we’ve placed in full-time. We don’t want to mess that up by doing-, but that’s why you have this result placed in full-time.

Josh Matthews: 16:04

We don’t want to mess that up by doing that’s why you have the first goal, exactly. And the next day they fired us. They no longer wanted to work with us. So, fair enough, we don’t want clients like that, right. But my gosh, just the sheer ignorance that you and I both, I think have witnessed in hiring it’s like well, no wonder you’re failing, it’s no wonder. It’s an incredible disservice to the firms that employ them. I mean, someone founded the company. Someone put their heart and soul into it. They risked their home, they financed their mortgage, they spent less time with their children so that they could grow this thing. They hired you, you’re a manager, and now you’re effing it up for that person who built the company. That I don’t understand, and I don’t understand why more companies don’t know this and don’t do something about it in a very serious, serious way.

Gerry Gadoury: 17:04

Can I talk about that part a second? Yeah, yeah, so you said something interesting that I’ve talked about many times. So a person starts a company, they’re all passion and excitement and they achieve to the point that they require a layer of managers under them. This is where that leadership framework is so important, and what you described happens if you don’t do it. You’ve got to inculcate your values and the way you want things done in the layer under you. What many owners and founders do is they assume, because those people see the way they do things, that they’re going to do them the same way. Not the case. Remember what I said at the beginning there’s two skills that everybody thinks that they can do recruit and lead. And leadership is a skill. And again, I know you painted the founder as the victim. I think that’s a victim that has some blame on their hands.

Josh Matthews: 17:57

Yeah, look, of course, absolutely, Absolutely of course. I’m just always shocked when people hire experts and then don’t take their advice. You know, we were talking about it on my podcast just last week. I think that’s going to get released next week, but we were just talking about it and I was asking Fred Cadena, who is a panelist and I’m on his podcast often to banking on disruption, and I asked him. I said, fred, what happens to the results when your clients don’t take your advice? You can guess the answer Things don’t go well and sometimes you need to let them go.

Gerry Gadoury: 18:37

Interesting thing on that. So I don’t do this anymore. But when I was management consulting I charged $2.75 an hour and I would only do it in packages. So I wasn’t a cheap prom date and typically they were three to six month retainers. And I discovered something after a couple of years and frankly it’s part of the reason why I got out of it.

Gerry Gadoury: 18:55

So people would hire me because they hit a plateau and they couldn’t get past it, and what happened more often than not was if I were to phrase it differently they got to a place where they were comfortable. You know, maybe now they’re the richest person in their social group or they’re financially successful. They took some money off the table, put it in other things, so now they’re secure and confident, they’re not hungry anymore. So they bring me in and I’m telling them things that in the back of the head they know are true, but that they know they’re going to have to put another level of effort into, maybe pull some of those resources they took off the table, put them back on the table, and they realize they don’t want to. They want to, but they don’t want to. So better for them to sign a check for me. That’s essentially wasted money and feel like they did something and just keep complaining than actually do those things.

Josh Matthews: 19:51

Absolutely. Yeah, I couldn’t agree more. And look, I’ve experienced that in my own business. I mean, when I started this company, it was two years of 80 to 90 hour weeks, maybe seven, 10 days off in two years, total, right, like that includes weekends, like total. And then it’s like great, I built something cool and now I can, you know.

Josh Matthews: 20:11

And then I got to take a little bit of a break and think money was coming in and everything’s good. But then the world changes, things change, and then you realize, okay, you need to invest, Like we. You know we invested quite a big sum in consulting this winter, same for the same reasons, because I don’t want to spend all that time. I’ve got this whole life. I want to live too. So I really understand that. But yeah, it’s just when you write a check, as my friend puts it, he’ll say like, hey, look what I did to the backyard, do you see what I did here and what I did here? And then he’ll say, okay, I didn’t do it, I paid someone to do it, and it’s the same level of satisfaction. He said, it doesn’t matter if I paid to do it or if I did it myself, it’s the same level of satisfaction. So getting consultants like you in the door to help them makes sense.

Gerry Gadoury: 20:59

You know it’s a funny thing. I’ve got a friend that owns a staffing firm that finds salespeople and recruiters for staffing firms and she has all the same complaints we just voiced. Working in the industry, you would think it would be easy peasy. You know all the same complaints and what I think it comes down to is people are people and they do what they do. But to your point, one of the things I’ve found when I’m working with a client long-term, I always ask them what’s your exit plan, what’s your five-year plan? What are you looking? To do.

Gerry Gadoury: 21:32

If they can answer that intelligently. I don’t care what the answer is. This is an ATM for me. I want an IPO, I want to be a national player. I just want to be a regional player. I just want to be a regional player. I don’t care what the answer is. I care that there’s an answer and it makes sense and they’ve thought it through, because those companies, they’re hiring you and they’re listening.

Josh Matthews: 21:52

Yeah, yeah, they are, and if you don’t know where you want to go, you just might get there right, yeah, exactly yeah. That makes a lot of sense. Well, let’s switch over to some other aspects of this of you know this methodology I I noticed. I’m going to pull it up here. This really stood out for me and I’d never heard this described quite this way. It was around company culture, because, as you know, when we’re trying to attract people and this book isn’t just about recruiting, right, this is how to be. This book hopefully makes it really easy for you to recruit because all the hard work’s done, you’ve got your employer value proposition, you can define the culture. It’s actually a real culture. So, speaking of culture, you said in here company culture is what your employees do when leadership is not there. It’s what they say about your company when asked by their friends and family, and I’ve never heard that description before. But, man, I got to tell you I love it. I’m going to be using that from now on. How did you come to that?

Gerry Gadoury: 23:00

You bought the book. You use it all you like. Yeah Thanks, yeah no. So it’s just observation.

Josh Matthews: 23:07

So you gave it to me for free.

Gerry Gadoury: 23:11

Okay, Then it’s 10 bucks every time you use it. So yeah, so it’s just observation. I work, again, predominantly in the startup and small business space. I’ve worked with hundreds of companies and it’s just become crystal clear that there are far more bad placements than there are bad people in bad companies. And what makes a bad placement? You don’t fit there? It might be skillset, sure, but usually that’s not the case. Usually it’s your personal mission and values don’t align with the company’s mission and the owner unfortunately has the toughest time seeing that, because nobody’s straight with the owner, Nobody’s going to say, hey, Josh, your company sucks to work for Nobody’s going to say that you know. So you’ve really got to work to uncover that reality and the better that you do and I give some strategies and the better you’re able to do that and articulate it to new people, the less likely you are to have what I described with that bad match.

Josh Matthews: 24:09

Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. There’s something else in the book that stood out to me and it was basically you know when, do you know when to fire someone? And this is kind of buried right around top of page 52. And you talk a little bit about how you’re going to build out this team, right Like that. When you bring someone on, you’re going to sit down with them, you’ll sit in their cube, you’ll help them, you’ll teach them, you’ll show them everything that you possibly can until they’ve proven that they’ve earned the autonomy to do the work themselves, but that if they’ve got all the right cultural fits all the right you know there’s they’re a good fit for the company overall, but they don’t have the skillset to actually perform the work that they’re hired for. Well, then you look at well, where else in the company can they fit? Usually we’re looking at larger companies to even be able to do this Smaller companies.

Gerry Gadoury: 25:06

Usually that’s to even be able to do this Smaller companies. Usually that’s going to be an out.

Josh Matthews: 25:08

Yeah, that’s right. But then the last one was if I just and I’ll just read it verbatim If I discover that they won’t do what I hired them to do, for whatever reason, they’re fired. Yeah, I mean, that’s it, isn’t it? People are so worried about getting sued. They’re so worried about having to justify an exit they get concerned about have I given enough of my time? Our onboarding process isn’t fantastic, so I’m going to cut them some slack, right? Or they don’t even know that they’re not doing the job because they’re not looking under the covers to see what’s happening.

Josh Matthews: 25:47

When they’re not there, the results aren’t there. But if they’re not doing the work that you hired them to do, then they’re fired and I love the part for whatever reason, right? So how many times have you begun to work with a client and maybe you’re doing employee reviews, you’re looking at the makeup of their team, things like that? Do you have a sense of how many? If you looked at all of the clients that you’ve supported, how many of them have employees working for them that absolutely should not be there any longer?

Gerry Gadoury: 26:22

Surprisingly large number. So, so, so, everything you’ve just described a moment ago is a leadership problem. Yeah, whether it’s, whatever the reason is, if they don’t have those answers as to leadership problem and I just want to point something out to a lot of people, especially if they’re not in a leadership role, that sounds incredibly harsh. You know, if they can’t do the job, you fire them. It sounds heartless, but the thing to remember is this I gave them everything I had to get them there. If it’s clear that they can’t or won’t, you’re not doing them a favor. They’re never going to thrive with you. All you’re doing is robbing them of the opportunity to thrive where they’re going to because it’s not here. So that’s the first part. The second part is what about the rest of the team? If you’ve got five people on this team, doesn’t matter what it is software developers, recruiters, carpenters, I don’t care what it is If you’ve got a five person team and one person can’t do the job, those other four have to pick up that 25% and divide it. That’s right.

Josh Matthews: 27:23

The risk of losing your top people goes through the roof and you do.

Gerry Gadoury: 27:28

And you deserve it, and you deserve it.

Josh Matthews: 27:30

You deserve it. Because they’re looking at the leader and they’re going this person does not know how to hire at all, like I mean, look around, right, and the people that suffer the most are the top performers, right, because it’s like well, I want you to mentor them, I want you to lead them or help them out. And what do they do? They might not know how to actually mentor properly, right, so you could be an incredible Salesforce architect, for instance, but maybe you don’t know how to sort of help nurture someone or mentor someone along enough to where they’re allowed to make mistakes. They’re going to do some trial and error, but you’re just kind of there to pick them up if they fall. Instead, they just wind up sliding in Like mom, you know, with the science project, and it’s like oh, I’ll build the bridge out of popsicle sticks for you, right, and now the person’s never learning, so it’s a real issue. No, go ahead, sorry.

Gerry Gadoury: 28:25

If’m sorry If I could touch one more thing on that. So, for those of you that are really uncomfortable by that, let me give you something you can use right away. So the next time you interview somebody for your team, say this to them. I’ll pick on Josh, because he’s here, josh, really excited about moving forward with you. I think you’re a great match, but I want to be super clear about something.

Gerry Gadoury: 28:49

As you’re onboarding into my team, I’m going to give you 100% of my attention. I’m going to do everything in my power to make you succeed. As you learn what you need to do, I’m going to give you the autonomy you earn by you showing me you can execute, and I want you to understand, though if it’s clear that you can’t do this, for whatever reason, if it’s clear you can’t or won’t succeed in this team, the first thing I’m going to do is try to find another place for you in the company. If I can’t do that, we’re going to part ways there, and the reason is, josh, it means you’re never going to thrive here, and the second reason is I value this team too much to have somebody on it that can’t carry that weight. Let me ask you, josh are you comfortable moving forward, knowing that’s how I run my team.

Josh Matthews: 29:28

You got it, let’s go. But my point is yeah, no, you’ve lined them, you’ve set expectations, exactly.

Gerry Gadoury: 29:35

Which is what onboarding is.

Josh Matthews: 29:37

Onboarding is setting expectations.

Gerry Gadoury: 29:39

Exactly right, so that piece makes the rest easier in my opinion yeah, of course, of course, no surprises. Exactly. You know consulting if it’s taught me anything. I don’t care what your discipline is. The key to being a successful consultant set expectations, manage them through the project and communicate effectively.

Josh Matthews: 30:02

You do those three things right. You can’t go far wrong. Are those parakeets that I’m listening to?

Gerry Gadoury: 30:05

communicate effectively. You do those things. Are those parakeets that I’m listening?

Josh Matthews: 30:08

to.

Gerry Gadoury: 30:11

I have an insane African gray parrot and he doesn’t switch to words.

Josh Matthews: 30:12

that probably shouldn’t be on the show. Okay, I used to live with an African gray parrot, then you know. Then I know. Yeah, he was a high stress bird. Pulled all the feathers. It wasn’t my bird, it was a roommate’s. Pulled all the feathers out of his chest.

Gerry Gadoury: 30:23

No, this dude is gorgeous. His name is Mercury. My kids call him Jerkury, and they’re right. If it’s quiet, he’s quiet. If you’re trying to do something, he adds his two cents.

Josh Matthews: 30:35

Hey, they’re social creatures, Yep. So when you think about this, you think about all this energy that you put in to developing this methodology, executing it, putting together a book. We’ve covered a lot of different things so far, but what’s something that maybe I haven’t brought up yet, that you feel listeners to this show, hiring managers particularly I mean again, it doesn’t matter if it’s tech space or not Sure, what’s the thing that maybe we haven’t touched on? That’s super critical for people to understand right now.

Gerry Gadoury: 31:11

Absolutely yeah. So first things first. I am incredibly passionate about this. This is what lights my fire. Now. You call this a recruiting book at the beginning, and that’s fair. But I would argue the reason why I break it out as attract, recruit, retain. This is about building and leading a team. Recruiting is a piece of that. But because so many people break that chunk off and make it separate, they fail to attract, they fail to retain and they fail to lead those people to excellence. And the more that you understand that those three things attract, recruit and retain are just phases in somebody’s interaction with your company, the more successful you’ll be. But most importantly, if you take the responsibility I know everybody hates the R word, but if you take the responsibility as a leader to make those things happen, you’re much more likely to thrive.

Josh Matthews: 32:06

You know what I love that. I’ll give you a quick story. I was so. I have a Tony Robbins executive coach and I’ve worked with him for almost three years and we had a meeting this morning. There’s a business challenge that I’m focused on and I’ve been trying to solve, and we went through an exercise and the result was that I’ve been lying to myself.

Josh Matthews: 32:40

It doesn’t feel good to have to admit it, and yet it feels good when you finally admit it, because I’m a huge fan of the truth. But I also know that this thing inside I’m a huge fan of the truth, but I also know that this thing inside this little skull of mine and everyone’s, is so well designed to protect your emotions, to protect your feelings, to keep you feeling good about yourself or in a positive frame of mind. Your brain is constantly in some sort of survival mode at any level, right, at any level, and it can be a tactic that your mind uses on you that everything’s fine and you’re okay and you’re not doing anything wrong. But that self-reflection is very hard to do, but all great leaders do it. They do it. It doesn’t feel good. If it felt good, everyone would do it right, 100% they do it.

Josh Matthews: 33:26

It doesn’t feel good. If it felt good, everyone would do it Right, a hundred percent. A hundred percent, so that I mean that’s just a real world example of today of having to be like, oh gosh, you know what? I’ve been saying this to myself, but maybe that’s not actually true. Maybe I haven’t tried this, or maybe I haven’t implemented that the way that I know it should be implemented. Whatever it may be, it’s so important also, I think, to own what we are good at right and own what we don’t know, and then you get the help from the people who do so. It’s as they say Russell Brunson would say, it’s not the how do you do it, it’s who can do this for you, and so I think you’re an exceptional example of someone who can help people do for themselves what they can’t do for themselves, right that makes sense.

Gerry Gadoury: 34:09

You said two things I would comment on. First of all, have you had a chance to go to Tony Robbins Business Mastery?

Josh Matthews: 34:15

I didn’t do Business Mastery, I did leadership and I’ve done UPW.

Gerry Gadoury: 34:20

So one of my clients long-term clients as a thank you bought me a ticket and sent me to Business Mastery and it was life-changing, absolutely best week. I grew more in that week than I did in a normal year. It was epic.

Josh Matthews: 34:32

It’s incredible those programs not that this is a big Tony Robbins advertisement A lot of people I think he’s a divisive character because people who understand him and can kind of get through some of the feeling A lot of people will feel like this is inauthentic. But it’s not. It’s not Plus the sort of hoorah bandwagon-esque folks that often are associated with him. And I’ll just say just this side of cult-like, you know people can get a real strange idea about what it is. But this is practical, scientifically based stuff around human behavior and processes that work. So I’m a huge fan and I credit a lot of my personal success to things I learned from him going back over 20 years ago.

Gerry Gadoury: 35:21

Same. I started off with him with the power talks 20, 25 years ago, but let me say this you hit it on the head, though. I’m off with him with the power talks 20, 25 years ago, but let me say this you hit it on the head, though. I’m going to take it one step further. Not all, but most of the people that don’t like them only see the rah-rah. The people that like them and stick with them realize that the rah-rah is to energize you in the moment, but then the follow through on the things he teaches you is where the success comes. The rah-rah is just for the event. It’s to get you jazzed, to get your energy up, to get you receptive, but all the things that you get he teaches, all business life cycle and stuff following through is where that comes from.

Gerry Gadoury: 35:58

That was only the first thing. The second thing that you said, though as a business owner, take full responsibility. Responsibility doesn’t mean blame. Those are two different words for a reason. I’ll give you a real, real quick example. We just landed a new client. Okay, we got in a wreck. They need help. We’re not a staffing firm. We do some staffing as part of our overall service, but it’s just maybe, maybe 20% of what we do, probably less than that.

Gerry Gadoury: 36:26

But but we got to reckon. My recruiters at all just shut down it’s 730 at night. They needed it. It’s a brand new client. I was recruiting until until midnight, crafting presentations, doing all that stuff, because even though I’m not a recruiter anymore, I’m the owner of the company. This is where the buck stops and I made a commitment to a client and they have a need. And was I happy? No, did I enjoy the next morning because I still had two hours of other work to do after I was done. Recruiting Also no, but it’s my job. And when that client’s happy and they renew in a year, our agreements are a year long when they renew in a year. That’s probably going to be a part of why. Because I took responsibility and move forward.

Josh Matthews: 37:09

Absolutely. You know, when we do the things that we don’t want to do, we are suddenly successful. Go figure, people think that it’s. You know. I remember thinking back when I was doing sales I was working for Robert Half and you know, in a variety of different positions. But I remember thinking like I was working for Robert Half and in a variety of different positions, but I remember thinking like I can’t wait till I can get out of sales and just go into leadership and I don’t have to pound the phone and this, that, the other thing, and it’s like no man, you’re just going to be doing that with more and more people. Exactly Because I did, I became a vice president and what do you wind up doing? Talking to more clients, doing more selling right? Exactly. Or dealing with them when they’re angry, yeah.

Josh Matthews: 37:51

Or dealing with them when they’re angry, and I realized you know what. It’s fun, it doesn’t matter, I’m good at it. Let’s go Like who cares yeah, you know who cares. But people who are absolutely resistant to certain aspects of their job think going into leadership is somehow going to magically get them away from it. Now, if you’re pouring concrete for a living, yeah, maybe you get to sit in the office and maybe you get to go out on the road in your brand new truck and spec jobs instead of being knee deep in concrete. Fair enough, right.

Josh Matthews: 38:20

But people confuse what leadership actually requires and demands of them. It requires this, I almost want to say like you almost have to tear yourself down and rebuild yourself to be a leader, and those lessons aren’t easy. They don’t come easy, they generally come hard. They don’t come easy, they generally come hard, and hopefully you’ve learned them early on or early enough in life that you get to reap the benefits for longer. If you learn them when you’re 50, now you only have X number of years of executing it in a certain way. If you learn it at 40 or 30, it’s way better. So developing your leadership skills is critical, but it always, always, always, always starts with self-reflection and true honesty. That’s what I think, anyway, yeah.

Gerry Gadoury: 39:11

I agree, and to your point. You just said it, so I hate to just reiterate, but the earlier you learn that lesson, the more likely you ought to be successful, because you’re not going to make the mistakes that your peers do. Right.

Josh Matthews: 39:25

Yeah, it’s just like you know. It’s just like buying, you know, index funds when you’re 20 years old instead of when you’re 40 years old, right, right, it’s going to be four times bigger, or whatever. Right? Invest early, reap the benefits for a longer period of time. Basic math.

Gerry Gadoury: 39:41

Exactly right. But circling back to why I’m passionate about this, these mistakes that I hope to help people to avoid in the book, by writing the book and by sharing the book, are very avoidable. And the companies that I see that embrace and it might not be exactly mine, but something similar to that concept they’re the ones that are thriving and are incredibly successful. Why? Because they’re creating cultures that are win-win. They’re creating cultures of accountability and growth, and it just again, having worked with hundreds of companies. When you walk into that location, you can feel that energy, you can see how people synergize when they work together. You walk into others and you think you’re going to get mugged. You can feel the negativity and the hate.

Josh Matthews: 40:29

Oh God, it’s incredible. I mean back in the days, pre-covid, I mean, we used to go to our clients’ sites and I used to walk around. This is back in Portland and I jump on my skateboard and go see five clients that day and they’re all downtown, walk in, maybe. I’ve got 20, 25 contractors working at this financial company and I’ve got three working over at this healthcare company or whatever. Skate around, walk in, you walk the halls. Man, you get that vibe so fast.

Josh Matthews: 40:58

Anyone who hasn’t had the opportunity to be in sort of an outside sales role or some sort of vendor, that you’ve had that chance to go into over a hundred companies and I’m not like people think about walking into companies what do they have? They got their auto shop, they got their dentist, they got their doctor’s office, they’ve got the grocery store, they’ve got restaurants, right. Where else? Maybe a therapist’s office or something like that it’s almost all healthcare, auto care, home care, right, and it’s got nothing to do with actual business. But when you start walking the halls of these organizations, you get that vibe like that. It’s incredible and it’s palpable. Now, walk them longer, you’ll learn even more, right, because sometimes what’s super rosy isn’t actually what’s happening, right.

Gerry Gadoury: 41:43

Yeah, and we talked about at the beginning when we were talking about how founders are sometimes the last to know because People act differently around them than the rest of the team. But I grew more in 10 years consulting to technology service and product companies than I did in all the rest of my career. I grew more in any one of those years than any 10 others for just that reason Getting to go and see what works and doesn’t work in similar but not the same companies and it was like a change, gary.

Josh Matthews: 42:13

We’ve got some lag. Sorry, we’ve got some lag. Hopefully the recording picked it up, but go ahead and keep going.

Gerry Gadoury: 42:19

I’m sorry about that. Yeah, so I’m sure it will. Riverside can be funny like that, but I will say, you know, it really empowered me to see what works and what doesn’t at scale, everything from companies as small as two or three people to publicly traded companies. I’ve consulted for all of them on site, done training for them, done leadership, performance management, coaching with them. And I boil that down and it’s I hate to say this because it sounds borderline offensive it’s not rocket science, nothing is complicated, it just has to be done consistently over time.

Josh Matthews: 42:56

Well, that’s the thing, because, look, you’re right, it’s not complicated, but one of the most complicated things in the world is consistency over time. Yeah, like it just is right. If you ask Tiger Woods what do you want? I want? I want to be a consistent. You know, I want every, every athlete. They want consistency, every leader. What do they want? Consistency with their growth, consistency with their revenue.

Josh Matthews: 43:18

It is one of the most challenging things in the world, because we stand on this round ball that does what it wants. Right, we don’t get a say in that. The good thing is, you know we’re extremely adaptable people, but how you know? So we’re standing on the ground and we’ve got to be paying attention to everything that’s changing. And you know everything’s changing right now economically, ai, global, global disruptions. You know there’s a lot of stuff that are impacting businesses, business decisions, where money is spent, what they’re doing. But the one thing that they can control is where they spend their time and, ladies and gentlemen, carve out some time to spend with Jerry and with this book. It will absolutely reinvigorate your team. It’ll give you the confidence to be an employer, a destination employer, and you’ll be able to look back a year later, five years later and just be grateful for having made that decision. Jerry, thank you so much for the time today. Tell everyone where can they purchase this book and where can they find you for your consulting services.

Gerry Gadoury: 44:32

Absolutely so. The book is on Amazon. I forgot to mention it. We actually hit number one on Amazon in three different categories in three weeks of being live, which I’m super proud of.

Josh Matthews: 44:43

So that’s incredible. What are those categories?

Gerry Gadoury: 44:48

Business, entrepreneurial skills, skills management skills and business systems fantastic congratulations.

Josh Matthews: 44:56

That’s not an easy thing, yeah yeah so that was awesome.

Gerry Gadoury: 45:01

Um, you can learn more about our methodology at destinationemployerco. We’ve got a self-paced program there. Or, if you’d like to work with my consulting company directly, redbeardsolutionscom. Or just look at me on LinkedIn. I spend an embarrassing amount of time there. Yeah, me too, my friend.

Josh Matthews: 45:21

That’s fantastic. Thanks so much. You’ve been listening to the Salesforce Career Show. If you’ve watched the video, it’s been on Josh Force on YouTube. If you’d like help with bringing on top talent for Salesforce professionals, visit the salesforcerecruitercom Ping me on LinkedIn. I’m pretty easy to find and, jerry, you’re welcome back here anytime. Thank you so much for the session today and thanks for taking so many of my personal thoughts and opinions and advice and recommendations and somehow channeling it into a book so I now don’t have to write it. Thank you.

Gerry Gadoury: 45:56

You’re welcome. Just send it to your clients when they’re being silly.

Josh Matthews: 45:59

I love it Okay.

• To learn more about Gerry Godoury, visit his LinkedIn.
• To buy the book on Amazon, click here.
• To learn more about Destination Employer, visit their website.