Today's Guest

Kurt Wilkin is a trusted advisor for high-growth, middle-market companies as founder and managing partner of Bee Cave Capital and Co-Founder of HireBetter. With a passion for growth and a hard-earned, proven set of tools, Kurt works with other entrepreneurs and CEOs to help them escape the start-up mindset and achieve next-level success. Kurt shares his insights on how to identify the skill gaps on your team so that you can make better hiring decisions.

Episode Transcript

(Please excuse grammatical errors due to transcription)

Gordon Henry:       Hey. Hey. This is Gordon Henry, at Winning on Main Street. This week, we're fortunate to spend time with an expert in the field of hiring and building the people side of your business, Kurt Wilkin. Welcome, Kurt.

Kurt Wilkin:         Hey, thanks so much for having me, Gordon.

Gordon Henry:       Great to have you. Brief intro on Kurt. Kurt Wilkin is a connector of dots, ideas, and people. He's the co-founder and visionary of HireBetter, a recruiting firm out of Austin, Texas. He authored the book Who's Your Mike?: A No-BS Guide to the People You'll Meet on Your Entrepreneurial Journey, and also the ebook, The Recruiting Industry is Broken. Prior to founding HireBetter, Kurt founded and led the controller group, TCG, professional services firm focused on accounting, technology and recruiting, which he and his partner sold to Tatum in 20... Or 2006.

                  Kurt began his career as an accountant with Ernst & Young, where he worked with early stage in high growth, middle market clients. Kurt's an active at angel investor, managing partner Bee Cave Capital, and he sits on the boards of several companies, a nonprofits. He lives in the Austin, Texas area. He has a wife and three sons, and he loves coaching youth sports. Me too. That's near and dear to my heart, Kurt. Kurt, tell us in 2011, this is after you've exited The Controller Group. You bought HireBetter, right? Your goal was, I think, to disrupt recruiting. What did that mean to you, and did you? Have you disrupted recruiting?

Kurt Wilkin:         Yeah, it's a great question. I set out to change everything I knew about the recruiting industry. I felt like, and still believe, much of it is dastardly broken. You mentioned the ebook, The Recruiting Industry is Broken. I came in and changed everything. The way recruiters are paid, the way they recruit, the types of roles they recruit and everything. In fact, it was so funny. I would talk to my friends. They're like, "Oh, tell me what you're doing." I'd word vomit on them, right? After 10 minutes, they're like, "Dude, I have no idea what you do because you say you're the anti-recruiter." What I learned is that, and got some advice on this, if you're trying to disrupt an industry, choose one thing. You can't change five things because you're going to try to change too much and people don't understand what you're doing anymore. We have disrupted our niche. We work exclusively with what I call high growth companies, entrepreneurial companies, who are going from scrappy startup to scale. We help them really professionalize their team.

Gordon Henry:       Okay. Where was the disruption piece in there?

Kurt Wilkin:         The disruption piece is most recruiters are trying to fill a seat. You got an empty chair, well, yeah, give me a job description and we'll start throwing it against the wall. What we created was a strategic approach and said, "You know what? You say you've got an empty chair. I want to understand what that chair is doing. How does it interact with the rest of the chairs?" Keep the analogy going. We created something we call strategic talent planning. It's our way of taking your business plan, your financial forecast, your hopes and dreams. What do you need to do to accomplish those hopes and dreams? What does your existing team look like? Most of which, or many of which, you probably outgrown or in the wrong roles. Then, let's start thinking about what you need to add. The book you mentioned earlier, Who's Your Mike?, There's virtually almost no recruiting in the book. It's more about what does your existing team look like, what are some of the people you've outgrown on your way to where you are.

Gordon Henry:       Let's talk about Who's Your Mike? It was a book that you obviously wanted to write and you felt tell the unique story. Why don't you tell us what was the message of Who's Your Mike? and what does that title mean?

Kurt Wilkin:         Yeah. Great question. First, I'll say it's a... While it is in the business book genre, it's the most anti... Different business book you've ever read. Mike is the title character, but not every chapter is set up like this. But Mike is your fraternity brother in college. You guys were best buds, thick as thieves. You trusted him with your life. When you started your business in your garage, Mike was right there with you, nights and weekends, helping you with all the administrative things, the back office stuff, the stuff you didn't like to do, and didn't know how to do. When you became a real company, Mike joined you as your accountant, still doing those non-biz dev non-product related things. Things like setting up your bank account, maybe setting up your LLC, stuff like that.

                  As you grew, you rewarded Mike's 100 weeks by promoting him. As he continued to grow with title and responsibilities, he didn't grow professionally. The challenge is Mike's never done this before. He's never built an accounting team for a $20 million company. He's making all this stuff up on his own. You look up and Mike is swirling. He's in over his head. He's now trying to negotiate a big merger with your biggest competitor, maybe a $10 million line of credit with the bank. Whatever it is, he's swirling and he doesn't want to admit it because he's so loyal to you. The question, for all your entrepreneurial audiences, who's your Mike? Everybody who's an entrepreneur's got a Mike. Either has one, used to have one, or will have one. Who's your Mike?

Gordon Henry:       Yeah. Fascinating. To just finish the story, so you recommend, I assume, that when you have a Mike who's maybe risen above the level where he's really capable, you've sadly got to find a way to exit out of Mike and bring in somebody who's more appropriate for the company where it is today.

Kurt Wilkin:         Maybe, maybe. That's the way the book is written is, look, I don't have your answer. No one's got your answer. But I can tell you stories of what other people have done and you can find the nugget in there that's going to support you. Every fourth or fifth chapter, I have what's called an intermission where we ask questions about Mike. Is Mike coachable? Could he become your CFO tomorrow? Maybe. Can you learn all the bumps and bruises along the way that you're going to have if he's learning on the job? Maybe you need to go too fast. You need to bring someone in from the outside. Maybe he's a strong individual contributor. What we often find is that Mike is a damn good controller, a good accountant. He's just not a future looking financial partner. Maybe we put him back into that role and bring in an outside CFO. Lots of different nuances based on his coachability, his humility, his capabilities.

Gordon Henry:       Hmm. Fascinating. Sounds like a really compelling read. I want to switch gears to more local businesses. I know you tend to work with these sort of high growth businesses, but a lot of the businesses that, frankly, are listening to our show, tend to be local business owners. They're a dentist or they're a plumber, or they're a roofer. They own a local business, a business that's successful. Maybe they have a couple of trucks on the road, servicing people's houses. They're not looking to become the next Facebook. They just want to run a successful local business. I say just because that's not an easy thing to do. I hear from them that there's a dearth of workers, that it's tough to find people who have the skills they need. It's tough to bring people in and keep them. What's going wrong in the hiring market today? Are kids busy wanting to be digital marketing majors and social media specialists, but not plumbers or roofers anymore?

Kurt Wilkin:         First and foremost, we tell all of our clients and all companies, the employees of today are different from the days of even two or three years ago before COVID. What I mean by that is, for the most part, we are, they are looking for purpose and meaning more than just a paycheck. Whether you're a forklift driver or a restaurant employee or a CMO, you're looking for something more powerful than just a paycheck. That doesn't mean you have to be saving the world. It just means you're doing something bigger than yourself. What most of your listeners can do is find that meaning, that purpose that they can hold themselves out for. Why do we exist? Find out what it is and, usually, more often than not, it's impactful. If it's just making money, that could be a purpose. You're going to attract certain employees, but not all of them.

Gordon Henry:       I've always heard that the key to keeping an employee happy is good manager, that they like their manager, that it's not necessarily about pay. Maybe not even about the higher cause of the company. That they have a good manager who does things that managers should do, look after them, mentors and so forth. That's nothing new. That's the way it's been for a long time. Are you saying that's no longer true that those kind of old ideas about what made people like a job and stay are no longer true and it's got to be this higher purpose idea?

Kurt Wilkin:         I think the manager is part of the higher purpose, in my opinion. The manager is not necessarily whether you're good at holding people accountable and giving people direction. That's also the relationships that you build and the type of person that your manager is. That's what I think of when I think of staying for managers. That's something we have at HireBetter is, I think, the people aspect is so strong that people are staying, oftentimes, for managers, because they can make more money elsewhere, especially being recruiters right now.

Gordon Henry:       What are the fundamental concepts other than this mission that you talked about? Are there other fundamental concepts about hiring better that companies who come to you need to learn in order to succeed?

Kurt Wilkin:         There's a whole myth out there for companies that only need to hire A players, or you should only hire A players. We have a chapter in my book called B Player Bob, where we say, "Look, B players have a place too. In fact, a B player can be a really good employee. They're not necessarily your future president, but they're very solid employees." Just understanding that is part of the aspect, but here's the bigger things that more to your question. Especially in today's job market, if you look back two or three years ago, most companies were hiring based on LinkedIn and Indeed and other job boards. If you get somebody to answer an ad, it's not that hard to get them to join your company. They're probably C players.

                  If you really want to hire an A or B player, sure you need to interview them and screen them and do all the things you want to do, but you've got to sell them some sizzle too. Why should they leave their amazing opportunity to come work for you? If all you're doing is grilling them and you're putting them through a five-week process and having them interview with 30 people, and everyone's just organized and no one knows what they're doing, you're not going to win the A or B players. You're only going to be able to get what's left over. Put on your own A game if you're going to try to attract amazing teammates.

Gordon Henry:       We have more to cover with Kurt Wilkin, but first, a message for Winning on Main Street guest, Mark Myers, over at Peak Profit Solutions. It's unfortunate that every year, an estimated 90% of high-income earning employees and businesses overpay at taxes. Yes, overpay at taxes. If only they have the time and resources to navigate the seemingly endless pages of tax code, larger companies have those resources. As a result, they often pay zero or very little in tax. Well, the good news is there's hope and it starts with a brief phone call to Mark Myers, founder of Peak Profit Solutions. Mark is a tax savings architect and has a track record reducing his client's tax burden by 30 to 60%. No need to change your CPA or invest in high risk assets. If you're tired of cutting fat checks to the IRS and want to know how to pay lower rates like the big guys, book a free 20-minute consultation with Mark. Just go to peakprofitsolutions.com, and click on Schedule An Appointment. Knowledge is powerful when properly applied. Peakprofitsolutions.com.

                  Back to Kurt Wilkin, curious about your thoughts on virtual work and this whole question of what should the work environment be? We've got some people saying it should all be virtual. Some people saying, "Nope, get back to the office." Some people saying, 'I want the hybrid in between." What are your thoughts on that as an expert in this area?

Kurt Wilkin:         Yeah. It's really your preference as an employer. I will say that if you're based in Tupelo, Mississippi and you want people in the office every day, it's hard for us, HireBetter, to recruit for you because there's a lot of other options that those A players have that might include a virtual or hybrid environment. However, many of your listeners, small to medium-sized businesses, they're not geared or set up to work with virtual employees. If you can't hold people accountable and you don't have systems and structure to make sure that they're doing their job properly, I don't know if I would do it. I guess most of your folks have the problem also of having some people who have to be on site, like restaurant employees and factory workers, and then you try to have a virtual office environment. That's tough.

Gordon Henry:       Well, Kurt, we're just about out of time. I'm curious. HireBetter is your latest adventure. You've been doing this, I guess, since 2011. What's the future of HireBetter and what's next for you?

Kurt Wilkin:         Yeah. Great question. We talked a little bit earlier about recruiting as a service. I'm super excited about that. On a related front, we've been working on we call fractional chief people officer, but most early stage companies have a desperate need for people strategy. What they usually pay for or get is an HR department that they hate. What we're working on is just the strategy piece and then we'll have another team do the compliance related generals things that HR people generally lean to, because I think anything more broken than the recruiting industry is probably the HR industry. That's the next on our list. But, for me, we've gotten so much success with Who's Your Mike? The book strikes a chord with entrepreneurs everywhere, because we've all had versions of these employees and it's been fun watching and listening to the responses from folks. I've been doing more podcasts and I know speaking engagements are coming back in Vogue. I know I've already been booked for some of those. I'm excited to spread the message. It's a great message.

Gordon Henry:       I just want to conclude. First of all, thanks for coming. How should people learn more about getting involved with you and HireBetter?

Kurt Wilkin:         We have a website for the book called at whosyourmike.com. We have a fun quiz for those of you who think, "Maybe I've got a Mike, maybe not. I'm not really sure my situation." It's whosyourmike.com/quiz. That's probably the best way. Hirebetter.com, I'm happy to be a sounding board for any of your listeners as they go through their own people challenges.

Gordon Henry:       Right. Well, thanks for stopping by Kurt. Great to have you on the show.

Kurt Wilkin:         Hey, Gordon, I love what you guys are doing to help small, medium-sized businesses. Man, keep up the great work.

Listener Reviews