#41: Aaron Grossman (TalentLaunch)

Aaron Grossman (TalentLaunch) [00:00:00]:

When I think about our industry and what we do, it's a grind. We're we're providing a service. It's a human being. That's our service. And guess what? The human being doesn't always do what they say they're gonna do when they say they're gonna do it. And so by design, we're putting ourselves into adverse situations Constantly. Because we are at the mercy of the human condition. But when you actually realize that why we're doing it Not the what or even the how, but why we're doing it.

Aaron Grossman (TalentLaunch) [00:00:30]:

Why we do it is because we have the opportunity to motivate the world to realize its potential.

Jeffrey Stern [00:00:36]:

Let's discover the Cleveland entrepreneurial ecosystem. We are telling the stories of its entrepreneurs and those supporting them. Welcome to the Lay of the Land podcast where we are exploring what people are building in Cleveland. I'm your host, Jeffrey Stern. And today, I sat down with Cleveland native Aaron Grossman, who is the founder and CEO of Talent Launch. Talent Launch is a network of independently operated staffing and recruiting companies that share best in class resources and back office support. More than that, though, as is wonderfully apparent throughout this conversation with Aaron, Talent Launch is an organization where culture is genuinely their foundation for success And competitive differentiation in the market, a strategy which has allowed Talent Launch to become north of $100,000,000 organization en route To a $1,000,000,000. This really was one of my favorite conversations so far hearing about how Aaron thinks about culture and the intentionality that he brings to it In service of helping others realize their potential.

Jeffrey Stern [00:01:43]:

So with that, I hope you all enjoy my conversation with Aaron Grossman. So recruiting has been a particularly topical Issue for me at the moment, I I think it happens to be what in my mind may be like the most impactful challenge my own company faces right now Off the bat of a Series A fundraise and trying to effectively double the size of the team in the next half year. And it it just forces some hard questions about Scaling culture and recruiting competitively in this remote world that we now live in and Whether to outsource talent acquisition or work to build that recruiting core competency in house and, you know, ultimately, People are a startup's and company's most important asset. And that's the, like, trite but true thing that is easy to say but hard in practice to really, like, Commit and prioritize finding, hiring, retaining top talent over the 1,000,000 things that a company has to to deal with. And so All this to say, I am excited to have you on today to talk about this world of recruiting more generally and and how you think about the space and And what you've built and are continuing to grow rapidly with, Talent Launch. So thank you for coming on.

Aaron Grossman (TalentLaunch) [00:03:02]:

Glad to be here. And, actually, you, you used, the Tagline that, that explains what our vision statement is, which is to engage every company in America that believes that talent is their most important asset. Because that is a step 1 is getting people to really understand that talent at the end of the day is the most important asset to a business, to the health and sustainability and the growth of it. And so that's that's really what we aspire is to find those companies that believe the way we do about it.

Jeffrey Stern [00:03:26]:

Is there ever an exercise in convincing companies that that's the case or those are just not the right Customers.

Aaron Grossman (TalentLaunch) [00:03:32]:

Those are usually not the right customers. I mean, they're they're the you know? And you can find that usually in in what they're willing to do with with how they pay their how they how they pay their people, How they train and develop their people, how they think about their people. And, and there's just there's businesses that just by happenstance not I shouldn't say by happenstance, but just by The way they're financially designed, they almost have built a company where they can't actually look at talent as their most important asset because they can't afford The right the right talent to kind of create sustainability and growth, they're just trying to stay alive, basically.

Jeffrey Stern [00:04:05]:

Right. Yeah. So before we get too deep down the The specifics of the talent rabbit hole. Let's let's start with, a brief overview here of of Talent Launch. You know, how do you describe the the business as it is Today and we'll we'll work, you know, a little backwards from there into to how you got started with it.

Aaron Grossman (TalentLaunch) [00:04:23]:

Sure. So Talent Launch today, It's a nationwide network of independently operated staffing and recruitment companies that are under common ownership, which is, which is me. In each of the each of the companies that we've either started organically or acquired throughout the United States, all of them maintain their own unique brand identity. And so, we feel that that's, that's powerful to, what we believe our customers want. They would prefer To work with, you know, a local or regional player in their given marketplace, and we believe in that too. We don't wanna act as if we're a national company. But what we wanna be able to do is provide resources and support to these smaller independently operated companies so that they have the power of a national company, But the look and feel and the customer service and and just the community of a small to regionally sized business.

Jeffrey Stern [00:05:13]:

Got it. So before we, we had turned the mic on here, we made some, some connections about our past and, and friends here locally in Cleveland. But I I had the the kind of privilege of working with Gerald, who has been on the podcast before, who runs, Able, Formerly employed Stream. But during my time there, I I kind of got this glimpse into the world of staffing and was just kinda taken that It's a highly competitive space, you know, tens of thousands of these these firms across the country, highly fragmented, very competitive again. And and so, Yeah. I'm curious what kinda drew you to the space initially and and where you kind of saw the opportunity within this world of staffing and What kind of the original vision for for this business was to offer scale and resources to the to the long tail of of the staffing world?

Aaron Grossman (TalentLaunch) [00:06:03]:

So you want a you're focused on the talent launch side, not not necessarily, but when it first got into staffing. Is that just to make sure I

Jeffrey Stern [00:06:10]:

We can go. We can go all the way back. We can go all

Aaron Grossman (TalentLaunch) [00:06:12]:

the way back. What?

Jeffrey Stern [00:06:13]:

You know? What first got you into staffing?

Aaron Grossman (TalentLaunch) [00:06:14]:

Okay. Yeah. Because they're 2 definitely very, very different stories. But I, what you what you probably will hear if you talk to most people in staffing Is that they kind of fell into it. I definitely was one of those people. I graduated from, Miami of Ohio. You know, wrestled there, Graduated a finance degree, and my 1st job out of college was working as an insurance broker at an insurance brokerage where they specialize in oil and gas and ultimately Hired me to kind of specialize in something different, and I I specialized in in the fitness areas, like the fitness centers, fitness equipment, whatnot. I actually had when I when I looked back, there was a couple of big things I learned in that moment, in that time.

Aaron Grossman (TalentLaunch) [00:06:52]:

One was that I learned in some ways how to be an what an entrepreneur What an entrepreneurial experience felt like because he said he hired me and said, you don't have to sell anything for the 1st 6 months, but you have to go pick an industry that's not ours, Figure out what insurance products would cover it and then figure out how to how to market it, how to find clients, how to do all of it. Right? And and I didn't realize at the time that that was and he gave me some tapes and some discs of some CDs to say, you know, here's here's your training. Yeah. And so I real I I didn't know at the Time that I was really kind of in a way, even though I wasn't an entrepreneur running my own business, I was running my own business inside of a business. And that was a a wonderful experience and really helped me when I did start my own business, back in 2001. The other the other thing that I I do talk about is this culture. Like, I I learned what Not a good culture looks like. I believe I believe there was only 10 people in the company, but I I believe at one point, one of the radio stations came live during Christmas time With a little tree and said, somebody voted us the Scrooge of Cincinnati.

Aaron Grossman (TalentLaunch) [00:07:52]:

And so, you know, I realized that that, you know, if I, you know, whatever I would do in my career, you know, you only gonna have 1 life to live, and I don't wanna, I don't wanna spend most of it in a place that's not enjoyable for me and not, not purposeful in that way. So I Put my re I was so miserable. I put my resume online, and I got a I got a call, I think it was at monster.com back then. I got a call from, division of Robert Half International called Account Temps, and they're one of the largest still one of the largest staffing firms in the world, and they're a specialized staffing firm. And I, I do remember telling my mom at the time, I'm like, I don't know what this is. I just wanna get out of here. And, And I went and interviewed. It was in Cincinnati, Ohio.

Aaron Grossman (TalentLaunch) [00:08:34]:

I went and interviewed, and there was, you know, probably 60 people in the office. It was bigger. I was in a 10 person office, and And they were all people, you know, you know, more or less my age. And, and it was and it was fun. And what I liked about it most of all was that It really kinda was that this this opportunity to work in this industry, it very much mimicked my wrestling career. And just wrestling is is It's a really hard sport. It's a lot of grind. It's a lot of repetitive movements, and it's about understanding what the little things are to Create the right position so that you can win at the at the highest levels.

Aaron Grossman (TalentLaunch) [00:09:09]:

And that's really what I thought. For whatever reason, that was my mindset when I got into staffing. It's like, how do I use my communication skills? How do I improve that? That to me is like, it's like wrestling in a match and finding ways to say things to get the influence or the outcomes I'm trying to drive, And I I I love that. I loved I loved coming into every day not knowing exactly what it was gonna look like, but that I have an opportunity to win With the things that I was trying to accomplish and I enjoyed that, I loved it. I remember the 1st week, the day would be, was supposed to end at 5:30 and I was, I didn't wanna leave. I just because there was more I could do. There was more I could win.

Jeffrey Stern [00:09:45]:

Right. Right.

Aaron Grossman (TalentLaunch) [00:09:45]:

And and I just really fell in love with it. So I I I started in staffing. That's how I I kinda fell into it back In in the late nineties and just really enjoyed it, did really well within the within, I think, 14 month period, I was at the I think the number one Producer, I think it was either a 6 or 8 state region. They have a they have a leaderboard card. You know, I started realizing that I could potentially do this on my own. I started my parents, At an early age, they were very entrepreneurial. They weren't successful entrepreneurs. They never were good, but they had this recycling business before People even knew what recycling was.

Aaron Grossman (TalentLaunch) [00:10:19]:

They had these golden goat machines that they would put at grocery stores back in the mid eighties. And it was really cool. It was really innovative, but it was Before, it was a little ahead of its time, and so it it went bankrupt. And at that time, my parents this is where I I really learned a life lesson for me that I that's carried on ever since As I was I was delivering the newspaper, my brother and I were delivering the the Cleveland Plain Dealer here down the street, and my parents couldn't pay the gas bill. They had an electric stove, and they would they would put water on it and then put it in the bathtub so we can have, you know, warm bath, before we went to school. But I I hated delivering the newspapers. I hated waking up. I was wrestling.

Aaron Grossman (TalentLaunch) [00:10:55]:

I was doing a lot. I was going to school. And so my parents decided, you know what? They'll take over my paper route So that they can pay the gas bill. Well, when they did that, the thing that kinda sticks on my mind is they my parents always thought differently. They they just thought differently about everything. And so for whatever reason, they they're they're doing this paper route to pay this gas bill, and what they uncovered at that time was that you were an independent contractor. You could buy you know, you can basically sell the plain dealer for any price you wanted to to the customer. So they were like, let's go find some affluent neighborhoods, Deliver the newspaper to to to them and and make some money.

Aaron Grossman (TalentLaunch) [00:11:30]:

And literally within 6 months, they were delivering to, I think, over 2,000 people a day and making over $100,000 a year Delivering the newspaper. And they turned it at that time from what was a kid industry with stuff that I did. Within a few short years, there were all adults Carrying it forward the way my parents did. And, and so I always kept that. I don't know why that's always stuck on my shoulder. It's like, think differently about Everything. And once I got into staffing and started showing success, that's exactly what I kept doing. I kept thinking about what can, how can I do this a little bit differently? How can I put my own twist on this and and and see what can work? And, and, and I ended up, you know, driving success.

Aaron Grossman (TalentLaunch) [00:12:07]:

They ended up promoting me to be, to manage, an underperforming office In Columbus, Ohio, and all I was applying was certain techniques that I kinda created on my own, some marketing techniques, and Just weighs more efficient processes of how to identify and and match talent. And, you know, I taught my team that up in up in Columbus, and within 6 months, we were the 3rd fastest growing Branch in the world, for them, that's when I thought I could start my own business. That's when I'm like, I don't think I need a big $1,000,000,000 company to do this. And I got incredibly lucky, like, super lucky, lucky, because I didn't have the money to do it. I didn't know anybody who had the money to do it, but I met 1 person for dinner who ended up putting me in touch with somebody who actually had owned a staffing company before was now in the automotive industry, and he was out of Detroit, Michigan. His name is, George Morales. And I went up there on a Saturday morning. Him and a guy, Rich Lindbergh, went up on a Saturday morning with no business plan.

Aaron Grossman (TalentLaunch) [00:13:00]:

I had a spreadsheet, and I, I wish I could have captured what I said because it must have been really inspiring because The next day he, he called me and said, I'm in. You know, he gave us a quarter $1,000,000 to start, Alliance. So So that was luck number 1. Luck number 2, even though he was the majority owner from an equity standpoint from up from 2001, 2011, He was never in the business, and he absolutely allowed me to fail. Like, he would not give me anytime I wanted to get advice, guidance to tell me how to do this, His his answer was figure it out. Make it happen. That's actually one of our core values now because it it forced me to really think about how I'm gonna solve Problem. He he knew.

Aaron Grossman (TalentLaunch) [00:13:38]:

He told me later on. He's like, I invested in you because you're I thought you were the horse. You know, you I thought you had it, but at the end of the day, you've got you've gotta run. You've gotta race the race. And he helped me understand that in order to race that race, I had to figure out how to solve my own problems. And sometimes those solutions weren't gonna be the right ones, But, you know, it's what you do with those, and and do you fail forward and move ahead? And, you know, fortunately, I was able to do that more times than not to be where I'm at today. So that was kind of how I Got into the industry. Yes.

Aaron Grossman (TalentLaunch) [00:14:08]:

And I started my own

Jeffrey Stern [00:14:09]:

company. Story. Yeah. So When you, you know, started the proverbial race, if if you will, was there a vision from what you were building with Alliance That kinda mirrors what Talent Launch has become today, or or was it a different vision that that has since evolved with some of those failings and learnings along the way that kind of Realize this opportunity for for what you're doing today with with Talent Launch.

Aaron Grossman (TalentLaunch) [00:14:38]:

I I think it definitely has morphed into a Completely different vision in a lot of ways, but one couldn't happen without the other. So when I first started my my business back in 2001, I really liked my my experience at working at Robert Half and working on account temps, and they had several business units that had their own brand identity, And they were all specialized in what they do, so they they hired recruiters who really would get hyper focused into an industry or job discipline and just get really good at it. And I really appreciated and found value in that, and that's exactly what I wanted to recreate. I just wanted to do it better. What's funny is I you know, as we as we get into this discussion a little bit more, The back of my mind, I always said I wanna I wanna be a $1,000,000,000 company one day, but there was absolutely no way I was gonna tell anybody that for a long, long time. I'm now I'm now, just like in the last couple of years, have have started to really kind of bring that out because that really has been my story since the beginning in my head. But, really, what I wanted to do was was do it better than what I had learned. Like, thought I loved there was a lot of things I loved about that company.

Aaron Grossman (TalentLaunch) [00:15:36]:

What I didn't was that the turnover internal turnover was just so high. It was something that was commonly It was a common thing throughout the company, and we always had to kinda defend that. And I I wanted to figure out, well, how can I really blend great process, Great systems with great culture? And if I could do that, I could I could scale this in a similar way. So Where the connection goes to where I'm at now is that I I literally did start over time. I think it was 5 or 6, maybe 6 different LLCs. They were all in Cleveland. They did share the name Alliance, but they had their own teams. And each team, which was their own company, really focused on a specific industry or job discipline.

Aaron Grossman (TalentLaunch) [00:16:20]:

So there it it was it was Robert Half like in that sense, and we were able to grow it pretty significantly. I mean, considering, like, in Cleveland, Ohio, we grew from $0 in revenue in 2001 to $21,000,000 in revenue by the end of 2006. So we grew we grew it really quickly. I wish I would've known about some of the awards that were, around that that around, because I think we would've won a lot of them, but, just felt that by creating these different specialized companies, we we could scale. And it wasn't until, you know, we, we went, we got, had the great recession in 2008, 2009, which, was a time where I created another, organization called the Wrestlers in Business Network, which is now a national organization. Because I was looking to identify from a networking perspective, like, where can I find my tribe? Where can I find people I can have common connections with So that I can save my business, because in 2008, 2009, you know, there's a great recession and no one's hiring, and that's what I did for a living? And, and we actually pushed through and did some innovative ideas that, I don't need to tell the stories about today, but that ended up we ended up making making money that year, and we were the only company, And Comerica Bank was our bank at the time. We were the only staffing company in the United States that actually turned a profit that year, and it was the only time our bankers actually came to visit us From Detroit to ask us how we did it, which is really cool. So but but we we kinda jumped out of the great recession in a in a big way.

Aaron Grossman (TalentLaunch) [00:17:38]:

And after we had done 21,000,000 in revenue, It it come really easy, quite honestly, and I just made this kind of vocal very vocal announcement that we were gonna be a $100,000,000 company or or $20,000,000 in revenue by the end of two Sixteen. Because I'm the kind of person that, you know, if I believe that I can do it, I wanna tell everybody about it because then it forces accountability to me to make it happen. So just was telling everybody I'm gonna do this. And then the great recession happened, and I'm like, oh my God. How am I gonna do this? But but, but part of our culture is that every day there's adversity. Every day there's obstacles. It's what you what you do you choose to hide by the obstacles, get get run over by that obstacle, or do you choose to find a pathway through it? And I just have always believed There's an there's a way through any adversary or obstacle, and oftentimes when you can get through it, you are much better for it. So I just thought, I'm still gonna get there.

Aaron Grossman (TalentLaunch) [00:18:25]:

I'm still gonna get to this $100,000,000 number. And we were climbing in revenue from we had actually got down to 12 a half $12,900,000 in revenue by the end of 2000 and, and 9. Then we jumped up to 25, then we jumped up to 32, and then we jumped up to 42. So I'm like, alright. This is climbing. But from a timeline perspective, that was 2012, I believe, I realized that, the way I had designed our business, I could not see the path to get to a 100,000,000 or 20,000,000 in gross margin by then 2016. Couldn't see it. Didn't know how to do it.

Aaron Grossman (TalentLaunch) [00:18:58]:

So I I actually took a pause on on thinking about how to drive my business through growth And really reflected it took a it took a year, really, to reflect a year, year and a half to reflect on on redesigning or rethinking about our business. I hired Two executives, 1 was a technology executive because I absolutely believe that the future state of how I'd get to where I wanted to go, Technology had to be central to it. So I wanted somebody to kinda help me, you know, realize some of the visions. One of them is EmployeeStream, which is now Able. That was one of the outputs that came from that, actually? But the other thing that that was an moment in that time of reflection was that I had created these 6 LLCs. We were providing marketing services to them, accounting services to them. We were providing all of these shared services to each of these independent, Really small, independent companies like teams of 4 to 6, but that's what we were doing. And and I thought, what if we acquired a company? Could that be part of our our growth strategy? And we absolutely realized that that could be a path to get us to where we were, and that absolutely opened up the vision to getting to to to getting back on track, to getting to a 100,000,000 and 20,000,000 gross margin.

Aaron Grossman (TalentLaunch) [00:20:05]:

So we got really lucky again. A lot of my story, there's luck to it that, I just happened to found my first Company was in Cleveland, and it was a small legal staffing company. So at that time, maintained the vision that I had around creating these specialized Staffing companies, and we just maintain their brand identity and just put them into the just put them in, just plugged it in, and that it wasn't like we had to do anything different. It's just another one Doing it for another one. So, so then we really started to kinda think bigger. And throughout this time, you know, I'm the, I'm the kind of person that really, I learned through, like, like, what you're doing with these interviews, I learned through just get sitting down with other people and just hearing their story, asking them questions. I wanted to I wanted to really learn about acquisitions and what were the good things about it, what were the bad things about it, what were the things that you'd be mindful of it. And in a very simple way, What I learned was that it's really easy to find a financially sound business to acquire.

Aaron Grossman (TalentLaunch) [00:20:59]:

It's really easy to do that. It's incredibly difficult To integrate them successfully and almost the main reason why is culture is culture alignment. So, you know, as I went through this journey of acquisitions, I really simultaneously was on this journey of culture. And and I had already Kinda done some of the prework because I woke up one day at when we were at $21,000,000 in revenue, and I'm like, how the heck is this happening? You know, I've got, at that time, I think it was 40 people working for me with, you know, a couple 100 clients. And I'm like, wow. Like, why do people wanna work here, and why do companies wanna Work with us. You know, there's gotta be something to this. And so I actually spent some time, like, designing our, you know, our core values, Which really at the essence of as an entrepreneur, you know, are things that I live by and and really went through that path.

Aaron Grossman (TalentLaunch) [00:21:49]:

But when I started doing acquisitions, I realized that the traditional, you know, purpose, vision, mission, values that are defined in a culture, there was there was actually something For me, that was missing. And it wasn't until I saw my 1st redwood tree in San Francisco when I got, actually when I was I got engaged to to my wife that it hit me. I saw this I went to this redwood forest. Have you ever seen a redwood tree before in person?

Jeffrey Stern [00:22:18]:

When I was younger, but I remember it distinctly. It's hard to forget.

Aaron Grossman (TalentLaunch) [00:22:22]:

Yeah. It's hard to forget. Like, I feel like I was walking in a comic book. Like, this is like, these things are just enormous. And and I just again, I I tend I think I'm a reflective person, and I just was, like, for days thinking of, like, wow. This thing has got probably massive roots. There it's huge, and but why doesn't it grow in Cleveland, Ohio? I don't understand it. And I understand it doesn't have the right environment.

Aaron Grossman (TalentLaunch) [00:22:42]:

Right? But then I'm the kind of person that, like, the way I simplify business is I just look at, like, the natural way in which people live. I look at our planet and how it how it how it is, and I literally thought to myself, that tree has roots That to me are the exact same thing has core values to a business or core values to a human. Like, I think every individual person has their own set of core values. Most of us probably don't realize that, but we're absolutely living through a value system each and every day of our lives. And and businesses, is there a little bit more clarity around that because, you know, a lot of businesses do try to define them even though they might not be right and they might not live them. But I thought to myself, it's one thing to have a set of core values, but if you don't have the right environment to your core values as a business, You'll never get off the ground. You'll never grow your own redwood. So then I spent time really figuring out, like, okay, these are our core values.

Aaron Grossman (TalentLaunch) [00:23:37]:

What are some of those things, those points of interest that we call pillars that really are basically the air in nutrition, that if we support Our core values through these pillars that we can actually grow a redwood tree anywhere we want. And that was really The the moment they gave me incredible confidence to say, I know I can find my people. I can we can find our people culturally anywhere. And I really felt so confident in it that the next acquisition opportunity that we had happened to be a company in Oregon. And this company in Oregon is called Select Temp. 1st acquisition we we did. And that acquisition is what led to the vision of Talent Launch.

Jeffrey Stern [00:24:19]:

I wanna unpack a little of what we talked about there, kind of culture as the foundation for success and scaling and kind of the The key that unlocks, you know, acquisition as a growth strategy for the company that, like, operationalizes it. One of the things that I I always think about with culture, it's it's like how to avoid the practice what you preach challenge of culture. Because I I think if you ask, You know, founders, if culture is important, you'll get a unanimous yes. But very few companies operate with virtue and values guiding like, truly In practice, the day to day decisions beyond, you know, like, living words on a website. And I know I can just sense that there is, like, this Real intentionality from how you thought about it and, you know, going all the way back to, you know, your childhood of understanding culture as Something that like, what you don't want also. So, like, how do you you talk about, like, putting it out there As a means to hold yourself accountable to it. But, like, how do you actually do that?

Aaron Grossman (TalentLaunch) [00:25:23]:

Well, I think, first of all, I mean, one of the other reasons why, You know, I knew that if we were going to scale a business, I couldn't be everything to everybody. And I knew back then because people told me this that, You know, I, you know, I'm inspiring. I'm, I'm motivational. I bring energy to the room, but I can't be me everywhere. Right? And and and that's really kinda how do I build a culture and and live our culture where where people are inspired to live to that that standard of of what that culture is, what our redwood tree is today? So, you know, one of the things that I I started to do from, with our management teams at the time was really, like, Anytime there was an issue, anytime there was a people issue or any kind of issue, I'd always circle them back to our Redwood tree and say, what core value is this creating a rub against, or what pillar is it creating a rub against? And that really, you know, helped people to start to make that connection To when there was an issue, it always had something to do with something that was rubbing against our definition of who we are as a company. And then on the pillar side, as we kind of got into pillars, what I, you know, I still do this all the time, is I'll look at our pillars and I'll say, Have we created programs? Have we created events? Do we have systems like our compensation system? Can I circle back and align it to aspects of our, of our pillars, and then does it then come back and support one of our core values? So literally, for me, that is my exact lens that I operate from, and I use it with every decision I make. Every decision to make has to come into that, has to come into that funnel, of our, of our redwood tree. And, and because of that, And because it's spoken about, because we talk about it all the time, it becomes who we are.

Aaron Grossman (TalentLaunch) [00:27:11]:

And I think one of the coolest things today, quite honestly, is is that is that internal talent acquisition has been a wonderful experience for me, especially over the last few years because we've We've gotten a lot of people, especially once we started thinking about that we could become a $1,000,000,000 company, getting people to believe in it, But more importantly, getting people inspired to this Redwood tree culture. When I when I, you know, I introduced this to to it's it's our first thing that we really talk about To a a potential key hire in our business, almost to a person, they're lured they're they're caught. They're they're like, yeah, I want that. Like, I I I've never worked for a company that Talks about that or thinks about it that way. I've had people cry, like, when I start sharing it, and, like, this is not just to me about a business. This is about a way of wish a way of life. You know, we're able to use this business to really, really profoundly live the redwood tree culture that we've created. And I believe that our purpose around all of it It's to motivate the world to realize its potential.

Aaron Grossman (TalentLaunch) [00:28:11]:

It's all centered around the power of potential. It's not about how much money we can make. We yes. We have to do those things. We have to show We have to show scale. But really it's about how do we actually serve our purpose and how do and we and we feel that through our redwood redwood tree values and our culture, We can actually motivate the world to realize its potential over time. When people ask me, why do you want to be a $1,000,000,000 company? It literally has nothing to do with it's a huge number. That has nothing to do with the money.

Aaron Grossman (TalentLaunch) [00:28:38]:

It has everything in with to do with, I think, the impact we will have been able to have When we've reached that that milestone, how many lives will we be able to impact? How many people have we engaged in this power of potential strategy? And can we change the world that way? My hopes are is that we can. And that's what people I think really, I think they join this journey because of it.

Jeffrey Stern [00:29:01]:

Yeah. No. It's it's very cool. I I do wanna just kind of unpack, you know, what some of these roots and and pillars are. I know we've spoken to some of them just Come as a natural consequence of the journey along the way when you started the, again, the proverbial horse race, you know, having to figure it out, You know, making it happen, that kind of mentality is is one of the core roots. But I love if you could just maybe speak to to 1 or 2 of of the other ones and, You know, some of maybe the defining moments are around them and and how you've thought about those in in practice.

Aaron Grossman (TalentLaunch) [00:29:28]:

Well, you know, entrepreneurship is is probably one of my favorite ones, but it's not, you know, Somebody actually I was at, I I I belonged to this thing called the Entrepreneurs Organization for many years, which is a nonprofit that engages leading entrepreneurs to learn and grow. And I I I did a lot. I learned a lot about how to how to do what I'm doing today through that organization and through other people's experiences. And, 1 guy actually was speaking at an event at MIT that I was participating in, and he talked about his definition of, of entrepreneurship? And it completely resonated with me because he said you don't have to be an entrepreneur to actually live the trait, the attribute, the value of entrepreneurship. And it's simply Take responsibility for your outcomes. That's it. Own your experience. And when he when I heard that for that moment, I'm like, that's it.

Aaron Grossman (TalentLaunch) [00:30:13]:

That that is exactly that is who I am because As, you know, wrestling and and and coming up the way I did, you know, I didn't have it always as easy, both but my my mom and stepdad, for example, at Different points try to try to commit suicide, and there's a lot of things that happen as a result to get to that point. So it was it was it was not always the easiest thing. And, You know, when it came to wrestling, like, you know, I, you know, nobody I, I when I made the state tournament, you know, I everybody I've ever met in my life that has ever made the state tournament in wrestling, Their parents came to watch them. I didn't have that. But I did have a community of people that supported me, but I had to own my experience. I had to take responsibility for it. I had to own it. And literally that value was instilled with me because of it.

Aaron Grossman (TalentLaunch) [00:30:57]:

I'm very appreciative. I'm appreciative of my parents for for helping me really learn that, even if it's even if it was the hard way, But I absolutely love that value, and I and I preach it all the time. And we at at the end of the day, we have we have so much control as human beings to be who we wanna be, And we are gonna make mistakes, but we can't blame others for it. No matter what, even if somebody else might have been a determining factor in that bad thing, You were in that moment with them in some way, shape, or form. And so I because I believe that to be true, I own it no matter what, and I figure out how to how to learn from it and grow. Love that value. Another value that I absolutely love, it's probably one of our hardest values to align to. I would say it's more of a Aspirational value, but it's absolutely something I talk about all the time.

Aaron Grossman (TalentLaunch) [00:31:43]:

And that's our our value of communication and how it's defined. And that's painting pictures to create alignment. And I always talk about the why. I believe that all of us as human beings have had our own life experiences. We have our own perspectives that we gain from those experiences, Which ultimately shape and stamp our own operating reality and how we see the world. And if we believe that to be true, and for Some reason, many years ago, I came to this mindset. And so what that helped me helped me get to is that I can't assume that anybody's gonna understand exactly what I say. I can say one thing, and you could be you could be hearing it a very different way.

Aaron Grossman (TalentLaunch) [00:32:22]:

So I know that. I believe that you have a different operating reality than I do. So it's really important that I take maybe a little bit extra time to try to, You know, really align you to what I'm seeing. At the same time, if you're coming to me with something that I I don't believe to be true, I don't immediately say you're wrong because I absolutely agree that I believe that you have your own operating reality. I wanna understand. You know? Because maybe you're right. Maybe there's something I didn't see. Wanna I wanna see what your operating reality is.

Aaron Grossman (TalentLaunch) [00:32:50]:

Help me understand. And because I I come to that basis, I've seen throughout my journey in my career in my life That I've been able to get a lot a lot of people to kinda come together on something and move forward because I take that time to understand that we all have our own operating realities, But we all can have the opportunity to see something in a very similar way so that we can move forward together. Love those values. On the supporting side, We have one that's called accountability, and that's really defined as creating transparency in our environment. So I, I, you know, I love Having an environment that we, we have open books, we, we, we share everything. I, I absolutely love that. There's 1, the, the newest one that we We added a few years ago, that I learned from Brene Brown, is, is all about vulnerability and really creating an environment where we can be our true self And and really, really move towards that. And I think that that helps us, you know, drive our core values further.

Aaron Grossman (TalentLaunch) [00:33:45]:

So I, You know, I lead that in in the way, like, I I just shared earlier, you know, something that I probably didn't share for many years with my parents. But, You know, I just the more that I learn how to be vulnerable and to be true to myself, the more free I am, the more the more space I give myself to learn and become the best possible version of myself. And I wish I would've learned that years ago, but I'm on that journey now of just having so much more freedom inside of myself to be able to become the best person that I can be. Those are examples.

Jeffrey Stern [00:34:14]:

Yeah. No. Thank you. Thank you for for sharing those. It's that's very cool to to get your insight into how you think of them. And and there's, you know, there's many more values on the streets. I imagine there's pretty awesome stories to to all of them.

Aaron Grossman (TalentLaunch) [00:34:26]:

Yeah. I want I want to believe so.

Jeffrey Stern [00:34:28]:

Yeah. Well, you know, one of the things I I was At the onset, curious about was how you think about competition and differentiation in this highly, again, competitive space, tens of thousands of staffing firms. But it's become clear to me just, you know, talking to you the last last few minutes here that culture has gotta be really one of the defining differentiation Things that that you do. But I am curious, you know, what what are the things that by design you are are trying to do differently, maybe that seem counterintuitive, That allow you to to differentiate against the, you know, the other recruiting firms that are that are out there.

Aaron Grossman (TalentLaunch) [00:35:03]:

There's a couple of things. One one, I'll actually just Go back to our core value of relationships, I think that creates a differentiator in how we approach things. So our our definition of relationship at our core value level It's to be a giver, not a taker. And when you think about any kind of sales related role, and and at the end of the day, we're in the services business. We we're a sales based Organization, we have to go and sell talent to kind of come into us so we can place them on our jobs. We have to go sell companies to trust us to give us opportunities to place people onto. And I've just chosen you know? So by design, when you're when you're thinking that way, like, even the way I was trained is like, go go meet that client and go get a job order. And that's a taking mindset.

Aaron Grossman (TalentLaunch) [00:35:43]:

And so we counterintuitively, I train differently. I want to figure out how do we give to that person? Educate them in what we do, but really give to them and and and and and and try to help them. And and maybe the way we help them doesn't do anything for us at all. But by giving in that way, at least for me, what that's what that's ended up is that I've gotten I've gotten business from so many different people that I never met before Because I might have given it to 3 other people and and and helped somebody out in this way and really give given my time. So that at a at a value level To me is a counterintuitive way to approach a sales based environment is to really be a giver, not a taker. The other thing that, that I'd say that we, you know, we do I would say, I think it's different. At least the focus is, is that I think a lot of people in my space, When they talk about I mean, it's it's everybody does this. Like they all say, you know, great customer service.

Aaron Grossman (TalentLaunch) [00:36:41]:

We're gonna provide great customer service. And to me, that's the outcome. Right? Of course, we all I I would be shocked if any of my competitors Said, I just really wanna do a bad job. You know? We do a terrible job for all of our customers. And so, you know, everybody wants to do right by their customer. To me, it's about how you do that. And so 2 ways in which we really focus on to with And to to believe that we can do, we can create that high sense of that that that great customer service that we wanna achieve for our customers Is, really a focus on technology and really kinda looking at what is available in the market, what's new, what can we create, like like, EmployeeStream EmployeeStream are able that can really create overall you know, remove friction to our process, Make it a better experience for our customer and ultimately drive the right result for them as well. And so, you know, that so you got culture, you got technology, And then you've got that process.

Aaron Grossman (TalentLaunch) [00:37:42]:

So we are we're we're hyper focused on process. Like, I'm probably a process junkie. Like, I'm always looking at figuring out how do we how do we shed, You know, a second, a minute or something off of our time by doing it something doing it a little bit of a different way. And I know I probably frustrate people at times, quite honestly. I probably In my company sometimes because, you know, you get used to doing something, and it's really hard to break a habit. And I'm the kind of person that's just Constantly wanting to break things and make them better. That's probably why I'm an entrepreneur. So, I I just really think that that's a differentiator because we really have a defined Workflow defined processes in our industry.

Aaron Grossman (TalentLaunch) [00:38:21]:

There's a lot of great companies in our industry. There's a lot of companies that mean well, but aren't Sophisticated and really thoughtful around really defining a strong process that can create the right result on a consistent basis.

Jeffrey Stern [00:38:33]:

Yeah. Now I wanna I wanna go on a a quick detour because I I think it will, I think our dozens of of Cleveland listeners here will appreciate the the story, but we can kinda turn the The Aperture back in in the past a bit and and just explore that, the story of of Abel, formerly Employstream, and and just How that, that came to be out of the work you were doing?

Aaron Grossman (TalentLaunch) [00:38:54]:

Yeah. So, as I was, mentioning earlier, you know, in 2012, when I kind of took a Step back to figure out how I can reshape the business to get to where I wanted to go. You know, we hired a technology executive into the business and I actually tasked him with like, He'd been in software development and I tasked him with like, you know, I want to create a technology company. I think this industry is ripe for, for technology. And I want, I know that we can, we can really enhance our process through technology and there, and I, we want, we need to figure this out. And so Over the course of a couple of years, we realized that there was this big issue on the onboarding side of of how we bring talent into into our database so that we can place them. And there's lots of compliance risk. And most people, in our industry, you know, hires the at at the branch level, they might be in charge of Hiring their own people.

Aaron Grossman (TalentLaunch) [00:39:47]:

And we don't necessarily as an industry have great training and development, and we didn't at that time either. And so we got caught. We were working with a a big company in Cleveland. I still hate that that we we we lost them as a customer, but it's because we had a new recruiter Who'd been with us for less than 3 months, he placed somebody out onto this onto a job. That person did a fantastic job. They actually wanted to hire that person on permanently. And when they ran their own background check, there was a felony. They couldn't hire him, and they were incredibly upset.

Aaron Grossman (TalentLaunch) [00:40:19]:

And so they, and we lost the account from it, but you know, that, what we found out is that, you know, even though we, we it's part of our training, like you've got to make sure you background Check everybody. This person didn't do that. He didn't background check that person. We lost an account, half a $1,000,000 a year in revenue, at least. And so that was really the precipice for, you know, solving that problem. And when we solved it, there was such a lot of manual work and manual flow of, an onboarding platform. And so over the course of a couple years, we created a solution that was really just meant for us at the time As a 1st trial, and it just worked incredibly well and allow us allowed us to not only manage compliance and regulation, We were able to create a better experience in how we flowed candidates through initially into our into our database. And it it allowed us to repurpose talent, internal talent, So that we can go and find more candidates so that we can bring into our database.

Aaron Grossman (TalentLaunch) [00:41:12]:

So it was like a win win type of situation, and I absolutely said, okay. This is the this is it. This is the beginning. Let's do this. So we I ended up, you know, spending probably a half $1,000,000 on hiring people and just building that building it into turning it from an internal Software into a software that we can actually sell to others. And, and then we went on that path of doing so. And then throughout that time, got Developed a relationship with Jumpstart and, North Coast Ventures in Cleveland, Ohio, and, they both, I believe, ended up Being the lead investor. Now in that time, Chris Snyder, you mentioned earlier before we got started talking, you know, one of my closest friends, we we've been, we've been in this EO thing for, you know, over, I think, 12 years almost now, and we've kinda grown up in business together.

Aaron Grossman (TalentLaunch) [00:41:59]:

And he he had actually approached me Because, Gerald Hetrick, who you said was on your show before, you know, was really wanting to, you know, run his own company. And his time at the company they were at together, you know, it was come was gonna come to an end. And so he knew that I was creating this company. It was starting to get some legs and, that I was excited about it. And so he introduced he I already knew Gerald, but didn't know him really well. And we ended up talking about it and really kind of getting into it. And he he's like, I I can see this vision here. I can see this.

Aaron Grossman (TalentLaunch) [00:42:29]:

Ended up joining the joining the team as the CEO. And it's been a, it's been a really cool, story to see, you know, to see something that you think, You know, you can see that this thing, I think, can solve some problems for our industry. And what it ended up doing is that they they onboarding did not exist as a category In our industry, before EmployStream, before ABLE. So they literally created an entire category, of thought within, within the industry, which has been really cool to see, and they've grown it successfully ever since. So it's, it's, it's fun to be a part. I think there's like 200 staffing Companies that are using it now, which is awesome.

Jeffrey Stern [00:43:05]:

Very cool.

Aaron Grossman (TalentLaunch) [00:43:06]:

Yeah. I think it's important to make the connection points to to culture. Because when I talk about our purpose, the power of potential because people ask me this question a lot. They're like, Aaron, you know, you created this thing that was obviously like a differentiator. You know, why didn't you just keep it internally and just grow your business that way? But really, to me, it was because I, you know, first of all, being a giver, not a taker, And realizing that this thing actually could help, it could help our industry create better better a better experience and and hopefully a better Representation to to our customers, because we we've always had a black this industry has a black eye on our ability to do really good work, even though it's a very much, I believe, an absolute Incredible industry that has so much value that it can provide to its customers, but we we've we've gotten a bad rap for many, many years. And I just thought that this could be better served If we it became its own company and actually helped the industry overall, not just me.

Jeffrey Stern [00:43:59]:

Yeah, no, I appreciate you, you tying the fact there. It is really cool. And As we, you know, back in in the present moment, as you've kind of been in the industry over the last decade plus now thinking about Where it's been and and where it might be going and and some of the, you know, the areas where technology, things like Employstream, Able, have been able to come in and then really kinda change you create a category within the within the space. How are you kinda thinking more macro about the world of staffing and The future of work and this incredibly competitive, you know, space in in in labor acquisition and Where we might be going from that perspective.

Aaron Grossman (TalentLaunch) [00:44:40]:

Yeah. You know, I I I kinda wanna tie in like the talent launch, the kinda network self and what we're trying to do there, because I think there there's some connection points to how I see, you know, long term, where everything might be heading. When I bought Select Temp in 2000 and and was it 16? Or is it it's been 6 years, 15? That opened up a whole Can of worms. A whole can of opportunities for me. Because it was the 1st company that we acquired that wasn't specialized. So they were What the industry might deem as more of a generalist firm where the re the revenue source is primarily gonna come through light industrial opportunities, and they're gonna do some light clerical. They did some construction as well. But we're a very successful company and have been around for 30 years.

Aaron Grossman (TalentLaunch) [00:45:23]:

And they were our people. When I found them, they're like, these are our people. Like, They're awesome. I've never been to Oregon in my life, but these are our people. They're I get this is great. And they all of the leaders have been with us this entire time. But what that got me realizing Was really kinda looking into the industry and understanding some of the problems that exist. There are roughly 20,000 staffing firms in United States, 150, $160,000,000,000 a year industry.

Aaron Grossman (TalentLaunch) [00:45:46]:

99% are not bigger than 50,000,000. 97% are not bigger than 25,000,000. So you talked about that at the beginning being heavily fragmented. Absolutely. Right? And then the are you familiar with the net promoter score? You know what that is?

Jeffrey Stern [00:46:01]:

Sure. But for for our audience, Get a brief overview.

Aaron Grossman (TalentLaunch) [00:46:04]:

So in a simple way, it's a survey that that that's done, that that this shares, you know, would would that person recommend your services? And it really kind of, In some way, kind of, you know, measures the experience that they have with you and how they their outlook of you as a company. Right? As an industry, this is what I was talking about earlier and and just the the bad the bad, outlook that it has on how clients and so they do this they do this Huge national survey. It's a best in staffing kind of program where the top 2% of the rated companies are rated best are considered to be best in staffing Companies. And so they, they, they enter they survey your clients, your talent. On the client side, a couple years ago, I don't know where it was last year, but a couple years ago, The score was a 4, I think, out of a possible 100. So this is as an industry how people think. So, so that that that went into my exploration to say, okay, we've got this growth barrier issue. We've got this net promoter issue.

Aaron Grossman (TalentLaunch) [00:47:05]:

Yet The bulk of the industry of this 20,000 people, 20,000 companies are these small companies that the that are the the business world Chooses to work with. So to me, I thought there was a tremendous there's a problem and a tremendous opportunity to try to solve for, and that was, What if we could we can buy these companies and this is the kind of precipice that the beginning of what talent launch is. You know, buy these companies, maintain their brand identity. But as a larger organization, we can actually have the the ability to drive the right resources, the right technology, Work together as a peer to peer network to drive optimized process and do that in a way that can allow these companies to to coexist within a network Independently, they have the resources to be able to support their customers in a meaningful way and ultimately drive past those $25,000,000 and $50,000,000 barriers As these independents. So that was really kind of the thesis and ultimately create a better net promoter score. The net promoter score is actually our first phase of this. So just providing, like, enhanced way in which we they teaching and working with our operating companies to to drive experiences to their customers. What ended up happening within a couple years, all the companies in our network had, scores roughly of about, in this low sixties Compared to a 4.

Aaron Grossman (TalentLaunch) [00:48:26]:

So that that validated that that part tremendously. And now we've been you know, COVID kinda threw us a little bit on on really kind of showcasing the organic growth that that we've we we we believe that we've been able to solve for In helping and teaching these companies different ways to look at how they do their business so that they can scale past those breakthrough barriers that that currently exist with us. So From a future state that created this, this idea of, of a $1,000,000,000 company. And so I see the future, at least from our perspective, of being really Abel really trying to help a lot of these companies where the the founder had had a successful business, couldn't figure out to scale it, Doesn't have a succession plan. We wanna be the succession plan for the for those for those companies. Now that's where we're going, Where I think the dangers are and where I think the market and where where I think of the evolution of technology will take us, and it's already starting to, there there's some of these things that are starting to pop up, and they're called hiring platforms. And it's really you know, technology's catching up with us in a way in artificial intelligence and The ability to kind of really get predictive into into data so that you can more accurately make decisions and making talent decisions Without the the need for human beings to be in the mix of that, that's already starting to happen, and it's already starting to to create scale In some of the lower level positions that exist in the United States. I believed that for a long time, and now it's starting to happen.

Aaron Grossman (TalentLaunch) [00:49:54]:

I believe that that's going to that's gonna Eventually become an evolution to the traditional staffing and how people and how how my industry actually connects back into our customer base. I think that that will absolutely happen. I think COVID has been a big reason for that the acceleration of these hiring platforms Because it's also what I also believe is that the way in which people work is shifting. And we already we already Iced I was actually presenting on this probably 5 years ago at different events on on the gig economy And that it was it was definitely here to stay, and it was actually going to grow tremendously over the next few years. And and and and I did believe it it would change the way We we do think about work. And, you know, Uber, you know, the Uber and Lyft, those were the kinda 2 big ones that started this this this kind of movement. Now you've got The same type of technology, being, you know, solutioned into different industries like Instacart. You wanna go grocery shopping, you got you wanna get you wanna go to any restaurant, but you wanna leave your house, go to DoorDash, go to, you know, go go to these, you know, Uber Eats, those types of things.

Aaron Grossman (TalentLaunch) [00:51:01]:

So that started the momentum. And then when COVID hit, What I've been hearing and what you see is that people are opting out of traditional work. They're opting into gig work and to different work and controlling their schedule. I wanna work 5 days a week, But I wanna work at these times. Or I maybe I just wanna work a couple days a week. With the acceleration of of some of the pay rates that we've seen over the summer, It's making it more attractive even to take on some of those opportunities, especially if you think about it. If you were if you were a a production worker making $10 an hour in In Cleveland are $9 now in Cleveland, which could have absolutely happened, you know, 2 years ago. You can go and work half the amount of hours making $20 an hour And some of these gig opportunities.

Aaron Grossman (TalentLaunch) [00:51:42]:

And I think that takes away from the traditional work that, you know, companies like mine have been, have been accustomed to fulfilling with our customers. So, you know, I'm on this mission right now to really rethink in some ways and make sure that we're staying mindful to the shift so that we can, We can slowly adopt some of those changes into, into our business model so that, you know, we don't wanna lose who we, who we are and who we have been, But we also don't wanna get caught with, with our pants down because we didn't see the world where it was going and become part of that new new world when it when it eventually

Jeffrey Stern [00:52:17]:

And this this makes sense and resonates, but how your culture will be extensible regardless kind of how the market Is operating. It's it will let you kind of work with and figure it out, you know, as as the market changes because it is dynamic and it's definitely changing. And I think we've all We've all seen that, experienced it over over the last few years now.

Aaron Grossman (TalentLaunch) [00:52:38]:

Yeah. I mean, I think a lot, you know, from a traditional stance, I think we hold on to some of the Some of the things that might be preventing people from, from taking on those traditional jobs, but I absolutely think there's a lot of people out there that will never come back the way they were, And they're gonna take these other new and creative opportunities that exist that allow them to have more control of their work life balance.

Jeffrey Stern [00:52:59]:

Yeah. Yeah. No, it's, It definitely it is this kind of foundational shift, in in how we're we're thinking about work. It's cool to see.

Aaron Grossman (TalentLaunch) [00:53:10]:

Yeah, it's, it's, it's definitely different. Do I wish it'd be uncomfortable and that we could just get back, get back to, you know, exactly how it was? Sure. But that's life, you know? Life is about evolution, and we're human beings, and we're always trying to figure out different ways, you know, we're all trying to find Opportunities where we can all create joy in our life and in our journey, and and work is is is something that is a big part of our life and not everybody finds joy in what they do. And I think that this is a, this is one of those moments that give people potentially an opportunity To find a different way to think about

Jeffrey Stern [00:53:44]:

it. Yeah. I know that that resonates a lot. I feel very lucky to have, like, found work in entrepreneurship that just feels more naturally like an extension Of myself than like work. And it's hard. It's not easy, but it's

Aaron Grossman (TalentLaunch) [00:53:57]:

But it is. And, and there's such a dignity to it. Like when you, when you do, when you, when you find Meaning in what you do, it is, it, it's not really work anymore. It's just a part of how you live, and you feel, you feel purposeful. That's really what what I think about our industry and what we do. It's a grind. We're we're providing a service. It's a human being.

Aaron Grossman (TalentLaunch) [00:54:17]:

That's our service. And guess what? The human being doesn't always do what they say they're gonna do when they say they're gonna do it. And so by design, we're putting ourselves into adverse situations Constantly. Because we are at the mercy of the human condition. But when you actually realize that why we're doing it, Not the what or even the how, but why we are doing it. Why we do it is because we have the opportunity to motivate the world to realize its potential. And it's really like you know, it's funny, like, because these are true things. Like, I I'll never forget, like, early on in my business, some of the people I hired, you know, When they because they were fits, we connected, I knew immediately they were gonna change my business for the better.

Aaron Grossman (TalentLaunch) [00:55:02]:

It wasn't gonna be me. This was the right environment for them. It was the right culture. They felt connected to it. They felt joy in the moment. They felt purposeful, and they ran. And I'm like, that was, like, that was, like, really the one of the one of the initial reasons why I first wanted to understand why is this happening because I'm like, how do I find more of those people? Because anytime I do that, it's awesome. Anytime I don't, it's not.

Aaron Grossman (TalentLaunch) [00:55:25]:

It's hard work. So it's it's really cool to have a purpose behind What you do and how you do. I wish most companies could think that way because I think it would bring back the true dignity of work that I believe is absolutely a part of who we are as human beings. I think there's such a dignity to it. And we just gotta be instead of thinking about how much money we make, what our revenue numbers are, How do we think about, you know, building a business around purpose? And it can be any kind of business. I'm a staffing company, but it can be Purposeful and meaningful, and people will find dignity in that in in that in that experience.

Jeffrey Stern [00:55:58]:

Yeah. No, I I, I I feel like I could talk to you about this for a very long time, but I I know we're we're coming up on time here. And I I wanna get to our our closing question, which Is is something we ask everyone on the show. And it's not, for necessarily your favorite thing in Cleveland, but for something that other people may not know about, a hidden gem, if you will.

Aaron Grossman (TalentLaunch) [00:56:21]:

Oh, so I didn't know you were gonna ask it that way. Because I was gonna say marble room. That's like, I, I love food and that's, I, I, I, I like eating there, but I will, there is another hidden gem restaurant that I, that, yeah, it has to be food cause I'm, I'm a bigger guy. I mean, I like

Jeffrey Stern [00:56:37]:

food. Love the food ones.

Aaron Grossman (TalentLaunch) [00:56:40]:

So, it's mama cantina. It's in Euclid area? It's by Beachland Ballroom. And we went there a couple of years back for, Valentine's Day, and it was a small Italian it was amazing. And then I find out like literally like a few months later, one of my, one of my closest friends that lives, lives down the street from me, he's talking about this Italian restaurant he goes to like at least Every few months, he's like, it's the best Italian restaurant I've ever had. And he says it, I'm like, Dude, I was, I was there for Valentine's Day. I just happened to fall into it because I was going to Beachland Ballroom for a concert and went there, and I was I was like, this is amazing. And he he he just raved about it. And so I think that's that's that's, actually, we're gonna be taking a couple there for their birthday In a couple of weeks.

Aaron Grossman (TalentLaunch) [00:57:23]:

And so that that's one that I I would say is a hidden gem. It's really, really good. And I think people should try it.

Jeffrey Stern [00:57:28]:

Right on. Well, it's on the list. It's an ever growing list of things that, needs to try. Well, Aaron, I I really appreciate you coming on and and sharing the story. I Really enjoyed this one and just hearing about how you how you think about company building. So thank you.

Aaron Grossman (TalentLaunch) [00:57:43]:

Awesome. Thank you for having me. I really, really enjoyed it too. It was fun.

Jeffrey Stern [00:57:46]:

Yeah. If folks have anything, they'd wanna follow-up with you about what would be the the best way for them to to reach you?

Aaron Grossman (TalentLaunch) [00:57:52]:

I'm on LinkedIn. I think it's Aaron Scott Grossman, is my LinkedIn profile. You can also email me too. It's grossman at my Talentlaunch.com.

Jeffrey Stern [00:58:03]:

Awesome. Well, Yeah. Thanks again, Aaron.

Aaron Grossman (TalentLaunch) [00:58:06]:

Awesome. Thank you for having me. I really appreciate

Jeffrey Stern [00:58:11]:

Thank you for listening. We'd love to hear your thoughts on today's show. So if you have any feedback, please send over an email to jeffrey at lay of the land .fm or find us on Twitter at pod lay of the land or at sternjefe, j e f e. If you or someone you know would make a good guest for our show, Please reach out as well and let us know. And if you enjoy the podcast, please subscribe and leave a review on iTunes or on your preferred podcast player. Your support goes a long way to help us spread the word and continue to bring the Cleveland founders and builders we love having on the show. We'll be back here next week at the same time to map more of The Land.