#76: Mark D’Agostino (ConnectedHR)

really believe that organizations what we go in and help and do that the right
human resource thing and it's not just all about compliance right it's about how to
build good communication how to make sure you know that the people within the
organization are talking to each other how people are feeling comfortable in their
roles right how the managers are trained right setting the Expectations and companies
making sure they're following through. I actually believe that human resources help
create a better employment experience 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 am your host, Jeffrey Stern, and today I had the pleasure
of speaking with Mark D 'Agostino, who co -founded Connected HR in 2014 and currently
serves as its president. Under his leadership, Connected HR has become one of the
fastest growing human resources consulting companies in Northeast Ohio. Before Connected
HR, Mark began his entrepreneurial career in 2001 by starting trifecta business
products, and as its CEO grew it to two locations and over 40 employees. In 2011,
he ultimately sold that company to an independently owned Ohio Corporation and the
year after co -founded a staffing and recruitment startup and served as its president
for two years. Marcus worked hard to bolster the business community in Northeast Ohio
having served on the board of Northeast Ohio's leading economic development
organization, the middle market committee of the Greater Cleveland Partnership, as well
as the Greater Akron Chamber Task Force. Mark previously had the privilege to serve
as the president of the Cleveland Chapter of the Entrepreneurs Organization. I very
much enjoyed having Mark's perspective on the changing macro dynamics of employment,
how the nature of work itself is changing, the business of fractional HR, and the
journey Mark has been on building Connected HR. Please enjoy my conversation with
Mark D 'Agostino. (upbeat music)
Mark, I've been looking forward to this conversation. I think in preparation for it,
just very evident that a lot of the topics we'll cover here sit at the eye of
this people employment storm I think that we find ourselves in recently with regards
to these tectonic shifts and the way work is being done, the state of employment,
the nature of human resources, and how this whole industry is involving what is
transient, what has staying power. I'm very much looking forward to getting your
perspective on this and looking forward to unpacking those topics with you today.
Well, I think before we kind of get to those macro level things and the work
you're doing with Connected HR, I know you have a past here of entrepreneurship
prior to the work you're doing today. And so I'd love to just understand your
journey to entrepreneurship and a little bit of your background and maybe just set
the stage for us here. All right. Well, I could tell you a little bit about about
it. A little over 20 years ago, I started my first company and it was an industry
that I was in for many years before I started the company. I always knew I was
going to start a company. It's just a matter of kind of getting the table set to
do that right. It got married, started having children. The pressures of life kind
of take over. But I started a company and it was an industry that I was in for a
while. And So I knew that industry inside and out like I wouldn't call myself an
expert. I was darn close and So started that and hit the ground running and it was
interesting how Back that long ago how you started a company, right? You you bought
a computer system. You bought a phone system, right? You had it was very brick -and
-mortar Feeling and I knew I brought some employees that I used to work with at the
other organizations that I was working for working for and we hit the ground
running. I had a bank of customers that I was starting with and within the first
year we were doing quite a bit of business and the second year we were killing it
and it was a tough industry. It was a supply industry, very brick and mortar type
industry but yeah, so that's how I started the first one. This company Connected HR
is a whole different story. Like it's just a completely different trajectory and how
it was started and it's actually when I do some mentorship with Cleveland State and
personally with some Kids the people that are rising into you know Want to get into
entrepreneurship and our business people and I tell this story all the time with
them How the difference of starting a company back then and starting a company 10
12 years later? Yeah, I'm curious, as you had kind of navigated that process,
what were some of the differences, what are some of the reasons you came back to
start something new, what was your kind of thought process? Well, for the first
company, I ended up selling it. So we started the company, I'll give you a date,
it was 2001, and then we acquired a company that was in the pretty predominantly
the Northeast Ohio greater Cleveland area. We acquired a company in the Youngstown
area. I had never been to Youngstown in my life. It's an hour away, but a world
of difference. It's just a different type of business community out there. We had
acquired that company out there, and the company had been in business for decades
and decades that we acquired. And we merged the companies together, and then about
four years into it, we were able to sell the whole group. It was a highly
competitive industry. It was tough. It was time to get out of that industry. The
big players were coming in and companies that were 200 times our size.
Navigated all that. It was very interesting. When we bought the company in
Youngstown, it was actually right when the recession was hitting. It was a really
interesting time. Banks were locking us down. It was rough. You learned a lot of
lessons during those tough times. It was saying, it was interesting, put a lot of
stress. But you know what, it tooled me up for the next evolution of what I was
gonna do. So ended up founding Connected HR. I have no HR background, zero.
And founded this because I saw, after I sold the organization and I got into
recruitment and staffing for a short period of time, I saw How grossly underserved
small businesses were with regards to HR? It's it's almost non -existent and So I
thought hmm. You know, I saw the there's a there's a thing out there called
fractional CFOs and Fractional CFO business is huge in the US. So I thought hmm.
Okay. Let's take a look at this Can we apply that model to human resources in the
marketplace. So I just pieced it together and I just said, "All right." And I
literally started one consultant and one client at a time and built it up over
time. So when I talk about the first business that I had, I had a bank of clients
ready to go. So we had revenue positive right away. This was,
all right, we got to figure this out. And I didn't I didn't know how to hire HR
people. I really didn't even know the right talking points when talking to clients.
So I looked back at that, I'm like, whoa. And so that was, really we took on our
first clients in 2014, and right at the beginning of 2014, and I was like,
man, this is tough, right? And then we just learned a long way. So when I started
the company, we had a virtual phone system. We did everything in the cloud,
right? We worked off of our cell phones, our mobile phones. Like they're the first
company, everything was brick and mortar. This was so different. And we really didn't
even really have an office at first. Heck, we didn't even get our website up for
two years. And so it was just a way, a way different way to enter, enter an
industry. And it was an industry I didn't know. So, you know, we're in our ninth
year now, we've learned a heck of a lot. And we're in the right business at the
right time, right? COVID hits, we grew a ton last year and small businesses are
screaming for HR infrastructure and help and guidance, right? And it's all tied to
recruiting too. They're all intermingled. So right business, right time,
but we've learned a ton. We've built things the right way. And as a business owner,
you learn things along the path. And you make mistakes along the path.
When we talked offline, you talked about lots of mistakes and learned from them, and
I sure did. So sometimes I see myself in the same pattern of making the same
mistake. I catch myself saying, "Uh -uh, you screwed that up once, don't screw it up
again." So in this business, this is professional services as opposed to distribution
for the first company I was in. So the difference is not so much the product or
service that you're delivering, but how you really run your organization and how you
treat your people. When I had the first company, I consider myself a very helpful
leader.
When somebody's got something going on, I sit down, I talk with them, you know, I
listen to them, I try to make people feel that they're cared about, and I don't
want to use the term a servant leader. I think it's kind of an outdated term, but
at one time I viewed myself as a servant leader. I was screwing so much stuff up
in the HR space when I had the first company. I needed help and guidance. I wish
this service that we developed, Connected HR, was around because I would have used
it for my other business. The controller and I were handling all the HR things, all
the related things, and we were fumbling them all over the place. And we were, we
had good intentions, we wanted to do the right things, we were just making mistakes
on them. So when I started this, a lot of the things, you know, since I don't
have that huge HR background, I think about things from a business perspective,
what matters to a business, something that's cost -effective, right? Something that's
on target, something that you can count on that's reliable. So when I started to
develop this business, that's what I focus on. And I just hired the HR experts in
that were the experts in human resources that could deliver those services.
And then I built an infrastructure around there, how to support them. them. It's
really that simple. It sounds simple. It's over complex,
but it was that simple to come up with the concept. Well, in those earliest days,
when you're, I think, going through the founding of this idea, how much of the
problem was one that you recognized having it experienced it yourself at your prior
company and how much of it was seeing it, the challenge,
the lack of HR capacity through the staffing and HR work that you were doing at
the time? Yeah, so that's a great question, Jeffrey. So I felt it while I had the
other company. I could feel like something's wrong, but I didn't know what I didn't
know, and I didn't really know how to fix it because there was no way we were
going to you know, $85 ,000 a year HR person to our, and plus there wasn't 40
hours of HR work in there, right? But as I got into the other business, and I got
into the transition business before I started Connected HR, and I started to see
small businesses and interact with their recruiters and with their HR people, I saw
a consistent problem over and over and over and over again. Like it wasn't at one
or two companies, it was its scores of them. And I thought, okay, there's a market
opportunity here. There's a market opportunity. And I can design something that can
help, and it can help these organizations. So it was just really taking a market
opportunity and filling the need. Can you kind of break down a little bit in more
depth the idea of this fractional worker? You worker. You borrowed from the very
growing industry of fractional CFOs. We've had actually Air CFO,
a company here in Cleveland on the show, but where maybe the inspiration for the
model came from and how it translates in an HR capacity. Small businesses need HR
guidance. Many times, someone at an HR administrative level doesn't have the knowledge
base to drive initiatives, build processes, build infrastructure,
build strategies, and most of the small groups need this. And it sounds complex, but
it's actually not. But you have to get to someone that's risen generally to an HR
director level in their career and have done these things before. So when I'm
looking at, you know, the companies Looking at the companies that were out there,
they didn't have this and there wasn't anybody that was going to be able to come
into there. They weren't going to be able to hire anybody to come in and do this.
I saw companies having HR people, they just weren't at the level that was needed to
build the strategy and the processes. They were getting some things done and they
typically had multiple other duties. They might have been pricing and it's payable,
right? So they could never truly really focus on it. And a lot of times they were
just pulled into recruiting, especially get into a manufacturing environment. You know,
the HR person is doing the bulk of the recruiting there too. So I actually picked
up fractional from fractional airplanes back in the day, like they're,
they're still out there, the companies, I actually didn't think about fractional CFOs
until I got further into it. I was thinking about a shared resource. To that
airplane, you buy a fraction of it, right? And you buy your time in there. So I
looked at that and I thought about that with HR people. So I figured out how can
I try to figure out how I can get the higher level, the people that have risen to
a certain level over their career into these companies and share them. And I looked
at the HR consulting models that are out there and a lot of them are 1099. So say
you were an HR consultant, and it was ABC Consulting, we'd say, "Hey, Jeffrey, we
got this gig for the next six months. Do you want to jump in and do this?" And
you'd say, "Yes or no, that you're full or not." We changed it. We flipped it. We
went to a W -2 model. So all of our employees are W -2 employees of Connected HR,
and we build their schedule, and they come in. It's a different way to deliver the
consulting services. And how is it that you're able to get up to speed with a
given customer and, you know, following the life cycle, the trajectory of a company
over time, are you able to scale with that company? Do you kind of facilitate the
onboarding of someone in a full -time capacity when they get to the point where
there's a sufficient workload to kind of mandate that? How do How do you think
about the relationships you have with the companies you have as they grow and as
you help them grow? Really on target questions. These are great questions. You have
a good understanding of this. We do start most companies with, we call it our valid
HR audit.
Before we did the audits, it was like a paratrooper dropping right and you were
just you know the HR consultant was dropped in there and they had to navigate and
find out what's going on and get it all said Matt there's a lot of stuff going on
so we did this audit and actually sets an agenda it sets action items it holds
everybody accountable on both sides you know to follow that and it gives us a it
gives them a game plan and so once we did that that that was a game changer that
was years and years and years ago that we started to do that. So that allowed us
to start to focus on some techniques that we're using, and then we started to see
the same repetitive things happening, so we learned as a group, and as we got more
sophisticated, and we were in the business longer, we knew the shortcuts, right? We
could see things coming before they were coming. Every company is unique. You could
have two manufacturers in Cleveland that make the same widgets that are right next
door to each other the same amount of employees, but the HR delivery and what's
needed in there could be very different. We really did focus on the companies that
we were supporting individually, but we were bringing in some proven processes and
best practices. When you started the company, did you have a vision for what
Connected HR has evolved into today or was it really more a recognition of,
"Here's a market opportunity. I want to try and solve this." Or were you thinking
more like, "Here's a company that I can build, addressing this problem." Both.
I saw the need in the market. That's the opportunity, right? But I also saw an
opportunity to hire people. Think back almost 10 years ago,
there was an opportunity, you have a lot of people that have paused to have start
their families from their careers at times, right? And you know, you start having, I
have four children and that's a lot of work when you have four kids. And when you
have even one child, but you know, you start to get to two, three, four kids, it
becomes, you know, your family time is important and your work time is less
important because you got to take care of your family, but you still got to put
food on the table. So I figured out a way that we can create an opportunity for
people to work in their state, in their career, but not have this, you know, 7 .30
to 5 .30 HR job that's they're getting calls after hours, right?
They're, you know, they're getting pinged at 10 o 'clock at night. It kind of
lowered the stress level of the of the of the HR professionals and they actually
can work a flex schedule. They can work full time or part time and it's up to
them what they want. So we designed it around the type of workers that we were
trying to pull in and we matched up with the market opportunity. The vision was
that we could actually build the best HR team in Ohio and so that was the original
vision of it and then we also wanted to bring a training center. So there's a
group in Cleveland that does a lot of manager and supervisor training and we wanted
to do more of that and we actually moved to Ohio City area right next to the West
Side Market and we opened up a training center and we did that because we wanted
to train frontline supervisors and managers because frontline supervisors and managers
in the small business world are generally not trained up enough. So,
COVID threw that back a little bit, so we're getting that built again and we have
to redesign it, reconfigure it, right, to accommodate. But we would get classes in
here before COVID, you know, 15 to 30 people and supervisors and we were doing
multiple classes and it was great and we would bring our team in to train and to
train them. And so, That was really the word. That was the vision. It's pretty
simple. Yeah. No, I think it is. It's really interesting, actually. As you were
talking, it made me think about, in my observation anecdotally, there is often this
association of HR with people operations,
with the underlying culture of a given company in a lot of ways. Because I think
when people think about employee enablement, onboarding,
the overall employee experience. It's tied in a lot of ways to a company culture.
And I am curious how you have thought about bridging, doing the HR work with the
company cultures that you're getting ingrained into and how you contribute to company
culture or or think about that? - Culture's tough, right? Culture evolved.
I love you, I wanna have a great culture. We wanna work on our culture. It's such
an ambiguous statement almost, right? Like, how do you even start to do that? I
actually take a step back and don't really say, I think the work that good HR sets
a foundation and starts to have an impact or an effect on culture,
right? But I really believe that organizations, when we go in and help and do the
right human resource thing, and it's not just all about compliance, right? It's about
how to build good communication, how to make sure that the people within the
organization are talking to each other, how people are feeling comfortable in their
roles, right? How the the managers are trained, setting the expectations and companies
making sure they're following through. I actually believe that human resources help
create a better employment experience, and if we go into a company and help create
a better employment experience that affects retention, it affects culture, and so I
really, there was a term we used early on, it was employer of choice. And right
And right now, we're seeing it because everybody's fighting for candidates and workers
and employees. But I really think companies that are being very intentional about
creating a good employment experience are going to be the ones that are going to do
very, very well in the market. So I'm taking a step back from culture and it's
really about the employment experience. Yeah, and I am also curious what a good
employee experience, how that has changed over time, and the amount,
the importance that companies are attributing to it these days and how that has
evolved. It starts at actually at the job postings. How is your company posting the
jobs? What do your job descriptions look like? Have they been updated? Are they on
task? Are they on task compared to what the market is? Are you paying correctly?
So think about how is the interview process, how is the screening process, how is
the interview process? Like these are all part of the employment experience, right?
They might not be employees, but it's part of the employment experience. So how does
that all of companies used to, you know, kind of like skip through those? I did it
too, right? Back at the other group. I even did it at the beginning of this one.
I just didn't know what I didn't No, and then I've gotten further into it. I
understand how important this is now. So how do you, onboarding is always
undercooked, always. It is the most important thing you can do. You know, we're
constantly looking at our onboarding. What can we do better? And it's not that
you're, you know, given a plate of cupcakes before somebody comes there, right? And
it's actually how you integrate them into your organization. Who are they allowed to
access? Who can they talk to? How do they feel when they enter, right? And part of
the employee experience, too, is how you're exiting somebody because, you know, not
all employment ends happily, right? Sometimes it's a little rough. So you do exit
and reviews. Your employees are watching how you exit people out of your
organization, right? Employees are talking. So there's all these things that are
involved in involved in it, how you're handling compensation, how you're reviewing
your employees, what kind of conversations you're having on a quarterly,
yearly, half -year basis, all these things are important. So there's so many things.
I mean, we get to sit here and talk about it for hours and hours, right? That's
all part of the employee experience. How are your managers, are you training your
managers on emotional intelligence, right? Are they able to have really good
conversations with their employees? You know, 80 % of the HR problems start at the
supervisor level. Supervisors are fumbling things and it's causing problems. You know
the stats of people leaving jobs because of their managers. It's true. It's very,
very true. So there's all kinds of things and when you look at all this in total,
it's all part of the employment experience, all of it. And it's so much work,
right? But, you know, you just chip away at it. You get a little bit better all
the time at these things, right? And if you fall off on one of them, you go back
and revisit it and say, "Okay, we're going to work on this again." Yeah. No, it's
very interesting. So maybe just focusing a little bit on the evolution of connected
HR over time. Maybe, you know, kind of paint a picture of where you are today as
an organization. And I think we can go from there. Okay, I think we're a very
blessed organization. We've been able to hire and work with some tremendous talent,
some wonderful people. They care about what they do. They care about their families.
They care about their coworkers. They care about their clients. They care about the
clients employees, right? You can never take that stuff for granted because people
that are conscientious and care deliver services and you know at the end of the day
we're all working we've got to work to make money and put food on our table but
the people that care they go the extra step and they make sure that things are
taken care of and buttoned up. So I think the reason I say all that is the
evolution of the company is we've been able to, as we've grown, we've been able to
bring on people that match our core values Core values I honestly I wasn't a big
core value person with the first company and I actually wasn't at the beginning of
this This company so what's evolved is? Everything's focused on the core values if
someone does not fit our core values But they can't come on our team and they're
not going to stay on our team so You know, we got our core values down They're
very very important and
If the evolution is if we stay true to those core values, the company will continue
to grow. And what, maybe just to unpack those, what do those look like and what
does that mean in practice? I'll give you a couple of them. So our main one is
collaborating. So as an organization, we have to collaborate internally. So when you
think about a company hires an HR professional, say they go out and they hire an
HR professional, Pay somebody to come in and be their HR manager director, whatever
That's a singular person that they've gone out and hired right so that person might
have you know Their previous experience that they're bringing in they're part of HR
Groups that they're part of and then they have their own personal network, right? So
they know what they know they come in they become an ex these workers become an
expert at the company that they're working at The connected HR team, we work at,
everybody in our team works at more than one client, so they work at more than one
company. But what they do is when they don't know something, they go to the team
and they collaborate with them and say, "I don't know how to do this, has anybody
run into this, can somebody help me with this?" We've built things into our company
that allows that to happen easier, and so now their knowledge base grows beyond just
that single person. So collaborating is important, but we also have to collaborate
with the clients. You know, it's not us just coming in and telling them, "You're
going to do this. You're going to do this. You're going to do this." It's not that
at all. It's like, "Okay. Why are you doing your PTO like this? Explain how it got
to this point. What are you struggling with? What's your pain points in it?" And
then you come up with some solutions that, "Okay, let's work on this. Let's
negotiate How we can do this so it's better for ABC and XYZ company, right? And
that collaboration is huge You know in the world right now people have become very
isolated Because of COVID and I think you're gonna see like a dawn of collaboration.
It's going to happen It's not yet, but it's going to happen and I think the
companies that collaborate better are going to be the companies that succeed So
Collaboration to me is is our number one thing. And you know, it's hard because
we're working at 50 some companies spattered all across Northeast, Ohio, right? We're
all over the place. How do we stay connected? By collaborating and it's it's it's
the number one thing. There was a couple years. I deemed like 2016 was the first
year of collaboration. So we themed the year, right? We did it again in 2018
because I felt the collaboration was falling off. That's why I point it right back.
If you can't collaborate, you're not a good fit for connected HR. - It's interesting
in a lot of ways that the shared ubiquitous problems of the companies that you get
to work with, you get to create this shared knowledge base that you can kind of
leverage to use, borrow from experience. Like how often are you coming Cross
challenges, HR problems that you have not encountered before. How much of the
difficulties that companies have are shared problems that other companies have?
You know, there's a line I use, I sometimes, when we're talking to potential clients
and clients, I say, you know, they're like, "Oh my gosh, this is terrible, you
know, we've got this." I said, "These are
said, you know, you guys, you guys are a good company, but you're not unique.
Because you have the same problems that a lot of other groups do. It's very, we
see a lot of the same repetitive things, right? COVID through it all sideways, the
COVID chaos, like that was a whole another thing. And, you know, we trained with
them during COVID, we trained with employment attorneys, we actually got stronger
during COVID, we got better. And we saw a lot of our folks quitting their jobs and
getting fired during COVID, they weren't able to build the resource network that they
needed. We were already before COVID building that resource network together.
And so when COVID hit, we were like, it was like, okay, we got this, right? And
so we were able to share information really quick. So I really think that our team
runs across stuff that they don't know. Sometimes They don't know it individually.
Sometimes they don't know it as a group. Sometimes if they don't know it
individually, they take it to the team and they get answers back from the team,
"Oh, I ran into that in my career at one point," or, "I'm doing that at ABC
Company right now." It's kind of a shortcut and everybody's accessible to each other.
Yeah. What does the competition look like in this space? When you're giving this
pitch, when you're trying to sell a customer, what are their alternatives they're
thinking through and what does that whole kind of market dynamic look like there? I
mean there's lots of HR consulting groups out there. I actually don't pay attention
to them much. I really focus on what we're doing but one of the biggest competitors
is actually a direct hire, like somebody going out and hiring somebody directly
instead of outsourcing the services to us. And I have a lot of reasons, depending
on the situation, why they should or shouldn't do it. There are times when you've
come in and done an audit and say you need to hire somebody full -time at this
position, at this level. There are other times I said the outsourcing through our
fractional HR services is the right thing to do. So we really look at everything
unique, but it's really a direct hire. That's probably our biggest, you know, if you
want to put it in the competitor category. Sure did your customers maybe poach is
not the right word, but but try and you know having built great relationships with
your people You know when they're they're at a stage where they're ready to build
that core competency internally You know try and and and pull your people happen a
few times. Yeah, it's it's happen a few times It's uncomfortable. We don't we don't
particularly care for it But you know, but our team that comes here They almost
everybody on our team, if you looked at our team roster, they left jobs to come
work in this environment. So they weren't, nobody on our team was a consultant
before they came here, zero. So yeah, it's happened a handful of times.
So we have the appropriate conversations at that time. Yeah. When you think about
the growth levers that you can pull and kind of the aspects for the future. Are
you thinking more along the lines of what are other services we can offer? What are
other geographies we can expand into? And I'm curious also with that, what keeps you
up at night? What are the risks that you're weighing? So compared to the first
business, I actually sleep really well with this business. That's good.
Sleep is good. Especially when you get older, like my age, you really want, you
really do treasure your sleep. So let's talk about growth. So yes, you can,
so this can be replicated in other areas, right? So we are actually opening an
office in Austin, Texas. It's starting now. So we're gonna, we're just getting it
going now. We secured space, you know, we're starting to look at the recruiting
environment there for talent. we're talking to potential clients, you know, we've got
proposals out and all that. So we've integrated into that business community and
we're going to continue to do that. That's such a growth area in the country.
There's so many businesses that are starting and there's so many business, there's a
ton of small businesses and as like the Tesla's of the world move there, all these
ancillary businesses are built to support, you know, what's moved into the area. So
we are focusing on that. It's a very inclusive area for us, you know, the companies
are, organizations are looking for companies like us in there, so that's a target
area for us. We have a couple of employees in the Pittsburgh area, we're intending
to expand into Pittsburgh, and we've done some work in Columbus, and we're gonna be
focusing on Columbus too. So there's certain areas that we're targeting that we're
gonna keep focused on, so geographically we can grow that way as far like this
isn't a service you can like sell to people I can't call you up say hey Jeffrey
you want to get some HR services like it's it just doesn't go away so you have to
build your referral network up and it's you know it's it's working with employment
attorneys it's working with fractional CFO groups it's working with benefits groups
that you that you're a trusted resource we get all of the work we get is referred
now all of it and These professional service providers out there when we enter when
they're referring us It actually helps them do their services in the company, right?
Because we're we're we're a very viable Calming force that shows up and we're very
organized. So we actually help the companies that they're supporting It makes it
easier for them to do business So, you know, I don't look at this business as
something that's gonna, you know triple in size every year. I do look at it as
continuing to grow, the need in the markets there for HR services. And I do think
that's how we'll continue to grow the business. That being said, we also did start
a separate recruiting division. We stayed away from that because we wanted to be the
predominant HR force in Ohio. We had to start recruiting because obviously the market
that we're in is crazy right now. So we needed to separate that. And we've done
the, I won't get into it today, but we've done the model a little different. We're
much different than a contingency recruiting firm. And so that's another growth area.
And we are actually looking, and I can't say specifically right now, we're actually
looking at either starting another business unit to support it or
we're constantly looking because if you're, you know, my, my views, if you're not
moving forward, you could be taken a couple steps back. I think we can go down the
detour for a second here. I want to maybe talk about the craziness of the space at
the moment and maybe hit on a few of these macro topics that we're seeing, great
resignation, remote work, you know, the mental health and burnout that I think we're
all feeling, seeing, experiencing in the space what culture in a remote world and HR
in a remote world looks like. You know, pick your poison here, but I'd love to get
your perspective on some of these topics. Yeah, so you know Cleveland, Northeast Ohio
is a Rust Belt area, right? So there's this manufacturing and construction mentality.
So it's kind of like, you know, get your butt in here and get to work. And in
manufacturing and construction, you got to show up to make money. Someone's got to
run the machine or someone's got to put the bricks on top of each other or dig
the hole. So when you hear in the media, a lot of the great resignation and hybrid
work, it doesn't apply to all companies in all industries.
very confusing and I think that the state we have a lot of construction groups that
work with us I think the status for every five people retiring construction I think
only two are coming in so there's going to be a huge deficit 2030 is the year
where you're going to see the huge deficit bigger deficit in manufacturing and
construction so you know those are things we have to pay attention to and And as
entrepreneurs, as business leaders, as governments, we have to figure out how to fill
these seats, right? And you've heard a lot of the conversations about, you know,
maybe college isn't for everybody. People can make some really good money being a
welder and have a wonderful career. They can have a great career in construction in
the trades, plumbers, electricians, right? Manufacturers are screaming for people.
There are some wonderful programs manufacturers have for people to get hired, right,
of all sizes. And I think what you're going to see is the smaller manufacturers and
the construction groups raise their game on how to get people. So I think that is
actually, so instead of talking about everybody that's leaving like tech companies and
professional services firm, I think there's gonna be opportunities in the other space.
We'll see what the United States looks like in a few years if that's going to
happen, but I think there's a huge opportunity and I think people can create some
very nice lives and wealth for themselves and have some great careers. I think the
great resignations, people are switching jobs a lot. I think industries just have to
adjust. I have many friends that are business You know, they've got six -figure jobs
they cannot fill either for competitive reasons because maybe they're not the right
career opportunity or maybe they're just not paying enough in that space, right? And
you know, it's a bunch of reasons. People are quitting jobs, but I think people are
quitting jobs for some of the same reasons is that this was just the time, you
know, they didn't really like the way the company was going, they didn't line up
with their manager, or they just got a ton of money from another group, and they're
saying, "Why not try it and see if it works?" I think we're starting to see with
some of our clients some boobering, where people have left for bigger opportunities,
and they've come back. So I think employers need to be open -minded about that,
like, you know, sometimes you get mad. Somebody's like, "Why did they leave me? Why
did they leave me? Right? Why did they leave this company? We're a great company.
We're a manager saying, "Why did she leave?" I think you got to be open -minded
about having them come back, right? Do a good exit interview. Don't burn a bridge.
Both sides. The employee shouldn't burn the bridge and the employer shouldn't burn
the bridge. Like, look, we're all trying to make things work. We're all trying to
get by. Life got really hard the last handful of years. Let's just be honest. For
all ages, right? But I think you're going to see a lot of people starting to
retire too. You're starting to see it now. So are the companies going to be able
to redesign the jobs of the people that are retiring to bring in some of the
younger talent? Right? It's a very interesting time. So I think there's just a lot
to be determined, Jeff. What are you most excited about thinking about the future?
You got to narrow that question down a little bit
With regards to I'll throw two out there the kind of trajectory for for connected
HR, you know, like in retrospect What is what is the impact that that you want to
have? And what what gets you most excited about thinking about the future of
connected HR and then on the macro side You know, just Given the changing nature of
work and some of these trends, of these elements, what is most interesting to you
about them? I get excited because every year we're in business, we get to work with
more and more awesome companies and more and more awesome HR professionals, and we
just keep learning and learning and learning. It's like our brain just gets bigger
and bigger and bigger, and It's just so interesting the stuff you come across and
you see different leaders, how they're leading their organization, some that do a
great job, some that maybe fumble a little bit. I get really excited when people
come on and they're so happy to be here and do the work and I get really excited
when clients are happy to have us there. It's HR. Who gets excited about it?
Human resources. But when you do a good job and there's a good marriage of the
services and the client. It's wonderful. I actually think that this business has a
lot of legs. It can really keep growing and going. I'm excited for the future.
I think we just don't know what we don't know. What else can this company do?
We're small. We're flexible. We can pivot and do things. I like that feeling of
freedom. It's one of the reasons I'm an entrepreneur and a business owner. I like
that freedom to move, right? And so I think I feel that way about the company. I
don't feel like, well, this is just the one way that we do it. No, like, we might
change. And I like, I like that that feels great. I'm excited for the future. I
think we're going through a hard time society now, everywhere, you know, you name
it, we don't have to sit here and go over the sadness of that. I think we're
going to have a renaissance at at some point. And I think that there's gonna be
happy times and people are gonna be excited to be together, be at work, accomplish
things together. I actually look very positively on the future. I think we're still
kind of going through some tough times, right? But I think there's gonna be a
renaissance and I think the good companies that understand that and treat people well
and try to build the best company that they can build for the employment experience,
are just gonna kill it. And I think some of the old stodgy type of way to do
business is just gonna go away 'cause they're not gonna survive. So I'm actually
super excited for the future. We got some challenges ahead, so. - We do.
I think it's more fun to be an optimist.
- True. True. Awesome. Well, I want to maybe bookend this conversation with a
question we asked everyone who comes on the show. And we're building kind of a
collective collage here of not necessarily people's favorite things in Cleveland,
but for something that other folks may not know about, a hidden gem,
if you will. Okay. I have one. It's not this huge amazing thing but I think it's
a hidden gem. The Hyatt Hotel in the arcade is awesome.
It is so cool. It's so unique. There's you know there's not a lot of that type of
hotel in the United States. It's just a cool place and what's near and dear to me
when I was like 19 years old and working through college I was I went to Cleveland
State and I And I had, if you've ever been in the arcade, there was businesses all
in the multiple layers there are. And I used to go to this one business and try
to sell them supplies, you know, when I was a 19 year old kid. So when the, when
Hyatt came in and turned into a hotel, I just thought it was the coolest thing.
You know, they put a Christmas tree up there and at Christmas time, it's just a
really neat place. And it's so Cleveland. Like it's just like a time warp when you
walk in there. - It really is. It's an incredible building. I mean,
it's really aesthetically the history. It's fantastic. - I agree. - That's a great
one. Well, Mark, thank you again so much for coming on today and for sharing your
story and the work you're doing. Really interesting conversation, and I very much
appreciate it. Thank you, Jeffrey. I appreciate it. I appreciate it very much.
Awesome. If folks have anything they would like to follow up with you about, where
is the best place for them to do so? They should jump on our website, connected -hr
.com. We put a lot of time and effort in there, but all our contact information is
in there, so they're welcome to get a hold of us that way. Well, thank you again,
Mark. Thank - I appreciate it. (upbeat music) -