Josh Hadley is a podcast host and a successful brand builder. His business Hadley Designs, just crossed 8 figures in annual sales.

One key to his success is hiring manager-level talent overseas. His approach to hiring is fantastic. It's definitely one of the better ones I've seen.

But that's not all! Before we dive into our discussion on hiring, we do a rapid-fire exchange of our top 6 takeaways from recent podcast episodes. Super fun and hopefully inspiring. 

Here's what we cover: 

Bonus Content: 

• Creative problem-solving as a competitive advantage. 
• The numbers behind successful infomercials. 
• The metric YouTube cares about to boost your brand's YouTube channel? 

Hiring Content: 

• How to get clear on WHO you should be hiring. 
• How to measure the success or failure of a new hire before you hire them. 
• How to create a compelling job description. 
• How to find, attract, and retain top-level talent overseas - get Josh's full formula. 

‍

Mentioned In This Episode:

Josh Hadley

• LinkedIn
• eComm Breakthrough
• Hadley Design

Brett Curry

• LinkedIn
• Twitter

Other Individuals / Resources

• Destaney Wishon
• Jordan Pine
• Mina Elias
• Liz Germain 
• Will Hughes
• Alex Hormozi 
• Michael E Gerber
• Criteria Corp
• Measure What Matters

‍

Transcript:

Brett:

Well, hello and welcome to another edition of the E-Commerce Evolution Podcast. I'm your host, Brett Curry, CEO of, OMG Commerce, and today we have a return guest and I am thrilled to have him and stoked about this topic. And so Mr. Josh Hadley is coming back for round two on the show. Josh is the CEO of Hadley Designs and he's the host of the e-Comm Breakthrough Podcast. Check that out wherever you like to consume your podcasts. And so today it's going to be kind of fun. Since we're both podcast hosts, we thought it'd be really interesting to kick off the show sharing a few takeaways that we've gathered from our brilliant guests in recent weeks and recent months. And then we're going to dive into the topic of hiring management level talent from overseas, which I think is something we all need to consider and all need to look at. So with that, Josh, welcome to the show, man. And how you doing,

Josh:

Brett? It's good to be back here. I saw you just last week too, and so this is great. We went a few months without talking to each other and now it's back to back, so this is

Brett:

Fun. Yeah, I think it was like maybe a couple years we didn't go without talking. And then yeah, we ran into each other at Seller in Austin. I had a chance to speak there. Got to chat with you a couple times. Awesome to see ya. And yeah, man, it sounds like you and your wife, your business is exploding in all the best ways. And so I'm going to mention people need to go back and listen to the episode where I had you and Becca both on the show. That was episode 151. That was over a hundred episodes ago. Holy cow. That was in February of 2021. But you guys tell the story, you guys are just the cutest, this awesome husband and wife team, but do you want to talk a little bit about what you guys sell and the growth you guys have had? And then we're going to get into the content for today.

Josh:

Yeah. Yeah, it, it's amazing. As we were just kind of reminiscing of the last time we talked, that was over two years ago now. And man, our business has completely changed and in a good way. And we've continued to double down on what's working, and we've seen great results because of that. But ultimately, our business started as a custom wedding invitation business and has since pivoted to a stationary empire. We have over 1200 different SKUs that we sell primarily on Amazon, and we crossed the eight figure mark at the end of last year, which was congrats, which is fantastic. And so yes, and we still have a lot more room to grow as well. We see a bright future ahead of us, and we're very optimistic.

Brett:

Love it, man. And your designs are awesome. Becca, your wife is extremely talented. You're a brilliant entrepreneur, strategist, business mind, and so you guys just work great together. So excited to see where you go and where you grow from here and happy to have insight and to watch you guys do that. So let's do this. So e-comm Breakthrough podcast. First of all, how do you hosting a podcast? Is it as fun as you thought it would be? Had it been harder than you thought it would be? Give folks at home the scoop who are maybe thinking I'd like to host a podcast.

Josh:

Yeah. Well, for myself, to me in my zone when I'm talking to people and interviewing people, that's my favorite thing. What I love about having a podcast, if we're just at dinner, right, Brett, and I'm talking to you about your business and I just continue to ask you 21 questions, you're like, bro, this is getting weird. Why do you want to keep diving down so deep? But in a podcast, it's almost like it's

Brett:

What you're supposed to do.

Josh:

Yeah. Like dude, just keep going deeper and deeper. There was one podcast guest that I had on Howard Tai and the strategies that he ended up sharing all the podcasts. He's like, dude, you made me spill the beans. This is the stuff I share in my mastermind group, but you just kept probing further and further. So anyways, I love that the podcast just gives you an excuse to really get the juiciness and real actionable tips and strategies from the guests. So for me, selfishly, I'm the one jotting down. I think most of the notes even more than the listeners, but

Brett:

Yeah, I totally agree. It's one of those phenomenal vehicles to connect with the really smart people and spend time with them and learn from them, and then pass that on, share that with others. So yeah, this is, just look back. So you got 200 and we're 250 plus episodes and been doing this since 2017, so I'm kind of addicted to it. I like it. Yeah, glad to have you joining the fold of podcast hosts. It's a

Josh:

Fun. Well, Brett, if you recall, you were the one I asked about what it would take to get a podcast started backup when we were in war room. Remember that? That was

Brett:

Right back in the war

Josh:

Room days four years ago. Yeah, I want to say. And I was like, dang, do you like it? Is it worth it? And you're like, yeah, dude, you should just start one and see what happens. And here we are.

Brett:

And here you are. Okay, awesome. So excited about that. Let's dive in though. Let's, we're going to each share three big takeaways from recent episodes that we've gotten, just little nuggets of inspiration, truth, e-commerce, goodness, that sort of thing. So what is your first takeaway?

Josh:

Yeah, so I had Destiny Wish on from Better ams on the podcast.

Brett:

I got to hang out. She was in Austin at Silicon. She was, well hang out with her. Yeah.

Josh:

Yep. She was one of the biggest mindset shifts that I got from recording that episode with her, which our team has really adopted at this point is doubling down on the keywords where our conversion rate on our products is better than the market average. And so what she shared was a new Amazon brand metrics. Amazon's coming out with so much data, it's hard to keep up. You've got search query performance, you got brand analytics. Well now this is brand metrics and this is located in the advertising console, not in Seller Central on the ad console. You need to go down to ad metrics and then you can get pretty far down in your product categories and you can see what the market average is for your conversion rate. And so take your PPC conversion rate for whatever particular keywords you're advertising for and see which keywords you're winning and where you have a higher conversion rate, then the market average, and then all, it's just a matter of pay to play at that point. Just keep doubling down on those and you'll watch your organic rankings increase. We have seen that work since we've been making those adjustments in our business. So that has been

Brett:

Super interesting and it totally makes sense because Amazon is motivated to sell more stuff. And that's like the key metric that Amazon looks at to determine ranking is you're obviously looking for relevance, the keyword match, but the greatest signal of that is someone buying after they type in that keyword. And so looking at what's converting above average through your ads, doubling down on the organic side, love that idea and shout out to Destiny. Good You in Austin. Awesome. So the one I'm going to share is this from episode two 30 of the E-Commerce Evolution podcast, Jordan Pine, he is a direct response TV veteran, so he's been working in the direct response TV world. He knows all the big names there. And so we were talking about how do you take lessons from direct response TV infomercials and translate that into success on YouTube or Facebook or any online advertising.

And so we talked a little about Ginsu knives and that famous ad where it cuts through the Pepsi can and then through the tomato and all these wild things. And he shared the numbers, the metrics behind infomercials. And this was fascinating to me. And I bet there's a lot of people out there that are like, how do they make money? 19 bucks for this product? How does that work? Well, the breakdown is this. They always push the phone number at the end of those commercials, but only about 20% of the audience or 20% of sales come from the phone. Not surprising for young people, but that's kind of the way that works. 30% comes from the website. So 30% of people visiting fancy whizzbang, peeler.com, whatever the product is. And then 50% comes on Amazon comes from Amazon. So people watching the infomercial getting excited about it and then just go into Amazon to find it.

And that's why, and I've seen this now, I was kind of alerted to this after the interview, I've seen a few infomercials where at the end they say, not available on Amazon, so don't go. Interesting. Don't go because you'll go and buy something else. And not, our product is not available on Amazon. So this is just a reminder to me of anything we are doing top of funnel, YouTube, Facebook, whatever, not infomercials per se, but just anything we're doing, we're going to drive traffic to Amazon. And so you got to have your Amazon game dialed in as well. And it's also a reminder that top of funnel efforts drive action at the bottom of the funnel. So shout out to Jordan Pine. Awesome, love that. What is your takeaway number two?

Josh:

Yeah, so I think coinciding with that takeaway there from Jordan is I learned this from Mina Elias from the Trivium Trivium group. I think you had Mina on your podcast as well.

Brett:

I know him, I don't think, no, he's been on the podcast, but I do know him. Yeah.

Josh:

Okay. So Mina, what he shared, he has a lot of experience in selling supplements on Amazon and also advertising as his own agency as well. So one thing that he shared, which I thought was fascinating, is as he was working on his supplement brand, one of the things he did is he reached out to somebody that created sales funnels, your one click add to cart type stuff, your Russell Brunson, ClickFunnels type of stuff. And what he did is he reached out to this guy and had him set up a bunch of different funnels. And long story short, the funnels didn't end up working out, but here's what he learned from the process. The person that was managing the funnels was just constantly making one tweak at a time. It was changing up the images, changing up the copy, and just testing, test, test, test, test, test.

And long story short, what he ended up doing is how that has impacted the clients that he works with as well as his own brand. And he said time and time again, the one test that continues to work the best for us is switching out your main image. And you need to just keep testing and testing and testing that main image because that is the biggest indicator or the biggest conversion rate lift mover out of all the tactics that you could do on Amazon. And it's so simple, but most people just set it and forget it. I mean, it's only a white background image, but if you really look at it, there's a lot of different creative ways that you could implement that. And so since then we have doubled down on our testing efforts. We've been using product pinyon as well as pfu to just, yeah, I love Pfu. Understand what incremental like change can we make to the way that these cards are showing up or the way that it's angled, and we're seeing some good performance of that as well. So it's a good mindset shift. Just simple tweaks can make a huge difference.

Brett:

Sometimes we make it too complex and sometimes we want to look for the hidden secret or the hidden tactic or strategy that nobody's talking about. So we want to do it when sometimes it's just as simple as just keep testing that image, because that is what drives decisions more than anything else on Amazon from a shopping point of view is does the image clearly communicate what this is, the quality? Is it what I want? Does it going to fit my needs? And so yeah, tweaking that testing. That makes a ton of sense. That's really, really good. Cool. All right. So next one for me. This is from Liz Jermaine, episode 2 34, talking about YouTube organic growth. Now I'm a YouTube ads guy. Always love YouTube ads. I like the YouTube organic side too, which is not my wheelhouse per se, but she came on and talked about the four stages of organic growth on YouTube.

And what's so cool is she and her sister started this fitness channel years ago. They haven't posted any new content like three or four years. She still makes a really nice income from that channel because some of the content ranks and it still gets views and it still gets engagement. So when you do YouTube organic, it will get better over time. It's in some ways the opposite of TikTok or Instagram reels where they can really skyrocket and go viral quickly, but then they die a very speedy death. YouTube can go viral too, but it often just ages and gets better over time. And so she talked about the metrics that YouTube loves the most. And I don't remember if this was the metric to rule all metrics, but I think it was go back and listen to the episode, just make sure, but it was time viewed.

So YouTube is obsessed with how long are people consuming your content? And if they watch it halfway through all the way through, they're really engaging with the content, that's what YouTube cares about. And they'll start feeding that content to more people if they find that the engagement or the view rate is really high. So check that one out. And then I'm going to go ahead and share two in a row, cause I want to end with your third one, and then we will roll right into the rest of the content. But episode 2 31, this was my buddy Will Hughes. We met each other when he was the head of growth at Organifi. And then we did an episode recently talking about Liquid Mind, and it's his process for creative problem solving. And it was one of the most fun episodes. I've had a lot of people talking about this sharing across the e-commerce forums and whatnot that everybody liked listening to Will. But one of the things he shared is that as business owners, we need to look at and just as problem solvers look for things that are undervalued and things that are overvalued, and then focus in on that and look for outsized opportunities. And so one of the examples he gave was the Oakland A's back in the days when they set the streak and when in the early days of Bill Billy Bean and the movie Moneyball, the era that was based on, have you seen the movie Moneyball, Josh? I

Josh:

Have, yeah. You're talking about the old days when people actually cared to show up at Oakland A games, because right now it's the opposite problem

Brett:

Is that I don't follow baseball too closely. It's a great sport. I don't follow closely. So yeah, this is back, I guess in more of the glory days of the A, but prior to Billy Bean kind of turning things around and go watch the movie Moneyball, it really showcases that they were dumpster fire material. So what Billy Bean and this B baseball analyst played by Jonah Hill uncovered was that a metric that really matters in baseball that's undervalued is just on base percentage. And it doesn't matter if you walk or whatever, if you get on bait, if you get on base, that's what counts. Because really as a manager, as someone building a baseball team, you're trying to manufacture runs, you're trying to buy runs. And so they had one of the lowest salary caps in baseball. The Yankees were like 10 x, their salary caps, something crazy like that, or salary, payroll.

And they were able to create the longest winning streak in baseball season history. And they had tremendous success because they found what was undervalued and they found pitchers who had great numbers but looked goofy, throwing the ball guys that walked a whole lot and got on base that nobody wanted. And then they built this team of misfits, so to speak, and that's probably a little bit of an exaggeration, but they looked at what was undervalued, what was overvalued, and they looked for outsized opportunities, which there's so many opportunities in our business like that if we train ourselves to look at it that way.

Josh:

So I love that. I think that is such an important mindset shift as I follow Alex Hor as well, one of the things he's been doubling down on what of

Brett:

My days

Josh:

Love that guy. In a lot of his conversations, he talks a lot about, it's not how hard you work, how many motivational speeches do we hear that's like, you got to burn the midnight oil, you need to sleep for four hours. And it's like it all comes down to leverage. Yes. And understanding where's your time best spent? There's way too many things that you could do in your business, so focus on the ones that when you pull the lever actually provide an outsized return. So it kind of correlates with that same principle, but

Brett:

Totally love it. Super awesome. So your takeaway number three, what do you got?

Josh:

All right. Takeaway number three, I had the chance to interview Michael e Gerber. He was the amazing author of the E-Myth it, and I think most entrepreneurs have read that book and it's

Brett:

Transformational. I read it three or four times back before we, the beginning of OMG 2010, I read that book, consumed it over and over again and really shaped a lot of my early strategy in omg.

Josh:

Yeah, I mean, it truly is transformational and creates such a big mindset shift in an entrepreneur to understand, Hey, I need to work on my business instead of in the business. And that's one thing that he talked about during that episode is like, Hey, by the way, entrepreneurs, you don't own a business until that business can grow without you actively working inside the business.

Brett:

Yes,

Josh:

Yes. Right. And unfortunately, I'm guilty of that myself. I can't walk away and be like, come back a year from now and be like, sweet. Our business is doubled in size now. That's what I'm trying to set up right now, so that we can get to a point where the business is growing a on its own because of the people that we have put in. And one thing that he talked about and when, because I followed up with a question, well, based on your 50 plus years of experience of hiring people, how do you know how to identify a level talent? And he was like, how? And he shared a fantastic analogy. So I'll ask you the question, Brett. How easy is it to become a Navy seal?

Brett:

I think it would be pretty difficult based on the fact that it's an 80% failure rate or something. And it's usually pretty tough. Dudes who are trying out to be a Navy seal

Josh:

It basically it's the top of the top, right? And they have a high failure rate, and they don't just accept anybody. They don't just accept anybody, number one. But then number two, you actually have to go through a bootcamp in training camp before you will even become a Navy Seal, right? And it is terrible. And basically the analogy, they have to go through hell and back in order to make it as a Navy seal. And so similarly, he said, that's the type of process you need to implement in your business. And so that is what we have done. I would like to say a very rigorous hiring process. As we hire management level staff overseas, we're able to filter from thousands of applicants and find genuinely a level talent to a point where honestly, people that have come to work with us have been like, I have never been through such a difficult hiring process, and I've worked for companies such as ibm. Those are the companies where even our process is more thorough and it's provide, in my opinion, outsized returns in our business because of the team members we've been able to.

Brett:

Do you want to clarify a little bit? So are you screaming at prospects and yelling at them, drill sergeant style, making 'em do

Josh:

Pushups and having them run through the mud, hold their breath,

Brett:

Water, getting water, yeah, yeah. Fake drowning 'em, stuff like that. No, but I do like the idea of making the process difficult. And it is interesting, and I love that comparison actually, that hey, it was easier to get a job at Coca-Cola or IBM or whatever than work for you. But businesses are size, and we're not small, you guys aren't small, but when you got a team of 50 or 70 or whatever, every new hire is really important. And so you got to get it right. And especially if you got 15 or 20, every new hire is so critical. So yeah, we do a round of four interviews, we do a team interview, we do exercises, we do personality profiles, and we still don't get it right every time. But at the end of it, you're like, I've got a pretty clear picture of who this person is, and if we didn't scare them off or run them off yet, they're probably a pretty good fit for the team. So love that. And hey, that's a perfect transition. Let's talk about hiring management level talent from overseas. We're a US-based company, but we do have a couple of support people that are overseas that have been phenomenal and amazing, but you've taken it one step further. You got management level team members overseas. So talk to me a little bit about the why, and then let's get into the how you've done it.

Josh:

Yeah, I think why is the fact that inside the US salaries are only increasing. We saw a huge, huge spike in Aries big time from covid and the great resignation than everybody was just like, how much more can you pay me? And so now, generally, and in addition to that, you've got inflation. So salaries are way up high, higher than they've ever been, and they ain't coming back down.

Brett:

Nope, nope. So

Josh:

What do you do if you want to go find some kick butt managers that actually are worth a darn right, then you've got to go pay top dollar to attract them. Well, I kind of took that approach and thought, Hey, I do want to pay top dollar, but I don't want to pay top dollar in the us so I'm going to go pay top dollar in the Philippines, in Mexico, anywhere else where there's a greater arbitrage, so to speak, in terms of those salary gaps. So the reason behind it is we wanted to pay top tier to track top tier talent, but we didn't want to afford US based salaries. So that's number one. So what did we do? Well? And then the other reason why behind that is early on, we at now have 25 team members on our team, but early on when we were hiring our first, our core team members that joined us were an r and d manager to help with research and development of new products, and then a product manager. Those were honestly some of our first hires. They are still with us critical

Brett:

Hires.

Josh:

Whoa, still with

Brett:

Us. And both those team members are overseas, is that correct?

Josh:

Both of 'em are overseas and they are absolutely crushing it. And here's the difference maker. I hired them, no. Oh, I'm probably paying maybe a little bit more than what I could be paying somebody else to fill this specific role right here right now. But what I did is I'm willing to afford a little bit more in order to hire management level staff right now that can grow as the business grows rather than I think, and here's what we hear all the time, hiring people overseas is not new. That's not a revolutionary sure idea for everybody talks about, oh, go get yourself a VA from the Philippines. I don't talk about hiring any VA VAs. We actually go and hire specialists and we go and hire management level staff over in the Philippines, which I think is your difference. So we're not talking three to $5 an hour team members. We're talking 10, $15 an hour team members that can just crush it, and these are going to be very well educated individuals. So that's kind of the background behind it all, Brett. So it ultimately comes down to hiring really good people that are almost overqualified for the position to begin with, but that can grow with you as your business grows. So yeah, does that make sense? For

Brett:

Totally makes sense. And I think it's one of those things where there's just, there's so much talent overseas that's often overlooked or maybe they're just not getting the opportunities that they want. And so you can come in, pay them an amazing wage for what they're doing, but you're finding management level people, and I think some of some bigger corporations have understood this. Google as an example, and we've got, at any given time, five or so dedicated Google reps that work with OMG. And some of our favorite reps, the smartest, the most talented, the most helpful were overseas and most of them lived and worked in San Francisco, but they were hired actually from overseas and then moved. And so companies are doing this now, but you can do it too, is kind of the takeaway. And so let's walk through then. I think you had mentioned you have a seven step process or something. I don't know if we'll have time to get into all seven steps or whatever, but what are some of the steps or how to go about doing this?

Josh:

Yeah, so I'll share the seven steps. I'll kind of go through each of 'em so we make sure we cover all seven before we tune out or of the podcast here today. But if you want to dive deeper, just let me know. So step number one is you need to first understand who you should actually be hiring. And as an entrepreneur, one of the best things you need to do, and you should do this regularly, probably once a quarter, is do a two week time study where you're writing down in 15 minute increments. What you are doing during those 15 minutes sounds painful and tedious for two weeks and it is, but you're going to come back from those two weeks and you're going to have a very clear picture of where you're spending the majority of your time. And so that's kind of how we've built our team.

We didn't just go out and hire 25 team members overnight. We identified where was I spending most of my time? So we talked about research and development manager and then a project manager as our first hires. Why? Because I spent most of my time looking for new product ideas on Amazon. And then secondly, I spent the rest of my time just coordinating of, Hey, we've got this product idea. We need to do keyword research, we need to set up PPC campaigns. And I was the one having to set all of that stuff up, but I had to kind of refine this process of how do we go from idea all the way to this product is launched on Amazon. And so I identified those as the two key roles, and then we started creating processes and bringing those team members in. So likewise, as soon as I hired them, I was able to then fill my time bucket up with something else as soon as I spent most of my time on ppc. Then we outsourced it to an agency and we recently brought it in-house, right? And so it was just step by step by step getting to where we are. And so that's why conducting time studies on an ongoing basis will reveal to you who you can bring in that will provide, we talked about that. Leverage, a leverage of your time will make an outsized return. So that's step number one. Does that make sense? Love that,

Brett:

Man time. Yeah, time studies sounds a little bit painful, but one, you're, you'll probably uncover ways you can work better and work more efficiently, but then two, it's going to show you who do you need to hire? And if you hire this role to take away this stress or this amount of time from your day, what more could you focus on to get done? Love that. So step one, understand who you should be hiring, what's step two?

Josh:

Step number two is you need to get clear with how you are going to track whether that person you hire is succeeding or failing in their role. So how do you do this? You need to establish KPIs, key performance indicators for that role. Now here's a quick hack for you. If you're trying to figure out, hey, what's a good, what are some good KPIs for an Amazon PPC manager? There's no better place to start than chat G P T these days just to get some ideas. It doesn't mean that that's the Bible, and that's the truth, and that's what you should use whatever chat G P T spits out, but use it as inspiration. It will give you some really good ideas and then customize them to your business. But they need to be those smart goals. They need to be specific, they need to be measurable. At the end of the day, you need to be able to track and say like, yes, our tacos are below 15% yes or no. And so that team member knows for themself, I'm a either winning or I'm B failing. And it's clear for them and it's also clear for you and it aligns you in that team member to make sure you're going down the right path. So that's

Brett:

Step member team. And what's so important about that is I think all good employees want to know. They want to know how am I doing? Are you pleased? Am I on the right track? Am I meeting obligations and ambiguity or not being clear on all that stuff? That really decreases satisfaction and decreases results. So love the practice of KPIs. I'm a big fan of the book Measure What Matters by John Dore, and he was at Google and he kind of talks about the kpi, KPI and OKRs, the objectives and key results, KPIs are key performance indicators. He talks about this process of, hey, when you have that right, it creates alignment and accountability and learning and improving, and it just makes such a difference. You get the right person, clear expectations, you measure it, you talk about it, the performance is going to be really, really strong. So love that, love

Josh:

That. And just like you talked about, I mean, here's the key. It's not only going to help you and your business, but that's how you attract a level talent, right? Because a level talent doesn't want to go apply for a job that it sounds like they have no idea what they're doing. Exactly. They don't. Yeah,

Brett:

Exactly. It's like people want to join a winning team and play a players don't want to play for coaches that don't have their stuff together. People may hate Bill Belichick or maybe he's not my buddy, but I play my best when I'm with him. And obviously you don't have to be a ruthless or a jerk to make things work, but having a system and having KPIs and having OKRs, that makes a big difference. So awesome. Point number three.

Josh:

Yep. So step number three, this is piggyback off of piggybacking off of step number two, but take those KPIs and create a compelling job description and make sure your KPIs are KPIs are part of that job description so that again, you're attracting the right A level talent and then you're going to post this job post. But here is the secret in step number three. Most people, it's just kind of like that, build it and they will come mentality post the job, and they will come faults, okay, you need to put on your sales hat. And myself having a sales background, I'm not one to stand idly by. And so as soon as we post a job and we'll post it on Upwork online jobs.ph, we'll do Indeed, and then we'll do workable, and they've got a new AI thing that's been pretty cool. So with Upwork, we will go in and on Upwork, you can set up your filters.

What's the rate you want to be paying somebody? What country do you want to be from? Yep. And then you can type in, I want a PPC manager type it in. And it's going to have a list of probably hundred thousands of people that meet those specifications and your filters that you set up. And then you can individually invite every single one of those guys to apply for your position. And we don't spend the time looking at their resume or their background. This is a spray and pray approach, so to speak, where it's like we will invite thousands of applicants. We will do the exact same thing on online jobs.ph. They limit you to reaching out to a hundred people per month or something like that. So we've opened up numerous accounts at the same time, all leading just to one same job post, but it is, we're going to get of people to be aware of our job posting on Indeed.

We just run the ads. So you can't actively promote there. Workable dot workable has a new AI where they've seen people's resumes that have applied for PPC jobs in the past and they've stored them somewhere, and you can actually reach out to those people that they have their contact information from and invite them to apply to your position. So that's kind of been a new development. That's been pretty cool. So you do all of that. That's basically step number three is like post the job, write a compelling job description, and then work your butt off. And this is probably not you as the entrepreneur, but ideally your executive assistant is now inviting thousands of people to a play.

Brett:

Yeah, yeah. It's so important. And yeah, it's one of those things where if you just do the first step, what are you going to get? A few applicants, but if you want the best, you got to work, man. And yeah, love that, that trying to get thousands of applicants. And then do you have a process, and this may be a lead into step number four. I may be skipping steps, but do you have a way then how do you weed that down? How do you weed it down a

Josh:

Thousand? Yeah, everybody's like, oh, I can't even imagine having a thousand applicants supplied to my job. So yes, here is how we go down from a thousand applicants down to 10, and an entrepreneur listening to this episode, I want you to know that all of this, you can create a process for it. This is how it works for our business right now. Everything's out to where we get a thousand applicants, and then I'm only looking at the top 10 at the end of the day. That's it. That's my level of involvement. So this is something, and the cool thing

Brett:

About that is though, if you shoot for the thousand and then you narrow down to 10, that's going to be a way better 10 than if you'd only gotten 10 in the first place. Oh,

Josh:

A hundred percent. Or that 10 is better than the a hundred, right?

Brett:

Yeah, totally.

Josh:

The higher the number is. So again, let's talk about the specifics. This is step number four. How do you start weeding out these 999 applicants, right? 990. So what we do immediately, my executive assistant, once somebody applies, she will immediately send them this canned response. Thanks for your application, your background looks great. Can you please complete this assessment? Okay. Now what this assessment is done through criteria corp. And the reason why is you don't have to pay per assessment. It's unlimited as assessments. And that's the secret of about it. And they have what's called an assessment. It's a personality assessment, and then it's like this cognitive aptitude test, and this is basically, it's an IQ score in a way, but they've done, through their data analysis and data science, they've seen that candidates with higher scores typically end up with higher job performance overall. You can read all their studies.

So anyways, we've relied on that number, and so far it's been very helpful. So we'll set our threshold of we want EV people to be above the 70th percentile, and so that's going to weed out 90% of your candidates there. You're going to go all the way down to a thousand applicants down to a hundred, okay? So that's step number four. Then moving into step number five is you're going to take these 100 applicants now that have passed your, I, we'll call it the IQ score at this point, that they speak good English because that's part of the test, that they have a personality that fits the job, because that's part of the test. So all of these things are working in your favor. Here's the secret sauce to step number five. You need to create a test project that is a most similar case study as you can mimic to what they will be doing in their role.

So in ppc, if I were hiring a PC manager, I would download my latest report from Amazon and I would just feed it over to 'em, and I'd be like, what can you find? You guys do, Brett, you'll do PC audits, right? Yep, yep. I'm going to give it to them and say, Hey, give me a PC audit. What do you find working well? What do you find not working well? And if you're coming up with this test on your own, for example, a supply chain manager, we've done this where it's like we took some random skews and then we put in what the current inventory stock is, what the velocity is, the lead time, who the manufacturer is, blah, blah, blah. And then we ask them, what SKUs do you need to order now? What SKUs do you need to order later, and how many units should you be ordering? And so on and so forth. And then you should have the answer to those results so that you can come back and review the test project and see, do they know their stuff or do they not know your stuff? And typically what I have found, the people that crush it, that it's like, oh, you did 10 times better than I even did on this supply chain project, right? Even myself, right?

Brett:

Yeah. I love that so much. That was a game changer for us when we implemented that. And again, we are in the us, but I totally see how this translates anywhere. Put someone through an exercise because you're going to find things that maybe the resume's great, maybe they're super smart, but maybe they really don't know what they're talking about when it comes to the position you're hiring for. And the exercise will reveal that, and yeah, can't recommend that highly enough, so totally makes sense. That's step five. What about step six?

Josh:

Yep. I'm going to just double down on step five real quick and saying, yeah, one thing that I learned in my mba, one thing went to the University of Utah one course, and one statement that has continued to stick with me to this day is this, and this was from my organizational behavior class. They have proven across all businesses that the interview is the indicator of somebody's likelihood to succeed.

Brett:

So true. Period.

Josh:

So true. Yeah. Because many people can look good in an interview and BS their way through it, and then you've got a dud on your hands, whereas like a test project, you can't BS your way through it.

Brett:

Yep. And yeah, what does an interview really measure? It measures people that are just good communicators, which is important, but it's not the number one factor. And yes, some of your rockstar candidates might not interview the best, and some of the people that interview the best could be an absolute dud once they get in the business. Yeah. Okay. Awesome. Love that. Step six

Josh:

Step. Yep, step six. So now we're going to take these from 100 that we send the test project to. About 33 to 50% are actually going to do it. The rest aren't even going to do it. Okay. So from those 33 to 50, you are going to end up finding about 10 to 15 that are really solid. On average, you'll get about 10 to 15 that you're like, all right, these are good. Here's what you need to do. In step six, set up a group interview, and you do this in batches of five. This isn't a group interview with your company. You grab five candidates at a time, and they are interviewing to together with you. So they are interviewing kind of against each other. Now you're going to ask 'em a series of maybe four or five questions. You're going to ask the exact same question to each one. They'll just kind of go in line and talking about that. But number one, you get to see how they react under pressure and in a surprised environment. They're like, oh, I've never seen this. This is weird before.

Brett:

This is high pressure, especially in this case where English is almost earlier their second language. And so how do they communicate under pressure and in a weird environment? Yeah. Love this.

Josh:

And then the secret question we ask at the end is, all right, this may make you uncomfortable, but it's my favorite question to ask. You can't nominate yourself. So out of all of these candidates, who would you hire and why? So now, legendary forced to pick somebody right from the group that's not themself. And what we found is that more often than not, we're bating a thousand percent right now. They've always identified the person that we end up hiring. And I think it's beneficial to the candidates too. I mean, most people are surprised. They're like, I've never done something like this, but I actually like it because I never see who I'm competing against. And so

Brett:

If they don't job, and also if you're the one being interviewed in this group and you see, oh, man, this person just nailed it. She did a perfect job. You get to see what she did, and so maybe you don't get the job. Maybe you lost out, but you got a front row seat to see how it's done and how other people perceive it. And man, that's brilliant. I had not heard of that before, but I absolutely love that idea.

Josh:

Yep. So sweet. Yes, for all those reasons. Yeah, people, it's actually a good thing. The candidates, I've never like, it's good for the candidates too. I was terrible. They actually enjoy the process, right? L last but not least, step number seven, we are going to do a one-on-one interview, and this is going to be where we follow the top grading method here, and you do your threat of assessment or you threat of reference check here. We have a lot of things that we ask people in this one-on-one interview, but to talk about it at a high level, what you're looking for is a pattern of success and promotion in their career history, even starting at a young age, even when they're in high school, were the team leads in a sporting organization? Were they the captain or were they the club president? Because you'll find those same people will naturally be the leaders that just kind of come to fruition throughout their entire career, right?

So you're looking for a pattern of success. And then number two, what you want to do is you want to use that thread of reference, check with them, and here's like the specific questions you want to ask them. You say, Hey, all right, great. You worked at Coca-Cola. Who is your manager? Who is your direct supervisor at Coca-Cola? What's their name? Oh, it was John Smith. Okay, thank you. When I reach out to John, and now I'm just kind of assuming the sale here, right? I'm just telling him I'm going to be reaching out to John. I don't have his contact info yet. I'll get it from you. But when I reach out to John, I'm going to ask him to rate you on a scale of one to 10 and why? How will John rate your job performance on a scale of one to 10? And so it's kind of that truth serum question where it's like they can't BSU now because they know, oh crap, what will John actually say is going to be what they're going to respond with? Then the next question we ask them is, what will John say is an area of improvement for yourself? So it's a much better version than the what's your weakness? And then everybody spins it to some BS thing. My

Brett:

Organization, I just care too much. Yeah, I work too hard. I work too much nights and weekends, I give too much to charity, whatever. That's my weakness. I'm trying to overcome it.

Josh:

So you actually get down to understanding what is actually something they need to improve upon. And then the last thing is what will John say is your greatest strength that you brought to the organization? And then dude, at the end of the interview, we'll email that reference and just double check those answers and yeah. Yeah, that's it.

Brett:

Super good, man. Super good. We do several interviews in addition to the exercise and a couple personality profiles. I think one of the things that shifted our interview process is getting people to talk about experiences. Yeah, I hate the question. Tell me your greatest strengths. What are your greatest weaknesses? Blah, blah, blah. But hey, tell me about a time when you disagreed with a previous manager. What was it about? What did you do, and how did that resolve? Or what about when you were asked, tell me about a time when you were asked to do something that didn't meet your standards, what did you do? And then you can just kind of tell like, Hey, does that ring true? Is that, what is that like? So lots of, tell me about a time when, and we love a resource. I'll mention Amazon talks about the, they call it the bar raise program where they look at anybody we hire for a given department or role, will they raise the bar meaningfully in that department?

Because what often happens is you hire somebody and then they hire someone if you're not in charge of hiring anymore. And sometimes the quality of the candidates gets worse as you go, but you got to look at, Hey, each new hire, how can they raise the bar? And I like that, dude. I love this approach, and I think this is going to be a fit for a lot of people. There's some amazing, amazing management level candidates out there globally, and so this is a way to get in touch with them. Well, Josh, this has been fantastic. Love sharing the insights and takeaways from our podcasts and those seven steps for hiring talent overseas is amazing. How can people check out the podcast and how can people get in touch with you if they're so inclined?

Josh:

Yeah, it definitely encourage people to go check out the podcast e-com, breakthrough with two M's. Go to your preferred podcasting platform of your choice. And then we also have our website, e-com, breakthrough.com. And if people want to reach out to me, they can do so at Josh at e-com, breakthrough.com, and would love to hear from your listeners. And I do like a free strategy audit once a month, so if people want to throw their hat in the ring and have me take a peek inside their business, I can do that as well.

Brett:

Awesome. So definitely check that out. You can tell just by those tips how sharp Josh is at running businesses and growing businesses, and so definitely check out the podcast. I'm just curious, so what is your preferred podcast app? So when Josh Hadley podcaster is listening to other podcasts, what do you listen on?

Josh:

Well, I originally started out by listening on Apple Podcasts, but then for whatever reason, maybe it was my phone, but the app just became so glitchy it would freeze all the time. And so then I transitioned over to Google Podcasts, but now I'm having the exact same problems with Google, so now I'm back onto Apple. So come. I haven't touched Spotify yet though. So what about, you

Brett:

Haven't used Spotify either? I know several people that use Spotify. I know, or actually I know I don't know anyone. I just hear that YouTube podcasts are growing. That's the way people are consuming it. I've never tried Google Podcasts. I don't like the Apple podcast app. Don't an Overcast fan. So Overcast is a podcasting app. It's available on for iTunes, and I'm an Apple and Mac user. It's awesome, but it's also available on Android, so Overcast, that's my podcast app of choice. So there you go. I love it. Awesome, man. Well, Josh, this has been fantastic. Thanks for taking the time. And hey, little preview, I'm going to be on your show in the fall, so people need to, that's right. Get up to speed now. Listen to the podcast now and then, hey, I'll be a guest here in a few months. Looking forward to having you on my show.

Awesome. Thanks, Josh. We'll have to do it again sometime. And as always, thank you for tuning in. We'd love to hear from you. What would you like to hear more of on the show if you've not done it already, we'd love that review on iTunes. Makes my day. Also helps other people discover the show and also connect with me on the socials. I'm getting pretty active on LinkedIn, marginally active on Twitter. I am there. Or look me up on Facebook. Would love to connect with you on the socials And with that, until next time, thank you for listening.

‍

‍

‍

‍