Join us in this enlightening episode of the En Factor with Kyle Mau, CEO and founder of HireUA. Kyle’s entrepreneurial journey is a unique one, starting from a successful dating advice blog to launching an olive oil venture, and eventually founding HireUA to connect the rich talent pool of Ukraine with all sorts of Western companies. In our conversation, he shares his insights on leveraging the Ukrainian workforce to create cost-effective hiring solutions for Western businesses, as well as the challenges of scaling a business, managing a remote team, and the importance of building a strong company culture. Join us and learn a plethora of lessons from Kyle regarding leadership, dealing with uncertainty and failure, the importance of sales, and balancing work and your health.
Key Words: Scaling Companies, Leadership
[00:00:02] .
[00:00:03] I think it was Kobe Bryant. He said, if you shoot 0 for 10, that means you psyched yourself
[00:00:07] out and you took yourself out of the game. And I'd rather go like 0 for 30. And that
[00:00:11] means I didn't give up. And it's kind of the same thing in business. You have to keep
[00:00:14] like shooting that shot. There's just no way around it because the world is always
[00:00:18] changing like, you know, people are going to copy you in today's world. You know,
[00:00:23] an ad platform might ban you or an algorithm might change. And so you just always have
[00:00:26] to adapt. That's part of the process.
[00:00:34] Welcome to the En Factor, conversations with entrepreneurs who started, stumbled and succeeded.
[00:00:40] I'm Rebecca White and I am very excited to welcome Kyle Mao to our show today. Kyle
[00:00:46] is the CEO and founder of Hire UA. And he's got a fantastic story and we're going to
[00:00:52] dig into that and learn a lot more about his background, what he's done and his entrepreneurial
[00:00:58] mindset. So Kyle, thank you for joining me today.
[00:01:01] Thank you for having me, Rebecca. I'm looking forward to talking about how I've stumbled
[00:01:04] into everything.
[00:01:05] Yeah. Well, you know, I think it's going to be a lot of fun. Before we started the
[00:01:11] show, you mentioned that you just got back from a vacation. So thank you for putting
[00:01:16] us on the agenda shortly after getting back from your vacation. But let's start by
[00:01:22] talking a little bit about Hire UA. What is the company and what value do you
[00:01:29] add for your clients and customers?
[00:01:31] Yeah. So I actually lived in Ukraine for quite a few years before the war started
[00:01:36] and I started the company out there. And I basically had found that there were a
[00:01:40] lot of people in the country that were extremely smart, extremely talented and would
[00:01:45] make fantastic employees for Western companies. So we've really disrupted some of the traditional
[00:01:49] markets which have traditionally been India, the Philippines and kind of those countries.
[00:01:54] And we've really been able to place hundreds of people into small medium businesses
[00:01:58] with great success and basically are able to save small, medium business owners 80
[00:02:03] percent off typical hiring costs in the West. And we do it in less than a week as
[00:02:07] well. So that's kind of our goal is what the way I like to put it is that I feel
[00:02:12] like business owners, we really kind of get the short end of the stick when it
[00:02:15] comes to like everything, whether it be taxes, regulations, everything else.
[00:02:20] And I feel like people in Ukraine are really getting the short end of the stick
[00:02:23] right now with the war too. So as far as I'm concerned, if we can help two
[00:02:26] people who are kind of getting screwed and make everybody happy, then that's
[00:02:30] kind of a good business. And I'm happy to be a part of it.
[00:02:32] Yeah, I absolutely love it.
[00:02:34] You know, it is it is so sad to see what people have to live through when
[00:02:39] they're in the in the throes of war.
[00:02:42] And it's something.
[00:02:43] So what a what a great mission you have.
[00:02:47] And I love that.
[00:02:49] So, Kyle, I noticed that I think you went to San Diego State University.
[00:02:54] Is that correct? That is correct.
[00:02:57] One of my best friends that I knew from graduate school and worked with
[00:03:03] many, many years, ran the entrepreneurship program there.
[00:03:07] So I'm curious about whether or not entrepreneurship was something you
[00:03:13] studied in school, how you became an entrepreneur.
[00:03:17] Can you tell us a little bit about your background?
[00:03:19] I did not study entrepreneurship in school.
[00:03:22] And I actually remember, I hope your friend doesn't hear this, but I
[00:03:25] remember I went to one class for business and someone actually asked
[00:03:29] Professor, like professor of entrepreneurship.
[00:03:31] What businesses have you run?
[00:03:33] And he said, like, I've never run a business.
[00:03:35] And I looked I kind of took a step back.
[00:03:37] I was like, wait a minute.
[00:03:38] Like, that doesn't quite make sense.
[00:03:40] So I never actually studied entrepreneurship other than that one class.
[00:03:44] But I basically was tired of the nine to five.
[00:03:47] I said, like, I don't want to have to commute.
[00:03:50] I don't want to have to sit in an office all day.
[00:03:52] I don't want to be beholden to somebody, you know, when I can take vacation
[00:03:56] or when I can have time off.
[00:03:57] So I basically decided it was in my best interest to go my own way and
[00:04:02] figure it out. And thankfully I've stumbled and fallen a lot on the way,
[00:04:05] but it has worked out in the long term.
[00:04:07] Yeah.
[00:04:08] Well, it's a, it's a practice, right?
[00:04:10] And you're in, it's a learning practice all the way.
[00:04:13] So unlike your professor, I've actually started, I started a tech
[00:04:18] company a number of years ago.
[00:04:20] And I always tell my students that that was some of the best tuition
[00:04:24] I ever spent.
[00:04:25] The cost, the time and the money to get that up and running was well worth it.
[00:04:31] So there nothing really replaces actually doing so.
[00:04:36] That's fair.
[00:04:36] True.
[00:04:36] Yeah.
[00:04:38] What was, what did you study?
[00:04:39] What was your background, your academic field?
[00:04:42] Economics, but then I actually went into computer engineering because I had
[00:04:45] the right connections in the field.
[00:04:47] So I kind of knew going into college, I would have had a job waiting for me
[00:04:50] at the end.
[00:04:50] So I went and studied economics.
[00:04:53] I don't actually remember a single thing from any economics class I ever
[00:04:56] took, but that's just how it is.
[00:04:59] And so yeah, I studied economics, became a computer engineer and then
[00:05:01] became an entrepreneur.
[00:05:03] That's kind of the path.
[00:05:05] Yeah.
[00:05:05] Yeah.
[00:05:06] Well, let's talk about that a little bit more.
[00:05:09] You have a unique business and I based on the background I read, this
[00:05:15] is not, this is not the first business you've started.
[00:05:18] So tell us a little bit about your career and how this all happened for you.
[00:05:22] So about 10 or so years ago, I was at a point in my life where I didn't
[00:05:27] really understand girls.
[00:05:30] I was really like kind of a nerd and I really didn't get it.
[00:05:32] So one day I stumbled upon a blog where all of a sudden I started
[00:05:36] to understand things and then I started like becoming a little bit
[00:05:39] better with girls and I said, I should start my own blog about this.
[00:05:42] And that's what I did.
[00:05:43] And a couple of years later, that blog had a couple of million readers
[00:05:47] and I was making a full-time living off of it.
[00:05:49] And so that's when I decided to kind of wrap up the nine to five career.
[00:05:52] I decided to put my face out there and stop being anonymous as far as
[00:05:57] blogging goes, and then I moved to Europe where I decided that I ultimately
[00:06:02] decided to settle down and ended up getting married and having a kid.
[00:06:04] So that was kind of the path is what I started and then
[00:06:08] everything dominoed from that.
[00:06:11] So from the readership of that blog, I had somebody, I was living
[00:06:14] in Prague in the Czech Republic and he said, Hey, I have an olive oil orchard.
[00:06:19] It's my family's and we'd like to bring it to America.
[00:06:21] You seem to know your marketing stuff.
[00:06:22] Would you be interested in partnering on this?
[00:06:24] So then before I knew it, I owned half of an olive oil company and
[00:06:27] we've now sold over a million dollars of like olive oil to the states and
[00:06:32] Canada, and then from there I moved to Ukraine.
[00:06:35] I bought property, got married, made some investments and decided that
[00:06:38] I was going to start this company because I saw how good people were.
[00:06:41] So that is the whole journey and everything has always just stacked on itself.
[00:06:45] So, you know, the skills I built in the first business, moved to the second,
[00:06:48] all the connections, and it's just amazing when I look back at the last 10
[00:06:52] years of how, of where I started, where it is now, it just blows my mind.
[00:06:57] Yeah.
[00:06:57] So, so a lot of this podcast is around mindset.
[00:07:02] So, um, that story, uh, gives me a lot of rich details.
[00:07:08] Oh boy.
[00:07:10] To dig into mindset.
[00:07:11] So, uh, very cool and very interesting.
[00:07:14] And, and I love that, that, you know, your whole journey started with, um,
[00:07:21] I don't know enough about something that I'm interested in.
[00:07:24] So I'm going to explore it.
[00:07:25] And, and that mindset, that curiosity, um, is, is quite honestly, I think one
[00:07:31] of the key distinguishing variables of an entrepreneur.
[00:07:35] Um, so you were curious, you started writing a blog.
[00:07:39] Let's talk a little bit from a business side about how did
[00:07:42] you build a business on a blog?
[00:07:46] How did that work for you?
[00:07:47] I mean, how did you make money?
[00:07:48] Because at the end of the day, you got to make money somehow.
[00:07:51] It was basically at the time it was very different.
[00:07:55] You could very easily write certain articles and you
[00:07:57] could rank well in Google.
[00:07:58] And people actually, they actually read stuff 10 years ago.
[00:08:01] Nowadays, everybody wants to watch like a very, very short
[00:08:04] clip of five to 10 seconds.
[00:08:05] And that's the only thing their attention span allows.
[00:08:07] But 10 years ago, people actually read stuff.
[00:08:10] So that was how it started was I started getting subscribers.
[00:08:13] It started on a free WordPress blog.
[00:08:15] And then I started collecting email subscribers and built a list.
[00:08:18] And then I sold, um, basically eBooks from that.
[00:08:21] I did in-person consulting as well, meaning guys would pay me and I would
[00:08:25] go out to a bar with them and say, Hey, there's a girl over there.
[00:08:27] You should go talk to them.
[00:08:28] This is what you should say.
[00:08:29] That kind of thing.
[00:08:30] And then also, um, yeah.
[00:08:32] So eBooks courses, consulting.
[00:08:34] So basically information products is how that started with that.
[00:08:37] Yeah.
[00:08:37] So you started to build a content, a content, content.
[00:08:42] Yeah.
[00:08:42] Yeah.
[00:08:43] But, but that evolved too, because a couple of years later I moved out to
[00:08:47] Europe, so then that could expand and I could say, Hey, I've moved to Europe.
[00:08:50] Now here's the differences.
[00:08:52] Like if you're interested in like traveling here, you know, I can help
[00:08:55] you with arrangements or if you're interested in looking at getting a
[00:08:59] residency in a country, I can help you with that.
[00:09:01] Or if you're interested in moving abroad, I can certainly consult with you on that.
[00:09:04] So everything kind of just stacked on itself and it all came from like
[00:09:09] honestly, just kind of sharing the struggles and sharing the journey.
[00:09:12] It's really what it all came down to.
[00:09:14] Yeah.
[00:09:14] That that's really interesting.
[00:09:16] And, um, you know, getting a little bit off of the mindset and talking
[00:09:19] about digital marketing and connecting with customers, um, you know, that I
[00:09:25] recently taught a digital marketing class in our graduate program and so much
[00:09:31] of it is about, uh, regardless of the business you're starting, it's about
[00:09:35] putting yourself out there and sharing about yourself.
[00:09:38] Don't you think?
[00:09:39] It really is, but it's also such a fine line.
[00:09:41] I think putting yourself out there and sharing it is the easiest way
[00:09:45] to actually grow a business quickly.
[00:09:47] But at the end of the day, if you want to make an exit or you want
[00:09:51] the business to run without you, it's really important that you remove
[00:09:54] yourself like, you know, I'm still the face of hire you away, but I am slowly
[00:09:58] but surely trying to push myself out of that role.
[00:10:00] I want it to be the people know the company.
[00:10:02] They don't know Kyle because then that's it's I'm beholden to
[00:10:07] that.
[00:10:07] That's what it comes down to.
[00:10:08] So I think it's, it's a really fine line, but I think starting
[00:10:11] out the easiest way is to put your face out there.
[00:10:14] Yeah, absolutely.
[00:10:15] I think that's a great point because if you want at the, when you need
[00:10:20] to or want to scale your business, it becomes a different game.
[00:10:25] People like to do business with people they like and trust.
[00:10:28] And I think putting yourself out there is important for that.
[00:10:32] But you also have to be thinking about scaling even from the beginning.
[00:10:36] So, so you, you moved to Eastern Europe.
[00:10:40] What, what, you know, digging into the mindset again, why did you do that?
[00:10:45] That I, that it, you know, I'm connecting the dots here.
[00:10:50] For our listeners and I'm not sure where that piece fits in.
[00:10:53] Basically, I wanted to build a business.
[00:10:55] I was living in Los Angeles at the time where I was making about
[00:10:59] a hundred thousand dollars a year, but my paycheck was only 4,400 and
[00:11:03] my rent was 2000.
[00:11:04] So I said, okay, right now the business is making $500 a month.
[00:11:08] I obviously I'm going to burn out of all the money in the bank.
[00:11:10] If I stay here.
[00:11:11] So I said, okay, if I go to Eastern Europe, I can live well off
[00:11:15] of $1,500 a month.
[00:11:17] I had 20 grand in the bank.
[00:11:18] So I said, if the business falls flat on its head and I make absolutely
[00:11:22] nothing from this, I get, I have a year and a half to figure it out.
[00:11:25] And then I also thought if I can't figure it out in a year and a half,
[00:11:28] I also probably don't deserve to make it.
[00:11:30] And so in that case, I will go back to the States and I'll get a job.
[00:11:33] So that was really it.
[00:11:35] It was a region that I'd been to and it spoke to me, you know, as far
[00:11:39] as just the culture, um, the walkability, I liked the accessibility
[00:11:42] of all the cities I wanted to go somewhere safe, which, so that kind
[00:11:45] of ruled out a lot of Latin America and I didn't want to go somewhere hot.
[00:11:49] So that ruled out a lot of Asia.
[00:11:50] So that was really kind of the path was I got to save some money
[00:11:54] and I got to build the dream, you know, somewhere where I'm
[00:11:57] not paying a fortune for my rent.
[00:11:59] Yeah.
[00:12:00] So that's really interesting.
[00:12:02] And, and, you know, it, it's, um, in sort of a parallel when
[00:12:06] I first moved, I'm in Tampa, Florida.
[00:12:08] When I first moved here, it was really, uh, inexpensive to
[00:12:12] live and start a business.
[00:12:14] And a number of people came here to do that, but in more recent years,
[00:12:18] the costs have gone up and I think it's really had an impact on,
[00:12:22] on our entrepreneurship.
[00:12:24] All the, you know, it's still thriving, but I think that that's,
[00:12:27] you know, that's a really interesting mindset.
[00:12:30] And, but it took some courage to do that, uh, to, to, to leave
[00:12:35] what you were used to and go somewhere new and somewhere different.
[00:12:40] So again, back to the mindset.
[00:12:42] Have you always been somebody who was willing to kind of
[00:12:45] step into the unknown?
[00:12:46] How do you deal with uncertainty and, and, um, you know, the lack
[00:12:53] of control and predictability when you're in a new situation.
[00:12:58] I actually was a very obedient and nice kid growing up.
[00:13:02] And I think I kind of got stepped on for that.
[00:13:04] And that kind of built in something, it hardened something in me where
[00:13:08] I then became the complete opposite of that, like I'm going to do
[00:13:11] whatever I want, it doesn't matter.
[00:13:12] And I don't care what anyone says.
[00:13:13] So it, it, I totally did a 180 on that regard.
[00:13:16] Um, as far as the uncertainty, I was thrilled because I was,
[00:13:21] I was 24 at the time and I was just, I was ready for the adventure.
[00:13:25] So I was good with that.
[00:13:26] The uncertainty, I was like, I don't care about the language,
[00:13:29] the food, the culture.
[00:13:30] I will just figure it all out.
[00:13:31] I had no fear in that regard.
[00:13:33] And I think at that time, like I said, I had this mindset.
[00:13:36] I, I defended myself in a way I said, if I don't do this,
[00:13:39] I didn't deserve to make it now with a wife and a kid and actually things
[00:13:44] at stake, it's a little bit different.
[00:13:47] You know, that up and down can be very, very difficult.
[00:13:49] I think for a lot of entrepreneurs.
[00:13:50] And I think the one thing that really keeps me going is knowing
[00:13:53] that for whatever reason, the world just seems to work in cycles.
[00:13:57] So you're going to have the best month ever.
[00:13:59] And then it's probably going to not be so good after that.
[00:14:01] And that's any time it's bad though.
[00:14:03] I just keep telling myself, one of the good ones is coming.
[00:14:06] Just be patient.
[00:14:07] It will come.
[00:14:08] And that it usually works out that way and knock on wood.
[00:14:12] Hopefully it does continue to work out like that as well.
[00:14:15] Yeah, yeah, that that's that's a great mindset because it is about resilience.
[00:14:20] Right.
[00:14:21] It's about keep going.
[00:14:22] And and and that optimism, which is what you're really talking about,
[00:14:27] the ability to believe that the future is going to be positive and good
[00:14:32] is so vital and so important to an entrepreneurial mindset.
[00:14:36] So you moved to Eastern Europe, you moved to Ukraine.
[00:14:41] Is that correct? Or did you move?
[00:14:42] That was I went to you first year.
[00:14:46] I was like a digital nomad.
[00:14:47] I traveled everywhere, you know, spent no more than a month in any place
[00:14:49] and then went to Ukraine, then Prague and then back to Ukraine.
[00:14:53] That was kind of the yeah.
[00:14:55] Yeah. All beautiful, beautiful places.
[00:14:57] So you spent how many years did you spend there in Eastern Europe?
[00:15:03] Of course, I know you came back once the war started.
[00:15:06] But how many years did you spend?
[00:15:08] I'm out in Poland now. So I'm back here.
[00:15:10] I've been in Poland.
[00:15:11] I'm in Poland now.
[00:15:12] So, yeah, I've lived out in Eastern Europe for since 2016.
[00:15:16] So almost eight years now.
[00:15:18] Yeah. OK.
[00:15:19] So talk a little bit about what you experienced there as a business owner.
[00:15:24] I'm very curious about about, you know, the difference.
[00:15:28] You were, of course, on a digital platform when you went.
[00:15:32] But then you acquired a 50 percent ownership in the
[00:15:37] in the olive oil company.
[00:15:39] So what was it like to do business in Eastern Europe
[00:15:42] compared to the United States?
[00:15:45] So all of our clients, like at higher UA are mostly Western.
[00:15:48] So mostly American and British.
[00:15:50] So I would say the real experience I have is actually working with candidates here.
[00:15:55] So that's like employees.
[00:15:56] So I don't do a lot of actual business to business here.
[00:15:59] As far as employees, I think
[00:16:02] it's a different mindset.
[00:16:04] Like sometimes, you know, even when I talk to my team,
[00:16:07] sometimes they'll say something like, wait, doesn't work like this, guys.
[00:16:09] Like, this isn't how we do business here.
[00:16:11] We're working with Western clients.
[00:16:12] So I think it's better in some ways.
[00:16:15] I think like the loyalty is better.
[00:16:17] The entitlement is not as high.
[00:16:19] I know people in the states like everyone,
[00:16:21] you know, if you're working locally, everyone's struggling to hire.
[00:16:24] They're like, I can't find help.
[00:16:25] You know, twenty five dollar an hour minimum wage in some places
[00:16:27] they're pushing for. It's really tough.
[00:16:29] And I think the work ethic is good.
[00:16:32] And I think that comes from the way that this part of the world has been through,
[00:16:36] like since the fall of the Soviet Union and, you know, kind of a communist mindset.
[00:16:40] I think the generation that came out of that is very,
[00:16:43] you know, strong willed and has a very good mindset towards the world.
[00:16:46] So I think that's what has made them
[00:16:49] good team members for our clients and like for my team itself as well.
[00:16:53] Right, right.
[00:16:54] So so let's talk a little bit about your decision to leave Ukraine.
[00:17:01] How did that happen for you?
[00:17:03] Did you did you have to flee the country or?
[00:17:06] Yeah. Were you able to leave? Yes. Yeah.
[00:17:10] Basically, the decision was made for me when I woke up to air raid sirens
[00:17:14] and then actually stayed for a day and was saying, oh, well,
[00:17:17] we'll wait it out and kind of just see what happens.
[00:17:19] And then that first night, stuff was like literally falling out of the sky,
[00:17:24] you know, exploding out of the window.
[00:17:25] So that was the point I was like, OK, it's time to go.
[00:17:28] My wife was probably about two months pregnant at the time,
[00:17:31] maybe one month pregnant.
[00:17:32] So that was kind of a no, we need to get out of this.
[00:17:35] And I think that was that was an interesting mindset moment for me.
[00:17:39] So we had my pregnant wife, the dog, and we were,
[00:17:42] you know, driving towards the border.
[00:17:43] And I just kept telling myself that you cannot think negatively.
[00:17:47] And I just said, this might suck. It's probably going to suck.
[00:17:50] We're probably going to be sleeping in the car for three days in the forest.
[00:17:53] It's going to be rough.
[00:17:54] We need we may run out of supplies.
[00:17:56] But there was never a single moment of mine where I said,
[00:17:59] we're not going to get out of here.
[00:18:00] And I just I knew I had to think that way just for my family.
[00:18:03] And I think that to me, mindset wise, was one of my strongest moments
[00:18:07] where I just said, no matter what, we are going to be out of here.
[00:18:09] So, yeah, it was almost three days to get out.
[00:18:13] And we did make it.
[00:18:15] And then we went to the States for about a year
[00:18:17] and then came back to Poland last year.
[00:18:19] But that was the the story in a nutshell.
[00:18:21] So, yeah, we did have to to flee, so to speak.
[00:18:24] Yeah. Were were you in Kiev?
[00:18:27] Mm hmm. Yep. That's where we were.
[00:18:29] Yeah. So it was a long drive.
[00:18:31] Yes. So so you your wife is it did she have to leave behind family in Ukraine?
[00:18:39] Yeah. Her mom and dad are still there.
[00:18:40] So she's from Ukraine, from Kiev, and her parents are still there as of now.
[00:18:44] Fine. But, you know, all things considered.
[00:18:46] But yes, they're still there. Yes. Yes.
[00:18:49] Well, I know going through an experience like that changes you.
[00:18:53] And it does.
[00:18:56] And the the strength that you gain from that
[00:18:59] probably puts a lot of things in perspective.
[00:19:02] But now you're you're blessed with a child, I think a young child.
[00:19:07] And you mentioned that you and your wife just went on vacation with the child.
[00:19:12] So I'm I'm curious about how you how do you balance everything?
[00:19:17] And and, you know, how was how long did it take you before you could let go?
[00:19:24] I grew up in a family business.
[00:19:26] And so I know about family vacations that have to get canceled because of that
[00:19:31] or that are working vacations.
[00:19:34] So I'm really curious.
[00:19:35] I know some of our listeners might need a vacation desperately.
[00:19:39] So, you know, how did you process all that?
[00:19:43] Give yourself permission to go.
[00:19:44] How did you how did you separate yourself during that time?
[00:19:49] So I think what I've started doing as this company has grown,
[00:19:52] we've gone from basically two people to 20 people in the last couple of years.
[00:19:56] And I built out the departments and I said, OK, what's the most like
[00:20:02] what am I going to take myself out of?
[00:20:03] And that to me was like the recruiting and the fulfillment.
[00:20:05] So as the CEO, I shouldn't really be finding candidates and talking to them.
[00:20:09] It's that's incredibly time consuming.
[00:20:11] So that a year or so ago, I started taking off my plate and I gave it to,
[00:20:17] you know, the right people and I train them and I gave them guidance.
[00:20:20] And then I started taking marketing off my plate
[00:20:23] and then I started taking sales off my plate.
[00:20:24] And I kind of just continued to move things from my area to somebody else's.
[00:20:29] And then I finally kind of said, like,
[00:20:31] it looks like the majority of stuff is off of me.
[00:20:35] So I don't really see any reason why this shouldn't go on without me.
[00:20:39] And it was also like a stress test, like if everything breaks while I'm gone,
[00:20:42] then I need to be going back and evaluating what how this was all built
[00:20:46] and what needs to be changed.
[00:20:47] So I kind of just said, I'm tired of the cold here.
[00:20:51] I want to go somewhere warm and I don't want to work.
[00:20:54] And I pretty much that was just what I did.
[00:20:55] I didn't really give myself permission.
[00:20:57] I just said I want to go somewhere warm and I don't want to work.
[00:20:59] So I actually uninstalled Slack, uninstalled email
[00:21:04] and believe it or not, did not check anything for the entire two weeks.
[00:21:07] My wife was like, you're not going to make it more than four days.
[00:21:09] I said, oh, watch me, I'll do it.
[00:21:10] And I actually didn't once.
[00:21:12] So I was very proud of myself in that regard.
[00:21:15] And actually.
[00:21:17] I realized I'm probably not as important as I think is the big thing.
[00:21:20] So I think a lot of business owners, if you've hired the right people,
[00:21:23] you have the right team around you, like they're better at the job
[00:21:27] than you, hopefully, because you hire them to do that job.
[00:21:29] So seeing that everything went really well without me, I'm like,
[00:21:33] I'm probably not as important as I think,
[00:21:35] and I should probably go on vacation more often is my thought.
[00:21:38] What a great message and one that I'm sure most entrepreneurs need to hear
[00:21:45] that the importance of
[00:21:49] micromanaging at the very earliest stage can't be understated.
[00:21:53] I mean, you have to know about everything in a startup.
[00:21:58] But at some point, that becomes the very thing
[00:22:01] that undermines your ability to grow and succeed.
[00:22:05] And so vacations can be a great way to think about,
[00:22:09] as you put it, stress testing the system that you put in place.
[00:22:13] And it can be a great plan.
[00:22:15] I'm just curious. I have to ask you, where did you go?
[00:22:18] That was Dubai. Yeah, Dubai. OK. Yeah.
[00:22:21] Yes. Yes. I've been there.
[00:22:22] It's that's nice. Yeah. Yeah.
[00:22:25] So so you were able to get away and you came back
[00:22:30] and everything was still running.
[00:22:31] So that's a good, a very good sign.
[00:22:34] I know. So so talk to us a little bit about how you built that team,
[00:22:39] because so much of success goes back to surrounding yourself
[00:22:43] with the right people.
[00:22:45] And that's it's really hard to do, I think,
[00:22:48] in the early stages of building a company, because it's very time
[00:22:51] consuming and requires a lot of thought.
[00:22:55] So what what was your methodology and how do you think about team building?
[00:23:00] My methodology has always been to hire the right people and then train them.
[00:23:04] I don't think like what their degree is really matters.
[00:23:08] I think it's better to have the right person with the right attitude
[00:23:10] and the right belief in your company and then show them how to do it.
[00:23:14] So a really good example of this is my current operations manager,
[00:23:17] Valentina, who basically runs everything at this point.
[00:23:20] She started as a very basic virtual assistant.
[00:23:23] And then I said, hey, we're really busy.
[00:23:25] Like, could you do some recruiting?
[00:23:26] Taught her how to do that.
[00:23:27] And before that and then after that, I handed like supervising
[00:23:30] everybody else off to her.
[00:23:32] And now she's like taking over marketing, taking over sales.
[00:23:35] So it's she's the right person who I gave the training to
[00:23:39] and who has grown into every role extraordinarily well.
[00:23:43] And then, you know, recently she hired a new recruiter
[00:23:46] and that new recruiter closed, I think, 12 placements this month.
[00:23:50] You know, so I'm like, oh, well, you hired the right person.
[00:23:53] I didn't even talk to the girl before she hired her.
[00:23:55] You know, so Valentina went and found her, got the feedback
[00:23:57] of the rest of the team, which is like, are you OK with this?
[00:23:59] I'm like, if you want to do that, yeah.
[00:24:01] So I think having just the right people from top to bottom
[00:24:06] and just allowing it allows me to go and just say, go do your job.
[00:24:09] And that allows them that empowers them because you said
[00:24:11] the key thing like micromanaging, nobody likes that.
[00:24:14] Everybody wants to feel like they can do the job
[00:24:17] that they were hired to do, not have someone right over their shoulders.
[00:24:19] So I think just trusting them to do it and accepting that
[00:24:23] like, you know, we all screw up.
[00:24:24] So accepting that people are going to screw up.
[00:24:26] And it's really not the end of the world is really what allows you
[00:24:28] to be a better CEO and a better leader for your company.
[00:24:33] So let's talk a little bit about what and you.
[00:24:36] I think you I think you already answered part of this question,
[00:24:40] but what makes somebody the right person?
[00:24:43] You mentioned attitude and belief in the company.
[00:24:46] Are there other things that you look for?
[00:24:49] You know, clearly not specifically tied to scale skills,
[00:24:54] but what what what is it?
[00:24:56] What is it that makes somebody the right person?
[00:24:58] I think what I really like to look for is people who are just sharp.
[00:25:02] So sometimes I'll even ask on an interview, like, you know,
[00:25:05] at your last job, did you work a full eight hour day?
[00:25:08] And they'll be like, yeah, I don't say how much of that
[00:25:10] did you actually work?
[00:25:12] And they'll say, like, OK, it was really only like three hours.
[00:25:14] I'll say, OK, but were you the top performer?
[00:25:17] And they'll say, yeah, I'm like, OK, great.
[00:25:19] So people like a lot of bosses, I think, you know,
[00:25:22] and this is true of like the nine to five office culture.
[00:25:25] It's obviously very true of like a retail culture.
[00:25:27] You know, someone has to be there.
[00:25:29] But to me, I'm like, if someone can do the eight hour job in two hours,
[00:25:34] that's the person I want.
[00:25:36] Right. I don't I don't care if it doesn't take you all day.
[00:25:39] If you're smart enough to get the job done, then you're the right person.
[00:25:42] So I think that's something that I've managed to is basically
[00:25:45] I want to find people who are efficient, so to speak.
[00:25:48] And I don't want to say the word lazy, but they value their time
[00:25:51] and they're not going to sit around and just waffle and not get stuff done.
[00:25:55] Yeah. So here in the United States, it may not be as true in Eastern Europe,
[00:26:01] but here in the US, I think a lot of companies are really struggling
[00:26:05] with how to manage a remote workforce.
[00:26:08] And obviously that that's a space you're very familiar with.
[00:26:13] So, you know, how what what are your thoughts around that?
[00:26:16] I mean, what's missing in the typical
[00:26:20] corporation in terms of thinking about the workforce of today
[00:26:25] and even more importantly, the workforce of of of the future?
[00:26:29] I mean, what's that going to look like?
[00:26:31] And and and what are companies and managers need to be?
[00:26:35] How do they need to be thinking differently?
[00:26:37] What do you think is like the biggest struggle
[00:26:39] for the companies that are trying to do remote work now?
[00:26:42] Is it just getting people to get stuff done?
[00:26:45] Like before I answer that, what do you think that the top issues are?
[00:26:48] I think it I think it's more around
[00:26:51] worker satisfaction and opportunities for workers without being
[00:26:58] in the office, so to speak, or able to interact on a more frequent basis.
[00:27:03] I think there's isolation and loneliness for certain employees.
[00:27:08] And I think employees are the you know,
[00:27:10] what I hear is that employees are torn because they love the freedom
[00:27:15] from working of working from home.
[00:27:17] But many times there, you know, I have a student or had a student,
[00:27:22] for example, that was working and she had to be at her computer
[00:27:27] a certain number of hours, which only allowed her,
[00:27:31] you know, very short get up and go to the bathroom.
[00:27:34] Otherwise, she had maybe a 30 minute lunch break and
[00:27:38] and the rest of the time she had to be
[00:27:42] forward facing at the computer, being productive.
[00:27:47] I think the big thing is companies need to realize that that nine
[00:27:52] to five office culture of kind of micro and let's be honest,
[00:27:55] a lot of them are micromanaging when you have the whole team in the office.
[00:27:58] So the first thing is is letting go of some of that.
[00:28:01] Like I think, you know, putting screen shot software
[00:28:05] on people's computers and tracking their every click is kind of crazy.
[00:28:08] Like nobody likes that.
[00:28:10] And I always say, like, would you like if your employer did that to you?
[00:28:12] And everyone's like, no, I wouldn't.
[00:28:14] I'm like, well, then why would you do that to someone that you're hiring?
[00:28:16] That's crazy.
[00:28:17] So I think it's accepting that as long as the job is done
[00:28:21] and you've laid out clear KPIs and expectations,
[00:28:25] as long as it's done, it doesn't really matter when.
[00:28:27] But I think that's kind of a problem with a lot of companies in the states
[00:28:31] that there's a lot of bloat.
[00:28:32] So they have a lot of jobs that are frankly not actually
[00:28:35] adding much of anything to the bottom line.
[00:28:38] And they don't actually there's no clear goal, there's no clear KPI
[00:28:41] that's not tied to any revenue or anything of the sort.
[00:28:44] So it's like, what are you doing all day?
[00:28:46] And most people are they're trying to look busy to justify the job.
[00:28:49] In reality, that job is maybe not even necessary.
[00:28:53] So that's the advice I would give is, you know,
[00:28:55] I don't want to say lean out and fire everybody.
[00:28:57] But if you're building the company, like, ask yourself,
[00:29:00] is this really necessary?
[00:29:02] Or could I give this to somebody else already on the team?
[00:29:05] Could I do it myself in under an hour a week?
[00:29:07] Like, you've got to ask yourself that before you start just hiring
[00:29:09] a million people to do nothing.
[00:29:11] You lose track of it all.
[00:29:13] That's a good point.
[00:29:14] And I think some of that probably comes from trying to
[00:29:20] retrofit almost the workforce that we had prior to COVID
[00:29:24] to the workforce that we have now.
[00:29:26] Yeah.
[00:29:27] And so there were probably a lot of people that
[00:29:32] were doing very little walking around the office,
[00:29:36] but it was less obvious than when they went home.
[00:29:38] So your point's probably a good one.
[00:29:40] But I think companies are struggling, you know, and they're looking at
[00:29:44] at a wide variety of solutions.
[00:29:46] But I think in certain areas like tech space where you've been or are,
[00:29:53] you know, in digital kinds of businesses like your first one,
[00:29:56] a lot of times those companies have been using
[00:30:01] remote work for a long, long time.
[00:30:03] So yeah, it's not new by any means, for sure.
[00:30:06] Yeah.
[00:30:07] Yeah.
[00:30:07] What do you hear from employers who are looking to hire Ukrainians,
[00:30:13] for example?
[00:30:14] I mean, what are they seeing that is of, you know,
[00:30:17] what's exciting them about that opportunity?
[00:30:20] So there's like two very distinctive ways.
[00:30:23] It's the people who are working online are excited because they think
[00:30:26] it's a higher level of talent than what they've been accustomed to.
[00:30:30] But I find the more interesting one to be the local businesses in the States.
[00:30:33] So, for example, we have a tire dealership in Miami
[00:30:37] who we've now placed three people with and they on their first call,
[00:30:40] they're like, we don't get half of our people to show up to interviews
[00:30:44] like our interviews, they just don't show up plain and simple.
[00:30:47] And now we've placed three people there and they're like,
[00:30:49] this is the greatest thing ever.
[00:30:51] We cut 80 percent off of what we the cost of this
[00:30:55] and they're enthusiastic and they're fantastic.
[00:30:58] And so that's been the real eye openers, small businesses who you would think,
[00:31:02] you know, like a tire dealership can't really do this online.
[00:31:07] They've gotten to the point they're so desperate.
[00:31:09] They've like, we're going to figure out a way to do this.
[00:31:12] So I think that's by far the most interesting to me.
[00:31:14] And that's what I hear from a lot of the more traditional business
[00:31:17] owners is they're just struggling, like they can't find the right people.
[00:31:21] They can't get them to show up to interviews.
[00:31:22] And unless they've got just a wad of cash to throw at them,
[00:31:26] they're just like that no one wants to work.
[00:31:28] And I think this is also unfortunately a covid byproduct that people are still
[00:31:34] are they still collecting unemployment?
[00:31:35] Do you know?
[00:31:37] I mean, as of like a year ago, I think they were and I
[00:31:40] I'm guessing they still are.
[00:31:42] I don't know.
[00:31:43] Yeah, it's it's
[00:31:45] unfortunately, almost every policy we pass never goes away,
[00:31:49] even when the circumstances change.
[00:31:51] Yeah, it just lives on forever.
[00:31:53] It can be an issue.
[00:31:54] But but we won't get into politics too much today.
[00:31:57] But yeah, I think there's some you know, there's definitely some
[00:32:01] some challenges there for the for the US worker.
[00:32:04] And I think companies like yours are demonstrating that,
[00:32:09] you know, you don't it's a it's a whole different world today.
[00:32:13] Hiring talent.
[00:32:14] We've we've got the entire world that we can look at
[00:32:18] as opposed to who lives in in the town where we're located.
[00:32:22] Yeah, very true.
[00:32:23] It's a very different marketplace.
[00:32:25] So tell me a little bit about sales because your company
[00:32:30] you just talked about, you know, the the new recruiter you hired.
[00:32:34] How do you do you all train?
[00:32:36] You know, talk about sales because that's that's really important
[00:32:40] for almost every entrepreneur to be thinking about how to how to get a good
[00:32:45] you know, how do you how do you sell a product?
[00:32:48] So, oh, like what question specifically,
[00:32:51] do you want to go into like processes?
[00:32:53] Do you want to go into like psychology?
[00:32:54] I think where do you want to go with this?
[00:32:58] It's up to you.
[00:32:59] What's most important, I think, is what I'm asking.
[00:33:02] Sales is the life of everything.
[00:33:05] I'm sorry. Sales is the lifeblood of everything when it comes to a business.
[00:33:09] Like there is no way around it.
[00:33:11] If you want to own a business, you need to like sales.
[00:33:14] Now, do you need to be a sleazy salesperson?
[00:33:17] No. But you need to like to talk and you need to like to network
[00:33:20] and you need to like to be able to you need to be able to talk about
[00:33:23] your business and what you offer and then be able to,
[00:33:25] you know, ask someone if they're interested in it.
[00:33:27] It's that simple.
[00:33:29] I think if you're a business owner and you don't like sales,
[00:33:31] like you're really going to struggle.
[00:33:33] It's the it's the most important thing.
[00:33:35] And as you start a company, there's no way around it.
[00:33:37] Like it has to be you doing it.
[00:33:39] It's going to be one of the last things
[00:33:41] that you're ever probably going to let go of if you ever do.
[00:33:44] And it's like, trust me, I know it is probably the hardest thing to let go of.
[00:33:48] And we talked about this earlier, too.
[00:33:49] But if it's your face and your company,
[00:33:52] like people are going to want to talk to you.
[00:33:54] I can't tell you how many times it happens that like one of my sales reps
[00:33:57] takes a call and then yet then they end up emailing me.
[00:34:00] So if you're the face of the company,
[00:34:02] you have to be willing to sell and be comfortable doing so.
[00:34:06] Yeah, I couldn't agree more.
[00:34:08] So how do you become a good salesperson?
[00:34:10] Is it just get out there and try it and sell and get a lot of knows
[00:34:14] and learn from that?
[00:34:15] I find a mentor, all of the above.
[00:34:18] A little bit of all of the above.
[00:34:20] I think I got lucky because I had a couple of jobs in high school
[00:34:23] and college in sales, so that made it quite a bit easier.
[00:34:26] But I think the biggest thing is starting to understand
[00:34:30] like what's warm and what's cold.
[00:34:32] So if you have a certain avatar that you're trying to sell to,
[00:34:37] you should actively try to repel people who do not meet that criteria.
[00:34:42] Trying to convince a bunch of people who are not the right fit
[00:34:45] will drive you insane.
[00:34:47] It is far, far, far better to try to attract the people
[00:34:50] who are a good fit and basically say no to everybody else,
[00:34:54] because then what you're going to find is you have better clients
[00:34:57] if they actually come in.
[00:34:58] You're going to enjoy it more and you're going to retain them longer.
[00:35:01] And this applies to any business.
[00:35:03] You know, would you try to sell, say,
[00:35:06] health food to somebody who's never been to the gym,
[00:35:08] or would you sell it to someone who goes to the gym every day?
[00:35:10] It's really that simple.
[00:35:11] Do you want to make things easy on yourself
[00:35:12] or do you want to make it really difficult?
[00:35:14] Yeah, and a lot of it goes back to getting really clear
[00:35:18] about who that customer is, right?
[00:35:19] You mentioned the avatar.
[00:35:21] So spending a lot of time up front to define as specifically as you can
[00:35:26] who that person is, what they do, how they think, all of the above.
[00:35:30] Yeah, it's very important.
[00:35:31] I think, like I said, that's the biggest piece of advice I can give
[00:35:34] is don't try to turn all the no's into yeses.
[00:35:37] Try to just find more yeses.
[00:35:38] It makes it a lot simpler.
[00:35:39] Yeah, that's a really good piece of advice, I think.
[00:35:42] So let's talk a little bit about money.
[00:35:45] A lot of entrepreneurs assume they have to, or startups,
[00:35:49] early stage companies, assume they have to raise money.
[00:35:54] Did you ever go through
[00:35:56] fundraising or have you mostly grown your business organically bootstrapped?
[00:36:00] Never taken any money, actually, on any business.
[00:36:04] I'm not opposed to it even.
[00:36:05] I just never have.
[00:36:06] I've always had an audience that I could just bootstrap it myself
[00:36:10] and launch it myself with just what I already had built on social media
[00:36:14] and my email list, so that made it a lot easier.
[00:36:16] And it is a lot harder to do that now, too.
[00:36:18] You know, it's not like you can just whip up
[00:36:21] an audience of thousands of people, but that's always how I've done it.
[00:36:24] So I'm not opposed to taking money, but I just never have.
[00:36:30] I have had business partners, though.
[00:36:32] And, yeah, taking money.
[00:36:34] Let's talk about that.
[00:36:35] Yeah, taking money is not quite the same, but like don't work with people
[00:36:39] who you're not going to be able to work with long term,
[00:36:42] because that never works out either.
[00:36:44] Yeah, I've had that.
[00:36:45] I've had a bad experience along that.
[00:36:48] We all have. Yeah.
[00:36:49] Yeah. Yeah.
[00:36:51] That's it. That's it.
[00:36:52] It's it's a pretty serious thing when you take on a business partner.
[00:36:55] And I think a lot of people,
[00:36:57] you know, it's it's like the early stages of dating, right?
[00:37:00] Everything is great until it isn't.
[00:37:03] Business and dating have so many parallels.
[00:37:06] It's it's uncanny. It really is.
[00:37:09] Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:37:09] You could probably go start a whole blog on that, right?
[00:37:12] I thought about writing a book on that.
[00:37:15] I thought about writing a book on that between the parallels of sales
[00:37:18] and business and dating.
[00:37:19] I thought about it, but I'm not going to go down that road yet.
[00:37:21] Maybe later in life.
[00:37:23] Maybe someday. Yeah.
[00:37:25] You're busy right now.
[00:37:26] So exactly.
[00:37:27] So let's let's talk a little bit about failure.
[00:37:31] Every entrepreneur that I've talked to has had some failure along the way
[00:37:36] to success. So what do you have a story that you'd be willing to share
[00:37:41] and or and or a little bit more about how you think about failure?
[00:37:48] The biggest thing I'd say is that you have to swing the ball
[00:37:52] or swing the bat a lot to hit a home run.
[00:37:54] And you're probably going to strike out a lot and maybe even
[00:37:57] hit some singles and some doubles.
[00:37:58] But what you want to do is eventually hit the home run.
[00:38:01] And I would say, yeah, I've had so many failures.
[00:38:04] I think the one that stands out to me the most was it was after Covid.
[00:38:07] And I'd actually had a couple of businesses and income streams
[00:38:10] knocked completely just offline by what happened.
[00:38:14] And I decided to start an e-commerce store.
[00:38:16] And I got this idea from a friend of mine to sell like hype boosters.
[00:38:20] So you slide it into your shoe and it adds, you know, a couple of inch,
[00:38:23] you know, targeted towards guys.
[00:38:25] And, you know, I I didn't believe in the product.
[00:38:27] I never used the product.
[00:38:29] I didn't understand anything about it.
[00:38:31] And I was just like, this is going to work.
[00:38:33] I'll just figure it out.
[00:38:34] And before I knew it, I was spending like a thousand dollars a day on ads.
[00:38:37] And then it all kind of just fell apart and I ended up losing tons of money.
[00:38:41] And, you know, it's just a typical story with that kind of niche.
[00:38:44] It really is. So that was probably the story of like,
[00:38:48] oh, this was something I didn't believe in.
[00:38:49] It was a product I didn't believe in.
[00:38:51] It was just a bad idea from the start.
[00:38:52] But I was I was desperate at that point.
[00:38:55] But there's there's plenty of stories like that of other things I've tried.
[00:38:59] Entrepreneurship is all about taking risks and trying to figure things out.
[00:39:04] And even in my business now, which is successful,
[00:39:07] sometimes we start ad campaigns and we lose a bunch of money
[00:39:11] and we don't get anything from it.
[00:39:12] And that's just how it is.
[00:39:13] It's it's a constant battle of just testing stuff out.
[00:39:16] It's part of the process.
[00:39:18] Yeah. And I'm assuming now one of your criteria
[00:39:22] for taking something on is you want to make sure you believe in it, right?
[00:39:25] Because every time we fail at something, we learn something from it.
[00:39:29] And yeah, I try to make sure. Yeah.
[00:39:32] Yeah. So, I mean, I think all of us have to find our way there.
[00:39:37] And I love your, you know, your analogies there.
[00:39:40] I mean, it is all about,
[00:39:43] you know, pushing past the failures and getting up to the bat to bat,
[00:39:47] you know, as many times as needed to get to success, which
[00:39:50] which also is an important lesson with with sales, because
[00:39:55] each time you get somebody saying no, hopefully,
[00:39:58] at least if you're focused on the right customer, you're learning something
[00:40:01] so that you can get to the one that will say yes.
[00:40:04] And yeah, how to sell to that person.
[00:40:07] Yeah. I'll use another sports analogy, too.
[00:40:09] I think it was Kobe Bryant.
[00:40:10] He said, if you shoot 0 for 10, that means you psyched yourself out
[00:40:14] and you took yourself out of the game.
[00:40:15] And I'd rather go like 0 for 30.
[00:40:17] And that means I didn't give up.
[00:40:19] And it's it's kind of the same thing in business.
[00:40:20] You have to keep like shooting that shot.
[00:40:22] There's just no way around it because the world is always changing.
[00:40:26] Like, you know, people are going to copy you in today's world.
[00:40:29] You know, an ad platform might ban you or an algorithm might change.
[00:40:33] And so you just always have to adapt.
[00:40:34] It's part of part of the process. Yeah.
[00:40:36] I call it executing pest failure.
[00:40:38] So you have to keep going and, you know, it's good.
[00:40:42] So yeah.
[00:40:44] So tell me what, you know, what is what is the future for higher
[00:40:49] UA, I mean, where are you headed now?
[00:40:51] What are you thinking about?
[00:40:52] Are there any innovations on your horizon that you're you're focused on?
[00:40:57] Anything you're curious about or testing out right now
[00:41:01] that you'd be willing to share?
[00:41:02] Yeah. So we're actually working on a software division,
[00:41:05] like an actual platform that we're going to run.
[00:41:08] So that's kind of the big thing at the moment.
[00:41:10] And I think I'd also like to get into, like, deeper integrations
[00:41:15] where I could have a business owner come to me, you know,
[00:41:18] ideally someone not totally green, but also hasn't really made a hire
[00:41:22] and say, this is what I'm struggling with.
[00:41:24] I need someone to really get integrated
[00:41:26] and to actually work with that person over a period of, say, three to six months
[00:41:30] and really make sure their new employees integrated into their business.
[00:41:34] And I think it would work best with, like, business owners who need an assistant
[00:41:37] because I've hired and trained a few assistants.
[00:41:39] And I can say, like, you know, my current assistant, Yana, is like,
[00:41:42] you know, runs my life in many ways.
[00:41:44] So I think being able to help people get people like Yana
[00:41:48] would be something I'd really enjoy to do, because then it's also,
[00:41:51] you know, everyone gets it.
[00:41:52] You know, whoever it is gets a good job.
[00:41:53] They get a great assistant.
[00:41:54] That would be something that would really interest me as well.
[00:41:56] Something I'm looking at. Yeah.
[00:41:58] Yeah, it's very fulfilling, I'm sure, to know that not only
[00:42:02] are you running a successful and profitable business for your family
[00:42:07] and your employees, but you're also making a difference
[00:42:11] in the lives of the people that you place.
[00:42:15] Yeah, yeah. That's makes me feel good.
[00:42:18] That's great. That's very rewarding.
[00:42:20] And so, well, this has been really, really interesting.
[00:42:25] And I've loved hearing your story.
[00:42:28] It's a story, I think, that will inspire a lot of people.
[00:42:31] So I appreciate you sharing it.
[00:42:33] And before we go, I would love to ask you to share
[00:42:37] if you had one piece of advice that you might have given yourself
[00:42:40] back when you first got started or in the early years of your
[00:42:45] entrepreneurial journey.
[00:42:47] What would that be?
[00:42:49] I would say it's based off of what I was talking about earlier,
[00:42:52] which is repelling the wrong people.
[00:42:54] So what in a bigger sense, this means say no to more things
[00:42:59] and say yes to only the things that you really believe in
[00:43:02] and try to just focus on instead of doing 20 things, try to do one.
[00:43:07] And I think this is a real problem with the current world
[00:43:09] where you get all these ads and it's like, try this, try that, try that.
[00:43:13] And before you know it, you're doing a terrible job at 10 different things
[00:43:16] when if you just sat down and did one thing,
[00:43:19] you would have been really good at it.
[00:43:20] So focus on one thing at a time and try to say the word no more often
[00:43:25] would be the best advice I can give.
[00:43:27] Yeah, that's tough, but great advice, really great advice.
[00:43:30] I think most entrepreneurs love, love the newness
[00:43:34] and the next big thing are looking for the next big thing.
[00:43:38] Yeah, be boring.
[00:43:39] That's yeah, that's a good piece of advice to do the boring thing
[00:43:43] and focus in on making what you're doing now, the next big thing,
[00:43:46] whatever that takes, right?
[00:43:48] So exactly making it, making it, building it.
[00:43:51] Well, Kyle, this has been fantastic.
[00:43:54] I wish you and your young family and your company the best.
[00:43:58] Thank you very much.
[00:43:59] Where can our listeners find out more about you?
[00:44:03] Follow you, perhaps find out about HireUA.
[00:44:07] Yeah, we've got a page built for your listeners.
[00:44:09] So it's Hire-UA.com slash N Factor.
[00:44:12] And if you're a business owner actively looking to hire,
[00:44:15] you can click the button there and book a call with the team.
[00:44:17] I also send out a daily email to business owners
[00:44:20] about the topics that we've kind of talked about today.
[00:44:23] And then if you're a business owner
[00:44:24] who's kind of struggling with your time, not sure where to go,
[00:44:27] then we have a time audit matrix as well.
[00:44:29] You can download that and kind of fill that out
[00:44:31] and it'll tell you this is what you're doing good,
[00:44:33] this is what you're doing bad, this is worth it, this is not.
[00:44:35] And you can kind of use that as your North Star, so to speak.
[00:44:38] That's great. That's fantastic.
[00:44:40] Well, HireUA forward slash N Factor.
[00:44:44] Yeah, Hire-UA.com forward slash N Factor.
[00:44:49] Thank you for sharing today and for joining us.
[00:44:51] Thank you for having me. It was a blast.
[00:44:53] Yeah, thanks.
[00:44:54] Thank you.
[00:44:56] If you enjoyed this episode
[00:44:58] and would like to learn more about entrepreneurship,
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[00:45:03] Thank you so much for listening to this episode of N Factor.