Ryan Rutan: Welcome back to another episode of the Startup therapy podcast. This is Ryan Rotan, joined by my friend and the CEO and founder of startups dot com. Will Schroeder. Will we get into all sorts of interesting things with these topics sometime? But I, I really, I'm gonna have to ask you this, this one's from, this one's from your desk. Like, uh is there a hidden message here? Right? Should I, should, I, should I let the team know we're not publishing an episode this week and keep everybody from uh from listening to this one. What uh what's going on here, buddy?
Wil Schroter: It's so funny. So, you know, we, we always put together these topics and we kind of brainstormed and, and uh this one I put together was uh titled What if I fired everybody and started over? And I sent it off to Sarah who's on our marketing team. And I was like, and after I said it, I was like, wait, hey, Sarah, hold on, come across really wrong. And I was like, this is more of an exercise about how founders think about um staffing and things like that. But it's a giant headline that says, what if I fired everyone and started over? It's like, what are you trying to say? Uh that, that didn't go over so well,
Ryan Rutan: don't, don't read too much into this, but also make sure you have this to me before the end of today.
Wil Schroter: How to pack your desk and, and lead today.
Ryan Rutan: Why did you print this on pink paper? Will, what's
Wil Schroter: going on? But look, man, it's, it, it is. It's a question that I'm gonna say every founder has had, they've always had the f this reset moment, at least probably once a day. All right. So before we get into this next topic, I just want to let you know what we talk about here is like 1% of the conversation, you know, really, this conversation is going on all day long online at groups dot startups dot com where Ryan and I pretty much talk endlessly with founders about every one of these topics. So if by the end of this discussion, you like the topic and you want to dig into it a little bit more with Ryan and I just head to groups dot startups dot com and we'll pick it up from there. And then the other question and I think this is really what we're talking about is more around. What if the people that I have right now aren't the right people. This is actually this is such an important question to be fair. We ask this question of our own organization every single month, you know, when we're going through payroll and end the month and everything and this isn't like we're trying to get rid of anybody. It's a health check, it's a health check to look around and say of all the people that we have all the rules that we have the compensation that we have everything that we have. Is it still appropriate? I don't think founders have that conversation enough and we have it like, fairly openly and
Ryan Rutan: we have it really openly. And, and I think so just to be clear, like we extend that beyond, this isn't just a human resources thing. We look at all of the resources that we're paying for everything that we have that we bring to bear and we consistently ask ourselves month, over month, over month, do the resources that we have suit what we're doing? Now, are these still the best tools, people, software service providers, whatever for the job? Now, I think we'll, we'll keep it constrained to, to the, to the human element today, but that's really what we're doing. And yeah, you know, I absolutely founders do this. We, I think inherently they're, they're doing this. But I think that there's a difference between wondering and actually making this into some sort of a process where you're actually doing something about it, which is, is kind of the corner that we've turned a long time ago, which is to say, like, let's do question um and, and question continuously because, you know, people say, well, no, they were, they were perfect when I hired them. Yes. Two years later, has that role changed at all? Has the company changed? He start up land in two months, sometimes this is, this is enough time to change. So, yeah, this is gonna be an interesting
Wil Schroter: one kind of look at it this way. Imagine you've got, uh, the startup starting and you've got a thesis or idea. And of course, we think that the initial idea is going to persist. It's gonna be exactly what we thought it would be. And of course, the moment it makes contact with customers, everything goes to hell, we made
Ryan Rutan: a road map will, how could it turn out to be anything other than that, the
Wil Schroter: most useless document of all time? We'll put it next to our business plan. It's so what ends up happening is we go through this process, we start building the company we hire for roles and we hire people that we think we need at the time. But then everything changes inherently. It kind of has to, in fact, if we're doing our job, everything changes, it evolves the skill sets that were the baseline for what we needed last year. If we're doing, our jobs aren't good enough. Exactly.
Ryan Rutan: Or that's exactly it. So
Wil Schroter: we look at the people that we hired and think about this. I don't think people really consider this factor. What if the people that we hired at the time we hired him were just the best we could do at the time. Maybe we didn't, we couldn't pay a recruiter. So our, our resources were really limited. Maybe we couldn't pay enough for the role. So our candidates were really limited. I mean, you name it and it's probably all true. So how is it the case that the person that happened to get the job at that time is still the best person for the job? Well, obviously they
Ryan Rutan: just scaled linearly with the business at exactly the right pace to be relevant the entire time. Right? And
Wil Schroter: so I think, right, I think it would be more uncommon for all of those things over all the health check items to actually still be present and relevant. So I don't think this is about wanting anybody to lose their job. This is about as a founder, as a leader in the company and the leadership of the company, we have to be very deliberate about how we analyze who we have on board today and what we do about it. So I think that's what we should talk about. Let's dig into that. Let's talk like all the health check items, look around the staff and say, is this who's supposed to be
Ryan Rutan: here? Yeah. Yeah. No, for sure. And I, and I think that, you know, to some degree this also isn't just about eliminating, right? It's not saying like, oh, this person is no longer relevant, sometimes this person is no longer sufficient for the role by them, right? And so we may need somebody else alongside them, above them, beside them, below them, whatever it ends up being, right? But we may need to augment that. And so I think that it's just this is a general overall call. So again, like you said, do the health checks, make sure that the resources you have fully meet the needs that you have and and just be cognizant that, that changes really, really fast, especially at the early stages in the startups just to, to to layer one more uh analogy on here. Um You know, as you were saying, you know, the idea that this person that you brought in and based on all these other factors um is going to be the person who just kind of grows and that they're, they're the one that's, you know, we hired him on day one and they're also relevant on day, you know, 2565 slim. It's a lot like a career in any sense, right? Like it's like saying that that first person we hired um is gonna last forever. It's like saying that first job you got is also gonna last forever, right? Nobody expects that to be the case. We expect to continuously level up, move on change, do all that same thing happens with the roles, right? And the needs of the company grows. So, but
Wil Schroter: I think that the other thing we have to consider is the company itself, the dynamics of the company, big things like culture, politics, all the bullshit like that. There is a point where it's so instantiated in the company that we just, if we were to do a hard research, we'd get rid of it all. The, the idea that comes to mind is a couple of weeks ago, I saw DH H go on Jason Call Canis Show and do kind of a debrief of what happened at um at base camp when they had that huge stir up last year. Uh when basically, uh they had huge internal politics and the whole thing blew up and half the staff quit, et cetera. And David said, look, he said, yeah, it was horrible. It was, you know, one of the worst moments of my life and we were such a stronger company because of it. And he said, look, we basically in one fell swoop, got rid of all of the cultural and political problems that we were having overnight. Now, there's a whole bunch of reasons. You may not agree with what he's saying, but he did it, you know, in his mind for what he was trying to achieve. It worked. That is not how they were expecting to achieve it. I
Ryan Rutan: was gonna say, I, I don't think that was exactly the plan right now. We're gonna do something inflammatory. This will, this will, this will chase him out. Yeah. So I, but it was a real, yeah. Yeah, it was a reset. Right. Yeah, it definitely, it definitely accomplished that. They burn the house down,
Wil Schroter: you bet. And we've actually gone through it ourselves. Uh, about six or seven years ago. Uh, we bought virtual, the virtual assistant business, um, which was in a standalone business, a venture funded business and had gone out of business overnight, which meant 400 people lost their jobs overnight. So just
Ryan Rutan: to clarify, when will says overnight, he literally means overnight. It was a
Wil Schroter: Sunday. And
Ryan Rutan: yeah, Sunday, everybody thought they had a job. Monday morning came to find that they didn't. So literally overnight, it's important.
Wil Schroter: And so that actually did what we're talking about, which was full clean slate kind of reset. We came in, we had nothing to do with the people losing their jobs. We were trying to actually do this to save everybody's job, but we came in with a clean slate and we went through all the health checks we're gonna talk about here. So we've done this at scale and we've actually seen both sides of it. We've also been, I think, uh pretty regimented about using those health checks inside startups dot com as we've grown. Uh Have we done the thing where we've held out on the people for too long? Sure. I think everybody has. Right. I kind of hard not to happen. Right. But we at least have the conversation. We're not trying to get anybody out of their jobs. A lot of times we're just trying to find a better role for people, a better use of their time and their resources because shit changes. So, I think the first thing that we look at when we're thinking about, um, uh, letting everybody go, you know, kind of clean slate reset is what roles would we not hire back if we, if we had none of these folks? Because I think it's a big part. We have so many roles that got kind of grandfathered in over time or never really got updated if you had 10 million in a series a investment in the bank and you were just rehiring everybody fresh. New org chart. Would it look like the ORG chart today? That's where I think where we should start? What roles still make
Ryan Rutan: sense? Yeah, totally. I mean, and just going through that calculus and saying like, what are we trying to accomplish now? And what are the roles that we have that serve that? Um What do we have that doesn't serve any of that at all? Right, because sometimes this happens, right? As the businesses pivot, uh you know, a, a particular role may become more or less relevant. I mean, if you recall going, this is, this is a long time ago. Uh when we were a much lower client volume business, we did not need a lot of customer service. And customer service was sort of handled as a distributed function across a lot of different people, across a lot of different teams. It sort of like we'll all pitch in and kind of do customer service at some point that no longer served us at all. And we went and we looked at it like this, this isn't gonna work, right? Having this one person uh without any leadership and without any, any real structure on how we're going to grow that as a business unit no longer makes any sense, right? But it, it took sitting down and looking at that and saying, OK, this is, this is enough of an issue that we need to solve that. And it came from actually looking at the org chart because the way we had, it actually did a really good job of hiding how much of a problem it was because it was a little bit of a problem for a whole bunch of people. And so it took sitting down and saying like, OK, this is becoming a more important issue based on the the the the client volume. We have, we need more data, we need centralized. How is this, how is this function? Now? We went? OK. But there actually isn't anybody in this role. So there we go, we need to create one. And in this case it wasn't about elimination, it was about creation, but it's still same exercise going through and understanding what do we need to accomplish right now? And how does the team service that
Wil Schroter: I think one of the things that happens is there's a ton of roles and responsibilities that just get absorbed over time. Right. Ryan, how many jobs do you and I have that have nothing to do with our title that we've just picked up. You know, you're, you're still helping with customer service. Right? Years later, right. Like seven years later, um, I still write all the copy for our site. I did 10 years ago. I still do it because we just haven't found somebody else to do it. And I guess when we think about it, when we look at a fresh slate we start with, uh, do, do we have these roles because someone was actually, uh, the best person for the job or they just happen to be there? Do we have the role? Just because they're still there? This happens all the time. Somebody quits and we're like, you know, now that they're gone, we're actually not gonna hire back for that role. I can think of a lot of cases even at senior levels, someone left and we didn't back,
Ryan Rutan: didn't backfill it, it got, it got redistributed. Yeah. The, the, the role didn't have enough value at that time, at least, uh, to, to warrant that. And, and we've certainly seen that happen, right. We've, we've had people leave and we've said, ok, we're just going to divide this up across, uh some of management and it's continued to work for a long time. Sometimes one aspect of that grows into a full role. Sometimes it, it kind of rec congeals and we do hire somebody else. Um, but it still, it takes this, this kind of constant analysis and looking and saying like, is this still serving us? Um Yeah, and those are always so, so eyeopening, right? And it's, it's always amazing when somebody leaves and, and then they that just that chair stays empty. Um And you think about, you know, what was that impact to the p and over time, uh it's super important to do this guys
Wil Schroter: here, here's what I think happens there. And, and I just want to pull that as an aside, I think what happens is at the time that that role gets invented, created, developed, et cetera, right? That point, we need a leader, we need somebody that is championing that role. Uh early days of virtual, think of how badly we needed specific leadership just fully focused only on virtual. Here's why. And I think a lot of folks are gonna start nodding their head going, you know that that actually is happening at the time. Shit's crazy. Someone has to own crazy. But if they're doing their job, eventually crazy tones down and just becomes processed and
Ryan Rutan: you go from creation to opera, opera uh operation. Right.
Wil Schroter: Exactly. And so all of a sudden, what was this unique dynamic role in leadership requirement now just can get done kind of by anybody. I would argue that's what most most major companies look like. Now, all the important stuff was done long, you know, years ago, decades ago and now everyone else just exists to not fuck it up right now. Um If you brought the most dynamic person in, it would make a lick of difference because everything has kind of been done.
Ryan Rutan: We have that dynamic has been run out of the rag at this point.
Wil Schroter: Yeah, totally. And we have that at startups by definition because going in nothing's been defined, everything requires a dynamic personality. So this person comes in, it doesn't even matter which role it could be dev it could be marketing customer service, you name it and they come in and they do a quick ass job to their credit and now they're running a department, but they're like the may tag repair man. They're just sitting around waiting for problems to happen. They don't actually, you know, create or do anything new uh especially as organizations get bigger. If it's a small organization and you don't have a ton of resources, then having that dynamic person matters. But now of a sudden you've got 50 people in the department. Yes, you need a manager. But again, there's enough resources to go around and I'm not saying that people that rise to management should be put to pasture. That's not what I'm saying at all. I'm saying it's not uncommon that as the role, as the department develops, that the need for someone at that level with that horsepower, with that capability is still relevant.
Ryan Rutan: Yeah, and not in the same way, certainly. Right. I think it goes back to this creation versus operations. Um You know, in the point where you need somebody creating, defining process, figuring things out, testing, breaking fixing that eventually goes away to your point, uh at least periodically, right? It can, it can certainly come back. Um Startups tend to zig and zag their way into the future. And so as those directional changes happen, you may get back into creation mode even within a given department that had been operational for a long time. Uh and, and something has changed, right? Like Apple releases a new privacy feature and, and pixels die. And now, you know, the marketing team has to scramble to figure out how we're going to be relevant based on the new marketing channels we're gonna need to use because the old ones just evaporate, right? So things, things do come cyclically, but this is why again, we have to pay attention to this stuff. We can't just assume that because we put a brick into place that it just stays in the wall and protects us and serves us forever. It's just not the way it works in a startup.
Wil Schroter: So, uh, I think the way we look at that exercise is let's build an ORG chart that has no names on it because I think often what happens is, or charts get tortured by who's making the, or, or chart. Jenna has always been in accounting. So we have to keep her in accounting even though accounting isn't even what it used to be. Right. Like it, like it's been automated, it's moved to stripe who the hell knows, right. The point is we tend to create these org charts by trying to torture everybody in the ORG chart. The right exercise is to say, what's the ORG chart without the people? What is that? The difference
Ryan Rutan: between this is the difference between planning out your meals based on a, on a really nice book of recipes and planning out your meals based on what's in the
Wil Schroter: fridge. Totally. And, and, and we pretty much always do it based on what's on the fridge, what's in the fridge? You know, by the way, I just want to mention if what we're talking about today sounds like the kind of discussion you wish you were having more often, you actually can, you know, we're online all day, every day working through exactly these types of topics with founders just like you. So any question you would have or maybe some problem you just want to work through. We're here and we love this stuff and we're easy to find, you know, head over to groups dot startups dot com and let's just start talking next. We'll look at what we're spending for those resources because once again, often for every role, the compensation and a lot of times the K P I s and such were created at a time that isn't. Now, you mentioned this uh earlier, you said uh I bring on a developer, net developer is the smartest developer and is the greatest coder of all time relative to having. Absolutely no one else on the, the one I had been in the land of the blind. And so we're willing to pay whatever we have to or you know, or, or, or the market demands for that role at that time. However, we've got like 12 of those people now, right? So paying some astronomical uh fee if you will for what's essentially a role that 12 other people are doing as well at a fraction of the price. It kind of doesn't make sense anymore.
Ryan Rutan: Yeah, the premium no longer, no longer stacks up.
Wil Schroter: And so comp gets grandfathered all the time. Yeah, all the time. And it's also not necessarily proportionate to where our needs are anymore. And early on maybe our needs were around products because we didn't have a product now that they're shifting. It's moving to Biz Deb and marketing and now we kind of need to, to move the cost there but we've got this heavy cost center in development and it happens. But this goes back to the same point about how we have to zoom out. And we have to say, OK, well, like given where we are at now, if we're starting fresh today, how would I allocate that money? It's almost always different, which I think is important. It is
Ryan Rutan: the other, I just want to touch on something else related to this. And that's that in addition to the compensation for some of these individuals, for example, let's just use the, the, the developer example that we, we brought them in um you know, relative to having nobody in the organization, they were great. Um And now in addition to their comp being out of line with the 12 other people who are doing their job, they may also be leading the 12 other people who are doing that job without any actual leadership experience. And so not only are you paying a premium for them to do the same job as everybody else, there is some level of expectation that they're doing another job that they're incapable of and you, you end up not only overpay, but then you, you put them in a role that you really probably do need some. If you got 12 people, you probably need some level of leadership and we see it all the time and it's not just in dev I just an easy example. Uh but we see this all the time, we had a, a hiring workshop, uh that we conducted earlier this week. And, uh there were several examples out of just a handful of people who kind of shared some experiences that spoke exactly to this. Right. That they had people that they had just been there from the beginning. So they've gotten promoted up into, into, you know, positions where they're no longer relevant and the salaries have continued to grow uh relative to the people who are working under them. A lot of the times that people probably more senior than the person who's now leading them just by virtue of having been there earlier, right? So this is again why we have to think about the composition of this work chart and, and who is where and why, right? And, and not just simply people, you know, have been here. So they have to keep rising to the top of the stack. Uh no matter what their experience level is, their, their expertise and so
Wil Schroter: forth. I think one of the tricky things too about managers is that uh people get promoted. And there's this idea that if I'm more senior, I'm also good at managing people. And I've rarely seen a correlation for folks listening. I gotta be honest with you. I've hired thousands of people. I've yet to see that correlation management
Ryan Rutan: is a specific mindset. It's, it's not something that just inherently comes with time and a role in fact, the more time you spend executing in a role, the less likely you are to be a good manager because you haven't been managing, you've been working. Those are two different things.
Wil Schroter: There's a really broken implication there, which is, if I do it longer, I'm also good at uh at leadership and it's just, I've yet to see that correlation happen again. It helps, it definitely helps to have that longer tenure and, and more time in the state, which is wonderful. But management is a totally different animal and this is important to what we're talking about here. Management is a totally different animal management is the ability to lead people. It's the ability to motivate people. It's the ability to grow people and show them a path to make the people working under you exponentially better than they would be without you.
Ryan Rutan: It is not a good manager, being really good at the role and having done it for longer than everybody else, right? It is not, it's
Wil Schroter: just not a babysitter, which is how most people treat management. If I look at a manager, if I evaluate a manager, I say with the people that they are managing are those people exponentially better because they're managing them. If, if you were to take that person out, will that person fail? If not, then what are they even adding? Because those people are gonna be able to do their jobs anyway. If you're not that you're a babysitter and that's a very different job. One that you don't pay a premium for, which is what we're talking about. We zoomed out and we said, look, I've got 12 developers and again, I wanna pick out, but I got 12 developers, realistically, if they have a, a manager that I'm paying some huge premium or not, they're kind of going to get the same job done there. Go, I probably won't spend a premium on another manager or if I do, I'll, I'll bump up somebody at some comp and make them a team lead and, and call it what it is. They're essentially the, the team captain. They're not really managing shit. And so I think when I think about it, when I think about again, the reset plan, I say to myself, what is each of those departments? What do they require at this point? Knowing now what we know, what would we be willing to pay a premium for? Surprisingly, it's usually not management, not the way we think
Ryan Rutan: it is. No, no, no, typically not. Now, I think, and again that I would draw, I would draw a pretty strong line between management leadership too. Um We can dig into that separately. But yeah, there's, there's, there's definitely a difference there. And again, it goes back to whether we're in, in create mode or, or operation mode, right? And sometimes operations do require a manager, right? There's enough things that are going on operationally where if any one of those pieces starts to falter or fail that it affects everybody else. You have, you may have some need for management. I this is not usually the case for, for early stage startups, right? There's, there's very little to manage. And I think you and I both said this before but, and I certainly feel this way. I don't know, you still feel this way but m managers manage people, not processes, not projects, not Softwares, right? This is managers, manage people. Uh And so I think there's this word gets thrown around a lot. But um at the early stage of the startups, you know, the the need for management is just typically so slim because again, everybody's actually doing the jobs, right? They're doing the jobs, they're doing multiple jobs in most cases as you referenced before. Uh There's nobody managing them, right? They're just managing a bunch of processes and trying to get work done uh which changes greatly over time. Um And so kind of again to circle back to that original point, which is, you know, how would we look at the cap table or the uh the work chart rather? Um And how do we think about who's in it and what would we be willing to pay for it? Sometimes that need for that initial leadership within a given area fades away. Sometimes the need for that management crops up. But again, I think this is a much later stage issue than, than most of our listeners. Uh in the most early stage startups are dealing with. This is more of a corporate problem uh in my mind.
Wil Schroter: Sure. Sure. So let's take a away from what we're spending and let's talk about who we're spending it on. Who would we, we rehire? And I thought that was the most interesting thing about that reference I made to the base camp thing was that, uh David and, and Jason said, look, we, we actually have really talented people. So it wasn't questioned. People had 16 years of tenure. I mean, crazy, 10 years, they've,
Ryan Rutan: they, they've consistently gushed about their team, right? Like they, it wasn't like there were a bunch of people, they were like, we can't wait to get rid of half of our staff. Uh That was not the case. Yeah,
Wil Schroter: except, except at some point, the fundamental cultural differences between them and their stat were just no longer relevant. I mean, they were just, they were so far away from each other and all of a sudden they look at that and say of all the people that just quit, would I hire them back? That's the most interesting thing. So, you and I have gone through this numerous times over a decade running startups dot com and let's say we had to let somebody go and it always sucks. We don't like letting people go. It's awful, but we have to make those hard decisions. And one of the questions we always ask ourselves and I would argue this might to this day be the most relevant question is if we were to part company with them. And a month later realized it was the worst decision, would we try to hire them back? Forget the logistics and everything else like that. Let's just pretend for argument's sake that they're sitting at home twiddling their thumbs waiting for us to call. Would we call them back? And the answer is always no. Now I wanna caveat that for a second because that might imply that we're, you, you've got some ill will toward the person or, you know, it's, it's an anger, not a case at all. Some of these people are awesome, right? In, in, in fact, one of them last night, I was, I was texting last night, we were set up for drinks, which is awesome. I, I can't wait to see him. However that said, would never hire them back. Big difference. The difference being when we, we had the opportunity to have the relationship, we tested it out. We saw what our working relationship was like and you know what? It just didn't work out so well. Maybe they just weren't a fit culturally for the company happens. Maybe their skill set, we just evolved past happens, happens like, but more, more likely it again, I, I don't want to overlook this part. Maybe there's just a jerk also happens. Right. It happens. It does for whatever the reasons are the question we always have when we're doing this evaluation is would we hire them back? And here's the thing, if the answer is yes, how many times have we held on to somebody? Not because we probably should have let him go, et cetera, but because of a relationship, we're like, you know what we, we, we really want to work with this person. We really want it to work, but they're just giving us every reason to have to part company, which sucks. But it's such an important, uh, decision point, you know what I mean?
Ryan Rutan: Yeah, sure. I mean, we, we, we get forced into these decisions at some points, um, which isn't really what we're talking about today. I mean, that does, it does happen right? Where we just sort of have to do this. Uh, but in the case where, you know, we're, we're going through and, and doing the evaluation, right? Going back to kind of your, your theme for today as we're evaluating? How does this factor into that part? Right. Would the, would the, would we hire them? How does that factor into how we feel about the given role? Because now we're talking a bit more about like the individual, uh, as opposed to the person? Yeah. So this is more about the person, an interesting thing came up during the, uh, the, the hiring workshop there were some questions around this is we started to talk about the fact that like from the very beginning, you, you need to have some level of vision. Of course, it needs to be flexible because just like your product road map, uh your hiring road map and your team vision will likely change as the business changes. But you need some sense of where you're going with this. And, and we talked about uh some of the non negotiables and will you and I have talked about this ad nausea and I think we've even done probably at least a full episode on this. And then we've touched on it other times, which is around like we had, we made, we made a pretty strong list of like the types of people we don't want to work with or the types of things that we absolutely won't tolerate are non negotiables in terms of hiring. Um And a lot of this, this challenge, the, the would we rehire, um I think can be preempted. It takes some time to learn this, right. And I think in the beginning when we're a less attractive company, you know, we have less cash, whatever, there's all these things that are going on that, that make it maybe harder to hire. And so we feel a little bit more desperate in terms of who we're hiring, right? We may not be as selective, we may say, you know, I don't really like them but they're sort of the best we can find for now um happens all the time. It happens all the time and it costs you a lot in the long run. So I think that, you know, in order to um to have less of these, would we rehire them comma no uh outcomes that this is really preempted at having some level of vision for the, the culture and, and more so probably the values that you want to create within the company um that came up as well, which that was pretty interesting. It was around, you know, the, the hiring for value ad uh culture ad versus just hiring for culture. Uh so that we, we do get some diversity and we do get some, you know, we, we don't end up building monoculture, which I think was one of the things that kind of came back from, from that uh the episode with DH H was that uh you know, if everybody who didn't agree with you left now, what are you left with from a culture standpoint? Right? Is it now monoculture uh and so forth which uh you know, the they addressed? But um yeah, so there's, there's a lot to consider within this one right around the. Would you rehire? I think most of this happens on the day you hire them with the exception again of like if the role has just surpassed them. Sure, that's a bit different. But I, I don't know if that, that would really would. I rehire them for the same role. Yes. For now. Maybe not. Right. Different discussion.
Wil Schroter: Think of it this way of all the people you've ever dated. Would you go back and date or marry every single one of them? Probably not. Probably
Ryan Rutan: doesn't mean
Wil Schroter: that doesn't mean that at the time you didn't have good parts of your relationship doesn't mean that they're a bad person. It means that you've gone through a relationship, your kind of relationship has done what it's done. Right. And of course you've moved on, would you have drinks with them when you hang out with them? Yeah. Maybe. Right. Maybe that they're otherwise cool. But you don't want to have that relationship with them and that's perfectly fine. The person I was just referring to was great. We ended up parting company. Not the end of the world is actually pretty amicable. So, all good. Um, but they're so awesome. Right. So, would we work together again? Absolutely not. And that's perfectly fine. And by the way it goes both ways. I don't know that many people that have left our organization, whether by choice or otherwise they'll look back and say, I can't wait to go work back there. Why not? Because they hate the company. Nothing like that. They did it. They already had that experience. Right. They, they don't need to get that experience again. They're looking for a new experience and a new opportunity as well. They should. And I think from our standpoint, we shouldn't be so precious about that. We should be able to say, look, there is a chance the folks that we have, let's say we have 20 people on staff that maybe five or six or seven of them probably it's their time to move on to go do something else. And again, this isn't the same as me saying, let's get rid of everybody. I'm saying it's us being cognizant that our goal isn't to strangle hold, hold every resource that we have, whether it's for our bene benefit or for theirs. Our goal is to say, given what the ORG needs right now, who and what roles are the best way we can use our resources. That's our goal. That's literally our job as leadership within the company. I guarantee everybody's thinking the same thing, right? This isn't that heretical. It's not like all of our staff is going, boy. I really want to leave, but I'm really so concerned about how the company is gonna do that. I thought of it for about five seconds and then they update their linkedin and as well. They should, right again, folks are thinking, hey, is this not be a best opportunity for me? But do I have a better opportunity to roll somewhere else that would be a better fit? They should be thinking like that. What I'm saying is internally as founders as leadership of any startup. Our job is to step back and somewhat unemotionally evaluate who do we have? What does our roster look like and then compare that to what would a clean slate hire look like? Who would we go after? What would we pay? What roles would be absolutely critical and make a decision as to how to move the organization forward based on what the organization would look like with a total clean slate. And all right. So that was fun. But let's actually keep this conversation going. You've heard what we think about this. But, you know, Ryan and I would really like to hear what you think and we're online like all day long, pretty much talking about every startup topic you could think of from fundraising to customer acquisition to just really how to get all of this crazy startup stuff out of your head. And there's tons of other founders just like you, they're weighing in on these topics. So you'll get a chance to just hang out and meet some really smart founders. We're also super, super easy to find you head over to groups dot startups dot com and let Ryan and I hear what's on your mind. Let's get to know each other a little bit and let's just start having more of these conversations.