Developing your People Strategy with Raul Hernandez Ochoa

Unknown Speaker 0:02
Well I’m left with is George G and the time is right welcome today’s guests during a powerful role Hernandez Ochoa rule. Welcome back. Thanks for having me, man. excited to have you back on roll is the author of productive profits. He is the host of the do good work podcast. He’s serving bootstrap business owners helping them reach their impact and revenue goals. And he’s helping to transform marketing agencies into high profit agencies. Role tell us about your personal lives more about your work, why you do what you do? Well, man, last time I was here, my son was informed but now I have a little one running around. So he’s the owner of downstairs, let’s just put it that Gabriel’s kingdom, when I’m not working, I’m either trying to serve going out there and do my best or chasing my son around or walking with the family and our golden retriever. And she is fun and crazy and 75 pounds. So my I keep it pretty simple man. I listen to books while I work. I mean, while I walk. And when I’m not working, I’m just doing one of those couple things. So that’s a, I guess that’s what I do what I do, being able to control the day and be able to spend time as I see my son grow.

Unknown Speaker 1:10
And that is that what most everybody wants, not to watch your son grow, play with your dog, but to watch their own kids grow and play with their dogs. They can take the dog if you’re listening to this, but no, I think that’s it suit. Everyone wants to help everyone wants to family relationships, they want to be prosperous, like the whole, the whole five basic areas, right. So it’s finding and aligning your work to achieve that. But then also maximize the the impact that you can make or the the skill that you’re endowed with how do you produce that and give to the marketplace?

Unknown Speaker 1:42
And

Unknown Speaker 1:44
wanting that and actually achieving it? How hard is that?

Unknown Speaker 1:50
I was on a recent pot. And he mentioned Yeah, it’s like a 10 year overnight success story. So this would mark the 10th year we trying to start businesses.

Unknown Speaker 2:00
Right. So in 2013 2012, failing a ton. And

Unknown Speaker 2:05
from 2015 16, trying to wake up at two or three 4am every day and then going to my nine to five to break through. So it’s still a work in progress. I mean, I’ve done cool stuff, but I don’t think I’m done. And it’s definitely a commitment. Yeah, it is a story of commitment.

Unknown Speaker 2:28
What is what is what is the starting point of that story? Is it setting the intention? Is it figuring out what you want your day to look like? Is it figuring out what the impact is? It’s all these things? It’s none of them. Interesting. So I think it begins with the intention of what do you want? And answering that question. In regards to what type of business do you want to build, I do this with productive profits as well with business owners. And some of them either want to build something so they can exit in the next five to 10 years or five to eight years, or build something that’s more of a lifestyle business were just aligned to their day. They’re no calls during the week, a couple, you know, a good revenue coming through. So you just first start, what do you want? And why do you want that. But the key thing to keep in mind is that your journey matters when you’re designing this because you can design any type of business, any type of output. But the destination that you want, like if you want to exit but your journey sucks, because you’re working 1416 hour days, your health is being like taken from you, you’re not spending time with the one that you love. And you’re doing that quote unquote sacrifice for the long term gain. That could be beneficial. But I firmly believe that the journey itself, you should optimize for every single day, how do you enjoy every single day for where you want to get to because the journey determines the destination. And sometimes we think that the destination determines the journey, but it’s actually the other way around.

Unknown Speaker 3:50
That makes sense to me.

Unknown Speaker 3:53
And I don’t know that that’s just because I’ve now 44 years old, and I’ve actually been working in business for the amount of time or just that my perspective has changed.

Unknown Speaker 4:05
Do most people get that? Do most people how how do you think about that? I think I mean, this might be too simplistic, but if you look at it from human personalities, or the types of assessments that we can take, I mean, disk is the most classic in the business world give your dominance, you have your analytical, you have your supporters and you have your promoters. So maybe you could align differently depending on what your personality is and how you approach the world and how you want to impact the world. I do know there are some common characteristics that need to be in you as you go out and make things happen. You can’t just expect things to happen or wait for things to happen. So there’s there’s that ebb and flow

Unknown Speaker 4:50
and talking about Bootstrap business owners, people that are you know, they’re they’re they’re starting something up from scratch without a lot

Unknown Speaker 5:00
I’d have probably, essentially no outside funding, but they’ve got maybe a little bit of money or, or they’re just taking everything that they’re earning and putting it back into their business. Is there a particular kind of business that is a good fit for that? Is it any kind of a business? And how are how is technology fitting in? That’s maybe too big of a question, but maybe pretty good question.

Unknown Speaker 5:26
Well, I think I mean, there’s different scales, different gradients of where you where you grow, for example, like on the agency side, I’ve mapped out specifically, the type of revenue, they are out between 120,000 a year to 5 million plus a year, and the exact issues you’re going to face, this is from my, just my experience, the exact issues and solutions you’re gonna face. So similarly, with a bootstrap founder, you’re gonna go through different classical phases, the beginning is focusing strictly on sales and marketing, primarily to get that revenue coming through, and you build a team, then you build the organizational systems, and then you build your leadership. Now, there are classical issues that entrepreneurs always face, because at the top, and again, this is small business, like one to five to 6 million plus businesses.

Unknown Speaker 6:09
At the top, it’s always leadership issues. And when it comes to a leadership issue, that actually is pointing the finger back at you, because as a business owner, or as an entrepreneur, the team or the company is a reflection of your, of your personality, it’s a reflection of your habits. So if you want the team or the company to get better, you personally have to be better. And that takes certain self restraints, certain disciplines, certain habits, certain focus areas, for you to make sure that you’re not well rounded just for yourself and your family. But they are also able to serve at a higher level where a business does actually extract that from you.

Unknown Speaker 6:43
You have to be better. So not just showing up for your family, and not just having like, whatever fits that idea of like a work life balance, but also improving how you’re showing up and building your business, working with your employees.

Unknown Speaker 7:01
And also knowing around the types of personalities that you manage. knowing your way around words, I created a framework called the Five Pillars of heroic leadership. And it’s just like a simple framework where leaders can understand one that they set the cadence or they set the stage of everything, how they show up how they talk, how they treat others, because others will mimic you when you do that, how to take data driven decisions, but then also work with a sanity check either a person within the group of your leaders or outside of your leadership group, to give you that sanity check and making the best decision. The third pillar is all around making sure that you know the weight of your words. And then you also know how the team is the framework that the team works in is actually all by design. So if there’s something wrong inherently with the team, it’s because it was designed that way, and it can be changed. But the other four and five, like the flywheel is all around how you show up, how you behave, how you design the outputs of the team, because at some point, it’s not going to be that you just hire someone, you tell them what to do they go do it. How do you get that motivation with them, for them to want to create new ideas for you, and still go do their best work besides, like, beside you?

Unknown Speaker 8:19
You find that as a business is growing, like you talked about, I forget what the what the lower threshold of 5 million is then up from there up from there there. From there, there are challenges each one of those and these five pillars of heroic leadership?

Unknown Speaker 8:40
Are they pretty universal at at each level? Or where where do people typically get stuck? Hmm.

Unknown Speaker 8:50
That’s a great question. I think that regardless of business revenue, humans are all or I’m not gonna say all equal in the sense of like the human intrinsic value, yes. But like I’m talking about, the way that we work with humans is principle based. So it’s not really going to change regardless of the revenue size that you have. Obviously, you might be able to hire better talent, when you have more revenue. And at the top, or when you’re reaching a higher level revenue. Your number one goal is attracting the best talent and keeping that talent because they have options. They have options to leave you they have options to start their own thing, and they’re in high demand. And that is a very interesting, I would say.

Unknown Speaker 9:33
Interesting dance, per se, of how do you not only attract them, how do you nurture them? How do you help them grow? And there’s always a few things that high performing, people always want. They want growth opportunities, they want to feel important. They want to know that they’re making a difference. They don’t want to be told what to do. They want to have an environment where they can tell you what’s going to happen, but it’s still within the parameters and it’s still within your organizational growth goals. So it’s an ebb and flow

Unknown Speaker 10:00
But as you get to that level,

Unknown Speaker 10:02
again, iron sharpens iron, you have to become better in order to lead that kind of person. It’s pretty fun, though,

Unknown Speaker 10:09
that makes a ton of sense. And it’s, it sounds, it sounds like it’s it’s almost like a dance between, as I’m growing my business as the CEO, owner or entrepreneur,

Unknown Speaker 10:21
one of my goals potentially could be to do a little bit less, and bring on really high quality people. And at the same time, making sure that I am doing everything that I need to to be giving these people everything that they need. So I’m not needed to be there. 24/7. But I’m also not an absentee leader. No, absolutely every single team member needs the empowerment of what to do, how to do it, and the space to do what they need to do. And there is a, you might be thinking, as you as you hear this, that you’re doing this with your team, you want to step back a little bit, and you want to focus on other projects, or other things that are passionate for you. There is I’m not sure how to define this just yet, this could be something that we can create a framework around as I talk to different leaders, but there is a threshold where you might leave too soon. And it actually collapses without you. And when do you know you’ve reached that threshold where it’s safe for you to start backing out a little bit at a time of 10%? Here 20%? There? Obviously, there’s some systematic things that you need to have in place like the the operating system of the business running correctly, your sales, tuning correctly, etc, etc.

Unknown Speaker 11:35
But I’ve seen it where you step away too soon, and then you come back 12 months later, and like this isn’t my company? What happened to my company?

Unknown Speaker 11:44
Yeah. And I think that we’ve probably all, at some point, I’ve been aware of IT organization or worked with an organization where that has been the case. Some people need to know what to do, they need to know how to do it, and they need the space to be able to do it. And I think that that is a really universal and valuable. Those are three really universal and valuable things to keep in mind and make sure that have I trained the people to do what it is they need to do? Am I really clear on what my expectations are? And am I giving them the autonomy to be able to execute in the way that they see fit based on the parameters that I’ve shared with them? 100% And there’s even three levels above that, that you can focus on, it’s more on the software side is are you optimistic and your conversations with them? Do they see themselves in the future? Do you have empathy with them, a lot of people desire a safe space to work, they desire to feel comfortable sharing vulnerabilities. I mean, obviously, there’s there’s a line, but being comfortable with that. And they’re also they want to be encouraged. I mean, I can probably show the research and the studies around how positivity is a better fit for humans than negativity. But it’s not just around just being positive and being fake. It’s all around how can this I help this person shine in their skill sets to the best of their ability, if they’re open to it.

Unknown Speaker 13:07
optimism, empathy, encouragement. So that really,

Unknown Speaker 13:14
that really is next level.

Unknown Speaker 13:17
It’s anybody’s capable of doing that as a leader. But you need to really step into that. And you personally not you but the leader, you need to make sure you have the competency to be able to do these things. And you have the confidence to be able to have these conversations and then you

Unknown Speaker 13:38
do you think that it should be scheduled? How to have these kinds of interactions? Is it serendipitous? Some of it a little bit of both? I think the one thing that I found because even see myself leading

Unknown Speaker 13:52
quite a bit hundreds of people online digitally, it’s you become almost a coach, and you find your own cadence with each team members. I remember I was responsible for leading a revenue team in house and helping them grow. And I would do a synchronous, you know, updates the team than one on ones. How can I support you asynchronously either through voice memos or usually just voice memos, but then getting on very specific calls once a month? And how was your career? How can I help you? What are you growing, and that is heavy lifting work, because that’s outside of executing what you need to get done that day that is outside of initiatives that is long term horizon thinking personal development with an individual, and there has to be trusts on both sides. So if you’re a leader coming into an organization, and you’re taking over or you’re moved to a different department and it’s a brand new team, or you’re hiring a fresh new talent and a fresh new team, you have to start planning to seek the seeds because the thing is, you know, the time is gonna pass anyways, either you’re gonna plant the seeds now and nurture and grow or three months, six months, 12 months, a year, three years passed by and you haven’t

Unknown Speaker 15:00
planted the seeds, and you’re still in the same spot. So it’s there is our choices that?

Unknown Speaker 15:04
Yeah, I think that that makes a ton of sense. And so

Unknown Speaker 15:11
as you are progressing along the different stages of your business growth, and you do actually start hiring, you need to it’s prudent, wise smart to be thinking about everything we’ve been talking about on the front end when you’re actually hiring. And you put that system in place, because you’re going to be the person that is the direct report, probably. But when you have 10 people, and then 20, then 30, and then 40, and 50, you have not, you’re not probably going to be the person who is the direct report for all these people, but then the manager is and so on, and so forth. So

Unknown Speaker 15:47
you know what I’m trying to say? Yeah, so there has to be an operating system. So there’s two components to this. One is a remote operating system, or at least for me, because I only work remote. So I kind of designed what that would look like. So we can talk about that structure. But I think it’s more important to to nail in the different phases of your people strategy at different revenue levels. I think in the beginning, and this is agnostic of industry, with the way the way I built this was for high profit agencies. But this is still agnostic. In the beginning, when you’re hiring, you’re hiring, when you’re making less than a million in revenue, you’re hiring to fill a specific role. That’s your, that’s your people strategy, I need to get my time back, or I need to fill this specific role. Let me go and hire and get it. As you start moving up the chain in revenue, size and growth, you start hiring based on either the values that you have as a company, either as the missions or the goals that you want to achieve, or at the core standard.

Unknown Speaker 16:43
And you’re in your people strategy goes around hiring for a role getting my time back, hiring for specific talents, hiring for someone who can be able to lead a team and manage or even be better than I am. I’ve worked with founders who are afraid to hire specific positions, because they’re afraid that they don’t know how to manage that person, because they’re more knowledgeable in that core function that they are, that’s perfectly fine.

Unknown Speaker 17:07
I think that, again, if if a company is limited to your personality, or is a reflection of who you are, then if you only hire people who you know exactly what they can do, and they don’t bring new things to the table, you are the rate limiting factor.

Unknown Speaker 17:23
And so something to keep in mind

Unknown Speaker 17:27
as you grow and as you scale, but you start hiring for different reasons for experience for partnership for mindset for leadership, and it all ties back to where you’re at in that growth trajectory.

Unknown Speaker 17:40
I think that that makes a ton of sense. I appreciate you clarifying that.

Unknown Speaker 17:44
If you’re able to are confident enough to hire somebody because I don’t want to put words in your mouth but you feel threatened or you’re not comfortable hiring because you don’t think you can manage them. What that really won’t that potentially stall your growth? Capture potential. Yeah, that you’re you’re the one that’s not allowing for growth because of that. I mean, it will look, we’ll call it what it is. It’s an insecurity. And if you’re experiencing that, that’s okay. But it’s not okay. For the long term, depending on the mission that your company actually achieves? Are people gonna be left out because of it? Your team? Do they actually need someone with higher caliber? But the cool thing is, I mean, they always say if you’re the smartest person in the room, leave that room. If you’re the smartest person in your company, like you’re literally wanting to be hold the Atlas on your back and have everything pressure on you. Why would you do that hire people who are better than you for a specific function, who can execute and when you do that, you’ll look like a genius because they broke through a wall that you couldn’t do it. And they did it with your direction?

Unknown Speaker 18:47
And is that part of what you were talking about? When we started the conversation about having somebody around you that can be a sounding board? countability partner kind of a relationship? Absolutely. Someone who can either see the business from an outsider’s perspective, a trusted colleague, a mentor or a coach.

Unknown Speaker 19:06
It just matters that you’re not limiting yourself, by your, by your view to see the objective reality of what’s going on around you. Because we all have blind spots. Oh, yeah, it’s hard to see the mountain. We’re standing on it. Right. It’s a good one. And I also like can’t see the label the jar when you’re inside of it. Oh, yeah.

Unknown Speaker 19:27
I feel that all the time. Man.

Unknown Speaker 19:30
That was a percent. Nice. Well, I felt like I asked you some bad questions. But we eventually got you were smart enough to be able to guide me to some really helpful frameworks.

Unknown Speaker 19:44
And I think that this people strategy was really, really helpful and the different levels of optimism and empathy and encouraging think that that’s really important for people who are trying to build organizations and have that impact.

Unknown Speaker 20:00
hacked. And the earlier you can start on this stuff, the better.

Unknown Speaker 20:04
Absolutely, especially in the remote workforce in a remote world that we’re

Unknown Speaker 20:08
Yeah.

Unknown Speaker 20:10
Or All right, cool. Thank you so much for coming back on where can people learn more about you? How can they engage with you?

Unknown Speaker 20:17
The best place is just the website do good work.io And you can connect with me on LinkedIn personally, and we can chat from there. Love it. Well, if you enjoyed as much as I did, shall roll your appreciation and share today show the friend who also appreciates good ideas go to do good work.io and track roll down on LinkedIn as well and connect with them and have a conversation to find out if the frameworks and the approaches that we’ve been talking about can help you and your business get to where you want to go and have the impact and the revenue that you’re interested in having their skin roll. Thank you, George. And until next time, remember, do your part by doing your best

Transcribed by https://otter.ai