EP234: Overcoming Failures and Finding Fit: Ryan Hogan on Entrepreneurship and Talent Acquisition

Awesome. Thanks for having me, Brad. Yeah,

So for me, I've had this weird kind of like dual trajectory professional track. I enlisted in the U.S. Navy in 2002. I was a helicopter crewman for about 10 years. Got picked up for a commissioning program, went and drove ships for a few years. And then I've been in the reserves now since I think it was 2017. So 23 years and counting and doing some really interesting things on the military side. And there's there's been this constant like tension in my life of like military and entrepreneurship and like, you know, a purpose and a calling to serve, to lead and then also to create value on this planet. I think my story can be summed up as a lot of failures and a couple wins. And that's that's pretty much been the journey. So the first company that. had some sort of traction was a company called Run For Your Lives. It was a zombie infested 5K obstacle course race. We scaled it nationwide. Basically, we learned everything of like what not to do. I hired all my best friends. I couldn't spell P &L, like you name it. Like I, that was it. And as quick as that grew, it failed and it failed miserably and it failed publicly. And at that point, I made myself a promise and just said, if I'm ever fortunate enough to find product market fit again. I'm going to become a learner. So I'm going to surround myself with people that have been there. They've done that. I'm going to find a system and a framework. I'm going to learn finance and some of those other things that come along with it. Second company that found some real scale called Hunt a Killer. It was an immersive murder mystery experience. And what was great was, one, it allowed me to separate from active duty service into the reserves. So I got to continue serving, but I also got to follow my passion and dreams to build something. And we grew. And we grew fast. And that was zero to 55 million bucks over six years. It was a group of peers in a community called Vistage. It was something called EOS, the Entrepreneurial Operating System. Implementing all of these things and having those soundboards really helped us mitigate the errors that I didn't learn on the first one as we kind of scaled through. And then today, it's talent acquisition. And this was really born out of Hunt a Killer. So as we were going through the sale process. We had about three horses in the race and my Vistage chair business coach pulled me aside and he was like, hey, kid, you're not going to be able to sit still. Go pick your favorite line item and go do that for a while. For me, it was people, the investment, development, coaching, mentoring, everything people related. But we spent about a million bucks on recruiting and the industry just never made sense to me. And so I found an opportunity and insert talent, talent harbor where we go out and we bolt on expert recruiting for companies where. expert recruiting has generally been inaccessible because of, you know,30,40, $50,000 per hire. Awesome.

And not only was I a mechanic, but I was an air crewman. So back in 2002, you had to have a rate. So my rate at that point was an aircraft mechanic, but I was an air crewman. So if I was on the flight schedule, I'd be flying. And if I wasn't on the flight schedule, I'd be fixing the engines. But yeah, we had. We have 53s.

Minimum was generally one. We would have two because you'd always have someone on long cord, and then you would have somebody, a crew chief in the back, kind of running around doing stuff. The interesting part about the Navy side is the primary mission, so the Marines, the primary mission is heavy lift and transport. For the Navy, the primary mission... is sort of was mine countermeasures. And so basically we would put a whole bunch of equipment into the back of the helicopter and we would have anywhere from five to seven air crewmen in the back. And we would be pushing this equipment out the back of the helicopter, get the equipment on a tow boom, and we would drag that equipment through the water, either searching or neutralizing mines. I

Like if it's not leaking, then it's empty. So like you want some sort of oil dripping on you because if it's not, you've got bigger issues.

That's exactly right. And it's a true statement.

Interesting. I got to lose. Okay, that's why I was going to. say it's so unfamiliar that I bet you it's been decommed by now.

Yeah I bet you've got some great stories. Were you on a NARG like was it a part of like a full amphibious readiness group three ships?

I have many shared memories because I was on LSD, so I was a part of the ARB when I started driving ships. So you and I probably have shared memories of just doing circles in the NAG or the SAG, wherever we were back then, but just doing circles for six months, waiting for something to happen.

Did you at least get the surf and turf? It's like every time there's going to be bad news, you know the surf and turf is coming.

Did you get tickets? Is that how? Good times. Is that how you would get your beers? Because we used to steal other people's tickets. You'd be like, hey, you going to use that one?

This is awesome.

Yeah, so we started as a live event. There's a longer story here. I'll give you the short version, which is the live event just didn't scale. But we took our experience from Run for Your Lives, and live events was all we knew. But we couldn't have thousands of people standing around a fake crime scene. And so we found product market fit through the live experience. And then we said, well, what other business model exists for us to be able to actually have a... scalable business. And this was back in 2016,17. So think like Loot Crate, Birchbox, all these like subscription box companies were popping up. And so that's what we did is we launched a subscription and basically we would send clues, items, correspondence, police reports, case files each month, episodically, six episodes in a season. That business scaled from zero to about 48 million. And then we were able to layer in, actually during the pandemic, we were able to layer in retail distribution. Like today, if you went to Target or Walmart today, you would see Hunt a Killer. I think they got like six SKUs right now on Target. But yeah, it's an adult tabletop board, not board game, but adult tabletop game.

Great question. And there's really kind of two things that we find pretty consistently. The first is an organization. cannot hire effectively if they don't know why they exist. And it's very easy for a construction company to say, well, we exist to build homes or we exist to build commercial properties, whatever the case may be. Generally, the purpose of a company goes much deeper than just putting paint on the walls or putting up structures. And there's a lot of things that kind of fall into that purpose and that vision. The other thing is, Like, why do we exist? And what are the core values inside of the organization that drive the success? What are those core behaviors that help people make decisions, that help them take action? And those things have absolutely got to be identified. And so like if we get a new client and they're coming through our process, you know, our first question is, are you operating on EOS or some sort of system that has all of these things documented in one place? And if they don't, then we will actually run an exercise with them to help them understand what their core values are. Because what we see and what I've experienced every time that I've gotten hiring wrong in the past at any of my companies, it wasn't because I.I can't read a resume. Like you can read a resume. You'll know immediately if they've got the experience, the expertise, you ask them some questions and then you call their references and you're like, hey, this person's good. Over 50% of the time, the reason somebody gets fired or doesn't work out in an organization is because their core values as a human, their core behaviors as an individual do not match the core behaviors of the organization. So number one, a pretty big friction point up front is this notion of core values, identifying them, understanding them, living and breathing them. And then two is when folks say, hey, I need to go hire a salesperson, it generally what happens is they'll find a competitor company or they'll just go and Google it or they'll plug in in chat GPT and they'll say, I need a salesperson and it'll spit out a job description. That's not an effective way. Every single company is different. Every single company is measuring different things, different targets, different growth trajectory, different clients, different value proposition. And so it's important in detail to first understand what do we actually need here? And spending the time to understand what does success look like will help you understand like what exactly you need. So number one. Someone comes in, they don't share the core values. Number two, you brought in a rock star, but that's not actually what you needed was that specific competency. You needed something all else.

No, no, I'll check it out.

Yeah, it is. And like there's two like common things that we've seen. The one that you just talked about, which is this idea of like, you know, woo woo, we don't need core values. Like, you know, we roll up our sleeves and we pick up the hammer and we go in there and we get the job done. And that's good. That's needed. But you also need to understand like what makes a human tick? What makes this organization tick? And making sure that all of those things align. The other kind of extreme case that we see as well is like they've got it and they they'll put it up on on their walls and people like look at it and pass it, but they never talk about it. And like once you have core values, it is the organization you need to hire, you need to fire and you need to talk about them and not just saying like. you know, integrity is our number one core value. What does integrity mean? It means you're honest and dependable and whatever else you may throw in there. That's not it. Like something that we've been doing is since my Hunt the Killer days is we get the entire team together once a week for 30 minutes. And we talk about a lot of fun things and what's happening and where we go in and we get everybody excited. The second thing that we do is we go over our core values. And what I'll do is I will call somebody out. for a decision or an action or something that they accomplished inside the organization. And I will tie that vignette to an actual core value because what we're trying to do is paint a picture for everybody in the organization. So it's not just, oh, I see the words. It's I know what that looks like in action.

great quote and I'm going to butcher it. But it's like an organization is as good as what it tolerates. And it's brilliant because like when, and you're talking about. this idea of like leading by example. And it's like, that's, that's like the worst of the worst, which is like, if the leader's not, not embracing the core values or not, it's not them, then like something is majorly broken. And then the other side of that is when things inside, when, when the workers aren't following the core values, but the organization or their leaders or the top leader looks the other way, doesn't call it out, doesn't hire and fire based upon those core values. They're meaningless. And that's to your point. Like, not only do you have to identify them, but but they have to be true. And everybody has to it's not abide by them, because to a certain extent, it's what the it's it's who you are. It's how you're made. A person that is successful at Zappos, where, you know, they're all about customer experience and and like everybody's like got great vibes and great energy. They get work done and they're effective. But that same human might not be all that great at. Amazon or at Tesla or some other culture where it's like, you know, all we care about here is performance and results. And if you're not hitting the mark, then you're gone. One's not right or wrong, but the same human will not be successful at both.

I couldn't agree more. And that's like, that's a part of high turnover. Like if an organization has high turnover, if an organization is like hemorrhaging talent, especially if it's like new talent, if new talent comes in and they turn around and walk off, you know, walk out the door within 90 days, like, Something was broke there. Expectations weren't aligned up front. They were oversold on the opportunity. You didn't pick the right candidate. But like something is is broke if those things are happening.

And generally speaking, and so like we, I've been running on EOS, all my businesses on EOS. And this is kind of a part of that type of framework. Generally what happens is that, the core values of an organization, especially in the early days. So like, think like zero to a million bucks, maybe even like a million bucks up to five to 10 million. The core values of the organization is like the same core values of the founder or of the CEO. And that's okay. Like, because that's kind of what you need. Like if the tone's being set at the top and like, this is how you think, this is how you believe, like you need to get other people that. can get on that bus and go wherever you're going with you. Because the minute that those things are untrue or you start bringing in people that don't fit, like that becomes problematic. And so to your point, like the owner should take time to sit down and say like, what are my personal beliefs? What are my core values? What makes me tick? Because naturally that's going to be the organization's core values until you get to a point in which you have a, you know. senior leadership team of six people and you're running this process with all of the leaders and you're kind of evolving. You're not like totally changing. You're not going from, you know, integrity to frauds like that. You're not going to that degree. But you are starting to evolve it because now you have an organization with a bunch of people that have like varying degrees. So anyhow, long winded, I agree with you. And it's such an important exercise.

This is just my own personal view. This is like the way that I hire. I wouldn't force my opinion on anybody else. 100% of times, I will look at the culture fit all day long. To your point of the hungry, humble, what was the last one? Smart. Hungry, humble, and smart. You can teach anybody that is hungry, that is humble, and that is smart. What that tells me immediately is that they are a learner. And learners... Well, like you can train learners.

The problem is, is when they don't fit the core values, they're stuck in their own ways. They like, it's just. I think I was having a conversation a couple of weeks ago and it was like adding a new employee to an organization is like it's like a foreign object inside of the body. And there's going to be like some sort of thing that happens. Like you hope the body doesn't reject it. But at the end of the day, like every single time, like it's going to it's going to shift. It's going to change the culture in some way. And you're just what you're trying to do is you're trying to change it constantly for the better. You're trying to improve. trying to improve the organization. And all day long, I would take a learner over someone with the actual skill sets. Now, that's not to say that like they can't have any experience in that because I don't, depending upon how fast you're growing and like, do you have time to, you know, train them up for a year? Probably not. But like checking the block, do they have some of the experience? Do they have some of the skill sets? Are they learners? Let's go.

The only way that you can grow a company, the only way, because there's a lot of consultants, there's a lot of fractional leadership. There's a whole bunch of things that you can do in this life where you're not an employee of an organization, but you're adding value and you're doing so in an independent way. And that's great. And that is 100% okay. If you want to take that. The only way you can scale is by getting out of the way. And so if you have a consultant practice and you're like, I like this, I dig it. Great. Like, you know, pick up a few clients, make sure you have a pipeline. And when one client drops, you know, you've got another one to plug in there. Let's say that takes you to a half a million bucks, million bucks. If you want to truly scale an organization, you have got to get out of the way. And that's all about like setting the vision, setting the mission, developing the core values, making sure everybody understands where you're going. And then starting to remove yourself, like we call them seats. And on an organizational chart, it would just be like whatever that job title is and where does it sit? And what we see all too often, actually very much in the sales seat, is that like owners generally can sell. Like the reason that they are even in business is because they convince people that they provide a certain amount of value and that person is now paying them for the value that they promised. And so generally speaking, like most founders are salespeople. And that means they are sitting in the sales seat. So not only are they in the visionary, maybe the integrator seat or the CEO and president, they're also sitting in the sales seat. Maybe they do some of the operational work. So they're also sitting in the operation seat. You've got to start to back out of those things. And you're right. We see that all the time. And it's struggle. It's a struggle for some owners, for some people that are like, well, that's not the way that I would have done it. And there's no easy fix for this. It sets up a disastrous situation because you could go out and hire the best person, most amazing salesperson ever. But if you don't give them the reins, if you don't get out of their way, they're not going to perform. And then the question would be like, why did you even hire? And so like some of the things that we talk about is things will never be done the exact way that you would have done them. And it like, let's assume that it's true that the way that you would have done it was. a hundred times better than the way that it was done or whatever the case may be. So if we assume those things are true, that like when you do it, it's done perfectly and you add a tremendous amount of value, then what you have to do is you have to say to yourself, I'm willing to accept 85%. Are they going to do it the same exact way I would have done it? No. Do they have the same, like if it's email, you know, do they have the same tone? Are they reaching out to the same people? It's not. But if you're willing to accept 85%, the gains. The gains that you will get by removing yourself from that seat so you can focus on other areas of the business are astronomical. Because what you're trying to do as an owner, you're trying to work on the business, not in the business. And so the first step in that is understanding that nobody's going to do it 100% the way that you would have done it and be as effective. But if you're willing to say, I acknowledge that, and I'm willing to step 85% because of the tremendous value that I'm going to add in other places in the organization, usually you can have an easier time getting there. Yeah.

Yeah. Like one, I have real world experience inside of my own organizations. And so my last company, Hunt a Killer, my co-founder in that. So I'm not a game designer. I'm not an obstacle course race designer. I'm really not a recruiter. Now I've hired people. I've hired hundreds of people. But like I have not honed the craft that is expert recruiting because recruiting is truly a core competency. When you take somebody from a sales position or you take somebody from the operations and you're like, you're also going to go hire for this new role. They are subject matter experts in operations or in sales. They're not subject matter experts in recruiting. And I think all too often we get lost because these tools are readily available. Oh, we'll post a job to LinkedIn. We'll post a job to Indeed. And these tools make it seem like recruiting is easy. It is not. It is one of the hardest things that you can do inside of an organization. And it's generally speaking inaccessible because of how much it costs. And so owners take it upon themselves. A real world example I have of this is my last company, my co-founder, Derek, who is an incredible game designer, storyteller, writer, and I'm not. So I was not the game designer. That was him. When I start businesses, I find a yin and yang and like, I'm a visionary. I'm like, I can, I can spot a problem. I can help put some things together, but I'm not the executioner. I'm not the, I don't deliver on the service or the product. And so I find co-founders like that. Well, when we started growing, you know, naturally two co-founders of a company, we're both kind of sitting at the top. Well, when we started growing and we started to fill in the leadership team, like Derek went into a spot in which was heading product, not running the company, not. worrying about finance. All he worried about is how do I produce the most amazing product the world has ever seen? And that's the best and highest use of his time. Owners that we've dealt with very similar situations and we call them integrators. You can call them general managers. You can call them presidents. But when that type of thing is happening, what you want is somebody running the day to day. Because like if you want to do sales and you are great at sales and that's the best and highest use of your time, one, congratulations because you had the self-awareness. to come out and say like maybe I'm not the best person to like run the day-to-day 100% like we can go out we can find an implementer or excuse me an integrator a general manager someone to come in and make sure that the trains are running on time and things are getting done and that'll open up the capacity for the owner to go and sell more products

I see that all day long. I was very fortunate. And so like when I sit here and talk about this, it's going to be like, oh, well, like how did he figure it all out? I stumbled in into this idea of like being able to detach from the business. And the reason is, is because all of the businesses that we've talked about that I've launched so far. I was active duty Navy when I launched those things. And so I had no time or capacity to micromanage everything. So like the only thing I could do is set a vision, hire the right people and trust that the work was going to get done. And it's never failed me before. And it was like a product of that environment, which has gotten me to where I am today. And the problem is, is that. The companies that will be tremendously successful are led by owners, are led by people that can let go of their ego. And so like, that's kind of the tough love here where it's like, hey, get it. Like, there's a lot of pride in this. And like, you want to, your name's on the side of the truck. And like, all of these things are true. What do you want out of this? Because if you want a nice million dollar business or, you know, half million dollar business and you're happy where you're at today, just keep doing what you're doing. Because there's nothing wrong with that. But if someone sits down and thinks about this and they're like, I'm trying to build a $10 million business, you got to get out of the way. You got to drop the ego. And that's just the reality or you'll never get there. And that's kind of the tough love side to this is like you can want all you want. But if you don't get out of the way, the organization is not going to grow and you become more of a detriment.

The absolute biggest unlock that I've had in life, like one, yes, disassociating from the business. Like how I look at business is business is a vehicle. Business is a vehicle for me to achieve whatever it is that I'm trying to achieve personally. And that allows me to disassociate from the actual business itself or like what we're doing to a degree in which it's not my baby. Like this business may look completely different than what I thought because all I care about is achieving my personal goals. And so if this is a vehicle, then we're going to continue to change things until we get to where we're going. The interesting part about what you just said is like the unlock that I've had in life is finding a partner. every single time, which is you just talked about, what was the first type of person you talked about? Did you say craftsman?

So let's say there is a brilliant craftsman out there. What that craftsman needs is somebody like me. Because I don't know anything about being a great craftsman, but I feel like I could sell that. Like, I feel like I could build a value proposition, build a vision. What is it? Like,100% of zero is zero, but 50% of a $10 million business is quite a bit. Like, that's the whole thing. And like, one's not better, not worse. Like, you know, Derek was great at the product. I would say that was half the business. Like, yes, we got to figure out how to sell it. We got to figure out how to do it. Half of the business is whatever it is that we're actually doing. And same thing with Talent Harbor. Like I'm not an expert recruiter. I went out and found a world class 25 year recruiter and we have joined forces. And so like the biggest unlock that I've had in life is like you go out and find somebody. And if it's a matter of having the name on the side of the door, like let's say it's Johnson. Well, go find. I don't know, Smith. And now it's like now on the side of the door, you still get your name on it. So you can still get that like it's my business. But now it's Johnson and Smith. And Smith just happens to be the guy that can help you take it from zero to 10 million. Yeah.

It's challenging. So let's say it's a $300,000 business. We'll use the example. We'll say it's a $300,000 business. They want to get to 10 million. And by next year, they want to be at a million. I'm not too deep into the margin profiles of the construction space, but I can only imagine there's not a lot of money to go around with a $300,000 business. And so it's like... How can you afford that integrator? I agree with you. Like visionary integrator, like yin yang, the thing is going to be like, if you can't afford it, then it probably is some type of partnership. But those are just the things you have to think about and the trade-offs as you go along. But you're right. Like if you're using EOS and putting together your accountability chart, ultimately you're just hiring for these roles. If the resources aren't there, then like, then sometimes equity has to come into play.

A hundred percent. Like, yeah, like magic happens when you truly find someone where like one person brings half of the skills and the other person brings like the exact other half that's needed. Like the energy, the solutions, like the vision, everything just starts to come together. And you just brought up an amazing point because it cuts both ways, which is all of this is true. Everything we just said is true, which is like, if you go find the yin and yang, like you can go and dominate in the world. If you pick the wrong person to partner with, like none of that stuff comes true. And that's why like partnerships are so important. Understanding expectations up front. having different like off ramps along the way. All of the partners that I've ever that I've ever partnered with for any of my companies, I've known for at least 10 years. So I know who they are as a human. I know that our personalities are good. I know that like they can push back because that's another thing. Like you don't want someone around you that's just like, oh, yeah, great idea. Let's go. Like I want people around me be like, hey, dude, that's a dumb idea. And like, have you considered these these things? It's like, oh, great. But yeah, finding a partner, you know, it's definitely not something I would say go to Craigslist for. You got to be strategic about it.

100% on the same page. Like I think I was kind of stuck in or using the example of the much smaller business and some things like that are prohibitive. 100% agree. Like your first thought is like, oh man, I want to grow my business. Let me go find a partner. That shouldn't be the first thought. The first thought should be, okay, great. You want to grow your business. How big do you want to grow it over what, you know, what is your own vision? What are, what's, what's the mission? Put all of these things together. And then once you have that, like you can start to make the decisions of like, oh, all I needed this whole time was an integrator. And so I'm going to go, I'm going to go hire a GM and it's going to take my business to the next level. But before you really understand, like, why do you exist? What are the core behaviors that drive this organization forward? And where is this organization going to be 10 years from now? Like, it's really hard to make decisions over like, who do I need? Do I need a partner? Do I need an integrator? Do I need a salesperson? That's why a lot of pre-work is needed up front on these things.

do. And sometimes we'll send business because, like, not everybody is ready for salespeople. Before you bring a salesperson through the door and you just brought this up, like, there has to be a process. If the entire process is in the owner's head and that's the only place that exists. You could go hire 10 salespeople tomorrow and nothing is going to happen because they don't know anything. And so like there has to be a process, a documented process ahead of going out and really looking for those salespeople. Now, you could start at a higher level. You could say whether it's VP or director or maybe like a sales manager, you could say like the first thing I'm going to go do is hire a sales leader or bring in a fractional salesperson to help me. to take the stuff that's in my head and put it into a documented process and then go hire salespeople, but all day long. And like what happens in the early conversations that we have is like, we can identify that and we'll say, boy, like we could really help you out in this area, but it's going to be set up to fail. So go talk to our friends over here who put together sales processes and things like that. And then just think of us like when it's all together and you're ready to roll, you know, just don't forget our names. And that's kind of how it goes. Awesome.

The biggest, the most helpful book, like two, two books that I, I like live and die by today. The first one is called the lean startup. And the reason the lean startup had such a monumental impact in my life is because we talked a little bit about disassociating from the, the product, the service, the brand, the company, and like. What the lead startup does is really reinforces that. And it says, listen, you are not your product or your service. You are creating value for a specific audience. And when it doesn't work with that market, then you change markets and you change markets and you change markets. And once you've gone through every market with whatever solution idea you had and nobody's still taking it, then you change the product and you go back and you rinse and repeat. Because it doesn't matter. Every company I've ever started has looked monumentally different by the end of it. Like what we set out to do and what we actually did. Now, from a growth standpoint, like those didn't change. Like we did what we did and we set those goals and set those targets. But how we got there continued to evolve as new data points came through. So the lean startup is a top one for me. And then traction. Traction had the biggest impact in my life. Like I look at the lean startup of like zero to one because the hardest thing to do in business is find product market fit. And so like that's my zero to one book. And then from one to 10 is traction. So I can implement some sort of framework to help me operate my business.

Yeah. Thanks so much for having me. I appreciate it, Brad.