Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | RSS
Paul Sackett, Founder and President of YourHR talks about developing your team to give you a vital competitive advantage. Plus, a little sous vide inspiration to cook your vegetables! In our marketing tip this week, we look at branded vs. unbranded search and what it may mean for your business.
Transcript:
Jeff Randolph:
Welcome to the Small Business Miracles Podcast. I’m Jeff Randolph. This small business podcast is brought to you by EAG Advertising and Marketing. We’re going to talk about marketing, and we’re also here to celebrate entrepreneurs. We have marketing news and advice that business owners can use to keep moving forward.
This week we’re talking about HR with Paul Sackett. He’s the owner and founder of YourHR. But first, we’ve got another small business marketing tip to talk about.
Jeff Randolph:
A quick word today on our tip section about the search habits of people coming to your website. Do you know what terms brought them to your site? Well, frequently, when we meet with a new business prospect, we have a quick conversation about whether the searches that bring people to the website are from branded searches or unbranded searches, and we’ll do that research and we’ll find out and then we’ll talk to somebody.
Okay, so let’s define branded and unbranded. A branded search is a search someone is doing on Google that includes your brand name in the search. They know who you are and they’re searching for you specifically by brand name. That is a branded search.
An unbranded search is someone finding you in a search for the thing that you do, a service you provide, or a product that you sell and not for your brand name. That’s an unbranded search. Do these people know your brand name before they click on you? Maybe or maybe not. Now, what should your search traffic look like? Well, that depends on a lot of factors. From the business owner’s standpoint, I can tell you it’s a lot easier to get that sale if they already know your brand name. And in a crowded, competitive field, the click will usually go to the brand they’ve heard of before. When you’re presented with a list of search people, I’m going to choose the one I’ve actually heard of before. That is the benefit of brand awareness.
But brand advertising can be expensive, and generating that kind of brand recognition means consistently marketing to your target audience over time. Now, what is the right mix of branded and unbranded traffic to your company website? We’d need to talk about your unique circumstances because your results may vary based on no end of factors, but we could talk.
Jeff Randolph:
Welcome back to the show. I am here with Paul Sackett. He’s the founder and president of YourHR. Paul, welcome to the show.
Paul Sackett:
Thanks, Jeff. Good to be here.
Jeff Randolph:
We’re happy to have you. We’re happy to have this kind of conversation. HR is important to everything that we do. Give us an overview of the business. What is YourHR, and let’s talk about the clients that you have and that you work with and that sort of thing.
Paul Sackett:
Sure. So YourHR is a fractional HR services company, and the question I always get is, so what is fractional HR? And basically what I do is I provide clients executive level HR strategic support at a fraction of a full-time, C-suite level salary. So that’s where the word fractional comes in. It’s a nice way of saying part-time.
Jeff Randolph:
Part-time. Not just anyone can do that. You need someone you can trust and someone who has the background to do it. You have a tremendous history in your career of working with some Fortune 50 companies and doing exactly this kind of thing. And now you’re saying, “I have all this expertise. Let’s break this up.”
Paul Sackett:
So you’re right, and I worked in corporate HR for over 30 years and backed into HR. Started as a recruiter for a company here in the Midwest. Had no idea that I was going to have this 30 year career path of human resources. And once I got into the recruiting, it evolved into helping a lot of business managers with employee relations issues and challenges and talent management and all of those kind of things. And coaching. And that was something that I really liked. I enjoyed doing that and I enjoyed helping both employees and managers being a facilitator.
And it just evolved. And then I was an HR manager, spent some time with General Electric, worked out east. That was where I really learned the nuances of succession planning and talent management and the importance of culture and engagement. And so about a year and a half ago, I was at a point in my career where I could make some life choices for myself and decided I want to do this. The seed was planted, I think it was in 2019 when I was first introduced to what a fractional leader is, and there’s fractional leaders in all the disciplines.
Jeff Randolph:
Oh yeah, no, fractional CMO, Chief Marketing Officer. Will do the same thing for you if you’d like.
Paul Sackett:
Yeah, fractional finance, sales and HR. So anyway, I started the company about a year and a half ago. I’d had a lot of entrepreneurial friends here in Kansas City that would ask me questions and I’d give them advice for free.
Jeff Randolph:
Advice.
Paul Sackett:
And I realized there was a need.
Jeff Randolph:
“Wait a minute. I could be charging for that.”
Paul Sackett:
I realized that was a. Need that small businesses, entrepreneurs, owners, really needed that strategic HR advice. They might have somebody doing the operational things like their payroll and onboarding and recruiting, but they lack that how do I build the right kind of culture? How do I help talent development? How do I grow my people? And all of those kind of strategic HR conversations. So that’s what I do.
Jeff Randolph:
Is there a particular size of client that you work with? Is there a sweet spot? Who is right for you? Who’s not right for you?
Paul Sackett:
And I get that question a lot too. And it’s really not about revenue. It’s more about number of headcount. And so generally someone that would look for my services would be 150 employees and down. The sweet spot is probably right between 50 and a 100. A lot of things change for employers after they go past 50 employees because of a lot of the federal regulations and so on and so forth. And so things can get a little bit more complicated with regards to compliance after 50 employees. So definitely between 50 and a 100 employees would be probably a sweet spot.
Jeff Randolph:
Perfect. Yeah, that is good definition. Tell us the difference between if they say, “Hey, we’re hiring for HR,” and what you really do on a day-to-day basis. What are the kind of services that you’re bringing to the table?
Paul Sackett:
One of the things that I help some of my clients with is they may already have somebody internal doing their transactional what I call operational HR work. They may already even have a handbook. They may already have those kind of things that an operational transactional HR department would do.
What I do is really work as their business partner. So in HR, in my 30 years, there’s two parts of HR. There’s what we would call HR operations. Those are the folks that manage the day-to-day benefits and payroll and filing and compliance, and maybe the recruiting, hiring, onboarding. That’s HR operations. The other side is the HR business partner, and that’s the role that I primarily worked in, in my career where I would be partnered up with a division head or a site leader or someone like that, and I would be their go-to person for all people questions, even some business questions that related to people, headcount, workforce planning, all of those kinds of things.
So what I do is really more on the strategic side of helping my clients navigate the waters and then also provide them that experience of helping that internal HR manage the compliance things, help them be more effective and efficient, and really act as a mentor and a guide to maybe any internal resources they’re already using to do their HR stuff.
Jeff Randolph:
And those internal resources and even you coming in as the fractional HR leader, we have a lot of different HR issues we’re thinking about, and I want to make sure that we get some of the things in your head out. And all the buzzwords that we’re hearing now, all the issues that we see. And I’ll throw a few out to get that conversation going.
There are four generations in the workforce. That’s a big deal for communication. A bunch of other buzzwords like the great resignation or quiet quitting or remote work. What are the biggest issues that you tend to work on, on a weekly basis with a client?
Paul Sackett:
I think probably the biggest one is really culture and a lot about environment, and there’s a lot of elements that come into that, like development. Again, you mentioned the four generations in the workplace. That’s probably one of the biggest challenges that I see a lot of small business owners or managers or even executives in large companies deal with. Because most of us, and I date myself, most of us are in our 50s now.
Jeff Randolph:
Sure.
Paul Sackett:
Mid to late 50s or early 60s. We’re right on the edge being Baby Boomers and there’s still Baby Boomers in the workplace. And we struggle with understanding what’s important to maybe the younger generations. And it’s very distinct. There wasn’t as much difference between the Gen X and the Baby Boomers.
Jeff Randolph:
Right. We were a little closer together. I’m going to out myself as an X’er real quickly here. I’m taking sides.
Paul Sackett:
I am taking-
Jeff Randolph:
Taking sides.
Paul Sackett:
So the challenge is really then to be able to open your mind up to being able to create that environment and culture that’s important to the other generations. So one of the things that I tell this story. I was very, very traditional when it came to having people in the office and felt like you had to have that face-to-face interaction to build that camaraderie and that team, and how could you have a culture when you don’t have your people working together?
And the pandemic started to change my attitude about that. I actually started a little bit before the pandemic when we were having so much trouble finding talent. And the other thing that changed is people don’t want to pick up and relocate for a job. When I was starting my career, I moved half a dozen times all over the country to take opportunities. People don’t want to do that anymore.
So for us to be able to get the kind of talent that we need to be successful to create the kind of culture and environment you have to be adaptable in how you think and manage a workforce today. You got to be flexible.
Jeff Randolph:
And how you manage culture across that remote environment is a different animal than if you’re managing culture internally in one building.
Paul Sackett:
Correct. And there’s things that also, when I’m counseling or coaching a millennial, there’s things that you can learn from the Boomers. There are some things that you can learn from the Boomers. And so I try to create that environment of collaboration between the generations.
Jeff Randolph:
Yes, and likewise, across all of the demographic age groups. There are things you can learn from each of them. And getting someone in an older demographic to understand that you can learn something from a younger demographic is just as difficult sometimes. So yeah, more communication is a great way to go get culture where it needs to be.
I want to talk about a YourHR difference here. You don’t have to read long on your website to see that there is a focal difference. And I’ll quote from your site if you’ll allow it. When your employees are engaged and feel appreciated and taken care of at work, you’ll create an unstoppable company culture and fantastic reputation, which gains you a vital competitive advantage. Give us some of the sentiment and definition around that.
Paul Sackett:
So I think that’s something that I’m very passionate about, that I feel very strongly about. And I’ll tell you where it comes from. So growing up, I was an athlete. I played competitive sports, football, in high school and college. And one of the things that I learned in my competitive sports life as a young person was a lot of times the difference between winning and losing was the culture on the team.
Jeff Randolph:
Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Paul Sackett:
And we could have a lot of talent on the team, but if there were people that were bickering or fighting or the coach wasn’t leading or we weren’t inspired, no matter how much talent we had, we would lose. And when the fourth quarter would roll around or the things got tough, we would lay down and that can feed and build on teammates. And it only takes one rotten apple in a group of people to bring the whole team down.
Jeff Randolph:
Right.
Paul Sackett:
And so you carry that forward into business, and it’s very much the same. A group of people is a team. And if you have that vision of, hey, we’re all in this for a common goal or a common objective or we’re working together, those will be successful teams. And I’ve seen extremely talented business people fail together, collaborative as a team, because they can’t get along. They don’t have the foundational element of trust and vulnerability to be that cohesive team.
And so for me to help people be successful and help my clients be successful, that’s why I believe it starts with the culture. Culture drives engagement, not the other way around. You can have people that are really engaged in their daily activities, but they really don’t like who they work for, or they don’t understand the vision and where they’re going or what they’re really even doing.
And so that’s why I make culture something that is a cornerstone of when I’m having conversations with CEOs and things. Anything that we do, whether it’s rolling out a policy, whether it is some type of activity that we’re going to do, what is our purpose here? Because you just can’t do things without understanding the impact that it’s going to have on your culture.
So that’s why that’s really important. Another example that I love to use is most of us that live here in the Kansas City area are very familiar with Kansas City Chiefs.
Jeff Randolph:
I’ve heard of them. Yes.
Paul Sackett:
You’ve heard of them, right?
Jeff Randolph:
Yes. We’ve heard of them.
Paul Sackett:
I think we won a couple Super Bowls. Anyway, I don’t know how many people remember; I sure do; living through the Todd-
Jeff Randolph:
A Marty Schottenheimer era
Paul Sackett:
Well, the Marty Schottenheimer, but the Pioli and Todd Haley era? You remember that from ’08 to ’10 in there? And the culture within the Kansas City Chiefs was horrendous in the office environments. Scott Pioli didn’t create a very good office environment in the front office. I’ve heard lots of people that worked for the Chiefs. A lot of people became very disengaged. A lot of people left the organization. That’s behind the scenes. That’s not what even the product was out on the field.
And the Chiefs were a disaster. Todd Haley, they fired him before the season was even over. And then all of a sudden we bring in Andy Reid and then Andy Reid comes in. We bring in a new GM. We did it. And the culture of the organization is completely different, which attributes to their winning as much as what it was when they were losing.
Jeff Randolph:
Yeah.
Paul Sackett:
And so that culture. And I talk to people that I know that work in the back offices with the Chiefs. They’re so engaged, they’re so fired up about the organization. It’s just such a different environment. So even the vendors, the folks that take care of the equipment, the marketing folks, the whole behind-the-office scene is completely different, which is supporting the winning culture on the field.
Jeff Randolph:
And you’re not claiming that you wrote or produced Ted Lasso. You’re just saying the message is right and that culture is really important. And if we believe we’re going to do it.
Paul Sackett:
I love Ted Lasso. There’s so many great HR things in Ted Lasso, and I absolutely think that for anyone that’s questioning or wondering about culture or even what I’m talking about, go watch Ted Lasso. Go watch Ted Lasso.
Jeff Randolph:
Go watch Ted Lasso. Does this matter? Can this improve your business? Yes, go do that. Go do that right now.
Paul Sackett:
And you don’t have to be as Ted Lasso necessarily an expert in the sport that he’s building the culture around. Right?
Jeff Randolph:
True, true. Oh, what a great example. I’m going to use that as a transition to get us into the lightning round. Are you ready for the lightning round?
Paul Sackett:
Sure.
Jeff Randolph:
You have no way. We knew we were going to talk about YourHR. We knew we were going to talk about HR issues. You have no way to know what we’re going to talk about here. I hope you’re ready for that.
Paul Sackett:
I’m ready.
Jeff Randolph:
So are you set? Okay, here we go. I want to talk about sous vide for a second. I’m going to ask you the things that you’ve made using sous vide, but before I do that, little background for our entrepreneur friends at home. Sous vide, amazing tool in the kitchen, tremendous control. You vacuum seal your food with some spices and some healthier unhealthy fats. You submerge that in a water bath with an immersion circulator that has very precise heat control, so you’re setting time and temperature. It will never overcook. You’re taking turkey that you cook and you cook that to 165 degrees internal temperature, but you do that for 30 seconds and you’ve killed all the bad bacteria.
But if you cook a turkey at, say, three hours for 138 degrees, you’ll get a better result. It’ll be a better turkey plus it kills all the bacteria to a log seven standard.
So what are you cooking in a sous vide machine? What have you done with sous vide?
Paul Sackett:
People, they think it’s all just steaks or meat or whatever. I think it’s amazing for carrots, mashed potatoes. Those are my two probably favorite vegetables.
Jeff Randolph:
Oh, mashed potatoes. Yeah. Okay.
Paul Sackett:
And carrots are amazing because if you steam carrots or you boil carrots, it really takes a lot of the flavor out. But when you sous vide it, and then all you have to do is throw them in a skillet, glaze them up, and then they’re amazing.
Jeff Randolph:
What do you do for potatoes? How do you do that? While it’s a whole potato or you diced or what’s the-
Paul Sackett:
To make mashed potatoes you dice up the mashed potatoes, put your milk, your butter and minced garlic and some rosemary, and cook that in the sous vide and then drain out, save your liquid.
Jeff Randolph:
Oh, right. Sure.
Paul Sackett:
And then mix your liquid back in as you hand mash the potatoes. Don’t you use a mixer. The starch. It makes them a little star-
Jeff Randolph:
That would be a terrible idea.
Paul Sackett:
Hand mash potatoes.
Jeff Randolph:
Gotcha. Okay. Have you done experiments with sous vide? Like, “Hey, I’m going to cook this for a day and a half.”
Paul Sackett:
So one of the best things that I’ve cooked is an eye of round roast.
Jeff Randolph:
Oh. That’s a-
Paul Sackett:
So an eye of round roast is one of the tougher pieces of meat. And actually when you cook it in the sous vide it’s like 30 hours, and then you sear it off. It’s literally what they call a poor man’s prime rib. It’s so tender.
Jeff Randolph:
Because you’ve treated the product so well.
Paul Sackett:
Correct.
Jeff Randolph:
You’ve cooked it for 30 hours in a sous vide machine.
Paul Sackett:
Like a 128, 129 degrees for 30 hours.
Jeff Randolph:
I know we’re getting into sous vide territory here, and this is very cooking show-like, but if you’re doing a party for a bunch of people, you can have a million things in a water bath and hold it at a temperature of medium rare or whatever you’d like to do and it’s never going to overcook. You can be party guest, host and have a great time, and then, oh, is it time to pull that out of the water bath and serve? Done. It’s a tremendous tool. Big fan.
Paul Sackett:
Here’s the other nice thing about it. One of the other things is I always struggled for cooking bone-in chicken. And you cook it in the sous vide. And I’ve made the best fried chicken I’ve ever made in my life because I cooked it in the sous vide. And then you put it in a flour or whatever and you fry up and you don’t have any worries of that bloodiness around bone or anything.
Jeff Randolph:
Yeah.
Paul Sackett:
I use it a lot to cook bone-in chicken. Chicken wings. Amazing.
Jeff Randolph:
Outstanding.
Paul Sackett:
All right. Anyway.
Jeff Randolph:
Okay, we’ll move off the food topic for a minute. That’s a good lightning round question. I’m happy with that. One of the top voices of people that you follow on LinkedIn is Ryan Reynolds, and I want to talk about that. Are you more of a Deadpool fan or a Wrexham fan, or are you just a gin drinker?
Paul Sackett:
All of the above. No, I like Deadpool. Yeah, I would’ve to go with Deadpool.
Jeff Randolph:
And from a management perspective, the things they’re doing on Wrexham, if you haven’t watched Welcome to Wrexham.
Paul Sackett:
I have.
Jeff Randolph:
That guy. They’re doing it right. Well done.
Paul Sackett:
And I think one of the things that I like is that he can be serious and drive a point with a sense of humor.
Jeff Randolph:
Yes, yes. 100%. And charisma.
Paul Sackett:
And dry. I like the dry humor. That’s why I like the Deadpool. It’s so dry.
Jeff Randolph:
Tremendous. Let me go with the next question. How do you size people up? There are no end of HR profile and job candidate assessment tools out there. Myers-Briggs and Clifton StrengthsFinder and DISC. Do you have a favorite of all of those? Do you use one and go, “Hey, I like this one, or I like that one,” or, This one makes sense to me?”
Paul Sackett:
I think as far as doing the psychological type profiles, Myers-Briggs is the foundation. Everything else is built off of Myers-Briggs. I think it’s very in-depth, and I think it does a very good job about pointing out what are our personality traits.
The challenge though, I think, with some of that is … And one of the tools that I like the best is StrengthsFinders. And the reason why is that we have 30 different strengths. And through all that, we have all of those in our personalities. Everybody has these different characteristics within their personalities. It’s just which one is your strongest one? I can do things with my left hand, but I’m naturally more comfortable with my right hand-
Jeff Randolph:
Good. Yeah.
Paul Sackett:
So I lead with my right, right? And so I think all of those are valuable tools, but I think with anything, people can also evolve over time. I think we have some things that are hardwired into us. And I think that’s what Myers-Briggs is good at getting the hardwired stuff, but StrengthsFinders is good at getting those things that we actually can evolve over time.
Jeff Randolph:
And focus on literally strength.
Paul Sackett:
And focus on-
Jeff Randolph:
Like your-
Paul Sackett:
Focus on what we’re good at.
Jeff Randolph:
Let’s not focus on, you can’t do the … You got a report card with all A’s and a B. What’s with that B? What’s going on with that? B? Like, we can focus on the goods.
Paul Sackett:
And one of the things that I like about StrengthsFinders, and I go back to Culture and team, successful teams. They’re not monolithic. You’ve got to have different personalities and different people to make up successful groups of people. And one of the things that StrengthsFinders does is it helps people realize all the different elements of their personalities that they bring as a strength to that team.
Jeff Randolph:
This is the part B to this question and the part B to the question is when you meet someone new, do you immediately size them up using one of these like, “Oh, that guy’s an ENTJ,” or no? You reserve judgment?
Paul Sackett:
No, I don’t use it more of an assessment tool. And I don’t make judgments on just first initial meetings.
Jeff Randolph:
That’s very kind. That’s a very kind thing to do. You’re a good outreacher.
Paul Sackett:
Well, because you can be wrong.
Jeff Randolph:
True, true.
Paul Sackett:
And I hate it when people have done that about me and met me and walked away and made an immediate assessment. I’m like, “You didn’t even really get to know me.” And people are complicated, and it takes time and interaction before you can really make an assessment on someone.
Jeff Randolph:
Oh, see, that’s just a wonderful answer. That’s a tremendous HR answer. If you could be any TV character throughout time, who would you be?
Paul Sackett:
Oh, wow. That’s a good one. Oh. There’s so many. I don’t know. I might have to try one. I’m trying to think of some of my favorite TV shows. I think, I don’t know, I’m going to throw one out there. Chandler.
Jeff Randolph:
Chandler. A Chandler guy. All right. Okay.
Paul Sackett:
He was funny. He always had a great wit, sense of humor. He was successful, although we never did really know what he did.
Jeff Randolph:
Right.
Paul Sackett:
And I just thought he was a great guy. And of course, as that series wrapped up, his and Monica’s Romance was kind of sweet.
Jeff Randolph:
One for the ages.
Paul Sackett:
So I always liked Chandler, and I’m sorry that he’s no longer with us.
Jeff Randolph:
Chanandler Bong for the win. You started your career in advertising sales. Can you give me a lesson learned or a takeaway from that early part of your career?
Paul Sackett:
Sure. So when I started, I actually started in Radio.
Jeff Randolph:
We can tell you’ve got a voice for radio.
Paul Sackett:
Oh, thank you.
Paul Sackett:
So I actually started in radio and I started doing just odds and ends, reading news, copy. Whatever they found for me to do. I was an intern at the radio station. And that internship turned into a job. And for them to validate my job, they wanted me to go out and sell ads for local high school basketball games and things like that. So I think one of the things that I learned in all of that, that I carry with me this day is a lot of the people that I were calling on selling ads were all small businesses and entrepreneurs and in a variety of industries, from egg supply store to a liquor store to the big grocery stores.
And so it was a wide variety of industries, and I learned how to work within that variety of businesses. And in advertising, part of my job was to help figure out ways to help them be successful and make money and get people in the door and so on and so forth. And so there was a lot of that experience that’s carried over into especially what I’m doing today in working with small businesses, helping them be successful. How do we grow? How do we maintain our employees? How do we attract employees.
Jeff Randolph:
Man, the way that those early career jobs just stack on top. It served as the foundation for everything we do.
Paul Sackett:
I would’ve never imagined. And if I can add one more is one of the other things is actually one summer I worked in a manufacturing plant, and that was so helpful when I was line HR manager and working in a factory and helping our operators and-
Jeff Randolph:
You know where they come from. You get it.
Paul Sackett:
I’ve done the work.
Jeff Randolph:
Yeah, absolutely. Well, I’m taking you out of the lightning round. That was a great lightning round from sous vide all the way to Deadpool and everything in between. Chandler Bing. Chanandler Bong. Great. Well done. You’ve survived. Congratulations.
Paul Sackett:
Thank you. Thank you.
Jeff Randolph:
Tell everybody where they can find you. Where can they learn more about you? Where do they go for information if they want to know more?
Paul Sackett:
Absolutely. My website address is www.yhrexperts.com. yhrexperts.com. Y as in the letter Y. Hrexperts.com. You can find me on LinkedIn. My profile, Paul Sackett. Also my business page on LinkedIn, which is YourHR. And so that’s where you can find me. And we have a free HR assessment on the website.
Jeff Randolph:
I did see that actually, yes.
Paul Sackett:
I get a lot of questions about I don’t even know if I need HR. So here’s a free, simple, 10 question HR assessment that a business owner can take and maybe evaluate where are my gaps, where are my opportunities? And give us call. We’ll give you a free assessment. And people always ask me, “Well, what do you do?” And it’s like I need to have a conversation and let’s talk about what your concerns are, and we will figure out where we go from there.
Jeff Randolph:
All right, Paul Sackett, founder and president of YourHR. Thanks for being with us today.
Paul Sackett:
All right, thank you. Thanks for having me.
Jeff Randolph:
And that is our show. Thanks to our guest, Paul Sackett, and thank you for listening to the Small Business Miracles Podcast. Remember to subscribe. Leave us a five-star rating and review. Drop us a line on the website at EAGADV.com if you have any thoughts. Until then, we’ll be out here helping entrepreneurs with another small business miracle.