Latest / AI for Founders with Ryan Estes / Build Remote Operations that Work: Isaac Kassab (Pearl Talent)

Transcript

Build Remote Operations that Work: Isaac Kassab (Pearl Talent) · AI for Founders with Ryan Estes

0:00
Welcome back to AI for Founders. I'm Ryan Estes.
0:02
Today's guest bootstrapped his company from zero to 1,000,000
0:06
ARR in just seven months and 10 million by year three.
0:10
That's not a typo. Isaac Kasab is the founder of
0:13
Pearl talent.com, a platform helping high growth startups
0:18
hire top tier global talent from Latin America, the Philippines,
0:21
and beyond, saving clients up to 60% in payroll costs while
0:25
boosting performance across operations, marketing, and
0:29
engineering. In this episode, Isaac breaks
0:31
down how to scale lean, build a remote first company that
0:35
actually works, and why credibility in systems beat
0:38
charisma every time. If you're a founder looking to
0:41
grow faster without burning out or wondering how to go from
0:44
scrappy team to global operation, this one's for you.
0:48
Let's dive in. But first, if you like this
0:50
podcast, you're going to love the accompanying newsletter.
0:54
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2:58
Isaac, how you doing? Doing right, All is well, you
3:02
know. Nice and sunny Tuesday down here
3:04
in Florida. Can't complain.
3:05
Gorgeous. I am so Jelly of that view.
3:07
That is incredible. What's that like to to wake up
3:10
in the morning? Yeah, it's, you know, coming
3:13
from six years in Manhattan, I was like Midtown and Upper East
3:18
and Noho and like now just Florida Ocean, you know,
3:21
sunlight, It's quite it's quite a difference.
3:23
Yeah, I, I was telling you before we came on, my brother
3:27
lives in Miami and I'm quite fond of it now.
3:30
It's a, it's a, it's like it's own country, you know, it's,
3:34
it's completely unique place on planet Earth.
3:38
A. Lot of people here locally call
3:41
it the capital of Latin America, so it's definitely, definitely
3:44
its own little operating system. So cool, I saw there was like a
3:49
homeless guy that was handing out compliments and he had like
3:52
some Louis Vuitton shoes on. Yeah, yeah, Like dude.
3:55
Look at the drip. Sounds Miami.
3:57
That sounds Miami. Incredible.
4:00
Well, I appreciate you coming on the show.
4:02
Introduce us to your company, Pearl Talent.
4:05
Yeah, absolutely dive right into it.
4:08
I think like Pearl, it's really interesting.
4:10
We we ended up taking what was like a three-year first
4:15
principles attack of like how do you hire phenomenal people from
4:19
our home country? So I I'm originally from
4:21
Venezuela. Monty, my business partner has
4:23
been, you know, one of my best friends for for eight years now.
4:25
We were both building in the tech space.
4:29
We're venture backed out in San Francisco 2020 heavy Zerp.
4:32
And like the short of it is we we couldn't find great hires
4:35
that were affordable. So we went through the overseas
4:38
staffing companies. They basically just didn't have
4:42
access to phenomenal talent. So we flew back home and just
4:47
went to our friends who like never left, went to the better
4:50
universities and just said, hey, like, we want to build, you
4:53
know, this is how we've been working over there.
4:54
Like this is what being, you know, insane operator looks
4:59
like. And we want, we want to bring in
5:00
people into that fold. And so for the next three years,
5:03
Monte out of Manila and the Philippines, me out of Venezuela
5:06
and quickly moved into Colombia and and Mexico and Argentina, we
5:09
just started building communities of people who wanted
5:12
to operate at like very high levels.
5:14
We hired 100 of them for ourselves.
5:16
And in those years we helped some friends, you know, we gave
5:19
them access to our recruiting funnel.
5:20
And from there, Pearl was born. When friends of friends started
5:23
coming to us, we, we started building the business out and
5:26
it's been great since then. You know, we've taken a very
5:28
aggressive. And, you know, one of the
5:30
reasons I was really excited, Chad, is the way we've been
5:32
bringing AI into the business. And, and just like optimizing
5:35
for yeah, we're, we're processing thousands of
5:37
candidates a month at this point.
5:40
And so the thesis is being able to hunt for the best ones and
5:45
train them up on how to be an incredible operator and have
5:49
them then work with our clients and and grow from there.
5:52
So cool let's back up a little bit.
5:53
So you came in from Venezuela now visas are all over the news
5:58
right now H1N1, how did you come into the the states?
6:03
So I. Actually was born in Miami and
6:06
then we went back to Venezuela where I spent the next eight
6:09
years and then came back to the States.
6:11
But at that point, my parents were both American.
6:14
My, my father studied in university in Boston.
6:17
So it was like a lot easier back then.
6:19
Now we, you know, change the ton.
6:21
When I, when I graduated to College in 2018, we had a 13,
6:25
you know, boys group and all but one of them that we're not,
6:30
we're, we're only two Americans. So there was 11 people that
6:34
applied for, to work in the states basically.
6:38
And they, they didn't get the extension.
6:39
They didn't get the visa and now we're seeing this whole, you
6:42
know, movement again. It's been very interesting.
6:44
I've been tracking a lot of what's happening in which
6:46
industries it's going to affect the most.
6:49
Crazy to see, you know, back and forth on, on what we want in
6:52
terms of people in the States. Yeah, it's really interesting.
6:54
I mean, it's obviously a controversial subject,
6:58
immigration, believe it or not. I mean, in Denver, I met a lot
7:02
of amazing Venezuelans because we are, you know, a sanctuary
7:05
city when there there was 40,000 coming in a day and they would
7:10
drop them off in downtown Denver in the middle of the winter with
7:12
a a white sheet. And these poor guys had had, you
7:16
know, shorts on. But the the most amazing
7:20
twinkle, twinkle in their eye and smile.
7:22
And they did fine. You know, shout out to them.
7:26
Yeah, the Venice, Yeah, they were called for.
7:30
Instance like, you know, it's really important, you know, and
7:34
you know, everyone knows this, but they get immigrants built
7:36
America and like the old America, the new America, like
7:38
it really comes from people who came over on on different sorts
7:41
of visas. Great examples.
7:43
Elon Musk was like not an American obviously.
7:45
And it it's just fascinating because you obviously want to
7:50
attract phenomenal talent into the states, but at the same
7:53
time, there's a lot of people who like live very comfortably,
7:56
you know, making a crazy amount of money through US in like
7:58
Medellin, Colombia, who are like, they don't need to come to
8:01
the states. Like they like their culture,
8:02
like their people. And so like they shows it's
8:05
incredible to be able to give them those same opportunities.
8:07
But you know, obviously some people have to leave their
8:10
countries for other reasons, safety, etcetera.
8:12
But it's just great to see both of those sides play where.
8:16
Yeah, and I mean, using kind of like offshore, near shore talent
8:21
has been a a boon for my businesses.
8:23
It's always been a great. It's never, you know, some
8:25
people want to come to America. I get it.
8:28
Until probably they get here and they're like, wait a minute, did
8:30
I just leave Paradise to come to, you know, Commerce City Co?
8:35
Like that was a mistake. So it can definitely work really
8:39
well is so I mean, this is kind of has its own share of
8:42
controversy. Obviously this is not
8:44
immigration, but let's touch on maybe the the controversial
8:47
takes of outsourced work because this is something that like the
8:50
Trump administration is trying to squash in certain ways.
8:54
Now, of course, it's Trump. So it's like, hey, if I like
8:56
you, you can do whatever you want.
8:57
But if I don't, I want to squash it with fines or tariffs or
9:01
however he's going to do it. But the the feeling behind the
9:05
Trump administration right now is we want to build things in
9:08
America. We want to hire people from
9:10
America. We want to be able to tax and
9:13
tariff outside talent for, for working here or working outside
9:17
of that. So what's kind of your take on
9:19
the climate right now as far as like hiring remote talent goes?
9:25
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think. Listen, it's a it's a
11:28
fascinating question. I think like it's when, when,
11:35
when topics or problems become too big, I like to break them
11:37
down until like very simple questions, right?
11:40
And, and the, the simplest 1 to go is like, if you're building a
11:43
business, you know, you've sold businesses, you've built new
11:45
businesses, you're obviously have an end goal in mind, right?
11:49
And that end goal usually has a KPI tied to it be a new, like
11:52
something around revenue or something around reach or how
11:55
many people are following you or, or reading every single
11:57
thing you put out. When you're building a business,
12:01
you have to like optimize, right?
12:03
Like you have to figure out like, how do I bring in the best
12:06
talent OR resources without spending too much money?
12:10
And so you could be profitable and reinvest in that business.
12:12
And so like from a very core first principle, you know, you
12:16
can hire someone equally as smart from Latin America or Asia
12:19
or anywhere else in the world than you can an American if you
12:22
know how to find them. And so then the question is
12:24
like, do you have the, do you have money to pay 3X for someone
12:28
locally? Because you get to sit with them
12:29
and like be face to face with them, which is, which is
12:31
valuable, right? Like that's extremely valuable,
12:33
but is it more valuable than hiring three people remotely
12:36
that are just as smart? And so my take generally is
12:39
like, you have to do the thing that's best for your business.
12:45
Sorry about that. You have to do the thing that's
12:47
best for your business. And so it's super important to
12:52
look at all the avenues and when talent ends up being one of your
12:55
biggest hop axes, like it's important to think through like
12:58
what can be done abroad. I think, and we can kind of go
13:00
into this later, but the issue with overseas up until very
13:04
recently is that people have thought about the terrible
13:07
experience they've had calling customer success reps within
13:10
like these large organizations, AT&T and the airline.
13:13
And like that doesn't represent what an incredible software
13:15
developer sitting out of Egypt can do.
13:18
Or you know, an insane salesperson who's ripping 150
13:21
dials and closing at the good 5% cold outbound campaign can do
13:26
out of Bogota, Colombia. And so like you have to be a
13:29
really creative as a, as a founder and we all know this
13:32
like it's extremely hard to make it work.
13:34
Like you have to do whatever it takes to make it work.
13:35
So I think overseas is a huge component there.
13:38
We agree. Now when we're talking about
13:40
hiring now there's there's difference in hiring contract
13:44
work. Every country is going to have
13:46
its own kind of like way that they they need to get paid in
13:49
taxes and things like that. So walk us through maybe the
13:52
differences. If you're talking about access
13:54
remote talent, actually what that means specifically, are you
13:58
hiring them through am I hiring Pearl talent and talent?
14:02
Pearl talent is hiring them. Like how does that whole
14:05
transaction work? So to that reason and that we
14:11
get that question a lot like we handle contracting those
14:14
individuals, paying their salaries, making sure they're
14:16
getting everything they need to look for their local taxes.
14:20
We said we have an American entity and so like, if you go at
14:24
it alone, you're going to have to handle processes with a bunch
14:28
of different countries with a lot of complex laws.
14:31
If you go through a company like Pearl where we're responsible
14:35
not only for hiring the end of finding these people, bringing
14:37
them on board, making sure they're getting like best
14:40
practices in place to be super successful.
14:41
And we coach them as well. We also handle like the
14:45
operational flow of like making sure everything's buttoned up
14:48
locally where they're at, making sure they have every piece of
14:51
hardware they would need possible.
14:52
And like, it might not be that much of a headache if you have
14:54
one person, but a lot of our clients are venture backed tech
14:58
companies that just like this. They came to us when they were
15:00
pre seed or even seed. And now they're at like Series A
15:02
or B and they have 30-40 fifty people with us.
15:06
You know, it's a very different story if those people are spread
15:08
out and how you manage them. And so we take care of all that
15:10
is basically the short of it. It's it's you have to be
15:13
tactical and local to be able to do it in the right way, is what
15:17
I found. And so we we just take on that
15:19
heat, yeah. Well, and hiring is like
15:22
obviously very stressful especially that.
15:25
You're. Early on, you know.
15:27
It's, it's no joke that we, we just had a fund that we work
15:31
really closely to. We started doing different
15:34
courses for like what do you do when you're pre seed for seed
15:36
for Series A? Like how do you think, how
15:38
should you think about like building budgets and spending
15:41
and finding talent? Because I, I do think that one
15:43
of the biggest issues younger companies face is higher.
15:46
And I think that might be the case for everyone.
15:48
But like it's, it's existential for earlier Sage companies,
15:51
right? Like when I built my first tech
15:52
company, my biggest failures were around like how I built my
15:56
team. And there's a lot of learnings
15:58
from those, obviously, which led to, you know, now this, but I
16:02
find that, you know, pre seed and seed are the are, are the
16:06
times when like it gets really, really hard to understand what's
16:09
best in class for like sourcing and then vetting people, most
16:12
importantly, setting them up for success afterwards.
16:14
So on boarding. And also, like, potential risk
16:18
and exposure, you know, hiring the wrong people early on can
16:23
take you, catch you, Yeah. And you could also, it could
16:27
also take you 3 months to find that person, right?
16:29
And then it's, you know, three months if you're the wrong
16:30
person. And I think you're like, oh
16:32
shit, like what do we do now? Like internally apparel, we have
16:35
a really strong like client success process.
16:37
But I think we're one of the only companies that work in our
16:40
like in the overseas staffing space that like kind of take a
16:43
tech approach to like client success where we have account
16:46
managers that are hand in hand with our clients that we have
16:49
talent success managers who lead upskilling kind of like
16:53
performance coaches, like we model the role after.
16:55
I don't. Have you watched Billions?
16:57
Yeah, what's billions? It's you have to OK, that's
17:02
that's for another conversation. But billions is kind of like the
17:06
idea. She's like this performance
17:08
coach therapist and like she helps figure out like how to
17:10
unlock people. And so one of the things I
17:12
realized early on in my journey of hiring for stage last, my
17:15
tech, my last tech company was I need people to be extreme owners
17:20
of their responsibilities and KPIs.
17:22
And how do I get them to review that at a, you know, quarterly
17:26
or monthly basis? Now I do it monthly where I can
17:29
just make sure that like they're reassessing what projects and,
17:31
and work they're doing. And so across the hundreds of
17:34
hires that we have every single month, we have 100% completion
17:38
of the talents self assessing themselves based on their like 3
17:43
to 5 responsibilities and three to five KPIs that gets sent to A
17:47
to their managers. And then our account managers
17:49
come in and ask, hey, like, does this look correct?
17:52
You know, where maybe is there a discrepancy between how the town
17:55
thinks we're doing or how you think they're doing?
17:57
And then we'll build upscaling curriculum based on that
18:00
feedback. And so like, that's led to our
18:03
very high retention rates. And so like there's a kind of
18:06
work that goes into it, but like, you know, when I can't
18:09
imagine there's a lot of found, there's a lot of founders out
18:11
there that are in their first, you know, couple hires and
18:13
thought about doing that from experience.
18:15
That's in Spanish. We call that upper ende de Los
18:18
conasos, which means learning by getting like repeatedly punched
18:21
in the face, like just cause. And so that's that's where that
18:24
practice came out of. Hey, I've had that lesson a
18:26
couple of times. Yeah, I'm a number.
18:30
They definitely learn from, you know, and I think hiring
18:33
remotely becomes, it gets a little bit easier after you've
18:35
been a little bit deeper into systems and processes and
18:38
developing people. You know, I've seen like young
18:41
first time founders, they really thrive on kind of that group
18:43
atmosphere, you know, that we, we need 4 guys around a desk and
18:47
we're going to eat Donuts and pizza and figure this thing out
18:49
together. Once you kind of, well, maybe
18:52
that's it, your personality type, you know, but some of us
18:55
are out here. We'd rather play singles than
18:56
play double S, you know, and so you can get super lean and very
18:59
specialized with your talent pool.
19:01
And let's talk a little bit about economics because
19:04
ultimately it comes down to two things.
19:06
You know, can you near shore talent equivalent to American
19:10
talent? Of course you can.
19:12
If not great or so some of the, the most incredible engineers
19:15
I've worked with are from Nigeria and just absolute
19:19
brilliant, you know, And the other side is then like, OK,
19:22
what's the economics is am I going to be able to get this
19:24
done at a better price? So when I look at your website,
19:27
it says you can save 70% on on talent by hiring overseas.
19:32
So how does that breakdown give us ballparks of salaries if
19:36
we're going full time? Do you guys offer part time?
19:38
What's the average full time salary, let's say for a junior
19:42
developer or for let's say a project manager?
19:47
Yeah. So right off the bat, I've yet
19:51
to find a situation where we cost anything less than 50% of
19:58
hiring locally, right. So what does that mean?
20:01
That means like for sales people, outbound sales,
20:04
development reps, right, we're charging 3500.
20:07
And that's like when you think about that, consider that to the
20:09
price you'd be paying in America plus the the 25 to 30% in like
20:13
taxes, benefits and everything else you have to give.
20:17
That allows us to go out and pay an SDR.
20:21
That's 10 year, right? Two to five years of like
20:23
booking experiences. Some of them even maybe could be
20:25
full cycle sales people within that range.
20:29
They'll be making double what they're making locally or
20:32
getting paid by a a business ABPO, which is like one of these
20:35
larger call centers or larger businesses that just sit down
20:37
and have hundreds of people doing the same role.
20:39
For software devs. We're looking at like 5 to 7 1/2
20:43
AK, so that's easily half or or you know more than half of what
20:48
it would cost locally. And then operators you know to
20:53
general EAS even marketers around the same range with three
20:56
to $4000 all in. So with that we can pay them far
21:00
above market. We have been met their managers
21:02
on board, we give them benefits and that then covers all of our
21:06
OpEx and our margin of course. Yeah, which is?
21:08
Fantastic, because it is the sneaky cost that come and come
21:12
back to bite you, you know like sure and.
21:16
Of our clients now, like we did a case study with one of our
21:20
first clients who now has 30 something hires with us.
21:25
When we only had eight hires. We did math like we were just,
21:28
you know, building out some numbers of like how much they
21:30
were saving versus like the Americans that were exact in the
21:32
exact same role that we're local.
21:35
And we were saving them close to $400,000.
21:38
And that was when the team was 1/3 of the size.
21:41
Yeah, compared to having the same exact person in the stage,
21:43
what they had, which they had in our seat, their C set scores
21:45
were the same. And so I'm excited, you know, to
21:48
get that updated because we're saving 1,000,000 bucks for this
21:50
now a year. And their C set scores are
21:53
better with the people that we have versus some of their
21:55
Americans. And it's because like, think
21:57
about it like if you, if you grab the most incredible higher,
22:01
the most incredible university here in the States, like would
22:04
their C set score be better than the Latin American or Asian?
22:06
Like there's a chance, right? Like people, Monty loves to say
22:10
like opportunity isn't created equal, but talent is.
22:14
So you have the best of the best of the best anywhere.
22:15
Like obviously they can compare, but with the salary that you can
22:19
offer someone locally in the states for this type of like
22:21
sales slash customer successful, you're hiring from a lower
22:25
barrel versus in Latin America, Asia, you're literally pulling
22:28
people from like venture funds from some of the best start-ups
22:31
locally from their best consulting firms, the best
22:33
accounting firms, etcetera. And so with the same amount of
22:37
money, even less money, you're able to get the best person
22:40
abroad versus like someone that might be a little bit lower tier
22:43
here in the States. Yeah, just yeah.
22:46
Yeah. And we were talking about the
22:47
controversies in the United States right now.
22:49
Everything's pretty polarized. Like there's some pretty extreme
22:51
attitudes across the board with Americans that you don't
22:55
necessarily fall into people from other places.
22:58
There could be cultural advantages as well.
23:02
I, I mean, I, I love having a diverse team.
23:05
We have close to 50 people internally at Pearl, how they
23:08
manage and, and hire, you know, upwards of a few 100 people.
23:12
And I find that the more people you bring from different
23:18
backgrounds that, you know, it definitely adds value to your
23:20
company. So I very much love it.
23:23
And of course, like I bootstrap my company all the way through.
23:26
We were unprofitably, we're reinvesting aggressively.
23:30
We, we love, you know, kind of our mission and, and our mission
23:33
at the end of the day, like we, we did Monty.
23:35
Now we're super excited to build Pearl because like we had an
23:37
opportunity to drive change in people's lives for what we were
23:41
seeing it the first couple of years as we started hiring for,
23:44
you know, our, both of our companies, but now we're able to
23:47
affect like a very significant amount of communities with so
23:51
many people working and so like that's been exciting as well.
23:54
It's. Great, I mean I could see a
23:56
major problem though, and correct me if I'm wrong, I mean
23:59
World Cup could destroy your own company.
24:05
You know, we'll get there when we got there.
24:08
That's absolutely hilarious. I think that I'm trying to think
24:12
which countries are going to take.
24:13
I think it's just, you know, Argentina is going to take it,
24:15
call it a day. I mean, you're going to say
24:19
cool. I would like main problem
24:21
though. Yeah, no kidding.
24:23
Amazing. Like I want to talk about your,
24:25
your organization and your org chart largely because you've
24:29
posted some very impressive numbers.
24:31
I'm not sure you're doing what you, what you did with your,
24:33
your startup. Love to hear about it.
24:35
But with with this on on X, you said you bootstrapped to
24:38
1,000,000 ARR in seven months, which is a heck of a base
24:43
reaching 10 million ARR by year 3.
24:46
So for a service based business, usually you have to scale by
24:49
putting butts in seats. I know you guys are software
24:52
enabled, software as a service as a software.
24:56
But like doing that with people is very, very difficult.
24:59
Maybe that in itself is a testament to the kind of talent
25:02
that you're you're hiring. How do you attribute that kind
25:05
of radical growth so fast? Yeah, that's a, that's a really
25:11
good question. And there's three, there's three
25:13
parts, the first of which is we genuinely have this like endless
25:17
funnel of phenomenal talent that we brought in, right.
25:22
So like in three years, I've hired 50 people internally.
25:25
Like there are a few companies at my level of revenue.
25:28
I feel like that have so many people I could operate.
25:32
This is with half, but I'm I throw bodies at net new
25:36
initiatives that I think can be like, you know, the 8020 And so
25:40
the pace at which we build and operate is like forget opera.
25:44
Let's talk about building like how how much we push.
25:48
We push really hard. Like my brother and I always
25:51
like joke about like pushing the simulation and just like what is
25:54
like the like the Contra, like what is the counter of like the
25:57
bane of what we're trying to do on this air, though, like that.
26:00
The idea was when we build Pearl, we were just, we were
26:05
lucky because we had four years of like this development of
26:08
these micro network of, of people operators that like we're
26:13
anxious to be able to build more than what their local markets
26:16
had. And so when we landed in, you
26:19
know, Venezuela, both in Colombia and Argentina, Mexico,
26:23
Philippines and we expanded to Africa, like people were, were
26:27
very receptive of our message of like, you know, screw the fact
26:29
that you don't have these opportunities that come, you
26:31
know, come work with us. So that's been a huge driver of
26:34
our success is like I can bring on somebody, any, any real
26:38
operator, any founder that's been through it and is now like
26:41
doing something that's up and to the right.
26:44
Nothing moves as fast as you want it to.
26:46
And so when you launch a new initiative that you have to give
26:48
it two or three months to really see like are there leading
26:51
indicators it's going to work or it's not.
26:53
And so I'm able to really staff up against net new initiatives
26:56
and a lot of those net new initiatives have hit.
26:58
And because of those hits, we end up adding like entire new
27:02
Legion funnels or, and a really strong retention strategy or,
27:07
you know, a ton of our AI initiatives, which I'll kind of
27:09
get into. And like the Third Point, which
27:11
I think is like AI is really helped us.
27:13
The second of which is our team, the people on our team because
27:20
of how we train them. And what we explained is like
27:23
the way to be successful, really oriented around our core values
27:27
and like, just like operating and executing an insanely high
27:31
clip like that is that is huge. Like our our internal training
27:35
program, which we use for all the town to go through our
27:36
clients. Like it is a fast-paced thing,
27:39
right? And so that offers us two big
27:41
wins. One is someone is going to move
27:43
really quickly up and they're going to you're going to clearly
27:45
see how they can handle or they're going to fail extremely
27:48
quickly. And that's also huge because you
27:49
don't end up spending the time and resources on someone who you
27:52
don't want to have around or you're not going to have around
27:54
in two to 3/4. So the way at which you operate
27:56
and like train someone up to be an extreme owner, you give them
27:59
something you don't have to hand hold them, you train them up
28:01
like really aggressively quickly.
28:03
That's been huge because now again, we're processing
28:05
thousands of people. We bring on 10s of new clients
28:08
every month and we're placing, you know, in the mid 10s on a
28:12
monthly basis, which like you can do the math, it's just it's
28:15
a ton of business. We're adding to the, to the
28:17
books. The third portion is really
28:21
around AI and like, I don't know if you want to break that down
28:23
further and like ask some other pointed questions because I've
28:25
seen a good amount of your content and, and some other
28:28
episodes you've done. And so like happy to dive into
28:31
that in more detail. But AI has been huge for just
28:36
one by one tackling, tackling bottlenecks and like 10X in a
28:39
lot of initiatives that we know of when working. 100% how?
28:42
How are you implementing a? Are you doing agentic stuff for
28:46
the training modules? Yeah.
28:48
So a lot of it is like internally it's building a lot
28:51
of agents across the board. We partnered with one of our
28:54
clients Stack AI. They're they're just like
28:57
phenomenal. They really allow you a lot of
28:59
like support and freeway to build individualized agents
29:05
across all the LMS. We're we're using AI across the
29:10
way. We are targeting our talent the
29:13
way we're vetting our talent the way we're then then we build
29:18
agents around like how you upskill someone and gamify the
29:21
learnings of like the practices that we know to be very
29:24
successful for operators, right? A lot of it's around like how do
29:28
you manage the priorities you're going to be hitting, setting
29:32
what you're going to be doing in terms of execution and managing
29:34
like what worked well and what did not.
29:36
That's huge. I think that's like really core
29:38
to being a phenomenal operator. And so we're we have a lot of
29:42
gamification in that learning process as well as how we
29:45
capturing the progress that individuals are doing.
29:49
So it's, it's a little bit easier to then spend the end of
29:52
the month assessing like what worked and what didn't.
29:55
Those are like the two main areas.
29:56
So in, in coaching our people and in the recruit, the
30:00
recruiting funnel part issues. And then of course, like around
30:02
the marketing, you know, we're, we're putting a bunch of content
30:05
out. We're, we're trying to leverage
30:06
any tool like we're trying to identify more and more AI tools
30:10
as they all get built and building up the muscle of like,
30:12
how do you stay in the loop of what is being built?
30:14
Because it for the next two years, it's going to be a crazy
30:16
amount of iteration before I think the next wave of AI comes
30:20
and might wipe out all the other companies that are built between
30:22
now and then that aren't like the big guys.
30:24
But. Totally.
30:25
Well, it's really impressive the growth.
30:27
I mean largely this is a very competitive sphere, you know,
30:30
outsource talent. It's there is a lot of big
30:34
companies, there's a lot of big budgets, people marketing with
30:36
big people to get it done. How do you how do you find
30:40
customers? So we have like 5 different lead
30:46
Gen. channels now. I would say the biggest one is
30:51
from our current client base, we've had 100% of our clients
30:56
that have succeeded if they succeeded in a month.
30:58
So if they for whatever reason didn't not work out within the
31:01
first four weeks, they've all grown with us.
31:03
And so our business has definitely like multiplied from
31:06
just like accounts getting, you know, clients loving us and
31:09
wanting to do more and finding new ways to build other teams.
31:13
Obviously when you can hire three people for the price of
31:15
one, it could become people hire more frequently.
31:18
Honestly, the second thing is the referrals that we get from
31:25
our networks, right? So we're putting out a lot of
31:26
content. All our clients love us, They're
31:27
sharing us out, they're liking us, they're helping put out a
31:29
post for us. And so a lot of it is, is that
31:32
word of mouth and referral. We've, we do some outbound
31:36
initiatives to like very specific target audiences when
31:39
we can. There's a huge win around 1.
31:41
And we've also done a pretty good job of like understanding
31:43
SEO and getting larger amount of like search engine demand.
31:50
The hard stuff, you know. We started going, we went into
31:55
SEO like literally month one, we're like, all right, it's
31:56
going to take a year. Let's just let's just get on.
31:58
Our SEO and referrals, I mean, that's again like that's
32:03
testament to like hard work and expertise, you know, which is
32:06
really cool. I mean, I think a lot of times
32:08
people want to go to market and be like, hey, we need to bribe
32:12
the right influencer or we need to do whatever.
32:14
But like the old stuff that the tried and true stuff, right?
32:19
We learned from a lot of our competitors, honestly, like
32:21
they've taken, they've taken a lot of those angles and like I
32:23
just went up to him and asked him like, how did this go for
32:26
you? You know, and like we just got a
32:27
lot of like honest feedback. And so like we've we've been
32:30
able to like skirt a lot of those stuff.
32:31
I think like it's you're always looking for that silver bullet,
32:35
right, Which is why people are raised like we have a
32:36
competitor. We do a ton of work within tech
32:39
and then my Co founders last business was in healthcare.
32:42
So we do a lot of healthcare as well.
32:45
And we have this competitor who went on and they're, they're
32:48
just around before like kind of neck and neck in terms of
32:52
revenue, from my understanding. And they erase so much money and
32:56
like they're the way they're building their org.
32:57
It's just going to be fascinating to see like how this
33:00
plays out. But you, you don't need to take
33:03
those sometimes, you know, sometimes money and raising is
33:06
phenomenal and it's for a lot of ideas you need to raise.
33:10
But if you don't like, you know, it's definitely possible to
33:12
build an org without raising money as as you, I'm sure you're
33:15
going to tell us you had you had you fundraised for your last
33:18
venture. I did with one of them and the
33:21
other one I bootstrapped that was just acquired in April.
33:24
It was a bootstrap service agency.
33:25
And so, you know, same thing. I built principles of like, man,
33:29
we're going to care about our clients, We're going to do
33:31
everything we can to serve them well.
33:33
We're going to treat everybody, you know, the way we want to
33:36
treat our mother. You know that just old school I
33:39
and I appreciate that. I think that if you really work
33:42
hard at anything with that kind of spirit, you almost can't
33:45
lose. You know, the have you seen the
33:50
the opposite? And I was what I mean, I got a
33:52
couple of buddies that probably if they could, would go full
33:55
Lebowski, you know, So if they're like, Hey, Isaac will
33:58
pay me 3000 bucks a month and I get to live in Bogota.
34:03
So how do you get the Americans down in in Colombia to be like,
34:06
hey man, if you give me a job? I would I would love that.
34:12
That doesn't happen as much right now, but we should look
34:14
into that I think. Expats, you know we.
34:17
Have some expats and they're phenomenal.
34:19
I mean truly phenomenal. It's not something I run into a
34:24
lot. 1 of the questions I get is like, do you think people are
34:26
going to want to end up like moving to these countries and
34:29
being part of the team? I'm like, that could happen.
34:32
I don't know where that will take this, but that could
34:34
happen. And we'd see then.
34:35
But like for the most part, like when you're able to live in a
34:39
phenomenal country with great culture and a lot of like really
34:44
comfortable living, like I think a lot of us know that.
34:47
And if you travel ahead of the US, you know that like life is
34:52
really beautiful outside of the US in the sense that it's not
34:55
all about being in the, what we call the rat race.
34:59
And it's more so just like work and business being part of like
35:02
this very larger idea of living. And so a lot of people don't
35:06
want to live leave that. They just want to like be able
35:08
to jump on and like put energy to build something and then get
35:12
out and, and go live in a phenomenal city or country.
35:15
And, and with like far more money, right?
35:17
Like being able to pay someone a couple $100 more a month in
35:21
Latin America is significant to their income.
35:25
And like in the States, it would it'd buy you like an extra, you
35:28
know, couple coffees or coffee once a day for like the for the,
35:32
for the month, right? Like that would be the
35:33
difference, yeah. You just worry if you weren't
35:35
buying enough Solana. Yeah, Molly, amazing.
35:42
OK, kind of an AI anxiety question.
35:45
So one of the anxieties everyone has about AI is it's going to
35:48
take your jobs and you're in the jobs business.
35:51
So you're looking ahead three to five years.
35:53
How do you see like AI affecting employment, particularly where
35:57
you're interested, which is, you know, like entry level junior
36:01
all the way up to the org chart. How do you see that affecting
36:05
your business? So the way I've been seeing it
36:09
affect our business currently is luckily really well.
36:15
We had a lot of later stage companies come to us and say we
36:18
have 200 people that are working for us locally, not even like
36:22
internationally. And we're thinking about a very
36:26
large shift because we're considering all these efforts
36:28
with AI and every single company comes with a different idea of
36:30
how to use AI based on wherever they have like the biggest
36:33
amount of need or bottleneck. And it's led to us being bigger
36:38
rooms. And I thought we'd be in for a
36:40
little bit honestly. Like we've been able to talk to
36:43
some very phenomenal organizations that are later
36:45
stage and like talking about entire team shifts.
36:49
So that's how I'm seeing it currently.
36:50
People are auditing their organizations based on what they
36:54
are seeing can help their orcs. And through that, they're making
36:58
larger business decisions of like where to implement where,
37:01
you know, we've seen all the large tech companies that let go
37:03
thousands of people. Yeah, makes sense.
37:07
I wouldn't, you know, it's if you don't, if you, if you cannot
37:12
adopt technology to make you go a lot faster or build bigger,
37:16
then you're going to have a really hard time.
37:17
Is, is the second trend that I'm seeing.
37:19
And so for us, we've invested so much into teaching our team like
37:24
how to be an AI enabled individual.
37:27
And I think as more and more into that like that an AI
37:30
enabled individual, an AI enabled talent is I think the
37:33
future of Pearl. How do you teach someone to be
37:37
far more valuable because they've mastered identifying and
37:40
using AI tooling within their work?
37:44
I haven't seen a lot of organizations that are early
37:46
stage hire less people because of AII, have seen a lot of them
37:51
enforce the usage of AI. But if your game, if your game
37:55
is to grow and continue your mission onward, AI will almost
37:59
always be a huge enabler of the talent versus take someone's job
38:04
away Now 5 to 10 years down the road.
38:06
Like super uncertain, honestly, like super uncertain.
38:11
I have literally no idea where we'll be.
38:14
I think that there is a really good chance that if some of the
38:19
smartest people that I've ever heard speak are correct, we're
38:23
going to be living in a world that might just like.
38:27
We don't know how to work at it. Yeah, not.
38:29
Even worth like we we need to sit for hours and a lot of
38:32
whiskey to get into like all those possible.
38:35
Yeah, 100%. Well, I think I oh, go ahead.
38:38
Sorry, no, as short and mid term it's it's a lot of opportunity
38:43
to enable, to enable people is is how I see it, Yeah.
38:46
Last time I was, I was working, I was doing some hiring for BDR
38:50
and doing some interviews. And it was interesting because
38:53
you know, the a hurdle for folks that maybe have English as a
38:57
second language. Now also, a lot of these folks
39:00
learned English in tandem with whatever their native language
39:03
is, you know, whether it's EBO or it's Spanish or whatever.
39:07
But you know, that's like me the the way I could speak Spanish
39:10
based being like, you know, a Denver white boy versus writing
39:14
it very challenging to write it, you know, at where now you can
39:19
use the LLMS and they can clean it up.
39:21
But it went to the far extreme where now like truly the, the
39:25
skills to have editorial process to take the GPT out of the copy,
39:29
you know? So then you're saying like, wow,
39:31
this is perfectly executed e-mail.
39:33
I love it. But I can just tell too much
39:36
that it's just kind of like a little bit of AI slop.
39:39
So then the skill becomes like being able to edit back, which
39:41
personally, I love that about. I think generative AI more than
39:46
anything is that it gives you so much that it just becomes the
39:50
taste to pull away what's not necessary.
39:53
It's easier for me to think that way.
39:55
So I could see that being like a great asset for, for, for
39:59
overseas talent, you know. We're we're very aggressive in
40:04
like firing outrageously strong English speakers.
40:10
And I think it's like less so about are they saying perfect
40:16
sentences because I don't even do something.
40:18
I'm basically like a language. I don't do that.
40:20
But it's more so like, can they think deeply about what the
40:25
conversation is in that native language, right?
40:27
Like, are they understanding the context behind the verbs?
40:30
Because, yeah. And Ryan, like I'm sure you've
40:32
sold things in your life like people do not say what they
40:35
mean. And so you have to go so much
40:37
deeper and understand the context behind it.
40:39
And so like, I'm very big on on, you know, the people that come
40:42
through Pearl or the English language is absolutely high.
40:45
Yeah, absolutely. You, you.
40:48
It's a necessity and it fortunately, you know, across
40:51
around the planet, you know, it's there's great English
40:54
speakers absolutely everywhere. You know, I think in I've seen a
40:57
real rise in Latin America. Maybe you're testament to that
41:00
too. And I think largely, you know, I
41:02
think Philippines were early. Obviously people have been
41:04
hiring out of India for a long, long time, but there's something
41:08
familiar about Latin American accents.
41:10
You know, it's like, oh, this, you hear it all the time.
41:13
A. Lot of our, a lot of our
41:15
business, sorry I didn't rather you, but a lot of the businesses
41:17
that are coming to Pearl and our clients, they want English and
41:21
Spanish speakers. Yeah, because their target
41:24
audience, a lot of times they're like fully speaking Spanish.
41:26
That's what a big part of America is that they find one.
41:30
Yeah, well. And I mean, I work in podcasting
41:32
and like, you know, America's probably 10 years ahead of
41:35
everybody in in podcasting specifically.
41:38
So you're starting to see a lot of people come on board, like
41:40
Brazil, you know, Mexico, You're like, oh, like those markets are
41:44
just getting tapped. They're just finding podcasting
41:46
now. It's just pretty interesting.
41:48
So to have native speakers because again, like I, I could
41:51
speak Spanish a little bit, but I'm not going to be able to be
41:53
ironic in Spanish, you know what I'm saying?
41:56
So go ahead. I was.
42:00
Going to ask you like I'm really curious like what were your
42:04
early experiences hiring like your first ever hires?
42:07
First ever hires oh man, I would hire friends and like referrals
42:12
from friends. Complete disaster.
42:14
You know, I, I, I, it was just. Little story.
42:19
I, I tell you what, I, I learned that early.
42:21
I took myself out of hiring it completely because I have the
42:25
terrible propensity to like fall in love with anybody I'm
42:28
speaking with. You know, I, I could be hired.
42:31
I could be interviewing somebody and they're like, well, I want
42:33
to be honest with you. I did some time because I stole
42:35
from my last employer. I'm like, wow, he's so honest.
42:39
You know what a great guy. Got it, got it.
42:45
It's a good guy. Yeah, yeah, everybody, man.
42:48
So I, I took a lot of painstaking processes in the
42:52
hiring process where there was a lot of experiments.
42:54
I would say like, OK, you need to execute like this, this,
42:57
this, this. Basically you had to check all
42:58
the boxes before you got to me. So I knew at least when you sat
43:02
down in front of me, you're reputable and competent.
43:05
So it, it's just a, it's just a taste choice, you know, but, but
43:10
I do enjoy the process. I, I think it's really cool and
43:12
I, I love the, the, the spirit. Well, I'm an interviewer, you
43:16
know, so I like interviewing people.
43:17
It's really fun. I'm interested about your org
43:20
chart close to you, because I like to hire like little teams
43:24
and I like to have my team and have another team and there's a
43:26
little bit of competition between the teams, which is good
43:29
for everybody. People have kind of their
43:30
insular groups and like, they have their own like epics and
43:34
their own things like that. So how about you?
43:36
What's What's your team look like?
43:39
Yeah, it's funny you say that because like there's like
43:40
nicknames for like many groups and like they're not they're not
43:43
even org oriented groups. They're just like people that
43:45
like love each other and like categorize them as like a
43:48
different like as if we were in color wars, which is it's like
43:53
our our Funko, our culture is pretty pretty ridic.
43:55
I mean I I love to like I'm a pretty non quiet guy like I, I'm
44:02
down to be a little bit outrageous.
44:03
And so I think I've built it in pretty fun, like challenging
44:06
culture. But it's a great question.
44:09
I've actually found that just based on how many conversations
44:13
I'm in and how many different things I touch on a monthly
44:16
basis or weekly basis, I need like an EA and a chief of staff
44:20
like hand in hand with me. And like almost everything I do,
44:23
I try to keep them like pretty separate and what they touch,
44:26
but have 100% coverage of everything I do.
44:28
That way I could operate without being in my e-mail period.
44:33
Like, and, and all like we have an internal rule that like all
44:37
clients get responded to in 10 minutes, like it in the worst of
44:40
cases an hour. And so we're pretty high touch.
44:42
And then you have to be like some sort of white gloves,
44:44
right, if you're going to be in a competitive market.
44:47
But we have a really large recruiting team, which is let
44:52
out by this phenomenal manager or director out in Latin America
44:56
and Mexico. We have a sales team and we have
45:00
a client success team and the client success in sales will
45:03
fight on like sales versus upsells because like we upsell
45:07
so much in our business that like it's like that is a really
45:10
good competition. Competition is high in, in pro
45:14
for sure. Like we are, we are very heavy
45:16
KPI oriented company. Like there is a, there's no
45:19
hiding here, but like in a good way like and so it's, it's
45:23
competitive, it's fun. I think that you'd have to have
45:29
this like desire to like outperform if you're going to be
45:32
in like an operationally aggressive, you know, managed
45:38
service business like pro, I would say like.
45:41
You have an EA and a Chief of Staff.
45:43
How do you differentiate? Is the EA essentially working
45:46
underneath the the Chief of Staff or how do you
45:48
differentiate the? Task, yeah.
45:51
So the way we've broken it down and we're very open to like
45:54
making ships on a quarterly basis if like we feel like
45:57
there's a need or we get into a big new initiative where it's
46:00
going to take a tone of someone's time.
46:02
But right now my Chief of Staff handles like what we call
46:05
priority zeros, which are like projects that need to move at
46:08
lightspeed. And so like they will spend 50
46:11
to 70% of their time only focus on one initiative at any given
46:15
moment. That's like the highest priority
46:16
thing that we've identified. Outside of that, they're
46:19
responsible for larger management of like our directors
46:26
initiatives. So just like project management
46:28
across the board in our company is like the biggest thing that
46:31
he manages outside of like whatever the number one project
46:35
is. And then my EA works alongside
46:38
of me to like any emails in touch.
46:41
So we, I get around 100 emails a day.
46:42
So like she helps me execute on those.
46:46
And then we have a lot of follow-ups that we need to do
46:48
from the people that are in our inbox, like managing our like,
46:52
like executive CRM, we call it between Monty and I, my Co
46:55
founder. And so that's how their rules
46:59
breakdown and she does scheduling for me and, and
47:00
travel as well. We're actually now trying to
47:02
hire like another EA under her or alongside of her.
47:06
Like, you know, we, we travel a lot to the markets where we, we
47:10
have our team. So into set in November, we went
47:12
to Mexico, in December, we're going to the Philippines.
47:14
There's like travel there in October.
47:15
We're doing like a big, you know, in US travel.
47:19
So SF tech week, LA tech week, we have a, an event that we're
47:23
I'm speaking to and, and introducing a, a really
47:26
phenomenal operator and investor.
47:28
It's not announced yet, so I can't really share it, but he,
47:32
he invests in T on in ATV show. He invests and then and then
47:37
we're going to health in Vegas. So October is going to be a big
47:42
of a big of a travel. So she she will handle that.
47:46
Cool. That sounds like fun.
47:47
And now you mentioned KPIs. What are KPIs are important to
47:50
you is is it revenue per employee?
47:53
What, what, what KPIs you keep track of very religiously within
47:57
your business? Yeah.
47:59
The the North Star, like the number one KPI is how many lives
48:02
we've affected, like how many lives we've changed is what how
48:05
we call it. So it's, it's the number one
48:06
KPI. Everything else rolls into that.
48:11
Clients or staff? That's a great question.
48:14
Staff talent that's, that's honestly we're, we're trying to
48:18
change businesses for our clients and, and change lives
48:20
for our talent. And I think that's definitely
48:23
the number one priority. There's a lot of people in Latin
48:28
America and in Asia who have a very like bad perception and
48:33
working remotely because they've seen their friends take the
48:37
easier route of working for these like larger BP OS that
48:41
doesn't have a lot of like brain power work to it.
48:44
It's just like do this one thing over and over and over again.
48:47
And so some of the smartest people abroad have this like
48:50
resentment because they see their friends doing these boring
48:54
roles that get paid more than like their prestigious local
48:57
roles. And then they hear from America
49:01
that like everyone thinks that everyone in the Philippines is
49:03
like schmuck, that is stupid, right?
49:06
And it's just like there's I guess resentment because of
49:07
that. So bringing those people into
49:10
higher paying roles, like the smartest people that are working
49:12
locally into higher paying roles that work remotely for companies
49:15
in the States is, is like our #1 mission changing those lives
49:18
and, and creating positive effect.
49:21
Outside of that, I think like recruiting, it's how many lives
49:24
are changed monthly sales or how many opportunities do we open to
49:28
change lives? Account management is like do
49:31
not lose, do not lose. People say, you know, make sure
49:35
we're, it's, it's, it's really a lot of like the job is the job
49:39
is to make sure we always have enough communication and
49:42
feedback to give it someone the opportunity to improve if
49:46
they're not killing it right? Like that is the work around
49:48
account management. So we, we measure like the
49:52
feedback points and like these monthly scorecards that we have
49:55
the talents that I mentioned earlier in our, in our
49:57
conversation. And that's, and then you know,
50:01
on, on marketing, we we measure some things around like the
50:04
entire final really. Totally.
50:07
You know, it's, it's interesting to hear this whole business is
50:09
like marred with stereotypes and biases and and just all these
50:14
like minefield kind of things. It's it's interesting to think
50:17
in natural that like, of course Philippines are going to have
50:20
certain stereotypes about Americans, you know, but what
50:23
I've found, if, if anybody's curious, like I found some of
50:26
the most brilliant people I've ever worked with from the
50:30
Philippines, from the Ukraine, from Nigeria, from Mexico, like
50:36
it telling it's extraordinary. The personalities is it's great.
50:38
I mean, I, I think those, those stereotypes have died a slow
50:43
death, but it feels like they're dying now.
50:45
Go ahead. What surprise. 20% of, you know,
50:49
American companies that are working with anyone overseas,
50:52
it's like it might feel saturated to us, but like it's
50:54
still so. So small, yeah, yeah.
50:58
I mean, I the only people that I can, you know, renownedly say is
51:04
a disgrace is like those folks in Austin, you know what I mean?
51:06
Like Austin, TX, they need to they need to get their act
51:09
together. I can't really handle those
51:11
guys. I'm just kidding because you
51:14
know, 90% of the people on this podcast are all in Austin.
51:16
Of course. Cool.
51:19
While we have a couple more minutes, Pernie loves Austin.
51:22
OK, Pearl loves Austin. Right.
51:26
I'm just kidding. I love Austin.
51:28
Denver's like is is like Austin's little cousin, you
51:31
know? I mean, yeah, Denver is Austin's
51:33
cousin. That takes some snowboarding.
51:34
That's what's up. That's a good, that's a vibe.
51:36
That's what we need. OK, let's do the quick slime
51:42
QuickTime with slime this, that or both.
51:45
If you say both, then we both drink.
51:47
I have tap water here so I don't know what you're drinking, but
51:51
if you say both, I. Mean I want to go to work.
51:54
I got water with me too. All right, let's.
51:57
Go depth birth verse breath. So focus on new verticals or
52:02
serve many industries broadly? What's the sorry Remind me again
52:06
what the slime is? It's this, that or both and
52:08
slime. We both drink if it's both.
52:11
OK, this, that or both. Yeah.
52:13
So we got depth or breadth. So focus on few verticals, go
52:19
deep or serve many industries broadly depth.
52:27
Depth, I want to see it both because I am both, but I've
52:29
really been hunkering down like we're just hitting segment by
52:32
segment now and just like taking 20% of like this like very small
52:36
segment and trying to grow it out.
52:37
And so we will then go into breadth, but depth is depth,
52:41
depth well. Process verse people.
52:44
So do you prioritize building repeatable systems or hiring
52:47
strong individual decision makers?
52:55
It's it's people, yeah. Yeah, nice.
53:00
Anything you. Want to say both but like it
53:02
like and I obviously I'm thinking both and obviously it's
53:06
both but people will solve like if you people will solve that
53:10
problem over over process possibly.
53:14
Yeah. And maybe we can make the
53:15
penalty more severe for for both because yeah, it is both.
53:19
But it's interesting. And, like, just make people
53:22
drink it, yeah. Yeah, if it was tequila, man,
53:25
there's some high stakes we'd never get through the interview.
53:29
OK, We got trust versus control. Do you hire a tonic hire with
53:34
autonomy, remotely with loose control, or demand tighter
53:38
oversight and structured workflows?
53:44
The. Former, I think like if you it's
53:47
it's interesting like some people would say like in office
53:49
culture, right? Like I think that makes sense if
53:51
you're hiring people you can't trust, but like, do you want to
53:53
be hiring people you can't trust?
53:54
Like what? What is that about like, And
53:56
maybe if you have like 10s of thousands of people, you just
53:58
don't believe you can build an organization or hire with like
54:01
high integrity trust. But for me, you got to you got
54:04
to lean into trust. Yeah, I agree.
54:07
You know, it's, it's interesting, like office culture
54:09
to me always existed like before or after work.
54:12
Like I know we all went to this like Openoffice type situation,
54:16
but I never liked that I whenever, every time I did that,
54:19
I had my own office because I'm doing calls, I'm doing whatever.
54:22
I'm loud, you know, I'm verbose. But you know, it seemed like
54:26
when it used to have like cubicles, like people were a
54:29
little bit happier, they had a little bit of privacy.
54:31
So, you know, and like, I suppose that just goes to.
54:34
In your house. Like what?
54:37
Like what you're talking about, like trust, you know, trust
54:39
people when they have their private moments.
54:41
And then there's always the people wandering around.
54:43
I want to chop it up with you the whole time.
54:46
OK, How about this one growth verse, profitability.
54:49
Push for growth with revenue and headcount even if margins
54:53
suffer, or ensure strong margins even if growth is slower.
54:59
I'm a big believer in in building safe.
55:02
I've seen a ton of friends have to take down rounds after like
55:05
letting go of their personal lives for like a business
55:07
outcome. Some of them for like changing
55:10
lives for the better and like making like actually their
55:12
companies to like help people and others just for money.
55:14
But I think at the end of the day, you got to protect.
55:18
If you if you want to protect the entity, you have to protect
55:19
the bottom line. There 100% if you're going to
55:22
vent your. Back then, like you don't need
55:23
profit and like you're going to become profitable in month in
55:26
year 15 then then RIP it. I mean, Godspeed like you're a
55:29
beast, but like it's a, it's a dangerous game to play there.
55:33
Are always young guys that do that, isn't it?
55:37
First time founders, if you took, if you look at the math, I
55:39
almost guarantee a lot of it's first time founders and then
55:42
maybe like. Well like you said that doesn't
55:45
get made a point enough. Is like your your personal life
55:48
will suffer undo. I mean incredibly in some
55:52
instances. You know you gotta you play
55:54
you're playing the devil's game there.
55:57
OK, last one reactive verse proactive.
56:00
Do you wait for client demand and tailor or push new hires
56:03
verticals proactively into the market?
56:07
Am I the first person to not say both on any of these options?
56:10
Because I'm I'm deaf, I have to go with proactive.
56:13
Like if you are reactive, you are losing the game.
56:15
Like that's a simple one. Like if yeah, you can't wait to,
56:20
you can't wait to hear feedback that you, like you is going to
56:22
be out of your control. You need to take everything
56:24
needs to be in your control and in the team's control,
56:27
especially if the thing that you're doing effects lives.
56:30
That that's the way I see it at Pearl, my last business made
56:33
billionaires 1% richer. So like that, like maybe less,
56:36
you know, maybe it could have been a little more reactive
56:37
there. But even then, I would have been
56:38
proactive. I'd just be more proactive in
56:40
business like BD. I love it.
56:42
What's the future look like for you, Isaac?
56:44
If you look in 12 months, I know 5-5 years is like who even
56:48
knows? But what is what are you?
56:50
What's on the road map for all else on the wall?
56:53
Yeah, All else equal, we wanna be, we wanna move as quickly as
56:59
possible to change 1000 people's lives directly through like
57:02
roles at Pearl. We like have done some very back
57:06
and napkin calculations of like how many people's lives get
57:08
affected by us offering one role.
57:11
And it's it's pretty significant in like the high tense to like
57:14
low hundreds for my trickle down effect into like communities and
57:18
like a little bit of surveying we've been doing just because we
57:20
we found that interesting to see like what what what are we
57:22
actually doing here by how do you hire?
57:26
I think we are going to be entering some new realms and
57:31
like AIAI empowered talent is like the future of pro.
57:35
And so I think next year we're going to be doing some really
57:37
big things. We, I don't think a lot of
57:39
people notice this, but like there's so many people working
57:41
at AI companies that have like such insane insights and
57:45
learnings to share. And like you only see the
57:47
biggest names on stages, right? And like, there's so much
57:51
opportunity for all of us to learn.
57:52
And so we're going to lean into speaking more with like the
57:55
people behind the LLMS or like these very large businesses, not
57:59
necessarily the founders, but the people doing the work to get
58:02
a better understanding from them.
58:03
Like how do we empower with AI and we'll just be traveling
58:08
around, be it LAT AM or US, like meeting new clients.
58:10
And of course, if you know, because we boot trapped in and
58:14
because we've come from having other businesses, we are very
58:17
focused on just working with people who share our values and
58:20
care for the same outcomes. Like everyone else in the
58:23
overseas staffing space. They've built a business product
58:26
to maximize profitability and then figured out how to hire
58:29
versus our first principled approach to finding phenomenal
58:33
people and then building a business product on top of it.
58:37
And so I think there's a really big opportunity for us to
58:40
continue to grow that, grow with people that believe in that and
58:44
continue to have like this extremely high retention.
58:47
So they like generally and, and I wanted to mention this earlier
58:51
in a question you were asking about like our performance, but
58:53
we take far less profit than our competitors, but our contracts
58:58
are forever like because people want to grow with us and like as
59:00
they grow their teams, we become more and more valuable for them.
59:04
And so we want more people we can grow, if so, finding them
59:07
and then hopefully building more companies that that affect
59:10
positively the world. Amazing Isaac, this was awesome.
59:14
The website ispearltalent.com What's the best place for people
59:18
to connect with you personally online?
59:21
I mean, LinkedIn for sure. Follow our journey and you can
59:24
just hit me directly on e-mail. It's Isaac at pearltalent.com.
59:28
I'm, you know, I'm around for anyone.
59:29
I, I, I speak to every single talent that gets hired through
59:33
Pearl before they start working with our clients.
59:35
So I've, I've, so the amount of people that have my phone number
59:38
and e-mail now is actually outrageous.
59:40
But if you want my phone number, you can just send me an e-mail.
59:42
I'll give you my number. But yeah, e-mail, LinkedIn, hit
59:46
up Brian. He'll call me.
59:47
You know, we'll get it. We'll get on the books.
59:50
Amazing. Isaac, thank you so much.
59:53
You're the man, Ryan. Appreciate you.
59:57
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