building teams exactly how you want w/ hank taylor, marketing at laravel

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auto-generated from the audio, so expect a few typos. the audio is the source of truth.

t my brother has seven kids so we're the small family around here yeah but yeah now there's you know babysitting can you know go on dates with my wife crazy crazy yeah I can I I can I'm two minutes from my gym used to be 45 minutes for me to get to the gym and see I would never work out if I was 45 minutes from a gym it was hard I had to tie it up into my whole day yeah and so I would go to the gym and and I made sure to have like a nice enough gym so that I could shower

there and not feel like I was going to get a fungus and and all that and you know that's that those are the times I'd work out um yeah when I was in San Francisco but yeah I moved here I'm pump for pump for your family interestingly and relevant to the podcast yeah so I didn't I thought about moving here earlier but when I was working at verel that CEO really values in person yeah and so I realized it was important for my career to be there but a few years in um I had I had these regular leadership meetings for the mar keting devell

and revops team yeah and I had a great one but my team was all remote I had six directors reporting to me yeah CEO's in a different room in the Wei workk I'm in a different room and we just had a great meeting so I walked out and I was like this is my moment I've been checking Zillow and I have a place picked out so I you know said hey GMO that was pretty good meeting and he was like yeah that was like the best meeting ever and I was like great so turns out you can have a good meet this is a good

conversation that needs to I think that needs to happen uh we just keep we just keep chatting so okay uh so did you have family in Boise or did you yeah so I grew up I grew up just outside of Boise in Meridian so now I live two miles from my parents which two miles in a state like this as you know is two minutes yep and then I live a quarter mile for my brother um people in San Francisco thought I had a lot of kids with three and three kids sharing a room in San Francisco was a lo oing this for four and

a half years now because uh I want to give back to developers at scale um and you know as a recruiter for 11 years I was having all these conversations when Co hit I was having so many conversations of Engineers being laid off before the market ripped and you know I was like there's got to be a better way to scale these conversations and so what what that was right now Hank and I were just talking backstage I was like you know let's just go live and hang out so again um we 'll go ahead and start the show but good morning everybody um super

pumps had the second Hank on this week crazy I don't know many Hanks I legitimately the only two Hanks that I know are on the show this week Hank Washington um out of Atlanta who you guys saw on Tuesday and now Hank Taylor now a little outside of Boise Idaho and so um Hank welcome to the show very excited for the show we started a little early because Hank's got a bunch of knowledge and I want try to get all that out of Hank ove r the next 40 minutes um so we started a little bit early so please say hey would love to hear

from you I tell everybody this that's that that Tunes in and I don't mean this mean towards the guest the guests are secondary on the show and the reason why I say that is because this is a networking show um I I I think N I think networking has changed substantially since covid um I believe was it Angie Jones that tweeted or blue Scot the other day I was like why don't you attend meetups I said they'r ing remotely boom boom and boom I think I need I think it's time for me to move to Idaho since you know I'm meeting over here anyway and

I can come down frequently enough yep um and yeah he he kind of couldn't say no to that I did end up leaving six months after I moved sure but you know yeah um it was inter that's awesome well y'all good morning you know I uh I I really like my my goal for this show is I want this to be a very approachable conversation for everybody involved and and I've been d lease do that would love to uh would love to say hey to you and and uh I think you're really going to enjoy this episode also ask questions for Hank um like I

said Hank comes with a knowledge we're going to talk about building teams talking about hiring talking about the job search separating yourself we're throwing some Equity conversations in here as well so again we're going to cover a lot today so hang on drink some caffeine I'm already in my second cup of C Brew today um so you guys enjoy b ut again ta it's good to see you Chris Matt Richie it's great to see y'all um but first and foremost I do want to give a shout out to aight I am an aight hero great crew over there go check them out um they are

absolutely fantastic so bless be part of them and of course as always torque we are my is to build um a community that's with you the entire way with the job search right our unofficial slogan is welcome home I want torque to be the de facto uh place when it comes to All Things career job search content we have a lot of work we got to do most people have not heard us but excited to build this thing in public um and and knowing Hank he obviously is a fan of that um Chris it's good to see you uh tuning in I love it uh

Ricardo it's great to see you as well meetups get me out of my PJs they need to be at least I I I I listen I'm going to be totally totally transparent with you all here I'm wearing the same pair of pants probably for the last week they are great they're from Lululemo e boring as hell somebody in the comments said because you have to comp compete with Netflix now and I think that's very very true and so I kind of keep that in mind so what this show is is for you to be able to come hang out have a cup of coffee in

your pjs maybe you're between meetings and want to hear some for some good people in Tech so please say hey would love to hear from you the only way to be present the only way to show up in a virtual setting these days is to say hey is to engage so p m and then I different um so I'm I'm at my core I'm a marketer for mainly technical products over the last gez more than a decade I had an internship at MySQL right out of high school in 2007 that my brother hooked me up with um he was their marketing manager I've done a

bunch of other interesting technical tools like gitlab and Neo forj most famously verell where I led devell marketing Revenue operations and a few other things for a few years and for the last two years I've been Consulting full -time yeah and doing fractional CMO type of work doing marketing advisory and one of those companies you know recently convinced me to abandon all yeah they they convinc me yeah they convinced me to abandon all the freedom and all that stuff they enticed me and so now I'm full-time at larl doing all things marketing um and actually that was a a thing we talked about before you

asked me what my title was yeah I was kind of shy about it but then I realized it's actually very relevant for this so I 'm ah head of marketing now which is actually a title downgrade yeah let's talk about from what I've had before I've been at VP marketing multiple times I've had CMO and VP offers and what's interesting is yeah I I took a a lesser title and some people have asked me about that um I guess I shouldn't be shy about it I think the opportunity is good enough yeah the company's young enough that they don't have the organizational structure to support

multiple like VPS so we have a CEO a COO a presiden n uh they are fantastic I need to drop the link but they are my favorites I travel with them they almost look like slacks too that's not the point of the show the point of the show is for Hank to talk so enough me running my mouth Hank let's give the people what they want man who are you what do you do and we'll go from there okay I'm Hank I did panic when I saw you were streaming with another Hank I was like I was like hold up am I supposed to is

that today did he go live is he waiting for me u ink some people get C too caught up on titles can you talk about what people should be aware of throughout their career obviously you took a lesser lesser title on paper but you talked the about the mindset around that why people should be open to it some things to look for um and then if you obvious if we want to get in kind of the equity conversation we can as well but I just kind of want to start super high level with that question yeah titles titles aren't crazy important it's one of the

thr ee main I tell people when they're interviewing with me that okay you've got you know three or four main levers you can ask me for money you can ask me for Equity you can ask me for title I love that and the more you pull on one the more you gotta let go of the others Y and I a what really matters for me salary Equity you know what's the what's the opportunity yeah um and you can also then there's the other the other levers and how you how you do vacation or other stuff and right what kind of ex pectations you're setting going

in um interest ly on this job I also you know wasn't too aggressive on my salary and equity and I told you know the COO I was negotiating with um because it was clear there was an expectation for me to ask for more yeah I said hey I'm I'm saving that because I've got people I'm gonna bring in and we want to run lean and we want to run fast and I'm GNA need to give more to certain people to convince them to come in here right um so that was interesting but I think t NCO actually yeah and then we have a couple heads

of so I'm one of those what man I you know I've gotten a question that and I've been very loud about that I think throughout your career I think I have always said there's only so many titles you can have there's only so from a compensation perspective I know e Equity we can talk about that here in a second but at the end of the day like I know a lot of people are title Chasers and that's fine I get it I think titles are important but I also th ially around some negotiables in your experience how can people negotiate is it okay to negotiate

I feel like people get these offers like okay yeah that's fine like is it okay to negotiate as a hiring manager as a leader in organizations in the past what are your thoughts on that most people think of negotiation as a kind of a battle yes and as a hey I want I want more and a lot of I think especially Junior people they hear advice you should always ask for another 5K or something and I've told multiple people who've you know come to me for advice they say I've got this offer whatever I'd really like five or 10K more and I go what is

five or 10K in the long run like if if you're an ambitious person and you think that you're going to keep growing your career five or 10K for a couple years in you know this role now what does that matter when you might be able to earn 30 30 40 50k more in a couple years if you can get that job and get the stories out of it so that's like one angle but yea h that's not very that's not what you're asking like how do you act how do you get more when you want it I love that take that and put that over

here for sure yeah that's something to set aside the other thing is both when someone wants to give you an offer they've decided you're you're fit for them somehow yep and it's no longer um you're no longer proving yourself or anything there are some sales leaders who they have this weird thinking where oh if the salesperson doesn't ask for more then th I don't know I think people get wrapped up in the titles and it really doesn't matter what matters is the stories you collect and the stories you can tell after 100% talk about when it comes I I know obviously the job search right

now um is very prevalent for a lot of people in this market right some people are having problems finding jobs some people when they get the offer they don't know what to look at you talked about these levers you can pull can you kind of dive in a little bit more espec of how do we make this work what's beneficial for everybody yeah I've seen people squeeze too hard as the employee and then they start the job with a Target on their back they start the job with their employee feeling like they lost and then it's and then that the hiring manager their manager their

executive is telling them on day one this person better prove themselves in 90 days yeah we gotta we got to go back to the market and that happens it happens especially with marketing types at technic al companies um because a lot of marketers are charlatans I'm not shy about it because I'm not one but hot take talk about that real fast I love some marketing hot takes I mean I I think if you're at a if you've been at a couple Dev tool companies you've had a couple different uh CMOS VPS of marketing through the revolving door um but yeah and we can talk more

about that if you like but I guess on on that first point you're both at the same table and you can instead of asking straight up for hey I need five or 10K more or being scared to ask for it you can approach the person as a human and just say hey this is what I'm hoping for yeah I you know I think it's supported by this this is what I'm hoping to do with the company this is how I'll earn it or can we have a real conversation in six months in yeah or can I trade some equity for that or can I trade

some cash for the equity y you know what what levers do you have dear hiring manager to help me get what me and or my family need to j ey're going to be a bad negotiator there are like in sales especially that's a thing I've heard yeah I I've I've seen a VP of sales be like should we retract this offer they didn't ask for more I'm scared they're not a good negotiator crazy yeah and but here's where I come come at it from Once once you as an employer or once you as a potential employee have come to the decision that you want to

work with each other you're on the same side of the table and now there's just a problem to be solved nows how to navigate do you have just some basic tips for people watching the show now in the future on how to figure out Equity at a high level yeah so in a lot of jobs there's a couple ways to think about it until you're really director level or like a senior engineer that's early your Equity usually doesn't matter and so it's kind of a bonus to think about and if you want to make a lot of money in Tech then the easiest way is

to go work for a huge company a Fang company because that that Equi ty comes as rsus when it's given to you you can basically liquidate it immediately and it's like that whereas at tiny startups which is where I specialize I join companies uh even as a consultant I only worked with companies under a 100 employees that's small yeah it's very small I've joined companies as small as 10 you know one of those they're much more likely to fail I've been at a couple companies that you know six months in I'm like all right I'm finding a new job this one didn't work out r

ight um but the equity thing what a lot of people don't understand is um one when the HR person or hiring manager gives you some valuation they could be basing that on an an FMV a fair market value okay which is an IRS number that's a number for tax purposes okay and that number is almost always smaller than the preferred value or the street value okay and so your first question when when you're given a value should always be oh is this the preferred value that the investors paid at the last rou oin your company yeah because otherwise I have these other opportunities blah blah

blah and that's a tough thing because sometimes the answer is I don't have anything like I already gave you everything I had yeah and and then there's just a real decision to be made 100% I I I do wan to I do want to talk talk about Equity you said backstage before you went live you know that that you feel like you got a pretty good grasp on it I think that's kind of a topic that nobody really talks about no one k ce preferred price and what ideally do you want to hear I want to hear well I'm at a different level so I'll

get into that okay go go ahead most people you want to hear that you're getting EV valuation in the FMV because that's that's always lower um and the FMV is going to be also your Str price how much it cost you to exercise so that's another thing people always forget is you're giv Equity you if you're given you know a $200,000 grant that vests over four years that's $50,000 a year right bu t if they're giving you that in the FMV then you have to pay $50,000 a year to exercise all of that and when you say excise explain exercise real quick for people who

don't know what the word term exercise means so you're never given a share of the company you're given an option to buy the share everybody got that cool keep going so with with an option and then there's multiple types of options but we don't have time to get into that yeah off and be like I'm gonna I I could go all day about this stuff I know um so yeah you you want to find out so that's your next question actually is well what's the strike price okay um because then you know this is the cost of equity okay and this is the um this

the other thing in fact actually you know you post this show somewhere on LinkedIn or Twitter right yeah I'm happy to put a little spreadsheet that I make for people I'm hiring that would be unreal like plug numbers in there okay and it kind of gives you the questions ask what's the strike pri nd or is this the FMV or is it somewhere in between okay that tells you if they're giving you equity on FMV that's more generous if they're giving it you on preferred value then you got to really think about how much more can this company actually grow you have a question so

okay so good question again I like to get tactical on this show so if you if you got an offer and someone's offering you Equity you need to ask them is this fair market value or is it what was the other one the preferred pri or you're like Taylor this is kind of a dry topic I understand but I think it's important for everybody so if you have questions about Equity please ask them I know there's a little bit of lag when it comes to streamyard and streaming so please ask them we'll get to them um Roxy is good to see girl um but I

do want to continue move on there's a lot of topics we only have 19 minutes left Hank's got a meet at in 19 minutes so I got I want to move through this let's talk about building teams hiring teams I think you said what what is the thing you said backstage about um all the people you're working with right now like you basically you know everybody right everyone you're hired yeah so I've um I've got five direct reports right now yeah five and a half one of them's kind of in a a half half devil half support job um and three of them four of

them are brand new to the company I mean this company's growing Mega fast one year ago there were 10 people at this company right now there's 45 ho ly smokes okay all right yeah so I I was brought in in large part to help build out the correct team I love it and to build it out in a way that we know it can stay lean yeah because we don't you know we don't have to like go crazy on price rate like there's all sorts of stuff you get forced into that's bad for your community we have a huge open source Community there's stuff you

get forced into on pricing and right now we have a very generous pricing model etc etc so we don't want to ruin that ce okay what's the what's the FMV what's the last preferred price okay you need those numbers to understand now when you're at a higher level you want to be asking about percentages you want to know how many shares are there outstanding okay because then you can you know then you can be asking for Meaningful fractions of a percent okay um okay and and so on you know I love that yeah that that that that spreadsheet would be great if anybody has any

questions around Equity I know this is like Tayl ompany though so he came in referred okay I've got one person who I've worked with before I've got another person who I've worked with uh this is our third time working together and then another person we've worked with four times together and these are people I've kept in touch with for years you know since the first time we worked together and those are the you know those are the first people you hit up sure talk I I I'm trying to I have so many questions I'm trying to figure out what what bes t to ask in

a short amount of time talk about what you look for right now you have hired you have scaled teams what does Hank Taylor look for when you hire somebody and I think this could be very applicable to the people watching the show right now if they're trying to figure out how to get a leg up in the interview process yeah um this might be weird to say but the Weir yeah yeah well it's weird because you know I've at versel I hired about 40 people in a year holy we were hypergrowth it was ze rp and we were one of the Justified we were one

of the Justified you know Zer companies like it's still going strong getcell y but I'd never hired that fast I had hired I hired external advisers and coaches for myself to look around corners I'd never I'd never been part of a market marketing org that big but I eventually had you know 55 people under me and that meant I also had to lay off a lot of people not I I was I'm more of an aggressive person than most when it comes to letting people go fo sure by growing too too fast and so next year we're not grow as fast so part of that

was hiring people that we know are going to hit a really high quality bar have low ego high impact all that sort of good stuff okay um so the first thing I did was go hit up the people I've worked with before and what I told you was I've got one great guy who I'd never met before he was already in the interview process basically when I met him okay and he's doing great great he was known by someone else at the c w anyway so let's bring that to today this is the weird thing I was going to say I already said some weird

things but I actually wrote down every role well every person and role that I had to let go at versel okay and prior and I thought really hard about why did I have to do that did I mess up in the interview did I miss something okay was the role just fundamentally incorrect or were they actually just a bad fit and it was gonna be impossible to detect so as I did that yeah what you find out I learned a lot about I'm not going to go into specifics for you know reasons of privacy but I figured out a lot about okay as I build

this team these are the roles that aren't necessary they were never necessary I hired them because somebody told me to hire them and that's a play and there's a Playbook and I don't I don't typically like playbooks but when you're asked to hire you know I was asked to hire like 60 people in the year and I only did like 30 or 40 right and that's crazy you know the board was telling me to spend faster and I was like no you guys are crazy right um so as I thought about it I thought okay what am I looking for now I'm looking for really

Dynamic people you know we're does that mean what does that mean though a dynamic person when you're at a a very small company they have to wear multiple hats okay and they they can't I can't teach them so one of the things that I realized I got trapped in of aell was um I had to teach too many people how to do their job inter r performance issues because um and this was a constant point of tension between me and the head of HR because um the number one thing you can give to your team that will retain them and make them happy and give

them quality of life is good teammates and if you give them bad teammates yes they're out of there and you all lose and yeah pretty sure so and and just because there's some people I let go that were actually really good they just weren't a good fit for that team at that time and you kno can just go learn from the the great wild world right um right and so I have the RO the roles we've hired they're all very hybrid um I have a person who's over growth and demand J she she's wearing Three Hats I put in the JD that I wrote to

pitch it in my like hiring plan to my coo I said you know XYZ and whatever else I can't handle like that's this person I've worked with her twice before I know she can do all that right there's another person it was X Y and Z there's another person a b and c right and with all these people I said I don't know which one you're going to focus on are you g to focus on the X or the Z it's hard to know you're GNA have to figure like that's where we'll be figuring things out together but I'll point you in the right way

so Dynamic I'm looking for people with Dynamic skill sets the ability to acquire skills is more important than the let me rephrase that the prior evidence and stories that a candidate talking to me has about acquiring new skills and fulfill ing new roles is more important to me than their experience with the specific role I'm hiring for does that make sense it does yep yep like I would rather have someone who if if I have you know job X to be done and I have a specialist at X who's done it for five years versus well I know someone who's learned w y and z

and they have stories about learning those things on the job with minimal input and high autonomy low ego yeah I'd rather just have that person learn X same because same way becaus esting okay and and so and and and that was a trap especially well suited for me because one of my mantras is teaching is the essence of leadership so I believe that when I'm teaching people things that's part of leadership and I still believe that to be true but the um the fundamental change here is like I have to protect my time in order to scale this company right and so I need people

who they know really well how to learn and they know when they need to learn from me and they know when they know I guess that's the main thing I've been thinking about obviously if they're kind of a fun and chipper person that's preferable so yeah I'm so I I've said this a lot in my talks that I think right now in today's market that hiring managers and and listen I have gotten some pushback I think there's some bias on this and I get it but I do think at the end of the day people want to work with people they enjoy you want here's

another hot take for you I love hot today I love it I've had people w ho are managers new managers older managers whatever more than ever managers have to be therapists for people that are working for them and we don't want to be your therapist all the time like we can be it sometimes yeah but we're not your therapists we're we're your boss and at the end of the day I need to know I'm going to get results out of you and that results are going to happen for the company and I can be human and I've been I have great friends and I've helped

people through some crazy s tuff right but when I have a there's there are some people I've had where it's oh every call is some sort of new drama yeah can't I can't sustain that as a hiring man as a manager yep and if you you can detect that in the interview process and if you can show in the interview process as the uh candidate that hey I'm I'm going to not be a burden I'm going to be someone you can actually talk to and be a confidant I'd rather have a confidant than you know be a a therapist Jordan be a low I might

no e then when the next thing comes up I know they'll be able to handle it and and that was some of the things I had let people go for was I hired a specialist turned out the job was actually over here not here so I had to let him go because they couldn't adapt y I love that Oly one of the Jordan comes in o one of the best things in my job has done for me as baptism about F you gotta learn and figure it out or you're going to drown 100% what else Hank so you want somebody that's else I mean I

don't time with my highest performers to multiply the impact I love that there you go I love that um how have you been able to know all these people I guess that's what I'm trying to get at I want to try to educate the people how to stay close to people long term you have hired people who you know how do you recommend people maintain relationships post job obviously your your networking Community has done a great job you keep up with people I mean listen you go to conferences and maybe that's it but like I mean you're everywhere and you do a podcast which is

great by the way I want to give you a chance to shout your podcast here in a minute but talk about how people can learn to keep up with people better for future jobs so uh I had a friend tell me a couple months ago that they were to SP that they were speaking to another friend of mine yeah and they said isn't it weird that Hank calls us on the phone and like didn't that weird you out at first and now isn't it like endearing like yeah I call people on the phone I'll call them randomly That's crazy dude call diabolical but really I

I reach out to people sometimes I'll make you know probably once or twice a year I'll put up a LinkedIn post it's like hey if this is like something you know of interest to you I want to talk to you I take a lot of the random LinkedIn DMs I get and I'll I just keep in touch with people I have um and that applies for anybody who might hire me anybody I might hire and anybody that I just think is intere w I guess to counter that I do kind of like that take Jordan but I've told I've told my high performers before uh

because I had a high performer once she's working with me now but a few years ago when we were working at a different job she said I'll try and I'll try and bug you less I said no actually as a high performer I want to be spending the most time with you okay like you should be the person because I know that you know effort in gets multiplied out of you right and so I I spend the most create these different circles right and and you make an effort and you pick up the phone and and I'm really happy somebody uh who was on my

one of my teams a few years ago and I haven't touched base with her for a few years she just started a new job and she just reached out to me and I've got my cly ready I have a cly I have a cly four friends I love that so that it's like certain hours of the day so it's not interrupting my workday so much but whatever um if I'm driving to McDonald's which I do too much I'm calling somebody you know if I'm not listening to a podcast I'm I'm trying to talk to somebody that I think is interesting I love that that's awesome

all right I got you for four more minutes I definitely want to give you a shout out I could talk with you forever um maybe I can bait you into coming on here the next few months again but um talk about how people can get touch with you um give a shout out to your podcast I'm a big fan of it so if you want to kind of give a quick ru ndown about what you got going on yeah so on Twitter I'm at the Hank Taylor you know because I thought I was the only Hank that you had around Taylor but I guess not

I'm sorry um shout out to Hank Washington earlier this week um um or on LinkedIn I'm inev marketer um and yeah you mentioned I've got a podcast code to market.

FM um it's really just for like technical Founders and heads of marketing at technical products uh it's pretty Niche it's really a way for me and ganto to talk um because we sting or am I like um yeah I'm a good yapper as Jack stay there like kind of weird our society shifted from thinking a phone call makes someone weird and and in addition of that I've created you know I have I have you know the group text I have a slack that was originally intended to be for uh you know revops type people and now it's just kind of friends of Hank who are

also really good at their jobs so we all have something to talk about and you're not rev opsy enough it's it's you know but you the comment section is going off right now so Hank I believe we had a good podcast um uh wanted so the last question I always end with the show's called guidance counselor 2.0 know because we had guidance counsels in middle school high school and college but now as adults we don't really have a guidance counselor turn to and just ask for General career advice that's what I want this platform to be what would be your biggest piece of career advice

to Young Hank if you go back to Hank 10 years ago what would you tell him I was thinking about this in the shower today because I was like um I'm gonna be on some podcast about careers and this came up this same sort of thing came up a couple days ago on a call with you know someone I was catching up with the most important thing I've done in my career is I've run to where the crowd is running away from and I thought about the uh you know not to put myself on like a pedestal but I I had that image of um

you know in in Marvel's endgame Avengers endgame everybody's fleeing out of New York and iron man walks against the crowd he's helping people along the way and he's trying to great reference and this this thought came from back when I was at NE forj my coo my my CMO was let go and the COO pulled me aside shortest one-on-one ever he said Hank our leads are not going to increase we're not getting more signups or anything but we need to double sales so you need to figure out how to do that and that is like the most terrifying thing you c just love talking so

we're like how do we structure this so we can keep talking um but yeah I'm I'm full-time at Lille now I don't really have much to pitch I'm not making I'm losing money on the podcast because um and yeah I'm not really looking for anything but I am always looking for good people um if you uh want to chat you know time time's limited but also life's limited so I'm always happy to chat with people hit me up all right last question um uh and again everybody thank you for tuning you so much I will attach um the uh the spreadsheet that Hank will send

me I'll make sure we get that and y'all have a good one we're off for the rest of the week appreciate y'all so much appreciate the community and we'll an be told this was my first job out of college and I was like I guess I'm running toward the fire here and everything everything good that's happened in my career has been when I take on things that nobody owns or is Illy defined that the founder doesn't want to deal with or whatever so P past tank run toward the fires and and that'll that'll set you up well I love it awwesome well y thank you

for tuning in this we appreciate it Hank say on so I can say bye to you backstage real fast but thank