Scaling Success: Navigating B2B SaaS Growth with Newbury Franklin’s Insights

Krissy Manzano: Hello and welcome to the Talent GTM podcast. I’m your host today, Krissy Manzano. On this podcast, we discuss a range of topics related to hiring, team building and leadership across go to market organizations today. and I’m very excited to introduce you all.

Krissy Manzano: To my friend, Joey Humkey. So Joey’s the CRO and operating executive at Newbury Franklin software, which is a buyer and builder of reoccurring revenue businesses. He spent the last 10 years working for private equity, running go to market teams at SaaS organizations. And throughout his career, he’s worked for companies ranging from eight people to a couple hundred at Dell.

Krissy Manzano: Fun fact, in a former life, he toured, managed a band. And has also been to all 50 States. He and his wife live in Nashville, Tennessee with their three girls and a yellow lab named Gus, which I’m pretty obsessed about. But Joey, welcome to the talent GTM podcast today. Really excited to have you.

Joey Humke: Yeah, thanks. I’m really excited to be here.

Krissy Manzano: Yeah, no, it’s going to be great.

Krissy Manzano: And, we’re going to be talking about navigating, SaaS growth, right. with, with B2B organizations. And I think we talk about this a lot, but how companies grow, how they scale has changed fundamentally where we have really shifted away from this era of growth at all costs or experiment and try grow as fast as you can.

Krissy Manzano: And while a lot of people might go, that was never a good strategy at the end of the day, everyone was doing that. Right. And so there’s still this. What feels like to me, a demand, for companies to try to get back to that pace a little bit, but you can’t do it the same way, which feels like a conflict, essentially.

Krissy Manzano: So, but before I guess we kick that off, can you kind of give us an introduction to Newbury Franklin software and your role in shaping the growth of your portfolio companies?

Joey Humke: course. Thanks. So, Newbury Franklin is a smaller PE fund. They’re based out of New England, the Boston area. the, the parent company actually has several, focuses. They buy industrial businesses, the, the, like manufacturing, they buy home services companies, they buy software companies, and then they just kicked off a pet services focus, for one of their smaller funds.

Joey Humke: I’m on the software side, obviously. What we’re doing. As we’re looking for small vertical focused software businesses, we’re not, to your point earlier, we’re not a growth at all costs, flip them in five years type of private equity group. We’re looking for founders who have built really strong small businesses with great culture, good product market fit, and maybe that founder wants a more graceful exit rather than just pulling the rip cord.

Joey Humke: They want to stay on for four or five years. Get an earn out, and, and help the business sort of grow past them and, and, and grow out of the founder led sort of time. I think, the traditional view of private equity, I think is like the Bob’s from the movie office space, the consultants who come in and like, what would you say you do here?

Joey Humke: And I’ve seen this, the PE firm sends in some suits to find a bunch of synergies, which is a nice buzzword everybody likes. and, And then they just want to cut costs to make the business more attractive to the next buyer down the road. And for us, it’s, the investment is far more long term.

Joey Humke: We want to hold these companies for a lot longer. We want to be much more directly involved and personally involved with their operations. And we get to make decisions as if we’re going to own the company for the long haul, not just for that short term profit, which is really more fun for me having been on both sides of this coin.

Joey Humke: So my focus here, and I just joined back in January is going to be to help our portfolio companies scale, go to market operations. Most of them, I think, have probably made it to where they are on, charm and founder drive and a nice, strong product market fit. But I’ll be able to bring my experience to help them kind of level up, level up hiring, build out better processes, optimize tools, strategies. a lot of the companies we look at, the founder or one of the co founders is, quote unquote running sales, even though they have no idea what that really means. They just happen to be the more social of the two founders sometimes and they got stuck with the job.

Joey Humke: And so I’m here to help them turn it into a real sort of sales organization and sort of ramp things up.

Krissy Manzano: Yeah, totally. For those that don’t know, and I think there’s quite a few that aren’t familiar, what would you say are the biggest differences between private equity and venture backed?

Joey Humke: Usually private equity is a little bit fun. further along on the funnel. the, the venture backed ones are more of a risk taker. we’ll, we’ll throw some money at you and see if you can get something going. We’re not looking for big risky swings. We’re looking for companies that are small, that have maybe had a hard time growing up past the two, three, four, 5 million mark.

Joey Humke: But we are looking for something that’s an established business that has a strong track record, good retention. venture capital is, is a little bit more like the, The Wild West Silicon Valley show thing that you might be used to, whereas private equity, at least, at least in my experience, tends to buy things that are, that they’re not necessarily broken under the hood, but they just use a little bit of help to get them kind of optimized.

Krissy Manzano: Yeah. Would you say private equity has more, not just influence, but decision making control than venture

Joey Humke: It has been my experience. Yeah. So the private equity sponsor and most of the, most of the private equity, equity groups that I’ve worked with or have been familiar with come with an operating division, right? So they’ll have specialist centers of excellence for marketing and sales that the, the portfolio companies can leverage.

Joey Humke: And take advantage of to sort of help them on their path.

Krissy Manzano: Yep. Nope. For sure. Given Newbury’s focus on long term value creation. What initial steps do you take with newly acquired companies to set them on the right path?

Joey Humke: Yeah. I, to be fair, we’re not looking for companies who are on the wrong path, so to speak. In fact, I, I’m a big believer in the, do no harm mantra, maybe more appropriate for us in Tennessee. The, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it mentality. most of the time we’re talking about small course corrections rather than like a full hard right.

Joey Humke: So. Look, all of us at NFS are incentivized to maximize revenue and profitability as quickly as possible. We are an investment firm, but since we don’t have that ticking clock that a lot of private equity sponsors do, we can be a lot more thoughtful and methodical. It may be less disruptive than is traditional when you when you’ve only got a three or a four or a five year hold period ahead of you, you have to do things fast, even if you don’t have all the information in front of you, we get to be a little bit more thoughtful about it.

Joey Humke: So for me, my first focus and part of this is just because it’s my background, but my first focus is always going to be on getting my head around the funnel. Companies that are the size that we’re looking at and that we buy probably don’t have a rev ops person. They don’t have a team of data scientists helping them dig into the data.

Joey Humke: And so the first place that I’ll focus is just on understanding where the leads are coming from. A lot of times the, the data hygiene is pretty terrible. They’re using CRMs that maybe we’re homegrown or, it’s all on an Excel file sometimes, and they don’t really know where their leads are coming from, so they don’t have any idea of where to double down on any marketing investments.

Joey Humke: So I spend time with sales and marketing, make sure they’re aligned on their goals. You’d be shocked because you, or maybe you wouldn’t, how often sales goals and marketing goals don’t align at all. there’s no shared ownership of success. We’re all in this together. So if we can only, we can only win if everybody wins.

Joey Humke: So that’s a big part of where I like to focus. And if you can get sales and marketing singing from the same song sheet, you get a lot more efficient, a lot more, very quickly, and then you can help those two get aligned with customer success. And now you’ve got top of funnel, client acquisition, and then retention all kind of humming together.

Joey Humke: And now you’re really cooking. So even at these smaller companies, there can be a really bizarre veil between sales and marketing and retention. Part of what I seek to do very quickly is just get rid of that. Make sure that we’re, we’re having shared ownership of KPIs. We have weekly marketing, sales and marketing meeting that goes all the way through the whole funnel to make sure that everybody owns everything.

Joey Humke: So that’s a big piece of it.

Krissy Manzano: Question for you on that. Cause you brought up an interesting point. So it’s, so it’s not shocking to me to hear that

Krissy Manzano: sales and market. 

Joey Humke: not. Yep.

Krissy Manzano: organization where they were, however, having always been on the sales side, now owning my own organization and taking on, I’ll call it piecemeal marketing, right?

Krissy Manzano: Cause it’s, it’s, you’re a small business, you’ve got to have your hands in a lot of pot, but that’s kind of one of my priorities. And I’ve realized so many things with it. I’m like, Oh, there’s a lot of indirect correlation to some of the things that I do where I was always trying to make them very direct, like sales.

Krissy Manzano: And so I can see where some of those, I thought like I should, I should write a post one day apologizing to marketing a little bit, just like seeing it from the other side. But at the same time, I’m curious if you could share, like, how do you, cause I haven’t seen a lot of people do that successfully. How do you get sales and marketing to be on the same page where historically a lot of them are just really not able to, to see eye to eye, or always feel like the other one is kind of getting the pass, in the, in the easy way of accountability.

Joey Humke: Yeah, well, I think both, both of those departments feel like the other one is getting the pass, right? I think sales always feels like the CEO is harder on them and marketing feels the same way as a, as a, with a sales background, obviously it’s sales that gets the shaft on most of these things, in my opinion.

Joey Humke: But I think for me, it’s about shared metrics and shared ownership of the metrics. every time I’ve gotten into a new sales organization, there’s always this sort of, well, let’s look at the marketing slides first. With all of this top of funnel stuff and then there’s this drop off where it’s like, okay There’s the handoff and then we look at the sales side of things and marketing is sort of wipe their hands of it And sales can just sit there and complain that the lead quality is terrible and marketing can just sit there and complain that we have They’re great leads, but sales doesn’t do anything with them And so it is about finding that set of metrics sort of, you know It’s no different than a relay race, right where somebody’s running and there’s that there’s that window for those of you who know me I’m not a track star obviously But there’s this window where that handoff is allowed to happen It’s on the track.

Joey Humke: It’s about focusing the meeting really on that window and making sure that sales has ownership of those lightly qualified leads and that marketing has ownership of the success of those leads making it to say stage two or stage three or whatever to make sure that everything was smooth and there is no more blame game happening.

Joey Humke: I think, everybody, everybody operates on a little bit of fear and insecurity at some level. We all have that. The inner voice telling us that we should be insecure. And so I think it’s about eliminating that and saying, look, you’re not on the hook for this or you are on the hook for this, but you’re on the hook with this other person too.

Joey Humke: And you guys are going to share this responsibility together. And so we’ve come up with some metrics. It’s metrics that everybody’s looking at. We’ve just put more than one name on it. And we start to say that those pre qualified lead stage zero sales has a responsibility for those as well, versus just waiting for marketing to get into the stage one as an example.

Joey Humke: So that’s, yeah, that’s a big part of it. And then, and then it really is just being visible with those metrics. When you have that, we no longer have at any of the companies I work for going forward, I will never again have a marketing meeting and a sales meeting. Because you’re bifurcating the funnel right there and creating opportunities to throw stones across the fence.

Joey Humke: Instead, we have a funnel meeting, or a sales and marketing meeting, or whatever you want to call it. And the whole funnel gets looked at together because if you’re squeezing on one side and shrinking it and inflating the other, then you might, you need to know what’s happening all the way to the top.

Krissy Manzano: No, that’s a great point. It’s it. We really are in a place where like we just can’t hit on the go to market side, I feel more than ever, we just can’t work in silos anymore. It worked. It did work before. Right. But kind of going into our next question and your experience, what are some of the key growth levers for, B2B sales companies in today’s market, of, of how they need to work together and, and all of those things.

Joey Humke: Well, first, I mean, if we can, if you and I can crack that code on this podcast, I think we’re going to be really, really rich. there have been books and reams of pages written and hours of tape probably dedicated to, to that question. And I know, I know that people, far smarter than I am, have, have really strong opinions about it.

Joey Humke: I think for the companies that we’re looking at, the path to success for them has mostly been on that product market fit. they’re still small enough, but a lot of the roadmap is still driven by direct customer feedback. and as you get bigger, you tend to build up this backlog of ideas, of product ideas and features, and you start slotting those into the roadmap because you start to develop passions around those, maybe at the expense of more current requests that are coming in and you can get processes and procedures in place that are necessary because of your size, but can lead to losing agility.

Joey Humke: One of the great benefits for us and one of the levers we’re able to pull on quite a bit is that we’re still really tight with our customers. These are small companies. we, we have a, one of the companies in our portfolio is a company that makes software for dentists to use for diagnosing sleep apnea.

Joey Humke: It’s very niche. I told you we were looking at vertical specific products, and they had an event back in February that I attended with a bunch of dentists and these dentists are walking and bringing gifts for the employees of this company because they’ve built these really strong direct relationships.

Joey Humke: And so that, that’s something that they’ve leveraged really, really well. These smaller founder led businesses still have those direct relationships. It’s not a customer advisory board or anything like that. It’s like real tangible relationships. They can take the feedback, they can act on it fast, get updates to the market really quickly.

Joey Humke: That’s been really critical for their growth. I think another big piece is retention and it gets harder as you scale, but if you don’t do it, all the money you’re spending further up the funnel and marketing and sales is basically wasted since it’s all leaking out the bottom of the bucket. And so when people hear growth.

Joey Humke: And, and want to leverage their growth. I think they, they start to think about new logo, a lot of them. And the reality is if you’re hitting your new logo numbers, but you’re missing retention, then your overall growth targets are going to be. And that’s really frustrating. Sometimes it can be hard to diagnose.

Joey Humke: And I think, for the, the companies that I’m working with, it really comes down to having the right people on the team. when you, when you’ve got a company of a thousand or 1500 or 2000 employees, like I worked at Dell, there were tens of thousands of employees, here in Nashville, even though there was several thousand in this big cubicle farm.

Joey Humke: It’s important to maybe hire for a few key roles at a company like that, but you can get away with some, some fudging and some mistakes further down the org chart. At a company of 20, you don’t have that buffer. And so the best strategy you can write down on paper in the world will fall apart if your team can’t or won’t put it into practice.

Joey Humke: And so, hiring good people that you really want to work with that are smart, curious and hardworking, it may be, well, potentially the most important lever of them all.

Krissy Manzano: So 2024 shaping up to be a year full of opportunities and challenges and you’re hitting on this a little bit, right? With just what you need to do with hiring. But, from your perspective, what are some of the trends that leaders should be most attentive to? Especially ones that are, Smaller orgs, right?

Krissy Manzano: They’re not the tens of thousands or thousands, of folks, of employees.

Joey Humke: Yeah, well, I’ve got, I’ve got three young daughters. They’re all under the age of 10 every year. They’re shaping up with challenges and opportunities for us. I think for this year in particular, there have been a lot of everybody’s watching the news. There’ve been a lot of really high profile. Layoffs, reductions in force, restructurings, whatever you want to call it.

Joey Humke: And that, that tends to put fear out into the world, right? The news makes its money on creating fear because then people will want to watch the news more. And so that’s kind of what’s out in the market right now. And in my experience, selling into a market that’s really deeply permeated with fear is really hard.

Joey Humke: there’s the old adage that, nobody ever got fired for buying IBM. IBM was always the safe bet. Ironically, my dad actually worked for IBM, for when I was really young, but most of us don’t work at IBM, and we don’t look work for anything that even looks like IBM. And we’re operating in markets that are really crowded with competitors that look and sound and smell and are priced a lot like we are.

Joey Humke: And so it’s incredibly important that in your, as you’re operating in that market of fear and you’re operating in a saturated market that there’s not a lot of product differentiation, you have to be attentive to that. And, a really good friend and mentor of mine likes to say that the number one criteria that buyers use when they’re considering a SaaS product is an ROI.

Joey Humke: And it isn’t even that they, they want their decision to make them look good. It’s actually the opposite of that. It’s this utter fear of making the wrong choice. They just don’t want to screw up. And when there’s fear in the market and people are genuinely worried about losing their jobs, everybody’s more risk averse, than ever before.

Joey Humke: And that puts, that puts pressure on the sales cycle. You end up with longer sales cycles because you’ve got more and more decision makers in the mix, nobody, nobody wants to be on the hook for making a decision on their own, so they bring in six other decision makers that they want to poll, decision by committee, which is, hardly ever works.

Joey Humke: Buyers are deciding to stick with the status quo, it’s the devil they know, and so rather than take the risk of buying something new that won’t integrate with some obscure tool they’ve got, we’ll just stick with what we’ve got and make it work. Budgets are tightening, people are afraid to spend money because they have limited cash. A few years ago, people were buying tools left and right, and everybody was looking for that tiniest edge, that little speed increase that would give them just a little bit faster than their competitors. Things are not the Wild West anymore. It’s not a free for all.

Joey Humke: Buyers are far more cautious than I’ve ever seen in my whole career. I think B2B SaaS leaders really need to start thinking about how they connect on a personal level, on a human level. I’ve worked for companies with big, big sales teams. I’m used to the idea of having, cadences and scripts and mutual action plans and all the things, right?

Joey Humke: And I can, I can pull out binders of all those things that I’m used to operating under, but in 2024, I think we’re going to have to do a better job of connecting with people, as people, that’s how buyers are going to feel safe and comfortable. it’s how they’re gonna make the decision, because in a lot of cases they’re gonna float their life, their job at least depends on it.

Joey Humke: I’m in the middle right now of procuring some software for that dental company that that does event management and I’ve seen like seven demos and they all kind of look the same. So for me, it’s going to come down to which company and which salesperson do we trust the most. and I think that’s going to be really important.

Krissy Manzano: Yeah. It, it feels like relationships are just even more key. And then, we went from like almost No one really like double checking, they’re checking themselves. Like I’m just going to make this decision, ask for forgiveness later, but I probably won’t have to, I can just pivot away from whatever bad decision it was to analysis paralysis now, right.

Krissy Manzano: To the point where like decisions literally aren’t being made or they’re being extended and just almost tightening the cord even more. Right. And so just kind of going into that for, especially orgs that. Are a little bit smaller and what advice would you would you give right? Even if it’s if it’s different than than others.

Krissy Manzano: On how they should look at making decisions from buying and hiring and all those things, knowing that there is more at stake. if you’re if you’re a 20 person company. And you hire four of the wrong people, right? And you figure that out six months in, there is like, you’re not, it shouldn’t kill you, but it could, or it really set you back, or it’s like, or your job can be done.

Krissy Manzano: Right. So how do you help people that bounce? Or it’s like, I totally get it. Your job’s on the line. There’s empathy, but at the same time, figuring out how to, how to make those decisions when there’s a lot of fear and pressure.

Joey Humke: Yeah, no, that’s a really good question. And I think, one of the things you said a minute ago kind of hit the nail on the head is that relationships are, are more important than ever. And I think for, for small companies in particular, they’re, they, they operate in small ponds, right?

Joey Humke: And so they know people in their industry for the most part. And so I would say I, I am not a, My wife will be the first to say, I’m not an analysis paralysis type of person. Like I can, I can make a decision pretty quickly and I’m a hundred percent sure. I’m right. Even when I’m not, which is, which is good for what I’m doing right now.

Joey Humke: It’s not always the best for my marriage, but that’s for another podcast. but I do think, I do think relationships are critical and it, and it, like I said, it will come down to that personal The sort of that personal connection, I, I think sort of a little bit of a tangent, but you know, late last year, I was unemployed for a couple of months and one of the, at some point my father in law said something to me about, well, are you, you’re going to try to fill out a certain number of applications every week?

Joey Humke: I’m like, well, that’s not really, it’s not really how I find it. Like that’s not how this works, anymore, at least not for me. And it’s not like I, I can go on LinkedIn and just fill out a bunch of applications and see how I stack up to the 3, 500 other applicants, it comes down to just personal connections and knowing people and knowing, and that’s, that’s how I landed where I am.

Joey Humke: I’m working with a good friend of mine that I’ve worked with in the past. but I think for those smaller companies, to get beyond just the work with people you like, you have to focus, it’s, it’s easy to give into the temptation Especially right now when you’re afraid, it’s easy to give into the temptation of chasing every request and being all things to all people and looking at every idea is equally valid.

Joey Humke: But it’s really important to set some goalposts, out at the end of the year, at the end of five years, however ambitious you want to be. And then work backwards to where you are today, so you know what you have to do every quarter and every month and even every week on sometimes in order to get there.

Joey Humke: It doesn’t mean you blindly stick to that plan, by the way, if the market changes or circumstances have to force you to adapt. But if you set those goals and develop the KPIs, the, the, the buzzword, the objectives and key results, you can track towards them. It helps you avoid getting blown off course and letting fear dictate decisions in the moment.

Joey Humke: You can always go back and check that against. What those long term goals are, and I think, I think that’s critical. A lot of these smaller companies that I’m working with, they, they don’t have that muscle. They’re not, they’re used to just doing whatever the founder said today. And then tomorrow it might be something different, helping them set those ambitious, but rational long term goals, and then being able to operate towards them.

Joey Humke: And then that, that can guide everything you do, right? decision making process and what tools you need to buy just becomes does this fit the long term goal that we’re intending for it? And if it doesn’t, if it only gets a 60 percent of the way there, this isn’t the right tool.

Joey Humke: Does this hire we’re thinking about making have the skill set to get us from A to, M? Or can they get us all the way to Z? And do we want to work with this person for that long? That’s, that relationships piece is like, I don’t like the people on your team,

Krissy Manzano: Yeah, no, totally. And one thing you said really stood out because, if I was to summarize what you just said in one word, it’s focus. And outside of like the relationship piece and having fear and focus are impossible to have at the same time. And even, for myself, right, fear. And if I look at just anything from what I’ve done, worked with, worked, by, fear always.

Krissy Manzano: Takes over and it allows you not to focus. Right? and I think it’s easier said than done, but it’s almost like, how do you get folks out of that? Right? Like, is it just, hey, find someone on the inside or the outside that you trust to say. Right now, I need you to help really give guidance where my fear is taking over.

Krissy Manzano: Right? Like, I, I think the 1st piece is, like, admitting that. It’s not that you’re not smart, even if you’re a founder or doing certain things, but you have to know we all have these moments. I’ve had these moments where the fear and anxiety is too much for me to make decisions that I, that are, that I would in the right way that I would normally focus on.

Krissy Manzano: Right. but, and there’s a lot of that out there right now, which again, I can totally empathize and

Joey Humke: But I think that’s a really good point is trying to find people that you trust. I mean, look, we’re, my parents generation. our parents generation would never have gone to a counselor, right? But the idea of just being able to, sometimes for people to just be able to speak and, and put their fears out into the world and have somebody validate those back.

Joey Humke: You don’t have to go to professional counseling. There are people on your team who feel the same way you do. They’re experiencing the same fears you are and just being able to be vulnerable and lean on them can, can dramatically change your life.

Krissy Manzano: Yeah. Absolutely. Totally. Just piggybacking off that a little bit. I know we’re getting close to the end, but what advice do you find yourself repeatedly giving your, your portcos as they scale?

Joey Humke: Yeah, it really is that it really is just, go back to those original goals. when we, when we buy these companies, a lot of times, their goals have been, again, it’s just been kind of driven by what the founder wanted to do this week or this month or this year and being able to say, okay, for us to grow, if we want to invest back in this business, we need to get to X point.

Joey Humke: So to do that, we’re going to outline these sort of five big things. He’s at DSS, we call them rocks, right? They’re big things sitting out there. And then you have to work your way back all the way to where you are. And so it is just letting them focus and making sure that everything checks back against those longterm goals.

Joey Humke: Because if you do that, everything else kind of falls into place. If you’re always making decisions in favor of. Where you’re supposed to be in a year, or in two years, or whatever that number is. You’ll find that a lot of that fear can melt away because you’re operating within that safe framework of Well, this fits the criteria to to get to this thing and I can validate that and justify it.

Joey Humke: Okay, It’s the right decision. Whether it works or not, it was the right choice.

Krissy Manzano: Yep. Yep. No, great, great advice with everything that’s changing and the hurdles we’re kind of facing. What do you think are the core strategies that companies need to, to lock down to not only survive, but to kind of really stand out beyond 2024, not even just this year.

Joey Humke: Yeah, surviving is one thing. I think the standing out is the real challenge. we talked earlier a little bit about just how Undifferentiated so many of the products, SaaS products are a dime a dozen so for me And I promise I’m not saying that’s just because of what you do, but it really does come down to hiring strong dedicated people And people who want to work on your team and that you want to work with, I think, not that long ago we were, we were buying tools left and right to overcome mediocrity or gaps within the team, talented people, strong a players, the cream of the crop can adapt and adjust to overcome, bad tools and processes.

Joey Humke: They’ll make them better, but even the best tools and processes can’t fix bad hires. And so at the end of the day, your product’s not that differentiated from the competition. Your marketing message is probably not that differentiated from the competition. And so you got to hire people that you want to work with that are curious, that are smart, even if they don’t necessarily have the exact niche background you’re looking for. Curious, smart, hardworking people will win every single day.

Krissy Manzano: Yeah, no, I, I totally agree and, I think I still see folks not understanding how much like the market has changed since cove it with, it, I, I say this a lot, but it’s so important. The leverage that companies had before cove it. Was was so far past and beyond employees. It was so unequal, and that is just not the case today.

Krissy Manzano: Employees are much closer in their leverage and being equal, even with all the layoffs, right? And there’s a lot of reasons for that. That’s, that’s for a different, podcast, a different, or a different episode, different time. But I think, really focusing on how you’re going to find the right person with the right.

Krissy Manzano: Behaviors, that can, take all the punches and be strategic and be that builder and be that self starter, like what does that look like and not pigeonholing yourself or having analysis paralysis around those things, but we’ve got to also like court these employees rightly beforehand or candidates.

Krissy Manzano: We could just people, I’m not saying it was right, but people could just do whatever they want. They don’t have to reply back to you. They can keep you in the process forever. They can be slow. They don’t have to talk to you. And candidates are like, Hey, I’m, I’m not interested in that because I’ve watched all these companies.

Krissy Manzano: Lay off folks left and right and my mental health and my well being and my career trajectory matters to me and I am a lot more picky with where I go or I’m going to stay with the devil. I know, which is I have a job today and you’re even though you’re breaking, you’re disrupting the market.

Krissy Manzano: You’re doing all these things. Well, guess what? Everyone’s told me that even if yours is true and I saw them all get laid off. Before they even started or something like that, right? So I think there’s this new reality that the when I when I see companies that are in smaller, especially embracing that and going, hey, this is the way that it is, whether we like it or not, whether we believe that company should be in office or can should be in office or not.

Krissy Manzano: Reality is, is that candidates have leverage. They do. even though there’s a lot that are winning jobs, right? They have leverage. And so, we are, this is a, Evolution point, a transformative point in, in hiring. Right. And I think the ones that, that really adapt to that faster. And in the courting, the candidates and whatnot are really going to, be the ones to stand out to your point.

Krissy Manzano: Right. And figuring out how to get that competitive edge faster, having rock stars quicker. Right. Cause there’s a lot of them out there. And honestly, they’re probably more loyal than they were five years ago, because everyone just wants to work somewhere where they feel valued. and they feel like they’re going to be invested in, but.

Joey Humke: Agreed.

Krissy Manzano: With that said, we’re out of time today. Thank you so much for joining. This was a great conversation. For all of you that have followed and, and listen to the talent GTM podcast, you can discover hiring insights with other leaders on this show. and if today’s conversation piques your interest, subscribe to our podcast on Spotify, Apple podcast, or our website, blueprint expansion.

Krissy Manzano: com and never miss an episode. Joey. Thank you for coming on here. Can you tell people where they can find you if they want to reach out and connect?

Joey Humke: Yeah, of course you can find me on LinkedIn. My name is Joey Humke. H U M K E. That’s a tough last name to spell. And that’s probably the best way to get a hold of me right there.

Krissy Manzano: Awesome. Well, thanks for being here. We so appreciate it. Until next time. We’ll talk to you all later. Bye.