Have you thought about expanding your recruiting efforts to include international team members? Or maybe you have international staff, and you are looking to expand your staff?
Our guest today is Jonathan Romley, and he shares with us some trends and best practices with recruiting global talent.
TODAY’S WIN-WIN:
Consider whether finding new staff from the global talent pool is for you.
LINKS FROM THE EPISODE:
ABOUT OUR GUEST:
Jonathan Romley is one of the world’s foremost experts on global talent management and the future of work. Recognized as a leading authority in navigating the complexities of international talent acquisition, Jonathan is the founder of Lundi, a global talent firm specializing in innovative strategies for attracting, retaining, and developing top talent across borders. His insights and methodologies have transformed talent acquisition practices, making him an invaluable advisor to companies ranging from startups to Fortune 500 enterprises. Jonathan’s unique approach, which blends strategic foresight with practical applications, has empowered organizations to thrive in the global market by fostering diverse, dynamic, and competitive workforces. Jonathan is profoundly committed to shaping the future of work. His advocacy for creating inclusive, equitable, and engaging workplaces has made him a sought-after speaker at international conferences and a respected voice in leading industry publications.
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TRANSCRIPTION:
Dr. Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (00:01):
Welcome to the Multiply Your Success podcast, where each week we help growth-minded entrepreneurs and franchise leaders take the next step in their expansion journey. I’m your host, Tom DuFore, CEO of Big Sky Franchise Team. As we open today, I’m wondering if you have thought about expanding your recruiting efforts to include international team members, or maybe you’ve already been pursuing global talent and you are looking to add to that and increase the number of international team members.
Dr. Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (00:33):
Well, our guest today is Jonathan Romley, and he shares with us some trends and best practices with recruiting in the global talent pool. Now, Jonathan is one of the world’s foremost experts on global talent management and the future of work. He’s recognized as a leading authority in navigating the complexities of international talent acquisition. He’s the Founder of Lundi, a global talent firm specializing in innovative strategies for attracting, retaining, and developing top talent, ranging from Fortune 500 enterprises to small businesses. You’re going to love my interview with Jonathan, so let’s go ahead and jump right into it.
Jonathan Romley (01:10):
My name is Jonathan Romley and I am the founder and CEO of a company called Lundi.
Dr. Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (01:20):
Perfect. Well, thank you so much for being here, Jonathan. And just as a way to get the conversation started, I know you’ve written a book and it’s a very interesting book about global recruitment, and I’d love for you just to give us an overview about the book and what led you to write that.
Jonathan Romley (01:38):
Sure. Well, the book is Winning the Global Talent War: How to Find the World’s Best Employees and Thrive in a Competitive World. And it’s what we all want to do, I suppose, at least the thrive in a competitive world part. I mean, the book is based on experiences that I’ve had, both in my own businesses before I started the company that I run today that helps companies figure out this global piece. I was a tech entrepreneur. I’ve run or founded companies on three continents, so in Asia, in Europe, and in North America in the US. So I’ve had firsthand a lot of these challenges, a lot of these experiences, and in some pretty interesting places. I mean, okay, the US is the US, so we know that we can open a business in the US and well, it’s relatively easy if you are from the United States. But I’ve opened businesses in Ukraine, in Poland, in China, in the UK, a few different places along the way, now in Canada as well.
Jonathan Romley (02:52):
And well, funny story, we might imagine that business is the same everywhere, and to some extent it is, right? You can buy and sell stuff and well, it’s pretty much the same if that’s what your business is. But recruiting, finding the people that are going to work for you and they’re going to help you expand your business, whether you’re hiring abroad for cost efficiency from the US or because you’re launching a new business or an expansion of your business in another country. Well, that tends to go a little bit of a different way in every place, just as does the legal process of forming a company, as do courts are not all like the US for better or worse, in every country around the world. So I’ve had a lot of these experiences good and bad for sure.
Jonathan Romley (03:45):
And well, wrap those into first a company Lundi, the company that I run today, that helps companies well, that helps companies to find talent internationally, either to expand their business or well, for operational efficiency for cost reduction, but also if you’re just having trouble finding what you need locally, regionally, in a statewide countrywide at any price, which is sometimes the case, this can also be a game changer for your company. So I mean, that’s behind the book.
Jonathan Romley (04:21):
What we’ve incorporated also into the book are experiences that we’ve had as a team and that I’ve had at my company also working with hundreds of companies to help implement the same processes, the same strategy that I’ve used in my business, actually the same strategy I used to even start this business, now with recruiters and talent acquisition professionals in 70 countries. It wasn’t by opening a bunch of offices and forming 70 companies, right? Didn’t do that. So I think that that is really all laid out here. And depending on where you are in an organization, you’ve either got talking points to your senior management for maybe an initiative that you want to get into, or on the other hand, if you’re a leader, well, this would give you an idea of how to get this done and how to put the team into place that can execute this for you, whether you’re trying to do one person, okay, maybe do it yourself or hundreds or thousands, the structure is in the book on how to get that done. Right? We call it the global talent blueprint.
Dr. Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (05:35):
What’s some of the most significant shifts in the global workforce in that whole landscape that companies need to prepare for or just be aware of?
Jonathan Romley (05:45):
Well, one of them I think we’ve already experienced over the last four years here since the pandemic, which was this. Before the pandemic almost nobody had really worked from home. Though of course some people, the people that saw those papers on the telephone poles that said something like “work from home” and pull off the phone number and go door to door, I mean respect, nothing bad about that, but that’s what people thought of a home business previously, was the Avon lady. To now everybody, now everybody was working at home for some time.
Jonathan Romley (06:16):
Now, depending on where you are in the world, that return to office has gone a number of different ways. And I know in the US companies have tried either really just to go back into the office or go to hybrid, not so many people are working still totally remotely, even if they’re in a tech company, but in other countries that hasn’t gone the same way. Right? So in other countries like the Philippines, you still have a lot of people that are working at home despite there being lots of office space, tons of office space in the Philippines.
Jonathan Romley (06:49):
In other countries, countries like Poland, well, there was a pretty quick demand for people to go back to the office. And even the idea of working remotely was the idea of, you can work remotely but you’ve got to be able to be in the office within 30 minutes for a meeting, which basically is kind of like a prison sentence, in terms of working remotely. You don’t even want to drive too far away from your office to work remotely. Hopefully you don’t live more than 30 minutes from the office. Okay, maybe it’s an hour, maybe it’s two hours, but anyway, you’re not going to be able to get on that plane back from Bali to go to your job.
Jonathan Romley (07:27):
So I think what we’ve seen a shift in different ways of how companies have returned to the office over this time and then we’ve seen waves of resignations and quiet quitting, all these waves we’ve gone through. But what we’re seeing now as a major shift is in the way that people are applying for jobs and in the way that companies are dealing with more applications than they have ever received, which is weird considering record low unemployment in a lot of countries. So suddenly it looks like everybody wants a job. What’s going on? How is this possible? Doesn’t seem like there is a lot of talents on the market, and I think that AI has a lot to do with that. So it’s probably one of the biggest shifts, right? Beyond, are we going back to the office? Well, yeah, we did.
Jonathan Romley (08:21):
Beyond this is the impact that AI is having on talent acquisition teams and on businesses that are trying to hire people. And if we look at, by the way, I don’t think that I’m an old person by any stretch of the imagination, but I guess that after Gen Z comes Gen Alpha, which who knew? So something like 90%, I mean Gen Z, we got. Okay that I got, but Gen Alpha.
Jonathan Romley (08:49):
So we had to go from Z back to A, and now we’re at the beginning of the alphabet again. So Gen Z and Gen Alpha, 90% already are using generative AI when they apply for a job. So now you start to have people that pretty much everybody has a great looking resume, well organized, well thought through, everything is kind of explained the way that you would expect it to be, and sometimes even customized to the job post. And we might be looking for as leaders for some things to stick out to us that might be in our job description. And well, we’re seeing those on virtually every resume that we look at now and it starts to become really difficult to decide who we should invite for an interview. We can’t invite everyone unless we are doing a mass hiring event. We can’t hire everyone unless we’re Amazon and it’s Christmas.
Jonathan Romley (09:44):
So this is becoming a big challenge, how to deal with this, for organizations, well, that are hiring any kind of employee where the employee is providing a resume for work or cover letter for work, because these are just, everybody’s using AI to do it. And I mean, the company’s trying to hack this, well, let’s use tools like generative AI to filter through CVs or to summarize resumes and skills and identify, is this person a good fit or not a good fit? While the candidates are fighting back. Candidates are fighting back and so now everybody just looks great.
Jonathan Romley (10:27):
And we’re all snowflakes and butterflies, we’re all wonderful, but as an employer it can make your job pretty tricky if you’re trying to pull a few out of the bunch to invite for an interview. So this is a big shift. I mean, the impact of AI, and it’s like everywhere we go we hear this, but it really is something that’s happening is going to be a game changer in how companies do their hiring. Already, I mean, what are we going to do? Candidates are going to do what they’re going to do and if there is a way to make yourself look better, executives use resumed writers previously, right? You’d get somebody to spiff up your resume and great, and those services were not cheap. Not cheap to do that. So now you can do that very inexpensively and everybody looks great. That’s a blessing and a curse. Blessing for the candidates, kind of curse for employers.
Jonathan Romley (11:17):
And so I’m really interested to see how this evolves because it’s happening right now, how this evolves over the next 12 months because of course 12 months now, forget internet years, 12 months in AI years is like 100 years. It just goes by like this.
Dr. Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (11:35):
A lot of our audience tends to be a growing small to midsize business, maybe franchises. And one of the things I’ve noticed in small businesses, the use of international admin support as just kind of a starting point where a lot of small businesses start. So just thinking of international recruitment or global recruitment for a small to mid-sized business, someone might be listening and say, “Well, Jonathan, that’s all well and good if you’re a major corporation. How could this work for my business, that’s maybe a locally owned restaurant with a few locations or a home services business?” How might you respond to someone that says that to you?
Jonathan Romley (12:13):
The answer to the question depends on what kind of role you’re trying to recruit. So home services business might be trying to import labor from the Philippines, whereas an entrepreneur that has a handful of restaurants might be looking for an admin, a virtual assistant, or perhaps a bookkeeper, accounting, things like this that you could do locally but you could do a lot less expensive internationally.
Jonathan Romley (12:39):
There are locations around the world where those large enterprises, we can take advantage actually, of what these large enterprises have been doing. In case anybody has ever called their bank anytime in the last 10 years, there are plenty of places in the world that American companies use and have for a long time to do things. And the great news about that is that, well, all those people have been trained already. They’ve all been trained, they know how to do gap accounting, they’re using QuickBooks or whatever you might be using, NetSuite, whatever it is. They are already ready to do the job for you. And I think this is something that many small businesses are surprised about. Right? They think like, oh, I’m going to hire somebody on this side of the world and I’m going to have to show them. It must be hiring somebody on the moon. And there are places where it would be hiring somebody on the moon, but if you’re a small business, there’s sort of a smaller set of countries where you might want to start looking where you could get that started.
Jonathan Romley (13:41):
So depending on what your requirements are, you have to think, and this is actually how we start with every business, big or small. We talk about, what are the roles that you were thinking about getting some international talent for? Before we start any recruiting, what are you thinking about? What are the gaps that you’re trying to fill, or what are the costs that you’re trying to reduce? Where are there some opportunities here that it makes sense? And then let’s validate if that makes sense.
Jonathan Romley (14:14):
So for example, are we going to hire somebody in the India, which can be nine and a half hours, 12 and a half hours, depending where you are in the US, away from you? And are they going to work overnight? And in some countries that’s pretty normal. In the Philippines, working overnight is a thing because well, there’s a night differential, people make a little bit more money just like you would if you worked overnight pretty much anywhere. Well, and they see this as an advantage, but you might be thinking about a different location. You might think about, I don’t know, Eastern Europe for one reason or another, and it’s really uncommon in most Eastern European countries, particularly those that are in the European Union for people to work overnight and the costs associated with that if you employ people legally. As a good boy scout, let’s employ everybody legally.
Jonathan Romley (15:01):
And of course, this is another question that comes up in this process, which is, once we’ve identified some ideas and ideas, usually start with, does this person need to work on your schedule or do these people need to work on your schedule? And if they do, well, there are some limitations around that. If you’re in the US, we’d probably start looking south or if you’re not trying to save too much money but you are trying to reduce costs a little bit, we might go to Canada. It just depends on what your business objectives are. Are we trying to fill a hole or are we trying to cut the cost of this role by 70%?
Jonathan Romley (15:41):
And in that case also, your business objective has an impact on the location. So we’d say, okay, what kind of time are these people going to be working, or what are you okay with? How much overlap do you need? What is your goal? Are we replacing some staff that’s leaving? Are we expanding the business? And we’re like, what is actually the goal? And that starts to allow us, and of course, what’s the budget? And then you can start to figure out where you can go. And then, are you willing to employ somebody legally? I mean, which is a funny question of course in the states, but many companies that embark on this journey start by employing people as contractors. And now that’s all good and fine if you go on sites like Upwork or good sites, if you want to get an hourly person, you don’t need a full-time person.
Jonathan Romley (16:33):
But what may surprise you is, well, less than 1% of totally available… If you looked at talents as a market opportunity, we would say 1% of the TAM, 1% of the total addressable market is actually working as a freelancer somewhere. So if we’re all trying to go after that 1% of talent, the cost is going to go up. So those people that you’ll find lines on freelance-type marketplaces and websites, they’re usually going to be looking for more money than somebody that you would hire just locally. Right? And the challenge is how do you access those people? Because it’s really easy to go to a website like, you would go to Upwork.com and find somebody for eight bucks an hour, wherever it is. And the reality of that might be that you’re paying two times, three times. I mean, which sounds crazy because eight bucks an hour is pretty good already. There might actually be a market where people earn four or three.
Jonathan Romley (17:38):
Now, I’m not here to make judgments about whether that’s a good salary or not a good salary. I’m just stating facts. And the thing is that most people in those markets, just as a broad generalization, are employed, unlike the W-2 equivalent in whatever their country is. Just like in the US, not everybody wants to be a 1099 independent contractor, not everybody wants to run their own business. Some people just want to work, do their job, file their taxes at the end of the year, maybe get a refund. That’s it. And if you really want to access maximum available talent in any market, you first also have to know, first, is this a country where people prefer to be employed as full-time employees? As whatever it’s called in that country, W-2 in the US. Or is it a country where people prefer to be employed as contractors, like a 1099, but not 1099? And this may also be impacted by their age, their salary, and this specific type of job that they’re going to do.
Jonathan Romley (18:45):
So I’ll give you an example, just to go back to Poland again. People under some age, I don’t know, it’s like under 25 years of age don’t have to pay social security. So somebody under 25 years of age would prefer to be employed in this way. Right? So there’s all of these market nuances that you need to talk to somebody that knows the answer to this or maybe ask perplexity, I’m not sure.
Jonathan Romley (19:07):
But the reality of it is that every market is unique, and that’s why you first want to kind of start with this. Where are we going? Where is it possible for us to go? Let’s narrow it down based on time zones, budget, things like this. And then let’s start to really understand, well, what do we want to do as a business? Because if we’re only willing to employ people as contractors, hey, that’s cool, no judgment, whatever. That’s fine. A lot of countries, it works. Argentina has a free fall of their currency and people are happy to get paid in dollars there. You can send them a transfer, Wise all day long. And they’ll sign the contract that says, I paid my taxes, and if they did, I hope they did.
Jonathan Romley (19:47):
And I think that you can take that approach as a business or you can say, I don’t care where I’m doing business in the world, I want to do it in a way that’s legally and perhaps ethically compliant, maybe even morally compliant. I don’t know what moral compliance is, but that you’re doing right by people. And in that case, you may want to try to figure out how to employ them locally. And that might mean, are we going to open a company? If you’re going to employ one person, you’re not going to open a company. You’re probably going to work with an employer of record or some kind of staffing type provider that can help onboard that person in the market.
Jonathan Romley (20:19):
And then this is where we get to the part where it’s like, how do we find talent? Right? And you’re like, okay, well, so I figured out where I’m going to go, what I’m going to do. And then you got to figure out, well, how are you actually going to find talent in those markets? Where do you go? Do you go to a job board? But what if the job board is in Spanish? Well, okay, it’s probably okay in Spanish, we’re in the US, maybe fine, but what if it’s not? What of it’s in a language that… What if it’s in Japanese? I don’t know, what if it’s the Mandarin? So now you’re in trouble, unless that’s a language that you speak. I mean, I don’t know why you’d be doing that, but if you did, you might find yourself in a pickle.
Jonathan Romley (20:52):
So then you start looking like, I don’t know, we’ve got to hire somebody in China for whatever the reason. How do we do that? Where do we find somebody that can help? And I’m sure you’ll find a lot of companies, for example, that are in China that could help you with that if you were able to communicate in Mandarin, but you might not be able to do that. So now you got two problems, right? You want to hire somebody, you want to try to get that done, but you’re not really sure how to approach it. And of course, there are a lot of ways to do that. But I mean, anyway, that’s the problem that we solve with the business that I’m at now. But you can try try to do it yourself. I mean, results may vary, but can be done.
Dr. Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (21:30):
Recruiting people internationally, adding these folks to your team. Let’s say they follow the rules and they’re compliant and they’re following certain standards and requirements and so on, and they’re all above board on everything. You’re still working with people that are either, as you said, maybe working on different time zones, but I think the big thing is cultural differences. If they’re in the US, most of our audience is here in the US or North America, there’s an American culture and every country and region has their own culture. So, what kind of challenges have you seen or companies or clients you’ve worked with or maybe your own experience go through?
Jonathan Romley (22:06):
Well, I think we see this kind of more in medium to large size companies when they just start to scratch the surface of hiring internationally. So there might be a manager or a leader within a company that says, “Hey, we could bring somebody internationally to our team.” Maybe their budget got reduced, or maybe they’re really struggling to find the team members that they need on their team. These are kind of the two reasons that you might end up in this challenge. And you might have a whole team that’s working together, and well, they might be in Portland. You’re thinking, great, well, we could hire people in, I don’t know, we could hire people. Great marketing talent in Nigeria, by the way. So let’s hire people in Nigeria. But of course this is on the other side of the world, very different place, totally different time zone, and you have to think about this.
Jonathan Romley (23:05):
So if we have one person on our team that is somewhere else, wherever that else is, how is that going to work? Do we already work asynchronously as a team today? Meaning, are we a team that… and what’s our team style? Are we having a standup meeting every day at 9:00 Pacific Standard Time, or are we communicating kind of offline? Are we using documentation to collaborate? Are the ways that we collaborate always in real time? Because if they are, we probably either need to find, I mean, we need to find somebody that wants to work on our time zone, which can be done, but again, we’re just limiting the talent pool, as opposed to going to somewhere in Latin America, for example, where you could be closer in time. Now, Columbia is much closer in time to the West Coast, Argentina, less so. But in any case, these are considerations, right?
Jonathan Romley (24:07):
We also have to think about, well, how open is the team to having somebody from another country? And are they going to feel, how are they going to feel about job security? Particularly if in a professional services environment, for example. Let’s say you’re running an accounting business and you start hiring accountants in Latin America and the Philippines and Poland and Hungary, wherever. Somewhere which is not the good old Estados Unidos.
Jonathan Romley (24:38):
And well, as a manager, how is your team going to feel when their next colleague is on the other side of the world? How do they feel about job security? How do you communicate why as a leader or as a company you’re doing this? Is it pretty well-known within the team that you’re struggling to find resources? Or is there price compression from… is there some price compression that’s going on? Do you have some tension with your clients that you need to reduce your costs or are your costs increasing in the business, you need to improve your margin? Whatever it is, communication is very important in this area, both with your new team member as well as with the team that you’re going to either start to bring people on board to or that are going to work together.
Jonathan Romley (25:32):
And one of the first thing that happens when a new international team member comes on board, just like any other person, you probably don’t do this with a freelancer, but this is an employee we’re talking about here. So they should go through onboarding, right? And what is your company’s… Is your employee handbook written for the state of Georgia? Because if you have now hired somebody in Buenos Aires, most of that’s not going to be relevant to them. And I think that these are things that people don’t think about, right? And don’t forget by the way, they need equipment. So a freelancer might be like a laptop jockey sitting in a cafe somewhere on an island, but an employee is going to expect even if they’re working from home, that you provide the equipment to do the job. And this gets overlooked sometimes.
Jonathan Romley (26:29):
So please keep in mind, just like if you go into a job in the US, usually your employer provides the tools to do the job. If you hire a person in another country, you must also provide them the tools to do the job. Of course, there are a lot of ways to get at that, but it’s just something that you have to think about.
Jonathan Romley (26:47):
So this goes back to we hope, I hope, that these are considerations that you make at that blueprint stage before you start, hired, before you even picked up the phone or fired up that Google and started searching for a solution that you thought through like, okay, wait, well, what are all the pieces that could possibly be in play here? What are all the pieces of this that I might need in order to do that, right? And there’s a lot of ways to solve that problem. You can reimburse people, you can rent equipment from some global provider. I mean, there are solutions to these problems, because the great news is that all of your competitors probably are doing this already if you’re not doing it, right? Lots of solutions on the market for how to solve these problems. Maybe not all your competitors, but definitely some of them are doing this. And wow, lots of solutions to that.
Jonathan Romley (27:44):
But you really got to think about the whole enchilada, really. You got to think about the whole 360 degrees of how this is going to be from candidate experience, because that impacts retention. You don’t want to go through all these movements to get this program started and then have your first person drop out in the first month because they’re like, wow, these people, they might have a great business in the US but they really don’t have their stuff together.
Dr. Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (28:13):
How can people get a copy of your book or learn a little bit more about your business?
Jonathan Romley (28:17):
You can go to the website, globaltalentwar.com, where you can subscribe to my newsletter. The book is available on Amazon or pretty much anywhere else you can buy a book, at least online. And my company, Lundi, well that’s also on the web at hellolundi, that’s L-U-N-D-I, like Monday in French, because we’re fancy, .com.
Dr. Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (28:40):
Wonderful. Well, this is a great time in the show Jonathan, and we’ll make sure we include those links in the show notes for you also. We ask every guest the same four questions before they go, and the first question we ask is, have you had a miss or two on your journey or your career, and something you learned from it?
Jonathan Romley (28:56):
I probably had more misses than hits. I think that this is just entrepreneurship 101. I read once that we used to call, what we now call a pivot, used to be called a (beep) up. Had a lot of those, whatever you want to call them, had a lot of those in every different which way. So to think about one that stands out for me, wow, oof, that’s a tough one. Let me think for a minute. But I mean, I think that the path, whatever path you’re on there are always going to be a lot of bumps in the road. You’re always going to make a lot of mistakes and there’ll always be something you can look back on that you’ll think like, wow, I should have done that differently.
Jonathan Romley (29:44):
So I’m going to give you a really good one, actually. I just remembered a really good one. So I was running an e-commerce business that we started in California. It was with some kind of computer vision element to it. Basically you take a photo of some women’s shoes or a bag and you would get it delivered from China in less than a week, happy days. So that business required setting up what’s called a cross-stocking operation because we didn’t have any inventory in South China, which is where most shoes and bags at least used to come from. Now they are mostly Chinese companies producing in Vietnam, but anyway. So we were set up with this logistics operation and part of that, well, in order to rent an office and do a lot of other things, open a shipping account because we wanted to send air cargo, we had to open a Chinese company. And I think this might be easier now, but the year was like 2015 or 2014. It’s like 10 years ago. Well, it was not the easiest thing to do.
Jonathan Romley (30:48):
We eventually got it done, but one of the things that you need in order to put money into the bank to pay for anything is called a foreign exchange license. And we were not operating a currency exchange, but that’s just what they call it. It’s big, it’s got a gold star on it and the rest of it, perhaps, not surprisingly is red. But well, there was a time that we had already rented the office, but we couldn’t actually put any money into the bank account. So we had the office, we had the air courier to be able to do the air cargo, the contract with the airline or the freight broker or whatever it was, all these things that we needed. The only problem is that we had no way to put any money into the bank to pay them. That’s a problem.
Jonathan Romley (31:35):
So we had this really, somebody had this idea, I don’t know who it was, but we had this idea to buy a Bitcoin and sell this Bitcoin on, just transfer it to one of the employees and to have them sell it on whatever the exchange was in China. And during the, I don’t know, three months, six months in between, it was like half a year actually, in between the time that bank accounts were open, company was open, but we couldn’t put any money there but we still had to pay for things, this is what we did. At the time, Bitcoin was like $100 and we were buying a whole office and company’s worth of expenses worth of Bitcoin every month, and then just transferring it to somebody and having them sell it and using it as perhaps the utility that it was meant to be.
Jonathan Romley (32:26):
And I’ll tell you that, I mean, really, whatever the expenses were of a business with a dozen employees, an office, air cargo, you can imagine the kind of number I could be talking about that just ran through every month and exchanged and left and didn’t even leave one of them in anything somewhere. So it’s just funny, I mean, at the time. That business in the end, that was one of those F-up businesses, it didn’t work out in the end. So if we look at the investment that went into that company and we had just kind of set aside what we were doing with our little way of paying for our operations, which could have different views about what to call that. In any case, yeah, we would’ve had a huge return on investment if we just would’ve like, okay that’s, we’re just not going to exchange that for the local [inaudible 00:33:17] going to save it.
Jonathan Romley (33:17):
So I don’t know, it’s a funny thing to look back on for sure, but just to see, we thought this was a utility and it was solving a problem for us at the moment and it was, but in hindsight, considering that that business, well, that business failed, we would’ve done better just not sending the Bitcoins to China.
Dr. Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (33:36):
Well, let’s talk about a make or a highlight or two you’d like to share.
Jonathan Romley (33:41):
I’ll share with you the pivot that Lundi went through, the company that today I’m running. We started off as a company that was building software, actually. We started off as a company that was building software for staffing agencies, which is very different than what we’re doing today. We started off as a company building software for staffing agencies. And while the idea behind that was that a lot of staffing agencies bring staff from abroad. Now, less so in the United States, but in other countries around the world, there is a lot of what’s called labor mobility, people moving around temporarily for work. I mean, we have a guest worker program in the US seasonally for agriculture, but I mean, the scale of what goes on in other countries in order to support economic development is just an order of magnitude greater than any guest worker program in the United States. Surprisingly, or maybe not surprisingly, but anyway.
Jonathan Romley (34:45):
So we had started to build software that would help companies to manage this integration process. Right? So to manage the physical movements of labor for work. And I mean, that was how we got started, physical movement of labor. And we started this business in October of 2019. October of 2019. So if you can imagine half a year into the business, and we started with a real big customer, talk about it in the book. So I mean, we had started off with a real big customer, pretty cool and famous one. We were really excited about the business and how we were going to grow it and what we were going to do with it. And then the physical movement of labor stopped, it stopped. We felt like most business owners felt like, okay, give it a week, okay, give it two weeks, give it a month.
Jonathan Romley (35:41):
And as time went on, we realized, well, okay, I mean, I don’t know if anybody thought there was ever going to be an end at some point, but we understood that there was actually a bigger problem to solve. And it wasn’t just because it, we were stuck. It’s a little bit because we were stuck, but it wasn’t just because we were stuck. It was also because while we identified a bigger market opportunity, right? We were playing in a pretty small sandbox, and we were feeling at that moment like we were flying high, that this is great. We got that tombstone, that marquee customer put the logo on the wall. I think that the journey wouldn’t have been the same had we not have faced that challenge. So I mean, if you look at what was a pretty scary moment for a lot of businesses, for mine too, what we’ve turned that into is something that is touching so many more people than it did before. Right?
Jonathan Romley (36:45):
So we’re now covering 70 countries. I mean, we weren’t doing that because we covered two, maybe three, maybe four, and everybody had to physically move around and it was blue collar, it was blue collar labor. Right? So we were in production and manufacturing, and it was real different, real different, but filling a need, filling a demand in a particular part of the world. Right? And what we were able to do is take a platform that we had built and a process and a structure and a network, and mostly a process for developing that network and the technology for that network to operate on. Right? So I mean, actually thinking about franchise businesses, we created the infrastructure that we were able to bring on country, after country, after country.
Jonathan Romley (37:28):
And so in a very short period of time, if you jump forward now from 2020 until now, even to last year, within three years, we managed to scale our reach to more than 70 countries and we’ve done that mostly without offices. We do have a few offices. I don’t know, there’s not really anybody in them, but we do have places where people can go. We’ve done that really on a shoestring of a budget, and it’s very hard to raise money for a staffing business, which is like, we can call ourselves a platform, we can call ourselves a technology. But at the end of the day, let’s call a spade a spade, because it’s a staffing business. But I mean, I think the win for us through this experience is not only surviving but thriving and actually really winning that global talent war ourselves and on behalf of our clients today.
Dr. Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (38:21):
Thank you, Jonathan. The next question we ask is, have you used a multiplier to grow yourself or personally or professionally or a business that you’ve run?
Jonathan Romley (38:30):
Well, there are a couple of things that I think can be a force multiplier. One is actually executive education. So I have continued, I’m not doing it, I mean, I’ve got two kids, I’ve got two young children. Also, by the way, the other win over this period of time. In that time, not only do we go to 70 countries, I’ve had two daughters. I’ve lived in eight countries, got married. So I mean, there was a lot going on. I was living in Ukraine when the war started. Oh, oh boy. Yeah, so it’s been a very interesting couple of years. I guess that’s the win, right? Still here, that is the win that we’re still here.
Jonathan Romley (39:11):
But as a force multiplier, I think education can really be a force multiplier for entrepreneurs and for business leaders. I think that admitting that we might not have all of the answers and that there are opportunities for engagement with other leaders, other communities in other parts of the world, particularly if you look at online education. So we’re turning to this idea of education as a force multiplier or just as a multiplier. I mean, that’s been something for me that’s helped me to… It’s real easy to think you know everything, and then turns out, you don’t. And if you think everything, just talk to like ChatGPT for five minutes and you’ll realize that you don’t. Even if she’s lying, but in any case, or hallucinating is what they call it, hallucinating. But I think that that’s been something for me that that has helped me to develop.
Jonathan Romley (40:07):
I also think that really paying attention to your health, that preventive medicine is also a multiplier. The stress, there’s a hidden epidemic of, well, first of all, depression among founders. That’s not an issue that I have but it’s something that’s out there for sure. But at the same time, I think it’s just really important to try to catch things before they happen and to try to feel and be young and energetic as long as you can because if you’re leading a business, well, particular if is a small business, you and your energy can act as such a force multiplier on your team. So I mean, if you got to be in good health to do that, right? That’s for sure.
Dr. Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (40:59):
One of the reasons I started the podcast was certainly to help educate our clients and others who may tune in, but it also was self-serving because I said, “I want to keep learning,” and this is forcing myself to talk to experts and professionals like you to learn things that I would’ve never learned anything about. So I definitely love that executive education push there.
Dr. Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (41:21):
Well, Jonathan, the final question we ask every guest is, what does success mean to you?
Jonathan Romley (41:27):
There’s a really low answer to that, and it’s never looking at the price tag. Whatever my earlier view, whatever my teenage view of success was, whatever my view of success was as a teenager, in my 20s, in my 30s, now in my forties, that’s a moving target, right? As a tech founder, I always thought I’d want to be on the team of a company that was acquired by whether Fang or some giants, one of these acronyms, Facebook, Amazon, Netflix, Google. So I did that in my 30s, and you think that you’re going to feel different. I think anybody that’s sold a business probably realizes that.
Jonathan Romley (42:11):
I mean, there are a lot of events in life where we’re meant to think that you’re going to snap your fingers and from one day to the next, whether that’s selling a business or I don’t know… I think the only life changing… Things that I would expect would change the way that I would feel myself, probably the only one that really threw a curve ball for me was having kids. I felt like, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, no problem. Whatever, yeah, I got this. Turns out that is a very life-changing experience and well, it can be even more so than a company that you’re on the management team of being bought by Google. So whatever that target is, I think that it’s definitely a moving one.
Jonathan Romley (42:54):
But I think a really simple way of saying that, right? Because having lots of money doesn’t make you happy. It doesn’t, it doesn’t. But just thinking about what you want to do and doing it. It doesn’t matter if that’s something that’s expensive or it’s something that it’s free, right? Having freedom, I think is what success is about. Having the freedom not to set your own schedule, having the freedom to spend time with your kids if you want, having the freedom to pursue a hobby or education or whatever that is on your own time and having the freedom, well, really to be the leader that you want to be in your organization. I mean, these are all things that define success, but of course it starts with just not thinking about whatever anything might cost, whatever that might be.
Dr. Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (43:43):
Jonathan, thank you so much for a fantastic interview and let’s go ahead and jump into today’s three key takeaways. Takeaway number one today is when he talked about young workers in today’s world that most of them are using AI to develop and build their resumes when they submit them. And so what he said is that it makes it a lot more challenging as an employer to distinguish one resume from another. So I thought that was an interesting point and something to be aware of as you’re recruiting just in general for your company.
Dr. Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (44:14):
Takeaway number two is when he was talking about international team members and bringing on international staff, is that you need to understand what your business objectives are. For example, do you need someone to work the same hours that you’re working? Where he described that oftentimes Eastern Europe does not work nights, but in the Philippines they do, so they might be working the same hours you are. Things like that are important for you to take into consideration.
Dr. Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (44:43):
Takeaway number three is when Jonathan and I talked about adding international staff into your domestic team. And he said you need to also think about what this culturally looks like, not just the cultural differences from say, an American culture to an international culture, some other country’s culture, but really, what does the internal culture of your company look like? And he said, “Do you already work asynchronously or are you already working remotely or is everyone in the office? How big of a deal are these time zone differences? For example, are you going to pursue international staff going east and west around the world, or are you going to go north and south or both?” And he said, “How will this new international person impact the dynamics of your current team?” And so I think these were all great questions and thoughts and things to be thinking about as you’re adding folks from around the world, from the global talent pool into your company.
Dr. Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (45:49):
And now it’s time for today’s win-win. So today’s win-win is really just a consideration. Should you consider finding new staff from the global talent pool? And is that right for you and your business? And is it the right time now or later?
Dr. Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (46:10):
And one of the things he talked about is that if you are considering to pursue global talent or maybe you’re in the midst of it, remember that the international markets have been doing business with American businesses for many decades. So the groundwork has already been laid. And as Jonathan described, countries already have residents and people that already know how to work either on American time, American cultures, working in these business programs. You’re probably using things like QuickBooks and knowing accounting and other types of programs that would be necessary. There are countries and places all over the world that have these specialties that have already been developed due to the international and global economy we are living and working in. So I thought that was a great win-win and a great takeaway that you are not going to be a trailblazer by pursuing global talent. The shift and the pathway has already been built.
Dr. Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (47:16):
And so that’s the episode today, folks. Please make sure you subscribe to the podcast and give us a review. And remember, if you or anyone might be ready to franchise our business or take their franchise company to the next level, please connect with us at bigskyfranchiseteam.com. Thanks for tuning in, and we look forward to having you back next week.