0 (2s):
Lights that sparked Fire Nation! JLD here and welcome to Entrepreneurs On Fire brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network with great shows like Being Boss. Today, we'll be talking about an entrepreneur who went from Shark Tank failure to tech success story, and to drop these value bombs. I brought Ryan Naylor into EOFire studios. Ryan is the founder of VIVAHR, a platform for entrepreneurs to publish their open positions and get organic visibility on all the top job sites. After flopping on Shark Tank, he built a framework culture marketing in foundation. Today, we'll talk about some lessons from being on Shark Tank, how he went from bust to a tech entrepreneur on fire.

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We'll talk about hiring why it's so hard to get the right people and how you Fire Nation can start improving your hiring right now. and so much more. When we get back from thanking our sponsors. Fire Nation, its time to stop trading time for money and start reaching more clients and making a bigger impact. And you can do just that with online courses, try Thinkific for free today at Thinkific.com/EOF. that's Thinkific.com/EOF. Ever wish you had a mentor to help improve your customer experience and scale your business. HubSpot's new podcast, the shakeup with Alexis Gay and Brianne Kimmel has you covered. I love it because it shares how real people are building real businesses in very unique ways.

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Listen, learn, and grow with the HubSpot Podcast Network at hubspot.com/podcastnetwork. Bryan say what's up the Fire Nation and share something that you believe about becoming successful that most people disagree with. What's

1 (1m 42s):
Up Fire Nation. I am super excited to be here. And probably the biggest thing that I believe in is to build a great business, stop focusing on relationships and where I come back is focus on value. I see so many friends starting a business and they get into networking groups and they focus on going and just building relationships, building a bunch of friends. And my feedback to them is you've got friends. You've got a lot of relationships, focus on adding value to prospects, and that's where you get the best return on your time spent. You're

0 (2m 18s):
Hitting upon. And one of my all time, favorite quotes from a Mr. Albert Einstein, which is try not to become a person of success, but rather a person of value because that's Fire Nation is the key. What value are you providing to the world? What solutions are you bringing to? People's real problems. And man, that's a great lesson. And I want to start off with some more lessons for Fire Nation, because you were a bust on Shark Tank. And so what did you learn from that whole experience? It's hard to swallow

1 (2m 51s):
And say I was a bust on Shark Tank, but it's true. You know, I, one of the biggest lessons I learned is the power having a purpose based company to drive you. And I'll back up just a little bit to tell you that when I was on Shark Tank, I was there pitching a product. I was pitching a product that I thought was really cool. I'd found in Italy and really expanded on this product in the United States. And when I was out there and I had mark Cuban and you know, everybody just kind of coming on my shoulders, I really found myself digging in, focused on, I know who I am and what they're saying.

1 (3m 33s):
Isn't directed at me. It's directed at the product. And I found myself not being able to defend the product cause it wasn't purposeful. It didn't, it didn't drive me. It was just a means to an end. It was just a transaction. And so the biggest lesson I learned is probably that night. When I went back to the hotel room, after being on Shark Tank, they put you up in a hotel after you record your episode. And I, I pulled out one of those pads of paper on the hotel desk and I just started writing, what do I believe in what is my motivators? And I listed it all out. And honestly, that's where I found myself. That's what I learned the most is focus on what drives you?

1 (4m 17s):
What is your purpose and do things that are going to magnify your purpose. And what

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Did that look like? Like what were some of those words on that piece of paper, words that I

1 (4m 27s):
Found myself circling at the end because I did, I went to underline and I circled the things that were the, the deepest for me. And it really came back to family. And I really am a huge advocate for the family unit. I'm a passionate believer that as a society, we are better when we have a family and families look a lot different today than they will tomorrow or the next day. But whatever your family environment looks like own it, make it better, be proud of that and build upon it. And, and I found myself struggling to, to, to basically align w my previous company to those core values, to my personal core values.

1 (5m 11s):
And so, and th and that's ultimately what kind of, what led me to what I'm doing today, but I don't want to jump the gun too much, but, but the core values and having purpose, you just sleep a lot better at night. And you, you become you're on fire like this podcast, right? You come to work every day, ready to roar and, and be the best version of yourself when you truly believe in those, those values. It's so true

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Because no matter how much success you're going to have in any field Fire Nation, there's going to come a time where you look up one day and be like, what am I doing? Like, what is it that I'm actually doing? What value am I actually providing? What solutions am I actually creating for real meaningful problems in this world? And if you can't get excited or feel passionate, or by the answer to that question, you're going to have, it's, it's really going to be this very difficult journey for you going forward. In fact, it's probably going to result in a pivot or an adjustment at that point. So why not start there? Why not start with something that you believe in that's really in your heart of heart, in your gut of guts.

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What I like to call your zone of fire, where your passions overlap with your value, where your enthusiasm intersects with your skill set. Like, how can you not want to try to start there right now, instead of having that really unfortunate wake-up moment, maybe months, years down the road of like, what exactly am I doing now? You are Ryan on Entrepreneurs On Fire. So let's break it down. How'd you go from that Shark Tank bust to tech entrepreneur on fire. I truly believe

1 (6m 46s):
It's that purpose. It was that motivator. I was able to come up with a business model that supported my core value, which is supporting families. I started researching, what is it that breaks up families? What is making the walls of a home crumble? And I found that one of the top leading contributions of that is unemployment and underemployment. And you think about that, you break it down a little bit more like financial pressures, what that does to relationships and how it might create a sense of distrust or a self-esteem self-worth might be diminished. And I wanted to do something about that. And so I went from there and started building a job board. I wanted to create something that drove people to find better employment that was focused on my passions, which is company culture.

1 (7m 33s):
How, how could I help other people find great businesses aligned with their values and their company culture, and started building it up. And over the next six years, I built a job board out of Arizona called local work that ultimately we are able to track back and had over a hundred thousand people get jobs directly through our platform with this purpose based mission, and is to really celebrate that. We did some research. We started asking our question, why w why were people having so much success with local work.com? What were employers doing? Big businesses, small businesses? Was it because they were name brand companies? And the answer was no is because the companies that actually had the most impact and attracting the best people and getting the best hires, they focused on storytelling.

1 (8m 21s):
They focused on culture telling transparently not what you're going to do for me, but what we can accomplish together. And as a small entrepreneur, that just hit me so hard that I could go back and I could see, see statistically in my face, the companies that focus on telling who they are, but more importantly, what they do and why they do it in the job. Posting had 500% increase in applicants. I mean, it was staggering. And so from there, it was, it was like, I got to build a product that helps more small businesses do this over and over again.

1 (9m 2s):
And we need to go nationwide. And that's really kind of what lit me in it. And all of it comes back to one thing, John, it it's my passion. It's my purpose. And when I can, when I can work late into the night, get up early in the morning and be super excited and have all the energy in the world. It's because I'm super passionate about what I'm doing

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Game and Fire Nation. Think of the alternative. I mean, think about you not having that passion or excitement to wake up in the morning, to do your thing, who is your competition? Somebody who is loving doing that thing. Who's waking up in the morning wanting to get to work. Can't wait to get to work. They're going to win every single time. So again, why not just start there? And I love some of those key phrases that Ryan used, storytelling, culture, transparency. Remember these things, Fire Nation, they really matter. And we have so much more value coming up about you, Fire Nation, improving your hiring in more. When we get back from thanking our sponsors. Customer expectations are at an all-time high.

0 (9m 59s):
So when a prospect or a customer reaches out, it's important that everyone across your organization has the context. They need to deliver a personalized and helpful experience. And because conversations with prospects and customers are going to happen across all sorts of channels and teams, it becomes increasingly important to be able to manage all of those conversations in one place. That means giving your sales team visibility into marketing emails that are sent in customer service teams, having visibility into conversations that happen during the sales process. We both know that when messaging isn't aligned, it can create a frustrating experience for customers who might feel like they're constantly repeating themselves or that your business just isn't a fit for them. Lucky for us has what has a tool to help us manage everything under one central CRM platform, HubSpot integrates with your inbox to automatically save and store email conversations, allow reps to record calls, right from within HubSpot, gives your teams a universal inbox to tackle live chat, inquiries, emails, Facebook messages in more, learn more about how you can scale your company without scaling complexity at hubspot.com. Whether you're a guitar teacher, a business coach, or a yoga instructor, entrepreneurs all share something in common, a desire to reach more clients and make a bigger impact without trading their time for money.

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So how do you do that by creating an online course with Thinkific expose your business to hundreds, thousands, or even millions of new clients worldwide with low impact on your time. But don't just take our word for it. Meet Vanessa. She runs group therapy, a business that offers beginner dance classes for adults. Vanessa was hearing time and time again, that people couldn't make it to class because of time constraints, anxiety, or not living close enough to attend. So Vanessa decided to put her dance classes into an online course with Thinkific. So people could take lessons at their own leisure. Her online courses took her business to a new international level, and they pretty much run themselves. Not only that she started making thousands of new revenue every month hitting her financial targets and freeing up time to work more on her business.

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More than 50,000 entrepreneurs have already used Thinkific to build revenue and educate their students worldwide. Try Thinkific free today at Thinkific.com/EOF. That's Thinkific.com/EOF Ryan we're back. And as I kind of teased before the break, I want you to break down with all of your vast experience and knowledge, how Fire Nation can start improving their hiring. Right now, this is something that's going to be so different for every company.

1 (12m 16s):
But I will say one of the biggest improvements that I made for myself when growing my company and hiring people, as well as coaching other businesses, is to start with a job scorecard, sit down and ask yourself, what are the three to four key metrics I'm going to measure success in this role. When I come back and I look at this candidate in 90 days, w how, how do I quickly quantitatively, see, this is success. This is somebody that, that did their job, right? And then I'm going to start measuring what are the three to five things that impact those KPIs, creating your scorecard.

1 (12m 55s):
Now that becomes your job description. That becomes how you transparently disclose exactly. What's expected of them. So many times I see entrepreneurs go out there and they find a quick template and I not against templates, but they'll find a quick template. And then they're shocked when the new employee's frustrated, because they're like this isn't anything that I applied to. You're asking me to do things that are completely opposite of what I expected and that it creates contention right out the gate. And I, and I think one of the biggest things is create a scorecard for each individual job. And I will always say anchor it to core values.

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What do you believe in as the entrepreneur, if you're leading that ship, if you're guiding it, put that in the job posting, talk about what you believe in. Do you believe in making sure you support your kids' soccer teams on the weekends, but that in there you make sure you're home in time for your daughter's piano recital, put that in there so that there's clear understanding and alignment of what you value and what they can value. So that there's full transparency, day one, gates,

0 (14m 4s):
A job scorecard Fire Nation. I love that concept. We're talking three to four metrics that you are going to use soon, maybe 90 days after hiring to measure their success. And guess what? Now you're actually setting them up for success because now they know what's expected of them. And it's clear communication. There's clarity the whole way through. And again, I love how you ended that, anchoring it to your core values, always have that anchor to your core values. And some of that you've done that fits everything that we've been talking about here today, with passion, with value, with your knowledge to become this tech entrepreneur on fire, you are the founder of VIVAHR. So what is VIVAHR and why is it making such a splash in this world today?

1 (14m 50s):
You know, VIVAHR, we really kind of going back to the story we wanted to build a product in Viva, kind of, you know, stands for kind of bringing things to life. We really wanted companies to bring their company to life through their job postings. One of my favorite companies here based out of Arizona is a company called Nextiva. And they're a voice over IP company. There's a bunch of telecom community, you know, companies all around, but I was able to go in and work with them and observe them when they were 18 employees. Now, I think they're over a thousand employees and they had Nerf guns going off at gongs in the corner that are banging on drums.

1 (15m 30s):
There is a, you know, and I was just like, this is incredible. How are you guys able to maintain such this incredible culture? And it really came down to, we live our core values from the very first moment. Somebody interacts with us all the way through their training, their onboarding, and their day to day with us. And that's what VIVAHR is, is we want to help tell that story. So when you post a job and it publishes out to all the different job boards on ZipRecruiter, indeed Glassdoor, wherever the job gets published out to VIVAHR is growing. Because we tell that story. We have our proprietary way where someone sees your job on indeed.

1 (16m 10s):
When they click on it, they get to a dedicated page talking about the company culture that you created. They talks about your core values, and it creates that emotional alignment. So we trademarked a phrase called culture marketing, and it's all about how do you tell your story through culture? How do you market your business? How do you market your open jobs through culture and that's that's game changer. That's going to get you, that's going to go from you hiring C players to A-players the quickest way to get a players to leave your company is to hire a bunch of C players. The greatest way to keep a players is to hire more A-players.

1 (16m 50s):
And so we truly believe that aligning and hiring the best of the best is really going to be the difference.

0 (16m 56s):
What kind of company are you trying to build? You're trying to build a company that's made up of C players. Are you trying to build up a company that is just like, yeah. You know, I'm good at what I do, or do you want people that are great at what they do are passionate about what they do? We're going to attract greatness. I mean, you see this in sports all the time. I mean, why is it trending the NBA right now with all of the best players getting on the same team, because they want to win a championship greatness, attracts greatness. And that is so key, especially when you have a company maybe where you're being incentivized by the success of the company. If you're getting stock options or equity or whatever that might look like, guess what you want that company to be as amazing as possible and to have as much success as possible, which means the employees have to be the best they possibly can be.

0 (17m 42s):
And let's be honest, who wants to surround ourselves with just average people? I mean, you know, I'm going to end this interview today, the way I, in every single interview with that Jim roll quarter, you're the average of the five people you spend the most time with people know that they believe it surround yourself with the right people every single day. Now, Ryan give us the one key takeaway that you really want to make sure Fire Nation gets from everything that you shared and talked about here today. And then also give us any way that we can connect with you, your company, any call to action you have, and then we'll say goodbye. When it

1 (18m 15s):
Grows at a business it's not sexy just to have a ton of people that work for you. What's truly sexy is to have a fully purpose-based business with complete alignment in your organization. That is fire that's. What's going to get you to sleep at night and that's, it's going to motivate you anytime you hit the next roadblock

0 (18m 33s):
Fire Nation. True word, Ryan, how do we connect with VIVAHR? Learn more about you. Any call to action you have, yeah.

1 (18m 42s):
Check out VIVAHR.com. But more importantly, I'd love to connect with you on Instagram or Twitter, Ryan Naylor. You can search for me in there and would love to connect. I love to hear stories of entrepreneurs on how they're using company culture to really grow their business Fire Nation.

0 (18m 59s):
As I mentioned, you're the average of those five people you spend the most time with. You've been hanging out with RN and JLD today. So keep up that heat head over to EOFire.com type a Ryan in the search bar. His shows page will pop up with everything we've talked about here today. Best shownotes in the biz. And of course, check out VIVAHR.com and follow Ryan on social. That's what he does. He looked delivers value and loves to connect with people like you. Fire Nation, Ryan, thank you brother, for sharing your truth, your knowledge, your value with Fire Nation today, for that we salute you and we'll catch you on the flip side. Hey, Fire Nation today's value bound content was brought to you by Ryan and Fire Nation. Successful entrepenuers accomplish big, huge goals, which is why I created the Freedom Journal to guide you in accomplishing your number one goal in just a hundred days when we're talking to step-by-step.

0 (19m 52s):
So visit the FreedomJournal.com use promo code PODCAST. Free $15 discounts. And thank you for listening to my podcast and I will catch you there. Or on the flip side. Fire Nation is time to stop trading time for money and start reaching more clients and making a bigger impact. And you can do just that with online courses, try Thinkific for free today at Thinkific.com/EOF. That's Thinkific.com/EOF. Ever wish you had a mentor to help improve your customer experience and scale your business. HubSpot's new podcast, the shakeup with Alexis Gay and Brianne Kimmel has you covered. I love it because it shares how real people are building real businesses in very unique ways.

0 (20m 36s):
Listen, learn, and grow with the HubSpot Podcast Network at hubspot.com/podcastnetwork.