Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: My undergrad degree is in kinesiology, which is exercise science. Companies are really struggling with this whole P aspect of people. You have to have a technology strategy as much as you have a people strategy. HR professionals have strayed away from one of the original names of our profession, which is human capital. You make investment, use capital to invest, and you want to produce return.
[00:00:24] Speaker B: Welcome to the Entrepreneur's Logbook podcast where we uncover the strategies and insights driving external business growth. Today we're joined by Joey Price, President and CEO of Jumpstart hr, an award winning HR consulting and HR technology analyst firm, helping business build happier, more engaged team that drive growth and stability. With nearly two decades of HR experience, Joey has grown from being an HR assistant to becoming a very respected voice in the HR space. He's the author of his book the power of HR, a TEDx presenter, and also the host of his own podcast while we were working. His firm, Jumpstart hr, specializes in HR solution for small businesses and startup while their research division, Aspic 43 helps HR and talent acquisition technology vendors build better tools by understanding the practitioner experience. Joey's mission is clear to help more people be excited about Monday than they are about Friday.
Joey Sabzi, amazing job on the show. Welcome Zach.
[00:01:24] Speaker A: It's truly a pleasure to be here and to spend time with you and your audience.
[00:01:29] Speaker B: Thank you so much. And I love like the last quote that like I mentioned with your mission, like having people be more excited about Mondays than Friday because I feel that's a big thing, like going around that, like, obviously since like the dawn of time, like a lot of people there's this misconception like, hey, like, I should be excited for Friday when oftentimes like, you should be able to structure your life to be excited for a Monday. So I love that. But I guess just like kick things off for like anyone that perhaps isn't really familiar with your work. Could you give like everyone a bit of background on yourself, how you even got into the EHR space? Because you've been doing this for a little while here.
[00:02:04] Speaker A: Yeah, sure. And you did an amazing introduction. So I'll try not to repeat everything you said, but I'll give.
My undergrad degree is in kinesiology, which is exercise science. And somewhere around my junior year I realized that maybe taping up athletes for the rest of my life wasn't what I want to do. Although it's a noble profession, many awesome careers come out of that degree program. But it just wasn't for me. Um, and so I was talking to Some friends and family and said, hey, I want a career that's corporate, but it's not all finance, it's not all technology, it's not all law, but, you know, has some variety. And so where every day is a little bit different.
And my sister in law who was in HR at the time, she said, hey, you should think about hr. I was like, great, all right, what's that? Because I had never interacted with an HR person for a job.
And it all been working at the university gym, you meet with the manager, or working at the local pharmacy, you meet the store manager. Or as a camp counselor, I met with the adults running the show. Right. I never really had that interaction with hr. But what I realized is that A, it was a good choice and B, over the years I realized that instead of helping athletes perform their best on ball fields, I help professionals perform their best in corporate settings. And so that line for me of helping people succeed in the best way possible is what drives my work and our research. But also stems the mission of wanting to help people enjoy getting excited about Monday as much as they are Friday.
[00:03:47] Speaker B: I love that because you somewhat shifted like your approach as opposed to doing it for like sports athletes or anything like that, which there's obviously a little segment for that you decided to do it for professionals, which is literally like everyone, unlike their mother, like everyone is a professional, they're all working professional. So you're somebody extending your mission in a way which like, I absolutely love that. And I guess like shifting gears like a little bit because you've had like a TEDx talk that was like published on like YouTube and one of the big things that you mentioned were like the three Ps because you have the four Ps in marketing, but then you have three Ps with HR with your approach, which is the profit, the people and the purpose. Something I guess I'd be a bit curious about is how have you seen companies struggle with balancing these three elements? Is there any advice you would give to entrepreneurs to be able to balance it effectively? It's not just one that takes over like the entire approach here.
[00:04:45] Speaker A: Yeah. You know, you're asking me this question today and I'm going to tell you it's the P of people. But over the last 15, 20 years or so, we've seen that interchangeably. There have been challenges for all three. Obviously during the COVID pandemic and the Great Recession of 2008, the challenge was profit. Right now I think that companies are really struggling with this whole business aspect of people because we are introducing technology at such a rapid scale that we're trying to grapple with what role do people have in our businesses these days. And of course that may sound a bit extreme to people who have had their head in the sand and maybe they work a frontline job where maybe there isn't as much technological advancement or work in a region where there isn't as much technological advancement. But where you read the newspapers these days and you hear about the significant layoffs happening at corporations large and small, some of that has to do with the fact that they are deploying technology to make things happen. I believe there is one large company, IBM, who said we're going to eliminate several HR jobs to and replace them with artificial intelligence. So to dial this in for the entrepreneur who's listening or the founder who's listening to.
When you think about how work gets done in your organization, you have to have a technology strategy as much as you have a people strategy. And those things have to coexist. I've heard it said you have to think about buying, building, borrowing or now botting. Right. So having bots and agentic AI take over your some processes in your organization. So founders have to think about buying, borrowing, building.
[00:06:41] Speaker B: Yeah, they have to find that balance again with like doing that as well. Because I mean you can't just have like an entire company being like AI like oriented. I mean I know like one of like earliest guests was like the EHR space as well. And like one of like the big concern he was saying is like when you use like AI with like hr, I mean there is a lot of like compliance that goes with that. You can't just have like something screen like your resume and then directly say if it's like a good fit like there, there's multiple procedures that you have to follow.
But again like I think it goes back to what you're saying, that you have to find a balance again of having people but also technology so you can actually still grow your company without like being stagnant in a way, if I'm not totally mistaken here.
[00:07:22] Speaker A: Yeah, no, you got it. You got it right?
[00:07:25] Speaker B: I love that. And with the companies, I mean you've built it, it's like you've been running it for like over a decade now, if I'm not mistaken like 13, like 14 years was there like a big like aha like moment that somewhat changed your like company from like a small consultancy to obviously like an award winning firm? Because I don't know a lot of HR firms that have the award winning somewhat component to it in my experience.
[00:07:50] Speaker A: Yeah, no, we've been very fortunate to win awards recognition and I'd say the aha moment for me happened when I made the pivot for from it being a lifestyle business to actually being a business that can work without me.
I had a blog on my website many years ago about the time where I actually truly took a vacation and didn't bring my laptop. And that was remarkable for me because it was the first time where I finally believed that hey, if this thing is going to live up to its potential and be all that it's supposed to be, I can't be involved in everything and I can't be responsible for everything. And of course as the CEO and founder, you're the buck stops with you. Right. So anything that happens in your organization is because you allow it or because you did not pay attention to it. I just, the eye opening moment for me was if it's going to grow, I've got to get out of the way and I've got to get smart people in who know what they can do and can do things better than me and cheer them on, encourage them, reward them, recognize them.
And that's how we've picked up the awards. Because it's not just about what I do every day, it's about the mission that our team rallies around every day and the way we fulfill our brand promises day in and day out.
[00:09:13] Speaker B: Yeah, and I love that because I feel that's like really what every like founder strives for. To be able to like go on that vacation as you mentioned, and not have to worry about like everything coming like crashing down. Like once you get to that point where you're able to like step away, you come back, your business is still growing, things are keeping afloat. Like that peace of mind must be like amazing for like any like founders listening out there that haven't been to that point yet. And I think that's where everyone wants to be. Like, I mean if you want to grow a company, you have to be able to get to that point. And going to your point, like trusting people to be able to like sustain but also hiring people that are smarter than you in certain like capacity. For example, like sometimes, I mean sometimes like I'll hire someone to edit my podcast. Like I'm not great at editing video. Like don't get me wrong, so that's why I pay someone else to do it because you're obviously way better than I am and doing that. And it seems, I mean just to Me that you've probably like, mastered that for, like, your company. I love that.
[00:10:07] Speaker A: I won't say mastered.
[00:10:08] Speaker B: Not mastered. Okay, fair enough.
[00:10:10] Speaker A: Even the HR guy.
[00:10:11] Speaker B: That's fair.
[00:10:12] Speaker A: It's human. Right? And, you know, our principles and everything we learn as HR pros are north stars, and they are goals to accomplish and systems that you want to create.
But, you know, is Our hiring rate 100%? Does is 100% of every person who comes to our team, do they work out? No, but you believe in people and you want to give people an opportunity, and sometimes it's just not a good fit. And every day you just have to make sure that you are taking the team that you have and growing and getting closer together and making sure that everyone is supporting one another.
[00:10:50] Speaker B: Yeah. Consistent improvement. And another thing that I would really love, like your take, because I've worked like small businesses before, and there seems to be again, like always, this misconception around the fact that HR is a cost center. Like, if you are a small business, if you have an HR department, like, why should I be spending on HR when I could literally be just pushing more on my ad budget to get more leads into the pipeline? Focus on marketing and sales. Is there any, I guess I wouldn't say advice, but a point that you have for them to shift their mindset around the value of investing into HR as opposed to seeing it just something that drains, like, your profit in a way.
[00:11:32] Speaker A: Yeah, Zach. So I'll try to keep it brief because I can get on my soapbox for like hours on this.
[00:11:37] Speaker B: Fair enough.
[00:11:38] Speaker A: But. But one thing that I have realized is that over the past decade or so, HR professionals have strayed away from one of the original names of our profession, which is human capital.
So we forget that capital, you make investment, you use capital to invest, and you want to produce return.
And so with that being said, we should be tracking, hey, we hired this person at this salary.
They're bringing in this amount of revenue for the organization.
We sent this person to this training for X dollars, and now we're seeing their output at X percent higher than before.
And also we had these two employees who were fighting with one another, and their productivity was very low. But because we had healthy interventions, now they're getting along and their productivity is much better.
I think that the failure to see HR truly as an investment is because we've stopped tracking or we've never been tracking those things that actually matter. And it's how do our actions, efforts, and investments make the company better? Zach, you know, so many Times we'll talk about HR being the cost center, but HR was responsible for hiring that chief marketing officer who's going to go off and grow the company. Right. Or working with the search firm to select the next CEO. Right. So. Or with, even with the board. So for founders, I would just say, you know, if you look around and your HR is only about reducing risk as opposed to helping you chase reward, then you're probably not doing HR right in your business. And we should talk.
[00:13:26] Speaker B: I love that. So using HR more as like a strategic partner in a way where like, they're looking at the data, they're looking at like, KPIs seeing, like, okay, like, we made this investment, this person, like, they're improving their driving, like a better, like, output as opposed to like, hey, from like a legal standpoint, maybe we should watch out for that and being more like, proactive in trying to like, grow, but also tracking all the KPIs to see what you're getting out of investing in your people. And in the end, every major company has grown by investing in people. Like, people are literally about girls at companies. I feel that's always something that, like, founders sometimes forget. They're like, okay, I mean, I'll just do this myself. Like, I can do this easily.
But going back to your point earlier, if you can't trust people, you can't hire people to do the job, then you don't have a business, you're a freelancer doing the work for, like, a lot of clients here. And I think that's probably the distinction to make here.
[00:14:21] Speaker A: Yeah, it's important to make that distinction. And it's important to, to know that the right HR strategy is going to make all the difference in the dynamics of your team, the skills and abilities you attract to your organization, even the skills, ability and culture that you repel from your organization.
Think about the company. If you go on Glassdoor and you're Google searching for job opportunities and you find a company that you think you want to work for, but you see that their employee experience is rated a one and a half star out of five. Right.
You are less inclined to opportunities at that place that, and you're gonna want to go work somewhere else.
So the right HR helps to attract the right mindsets and attitudes towards growing your company.
[00:15:19] Speaker B: Yeah, it's so much bigger than simply just trying to like, protect like, employees, like legal or anything like that. Like, it goes much beyond that. And I love that and like, so much shifting gear, like a little bit. Because you obviously have like, your HR company, but you also have like your research division aspect, like 43. And that's something like, I'm a bit curious about, is there like any trends that you're seeing, whether it's with like technology for like entrepreneurs or anything like that that you feel like business owners would be like, surprised to learn. Like, I know obviously AI is probably going to be like a big trend that you're probably seeing, but I'd be curious to hear your take on that.
[00:15:58] Speaker A: Yeah, I think there are two things. One, the elephant in the room is AI. The more products that I see and conferences that I attend, chatting with vendors on the expo floor, some of those vendors being large established companies and some of those vendors being, you know, the startup that got a small booth in the startup section.
AI is the name of the game. And so in many ways technology companies are no longer just technology firms, they're AI firms as well.
But I'll spare the whole exposition on the different types of AI and things of that nature. But the long and short of the first thing is that artificial intelligence is truly changing how we work and what our expectations are around work. Give an example.
There's a company that we had a briefing for and one of the feedback that they, that we saw from one of their end users was, was, hey, I'm a single mom, that works. And you know, I don't really have time for interviews during the day, but because I was able to have an interview with this AI recruiter that gave me greater confidence about my job search and I was able to do this interview once I put my kids down for sleep.
So again, it's extending the reach of work beyond just typical, know, first shift, second shift, third shift, but also helping people interact with your brand during non business hours. So that's the first thing. And then the second thing is, you know, there's a lot of conversation these days about diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging and whether companies should be for it or should not be for it. But what I'm seeing in technology is that it's actually being baked. Equity is being baked into the process.
So it's, you know, the talent attraction software that scrubs for biases or the employee recognition software that asks you to expand upon your recognition so that you're not just rewarding the, the vocal spokesperson, but you're rewarding the coordinator who makes sure everybody attends the meetings. So I'm seeing those things be key drivers in this space.
But you know, there are more. But you asked for like one or two, so.
[00:18:24] Speaker B: Yeah, no, I mean, and that's like really interesting, that first point that you mentioned, because I think the last person I had on my podcast, she runs like a staffing firm, like recruiting. And the exact example that you mentioned with like these like AI recruiters being able to like call people, etc. She mentioned like that same point that it was really becoming like an advantage where like some people, yeah, like they're working, they're nine to five, they can't take the time to pick up a call to do an interview with the recruiter at the same time. But if it's an AI, you can speak to an AI like 7, 8, 9pm at night without like speaking directly to that person. So again, like I'm seeing like again like the same concept of just helping us be more efficient, like to be like really simply, it's just helping us be more efficient.
And it's interesting that you're in hr, she's in recruiting, and you guys have like that exact same perspective. So I think that's definitely like a really big one that we're like seeing here. No, I love that. And I guess with like your book here, because that's something I didn't want to like touch on. Is there like any specific type of people that you feel would get like the most value from like your book? Specifically whether it's business owners, founders, anything like that?
[00:19:35] Speaker A: Yeah. So the book is targeted to mid to senior level HR professionals who want to level up in their career but don't have the strategic component to their kind of toolkit.
But as reviews come in about the book, one thing that stood out to me is that one reviewer said this would be great for MBA students who want to open a business but need to know what to expect from their HR founders. I definitely would recommend picking it up because the moment you open your business, you are the HR director.
And if you want to create a great company from day one, maybe the first step is to check out the book and then the second step is to give us a call, provide services for you. But really and truly, it's for HR pros and anyone out there who wants to learn the true value that HR can bring. So if you want no stone unturned with delivering excellence in hr, start with the book.
[00:20:39] Speaker B: I love thought. I think as you like get more feedback, you'll realize that you probably like it's applicable to like a lot more than just like HR professional. I mean students, founders, like CEOs, there's going to be more use cases.
[00:20:53] Speaker A: My kids.
Okay, so my oldest daughter, she's six. And I'm going to have to hire her for marketing one day because she's like the biggest proponent for market telling everyone.
And so she was telling some of her teachers at school about my book. One of them got a copy of my book and told another teacher and was like, wow, there's some really good stuff in there that even we should be knowing.
So even teachers out there did get the book because really and truly it's. It helps you have fresh expectations for your hr.
[00:21:26] Speaker B: Did you give her like a referral code, like an affiliate code for something like that? For to like when she provides it to like, your teachers?
[00:21:33] Speaker A: Not an affiliate code. But I gave her a free copy. I gave her.
[00:21:36] Speaker B: Oh, there you go.
I love that. And for your book, Amazon, any other, like, places people should be looking if they want to find that?
[00:21:43] Speaker A: Target, Barnes and Noble, independent bookstores, you can order it and then they'll ship it to the bookstore, to your house. And also on our Coke on the Cogan page website, if you're interested in bulk copies. But if you're a professor and you're looking for you want an evaluation copy, you can go to koganpage.com and get an evaluation copy too.
[00:22:04] Speaker B: Perfect. We're going to put down the description on just before we like wrap things up here. Joy. One thing that like I always like ask, like to ask him like at the end of these episode is if there was like one thing that you would someone or you would want someone to like part away with like an actionable like step to like be able to like improve their business, their company revolving around like hr. Because that's obviously your specialty is your one thing not. You would tell them.
[00:22:31] Speaker A: Yeah, I would tell every founder who's listening to this. You know, people join your organization because they believe in you and the mission that you're embarking on, but they don't inherently have the same enthusiasm about your company as you do.
And so you have to make intentional steps to recognize people, reward people, communicate effectively, have good policies in place so that they carry the level of enthusiasm that you carry about the work that they get to do. Never make that assumption that people are all in for you as much as you are for the organization.
You've got to, you've got to take care of your people. And effective HR policies help that happen quite a bit.
[00:23:25] Speaker B: Yeah, because as a founder, I mean your company is your baby. And if you have employees, they're not going to see the company as their baby if they get something else up here. But Perfect. Joey, thank you so much for your time. If, like anyone wants to connect with you, I know you're Fairly Active on LinkedIn. We obviously have like the book that we'll put in the description, but anywhere else should people look for you or.
[00:23:44] Speaker A: Yeah, great place is to look for me on LinkedIn and I can share more links about our research. So if anyone wants to be involved in our research, happy to do that as well.
[00:23:56] Speaker B: Perfect. Well, thank you so much, Joy, for coming on.
[00:23:58] Speaker A: My pleasure.
