Business Growth With Louise Bijesse

0:02Hi, and welcome to this week's episode of the Epic Entrepreneurs podcast where we are all about helping business owners just like you achieve success. So we don't do fancy smancy. We don't do flashing lights. We don't do a lot of things that a lot of podcasts will do. These are just real stories about real people and their entrepreneurial and business experiences. We go into their wins, their challenges, and their learnings. So we hope you enjoy it. Hey there, welcome to this week's episode of Epic Entrepreneurs, brought to you by Action Coach Growth Partners. I'm your host, Bill Gilliland, and in this podcast, you'll find three things.

0:46You're going to hear real stories from real entrepreneurs that will help you along your entrepreneurial journey. You're also going to get business tips to help you scale up faster, and you're going to get actual coaching to help you get better real world results to be the best entrepreneur you can be. Hey, and if you like the podcast, remember to subscribe. And now, enjoy the show. Hi, Bill. I'm Louise Bajessi with Uptalent Consulting and Uptalent Search, and I'm based here in Fairview, North Carolina. Awesome. So I know a little bit, but the folks listening don't. tell us a little bit about how you got into this, these businesses.

1:32Okay. Well, thank you for asking that. Now I've been in HR and talent acquisition for most of my career, though I did start out earlier on as a chef, went to culinary school, thought I'd always be in culinary, you know, staying really with that area and then started having children, got married and decided that that really wasn't the career for me as also being a mother. So that's when I went to work for a company. I worked in food service. I did sales for a local food service company based in New York. And then over time evolved, you know, 10 years later, goes by quickly, went to and opened up my own staffing company back then.

2:19And I had temp staffing and I placed chefs and cooks on Long Island in New York City for my clients. And then found that temp staffing really wasn't for me. You know, I didn't really want my future and my livelihood to be predicated on the irresponsibility of the temp workforce that I was running into back then. I decided, and this is going back almost 20 years ago, I would have just worked on direct placements. So I did that for a little bit. One of my clients when I was doing direct placements was Compass Group. And Compass Group said, hey, you know, we're looking for somebody like you to join our recruiting team.

3:07Fast forward, I was at 13 years, moved up over the years. When I left there in 2018, I was the senior director of talent acquisition. And not everyone knows Compass Group. A lot of times they know the companies that are underneath the umbrella. But when I left there, we had over a quarter of a million employees in the United States. I had a fairly significant talent acquisition recruiting team reporting up to me. And then I said, you know what, it's time to move on. I took a role for a VP of recruiting talent acquisition and HR for a healthcare company, moved up to Louisville for a few years, figured to try out something different, got a couple of horses, a couple of donkeys.

3:55We had a farm and living the life and said, you know what? We really miss Asheville, Fairview area of North Carolina. Our children are down here. Back in 18, moved back. but prior to leaving the healthcare company that I worked for, really thought about what I was going to do, what was going to be my next step. So I gave three months notice and was working on my exiting plan, was plan, what am I going to do? So I said, you know, I'm going to start an HR consultancy and not really focus on the talent acquisition part, but really focus on the HR part of it. Little burnt out, you know, went through COVID in healthcare with talent acquisition.

4:38It was a tough, tough ride. So moved, opened up my company, up talent consulting, brought on a couple of clients through contacts that I knew. And then that's six, seven months in, you know, here I am hitting into the beginning of 2023, about a little over a year ago. You know, everyone's coming to me for talent acquisition. You know, when you work in talent acquisition for, say, 25 years, you're like a magnet. So I picked up a few clients for a fractional talent acquisition, still doing my HR consultancy. And then another client in manufacturing was doing a searches, placed seven people with them over the course of the year.

5:27And then started working with Action Coach and really saying, because I was all over the place. You know, really needed to focus in on what I was going to do. And going back to my hospitality and food service saying, I have a great network. I have over 8 ,000 contacts in hospitality and food service. I'm a, you know, graduated chef. I've worked in food service for many years. You know, maybe I need to go back to my roots. And that's what I did. So recently expanded my up talent consulting and still working on my HR consultancy. but expanded and went into hospitality and food service of talent search.

6:10I have a staff now, two people reporting to me. One person's on the HR side and the other one's on the search consultant. And I'm really trying to work on my business. Nice. So are you still doing anywhere or are you just focused right in the hospitality industry? Are you still doing healthcare as well? I'm not doing healthcare anymore. and my manufacturing, we do have one candidate out, but that's pretty much sunsetting that search, but still focused on the HR part of the business. So I'm fractional for a FinTech company. I'm working on employee handbooks, and that's a different aspect, steady income, different aspect of my business.

6:55And then the up talent search is just hospitality and food service. So the talent is you're niching down to the hospitality and the HR consultancy could be pretty much anybody, any kind of any kind of business. It makes sense. It makes it makes a lot of sense, really. And, you know, because that's that's where it is. So that's a great story. So I'm guessing in that within that story, there's been some some some wins and some learnings. What what tell us a little bit about what what you've learned along the way. okay so one of the things and one of my clients on the manufacturing side I started when I was doing some searches for them I did it contingent and my learning is they don't necessarily they don't have to hire somebody and sometimes you're you're putting candidates through and it's and you're not making any money so it's like working for free and yes I did play seven people in there.

7:55Hopefully there's an eighth last one, the last search that we're working on with them. But I've learned that I need to get paid for what I do. I think that's important. Yeah, that's a good one. You don't want to, you don't want to do the work and not get paid. That's a, that's a recipe for disaster. So. Absolutely. Absolutely. And then also I, you know, I have a lot of years of experience in what I'm doing in talent acquisition, in HR, and then also obviously in food service and hospitality, as I said earlier. So I want to get paid fairly for what I'm doing. And I feel like I am now. But my clients in the hospitality and food service space, I am getting a engagement fee to get started.

8:42and I continually work at and look at my fee schedule on what it is to ensure that I'm being competitive in the market but I'm also getting paid for my level of and my team's level of expertise on what we're doing and the amount of time and effort that we're putting into the searches. Yeah that's a great learning. So you've run pretty large teams and now you're running a smaller team and obviously you're going to grow this team because that's probably what your capacity is and what you're after here with your level of experience and all that. So tell us a little bit about some of the learnings around having team.

9:25I mean, you're an expert in hiring teams, so maybe there's some tips you could give us about finding the right people. Have you ever said something along the lines of, my team should be better, or how in the world could they have thought that, or how in the world could they have done that? Well, here's another question for you. What's the last management book that you remember reading or being published? Well, for me, it's the One Minute Manager, and that's 20 or 30 years old. I remember back in the day, you know, my dad worked for retail clothing store chain. And when he went into management, they sent him to management training.

10:03And when he was promoted, they sent him to more management training. And it seemed like they were training, training, training all the time. For some reason, we've gotten away from management training. Well, here's a solution for you. We at Action Coach have a 12-week management training course where it'll teach you a management system that will up-level you and your team. It'll make you more proficient. It'll make you more efficient. And it'll make your team more competent. For more information, just reach out to us at ncbusiness.coach. And now for the podcast. Well, I think it's more than a gut feeling, first of all.

10:50Yeah, it's way more. that's hilarious you have to do your due diligence um you always should be recruiting and and looking for talent and I believe very strongly that you don't just have a job description and try to find someone to fit into that job description you find the great talent you find somebody that's hungry you find somebody that's smart and obviously honest and that they're driven and then you look at what skills that they bring to the table and then you craft how if they can fit into your business and just so look at it um not black and white that's just what's on the paper, but really open to say, Hey, well, they might not fit it the way I thought it was going to do, but they can bring this aspect to the business and they can help us grow in this way.

11:54So be very flexible. Um, it's important to be, I'm a very, I'm an open communicator. Um, I'm very transparent and sometimes a little too transparent though. I'll share a little bit too much that I maybe I shouldn't share, but I also believe in having strong communication with your team and that we're a team working together to, to get to a positive outcome. And, you know, I always say that this three, you know, I used to live up on a mountain. I still live on a mountain, but a higher mountain. I said, there's many ways you can get down to the mountain, the bottom of the mountain. The end result might still be that you get to the end of the mountain.

12:39You sometimes you might get there quicker or you might get bruised because you hopped over the bushes in the back, but you're still going to get to the end. So there's more than one way of getting somewhere. And that's what I think about people bringing them in. There's more than one way of bringing people in. And you'll see, I have a very strong evaluation. We check references. We ask a lot of questions, you know, we'll want to hire the right talent, them but we're dealing with the human element so there's things we have to always remember that are out of our control and while we might think somebody's the right fit and the future those are the ones that are going to surprise you and come back and say you know when i'm moving on to this other opportunity or this is not what i want to do anymore so you should always be making your plan B on what if?

13:33Yeah, the chances of having an employee for 40 years these days is rarer than rare, really. It's pretty hard. I got an interesting question. This is an aside. I mean, I have some theories about resumes and the value of resumes or CVs depending on what business you're in. What's your thoughts on resumes and how they should be handled? Well, I'll give you a little, like, I don't know if you know this, but an individual only reads a resume, like a recruiter, you're lucky if you get a 10 second glance on the resume. That's what I think, yeah. Right? But it's all that they have. I mean, cover letters aren't important.

14:22Cover letters are only important if somebody, if it's more of an executive position and somebody has actually got passed, the recruiter got passed the resume, then the hiring manager might go in and read the cover letter. The recruiter typically doesn't read a cover letter. But a resume, you know, it's interesting because I deal with, I get thousands of resumes and some of them are so poorly written that, that, you know, there's typos and there's, or they try to squish because somebody told them this happened this the other day, they try to squish everything into one page and they worked for 30 years, but they said, well, I only had three jobs.

15:05But I'm like, but what did you do at those three jobs? It's not enough information. Or on the flip side, we had somebody recently had like an eight page resume. It's like a book. Nobody's going to read it. So it should be, I always say two pages. It needs to be concise. It needs to, um, anything that you, that is important to the role that you want to get needs to be in the top part of the resume because nobody's going to get to the, to the next page. And if you had a lot of movement, which a lot of candidates had a lot of movement because of COVID and just because of the, the change in thought process you said earlier nobody's staying at a job for 40 years anymore um they move around a lot but you don't want to see like they work here six months and they're seven months and then on the next page they have a tenure or four years we want to see some stability so try to make sure that that information's on the first page because we're never going to turn over to the next page and look at that yeah it's i think it's a good point that you know there's I mean, that's only in the, I mean, people think they can do a resume and throw it out there.

16:18I mean, I think you, like, if you're out there looking for high level jobs, you should be actually doing the work to get a high level job. and the people searching through the people applying. I mean, I ran a job ad a month ago, and I mean, I had 239 applicants in less than a day and a half. So if there's more of a system to it than I think people realize. Well, let's get back on it. That's interesting information. I hope that helps people. It might help people on both ends of the hiring and the job looking. Right. And most of those candidates were not qualified for your job. Of course not. Yeah, of course not.

17:07So and as somebody who hires people, yeah, I mean, you have to have a deselection process to get down to the people who actually want to be there. Well, we have an applicant tracking system, too, that we use for agencies, for firms. that absolutely to help them yeah to help them go through that help them deselect all the people we use a lot of technology um our system actually goes and finds people you know that are on linkedin and are out there it's it's automatically on search that we don't even have to really put that much information in that we just do a few clicks and it brings figure out people in our database yeah no that's awesome that's awesome well that's great that's great to hear because I mean, I think it's I think particularly on the talent acquisition side, you know, there's I can't tell you how many people that I've worked with over the years who just don't enjoy the hiring process.

18:01They don't enjoy interviewing. They don't enjoy going through those steps. So I think, you know, having someone like you on the team to do that is is a massive shortcut for a lot of them and and and, you know, totally worth the investment. it. So let's do a quick, you know, EPIC is an acronym. So let me, I just want to talk about the importance of the acronym and see what it's meant to you in your career. So these, I'm not going to say these are bullet point answers, but shorter than, than like, you know, an entire term paper here. So, so the E stands for education. So what, what, what's been the role of education or how do you think education impacts success?

18:48Well, I think we should always be learning forever. I mean, until the day we die. I mean, I feel like we should always be learning. So I personally listen to podcasts, read books, and I have a, you can ask Mary, I have a sharing library in my reception area in my office. They're all business books. Anybody can come in and borrow a book, and I do that. So I'm always reading books. So I think it's important. And I listen to podcasts. I've mentioned earlier, I listen to podcasts. Yeah, yeah. I think consuming education in whatever way is best for you. If you're not a reader, okay, well, there's audio and there's video.

19:30If you prefer reading, great. If you prefer audio, great. I think if you prefer talking to people and learning from others, you know, go to workshops and seminars. And I say do it all, but, you know, there's going to be a preference. Everybody has a preference in the way they prefer to learn. All right. So P stands for planning. What do you think the importance of the role of planning is in building your business? Well, I mean, and you can over plan because you can plan so much, but you don't implement. So I really think it's about implementing. You know, you have to put it down on paper, right?

20:06So you own it. Yeah. And then you got to implement it. And so it's not just making the plan. It's actually like, how are you going to execute it? Yeah. So a great, you got to do the plan, but executing it. I think it was Patton who said a good plan violently executed today is better than a great plan executed next week. Right. So you got to have a plan, but then the execution is probably the key. How about inspiration? Where do you find inspiration? um you know i you know my children inspire me um and my team members i mean i have somebody that works for me it's been working for me for a year i mean i've only been in business for a year and half and she's been working for a year and she inspires me and brings a different sometimes a different light a different approach to things and different thought processes um which i get inspired with that just um and I'm you know so I'm a lot of it comes within though I'm very motivated and driven that somebody asked me here in my office like what's your favorite day of the week and I said Monday because I'm gonna I'm excited I'm gonna go to work I'm like really excited like isn't I says yeah I like the weekend I love the weekend and I have a tendency to take Saturdays off and reflect.

21:29But I, you know, I love coming in and doing something and helping my clients solve a problem. Man, I'm with you. I love that. I mean, I like, you know, that's, that's who you want to do business with is somebody who's fired up to come in on Monday and get after it and help people. I mean, I just, I just think that's fantastic. So yeah, well, well done. So C, you know, I do think a lot of it comes from inside. The C stands for commitment. So obviously to be in business, is this your first business? No, this is my third business. Okay. Got it. But there's decades in between each one. Oh yeah, I understand.

22:15I understand. You couldn't escape. I do think that, you know, on the last point, entrepreneurs are a little different i mean i think we do come to come ready to go um and some people i mean you can decide if you want to have a good day or not all you got to do is just decide things can happen and make it some bad stuff can happen but you can decide on what you want so commitment let's get back to that so what what's commitment so you know i really like part of my commitment and it's also goes with autonomy is my commitment to myself, my husband, my, like my future, you know, just everything, um, is really being able, having the ability to take my personal life and my business life.

23:05And it's really one. And because I'm committed to ensuring that I have enough money coming in so I can afford retirement at one point that I can focus. I always say, because I got this from action coach on my business versus in my business. And I'm committed to making that happen, even though I'm still early stages, you know, second year in business, but I'm committed to. So that's a big thing for me, especially as I'm getting older. So I'm committed to making this happen and I said it's my third I mean my it's yeah it was my decisions to exit for personal reasons and this feels like every 20 years I'm having another business but I'm committed that this is my last position as well that I and it could be that I have this forever I mean who knows what forever is anyway so probably not the answer you are looking for but no no I'm always interested in what it means to I mean different words mean different things to different people.

24:09And it's always, I love that. I love that you're on the path to have a business that can work without you, where you can spend your time working on it and not in the day-to-day. And that really gives you options. I mean, that's the key is to have options. I mean, you could build a business that could be sold or you could build a business and other people could run it for you and make a nice income out of profits. I mean, there's a lot of ways you can go, particularly in your business. Any last thoughts? Just excited to be living this. And I'm glad that I have Action Coach helping me because I don't think I could do this by myself.

24:52Yeah. I mean, one of the things about being in business as an entrepreneur, if you haven't done it or have never done it, the loneliness is real. The feeling of being on an island. And so we get that a lot. I know when I first, and I still am to some extent, there is a bit of an island that we live on. So it's helpful to be around other entrepreneurs and people that are along for the journey. So thanks for that. Well, hey, thanks for being on. Thank you for having me. You've been great. Yeah. Hey, and until next time, all the best. Hey, thanks for listening to the Epic Entrepreneurs podcast. Here's three things that you can do.

25:32Number one, remember to subscribe to the podcast. It takes very little effort on your part. It's going to help you and your fellow entrepreneurs. Plus, you guys know how it works. The more subscribers we get, the more cool things we can offer to you. Second, to learn more about growing your business, just download my book, The Coach Approach. It's free for you at giftfrombill.com. That's giftfrombill.com. Hey, and if you'd like more info about growing your business and what we can do to help you grow your business, send me an email directly. Just send it to williamgilliland at actioncoach.com.

26:13That's my personal email that I read. No one else reads it first. It's not screened. It's my real email. Just send it to me. I can't wait to talk to you. Hey, and until then, all the best. hey thanks for listening to the epic entrepreneurs podcast here's three things that you can do number one remember to subscribe to the podcast it takes very little effort on your part it's going to help you and your fellow entrepreneurs plus you you guys know how it works the more subscribers we get, the more cool things we can offer to you. Second, to learn more about growing your business, just download my book, The Coach Approach.

27:00It's free for you at giftfrombill.com. That's giftfrombill.com. Hey, and if you'd like more info about growing your business and what we can do to help you grow your business, send me an email directly. Just send it to williamgilliland at actioncoach.com. That's my personal email that I read. No one else reads it first. It's not screened. It's my real email. Just send it to me. I can't wait to talk to you. Hey, and until then, all the best.