Afford Anything - What If Everything We Know About Hiring Is Wrong?, with William Vanderbloemen

Episode Date: November 21, 2025

#662: Most teams hire for skills. The best teams hire for wiring. What if the reason someone accelerates your organization, or quietly derails it, has more to do with their response time, processing style, or sense of mission than their résumé? This episode dives into the hidden patterns that shape how people work, make decisions, and handle pressure; the clues we often overlook, and the tiny tells that reveal who will thrive. We’re joined by William Vanderbloemen, whose firm has completed nearly 4,000 executive searches. After reviewing years of candidate data, he discovered why some people create momentum everywhere they go and others struggle, even when they look perfect on paper. We explore what “fast thinkers” and “slow thinkers” bring to a team, how to spot agility before you hire someone, and why some workers need a mission while others need a measurable win. Along the way, we reflect on our own tendencies and how understanding them can change the way we build teams, manage energy, and make long-term decisions. Key Takeaways Response speed can signal mental wiring, not politeness, which makes it a powerful hiring clue. The real interview starts long before the formal meeting, which means every informal interaction counts. Agility shows up when plans change, so micro-tests can reveal how someone handles shifting conditions. Many high performers are driven either by purpose or measurable progress, and knowing which matters. Understanding our own lane helps us hire better, delegate better, and build systems that reduce friction. Resources and Links Simon Sinek, Start With Why https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u4ZoJKF_VuA Vanderbloemen Group https://vanderbloemengroup.com/ Be the Unicorn by William Vanderbloemen https://www.amazon.com/Be-Unicorn-Data-Driven-Separate-Leaders/dp/1400247101 Chapters Note: Timestamps are approximate and may vary greatly across listening platforms due to dynamically inserted ads. (00:00) What thousands of executive searches revealed (10:35) The nine markers of high performers (22:01) Fast thinkers, slow thinkers, and finding your lane (25:35) Why response time predicts performance (25:48) Testing agility in real-world scenarios (47:16) Why purpose matters more to younger workers (55:13) Why curiosity is a career superpower Share this episode with a friend, colleagues, your veterinarian: https://affordanything.com/episode662 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What if something as simple as how quickly you respond to an email reveals more about your future success or your fit at a given job than your entire resume? Now, I know that sounds ridiculous, but today's guest has research and data that shows that this may actually be the case. Today's guest has completed nearly 4,000 executive searches. We're talking placing CEOs, VPs, and senior leaders across every industry that you can imagine. And after analyzing mountains of data on what makes people succeed or fail in their roles, he discovered something that changed how he thinks about hiring and how he thinks

about whether or not you're a good fit for the job that you have. Because it turns out the things that we typically look for, like impressive credentials or years of experience or knowing how to give the perfect answers in interviews, these things barely matter compared to hidden behavioral patterns that many people never notice. Our guest today is William van der Blumen. As the CEO of Vanderbluen Search Group, he has placed more than 4,000 executives. Prior to that, he was the youngest ever senior pastor

at First Presbyterian Church of Houston. He has seven children, and he holds a Masters of Divinity from Princeton. He and his team have compiled an enormous amount of research around professional qualifications to try to figure out why some people seem to thrive everywhere they go, while others who have identical qualifications will struggle. What's the difference?

And what are the tiny tells? And how can you take this information and apply it to your own life? That's what we're going to cover in today's episode. Welcome to the Afford Anything podcast, the show that knows you can afford anything, not everything. The show covers five pillars. Financial Psychology, Increasing Your Income, Investing, Real Estate and Entrepreneurship. I fire. I'm your host, Paula Pant, and today's episode really focuses on the double I fire framework.

It focuses on the first of the two letter I's, increasing your income. And it does that by making sure that you're a good fit for the work that you have. So whether you're hiring people, or whether you're trying to get hired, or whether you're just trying to understand what you should do, what career you should be in, why you work the way you do, if maybe there would be a better role for you somewhere? This conversation will change how you think about what drives success. Here he is, William van der Blumen. Hi, William. Hey, Paula. Thank you for joining us. Oh, thanks for having me. I love the place you're in. I love the podcast you're doing, and I'm honored to be here. Oh, thank you. William, you've made the observation that you would never ask a Pomeranian to be a

guard dog. Tell me about that observation and how that applies to the lives and careers of the people who are listening to this. Well, time for true confessions. I wrote about a Pomeranian. The reality is, I have a miniature poodle. But not many men want to say that they own a miniature poodle, right? But our poodle, I swear, there's a thing going through my algorithm right now of dogs barking at the door and Jack Nicholson lines over the top of them.

They're protecting their house like a few good men. And that's our miniature poodle. She sits there and barks and looks at me when I say, be quiet. Like the Amazon guy hasn't ever broken in. when I do this. So she's convinced she could take down a Great Dane, she could take down, and she can't. She'd be terrible at it. She'd get eaten alive.

And I'm afraid some people's careers, people get caught into thinking they have to do jobs they're not wired to do. You know, some of us are wired like the very confident 10-pound poodle, but don't need to be fighting Great Dane's. Others are sled dogs and can do the Iditarod. Well, I wouldn't think my poodle would do very well at that. So I think the key, you know, when we look at all of them, we look at it, So they're dogs.

They're not, some of them bigger than others. Some are shaped different tasks. Humans are even more complex. And too many people hate their job. And too many managers think that the people that work for them aren't any good at their job. So what I was trying to get across in that image of the Pomeranian is, you know, figure out what you're wired to do and lean into that lane. Life is just too short to go through it spending most of your waking hours at a job you don't like. And what I think is great about the dog analogy is that even there is sort of an inherent nature that we all have and you can try to make yourself something you're not.

You can be the miniature poodle that is barking at the Great Dane, but at the end of the day, you're just not going to be as good as a Great Dane at the things that a Great Dane can do. I would love to win the NBA slam dunk competition. I think it'd be awesome. But it's not going to happen, Paula. I'm Dutch. We're short and built for wind resistance. instance, you know, we're not tall NBA players. Everybody's got a dream of what they do. The magic happens when the dream matches your wiring. So how does that drive with, you know, sometimes

people will have these dreams and society around them tells them to quote unquote be realistic. Sure. How do you maintain the audacity of dreaming big while also fitting that in with a framework of working in the way that you're wired? Yeah. I think the key to achieving a big dream, is working in the lane you're wired. So we have seven children, and all of them in the real world, except one in high school still. I am now taking on a new role with my kids. I'm the family HR department. Since I run an exact search firm, they call me with career vibes.

What do I do with this? What do it? And they're all doing totally different things, and none of them work in our company. I've told all of them, you know, if you can run your job through a few filters, you're going to really be happy with what you do. If you can find something you're good at that the world needs, that leaves the place better than you found it, and that you can make some money doing, well, then you found magic. And I don't care what you go into. You know, you can be a garbage truck collector.

And if that hits all those boxes for you, you'll be happy. If you figure out what the thing is you're good at and the world needs it and you can make a living and it leaves the place better than you found it and you run as hard as you can, you might end up being the best in the world at whatever that one thing is. So it doesn't limit dream size. It's just what lane do I run in? And once I've got exactly the right lane, you can probably go farther and faster than in any of the other lanes. For somebody in their 20s, that sounds very appealing.

There are a lot of people who are listening to this who are in their 30s, 40s, 50s, who are thinking, you know, I think in retrospect that I might be in the wrong lane, but retraining at the age of 45 or at the age of 55. feels like such an uphill battle, wouldn't it be easier for me or wouldn't it be better for me to simply retire early and then make that the permanent cessation of income-producing activity? I'd get bored pretty fast. My wife would tell me to go find something to do if I were home all day. I think we were made to work. Most of us were. And everybody'd love to be able to say, I don't have to work anymore. But the reality is we're living longer than ever. Health care costs are going up

faster than ever. Who knows if Social Security will hold when you and I are older. So it's kind of on us to work longer than we ever have. And I think one of the gifts, millennials, I'm in the X generation, the millennials taught us you don't have to stay in the same job or even career. You can change, you know, I grew up with a granddad that literally got the gold watch for working at the same company for how many years, 35, 40 years. That's over. But that's what I grew up thinking you had to do. And reality now is not, you know, I grew up when there were three networks on TV. Now everything's on demand all the time. Jobs are similar.

You don't have to stay in one of two or three places. And you'd be surprised how many people have picked up the idea of changing careers in their 50s even. Okay, I've done this. Now I need a new role. I'm kind of tired of what I'm doing. How do I make that shift? How do I make that change? And hopefully figuring out how you're wired and what.

lane you then belong in can help. That's why we set out to write a book that described and help people find a path on one of 12 lanes that have real questions about how do you manage them if they're like this, how do you find a job that fits this, avoid these jobs that don't fit this, and hopefully it's a simple roadmap to give people a chance, whether they're 50 looking at a new career or they're 20 saying now it's time to get a grown-up job or whatever. Hopefully you can figure out how you're where I would find that lane that you belong in and go farther and faster. In just a moment, I want to go through each of the 12 lanes. I will tell you, when I was reading through the 12 lanes, it was obvious to me which

lanes I wasn't. There were actually two that I eliminated. There was one that I eliminated immediately. I was like, oh, fast. Okay. Oh, I am renowned for my slowness. And I've been like that since I was a child. I was the kid in the school cafeteria who was getting yelled at by the teachers for being

too slow of an eater. So, yeah, my whole life, I've been notably slow at everything I do. And so that particular one, the moment I read it, I was like, whoa, that is not me. Well, and there are jobs for that kind of person, the jobs that you don't want to get involved in. Yeah. So, yeah, in a moment, I want to go through the 12. Before we get to that, though, I'd love for you to describe the methodology because you went through disc assessment, anagram.

What was the other one? It was one that we developed. It's called the Vander Index. Basically, we dropped back a little farther back in the story. 2020 happens. We're shut down. Right. Everybody's home.

Nobody in our sector was hiring, so they didn't really need any executive search on. So we had, we've grown every year, and we had a chance to drop back and actually do some research about all the data we'd gathered over the years, because we've done lots and lots of searches, probably 4,000. get completed this year, which is a big deal, which for every one search, there are hundreds and hundreds of candidates. So we have all this data. And we started to ask ourselves, have you ever met somebody? And within 10 seconds, you're like, I'm signing up for their podcast. I want on their newsletter list. I want to hire them. I want to date them. Or I want to, whatever. That immediate,

okay, that one's different. Yeah. So we said, let's figure out who those people were that we interfaced with and see where they've gone in their careers. And the ones that have interviewed well and progressed, let's see if they have anything in common. It just led to a big research project of the top 30,000 that we'd ever interviewed. We distilled it down to, I thought it would be, we were doing this research about three years ago when everybody that was a teenager was walking around talking about, got to find a guy in finance, six foot five. You remember the thing? Yeah, yeah. Looking for a guy in finance. Trust fund. Six, five, blue eyes.

Yeah. Now he'd have to be six, seven, I guess. With inflation, yeah. Well, I thought it would be things like that. High IQ, well-networked, alumni of good schools, grew up with a family with some means. You know, the normal quarterback head cheerleader kind of stereotypes was none of that. And it wasn't just C-suite people. What we found they had in common were 12 habits that they all seemed to share.

Those 12 habits then became a lens for. saying, these people actually enjoy what they're doing and they're good at it. Most Americans hate their job. Not mildly dislike it. Most Americans, you can look at lots of studies and find similar results. Most Americans hate their job. Most managers think their teams are average at best. These people love what they're doing and they're good at it. So we sort of reverse engineered. We said, all right, let's look at all their disks. Let's look at all their enneagrams. Let's look at all of their, we built an index for those 12 habits. Let's look at all their Vander index and see where there is crisscross, what kinds of jobs, what kinds of things.

If your dominant habit is speed or fast, then this is the kind of job. This is the kind of lane that you should belong to. So it really is a massive study that we started five years ago now that's yielded some pretty cool fruit. And it's amazing to me. I'll have an HR office of a Fortune 500 company order two cases of both books for their high performers. And then I'll turn around and sign a hundred of each book for a class of high school seniors. So it's hit all ages and stages of life. It's not just limited to, I just finished college.

What do I do now? Can you talk about the Vander Index? How did you develop that? Yeah. So the Vander Index, we hired researchers. basically it's an assessment like a disc inventory. I mean, I think it takes maybe 15 minutes to take. And it asks questions in a way that I don't know how to set all that up,

but the psychologist and researchers that we hired set it up. And it gives you of these 12 habits, which are basically just how you treat other people fast. Do you get back to people quickly? No. Okay. I'm picking on that one habit. But for every habit, it's really human to human skills,

which we didn't know when we were researching, but that is the ballgame for labor going forward, human to human. There's be so much that gets tech-driven, so much that gets made efficient with fewer people. And I think those humans that can relate to other humans well are the ones that are going to be the gold standard. So these 12 habits that the unicorns had, we built an index so people could take it and say, well, which two or three of these do I tend to gravitate toward? and which two or three of them are just not my jam. And give people a sense of if be the unicorn tells you how to behave with humans so you can get promoted at work, work how you're wired says, here's how you're wired so you can be in good work. Right, right.

So working how you're wired is what work to choose. That's right. And then becoming a unicorn is how to operate. Just behave this way. People don't like you better. Now, to people who are listening who are not familiar with the disc index, can you briefly describe what that is? It's just a personality index. What do you prefer?

Disc, I don't remember what the four letters are for, but it's D, I, S, and C. High D is a, I'm going to butcher this, but is a real big bottom line leader. Here's what we're going to get done. A high eye is probably you and me. We love getting on a microphone, being in front of a camera, planning a party, gathering a group. S would be a really caring person, a person who curate their work, right? And a C would be like an engineer. It's just got to be right.

And everybody tends to have one of those four as a dominant, and then another that's less dominant. And sometimes what you're dominant in at work and recessive, if you will, flips when you're at home. It does for me. But it's probably, in my estimation, it's probably the most commonly used personality profile in workplaces. So that's why we picked it.

It's just the most ubiquitous. And then everyone, every child I've raised said, well, dad, you have to use the enneagram because that's what anybody talks about now, so. Right, exactly. So I hired a fractional COO earlier this year, and one of the first things that she did was she had our entire team take disc assessments. And you were? I'm the one, I forget the letters it's associated with, but driven by ideas really quick to start, very visionary, but terrible follow through, which I think is probably common for a lot of entrepreneurs. 100%.

You've got to have an integrator. Right. What's that great book? Rocket Fuel. Have you found this book? Oh, no. I have. Oh, everybody listening should find this. If you own any form of business or work for someone who owns a business, because it's the Heath Brothers that wrote Made to Stick. Oh, yeah. Yeah. And it's this big. It's a one airplane ride book. But it's basically the role, a good company that grows, the rocket fuel that makes it go, is a good visionary and then a good integrator, probably your fractional COO, that actually makes things happen. And when those two can learn that that's who they are. work together. It's a real nice salmon eggs. Yeah. Wow. So then the methodology is you were figuring out the 12 zones of how people are wired. So you use a variety of assessments, the one that you developed, plus the disc, plus the

enneagram. Tell us more about the methodology behind figuring out these 12. You hire good researchers. The thought was if we've distilled this down to 12 habits, that people, when they do them well, they get noticed. Well, everyone's good at one of these 12 things. None of the habits are born traits. In fact, we said habits instead of traits because they're just habits. And everybody leans toward one or more. So the more we looked at, what does the disc say about these people?

What does the anagram say about these people? Where do they rank on their Vander Index? You start to see careers, just reverse engineering from people that are good at their job and love it to say, okay, here's 12 lanes and here's where this kind of job falls and this kind of job and this kind of job. And I hope people don't get scared away from starting the book because, well, I don't want to take all these inventories and you don't have doing that. We try to make this cookies on the bottom shelf. Here's 12 paths. Read about this. If you want to go take an assessment for yourself, then do that. That'd be fun. But here's 12 lanes.

If you read the book, you'll find the one. That's me. I like that one too. Then you you've got real clear examples of jobs that work. Jobs that work and jobs that don't. And that's from CEO to mailroom. I mean, it's not just super highly successful careers. Oh, yeah. The jobs that you listed were hilarious. I was literally laughing out loud.

So a couple of examples. One was North Korean military, specifically the North Korean military. It wasn't any. It was North Korea. You had that on the list. One was politician, comma, unfortunately. And that was for people, if you're low in authenticity. Yes.

You're being a great politician. Yeah, so there were several where I was literally laughing out loud. Oh, Dickensian lender, specifically. You know, anytime you see the word Dickensian on a career list. Well, not normally, but that's kind of the style of the writing's a little snarky, I guess. Yeah. All right. So let's go through the 12. The very first one that you listed, which is the one that I am not, which is fast. Tell us about what does it mean to be fast. What we discovered when we studied unicorns and then career paths that they take is there is a place in the world for people who cannot not get back to people. Yeah. Yeah. I had to turn my phone. I have to get back to people. I get a text. It's got to happen.

Oh, I'm the opposite. It's first, because it's my disorder. Unicorns that practice that get noticed. And it's amazing right now, getting a human response with some thoughtfulness to an email or a text. Oh, my gosh, that's amazing. And if it happens quickly, that's even more amazing. So there are people who are designed to be in that lane. I like to get back to people.

I like to do things that are brand new. I like to go fast. I like to jump out of the plane and build. parachute on the way down. That kind of fast-twitch thinking and fast-twitch acting does have career paths that fall down that lane. The coolest thing, though, is once you know you belong there, the interview's a piece of cake. Oh, well, Paula, you want me to come on as your fractional bookkeeper. You don't want to do that. You'll fire me real fast. When I put me on sales where I'm out generating ad revenue or whatever the thing is in your company that sale.

That I can do. I know that because I'm just bent on getting back to people quickly and that's the hallmark of a great salesperson. Right. Emergency veterinarian, I remember. Emergency veterinarian. Yeah. You know, you got to respond to things quickly.

Right then. Right. And these days, it's not just respond quickly, but discern what has to get responded to quickly. Yeah, triage. When you wake up to 500 emails, I mean. And how do I get through that quick? Triage it and then answer really quickly.

Right, right. You know, the reason that the emergency veterinarian on that list stood out to me is because I have a good friend who's an emergency vet. And I remember she told me once, I can't imagine being the type of vet who manages chronic conditions. I had never really thought about the veterinary practice until she made that comment. And when she said that, I was like, it was just a moment where I realized, oh, wow, the skill set of being an ER vet versus the skill set of being a veterinary oncologist

are completely, you know, like, yeah. In Houston, one of the legends in medicine was a man named Denton Cooley. Most heart medicine in the U.S. is either Dr. DeBakey or Dr. Cooley, who were both in Houston, both died in the last, I don't know, five, ten years. So we've had memorials and things for them. And I didn't know until Dr. Cooley died. They're major innovators, their researchers, whatever. His proudest moment was saying that he had done, I forget the number and I'll get it wrong,

10,000 or 20,000 of this same procedure over and I started getting tired just hearing and talk about it. It's not what the fast want to do. They don't want to do the same thing over and over and over in Roat. They want to move from thing to thing and get back to people quickly. Right, right. Okay. So as somebody who is just snail slow, my skill is reading a book, digesting it, and having a long form one-on-one conversation with the author about it, right? That's what I do as a podcast host.

That is the opposite of fast-twitch movement. That is like it's deep study, deep reading, deep thinking, deep learning, long-form conversation. But the consequence of that is then people reach out to me and it could be audience members. It could be sponsored. I mean, just in the process of running the infrastructure of the business that it takes to run this, people reach out to me and I'm terrible at responding. Well, you haven't been terrible for me because I've been contacting with your team. Yeah, exactly. So once you know your lane, especially if you own a business, once you know your lane, you know who else to hire.

So that's my question to you is in job interviews as an employer, if I were looking for somebody who's fast, how do I assess? I mean, people are going to say in a job interview what they think the interviewer wants to hear. Well, this could be a long podcast. You start talking about job interviews. One of the things I think people miss out on when they're running the interview is they think, I don't know how long you think of an interview, 45 minutes, 90 minutes, whatever the length of the time is. Yeah. They think that's the interview. It's not.

The interview is from the moment you start considering hiring me to the moment you make a decision about whether to hire me or not. Right. And all the days and hours in between there. That's the interview. Now, you may have a block of time set aside for a formal face-to-face conversation. where that's part of the process, I encourage people who are looking at fast in particular, and I'm particularly drilled down on this one because it's one of my things, is if they're really, really, truly one of the fasts, it's so chronic, they can't help it. So text them at 9.30 at night,

just see what happens. On a Sunday. Just see what happens. Maybe they don't text you back. That's okay. I say this, and I wrote a column about this one time, and it went in some syndicated business, Journal that got over to Europe. And I got like hate mail from people like, you can't make people work after hours. Very rigid union driven sort of thing. But if you're hiring somebody and you're okay with it, send them a text at a really oddball hour. And if they get back to you right away with five paragraphs, that also tells you something. You might not want all that intensity. But if they get back to you within 24 hours, that's a pretty good marker. People in general don't return calls. Inbound marketing, you know, where people fill out a form, please, somebody will contact

you. You fill out the form and how quickly whoever receives the form responds determines how likely it is you're going to talk to the person. Massive studies have been done on this. And the question is how quick a response time matters when you get to fill out a form and somebody will get back to you. So if the form comes in and you get back to them within 60 seconds, you have a 98 or better, 98% chance or better of talking to that person. If you wait 20 minutes, it drops to 60%. Wow. If you wait 24 hours, it drops to 1%.

Wow. The average response time of all the companies that were paying money for software or fell out of formal conduct, average response time was 73 hours. Wow. So they just threw all that money away. So if somebody gets back to you quicker than 24 hours in a text, that's not during that rather formal interview, that'll tell you if they're fast. And you can do if you need someone who's really agile, like if you were hiring a person to run marketing right now,

marketing is changing every single day with Sorrow we were talking about before the interview, with AI everywhere. Well, you got to have somebody who's agile. That's one of the lanes. If you're interviewing and you want to know if the person you're interviewing is agile, change the interview location about 30 minutes before. I drove by that story. Starbucks, it is so crowded. Do you mind if we meet at Pete's four blocks away? Maybe they get mad. Okay, fine. But I mean, don't, don't be fooled into thinking the 45-minute formal interview is the interview time. That's all I'm saying. Use all the time from when you start considering hiring somebody to when you make your decision as chances to interview them. And once you know what

you're looking for, fast, agile, whatever the thing is, you can do some non-interview interviewing to see how they behave. Because if they're wired that way, they won't be able to help it. They're just going to... Right. If I were looking for thorough, thoughtful, reflective, conversant,

and I texted you and you got back to me in a minute or two, I'd have to sit and think about that. Right. I think you're right where you should be. Exactly. You know, when I was a kid, I remember on Christmas morning, I got lots of toys, lots of books,

lots of clothes, gifts, Books were always my favorite. I'd spent all of Christmas Day just reading and reading and reading. But, you know, none of those are things that I have anymore. They were wonderful in the moment. But decades later, I have no idea where any of those things went. But by contrast, when you give a gift that brings somebody financial security, that's something that lasts a lifetime. Now, when it comes to financial security, nearly half of American adults say that if they lost their primary income earner, they would suffer financial hardship within six months. And so if you want to secure your future before the new year it begins, lock in your life insurance today because that's something that you don't buy for yourself. You buy it for your loved ones.

You buy it so that in the event that the worst were to happen, your loved ones would have some financial security. PolicyGenius helps you find your most affordable policy that meets your needs. They answer questions, handle paperwork. Their license team helps you find what you need in terms of coverage amounts, prices, terms. They have thousands of five-star reviews on Google Adidas. Trust Pilot. With PolicyGenius, real users have gotten 20-year, $2 million policies for just $53 a month.

Don't wait until next year. Give your family the gift of security today with PolicyGenius. Head to PolicyGenius.com to compare life insurance quotes from top companies and see how much you could save. That's PolicyGenius.com. Okay, we've talked about fast as one of the 12 ways that people are wired. There's another one, self-aware. Yeah, we're all pretty bad at being self-aware. But there's some that develop it. You remember the first time you heard your voice recorded?

Yes. Yeah, I do. It's awful, isn't it? Anybody listening get that? I mean, I remember hearing my voice recorded for the first time. I'm like, who is that? Yeah. I don't even like that voice.

It's terrible. That is the human lack of self-awareness. Epitomized. We surveyed a quarter million people, force-ranked these 12 things. Where do you think you're good or not, these 12 habits and 12 lanes? What are you best at and what are you worst at?

Okay. So we surveyed 30,000 unicorns and then a quarter million people just at large. Unicorns, what are you best at? Well, one and two were different because there was no one answer that everybody said, I'm really good at that. There was one that they all said, I'm terrible at. Last place was self-awareness. Gosh, I've got to get better at that. And they're actually the ones that

are better at it. The general survey, a quarter million people, we said each of the 12 habits, and we asked them to force rank whether they're one to five, not good at all, sort of not good, average, good, really good. Get to self-awareness, 250,000 people. Ninety-three percent of them said they were very good at self-awareness, way above average. I don't have a math degree, but I'm pretty sure there's not a group on the planet where 93% are above average. Right. So, you know, unless it's parents talking about their kids, all our kids are above average, right? But it, the normal people in the world, all of us think we're great at it, but when we hear our voice recorder, we go crazy. The people who are really good at it know they need to keep working on it.

the self-aware are these sort of reflective people. They're observers. They watch a lot of things. They're watching themselves and how they're probably, you have any friends that are really quiet, but when they say something? Yeah, exactly. It's brilliant. That's the self-aware. You don't want them in sales.

Right. You don't want them doing your marketing. Well, maybe you're marketing. If they're aware enough to feel pain points, Don Draper was probably a good marketer that lacked complete self-awareness. but there are some that observe. But to me, you find someone who's really self-aware. They'll tell you whether they belong in the job or not. Right.

Because they already know, you know, I'm good at this. I'm not good at this. In fact, once you know your lane, this is a little off topic, but it's pretty cool. It's like an icebreaker question people use in interviews, and it really paralyzes the person being interviewed. And it's the question, so tell me about yourself. Exactly. It's too broad. Oh, well, I started one.

walking at 11 months. So that was, you know, I mean, do you answer my first solid food at six months? Oh, right. Is that what we're after? Or, I mean, I think you're probably just trying to kill time to get us all talking. But, but what would happen if you're interviewing me for a job and it's for a head of marketing and your company's growing really fast? And I say, well, let me tell you about myself. Here's what I'm learning about myself. I took this thing called the disc inventory. I'm a high eye. I love to find and plan the next party. I'm a 7 on the Enneagram.

I'm always on to the new project. That's who I am. I love doing things quickly. I love doing things where we don't know how to do them yet. I love doing things that require someone that wants to respond quickly. And that's what I'm learning about myself as a high eye and an Enigram 7. That means if you want to hire me to be head of compliance, don't. You want a bookkeeper, please don't hire me.

me. I could probably figure out how to do it, but that's not what I'm wired to do. What I'm wired to do is to go down this road of marketing with you, maybe, and figure out the new frontier that it is with AI, with outsourced things. It's a whole new ballgame. And if you look at my last three jobs, the reference letters I have are for projects I worked on where we didn't know what we were doing when we started and we figured it out. So what I'm learning about myself is I love that kind of challenge And I look at your company and I see the growth you've gone through. And I'm guessing you're jumping out of planes, building parachutes on the way down. And for this particular role, you need someone that is actually looking forward to that, not paralyzed by it.

And I think I can be that person. So here's what I'm learning about myself. I think I'm wired in a way that might work with this job. It's a pretty cool answer. Right, right. It also prevents the interviewer from then going to the worst interview question on the planet. And that is, tell me about your weaknesses. well I never ask for a raise I don't use my PTO you know what I do you answer that well I already did

I don't ask me to do repetitive tasks over and over with thoroughness that is not who I am but put me in a job like marketing right now 100% and when you when you learn that about yourself you will interview so well you won't even have to think about whether you're getting the job right when you're answering about how you're wired it inherently answers the question, what are your weaknesses? I mean, I've literally just told you mine. Right. And we didn't have to go through that nasty exercise because no one knows how to do good interviews. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. All right. Agile is also one of the 12. What does it mean to be agile? Do you have a friend when you say, what's your favorite book you've ever read? And I just finished it. Yeah. Yeah. And it's

always the most recent book. It's always the best book every time. They're learning new things. The shadow side of agility is ADD, you know, and shiny object syndrome. And I'm not, I've got a kid with ADD. Like, I'm not, please don't send me you. No, I have an ADHD diagnosis. It's fine. But the value side is people who can multitask, people who love to try new things. Yeah.

And we were doing a chief marketing search for a very large organization that is a nonprofit and communicates across probably six different generations. So the chief communications officer had to figure out how to carry the same message to the elderly couple who wanted printed materials delivered via U.S. mail. That's a thing. And then they had to figure out how to carry that same message to TikTok. So this is omni-channel communications. As we looked, we figured this is all changing so fast. We need someone agile.

So we started interviewing. And here's a perfect example of agility. and when you're interviewing, what's a new hobby? It doesn't have to be a favorite one, but what's a cool new thing you're doing right now? Agile people will have that. The lady that we interviewed for this chief communications role, I said, what's something new you're doing? So I'm learning French. She's in Southern California.

I'm in South Texas. I'm like, listen, that's great. I took French, but you live in California, I live in Texas. If we're going to learn something other than English, I have a different suggestion for you, you know. Right, yeah. It would be far more useful to learn Spanish, right? Right. And she said, yeah, yeah, but that's not the point. I said, okay, why are you learning French? She said, well, this was 2020. She said, my daughter's a class of 2020. I've got one of those two. She said, yeah, this is college. Oh, mine's high school. She said, well, my college graduate, I had promised I'd take her to Paris for a week. And now we can't go anywhere. Right. And I don't think we're going anywhere for a while. So I said, tell you what, let's play a game. Who can become fluent in French before we go? If you can pass a fluent. exam and I can pass one, we'll stay for two weeks.

Wow. So they're learning French because of a thing they're doing together. It's bringing them together. It's not just wasted shiny object. I've got to go do this kind of pointless energy. Right. And it shows an amazing agility. So I'm like, well, do you want to learn TikTok?

Well, I'd love to learn TikTok. I know the U.S. mail thing. Worked out great as a chief communications officer. But it was all based in agility because that particular sector is going through so much change right now so quickly. And people who are agile, a lot of people will say the future belongs to the fast. I think the future belongs to the agile as well. Do you know what five years from now looks like? I don't know what five months from now looks like. That's even better said. I mean, it is just the rate of change is not going to slow down. And if you are in any kind of business

is going to be impacted by AI, which is all of them. But like, it really impacted. I'd be looking for agile people over everything. We've never done it that way before. before, or we've never done that before. They say that's the seven last words of the church. It's going to be the seven last words of a lot of businesses. And it's not too late to start hiring agile people and adopting some change. But man, agility is going to be, I think, more sought after than anything in the next phase of the world that we're entering. There are going to be people listening to this who hear that and think, all right, then I would like to become a more agile person. But as we already established, some dogs are Pomeranians

and some dogs are Great Danes. Some people are wired to be agile and some are not. So if you are not naturally wired to be agile, can you become more agile in a future that's going to demand it? Or can you find a job that doesn't require as much agility? I'm the HR department for all my friends kids too. We've got some dear friends who have a kid who's going to set the world on fire with some kind of research. And another one who just really is not interested in books as much. And they were so worried about it. And my wife actually gave me the advice, why don't you send him to pipe fitting school or electrician? And your parents think, how do you win a Nobel Prize in that? It's not a real job. Yeah. Yeah. Parents think it has to be this magnanimous thing. But

if you look at what jobs are really going to be around over the next, I mean, the trade skills are bulletproof for a long time. And if you're not agile and you're worried, well, maybe you learn to do a trade skill that you like doing. That's okay. But can you learn agility? Well, sure. And agility, even if it's how you're wired, the interesting thing about agility, unlike any of the other 12 lanes or habits, agility, atrophies, naturally. Really? Well, you ever try stretching? Yep. Yeah. Is it easier or harder than when you were 10 years old? Right. Yeah, yeah, exactly.

I mean, I was, I try and run. I was up here two weeks ago and ran the. marathon. Oh, the New York Marathon? Yeah, we were raising money for cancer research. Wow. Yeah, my daughter, my son, and my daughter's boyfriend ran with us, which was good, because they've been dating long enough, and we need to know if he's a finisher or a quitter, right? So he finished, so that's a good sign. But we're up here running, and so I'm a runner, and I have had to start stretching to keep from getting injured. Right. And I remember when our youngest was, however old, three and a half feet tall is, you know. Yeah. She came in one day. I was trying to stretch, I was sweating more during the stretching than during the run because I'm

just not a super flexible person. She didn't say a word to me. She just looked at me and then she sat down on the floor, tied herself into a human knot, like only a little kid can, looked up at me and smiled, untied herself, got up and left the room without saying a word. And it dawned on me, Paul, it dawned on me, William, every day you're alive. You get less. flexible. That's true of business teams too. It's true of podcast studios. It's just natural. It's biologically what happens. The longer you're around, the more you get stiff, the less agile you are, the more you calcify. So even the agile, it's the one habit that you have to feed and work on every single day or it will go away. And I would say, no matter how you're wired,

everyone should be working on stretching in some way. And that might mean, learn how to play a new instrument. It might be that simple. Develop a new hobby. Develop a new hobby. Take up a new sport. Play mahjong with your wife. Like, learn how to do that.

Learn something new. It will teach you that curiosity, the agility, the thing that keeps us from calcifying. But it takes daily work, even if you're good at it. So another one of the 12 lanes, perfectionist or perfectionism, Now, that seems to me like a, in some ways, a character deficiency. You would think. Years ago, I was a pastor in a previous life, a long time ago. That's why all these answers are so long-winded, sorry.

I was going out to eat with a guy in our church, had just gotten to the church. And he is a world-renowned neurosurgeon. Houston has a lot of medicine. We're sitting at the table. I'll call him Paula just to protect identities. but he sat down at a really nice restaurant to have lunch and he spent, and I watched my watch, he spent three full minutes, which is a long time. Three minutes takes a while. Three minutes arranging the silverware, so it was lined up just, right? So he finishes and he looks up and he's not

dumb. He saw me watching him and he said, what? And I said, Paula, have you ever looked into obsessive-compulsive disorder? And he looked at me and said, William, you want your brain surgeon to be OCD. Oh, that's right. I don't care if the guy that flies me back to Houston today is nice or not, but I want him to be detail-oriented and be a pilot for United that, you know, is super highly attentive. I don't know that I want to go out to eat with him, but get me home. So there are some jobs that require, what you call it, perfectionism, thoroughness, diligence. I mean, anytime we were running over those bridges during the marathon, I'm like, golly, this probably took a while to figure out how to build.

And it probably took a perfectionist. I walked and ran across the Brooklyn Bridge this morning. 13 years it took to build that thing. That was a bunch of perfectionists. And thank goodness it was. Right. You can't raise a suspended bridge with a road without paying attention to detail. Right.

Right. Edith Roebling. Yes. Yeah. Yes. So what types of jobs other than neurosurgeon? are good fits for perfectionists. Well, I think anything where people are, where it has to be right, accountants, that's a

great job. And I don't know what the AI forecast for accountants is, but I tell my accountant, I have two rules, in order. First rule, I don't look good in orange jumpsuits. So that's the first rule. Second rule is, I don't want to pay any more tax than I legally have to in that order. Right. She has to be right or I go to jail.

Any job, if you think about it, is that something that has to be done exactly right? Then that's a perfectionist. I was a horrible house painter because I don't take the time to go over it carefully, right? Right. So any job that requires that level of getting the detail just right. And so what should a perfectionist not do? Art is you'll never be finished. Right.

Things that don't get finished. fiction writing consulting i mean you do all this work tell a client follow this this and this and this and then they don't do any of it that's what consulting is usually so you'll get very frustrated if you spend all this time working up this perfect plan and people don't follow it right might be other little jobs like jobs that you should not take if you're a perfectionist probably a fitness trainer because people who know how to stay in shape generally don't have to hire a fitness trainer so you few of it. You're telling them what to do and they just don't do it. So any place that's going to frustrate you that things aren't perfect, speedy delivery, FedEx driver, all the engineers

that work in any oil and gas field better be perfectionist. Right. One of the ones you haven't mentioned, Paul, that's really interesting and we're seeing as a growing trend is we thought it would just be one lane, and it is one lane, but it's called purpose driven. Some people are wired to want to do work that they believe deeply matters. And we've seen in millennials to some extent, Gen Zs, I read a study that said 76% of Gen Zs that were surveyed wouldn't even consider a job until they knew why the company existed. You know, the Simon Seneca talk, start with why. I think it might be one of the most popular TED talks ever. And it's a thing right now. I want to know the why. I want to know what's my. Well, some people are actually driven

by that. I have one life to live. I want to make it count. Or they've had something happen. You know, my wife has cancer, kidney cancer. And so that's what we were running for. We were raising money for that. And it wasn't about finishing a marathon. It was, we're running, you know, we were the A team. Adrian is her name. So yeah, my kids don't have any idea what the A team is. But old, old show. But that was more than just a race. It was going to be a marathon. Then we get this diagnosis. It's like, no, no, no. Now it's for some people. are wired that way, that if they don't know that their work is going to last beyond them, create a meaningful ripple, do some good in the world, they're not going to be happy.

I think most people who are accomplished have some form of North Star. It could be the sales guy who sees last year's October was this number. I'm going to beat it. And that's the North Star. It's a pretty low North Star. But the higher the North Star, the farther people actually go. But even evil people in the world had a North Star that. they were following, a wrong one, but a North Star. And the people who are wired for that

really need to consider careers that, I mean, it's pretty hard to figure out how working at Perrier is changing the world. You kind of dig a little bit. No shade on Perrier. No shade on Perrier. I've supported them individually. I probably had kept their business alive. But it's pretty hard to get to What's the nobility behind that? There's that famous quote. Was it Steve Jobs? It was somebody who was recruiting someone to come work for him. And he was recruiting a high-level executive at Pepsi.

Yes. And he said, do you want to spend the rest of your life selling sugar water? Yes. You know? That was his pitch. And Gates had a similar one. I think he said, well, you can keep doing that or you can come change the world with us. Yeah.

So he would be one that's driven by, I don't think Bill's driven by money. I think it was a change the world computer in every house. that whole dream. And if you're wired that way, it's a great time to go into business because AI is not going to replace nonprofits. And you can make a living ring a nonprofit, you know, it sounds kind of contrary. But if you need meaningful work, or you go to work for Tom's shoes or for, you know, you name it, chick filet, something that falls in whatever you think you're calling for a higher purpose. If you're wired that way, it's important to know because you will get very frustrated in a whole lot of jobs. Manufacturing, don't do it, you know, unless you're

manufacturing something like Bibles or something that's going to make a lasting impact. So really interesting to see how that has become more, more of something that the majority of young workers are interested in. I don't know that they're all wired for it, but it's, I think, a pretty cool sign of what our future leaders look like. Right. And that actually opens up, there are probably be people who are listening to this who are thinking, well, I am very purpose driven, but I'm also very agile. How many of these different lanes can a person fit into? I would say two or three. You can't say all of them. If you say all of them, you're probably just fast or agile, and you just like them all. Yeah. But they're two or three. And the cool thing is when you start to overlay those things,

I think we put in the book on, I think in the chapter on agility and purpose driven, we both listed run FEMA. That's the ER vet. That's the, okay, you woke up and there was a flood or an earthquake or a hurricane or whatever. Somebody needs to get boots on the ground and solve this real fast and you're doing it for a purpose. Well, that's a great job. Right. I noticed that executive assistant was written under many of those. Yes. Many, many, many of those. Yes. Yes. Of course, executive assistant, to be fair, completely depends on who you're assisting. Right. Your executive The assistant probably needs a different skill set than mine. Right.

You're probably easier to work for, too. Well, but bosses can be hard in different ways with my team. What I provide is a lack of structure. Yes. That some people thrive in that environment and other people chafe against that environment. You know, the lack of structure stresses them out. And the, especially in a very small business, the requirement to wear so many hats means necessarily that they don't have a, highly specific job description that they hew closely to. No, it's very specific. It's other duties

as necessary. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. And for some people, that's a blessing and for others it's a curse. And I was thinking that when you were describing purpose driven as well, you know, what a person values, person A versus person B might have two totally different values. That's right. And so persons A and B can both be purpose driven, but they could actually be working in opposition to one another. 100%. And you just described Washington, D.C. Right, right.

Good people on both sides, and they're both working for causes, but they're not always seeing it the same way. Right. But our society needs both, so long as we don't get too polarized or entrenched or tribal, I think the society needs both in order to determine where the boundaries of that Overton window exists. You hit on a great thing. We did not touch on in the book.

And so maybe as bonus material, we could talk about it a little bit. Size of the company also determines how much agility is needed. Just as I said, agility atrophies. Every day I'm alive, I get less flex. Every day a company is alive, especially if it's a growing company, it gets less flexible. And we need a young company with small headcount, agility, everybody better be agile or you're not going to make it. We've even found I'm yet to be able to hire someone. Well, I have a one, our COO, but I think that's the only time I've hired someone that's worked for a Fortune 500 that has worked out at our company.

And I've always thought, well, they worked at that big company. It's great. Totally different atmosphere. Right. You know, and more agility required. So be sure when you're looking, I know how I'm wired, I know what kind of job. Make sure it also matches, you know, the, there's a guy that works for Exxon in Texas. I don't know if you still have the job, but 20 years ago, all he did was change light bulbs in the office building.

Like, that's all he did. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. So one job. Yeah. So you can say, well, I'm super agile and I'll be the agile guy at Exxon. Well, there's very little agility at Exxon. They have one got to change the light bulbs. They have one got to do. So look at the size and age of the company when you're figuring out where to go. And if you're managing people, read this book because there is a little section in every chapter. If you have a person like this on your team, here are tips for what to do and what not to do when you're trying to motivate or manage this type of person. So I think it would be really helpful. We briefly had an employee whose entire career prior to coming to work for us,

she had worked for her local government. And so it was a very rigid work environment. Sure. Parks and Rec. Yeah. Yeah. Very, very specific. job description, a lot of guardrails, a lot of boundaries, a lot of red tape, and the shift from doing something like that to coming and working for a hyper small business, you know, a team of five. Where you have a goal, just go get it done. You'll figure it out.

Yeah, exactly. And we're like, all right, welcome, figure it out. Yeah. That's right. That's right. So the podcast studio that we built, I told my son, I'd go get on YouTube and figure out how to do it, 2015 or 14, whenever we started. Right.

One we haven't talked about is there's some people who are just naturally curious. Their jobs where that's not a cool thing. You're not supposed to ask questions. You're just supposed to do the job. But there are other jobs that if you are always saying, why? Why is that? Why do they make it this shape instead of that shape? I mean, is it better packaging?

Does it sell better? If you're that kind of person, there are so many great jobs where people really need human discernment. about how things go together and the curious are the ones who can do that. They're the best management consultants. They're the ones who can spot a problem and figure out a pathway to solve the problem. And right now, while you can send out an email newsletter and an AI can generate the whole thing or you don't, but like that is an option for people now or you need a slide deck put together. AI can do that. The ability to say how do all these dots actually connect and affect our business, we're not there yet.

And if we do get there, then we're probably all out of a job. But until that day, people who are curious by nature are going to be highly valuable because they're always asking the why underneath the what. They're always trying to figure out, well, how does this work? How do we get better at that? The curious people have a bright, bright future in the workplace. And so what types of jobs, if somebody's listening to this and they think, you know, that's me, I'm inquisitive, I'm curious.

I like to connect. I like to synthesize, right? If that resonates with someone who's listening, what are some types of ideal jobs for them? Yeah, well, you don't have to be a doctor, but that's the first thing that comes to mind. Tell me what's wrong. That's what the doctor does.

It could be a physician's assistant. You know what kind of shortage we have in the nursing industry right now, and that's not going to change. Particularly as a population ages. Population ages, but lives longer, so it's getting more health care. Right.

And you're not going to talk to a robot. Right. Yeah. So there will be changes in the nursing industry. But if you're curious and you're wondering why people, why can't they sleep at night? Well, maybe they need this. Maybe a healthcare job. Maybe a researcher. Maybe you could do deep level research, like an analyst for a consulting firm. But the curious have a high value, especially if they're curious about things they've never been curious about before. Like, I've never seen that. That's exciting. If you're wired like that, you have a very bright future in the job market. What should the curious not do? They should not go to a job where they can't ask questions. We don't ask questions here. We just do this manufacturing.

You do what you're told. Do what you're told and don't ask any questions. And a lot of companies just have that vibe. Well, it's working, so don't ask any questions. You know, 3M up in Minneapolis used to have a mandate. They invented all. I mean, they had more patents, probably more patents. than anybody. They had a rule for a while that if you were in management or above,

15% of your day was set aside to figure out things you hadn't thought of. 15% of the work day. I mean, that's a lot. In an eight-hour day, one hour is, what, 12.5%. That's right. So that would be a little over an hour. Yeah. I want you just sit and think about things you hadn't thought about yet and come up with new stuff. Find somewhere like that to work. We've talked about a number of attributes so far, agility, curiosity, being purpose-driven. Do these change over time? I think agility, we've mentioned, actually, atrophies. It will go away if you don't tend to it. I don't know that the others do.

I'm not as fast as I used to be. I have to be a little more discerning about getting back to people quickly because I can't get back to everybody within a minute. I used to say, we'll always get back to you within a minute. And my team just hated it when I was on a podcast like this, because they would get flooded with calls from people saying, just want to see if you get back to me in a minute. So I think as your life change,

changes, you have to steward your wiring differently, but I don't know that they fundamentally change. I don't know that you will have a clear vision of what that lifelong lane for you is until your frontal cortex is developed. And for females who have it together more than men, I think you're done at 24 with your frontal cortex at least in a year. So if you're 20, 21, 22, I don't know yet. I don't know yet. That's fine. That's fine. Your first job is not your last job. Ask any successful person what their first job was. I bet it's not at the company they're at right now. So it's okay, as long as you're treating your employer as well, to kind of test the waters for a while.

But once you get to 25, I think your natural preferences are going to fall in one of these 12 lanes. How you use it will change over time. And the one that will go away is agility. But I think we are who we are. I mean, you're either Pomeran or you're not. Right, right. We've been talking about how these various traits reflect the type of work that you do. But the other thing that strikes me is, in addition to the type of work that you do, there's also, more broadly, company culture.

100%. And you mentioned company size, and that plays a role in it, but outside of size itself, there's also simply company culture. How can a person assess that as they're trying to figure out what's going to be a good fit for them? Yeah, well, the Internet's your friend. You mean, let me see if I understand correctly. If you're thinking of, I'm done with podcasting, I'm going to look for something else to do, I'm going to interview around, I'm going to get a new job, how do you learn about the company culture at the company you're interviewing with? Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

Well, first of all, hopefully they have it spelled out and it's real. So in 2018, we wrote a book. We kept winning all these best places to work awards. It was getting kind of stupid. We won Best Office Dog. Best Office Dog? Yeah, it got out of hand. That's amazing.

Well, he was an amazing dog, but Moses is one of a kind. What kind of a dog? Standard poodle. When we got married, Adrian said, I'm allergic to large dogs. I'm allergic to dogs that shed. And I said, well, I'm allergic to small dogs. So we ended up with a large standard poodle. Yeah.

But when we won all these awards, we ended up getting asked to over and write a book. Write a book about your culture. I'm like, I'm not going to write a book about that. So we studied 150 different companies that were winning the similar awards. And we said, what do they have in common? And this is how I don't write books. I do research projects. And then they turn into a book.

And it turned into a book called Culture Wins. And when we were writing it, we were studying places that do culture well. They do the hard work of figuring it out. And you'll see their cultural values everywhere. You'll see ours plastered on the wall when you walk in. And the biggest one of the nine, we did it as a word cloud of our nine values, is ridiculous responsiveness. So you would probably not like working. I would be terrible at that.

But it's been great for us because we now can interview and say, we know we're crazy. Yeah. Here are nine markers of how we behave because workplace culture, if your vision is what you're trying to get done, workplace culture is how does this team behave as we're getting that done? Like what are the family rules? That's what I see culture as. And if culture's strong, you'll pick up on it. And, you know, you would run away from our company and, you know, sorry, but we're crazy. We'd get back to people right away.

Okay. So what I'm hearing is it's the responsibility of the company to really clearly convey. It's the responsibility of the company to clearly convey. So we studied places that were not winning the award that had their cultural values. We found one big elevator lobby, a company in Houston, and the four walls of the elevator lobby to go up to the office building. I had the four values written on it. integrity, trust, I think reliability. I don't forget what. Well, that was the elevator lobby for a company called Enron, which was massive fraud. It's like you can write it on the board all

day. But, you know, it's who you are when you are working there. You can ask AI, though. I mean, I would verify what it binds for you, but you can ask AI about the churn rate of a company. How much turnover do they have? How does that stack up against the industry? What do we glass door reviews say about working there. And you'll start to hear, and I mean, people who take time to fill out reviews are usually very positive or very negative. Right. Yeah, exactly. You know, it's either your mother or your mother-in-law that's writing. So you can use the internet to find out as much as you can as a future employee about the company culture. I wouldn't necessarily trust what's written on the wall. But when you talk to people and you say, well, how do you, you know,

when you interview with him, you can say, well, I've studied and I see your four values are this. How does that play out here? Or is it just words on a piece of paper or what? And people will tell you, and if it's good, they will immediately start telling stories. And if it's a small company like yours, structuralist structure is one of our values. If you can articulate how you behave, you will naturally attract people who behave the same way. And that doesn't mean same age, same gender, same. This goes across generations.

Right. How does remote work play a role in all of this? Because both of the stories that you told involve physically coming into a space and seeing something written on the wall, ridiculous responsiveness, written on the wall. What happens for a remote team when there are no physical walls? Very, very difficult. Very, very difficult. An old curmudgeon. And I think that being able to Zoom with somebody's great, but there's a reason we're sitting in the same. room together today. Yeah. There's something different when humans interact with humans. And

I know there'll be hybrid work will continue. There's some work that needs to be remote, but I think people coming back into the office is going to be more and more of a thing. I'm seeing it with the Gen Zs that are my kids. They're like, I had a daughter who worked up here two summers for a company and they wanted to come back after graduation and work. And she didn't want a job that was remote. She wanted to be in an office. So it's harder to do culture when it's remote. It's harder to be a part of things when it's remote. I face time with our kids who don't live in Houston every night, but it's way better to see him face to face. So I'm not very bullish on that. Sorry. Right. For the people who are listening who are entrepreneurs or who are managers who are

hiring, how do you balance the desire to capture nationwide talent to expand that search pool to talent nationwide, particularly if it's, if you're looking for that unicorn, you're looking for somebody who's excellent at a very, very niche skill. You want to expand that talent search nationwide rather than curtail it to just your locality. But you also would prefer an in-person team. How do you balance those two? You should write a book about it. I don't have any answers. I have only questions. It's attention to manage for sure. It's attention to manage. there's some jobs that are just so skill specific that you have to throw other considerations out the window. I mean, I think as an employer, if you're looking to hire people, your first

job is to know your company, know what works and what doesn't. You know, if you are, you use your company, I don't know the first thing about it. So let's say it's 20 people. We're five people. Okay, you're five people. Where are you guys located? We're fully remote. Okay. Well, then it shouldn't be a problem at all. But if you had five people who were coming in here every day. And there's this one person, I don't know what they are. They're like a back end coder for the one thing you need in your company. And you're willing to take someone from Alaska. Well, these five people that are coming in every day are going to be like, well, why are we coming in? Yeah. Right. I mean, so it's the employer's job to know what works at our company and what doesn't, you know, and what

above everything else matters. And if his talent and skill and we don't care where you live, that's great. But stayed it up front where I see managers get in trouble. is when they see talent and then break all the rules they use to hire the people that they have to go get the talent. And it just, it can be advisable in rare circumstances, but usually it costs the team more than you gain. Right. Inconsistency is where people get into trouble. I think that's right. Authenticity. The authentic manager knows what's going to be good for the team. When you hire a person, you change the chemistry of the team. Right. Every time. That's why people are afraid of it. It's why I have a job as an exec search guy. It's really disruptive.

So I think managers who do the best job of hiring are the ones who really know who their company is and how much change they can tolerate. And then they hire thinking of the whole team and not just getting the rock star that's out there. Right. You know, we briefly mentioned authenticity as one of the lanes. I don't think we actually dove into it. Authenticity is also one of the lanes. But what was interesting when I was looking at, at the list of, hey, if you are not authentic. If you're at all a chameleon, a lot of really great salespeople can become whatever they need to walk into whatever room they're walking into to make a human connection and sell a good. Right.

So it's not a bad thing. I think the people who really value authenticity and they're people of principle, they're people who don't do that, you know, that wouldn't be who my true self is, there is a very specific place in the world for jobs that need that kind of authenticity, law enforcement comes to mind. Be the good cop, right? Authenticity matters there. Authenticity matters in religious leadership, whether it's a synagogue or a temple or a mosque or a church, what have you. People need to know that the person they're looking at actually is who they say they are when they're off the stage and up close and personal. And if you're not that kind of person, there's a place for you. It's

You should probably find another word than authentic because it makes it sound like you're a bad person if you're not authentic. Yeah, yeah. But if you can change skins quickly, which is not a adaptable. Politicians, I do not know. I've traveled this country so much since I started this work 17 years ago. I don't know how you win the presidency. You know, when I go to eastern Washington and it's different than Western Washington, which is different than Ohio, which is different than some other swing state. You know, you have to be able to adapt to the crowd to get the thing done.

And I guess we need a different word than authenticity. But if you have to behave according to who you know who you are, there's a place for you too. It's one of the 12 lanes and there's lots of good jobs that are listed in there that you can find. Right. It sounds as though there's almost a certain degree of rigidity that's incumbent with authenticity. I think that's right. You know, whereas the opposite would have flexibility.

I think that's probably a fair statement. And usually, you know, in healthy marriages, there's usually one of each of those kind of people, you know, law and order and a little bit looser in the saddle. There are many people who are listening to this who are in their 40s or 50s. Yes. And they're thinking, I'm not in the right career. Yes. I'm not in the right job. I don't love what I do.

And at this phase in my life, I could retrain, but that would be just a huge pain in the butt to go back to school at the age of 49. or, you know, 52, and to be in school for another X number of years. So I could retrain or I could try to retire early, but even if I did, I'd be 55 and I'd still have all of this energy and life and vigor, and I want to make a contribution to the world, and I don't exactly know what that would look like. Yes. And that's the position that they're in. And what words of wisdom would you have for?

Yeah, well, it's right where I'm living. I don't think many people would do very well just retiring. Even if you retire, I would bet if you're energy, if you worked hard enough to be able to retire at 55, you're not good at sitting still. Yeah. Unless you invented something, right? Even if you retire and go volunteer, you don't need to be volunteering at a volunteer job that is misery. You need to know how you're wired so you can volunteer in a place that's like, I know how to do this. I can do this, you know, of all the things that this cancer journey were on, I know how to raise my mind.

I can't solve cancer, but I can go raise money, and that's a volunteer thing, and it's how I'm wired, I enjoy doing it, I'm good at it, and that makes it fulfilling. So even if you're going to retire at 55, you're probably going to have to find something to volunteer, better to know how you're wired. So you're volunteering in a lane that would match how you're wired, because when you're in your lane, you'll go farther and faster at your job or your volunteer work or however you're filling your day. But what if working how you're wired requires retraining? What do you do then? I don't think it does. I don't think it does. If you looked through the book, I'm making a bet

without knowing the book by heart, you will find in every one of those chapters job options that don't require technical training. I think the future of human work is humans talking to other humans about human issues. So if you discover your wiring is I should go learn how to be a coder. Now I have to go to sit. Don't do that. Because coating's over. You know, that's going to be automated. Most of the technical jobs, aside from masonry, pipe fitting, electrician that we talked about before, the labor-intensive trade skills, those you do need to go learn.

But learning how to be a volunteer coordinator, learning how to be, I mean, a good COO can run anything. My wife's the best COO on the planet. She's managed to get seven kids and me functioning as adults and running. running the place, she could run any company in the world. So I don't know that the training of a skill-specific thing is necessary. If you're looking at changing your career completely and you've got some financial security, I think you will find a job that fits your wiring that focuses on human-to-human skills. And yeah, who knows? It might not be a job in five years.

Right. Well, thank you for spending this time with us. Where can people find you if they'd like to learn more? Yeah, unfortunately, our company is named after me, and the only reason is back when SEO was a thing, Vanderbluen, you can misspell into Google about a hundred different ways and you'll find our site. And you'll find the site. And if you're running a team on our site, it's not just executive search. There's probably 6,000 free resources for leaders on how to build and run and keep their team. So you just type Vanderbloom and however you want.

Same with the book. Just go to Amazon and try spelling Vanderbloom. and all the things will come up. That is actually nice to know that people don't have to spell it correctly. Just type any interpretation of Vanderbluen. Yeah, Vanderpump was a TV thing for a while. Right, yeah, Vanderpump rules. Yeah, you might get Vanderbilt, but you get past those two.

It's pretty much going to drive to us. Excellent. Well, thank you. Thank you for having me on. It's a real pleasure. Appreciate what you're doing through this podcast. Oh, thank you. Thank you so much to William Vanderbueman.

What are three key takeaways that we got from this conversation? Key takeaway number one. Your response time to emails and texts reveals more about your career potential than your resume. So if you're hiring someone, don't just focus on the formal interview. Watch how quickly they respond to your texts or emails because this is a window into their mental wiring that predicts performance. William discovered that the response time, it's not about politeness. It's about how some people are fundamentally wired to process information and act on it. Some people are fast.

And if you're hiring for a role that demands fast and demands responsiveness, then you need somebody who shows this, who demonstrates this. If they get back to you within 24 hours, that's a pretty good marker. People in general don't return calls. inbound marketing, you know, where people fill out a form, please. Somebody will contact you. You fill out the form and how quickly whoever receives the form responds determines how likely it is you're going to talk to the person. Massive studies have been done on this. And the question is how quick a response time matters when you get to fill out a form and somebody will get back to you. So if the form comes in and you get back to them within 60 seconds, you have a 98 or better, 98% chance or better of talking to that person. If you wait 20 minutes, it drops to 60%. If you wait 24 hours, it drops to 1%. Now, that being said, not all roles demand responsiveness. For people like myself, you know, what am I good at?

I'm good at reading a book, thinking very, very deeply about it, and then having a one-on-one conversation with the author about the ideas and concepts from that book so that we can create a long-form interview, a long-form piece of content that can educate people. That's more in the Cal-Newport deep work vein. And so what that means is that I need to hire somebody to be responsive on my behalf so that I can focus on deep work.

Different people are wired in ways that make them succeed or stagnate in different roles. And the key to top performance is putting the right people in the right roles. So that's key takeaway number one. Key takeaway number two, test for agility by changing plans at the last minute. That will reveal who thrives and who doesn't when everything shifts. Certain fields change rapidly. Marketing changes every day. Tech evolves constantly. People who succeed in those fields can pivot without breaking a sweat. So you need to know whether or not someone's truly agile if you are hiring for one of those roles or if you're applying for one of those

roles if you think you might want to go into one of those roles again you need to determine if you yourself would thrive in something that requires agility throw them a curveball during the hiring process watch what happens if you're interviewing and you want to know if the person you're interviewing is agile change the interview location about 30 minutes before I drove by that Starbucks it is so crowded do you mind if we meet at pete's four blocks away. Maybe they get mad. Okay, fine. But I mean, don't, don't be fooled into thinking the 45-minute formal interview is the interview time. That's all I'm saying. Use all the time from when you start considering hiring somebody to when you make your decision. That is the second key

takeaway. Finally, key takeaway number three, some workers need a mission and others need a measurable win. Knowing which type of worker you are changes everything because not everyone is motivated by the same things. William found that high performers fall into two camps. There are people who are driven by purpose. They need to know that their work matters beyond just a paycheck. And there are people who are driven by progress, measurable progress, and they thrive on beating last month's numbers. And neither is better or worse. They're just different wiring. And this is about working in the way in which you personally are wired? Some people are wired to want to do work that they believe deeply matters. And we've seen in millennials to some extent, Gen Z's,

I read a study that said 76% of Gen Zs that were surveyed wouldn't even consider a job until they knew why the company existed. You know, the Simon Sinek talk, start with why. I think it might be one of the most popular TED talks ever. And it's a thing right now. I want to know the why. I want to know what's my. Well, some people are actually driven by that. I have one life to live. I want to make it count. Those are three key takeaways from this conversation with William Vanderbluen. Thank you so much for being part of the Afford Anything community. If you got value from today's episode, please share it with a friend. Share it with someone in marketing, in tech. Share it with the people who are really super fast.

at responding to emails and texts, and share it with the people who, like me, are very slow at that. Share it with the people who thrive when plans change, and share it with the people who prefer stability and predictability. Share it with people who are looking for a job, people who are thinking about a career change, people who are wondering what they're going to be when they grow up, regardless of how old they currently are, because you can wonder that even in your 50s and 60s. Share this with all of those people and more, because that is the single most important way that you can spread the message of F-A-W-I-R-E. Also, please subscribe to our newsletter,

afford-anything.com slash newsletter, where we send out thoughts, ideas, learnings that we don't discuss on this podcast. So for special content that you won't find anywhere else, subscribe to that newsletter. It's totally free, afford-anything.com slash newsletter. Also, open up your favorite podcast playing app. Hit the follow button so that you don't miss any of our amazing upcoming episode. and while you're there, please leave us up to, and including, a five-star review.

You can also watch us on YouTube. Watch these videos at YouTube.com slash afford anything. Subscribe to the channel, like one of our videos, leave a comment, tell us about what you thought about any of these interviews. Again, that's YouTube.com slash afford anything. Thank you again for being part of this community. I'm Paula Pant. This is the Afford Anything podcast, and I'll meet you in the next episode. Thank you.