[00:00:00] Chaz Wolfe: On today’s episode of Gathering the Kings.
[00:00:03] Darrin Carr: I’ve always enjoyed hiring A players. Uh, I mean that, that thrill when you bring on somebody who’s just going to make a difference, because the golden rule of recruiting is A players hire A players.
[00:00:13] Chaz Wolfe: You are listening to Gathering the Kings with Chaz Wolf, featuring Fellow seven, eight and even nine figure business owners who have real battle scars from business and life, but have prevailed as the king that they are designed to be.
[00:00:28] We welcome high performing entrepreneurs to the stage in order to reveal the real of the real on what it takes to build a successful business today. We dissect the good and bad decisions they’ve made along the way. They give a true and accurate picture Of the journey of success and how you too can get there through this dialogue You will learn the value of growing your network and surrounding yourself with power players and kings like today’s guest Grab your pen and notebook because we’re about to dive in What’s up everybody.
[00:01:01] I’m Chaz Wolf gathering the Kings podcast. I’ve got Darrin Carr here on the King stage. My brother, how you doing? Really good Chaz. Thank you very much. Thanks for having me on. So excited
[00:01:13] Darrin Carr: to be
[00:01:13] Chaz Wolfe: here. I appreciate that energy. I was just telling you off air that we go through a little bit of a process. You probably felt like what in the world we go through a little bit of a process to get people on the show, but we love energy, like mindedness.
[00:01:25] But we’re going to get into your story here in a little bit. But Darrin, tell us what kind of business that you have.
[00:01:30] Darrin Carr: Yeah, thanks for asking. So we have a recruiting and HR service agency here. I got out of corporate eight years ago, started this. It was a solopreneur thing for a couple of years. Uh, and then just started needing more and more help as more and more clients came to us and I’ve been blessed in that way.
[00:01:49] We are, we’re true headhunters. We’re a recruiting agency that really focuses in on what makes that client tick, what functionally and what makes them sparkle culturally and why, and trying to determine at core, what does this company need? What does this company offer? And then just draw those connect those dotted lines between client and candidate.
[00:02:09] And, and then we also have an HR service. Of the, of the company where we have HR staff who help, like for instance, help onboard for long term retention and company handbooks, things of that nature.
[00:02:21] Chaz Wolfe: Yeah. Just such a needed space. I’m so excited to be able to get into some of the stuff with you because every entrepreneur, especially.
[00:02:27] Especially someone who’s listening today, who wants to grow is going to have to hire and the guys who are already been on the show or been successful, they know they got to hire and they’re going to continue to hire. So it’s, it’s an obvious need, but before we jump into kind of like how you get started and all the benefits of what you’re doing, because I think this is going to be a show like we haven’t had before.
[00:02:49] Why are you doing this? You’ve already been successful and you’re still doing it. Why? What’s the bigger picture
[00:02:55] Darrin Carr: here? I guess the backdrop is coming from being a corporate boy, starting as a 20 something 22 year old sales rep and just going through that whole corporate life and structure, which I. Three quarters enjoyed one quarter had some differences with how things were going, but it manifested from that experience, sales rep, district manager, regional sales manager, and then director of sales.
[00:03:19] And finally, director of recruiting. I got the full Monty. I got all that experience. I was, I know how to put together a meeting and it was great. It’s just, there were some parameters, some things that philosophies politics that I just wasn’t completely a hundred percent down with. And so I decided to strike out.
[00:03:35] to do what I wanted to focus on. I was doing this and here’s what I enjoyed. So now I get to focus on just what I really like. And I love it. I love the parts that I love are I’ve always enjoyed hiring a players. Uh, I mean that, that thrill, when you bring on somebody who’s just going to make a difference because the golden rule of recruiting is a players hire a player.
[00:03:54] So I got to make sure I have a players. Uh, that’s a lot of fun. Seeing them develop. And then, um, on the, obviously seeing the careers of the people that we hire for our clients develop. And to be totally honest, is that a hunt, the thrill of the kill it is. Oh man, I just stole your company’s best person, my recruiter did.
[00:04:13] And that, that’s a little, that’s fun to see the excitement in, in our client’s eyes when they’ve hooked the good one, that’s going to make the difference. So that’s what keeps, that’s the fun of it for me.
[00:04:21] Chaz Wolfe: So I heard two greater purposes in there. I heard number one, freedom. Cause you didn’t want to do it.
[00:04:26] Underneath someone else’s umbrella anymore. And then I also heard just the fulfillment of, wow. When I can actually, when I can do the thing that I love and it provides this amazing experience, wow, I get fulfilled. And so my follow up question to that, was that always a thing? Did you always have that feeling or is it even more so now that you’ve developed this awesome business and like, it just has skyrocketed.
[00:04:48] Tell us about how you’ve gotten to this feeling of purpose.
[00:04:51] Darrin Carr: Yeah, right on. Good question. That, those like. Two or three thrills that are in it for me that I just mentioned have always been what has driven me, but it has just become in sharper focus here in the last five, six years. It’s to where I am zeroed in on exactly what I want to do and how I want to do it, and how I think, and actually, I’m, how I want to do it is actually an amalgam of how everybody on my team thinks we should do it.
[00:05:17] So, I hire good people and trust their opinions and their intellect. And step one for me is just collecting that, that opinion and hearing everybody out. But yeah, I would say it’s always been there for me, that sort of impulse to like better people and better companies. And like I said, take pride in the people that we have stolen away that are amazing.
[00:05:36] So it’s always been there, but it’s just been more magnified here in the last five years as I’ve got to do it on my own terms.
[00:05:43] Chaz Wolfe: Yeah. I love that perspective spoken like a true entrepreneur. Thank you. Okay. So tell us, okay, you had the corporate history. Obviously you wanted to do your own thing. You gave us that, but what were the things that led?
[00:05:54] What were the couple of like moments where, okay, this is enough. I’m doing my thing. Tell us that little period of time. Like you actually got started in this, you actually took the risk.
[00:06:05] Darrin Carr: I would say like, it’s a convergence of challenges that my own desire and some challenges that the industry I was in faced.
[00:06:13] And so it just made it pretty clear to me. So I was in publishing, educational publishing. So college textbooks and software. So I was going around the country, knocking on professors doors in chemistry and philosophy and English and psychology and, and talking with them. And what, that was a learner’s dream.
[00:06:28] First of all, like, Coming into contact with the nation’s best minds, researchers and authors on every topic imaginable. So it was thrilling for a long time, and I still love that environment. Um, but again, as I rose up through the ranks, you need to become necessarily more and more tied to policy. That maybe I wasn’t completely a hundred percent in line with, and, and also too, coupled with the fact that when I started, there was 25 publishing companies of some size.
[00:06:55] And when I ended, there was five, so shrinking industry, sharks in the water, company takeovers, all that stuff. And then there was the travel. I was traveling every other week for many years, all week. And then the last couple of years, it was every week. All week and I had twins 10 years ago and that all that convergence of all those factors and me just wanting to do my own thing that just came to a head and I I’m out.
[00:07:21] Chaz Wolfe: Yeah. Yeah. Now, obviously, like I said, a few minutes ago, spoken like a true entrepreneur or a nonconformist. You’re like, dude, don’t put me in a box. I did. I’m that, that whole feeling is resonating, coming through the screen here, do not put me in a box. Did that come from the way you were raised? Is that just your personality?
[00:07:37] Like, where did that come from? Cause that’s obviously the stem of it.
[00:07:40] Darrin Carr: Oh, that’s a good question, Chaz. Yeah, I have always had a good healthy measure of fight the power in me. And I like, I, and I, and by the way, that’s one of the most healthiest things. Challenge authority is what I try to instill in my twins to some reasonable degree.
[00:07:55] Sir, it can backfire and it has, but I like that. Their mindset on that. Yeah. So I would, yeah, I would say that I’ve always had that. And then that’s why there were some cognitive dissonance in my corporate experience, because a part of me didn’t agree with what was going on, but you got to deal with it, you got to deal with at the time.
[00:08:11] Yeah. In childhood, I always was like the song goes, I fought authority, the authority always wins. And pretty much authority one, I was still had that mindset and it did help to break away from, from all that structure.
[00:08:24] Chaz Wolfe: I love what you said about your twins. How old are the twins? They just turned 10. Yeah.
[00:08:29] Okay. So I’ve got an almost nine year old, six year old, three year old boy, the two older girls, and then my newborn daughter. But I am already experiencing these things where I want them to challenge. I want them to ask questions, all the things that we’re talking about. And so in the moment when they’re.
[00:08:45] Challenging me or asking good questions. I have to go, wow, they’re doing exactly what I’ve trained them to do, but this is not the right moment. I’ve learned to say things like, I appreciate your persistence. I appreciate your excitement about this. I’m excited that you have lots of questions. I’m not going to answer any of those right now because I’m your father.
[00:09:05] And what I said, let’s go right now. I am stealing those phrases.
[00:09:09] Darrin Carr: I appreciate what you have expressed. I love it. Yeah.
[00:09:12] Chaz Wolfe: Yeah. Because to your point, I don’t want to be the dominant. Entrepreneur force in my own house and then create a bunch of yes men or women, right? I want to, I want to create creative thinkers.
[00:09:23] I want to create more entrepreneurs. I want to create people who are providing and creating just like you and I are. And so I think you’re trying to do the same thing with yours. So I read recently that children are
[00:09:32] Darrin Carr: like the most accurate hypocrisy detectors ever created on earth. And that is so true.
[00:09:38] Like, wait, Dad, you said that two months ago and yeah, that’s right. So
[00:09:42] Chaz Wolfe: it’s so true. They are sponges and they’ll keep you honest, but at the same time, when you know that you’re literally developing a mind and we do this with our people too, probably you can speak to this point just from an acquisition perspective.
[00:09:54] Once you have somebody come in, although they’re in a player, you still There’s, there still has to be some like an onboarding, like you said, right? There has to be this, Hey, here’s, here’s, here’s the way we do things. And in the Wolf house, JC, this is how we do things. This is how I want you thinking. Yes. I want you challenging me, but now’s not the moment for that.
[00:10:13] So we gotta be, we gotta be able to have both. But anyway, neither here nor there, such great conversation. And I appreciate you bringing that up about the twins. I want to know along the way, before you were seven figures in the middle of the grind. Maybe it’s when you were a solopreneur, maybe it’s just after you’d hired a first one or two people.
[00:10:31] What was that one key thing, that decision that you made? You can look back on and go catapult that one thing that I did.
[00:10:38] Darrin Carr: Yeah, I, that’s a great question as well. Lots of good questions. I would say it’s when I finally turned the corner on business development. So I believed I had a great product and a great methodology and great tools.
[00:10:50] And because I, I say that we have four things that. Companies don’t have art that use us time tools, the process and the expertise on the recruiting process. So I knew I had those, but just coming out of the gate, building a client base, I was doing what you’re supposed to do, or at least what I was told to do.
[00:11:08] And that was a lot of digital effort and a lot of time and resources and money and people put on cold outreach out in the digital sphere. And like people do, and I just, I don’t even want to know how much money and how many hours went into that to very little effect. Yeah, I’m not even going to tally that up.
[00:11:27] That’s in the past. And I’m a windshield kind of guy, not a rear view mirror guy. Like I rarely like to do this only if I messed up and I need to assess. Sure. But, but so it was turning that corner. I’m like, okay, no, this is not working. We need to focus in on this warm, organic human growth. And that was simply like taking our client base that we had and really talking with them about what groups do you belong to?
[00:11:50] And what are these groups do for, would you introduce us? So it was making a decision to proceed in that way with growing our client base. And that has made all the difference in the world. A hundred percent or almost all, we do no advertising. We are all a referral. And that is that we get into a community and then we hopefully provide value with tools that we’ve created and webinars and things like that.
[00:12:11] So, and build trust. So it’s, it was that decision after that costly decision that really started turning things around for us. And we got into some of these larger collectives and masterminds and communities.
[00:12:24] Chaz Wolfe: Yeah, no, I love what you’re referring to. And it’s a mindset easy versus hard is how I, how I see it.
[00:12:31] A lot of times people in today’s world think the digital running ads or the quick and easy lead. And there’s a play for that. I think that if you’ve got a, if you’ve got a good sales team and you got a guy that can follow up and hit the phone, sure. But a lot of these guys listening today are like, Where you and I once were, where it was maybe just us, or maybe us and maybe one or two others, and there isn’t necessarily a designated trained salesperson who’s just calling these online leads or whatever.
[00:12:58] I’m not saying that those things are bad. I come from a sales background. I love online leads. We’ll crush them all day long. But to your point. I think there’s just so much weight in human interaction, being real, genuine, even interactions like this. I don’t have an agenda here with the show. I have six figure folks listening.
[00:13:15] I have seven plus figure people on the show, and I’ve had some people listen who want to join our mastermind. I’ve had some people be on the show. Who want to join our mastermind? I’ve had folks that have been on the show and I’ve done a deal with them. But like I’ve referred them to other people who have been on the show.
[00:13:27] I don’t like they’re right. I just want to meet people. I want to be able to create human capital, if you will, as is really what you’re saying, organic human capital, and be able to press into those relationships, however they form out based on the skill sets and the value that I bring. Is what you just said.
[00:13:42] What would you add to that? Yeah.
[00:13:45] Darrin Carr: No, I would completely agree with what you said. It’s a human capital. It’s, it is relationship driven. It is a needs based. It is giving where you may not get back, but you just go on. Faith and past performance that you’re going to get it back. For instance, you’ve spent a lot of time developing a lot of tools that we give out for free.
[00:14:03] How to, how to build your hiring structure, how you’re hiring blueprints on things that are commonly missed, how to onboard for long term retention, how to, how to lock down the candidates that you like in the process in a gradual way to where it shouldn’t just be an offer. It shouldn’t even be an offer.
[00:14:19] It should just be setting a start date. So a lot of things that, that companies wouldn’t have sophistication, To do, why would they, it’s not their gig, right? The nuances of recruiting. And that took time, a little bit of faith to build out a lot of tools that we share for free and webinars and things like that.
[00:14:36] It has been a case where what is going to help people right now? What’s going to have them trust us and value us. And even though it took a lot of time, that’s the direction we just decided to go and it’s really proven out so far.
[00:14:49] Chaz Wolfe: Yeah, I love it. Love the mindset. Let’s flip the coin. What was the bad decision looking back that you made that if you had not done that one thing, you’d probably be in a different place.
[00:15:00] Darrin Carr: Yeah, I guess I would have to go back to that, that putting all the eggs in the digital basket and that outreach and we have, will we go back to doing some of that? Yes. We’ve just been blessed with. A lot of activity and client people needing people. It’s still a very tricky labor market. And so we’re in a good spot in helping good folks with good people, but, but it would be that year long effort of, like I said, untold dollars and hours put into purely a digital outreach.
[00:15:31] Chaz Wolfe: Yeah. I heard you say a couple of things. I heard, I spent a bunch of money on the digital side and it didn’t really pan out. And then on the organic side, you said, okay, this was good. It feels right. It’s human capital. Yeah. But it took longer. Can you maybe give some, okay, here’s the example of what happened with digital, maybe some money that you spent or lost.
[00:15:49] And then here’s maybe an example of what it looks like on the, on the organic side.
[00:15:53] Darrin Carr: Yeah, that’s a great question. Yeah. So I think on, on the digital side, on that sort of outreach. It was just becoming obvious by the metrics week after week, month after month, that we just weren’t getting the returns for the dollars or even close.
[00:16:09] So I, maybe we, I had the wrong people, the wrong methodology. We’re talking like Facebook, we’re talking Google ads, we’re talking just. Mixture of all those things, cold emails from lists, things like that. Yep. And as that became more and more evident, that wasn’t working. You just started reaching out to groups.
[00:16:27] And actually the best place to start was the current clients that we trusted. And hey, what is supporting you? What, who are you? Relying on and it would be the first mastermind that we join know that the owner of that mastermind really took me in and just sat down and said, Hey, here’s the way it’s like everything you find a good mentor, ask the locals, ask what’s going on the ground.
[00:16:47] And that is one method that I will never give up is just always getting the trade secrets from the people who know what’s going on in this particular owner of. Very successful mastermind, just spent a lot of time with me and it guided me on how to start this building value, how to build value for them before people would even consider utilizing our services and got website pride.
[00:17:10] Just like I just was a sponge from him and very thankful, but that’s what I’m like, okay, this is the way to go. Now we’re meeting people in his mastermind and now that things are starting to solidify. In a structure that, you know, is automated and makes sense. So that’s the turning point. I’m like, okay, this is the way to go.
[00:17:28] Chaz Wolfe: Yeah. I love that. It’s all a relationship based on that same example that you just gave as well. What do you think about a process or maybe even a discipline principle, maybe that you live by now, Darrin thinking about decision making.
[00:17:40] Darrin Carr: Yeah. So I am a gatherer of consensus. I really am. I, I know there’s a lot smarter people than me in the world.
[00:17:48] And even on my team, I am blessed to have really smart people around me. And particularly the key people, the closest people around you, like your operations manager. I just happened to have the most amazing operations manager who has really launched my business to another level. I have hired many hundreds of people.
[00:18:06] I have managed many dozens of people. And. She is probably my best hire, I can say unequivocally. So my first step is to gather consensus and with the people, what’s on their minds and what their opinion is. Give us a few days to sift through those bullets that came from it, meet again, walk through the upsides and the downsides of each option of each bullet point, and then just try to weigh risk with reward.
[00:18:30] And hopefully we have a mutual decision at the end of it.
[00:18:34] Chaz Wolfe: Yeah. Love that process. Okay. I want to switch over to our speed round. I’ve got several questions I’m going to hit you with, but I’m notorious for asking for more information, even after I asked the one question, if you could dwindle the entire business down there to one trackable metric, what would it be?
[00:18:50] Clients. Happiness and satisfaction slash quality hires. And I guess those two things go together. I was gonna say for you to go together, how are you tracking the quality or the happiness of the client? Yeah,
[00:19:03] Darrin Carr: good question. We have, we recently we’ve switched systems quite a bit, but we have, we have a customer relationship database and an applicant.
[00:19:12] Tracking system that go together and we keep very thorough notes. Everybody who talks to a client, the notes have to go in there. So we have a, first of all, that helps us. We got a written record of everything that’s gone on conversation notes, discovery meeting notes, check in notes. We have weekly check ins, all of our clients, weekly check ins with the recruiters.
[00:19:27] So everything goes there. So we have a basis of, and that’s thanks to Whitney. I am not the check, check kind of person. She is. So everything is there. So that gives us a base of information from which to draw on. And so when that, when we do meet for our client satisfaction meetings, we’ve got all the data right there.
[00:19:43] And so I would say the most important things in achieving that client satisfaction are, and as I say this all the time to our, to our clients, if you have a good recruiter, which we do. Plus an engaged client, which you have to have, they’ve got to be responsive. Plus great communication that equals a great hire.
[00:20:00] So that communication piece is so important to us. In addition to weekly email updates, we need a client satisfaction meeting with that client. 15 minutes. Hey, are things on track this week? What, what have you seen? What have you not seen that you want to see in candidates that we’ve submitted? So those are some of the most important ways in which that we track those metrics.
[00:20:20] Chaz Wolfe: Yeah, I love it just getting with them and asking how they’re doing.
[00:20:24] Darrin Carr: Yeah. Yeah. And of course we have, we got the, we can run the reports from the software on the metrics, how many hires, days to hire that kind of a thing. And we actually bonus our recruiters if they, not only if they found a great hire, the efficiency with they found it and, and things of that nature.
[00:20:39] So yeah, that’s how we operate.
[00:20:41] Chaz Wolfe: Yeah. You’ve got your, your, even in the back end, what you’re just describing, I’m pointing this out for the listener. That. What he said was the number one metric he’s got then supporting action behind it, even in his comp plan. And so he he’s saying this is the most important thing, but then he’s even incentivizing his folks to be able to not only do it quickly, but to do it in a high quality way, which is going to give them that experience, that five star rating at the end, what book Darrin, would you recommend.
[00:21:05] That a six figure business owner read.
[00:21:08] Darrin Carr: I’ll go back to an oldie, but a goodie that I read a long time ago, because that impacted me a lot. And that’s good to great. And I’m maybe because of one principle in that book that I remember, and that was hire the best person absolutely possible and then figure out how to.
[00:21:24] They are going to help your business because the quality of the person, and I’ll use a couple of people in my company as a, as an example, Whitney, our operations manager and several others, but you bring the best person in and they are loaded with talent. And there’s three things I tell clients to hire for, and that is aptitude slash ability.
[00:21:46] Overexperienced. You get a lot of experienced people who don’t have a ton of skill, aptitude and ability, drive, spark, hustle. Do they care? Are they in it? Do they have ownership and cultural fit with that company? The core values, do they fit? Are they going to stay there a long time? Yeah. Those are the things that we look for in candidates that I look
[00:22:05] Chaz Wolfe: for in my people.
[00:22:07] I am curious to know, actually, what you just said reminded me of another book by Patrick Lentz, the ideal team player. Are you familiar with this book? No. Oh my goodness. Okay. So he talks about the three things when you’re bringing on a team player. Do they need to be hungry, humble, and smart? And he breaks down what those things are in a pretty similar fashion to what you just did.
[00:22:26] But I think of those things when I’m hiring, or even when I’m talking to other entrepreneurs, when we’re talking about employees or hiring or building culture, hungry, humble, and smart, that’s a phenomenal book. I think that you’ll like it.
[00:22:35] Darrin Carr: I love it. The hungry and the humble. I like all of them, but especially the hungry, maybe, but the humble is so important as well.
[00:22:42] And that, and those that the hungry part, those are hunger, character, drive, integrity, those are the tricky things to pull out in an interview. And so there are methods that we use behavioral questioning that have a candidate walk through how they, how their hunger helped them, how their humility helped them in a particular business situation.
[00:23:04] Yeah, but just a quick little tip here. Those are, those are the ones that are tricky. The only time. And it will tell a process will maybe show the cracks in the foundation of a candidate in those ways, hunger and humility and integrity and character and drive. And so that’s why we recommend three to five steps after we even vet as hard as we do.
[00:23:23] So those things start to come to four. And because it is, you need somebody who is eager to get at it, wants to prove themselves to the world. And that’s good stuff.
[00:23:32] Chaz Wolfe: I love it. Yeah. The, I was just talking to an entrepreneur just a couple of days ago about this and the motion, Oh, I was trying to remember now what the, how we were using hungry, humble, smart, shoot him a draw blank.
[00:23:45] Bummer. Okay. Maybe he’ll come back to me. That doesn’t happen very often. Happens to me all the time. So you’re lucky. Yeah, that’s good. That’s good. Obviously what we’re taking away from you here is that there’s gotta be a process. There’s gotta be something that we’re looking for. And then someone like you.
[00:24:01] Ideally can come in and help us find that person, but, oh, that’s what it was. It was the situational questions that you just said. I, that’s what I was telling him to do, which if you just, your whole interview is just, what would you do in this situation? What would you do in this situation? What would you do in this situation?
[00:24:14] Tell me what you did in a situation like this. Tell me it’s just over and over and the responses that I’ve got from interviews like that in the past. Cause obviously you can have some fun with it and have some personality to it. It didn’t have to be just like a grilling session, but especially in sales.
[00:24:29] And I’m putting people in situations all the time and being pretty gruesome. The feedback I’ve gotten afterwards is dude, that was, you put me through the ringer, but I liked it. I like. You had me on my toes. You had me like bobbing and weaving with your questions. And, and if they’re not like that, then it’s pretty easy to know.
[00:24:44] They got tired out pretty quick with all my situational questions. Good for you, man. You’re
[00:24:47] Darrin Carr: dialed in on what it takes to get at the heart of what makes a person tick because we’re tough on them too. And I, we train our recruiters. Well, we, first of all, we hire people have got to be know what they’re doing when they come in.
[00:24:58] We really just orient them to our ways. And, but behavioral interviewing, we’re pretty tough on them too. We do five stages of behavioral questions and we hit them all up at the same ones. Like. Number one, tell me about a challenge you had with X, like a sales leadership challenge. Number two, what was the plan?
[00:25:12] How did you come up with the plan? Who’d you talk to? Number three, how did that plan unfold? How did it execute? Number four, what was the benefit? What’s the benefit to the company? What happened? What were the metrics? And sales go up 28. 3 percent in the fourth quarter. And number four or number five, what did you learn from that?
[00:25:26] Or what did you, what would you do differently going forward? Gets it adaptability, intelligence, coachability, And so that’s a five point question and that’ll stun some people and it’s okay if they come back and say, wait, what was number three? What was number four? Because we want people to work their way through it and have some clear, compelling, cogent, coherent story that they either went above and beyond or were creative and intelligent about how they solved that.
[00:25:51] That’ll tell a lot of tales right there.
[00:25:53] Chaz Wolfe: A hundred percent. I want the listener to pause right now and just realize that, that he just gave you some interviewing juice, but at the same time too, here’s the reality. Is that you’ve got to just. Squeeze the person in a way, not like in a, like a physical aggressive way, but you’re trying to put them in a situation where, like you said, you can see who they really are.
[00:26:12] You can see the cracks if you will, or you just hired Darrin and he does it for you.
[00:26:19] Darrin Carr: Well, uh, I can do that for you or for any of your listeners. I am happy to, I have myself cooked up a big batch of those behavioral questions that get at about every attribute. And I’m happy to share for anybody who would like them.
[00:26:31] Chaz Wolfe: Love that. Yeah. We can put that in the show notes for sure. Okay. You’ve already mentioned mastermind. So I’m curious to hear what your thoughts are. My question normally is, do you network or mastermind with other entrepreneurs? You’ve obviously said that you did, you used it for organic growth. Was there anything else that you’ve gotten out of either networking or masterminding with other entrepreneurs?
[00:26:48] Darrin Carr: Oh my gosh. Yeah. Like I said, being from corporate, I am finding my way, even though things are going well, I, I need, I need to know what other people are doing that are doing a lot better than me. So yeah, just attending these live sessions and I’ll attend three or four online meetings per week with these different groups and yeah, to hear, first of all, to hear the strategy and tactics that other people are using, but the energy and the intelligence and the drive is, uh, Infectious and energizing and man, what would I do without these people around me?
[00:27:23] I don’t even know what I did do without them around me because it’s illuminating and energizing.
[00:27:28] Chaz Wolfe: I love those words. I don’t know if I’ve ever had anybody quite describe it like that, but dude, that’s how I feel about it, especially as a facilitator. Of a mastermind and because there’s a lot of times where I don’t get to necessarily be the receiver of specific strategic feedback because I’m facilitating, but I’ll tell you what, being in a room, like what you just described, there’s nothing like it.
[00:27:48] The energy, the accountability, the push forward. I’ve got one of the, one of my guys that was like, I knew just even showing up, just meeting you. That I had to bring the game. And so just even that leveling up in your own spirit before you even showed up is a part of it. Level up in your own spirit. Good phrase.
[00:28:04] You like that? I’ll have my podcast guy quote me on that one. Please do. Oh man. We’re going to definitely have plenty of quotes for you too. Don’t worry. But, um, I got a question for you about operations. I know you said you’ve got a phenomenal operations person. And so my question to you as the CEO, the entrepreneur, the head dog, if you only had one hour each week to work on the business, what would you do?
[00:28:27] Or how would you work or how would you use that hour? To successfully run your business. Like you do now.
[00:28:33] Darrin Carr: No, that’s a great question. I divide it into, and the first half would be, what are we doing or not doing that makes our clients happy and satisfied and, and has them coming back and happy and referring, that would be the first one is how can we make people even happier than they are?
[00:28:50] And. That process has been a gradual one. And we’ve dialed it in maybe in the last two years where we’ve gotten super tight on, I’m talking about this communication and this gauging of where they’re at and not letting them, not letting clients off the hook either. No, we’d rather you not skip this week’s chat because we need it.
[00:29:07] So it would be half of what are we doing right? How can we be better? And it would be half of, all right, let’s look to the future. Where do we need to go that we’re not? So I would divide it equally in half. What’s our future look. Like in terms of industries and clients and types of positions and other HR services, half in the now half in the future.
[00:29:25] Chaz Wolfe: Love it. Love, love, love the answer. Last question here for you, Darrin, if you lost it all. What would you do? Start again.
[00:29:32] Darrin Carr: Yeah. You wouldn’t go back to corporate America. Come on. That’s right. Hello, folks. Darrin Carr’s back. No, I would not. I would not. I would, I would start. It’s like the old phrase, not how many times you get knocked down, it’s how many times you pick yourself up.
[00:29:43] And I’ve been knocked down a few times. I’m sure many entrepreneurs here have because it’s Like I’ve, I don’t know, I’ve read, it’s not your first or second or third business, it might be your seventh or your fourth, that is the winner. And now I’ve had a taste of this and what it’s like to put together great people, processes, although that’s not my complete strength, people as my strength, but people, people who know processes and tools and things like that.
[00:30:07] It’s exhilarating. It’s rewarding. Yeah. I just start, I’d start again, scratch it on up.
[00:30:12] Chaz Wolfe: That’s right. I love that. Bail forward, right? That’s right. Darrin, how can the listener connect with you? Obviously you’ve got potential services that you can offer. You’ve got an amazing personality where they maybe just want to get to know you.
[00:30:24] How can they find you? Whether they want to hire you, get to know you.
[00:30:27] Darrin Carr: Yeah, thank you for the question. And yeah, and I’m happy to, in addition to a lot of hiring tools and HR onboarding tools and things of that nature, I also love to just chat with people, as you said, get to know them, any advice, consultation they may need, obviously no charge.
[00:30:41] I just love, I love that interaction. So the ways in which people can get to reach me are a message through our website, www. cartalent, Carrwith two R’s, C A R R Talent. com and my email, Darrin, D A R I N at CarrC A R R talent. com. And then phone number 641 691 2990. Those are the main points of contact.
[00:31:03] Chaz Wolfe: That’s awesome, Darrin. I appreciate that. And just your openness and willingness to share. And obviously the free resources, those go really far, especially when you know how good you are, you can give a lot away, And you can realize that you can be valuable. And then when people get it in their hands, they go, I just need Darrin to do it for me anyway.
[00:31:22] So sometimes that
[00:31:23] Darrin Carr: happens.
[00:31:23] Chaz Wolfe: Yeah, exactly. Which I’m teaching and training the listener as much as I am promoting you. It’s the same, it’s the same fashion that they should be doing their business too. They should feel so good and so confident about what they’re doing, that they give things away like I do here.
[00:31:35] Even I’m, these are the, some of the same things we talk about in the mastermind. It’s the strategies, it’s the relationships, it’s the good decisions, the bad decisions. But if you can give things away, then it enables you to be able to provide value ahead of the sale. So you have been an extreme example of that here today.
[00:31:51] And I thank you for that. I really appreciate it. We wish you nothing but success. Thank you for being on the show, my brother.
[00:31:56] Darrin Carr: It’s been my pleasure. Thanks.
[00:32:00] Chaz Wolfe: Thanks for listening to gathering the Kings. We hope you got a ton of value today and learned a thing or two about taking your business. To seven figures and beyond if you desire more and want a community around you to help you get there I want you to go to gathering the kings.
[00:32:14] com That’s gathering the kings. com and I want you to apply for our next becoming a king 90 day intensive We are extremely exclusive by nature as a group What that means is that we’re really wanting only the entrepreneurs who take their business and targets super serious to apply So if that’s you you think you got what it takes To level up your business, I want you to go to gatheringthekings.
[00:32:36] com and apply, and we will see you on the other side.