I think hiring is a multi-year ... a multi-year game. About half the people I ... we've hired at [Nomics 00:00:11] I've known ... oh, about a year. Some of them, two of them I knew for over a year before they were hired, and it's just so important, I think, as a CEO, to stay in contact [00:00:30] with people who are excellent at what they do. A lot of people try and stay in contact with thought leaders, or other CEOs, and ... you know, people with huge brand names. 

Those people are already bombarded. They have way too much to do. I think the highest ROI relationships to keep up are ones with just amazing operators in their space. I really believe that the biggest lessons I've learned as an entrepreneur [00:01:00] have been around what excellence looks like in different positions, and in different roles. 

And, until you've worked with an A-player ... any given role ... it's just hard to know what that looks like, specially in some of these roles that don't get a lot of attention, like finance leaders, sales leaders, design and product leaders, engineering leaders. 

Generally, the top people [00:01:30] on many of these roles don't have huge followings on Twitter. There's not a lot of social signaling around who they are, other than maybe companies that they've worked at in the past, maybe. And, the only way that they'll have ... for the most part, that they'll have really [fanty 00:01:47] past roles is if they've lived on the coast. Right? If they've lived in New York, or San Francisco; but other than that, those signals are often not there. 

But, [00:02:00] I think these are really important people to stay in touch with, so I just got off the phone with someone who we were looking at, at my last company, when we were looking to replace me as CEO. I went to the board, I said, “I think it's time to higher another CEO. This company ... you know. I feel really comfortable between 30 people to 80 people, or 100. Past that, I think I'm [00:02:30] a bit out of my league. We should hire someone,” and someone applied for that position, who I really think the world of. 

I think they're one of the best executives I've ever seen. Again, they don't have a huge following on Twitter. They don't have a huge personal brand, but holy crap, they're amazing operators, and I think they've been successful in every single role they've ever been in, ever. And so, [00:03:00] I stay in touch with them. 

I'd like them to be an advisor to the company, and so we're talking about that. I also, as a side note, stay in touch with the person that we hired for that role to replace me as CEO at my last company. He's an advisor to the company, we meet every month. I've learned so much from him, and have the utmost respect for him, as well. 

But, yeah, I [00:03:30] think staying in touch with the best operators in these often looked-over areas of a business. I think it's one of the highest ROI activities ever, as an entrepreneur, and I don't think it's done enough, because I just don't know a lot of people that do it; but those are the people that make the difference between really taking [00:04:00]

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