Beyond Business: How Prioritizing Health and Relationships Elevates Leadership and Growth Featuring Chris Gannon
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You're listening to the Uncharted Podcast. This week's episode is with Chris Gannon, who is the founder and CEO of Captivate Talent. I've loved working with him and made a ton of fun having him as a guest on this week's episode. Enjoy after a quick advertisement by our sponsor. What does the future hold for business? Ask nine experts and you'll get 10 different answers. Bull market, burn market, inflations up or down. Can someone please invent a crystal ball?

Until then, over 38,000 businesses have future-proofed their business with NetSuite by Oracle, the number one cloud ERP, bringing accounting, financial management, inventory, HR into one fluid platform.

When you're closing the books in days and not weeks, you're spending less time looking backwards and more time on what's next. I use this product and you should too. With one unified business management suite, this gives you the visibility and control you need to make decisions quickly and the opportunity to grow your business. Speaking of opportunity, download the CFO's Guide to AI and Machine Learning at netsuite.com forward slash scale.

The guide is free at netsuite.com. Download the free guide at netsuite.com. Chris Gannon from Captivate Talent. Welcome to the Uncharted. How are we?

Thanks so much, Poya. I'm doing good. It's Friday. The sun's shining out here in New Jersey like it has been for the last month. We haven't gotten rain here in a month. Sunny days out here on the East Coast. I love it. Let's start with a quick business personal bio. I'm best known as the founder of Captivate Talent. I started Captivate Talent almost eight years ago. We specialize in placing...

GTM executives and contributors at high growth B2B tech companies. GTM for go to market. You'll be surprised how some people don't even know what those acronyms are. Customer success and soon to be RevOps. So one question I'd like to start off with over the last year, you've gone into this health kick, right? Cold plunges, getting a little more healthier, making healthier decisions. What was the driving motivation behind it? Blessed with a beautiful about to be 20 month old girl.

My driving motivation or the moment, you should say, I was on the floor with her last December and I rolled over and I just felt my back just go. And I was like, oh no, I'm 40. So when I'm 60, she's going to be 20. And I want to be able to still do fun things with her. And I was like, oh God, dude, you're like not that healthy right now. You're not eating great. You're sitting at home five days a week, not really moving much. You got to change it.

And then honestly, I reflected on it a bit and looked at the parallels in my life where I was really taking care of myself, both physically and mentally, and how I was achieving the goals I wanted to, both professionally and personally. And I realized I was at a low point. We had a kickoff like a few weeks later, company kickoff. And my burn the boat, leave it in the past was being unhealthy and not doing myself justice.

And then my future was taking care of yourself physically, mentally, because that will allow me to show up in business as the leader I should be. So tied in professionally, personally, but like when you're making kinds of goals, I think that's how they should be. And yeah, man, now I have a cold plunge in my basement. We host them at events now. Until somebody starts to rip them off, we'll keep doing it and try to just take care of yourself, but also like to have fun, but you got to have balance. I think one of the tough parts about health kicks is consistency, right? Yeah.

It's easy sometimes to get started, but it's easy to lose passion and hustle. What's helped you stay consistent? When it's hard, that's when you have to keep it up. I think first off, you have to have a North Star. So my North Star, first and foremost, it's my daughter, like staying healthy for her. But then like also my business, if I can't show up, if I'm sick, if I don't make it to GTM Summit with Pavilion because somebody gave me strep throat because my immune system was whacked out, that's a big loss for our business.

So I've realized that when you're in those moments of you're on the road, if you could work out like two days while you're on the road, if you're away for a week, like that's just so much of a Delta. Cause you'll,

You won't have as many drinks the night before, or you'll just be a little bit more mindful of what you eat when it's like a full buffet and it's an open bar and that kind of stuff. So it's when it's harder, just trying to be really mindful of, can I do one little thing, make one incremental move differently than maybe I did a year or two ago to keep me on track. Understood. I'm changing gears here, but one of the reasons I was excited to chat with you is you've done BD for a long time, right? Business Development Partnerships.

sales, whatever you want to call it. But on the same time, now that you guys have grown, you've had a lot of people sell to you and you've been on the other side. Now for good or bad, everything's become commoditized, right? And when I say commoditized, everything's become a little more competitive, right? Industry you're in, there's other options. I would say for every software product, there's other options. For what I do, how do you view business development and partnerships? When you partner with people, what do you look for?

I look for what we try to do ourselves. In recruiting, we're like the most commoditized business out there. Like anyone with a computer and you don't even have to be that smart to start a recruiting business. So it's the barrier to entry is extremely low to do what we do. And many people from the outside, it's hard to differentiate like who's good and who's not good. So

We're a hyper-commoditized business. When I see that out in the market, I really look for relationships and people that I know will take care of me, even maybe when

It's challenging to do that, or they're not always just trying to win the deal or get the money. They're trying to actually listen to the customer and provide what will be helpful for them. That makes buying decisions actually really easy. When you've built a relationship with somebody or you think they truly are trying to solve a problem and help you, it makes it easy to differentiate a commoditized product and pick one over the other. That's what I strive for, especially over the last couple of months. I've deliberately made that a huge part of my mission anytime I partner with someone.

But sometimes the tough part is you're the middle person. It's easy for you because you're the CEO, right? But one of your team members, it might be a little harder because they have to be an advocate for captivating talent, but also an advocate for the customer. When you're in those scenarios where...

It's hard. Do you have a framework, any tips on what you've seen work well? It's true. And it's really challenging. So I know what I do personally. And this is also what I expect from other organizations. It all comes from the top. It's top-down leadership. We see this with companies we've worked with. We've seen this with companies we've bought from. We see this in our own organization. And when I hire people here internally, I promise them, I'll say, look, I will never be the business owner that is forcing you to sell somebody into a job that's not a good fit for them.

Because while that might make our company and myself some money and that person some money in the very short term, it will not do us justice in the long term. And if we're thinking about the world we're in and recruiting from a long-term infinite game mindset of if you don't win today, there is infinite chances to win tomorrow or in the future, or that loss today could turn into five wins in the future because you did the right thing.

we will inevitably keep winning. If you are just thinking about the moment and the deal and today, and that is how your leaders and founders make you think, and they are transactional, your company will become transactional and your relationships will be transactional.

It's well said. Is there ways you test for this early on? You can always ask a recruiter that's worked for them because they have a pretty good indicator of how the company will view partnerships or vendors or even their own employees. And I joke about that, but now I actually think there's a platform or two where they get that information from recruiters on how

how CEOs act, how they get treated, how people get treated. So I do think that's an actually good indicator. Talk to people that have worked there, understand, look at what their turnovers looked like, look at what their customer turns looked like. All those things are indicators of what leadership is thinking, how they're acting, how they view customers, if they actually view them as customers or they just view them as transactions. And look, in this world of SaaS and like

founder mode and high pressure VCs or PE companies, I think it's very easy to be swept up and look at relationships as transactions. I agree wholeheartedly. There's a lot of industries that have become commoditized and what differentiates is the relationships. And you definitely want to keep those close to your hearts. The one question I'd love to ask before we say our goodbyes to every guest

If you could go back to any time, what's one piece of advice the wiser, older Chris would give his younger self? Continue to take care of yourself. And look, this isn't like, you don't have to go do CrossFit seven days a week. There's a little, like I took a yoga class the other day. Very easy way to take care of myself. But if you are not taking care of yourself, if you can't show up as your best self every day, there is no way you can take care of other people. That's what I view leadership as is like,

The biggest decision I had to make was if I was going to just do this as a guy on my couch by myself and make a pretty good lifestyle business, or if I want to grow a business and hire people. And when I made that decision to grow and hire people, I understood that it was my responsibility that I was taking care of them and they were taking care of their families through

what I was creating. So you have to show up every day and just try to be your best self and do the things that could take care of yourself for that. Take care of yourself and mentally as much as physically, it is so important. Well said. I have one more actually too. We have somebody on our team and she's very goal-driven and I love her and that's why I hired her. She always asks me events like, what's my goal? What's my objective? And I finally came up with a saying to her which resonated and I said, look, if someone's a lead, try to convert them to a prospect.

If they're a prospect, try to convert them to a client. If they're a client, maybe move them to a partner. If they're already a partner of ours, see if we can turn them into a champion. And if they're a champion, you might be lucky enough to turn them into a friend. And

I said, it's just about advancing a relationship and building a better relationship. And if you think of it as a transaction, you will never get those. You will never be able to advance those relationships. And you might close a deal or two, but you will never advance your relationship. And there is a difference there. Look, this has been fantastic for everybody. I will put Chris's LinkedIn and whatnot in the show notes. Reach out. Captivate Talon's my go-to. They're my partner. This has been fantastic. You've been a great partner over the last couple of years. I've loved working with you and your team.

on various dinners, meetups. So thanks for your friendship as well as partnership. For everybody, until next time, be well, be safe, and we'll catch you on the next episode of the Uncharted Podcast. What does the future hold for business? Ask nine experts and you'll get 10 different answers. Bull market, bird market, inflation's up or down. Can someone please invent a crystal ball?

Until then, over 38,000 businesses have future-proofed their business with NetSuite by the number one cloud ERP, bringing accounting, financial management, inventory, HR into one fluid platform.

when you're closing the books in days and not weeks you're spending less time looking backward and more time on what's next i use this product that you should do with one unified business management suite this gives you the visibility and control you need to make decisions quickly and the opportunity to grow your business speaking of opportunity download the cfo's guide to ai and machine learning at netsuite.com forward slash scale the guide

The guide is free at netsuite.com slash scale. Download the free guide at netsuite.com slash scale.