650 Leslie McIntyre-Tavella:

Business is all about people.  Finding the right people to hire. Inspiring those people to gradually fade music here succeed. Reaching out to mentors to keep learning as your business grows. Yet so many women entrepreneurs tend to be slow to hire, and get stuck playing too small by thinking they have to do everything – and perfect everything – by themselves. It holds us back. My guest today – Leslie McIntyre-Tavella  – has made it her mission to helping business owners build great teams and cultures, and yes, encouraging women to have the confidence to “hire their weaknesses” and get better at delegating.

MELINDA

Hi, welcome to Wings of Inspired Business. I’m Melinda Wittstock, 5-time serial entrepreneur and founder-CEO of the social podcast app Podopolo, and here on Wings we share the inspiring entrepreneurial journeys, epiphanies, and practical advice from successful female founders … so you have everything you need at your fingertips to build the business and life of your dreams.

Today we meet an inspiring entrepreneur who has devoted her entire career to building and strengthening businesses and creating environments where talented people can excel. Leslie McIntyre-Tavella built her first business – a recruitment and staffing company – to a $20 million success by cultivating a culture that fostered teamwork, comradery, and retained her employees twice as long as the industry standard.

Today we talk about how to hire the right team members, how to set them up for success, and why we all need mentors for every stage of business growth.

Leslie will be here in a moment and first:

Have you downloaded Podopolo yet? If you’re listening to this podcast right now then I know you love podcasts as much as me – and that’s why it’s time to explore the app that makes listening social and curates the ideal podcasts for you from our library of more than 4 million. Find out what everyone is talking about – join us on Podopolo today – free to download in either app store.

Leslie McIntyre-Tavella launched her first start-up thirty years ago to bring a different service paradigm to the recruiting and staffing industry. It grew to a $20 million dollar company, won numerous awards including “First Place in Best Places to Work” and 11th place for Women Owned Businesses in the U.S.”

Now the CEO and founder of Culpeo HR – its name a mashup of culture and people – Leslie helps businesses large and small make sure they find, hire and retain the right talent – because it is the secret sauce to building a solid foundation and the winning ingredient needed to succeed wildly! Leslie also helps businesses with client engagement, new customer acquisition, as well as how to optimize the talent pipeline.

Today Leslie shares some game-changing advice on everything from what questions to ask prospective hires to how to build a great company culture. We also talk a lot about why women entrepreneurs are all too often late to hire, and make the mistake of thinking of employees as an expense rather than an investment to grow their businesses faster. A lot of that comes down to mindset – as it always does – including overcoming the perfectionism that often leads us to try to do everything ourselves and not ask for help when we need it.

I know you’re going to love this one, because it contains so much practical advice you can implement right away, so let’s put on our wings with the inspiring Leslie McIntyre-Tavella.

Melinda Wittstock:

Leslie, welcome to Wings.

Leslie McIntyre-Tavella:

Thank you so much. It’s just a pleasure to be here.

Melinda Wittstock:

Well, I’m excited to talk to you about everything that you do, because we all know that businesses don’t succeed without a great team of the right players in the right places and a great culture.

What are some of the things that you’ve learned along the way?

Leslie McIntyre-Tavella:

Well, I’ll tell you some of my biggest takeaways and that is the first thing that everyone really needs to understand is that all business owners are facing the same challenges. Big or small, everyone really goes through the same struggles and challenges. We have to understand that you’re not alone and there are a lot of people out there that really can help you as you grow and scale and build your business with these kind of markers, I call them. When you hit $1 million in revenue, there’s some issues that are going to happen. When you hit $5 million, $10 million and so on.

Leslie McIntyre-Tavella:

What you have to understand first is what got you here won’t get you there, so you have to change your mindset when you’re going through these growth spurts and these growth phases, if you will, and it’s really, really important to surround yourself with a really, really seasoned group of mentors that can help you work through a lot of the emotional challenges and decisions that you have to make that are really critical to building your business.

Melinda Wittstock:

Well, just before we started this interview, we were both talking candidly about what it is that stops women, in particular, from going big enough, from hiring early enough, from really leveraging the power of team. There’s something that keeps a lot of women playing a little bit smaller than we need to. What’s up with that?

Leslie McIntyre-Tavella:

I don’t know. You know, it’s really interesting. I do meet a lot of women who, for some reason, are held back when thinking about scaling their businesses. I’m not really sure why. I don’t know if it’s a lack of confidence, I don’t know if they perhaps don’t have the right mentors in place. Again, I can’t speak enough about mentors. When I say that, there are so many different kinds of mentors that you can really find in business. There are people where there’s these great groups where you can sit in monthly and you can have a board type arrangement. What’s wonderful about that is you can really hear straightforward information from people who are accustomed to driving and building businesses.

I think sometimes women might be afraid emotionally to make some of the really hard decisions that you need to make. If you’re afraid to make the emotional decisions, you will really get held back. It will really prevent you from building the business that you can potentially build. It’s really, really important to get the right team in place and to surround yourself with the right people.

Melinda Wittstock:

Yeah. There’s some statistics that I’ve read about this that businesses that hire sooner rather than later, actually within the first six months, have a much higher degree of chances of success than those that don’t. I think sometimes women at that early stage, they’re looking at hiring an expense rather than investment.

Leslie McIntyre-Tavella:

Absolutely. I would absolutely agree with that. You have to make sure that you really hire the right people. Often times, people who hire people like themselves … I always say you have to hire for your weaknesses. You can’t be great at everything. I learned this early on, what I was great at and what I was not great at, and so I would always hire for those weaknesses.

Secondly, you can’t hire people that are going to become, I call them, yes men and women in my book. You cannot have a group of people who are going to sit around and just agree with everything you say. You really want your people to stretch you, challenge you, question why you’re doing something. Again, in a very positive and influential way but you really want to make sure that you’re having people really challenge you. You want to make sure that you’re making the best decisions for your company. Having a group of people that just sit back and say, “Oh, yeah. That’s a great idea, that’s a great idea.” No, that will sink your ship a lot sooner than needed. You have to get people that are really willing to help you see the big picture and ask the right questions.

Melinda Wittstock:

Yeah. Hiring the weakness thing is critical. [crosstalk 00:06:14]. It presupposes that you’ve done the deep work on yourself to know what are the things that only you can do. Like your unique differentiation and then what are the things that you may love to do, but someone else can do just as well, if not better. What are the things that you hate to do? What are the things that you’re terrible at? Hire those people and bring them in.

I think that’s absolutely vital. I think the other mistake, though, that gets made is that people hire people to do things rather than hire people to achieve results.

Leslie McIntyre-Tavella:

Absolutely. I very much agree with that.

Melinda Wittstock:

When you think of the staffing side of your business of Culpeo, when you’re helping people place the right people and figure out job descriptions and whatnot, how much of an emphasis is there or how much mentoring in a way does your company have to do to work with business owners and entrepreneurs to say, “Hey, well, look. This is great that you want this person but what’s the result?”

Leslie McIntyre-Tavella:

Absolutely. You know, it’s interesting. You bring up job descriptions. This is something that I wish I could get on the rooftops of all buildings and scream this out to all the people that would be willing to listen. It really starts in the very, very beginning. Right now, everyone is talking about talent. There’s this tsunami, this resignation tsunami that everyone is talking about. It’s true. There is a record amount of people leaving the workforce now for a multitude of different reasons. There’s just a big shift going on right now with people wanting to … They really have taken the time to step back and evaluate what’s important to them and so they’ve decided to leave the industry to pursue their own happiness and perhaps become entrepreneurs themselves.

In the beginning of a process for hiring, you have to realize how important it is when you prepare a job description. That’s where it really starts. Companies think a job description is a description of the job, so perhaps we should completely throw that name out and retool it, because what it really is it’s an attraction to a certain cultural fit for your company, so you want to talk about what is really going to bring that person, attract this talent to your company, and I talk about it … I call it in my book, the hymn, H-Y-MN. It’s about what is the hook? What is your why? What is your mission? Then what are the non-negotiables, the absolute non-negotiables that your company cannot live without?

This is how you really have to go about finding talent. Then it’s really about the process and the speed and efficiency of the hire. I have to tell you, again, there are just so many companies out there saying we can’t find anyone, it’s a terrible market, just on and on and on. I have to tell you, it’s just really not the case. It’s really about the broken process of recruiting and it really starts with the engagement. It’s not about you, the company, it’s about the people. When the actual interview starts, that’s when you can then start talking about their background and things like that. It has to be a really strong engagement and a really strong and efficient and fast process to continue to engage that talent and bring them to hire.

Melinda Wittstock:

Well, this is where the culture of the company comes in.

Leslie McIntyre-Tavella:

Absolutely.

Melinda Wittstock:

It presupposes that you know your culture, that you’re proactive about creating [inaudible 00:10:01] but you’re authentic in it, that you actually do walk your talk, so when it comes time to advertise a position that’s open or talent that you need, yes, that you can hire and get alignment on that mission and that it’s a good cultural fit.

It’s also hiring on character, knowing the sort of character that you want because you want that person to grow and develop and whatnot in the position and not just be stuck always necessarily doing the same thing.

Leslie McIntyre-Tavella:

Correct.

Melinda Wittstock:

In a way, those job ads they’re almost like marketing, like really good marketing, you need a really great direct response copywriter on it. You know?

Leslie McIntyre-Tavella:

Absolutely. It’s funny because a lot of companies … Again, if you go online and you look at some of the jobs and, really, it’s about 85% or 90% of the jobs, they just take every single thing they can think of. They list all of their company jargon. No one understands half of that jargon. I’ve been in business for 35 years and sometimes I look at these job descriptions and I think, “Wow. Maybe it’s time for me to retire because I don’t even understand that.”

Again, what they’re really missing is young people today, which is the audience that I would think a lot of companies are actually trying to recruit for, they want what I call the brag behind the brand. If I meet someone, I say to them, “What do you do?” If a young people meets someone, they say, “Where do you work?” It’s really about the company’s mission. They want to have a company that they can socially identify with and then they can use their social media as an extension of the company and talk about, “Look at what my company is doing, look how great this is, look at what we’re doing today.” They’re all about community and the environment and they really want to get aligned and behind their brand. It’s really, really important that you hire that culturally aligned person.

Melinda Wittstock:

Now this is an interesting conundrum with women CEOs and women entrepreneurs because, on one hand, you have this playing too small, not hiring fast enough, fear of delegation perhaps, perhaps that’s to do with perfectionism and women being very much in the doing, and on the other hand, you have this whole cultural truth really that women are very good at collaborative management styles and empowering other people. There seems to be a disconnect there because it seems like the conditions are perfect right now for women to leverage their natural or authentic feminine power, if you will, to really actually crush it. I’m sort of using male terminology there but …

Leslie McIntyre-Tavella:

It’s true.

Melinda Wittstock:

I’m not understanding this disconnect…. What’s the logjam there?

Leslie McIntyre-Tavella:

You know, it’s such a good question. Again, I don’t know. I mean, if I had to take a couple of guesses, I would say that one thing that men seem to do better than women is I think men really aren’t afraid to really network and partner with other men. I think that women are afraid to do that. I think women are also always worried about getting judged or if they’re powerful, they’re witchy.

Melinda Wittstock:

Yeah. We’re afraid of the B-word, right?

Leslie McIntyre-Tavella:

Yeah. Absolutely. Afraid of the B-word. I have to tell you, you don’t have to be the B-word or be angry to be a very, very effective leader and to grow a very, very successful business. Again, the key is to surround yourself with very, very strong talent, very diversified talent. Pretty much every person I hired in my company or many of them had a much higher education than I did. I was never afraid of that. They were all very, very bright people. Obviously, you always want to hire the brightest and the best.

I do know that there are … I, myself, had a few women leaders who were afraid to hire people who were brighter than them or smarter than them. I used to question that a lot and say, “Listen, don’t be afraid to bring strong talent into the company.” You always want to surround yourself with strong talent, smart people. I would say that men really don’t … If I had to really take a guess, they don’t really have a problem with that and they’re not afraid to help one another. I’ve seen male entrepreneurs really bond and really work together whereas I maybe haven’t seen women entrepreneurs do that same thing. I often wonder why.

Melinda Wittstock:

Maybe it’s because we’re stuck in a scarcity that the way that it’s evolved … It used to be that there was only room … First of all, there was no room for women but then there was room for one woman and that woman had to defend her one woman position. Yeah?

Leslie McIntyre-Tavella:

Mm-hmm (affirmative). Yeah.

Melinda Wittstock:

The queen bee phenomenon.

Leslie McIntyre-Tavella:

Sure. Absolutely.

Melinda Wittstock:

And was competing really only with other women, in a way, for the little bit of oxygen at the top of the mountain or whatever, and so I think there’s still sort of some vestiges of that perhaps that in people’s … Deep in their subconscious minds … Because it really does hold you back.

Melinda Wittstock:

I just even notice, even with my son and my daughter, my son automatically doesn’t hold back from anything. If he doesn’t know how to do it himself, he figures out very quickly who can do it for him.

Leslie McIntyre-Tavella:

Correct.

Melinda Wittstock:

And has absolutely no fear, doesn’t make him less of a person, any of that. He’s always been this way whereas my daughter always wants to do something, do all the doing, it has to be perfect, it has to look pretty. Do you know what I mean?

Leslie McIntyre-Tavella:

Sure. Sure. [crosstalk 00:16:43]. I wonder if it’s the caregiver/mother mentality. I wonder if that’s part of it somehow.

Melinda Wittstock:

Yeah. It’s really, really curious because I think men, in a way, have more of a confidence because they don’t feel they have to do it themselves, that someone else can do it, that you can ask, that you can receive, right? And you’re not going to be shown up by someone doing something that you can’t do.

Having grown a number of companies to seven and eight figures and the one I’m working on right now. We started the year at two people and we’re now at 24.

Leslie McIntyre-Tavella:

Wow. Bravo. That’s wonderful.

Melinda Wittstock:

I believe in having the best people, the ones that are really secure in their talent and ability, what Steve Jobs used to call A players, tend to only want to work with other A players. A B player, who is a little bit insecure, tends to want to hire a C player.

Leslie McIntyre-Tavella:

Correct. [crosstalk 00:18:10]. I did see that. Yes.

Melinda Wittstock:

Yeah. Before you know it, your team is just not a good team.

Leslie McIntyre-Tavella:

Correct.

Melinda Wittstock:

They can’t really compete and then you have all the intrigue and political infighting and all of that stuff starts to happen at that point, which drives a culture toxic.

Leslie McIntyre-Tavella:

Absolutely. One of the things that I talk about a lot in my book and a lesson that I learned in my company is never, ever compromise your standards. Never lower your bar. When I say that, I mean, even to the smallest degree, because if you do that, without even almost realizing it, you bring your firm down a notch and then over time … In my book, again, I have a play on construction, so I talk about remediating the rot in your company, so kind of like remediating the rot in an old house, because I love to redo houses. I did a whole play on construction.

It’s really true. You really have to be so careful. It’s your company and it’s your brand. You shouldn’t apologize for wanting your company to act a certain way, to have a certain mission, to have certain standards. If you set your values in your company, you should know your values, be able to recite your values, and everyone in your company should abide by those values, not 80% of the time or 90% of the time, but always, 100% of the time.

If you don’t really follow that mantra and that mission, your company will slowly, slowly deteriorate, you’ll slowly hire the wrong people, and all of a sudden, after a couple of years, you’ll turn around and go, “Whoa. What happened?” Those people are negative detractors and those detractors will somehow infect other people. Then the whole company really becomes a different group of people.

For some reason, people love to follow negative detractors, which I never really could figure out and I really wish I had the answer for that, because even though, you’ll have a very positive set of very positive people, the negative detractors will be the ones that will drag the other people down over time.

Melinda Wittstock:

It’s true. It’s like one bad apple. It just takes one.

Leslie McIntyre-Tavella:

It is. It is. It’s one apple really does ruin the whole darn bunch.

Melinda Wittstock:

You know, this presupposes the old Google phrase, hire very slowly, fire very fast.

Leslie McIntyre-Tavella:

That’s right. Absolutely.

Melinda Wittstock:

If you have one person … Sometimes you can’t really tell but what do you do about the person who isn’t necessarily obviously toxic or obviously bad at their job or whatever but they’re not an A player.

Leslie McIntyre-Tavella:

Sure. This is the best question and I’m so glad that you asked it. This is why I always tell companies when we talk about setting up a talent acquisition strategy, you can’t wait until you have to hire someone to setup a really strong candidate pipeline. You have to constantly be working your network and you have to constantly be recruiting and then pipelining all of the candidates that you’re meeting and maybe not hiring today but potentially hiring tomorrow. It’s so vital to your company.

Think about it. I ask this, again, in my book, if owners and entrepreneurs and C level executives, managers, if they had the ability to literally say to someone, “Okay, you are a B player, you are not great, I’m going to ask you to leave today, because I have four or five A players just sitting on the bench waiting to come work for me”, what do we think anyone in a company would do? I mean, we’d wave that magic wand and that person would be gone.

The problem is we settle for people like this because we don’t have the candidate pipeline that we need. I don’t mean to say that these people are wrong or they shouldn’t be working. It’s really just about cultural alignment. It means that you’re not culturally aligned in my company but you are culturally aligned somewhere else at another company.

You really want to free them up, so they can go find the opportunity that’s best suited for them and you want to be able to bring in the best quality and culturally aligned person, candidate, for your company. It’s really about that.

Melinda Wittstock:

Well, it’s critical too in the context of a startup or an emerging growth company. A startup is not for everybody.

Leslie McIntyre-Tavella:

That’s so true. It’s very true. It takes a very special person. It really does.

Melinda Wittstock:

It does take a very special person and a team of people because there’s so much uncertainty, there’s so many things beyond your control, and if you’re doing something really disruptive and you’re doing something big, it’s not like there’s not going to be challenges along the way and there are going to be, hopefully, not but there’s always some cashflow issues or things like that.

People have to really believe, have to be really curious, they have to be very agile. There’s so many different things. I’ve found actually in our own process, and you may have some great advice about how to elicit where somebody really is, because startups have become so glamorous in our culture now that everybody wants to be or they think they want to be in a startup without really knowing what’s it’s like.

Leslie McIntyre-Tavella:

Absolutely. I have a very unconventional interviewing process. I do talk a lot about this in my book. I talk to people about how they were raised, I talk to them about their parents, I talk to them about their siblings, I talk to them about their different work experiences but a lot really about their life, what their friends would say about them, where they’re most comfortable, what they really like to do. Very, very unconventional and I used to … My staff used to say to me all the time, “It’s just very unusual how you interview.” I said, “That’s because I know you’re doing the very traditional interview. I’m really talking with them about their soft skills. I’m talking to them about where they’re comfortable.”

I remember we interviewed someone once who worked on a farm, who was born and raised on a farm, her parents were farmers. From the age of probably six, seven years old, she got up at five o’clock in the morning. As you can imagine, her family farm, that was their livelihood, so she had to participate and work in that family farm every day. There was no not getting up. It was something that just innately she knew that this is what we do, this is our life.

She was the most incredibly well balanced, hardworking person I had ever met. There was no question that there was … She would do anything that you would ask of her. She would have been a perfect candidate, and so well suited for a startup, because in a startup environment, you never know what you’re going to get thrown at you, you can’t say it’s not my job, there are so many twists and turns, and you literally need people that are going to be prepared to pivot accordingly at a moment’s notice. Those are the kinds of I feel questions that can really get answers and put the right people in the right roles and in the right environments.

Melinda Wittstock:

I love that. I think that’s so, so important because that line of questioning also gives you a sense of their mindset.

Leslie McIntyre-Tavella:

Absolutely.

Melinda Wittstock:

And any fears they may have about anything or how they relate to people, so many things. How brilliant. I think people don’t really put that kind of level of attention into their hiring.

Leslie McIntyre-Tavella:

They don’t. People are afraid. Again, you have to be very, very careful. You can’t cross any lines. You have to make sure that you’re not asking anything that, obviously, isn’t legal. You can just talk with them about where people are comfortable, what their background is, what positions they’ve had, what environments they thrive in, where are they most comfortable, where do they do their best work. Those are all things that you can talk about, that really can help you understand the fit of the person and where they really are going to be most comfortable.

It’s a two-way street. You want people coming into your company to be comfortable, you don’t want them to feel out of sorts or not fit into the culture, and you, obviously, want your company to get the very, very best talent that it can, so that you can grow your business and scale it quickly.

Melinda Wittstock:

I love the farm analogy One of the things I’ve also discovered on this podcast and through all of the different female entrepreneurs that I know, and male entrepreneurs as well, is that they have played some sort of competitive sport as a kid. Particularly, women in team sports. That’s a huge differentiator because you know what it’s like to work in a team and the give and take of a team and creating a great company, it’s about the team.

Leslie McIntyre-Tavella:

Absolutely. Yes. It’s funny. I don’t know why but for some reason, I do not fit into that category. I did not play one sport when I was young, nor was I very athletic at all. It’s very funny. I was the book worm. I’m not sure what happened. Something happened, I’m now very competitive, so it came later in life I guess.

Leslie McIntyre-Tavella:

However, I will tell you that most of the people that we recruited for our company, some of them even played minor league or semi-professional football, soccer, baseball. We had a tremendous amount of sports-minded people and very competitive and very enthusiastic about that. It was all team sports. Again, very much taught them how to work within a team and how to build a team, which is very important.

Melinda Wittstock:

Yeah. Also, how to overcome adversity.

Leslie McIntyre-Tavella:

Absolutely.

Melinda Wittstock:

I can’t tell you how many times I landed hard on very cold ice as a figure skater as a kid.

Leslie McIntyre-Tavella:

That’s a tough one.

Melinda Wittstock:

Learning all these jumps, learning what not to do. [crosstalk 00:28:57].

Leslie McIntyre-Tavella:

Yeah. Absolutely.

Melinda Wittstock:

Getting up and doing it again and again and again and again. Right?

Leslie McIntyre-Tavella:

Yeah.

Melinda Wittstock:

Overcoming mindset issues around competition, around all that kind of stuff. I look back now and I think, “Oh God. What an amazing …” There’s so many lessons from that.

Leslie McIntyre-Tavella:

Oh, I would agree. Yeah.

Melinda Wittstock:

[crosstalk 00:29:20].

Leslie McIntyre-Tavella:

Absolutely.

Melinda Wittstock:

… my entrepreneurship. Leslie, going back a little ways, what you’re working on right now is your second company, but you built another one, a $20 million company and it won all kinds of great awards, including first best places to work, among other things.

Melinda Wittstock:

Tell me what led you to start your company to begin with and how you learned all these lessons that so much informed what you’re doing now.

Leslie McIntyre-Tavella:

Sure. Again, I would honestly say that I was blessed with a series of incredible mentors in my life. One of them started with my aunt, who actually raised me from a very, very small baby up to be the woman that I’ve become. She started out with the mantra that you can do anything that you want to do. She gave me self-confidence that was really remarkable for the other side of the upbringing that I had.

I’ve passed that self-confidence onto my daughter, and I believe that she would tell you that she believes that she can do anything she sets her mind to. I think it’s really important to have someone in your life who really believes in you, number one.

Again, lucky for me, I started out my career by working as a clerk typist in a telecommunications company. I happened to be on the phone one day and the VP of sales happened to come into our little cubby … We were in the corner of a building in this large company in Norwalk. The VP happened to be standing behind me, he listened to me while I was on the phone, I didn’t know he was there. He said, “Wow. You are really great on the phone. I heard you talking to that customer. I’d really like you to come up to my office this afternoon and talk to me about your career.”

Again, I was on the phone talking with a customer. They were going to order some paper. We were a paper supply company. I was just giving them recommendations on how they could save money, and if they did this and they ordered this amount and they ordered it in this way, it would save them a great deal of money over the course of X period of years.

I was just doing what I did and that was just always trying to satisfy the customer. I love making customers happy, I love finding solutions to problems, I love things that are challenging and so he just heard me doing what I thought to be very normal and run of the mill.

Again, come in mentor number two, he brought me through a lovely career at this company, I was promoted several times and then I had gotten to a point where I had reached the level that I wanted to reach at this company, and I didn’t want to move to the next level that they had and so I saw this great ad, again, now, this is like 1980 something. I saw an ad in the newspaper for this great position. I applied, they called me in. Again, very, very lucky. My divine life.

Rather than the person who I was supposed to meet interview me, she had been sick, and so the owner of the company met me instead. Great fortune for me. I didn’t even realize at that time, I was at a staffing firm, I thought I was actually interviewing for the role in the paper. I didn’t know what a staffing firm was at the time. Lucky for me, the staffing firm owner said, “I would really love it if you would come work at my company.” I mentored under her. She was a remarkable entrepreneur. So ahead of her time. She was so delightful and successful.

I literally got three to four years of the most incredible training anyone could ever ask for, leading me then up to, “Wow. I really want to do this for the rest of my life. I’m going to open up my own staffing firm and I’m going to do this on an even larger scale and I’m going to build out the consulting side of the business more so.” I was able to do that and it was great timing and I really think that had a lot to do with it. Again, I made some really great decisions and hired some wonderful talent. They helped me build a remarkable business. It was a treat to have the business. It was very, very well known. We did a great job and got thousands and thousands of people incredible jobs, which is just very rewarding.

Melinda Wittstock:

What a wonderfully inspiring story. I mean, the fact that it goes to the mentor. Do you have any advice about how women entrepreneurs and executives should really go about finding mentors? I’ve found in my life you need different mentors for different things and different mentors at different times but what’s the best way?

Leslie McIntyre-Tavella:

You do. The best way, for me, and I say that as I unpacked my 31 year career owning my own staffing company, after I sold it, I really sat back and I unpacked that whole journey. One of the things that I wish I had done much sooner was I wish that I had joined a group. Again, it might really take you several groups to find the right group. There’s all different levels of groups, there’s sales groups and then there’s mentoring groups and then there’s private coaching.

I have a group that I’ve now been with for 10 plus years. They literally are my board of advisors. They are people who know my business intimately. They know me intimately. They’re very, very direct. We’re very kind to one another, of course, and we love each other. I have to be honest with you, they are the first people that will call me out if I am not doing something I should be doing, if I am allowing emotions to cloud my better judgment to make a decision. They will call me out if I’m not being truthful with myself about the business, if I am not driving and growing the business the way that I should. They make me 100% accountable for everything that I do and I say I’m going to do.

I mean, sometimes it’s tough and you really hate to hear the truth but it’s the best thing in the world because they will not only draw out the issue, we will problem solve it, and then they will put you to task on resolving it and they’ll put that task on a timeline and then you better come back to that next meeting next month and have that task accomplished, otherwise, you are really going to get called out.

You know, tough love. I mean, I think that more people need that. I hate to say it but I think we need to be a little tougher and I think that people need to be a little more accountable.

Melinda Wittstock:

Gosh, so good. I could talk to you for a lot longer. You’ll probably have to come back on this podcast, Leslie, because there’s so much value here.

Leslie McIntyre-Tavella:

Thank you.

Melinda Wittstock:

We do talk about these themes a lot. I mean, the culture of the company, the team, the hiring, all of these things, the necessity for mentors. It’s particularly true for women. Gosh, to find support of other women and men, and to be willing to give forward as well.

Leslie McIntyre-Tavella:

Absolutely. You know what men aren’t afraid to do? I noticed this with the gentleman who actually bought my company. He wasn’t afraid … I really have to compliment him in this area. He wasn’t afraid to pick up the phone and call anyone and ask for their help or for their opinion.

If he was struggling with something, let’s say, that his company was at $50 million or $80 million in revenue and he wanted to figure out how to get to $150 million but he couldn’t figure it out because of this one issue that was troubling him, he would pick up the phone and call a $150 million competitor and say, “Hey, listen. I know we’re competitors but I’m struggling with this thing and I wondered if you would talk with me about it.”

I have to tell you, every single time, the person would say, “Yes” and I never once, as a woman, would have thought to ever pick up the phone and call a competitor and ask them for anything. There’s something.

Melinda Wittstock:

Gosh. Yeah. I mean, calling a competitor but just like a lot of women, just asking for anything.

Leslie McIntyre-Tavella:

Yeah. Just ask for help. You’d be so surprised how many people are willing to give it. [crosstalk 00:38:09].

Melinda Wittstock:

Yeah. The funny thing that I’ve learned is actually the people who are at the top of their game, the most successful, are usually the most generous.

Leslie McIntyre-Tavella:

That’s correct. People want to see people succeed. I would honestly say most people really want to do good things and do better. I really think it’s just about don’t be afraid to ask. Call up and ask. What’s the worst thing they’re going to say anyway? No. We have to get used to that because you’re going to hear no a lot, if you own your own business. To me, no is just a delay to getting a yes down the road.

Melinda Wittstock:

Absolutely.

Leslie McIntyre-Tavella:

That’s how I look at a no.

Melinda Wittstock:

Absolutely. Then you come to see also failure as part of the iterative process.

Leslie McIntyre-Tavella:

Absolutely.

Melinda Wittstock:

Of feedback. It sure helps to be curious and open to lots of different input and balancing that openness to advice from others with focus on your north star.

Leslie McIntyre-Tavella:

Absolutely.

Melinda Wittstock:

Sometimes that can be a delicate balance but vital.

Leslie McIntyre-Tavella:

Yeah. I would agree. Absolutely.

Melinda Wittstock:

Leslie, for all the people who are listening to this and need help with their recruitment, with their cultures, with their team management, how can they best find you and work with you?

Leslie McIntyre-Tavella:

Absolutely. My company is called Culpeo HR. We are focusing on HR strategies, customizable HR solutions, on site or offsite, to really help companies with their people, process, to be consistent and to differentiate. Then we have a separate division called Workforce, which is working with select companies that are very serious about finding top talent. We are absolutely able to go out and find the talent that companies are looking for if they’re very, very serious about driving talent and getting A players into their businesses.

Melinda Wittstock:

Wonderful. Well, thank you so much for putting on your Wings and flying with us today.

Leslie McIntyre-Tavella:

It was my pleasure.