530: Hiring the Right Tech Talent and Finding the Right Team with 10X Management Founder Michael Solomon

Speaker 1 0:00 Marketer of the day. Episode 530 hiring the right tech talent and finding the right team with 10x management founder Michael Solomon. Hey

Robert Plank 0:10 everyone. We're so glad you're listening. We're talking with Michael Solomon. And Michael is an established entrepreneur, and he's the founder of 10x management, which is the premier tech talent agency. So we're gonna hear all about 10x management and Michael and what he's all about. So glad to be talking to you. Michael,

Michael Solomon 0:26 likewise, I'm thrilled to be here. Thanks for having me. Robert, super

Robert Plank 0:29 cool. So what's your focus? To you? Say what's on your mind?

Michael Solomon 0:33 So our core business is representing freelance tech talent in their projects, both helping them find work, but more importantly, since they're in such demand, helping them decide which work is appropriate, and then sorting out the terms of their contracts and doing their invoicing. Our value for the companies that come to us to find talent is we, because we have existing and exclusive relationships with the talent. We can get companies up and running in a very short period of time with super high level talent. And we basically, we try and take the pain out of hiring freelancers. Take the pain out of it for both sides.

Robert Plank 1:14 Awesome. So so no screwing around on Fiverr or Upwork. You say, I want to hire someone to code an app or a platform or a plug in for me, and I don't have to go through five or 10 different programmers. I don't have to do interviews. You'll find the person for me exactly.

Michael Solomon 1:31 A lot of people, when they come to us, have had bad experiences with the various platforms and even some of the platforms that have that prevent their talent, they still come having had problems. Sometimes they they're they're a little surprised about the cost. But the the real value of having somebody who's very experienced is what they get done in an hour is very different than what somebody who's less experienced gets done in an hour and people always say, Oh, $200 an hour person is way more expensive than $100 an hour person. And the truth is, with the information set in that sentence, you actually don't know if that's true, because if the $200 an hour person does five times the work of the $100 an hour person, they're actually cheaper. It's just people don't think in those terms, usually, right?

Robert Plank 2:22 And I imagine that people might be kind of driving themselves crazy with that sort of thinking like, it seems like the analogy to me is like, well, if you want to, like, rent out a house, you could, you know, try to do it yourself. Or you could try to, you know, hire this person or that person, then you have to, kind of, you know, manage all that, or you can go to like, a property rental kind of company, and they manage it all for you, and maybe they take a bigger cut. But I imagine that people maybe are having trouble maybe deciding on which route they're going to take. So can you maybe talk us into like, why someone would want to go with you, as opposed to trying to manage all this themselves?

Michael Solomon 2:59 Sure, you mean why the talent would go with us or the company?

Robert Plank 3:03 I mean both are either

Michael Solomon 3:06 Sure. So the the talent loves to do this because their time is valuable, and every minute that they spend working on figuring out the terms of a contract or figuring out the terms of the engagement is time they're not spending doing the work that they're good at and they love doing, so they're thrilled to I was with somebody on on Thursday night who was saying, you know, it's not even so much chasing the invoices. That's so time consuming. It's even figuring out if you've been paid because you have, you have wires coming into your your bank account, or ACH is coming in, and then you have to try and match them up to which invoice they go with, and that's all time consuming, and everything we can do to save them time is a big win for them. And because their time is so valuable, they're ending up ahead of the game financially. And then on the company side, you know when, when people have done a few projects and have some bad experiences, they come in our door with, you know, arms wide open, being very receptive to our offering. And, you know, occasionally we have somebody who gets a price from us for a specific thing, and they say, Oh, my God, I see that. You know, there's, there's 100 people here for, for, you know, $100 less per hour than the guy you're charging. And I said, it's true, and among those 100 people, there's probably some really good ones at that price. But in order for you to figure out which ones they are, you're going to have to kiss a whole bunch of frogs, and by the time you're done doing that, you'll have spent more money than you will, than you than you would have otherwise, and you'll have wasted a lot of time. And we also, we also have people come in after those bad experiences with disastrous code bases saying, Can you fix this? Of course, sometimes it's possible to fix it, and often it's it's just much easier to start over again, right?

Robert Plank 4:50 And that's a scary place to be, where people say, Well, Mike, my company is now all these months behind, and now we're kind of code wise in the. Dead and have to start over, and we're out this money, and we have to start over. And now we've finally seen the light, and we have gone to you. You're saying, why not just cut through all that and just go to you to begin with? Yep,

Michael Solomon 5:11 and often, you know, often, these are people who are using investor money. So it's not only did they waste their time and their energy, but now they're starting to lose the confidence of their investors because they're spending money poorly.

Robert Plank 5:23 Yeah, gee. So like, if they were saying, Well, this project needs to be done in six months, and now they've wasted four months on it. And, like, All right, now we need to really hustle here and get it done and get six months done in two months, kind of a scary place to be. And so I imagine in your dealing with people again, from from both ends of the spectrum you've had, you've got some interesting stories under your belt, either from the like the tech talent side or the company side. So do you have any like, cool stories like that you want to share with us today?

Michael Solomon 5:53 Sure we also you know that our background as as you know is we've been managing musicians and directors for 2522 years. So it's, it's pretty funny trying to compare what it's like dealing with the different kinds of talent we have. A lot of we have a lot of fun with that. I would say, one of my favorite stories, and I can't name any names, is a very successful 20 year old company came to us and said, a small company, I don't want to make it sound huge, and said, we have a tech team of 36 people, and we're not feeling like it's a perfect fit for our our culture anymore, and We're wondering if we can start over with you, and we need to build a whole new product. And can we, can? Can we use you guys to do that? If we, if we let the existing team go, we've worked with them, we'll take good care of them. We'll do it the right way. And lo and behold, you know, six or eight months later, we had completely rebuilt their product with a team of about five people, and we are continuing to work with them on an ongoing basis, where we're keeping new features flowing and growing the product and keeping the base going with a, you know, a fraction of the people that they had before, and A fraction of the cost. And, you know, really the the idea of our company name, that the idea of a 10x developer, is all geared around, you know, the people who are really good at this are so much more valuable than than just a little better than the people who are good at it, like the people who are really good at it are just infinitely, you know, an order of magnitude. And that's one of our favorite, favorite things that we get to see. And it was a, you know, it was a win win for the company and for the people who worked on it. So that's, that's a really fun one. I'm trying to think of some other good stories. There are other situations that go in the other in the other direction. I think that there's a lot of moments where new entrepreneurs want to do things their way and haven't studied the best practices of both the technology and the startup industry. And you know, we pride ourselves on not saying yes, we'll do whatever you want without having explored the reasons why they want to do it, and is it the best way to do it? But there are moments where we where we worked with people, you know, who, who choose to not listen to those, those kinds of advice and counsel and and we, you know, ultimately, we serve at their pleasure, so we will do what they want. But it's very unfortunate, because the outcomes of those things don't don't always go the way that you want them to. So we, when we vet our talent, one of the things we're looking for is not just, are they highly skilled, but are they good communicators? Will they say to somebody, let me, let me better understand why you want to do it that way. Because I don't think, from a technical standpoint, that's the right choice. So explain to me why you won't do it and really digging in and and being a partner, a trusted partner, not just a code monkey, if you will, who's sort of just going off in a corner and doing it. We really view ourselves as consultants, as partners, consultants and partners. Does that make sense? Yeah.

Robert Plank 9:22 So, so basically, you you think it through more than than the average person. It sounds like a really common trap people can fall into is if they say, Well, you know, I just want to create the this software, and I don't really care how it's done, or I don't care what platform it is, so I'll just hire someone to do it, and then you're basically playing Russian roulette, right? You're basically at the mercy of whatever language or whatever tools that person's using. And it's like when, when you're a hammer, everything looks like a nail, so you might end up getting, you know, backed into a corner. And then there's the other problem of saying, Well, I'm just gonna do some really quick research, and. And I'll, I'll make a few hasty decisions based on, well, I want it to be COVID like this, or have this platform, and then kind of going around and seeing who will say yes to you, and then, yeah, having another whole problem there. So it sounds like, by by you guys and having your whole team, things are actually thought through for a change. Yeah,

Michael Solomon 10:16 we really, we really feel like the, old adage of Measure twice, cut once is super important. And you know, to be honest, in the startup world, you also balance that with, you know, don't try and get things perfect, get them out. See how people react to them and live with your product. Let your users live with the product and see what you learn, and then iterate and change from there. And those are those are somewhat contradictory ideas, but they actually go really well together when, when applied with the right discipline. Yeah,

Robert Plank 10:49 the iPhone took a couple generations just to add copy and paste. So I find this really interesting that you're doing. You're dealing with like the programmers now, but you also do like musicians and directors. So how the heck did you even get started with this? So

Michael Solomon 11:03 the background is we, my partner and I have been managing musicians for 23 years. I think this year is our, is our. Is our 23rd year of the company. And as the music industry got really badly disrupted by technology, we started to think about, what are, what are our skill? I mean, it's actually what we talk about. You. You put a product out, it works, it's good. And then you run into a problem, and you have to iterate, right? You have to figure out, like, what what do we do? So we had this pivot moment of like, okay, we have these skills. What else can we do with these skills? And they're unlike other other areas of the music industry, I think being a manager is actually a fairly translatable skill into other industries, but we sort of had this epiphany when we were doing some work on some technical products, both for our clients and for Bruce Springsteen. We were working on some iOS apps, and in one of these projects, we just sort of had this very not great experience, and we kept wondering, where was this person's manager? We, as a customer like we wanted to talk to somebody about how the process was going, and there was no one. There was no one for us to talk to. So that was sort of the initial kernel of the idea. And we experimented, founder, found our way to somebody who was a great technologist, who understood the concept of what we want to do, because he was also had was a musician, and they were both passion points for him. And we tried it out, and it worked really well. And he was the one who said, you know, I love this. All my friends, all my programmer friends, want, want in on this. Let's, let's turn it into a company. And that was the birth of 10 acts, which is about five, six years ago. Super

Robert Plank 12:43 cool. So you pivoted, and it's I like that, that whole whole concept of you figure out, like the process, the skills, you find something that works, and then if the if the world's changing around you, then you don't just throw out the skills that you learn. You use those skills for something that's maybe right next door

Michael Solomon 13:03 Exactly. And actually, we're, we're having another moment of that right now because we, we've, we've been asked a number of times like, will you help me negotiate my full time job, not my freelance thing, and this is not by our existing clients for the most part. And we thought, oh, let's, let's, let's give that a try. That's an interesting idea. So we've now piloted a new service called agent on demand, where somebody with a job offer comes to us and says, you know, either, will you negotiate this for me with with, you know, the company that's offering a job, or will you help me negotiate it for myself? But you know, giving me ways to think about this that are that are not the way I would have thought about it myself, giving me additional information, maybe giving me confidence to be able to ask for it, giving me comparables. And we're, you know, we're in the midst, we've done a half dozen of these now, and it's feeling like it's going to be another service that we offer. And the one of the things that I love about it is it really solves a pain point for people who have traditionally been exploited, which I believe tech talent has. And what's new about this, and it won't emerge for a little while, until we really get out there in a bigger way, is what we're actually going to end up offering to companies is going to be really valuable for them too, because it's not just about, like, how can we squeeze another dollar out of the company? We don't really approach it that way at all. It's much more about trying to create alignment between the two parties. So just to give you an example, companies typically when they when they want to make an offer to somebody, make the same offer to George as they do, to Sally as they do, to Beth all for the same role. But they didn't start out by finding out, like, what's important to George versus Sally versus Beth, and you know, they could actually end up spending less money on an employee just by offering the right other incentive. Initiatives like, oh, you know George, you can work from home on Fridays that might be hugely important to him, and he's willing to take a lower salary than otherwise, because they're able to do that, but if they didn't ask the questions, they don't even know what people are interested in. And I think that the approach that we're taking with this is really built around understanding what the candidates looking for, and then helping them or doing it ourselves, to communicate to that to the company. So you've now got a much better understanding between both sides.

Robert Plank 15:30 Yeah. I mean, you're bridging the gap. And it makes me think, like, anytime I like, need to call, like, a contractor of some kind, I just like, go down the list, and I make, you know, call after call, and it's one of those situations where it feels like, in this day and age, with the technology out there, there's got to be a better way. And it sounds like the same sort of situation applies for people, you know, matching up with, with their their employment, in whatever which way. So like, it sounds like you guys, like you're, you're kind of cutting edge and on the ball, and you get a lot done and have this attention to detail. So I mean, why do you think that is? Do you think that is there, are there things that you think that you do differently or better than everyone else out there?

Michael Solomon 16:15 No, but I definitely love keeping my eyes and ears open for pain points in people's lives. All of the the for profit and not for profit businesses that that I've been involved in, founding or CO founding, all have this common element of helping people. The irony, by the way, is that I'm 48 years old. It didn't it didn't occur to me that they all had that commonality until about a year or two ago, but, but that's sort of where I live. And as soon as you start to open your eyes and ears to what are people's pain points, you all of a sudden start to see the opportunities of, where can I really improve somebody's life? And of course, yes, I'm interested in getting paid, and at least for the for profit companies for doing that, and it it really just gives you the ability to see the world in a different way. And I do believe entrepreneurship can be taught. But I also believe a big part of what makes an entrepreneur, the ones who are born, if you will, or the ones who who sort of got there without intentionality, are the ones who see the world that way. They just see those opportunities differently. And I don't, I don't know that I have any superpowers in reality, but if I did, I think seeing some of that is one of them, and looking at the world through that lens,

Robert Plank 17:35 that's a really important, I guess, life lesson in general, right? Don't be pessimistic and and look at problems, at opportunity opportunities instead. And as you're explaining your thought process there, what, what like strikes me a little bit is that I imagine that a lot of you know, either, like companies or entrepreneurs or whoever like they might be missing out on the opportunities that are out there, because maybe they're, they have, like, an ego problem. They're stuck in the old fashioned way of doing things. They don't want to be aware or focus on those problems. They just want to, like, sweep things under the rug. And, I mean, the the music industry Perfect, perfect example of that, right? I mean, you look at, you know, the seat when CDs were dying and everyone wanted to ignore the piracy and the streaming. Well, then Apple went and said, well, we'll pick up on that. And and so I imagine that maybe some people need to put their ego aside. And if their current business model is kind of dying or has limited shelf life, they need to re examine things and look at things without an ego. And then there's like, the the whole aspect of, you know, people might be just too busy and putting out fires and switching gears and not really aware of where things are headed. So I think that you know, as you're explaining that that's what kind of comes to me, that people need to put their ego aside and to maybe stop putting out the fires and get that perspective so that way they can, they can just get the ball rolling on these other, you know, wherever their industry is headed, just kind of focus on what needs to be focused on.

Michael Solomon 19:03 Yeah, I think that's absolutely true. I mean, the music industry, especially the recorded music industry, basically was like an ostrich, like, if we put our head in the sand, maybe this will go away. And it cost 10s of billions of dollars, because they did have options for ways to be involved in the future. And ultimately, everything is coming back around, and things are starting to look up for the entire industry. They were entire recorded industry because of streaming streaming revenue. But it didn't have to be the last 20 years of of disaster didn't have to be what it was. And the real problem was that the leadership didn't approach it with an open mind and really thinking about, like, forget about the way we've done it. How should we do it going forward? If we were starting this business today, how would we build this business? And you know, that's true of many. Are many big companies and industries that get, get disintermediated, but it's, it's very it was very unfortunate and very hard to watch. I mean, personally, we saw tons of friends lose their jobs and ultimately have to leave the industry because the industry shrank. There just weren't jobs for them and and we didn't leave it, but we added on to it, and it's been really rewarding. And I think that a lot of what we've learned from Tech has informed how we operate within the music industry now. And I you know life is this great journey, and you have to really avail yourself of all of the preconceived things that you feel like are set in stone, and just be open to new data all the time. Every day, you're getting new data, and if you don't have fear around it, and you can just take it in as data, the opportunities are just there. You just see them.

Robert Plank 20:56 That's a really good way of looking at it, of looking at the thinking about the what if and then, don't let that emotion hold you back just because you're afraid of of the the uncertainty of maybe throwing something out, or doing something irreversible in order to kind of make your your business what it needs to be, or expanding into kind of new area. So, so, you know, you said something in there that was something along the lines of like, you know, like the hindsight and perspective aspects. So with you personally looking back at what you've done, do you feel like it? Do you do anything differently? Or did you make any, like, huge mistakes, or anything like that? Does that come to mind?

Michael Solomon 21:35 Oh, yeah. I mean, making mistakes. One of the things that I love about the technology industry is it celebrates failure in a way that other that other places don't. So I'm a little less, a little less afraid of that. I think we made some are you specifically talking about in technology now, or just along the way, just along the way? I mean, I think one of the earliest mistakes that we made, and it's really interesting, because it sort of applies across, it's, it's, I would say, if I had, you know, I said if I had a superpower, if I had a super weakness, this might go along with this might, this might be it. But early in, in our in our years as a music management company, we really believe that if somebody had exceptional talent in one regard, they would be able to overcome some some big difficulties. So that might be addiction as an example of a difficulty. And the reality is, in most instances, talent needs to really be talented across the thing that they're known for, their talent for. I didn't compose that sentence well, but so a musician can't just be a great singer and nothing else they need. They need to have other skills that go along with that. And as with any statement or any rule, there are exceptions to that, but they are few and far between. And if you ask people in the music industry about the superstars that they've met and worked with over the years, there are very few people who got to be an arena act, who got to be a long, lasting act that are not talented, not just in their in their given instrument or in their songwriting, but in their people skills, in how who they surround themselves with. And that's a big part of their talent is being able to, like keep the ball moving. They're usually good marketers in one way or another. And I think when you know what I was talking about earlier with the tech talent is we don't just want people who are great tech talent to represent. We want people who are great tech talent who also have great communication skills and good business acumen so that they can understand like, Oh, you want to build that to do this. Okay, I can do it that way. But really, I think if I understand what you want you we should do it this way, because this is going to be better for what you want in the long run. And that's the idea of having this holistic person who's really well rounded and has multiple attributes that feed their talent is is something that I missed early on, and I'm still getting there, and I still sometimes believe that people can overcome one weakness by being really strong with something else. And I rarely seen evidence of that. That's

Robert Plank 24:30 really interesting way of thinking about it, that like you don't have to have skills in every possible thing. It's okay to specialize, but you can't just have that one skill. You have to have some of those other neighboring skills. It doesn't matter if you're the best coder in the world, if you can't communicate, or if you don't have common sense. So that's, that's, that's something I'm gonna have to think about for a long time that like it, we need to kind of have those, maybe not 1000 hats, but like five or 10 different hats, those extra compliments. Three skills to kind of make, make our our number one skill, that much better. I love it.

Michael Solomon 25:04 Yeah. And I think that what people call soft skills, or people are starting to call power skills, but sort of the human side of things really come into everything. I mean, having a high emotional intelligence is is crucial to succeed. And if people really don't have that, and they really don't understand how their actions impact their life and impact the world around them, and just have that very, very base level of of understanding about their their role in the world, there's very little way to achieve much beyond that, because the if you don't have that, you end up walking around blaming people or the universe for the circumstances around you. And if you blame other people for the for the situation you're in, then you have no power to be able to change it. And I slightly veered off course here to talk about, to talk about emotional intelligence, but like it really plays in so, so heavily into everything that we do,

Robert Plank 26:02 right? I agree completely. Well, this has been a super enlightening and eye opening, and I want to make sure that everyone knows where to find out about you and your company and what you have going on. So do you have any links to drop for us

Michael Solomon 26:13 today? Sure. So the the main hub is 10x management, which is our technology company that I just spoke. Just just spoke about a bit. The music company is called brick wall management, and it's brick wall mgmt.com and then the nonprofits, which I didn't really get into, our musicians on call.org, and sarcoma.org

Robert Plank 26:35 super cool. And is there a quick, like, like, 32nd 62nd blurb about this nonprofit stuff, because it sounds really

Michael Solomon 26:42 interesting. Sure, the Christian and car fund, which is found@sarcoma.org is a nonprofit that raises money for research and treatment for sarcoma, which is a rare but very important cancer, because it's believed to be the gateway to solving a bunch of different cancers, if we can figure out how to solve the various versions of that of that illness. And musicians on call is a nonprofit that brings musicians into the bedsides of patients in healthcare facilities, and they literally go room to room and play right at the bedsides. And it's a it's a very easy thing to describe and picture, but the experience of being in the room is actually much bigger than the image we all get in our head.

Robert Plank 27:25 Super cool. That sounds like a nice, nice thing that you're doing there. So just a recap for everyone. 10x management.com, brick wall, MGMT musicians on call.org, and then what was the and then the Christian and car fund is sarcoma.org and so, so, yeah, so it's

Michael Solomon 27:43 actually sarcoma.com or the Christian and car fund.org either way. Oh, my

Robert Plank 27:47 mistake. Sarcoma.com Chris, the Christian and car fund org. Okay, they get it right, yep,

Michael Solomon 27:53 they go to the same place. Okay, cool, that that's

Robert Plank 27:55 that's a relief. Then, so, so, great. So, uh, so, yeah, lots of things to ponder and think about when it comes to if we are freelancers or workers, and if we're unhappy and we want to get hooked up with some, you know, some better employment than 10x management. And then on the flip side, if you're a startup of business and you want to have better talent, if you're tired of the freelance sites, if you're tired of just dealing with this or that person, then go and reach out to 10x management and see if they're a right fit for you and and yeah, so, and maybe for everyone else out there, maybe listen to this episode two or three times within the next couple of months, to really think about, are you aware of the problems, the opportunities? Are you acting down on them, or are you resting on your laurels and losing market share? I'd rather be the person that's kind of innovating and moving in the direction I need to go so. So yeah, lots of stuff to think about, and thanks Michael for stopping by and for sharing some of this great stuff with us today. Thank

Michael Solomon 28:54 you so much for having me. It was a real pleasure, and I really enjoyed the conversation.

Robert Plank 28:58 Awesome. Same here. Please subscribe, rate and review our show at marketer of the day.com/itunes and like us on Facebook at marketer of the day.com/facebook you.