342 Avetis Antaplyan

Jeffrey Feldberg: [00:00:00] Avidus Antaplion is the founder and CEO of HireClout, an Inc. 5000 fastest growing company. He's an award winning CEO, advisor, investor, entrepreneur, family man, and go giver. HireClout provides tech recruiting and consulting services, hiring tech professionals for the best companies in the world. 

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Welcome to the Deep Wealth Podcast. Well, we have a fellow entrepreneur, thought leader, podcaster, investor, and the list goes on and on, but it's all in the Deep Wealth house. Avetis, welcome to the Deep Wealth Podcast. An absolute pleasure to have you with us. And I'm curious because there's always a story behind the story.

What's your story? What got you from where you were to where you are today?

Avetis Antapylan: Well, first of all, thank you for having me here, Jeffrey. I'm very excited. I've heard great things. glad to hopefully add some value to your awesome listeners.

Jeffrey Feldberg: Thank you. Thank you. And likewise, right back at you.

Avetis Antapylan: Thank you so much. [00:03:00] the story behind the story. Huh? How we got here? it's probably a typical story you've heard many times is a entrepreneur that, that wants to win, right? And wants to win in a big way and has a constant itch, a vision.

I'm a guy that takes a lot of risks which is interesting because, I've got a life that would be little bit, risk aversed, I have a family. I have a wife and two kids and we are very simple people, so we don't need anything crazy, but there's an itch that I have that I've always had, I've had since I was a kid, to be an entrepreneur and to do big things so for me, I took the traditional route at first, went to school, studied business all I ever knew was, I needed to be successful.

I wanted to be successful. So I went to school, studied business and I went to work. I went to work and I ran a 5 million a year Rite Aid which is actually a pretty, a pretty big deal. I was an assistant manager at 19 years old. I ran a 5 million store along with the store manager, got really bored with the bureaucracy and the nonsense.

And, funny story, they wanted to promote me to a store [00:04:00] manager. And of course, a money motivated individual, I was like, great, let's do it. And they said, well, you have to work seven to five. And I said well, I can't because I'm going to school. And they said, well, you're going to have to. To figure that out, I was like, what do you mean you have to figure that out?

I can't do that, right? I have to go to school. I come in 11 and leave at 8. You can be innovative. This is fine, right? There's people that would love that seven to five schedule. I'll hire and assist the manager and they said, well, no, you don't understand though, you, you have to.

Leave school, because this is a big thing, and I said, nope hard pass, one of the smartest decisions I've made, I continued in school, ended up leaving, Kaplan went and , Rite Aid, and I ended up working after school program, basically it was sports, teaching kids sports, One of the best jobs I've ever had within a few months, I became a head coach, and then I became a training coach.

So other schools would come in, other coaches would come in to learn from me very early on I felt that I had this leadership inside of me, right? Very early, I learned to disrupt before it was a word, people would say, it [00:05:00] takes three years to get to that position, and I would say, I don't care, and I would do it in nine months, and I would do it in, So, I just started learning that I didn't care what people said and what the norm was.

So then, unfortunately, I left those schools and became a traveling program manager. So I had my own schools underneath me.

Jeffrey Feldberg: Huh.

Avetis Antapylan: So that was a lot of fun because now I get to work with the coaches and develop them and hire them, coach them and all that. But I missed the kid component, right? So I really enjoyed working with the kids and making an impact there.

Eventually, I left there. To go work for Kaplan, a company I'm sure you you know well and they had acquired a, I guess a startup, SCORE Educational Centers, and wanted to scale it. I went in there same thing, learned, was an assistant director, then took over a center helped rebuild that.

Then I was sent to one of the worst performing centers in the country, in a very nice area of LA. I turned that into a top three. So then it became, hey, you're big on kind of changing. Turnaround [00:06:00] stories, basically, here go rebuild this center, go rebuild that center, so that became a kind of a trend, so I did that for a few years but what changed there is, as good as I was doing, as well as I was doing It didn't seem to matter, right?

The company was kind of starting to feel the pre recession, which was happening in 2006 and 7. We were starting to feel that, and they kept shuffling the deck. They kept shuffling leadership, and the position that I was kind of being groomed for, I think it was a vice president or something like that, was eliminated without any notice to me.

That position no longer existed. So I said, so what does this mean for me? And their answer was, I don't know, but don't worry, we're going to do this and this. I said, okay, well, that's kind of odd. It seems odd that I wasn't even told, and I was clearly not part of your big plans. If I really was, you would have talked to me about it.

So I started looking for a new position, and within a months, yeah, I gave him months notice, but within a few months, I had several offers, [00:07:00] and then Right before I accepted one of them, one of the women that worked for me this woman, Jessica, she said, hey, she was one of the directors, she said, hey, before you take another job, can I introduce you to someone?

I said no, no, no I'm, all set, Jessica, I'm going to accept an offer in the next couple of days, they're expiring soon, can you please, please meet this guy, Jeff? So I meet Jeff, who happened to be a Kaplan customer, his kids, we used to go to one of our K 12 branches. Met him, really liked him, he had a business that was previously successful, but not doing well he hadn't done well in the 2001 2003 recession, it just hadn't rebounded well, so by he was just looking for someone to rebuild his business, and I said, I'm happy to come in and help, I would just want to make sure, by the way, this was a recruiting company.

I said, I'm not necessarily interested in being a recruiter. I'm, I'm, are you going to get out of the way so I can rebuild this and scale this business? And he said, yeah, please, I need a franchise player, which again, it's kind of a weird gutsy thing to say for a 26 year old who doesn't know anything about that industry.

But again, this is kind of the [00:08:00] crazy person I am. We came in, things looked good. And then all of a sudden 2008 recession came. So I was like great timing, right? So business is really bad. I've given up my, cushy well paid position with great benefits and great respect and a big fun team to go work at a a company that needs restructuring and rebuilding and whoo, here we are.

It gets better and worse in the sense that I'm looking for MBA programs, I'm about to start an MBA program, my wife's hey, great news, we're having our first baby. I'm like, great, now I have no money a position that I don't know if we're gonna make it through. We're in a recession, and I'm about to get myself into a 100, 000 debt for an MBA program.

Wonderful. But what ended up happening, it was one of the biggest blessings in the world because Typically, I would have considered quitting and going back world, right? Back to the same predictable world. But this mentality of burning the boats. I don't know if you know the book. I'm reading the book 20 years later, 18 years [00:09:00] later.

The concept of you just burn the boats is kind of how I approached it. And one of the things that allowed me to do that when my baby was born, office was Five minutes from my home. So what I would do is I would go in the middle of the day, see my wife, give her a little bit of an hour kind of support.

She'd make me some lunch. I would play with the baby. I'd give her a little bit of a break. And that allowed me to stay strong and keep doing it. And of course, there was other things. I had a, Jeff was great to deal with. I was learning a lot. very few clients we did have loved us.

So I knew something was around the corner. So we struggled for about 16, 17, 18 months, and then things started turning around. We started scaling that business. I became an owner in that business, and then eventually, I wanted to build my own thing, I wanted to build my own baby sort of say, and then Jeff was, hey, you can have more equity let's keep building the Mitchell Group, I said no, this is your baby I want my own, I want to build my own baby, so let's do it together, I'll come with you, and I laughed, and he said, no, I mean it and [00:10:00] this is the no, no nonsense guy that he is.

No, I should say ego guy that he is and I said, he goes, I'm serious. I'm like, but I'm going to be the one running it. I'm the CEO. He says, yeah, no problem. So that's what we did. So we started this company about 10 years ago from zero, lots of ups and downs, small growth frustrating, small growth.

We started making small changes. We implemented EOS. I'm not sure if you're aware of the platform. Jeffrey really helped us systemize and really become a real business. And two years in a row, we made Inc. 5, 000 fastest growing companies. This year haven't applied, so I'm not sure if we'll make it or not considering, recession we are in tech anyway.

But from zero to Inc. 5000, was not easy, but we did it. And we had a little hiccup this year, but it looks like back on track to be where we're at. HireCloud, I should say, is a technology consulting and recruiting firm. We're a global company. The previous company was more of a regional player.

HireCloud is a global company. And we have teams four continents I'd say 5 [00:11:00] percent of our business is here in the United States, but we service the biggest tech companies. We build and scale their teams, Toyota, Uber, Hulu, Sony PlayStation, Panasonic, these types of companies. We scale their engineering and technology and IT teams and AI teams.

We also have our own engineers, so we can embed them into yours, so on and so forth. That's the story. I got a wife, two kids. They're my why. This is why I do all the crazy stuff I do. I'm an investor in deep tech startups. I'm a board member. I have my own podcast. I'm a wild man. I'm always everywhere and a million different things.

And every time I tell myself I'm not going to do it, I do more of it.

Jeffrey Feldberg: Wow. I've had so much to unpack there. Let's go back to the beginning though, because you said something interesting. When you were young, you said as a child growing up, you knew you wanted to be an entrepreneur. You just had that within you. So a couple of questions around that. Where did that come from?

That insight? Yeah, I'm going to be an entrepreneur. I'm going to run my own company at one point in time. [00:12:00] Where is that from?

Avetis Antapylan: Well, I mean, the truth is I actually wanted to be an NBA basketball player, but that goal, that dream was very quickly crushed as I had more and more ankle injuries playing basketball and realized okay, the furthest I'm going to get is probably high school basketball. I don't even, I don't think I can even, I can't get to division one or two college basketball.

So, it's Pointless. And I didn't want to be an accountant, and I didn't want to necessarily be a doctor, and I didn't want to be an attorney and I didn't have a path, right? I didn't grow up in a home where, let's say, my parents were doctors or lawyers or whatever. And so that I had something to follow in that sense.

My mother was a teacher. My father was kind of, would do a lot of loose, different kind of entrepreneurial type of stuff, but I didn't have a path to follow. So I decided just to, I needed to be successful and business seemed to be the route to go. But I always knew I wanted to probably be the guy.

Even as the not best player on every team I ever [00:13:00] played on, I was always the team captain. So there was always something in me that said, I want to run things. Not because I want to be important or be the guy, it's because I want to be responsible for the success and the failures.

I want to blame myself. I want to control what I can control and feel great about it. Or feel negative but towards myself, you know what I mean?

Jeffrey Feldberg: And perhaps that's part of the answer for the next question, because when you started your journey, you were really a quote unquote employee, you were a team member, did some remarkable things, you rose through the ranks very quickly, and Avidus for a lot of people That's where the story would have ended and you even said it a little earlier, I had a great job, a wonderful team, a large team, terrific benefits.

It was predictable. You knew what was going to be happening. You had a rhythm and in many ways for a lot of business owners and entrepreneurs, that's the same kind of thing. They have this predictability. They have this rhythm. For you though. [00:14:00] You didn't move forward. You stopped that. You burned the boats.

Love that story. That's something that still today inspires me when I'm thinking about things. And for the listeners, I'm going to do a very poor job of the full story, but the long story short, it goes back in the day where there's this conquering army and they land on the shores and they're walking towards the battle and the captain.

He has everyone turn around and they look and lo and behold, the ships are burning and all the soldiers saying Captain, what are you doing? What are you doing? How are we going to get back home? We're going to have to either fight and win or die because we can't go back home now on the boats. And he said, that's exactly the point.

And sure enough, as the story goes, they went on and they won because they didn't have a choice. It was die or win. And off they went with that again, probably a very poor rendition of that

Avetis Antapylan: No, that was great.

Jeffrey Feldberg: gets the point across. So. You burned your boats. You said, I'm not going to go back to that life.

And even when you had ownership in a company, a lot of people would have said, Hey, I've arrived, I've done it. [00:15:00] But that really was just the beginning. That was just your warmup act where later on you said, I'm going to go out on my own and we'll talk about higher cloud in a moment. So what was behind that?

Because you had the trappings of success. You were that entrepreneur, you didn't start the company, but you're now in the company and in that entrepreneurial role. So where's this burning passion of really doing your own thing from scratch led to HireCloud? Where's that coming from?

Avetis Antapylan: Great question. Really deep. It's tough to find the actual root of it. I just think it's craziness. I don't know if you I don't know if you, of course you have, you've probably been in a room with a think tank, some kind of genius group, 10, 15 of you, and you look around, you're like, every one of you is insane.

You ever been in one of those rooms?

Jeffrey Feldberg: Absolutely. Absolutely.

Avetis Antapylan: And no one understands those people, sometimes not their own families, it's actually madness what we do, right? It doesn't make sense why someone would give all that comfort [00:16:00] up to go into chaos. I think, honestly, if I can be, I mean, I was happy at Kaplan.

I was doing well. I just was really disappointed with kind of bureaucracy and the politics and stuff like that. I didn't like that, you know, and Even as a response to we'll give you raises, we'll do this, but we got to wait until your next one year, what do you call it?

Performance review. And I'm like, what it's March or whatever it was, I got to wait nine months. This is nuts, and so. I always wanted to control my own destiny, maybe that's what it was, but it was risky, Jeffrey, and I can't say I didn't look back and say, man, maybe I made a mistake. I even had really smart people tell me not to do it.

My mom, who's one of the smartest people I know, said, don't do it, son, don't do it. Don't do it and I said, I'm gonna do it. I'm gonna do it. I have to do it. I talked to my wife and she said, you've never done this wrong. Do whatever you gotta do. And, I tend not to listen to people.

I tend to just do Follow my gut. [00:17:00] I'm big. I'm following my gut. My gut said, I have to do something different. I have to go against the grain. Everybody's doing this. I should do something else. And I think that's really what it was, and all of this story could have been very different, because the other two positions I almost accepted were very corporate jobs.

And it was very comfortable and normal and it was similar set up, beautiful offices and stable companies and just didn't want to do that. It wasn't what I wanted. I wanted a little bit of chaos and craziness and I knew going in, it was probably not going to work. Cause I've looked at it and I was like, this thing's got good bones, but damn, it's a mess.

It's a mess, it's gonna be a lot of work, but that's what I wanted, I've learned I don't like simple things, I don't like easy things, even when I buy properties, I never buy nice properties, I buy nice land and shitty properties, and I make them great, and I build new homes, and so I've learned more about either improving things or building things.

[00:18:00] And I just could, that's my thing and that's, I think, fits well in the entrepreneurial route. But I warn people, it is not for everybody. Listening to this story, if you're not this type, and if you're not willing to risk it all, don't do it, because it's crazy, it sounds cool when we tell it, right?

I mean, forget me I've, accomplished nothing compared to some of these crazy stories I've had, I've heard, you just told me a story of, nine figure acquisition and all this. I mean, you look back and you're like, that's exactly what I'm gonna do. But you didn't live those two, three, four, five years of hell those people went through to get there.

You weren't the one that skipped payroll for six months to make sure your employees get paid during recessions. You weren't the one that was taking half a salary or none for, to get your business built up. So it's challenging. It's not as easy as it sounds.

Jeffrey Feldberg: Absolutely. The entrepreneurial journey, we must love pain and torture along the way to, to get that done. So you have it [00:19:00] within your DNA that you like the challenge. You like leading your own destiny to take some of your words. And so when it came to higher clout, so for starters, why don't you share with the listeners, if they haven't heard of your company, what your company is doing, and once that's out there, how did you come to really do higher clout?

And in HR, you have your own twist with that, but you could have really done anything. So how did this all come to be?

Avetis Antapylan: Great question. So, I'll start with the story and then we can talk about what it does. But when I was leaving Kaplan, I was working with executive search firms, retained executive search firms who were trying to place me as a VP. And as they were setting me up with this organization and that organization and this interview and this offer, I was like, hey man, what do you do?

Tell me more about what they do. They're like what do you mean? No. Let's just get you set up for this interview. And I said no. What do you do? It looks interesting. He goes, what? No, dude, I'm placing you as, whatever it was, senior director of operations at a e learning company or something.

And I'm like, what you do looks interesting. They're like, [00:20:00] nah, don't do it, man. Just stick to what you do. And I was like, okay. And funny enough, talk about a weird journey. Jessica introducing me to Jeff. Jeff ran a a boutique technology recruiting firm, right? It was more of an IT shop, and it was like I said, a regional LA, Southern California player.

But I thought it was interesting. I was like, oh, okay, so you get to work with more than one business. That seems interesting. And my curiosity has always been about consulting, advising, multiple businesses, and how do you do that as a 26, 27 year old? Even if you think you're successful, nobody is okay, great, you run a small portion of a successful business.

What? Who's going to hire you to consult them? So I felt that there was a little bit of this, but what I learned early on is the way that the industry does it is not right. They're reacting to job orders and job descriptions, and very [00:21:00] early I was like, no, that's not how I roll this is done wrong, this is not how you, you know, like, what do you mean we send resumes and we hope to hear back?

What the hell kind of business do you all run? These are bullshit clients, let's throw them out. But some of these were like big time clients what do you mean, it's DirecTV, I'm like, I don't care who it is, you're dealing with a talent acquisition contractor, who can care less, she's not responding to your emails or calls, that's weird, what kind of business is this, and all these recruiters are working hard and we don't get, no, this is not a client.

And I started getting my own clients and setting expectations right in the beginning. And I realized that's the right way. You don't get on the phone with a client and just, okay, thank you for the business. Thank you so much. What do you need? No. Here, what do you need?

Let's talk about your vision. Let's talk about your team. Let's talk about your mission. What do you mean? I need Java. I need Oracle. I was like, I don't care about all that. That's easy. We can figure that out. Let's talk about, your culture. Let's talk These are things I'm doing early on in the business, not knowing anything about the business.

so that was the [00:22:00] Mitchell Group. That's how I changed the landscape of that organization. So that's why I joined the industry. But HireCloud, I wanted to do something bigger, right? I wanted to be global and I wanted it to be more high tech, not just IT. I wanted software engineering, mobile, real tech.

Now it's like deep tech, right? AI and IOT and all that. So, hopefully that answers that question, how I got into it. It was honestly random really random. And as far as what HireCloud's doing, so, yeah, there's three parts of our business is the executive search or hiring, whatever you want to call it.

So we hire we have four services. One of them is, is called Scale. This is basically if you want to hire 10, 15, 20 people, we're here to do that. One is Flex, which is like If you just want to hire, folks to do a project, right? So a six month, one year, two year project, but these are my engineers that you're hiring temporarily, right?

And then when you're done with the project, you could either convert them and make them your own or send them [00:23:00] back to me and I'll find them another project. And then Elite, which is our kind of executive search where we hire very urgent positions one, one at a time, a CTO, a CPO, CIO, that kind of VP of Engineering, that kind of role.

And then Build is our final offering. And Build is like, we can actually take on small software development projects for you. So, for example, you might say, well, I'm a tech company, what the hell am I going to hire you to do software development for me? You're a tech company, but let's say, or non tech company, and your core people are working on your core product that's making you lots of money.

You can't interrupt that and have them experiment, but you can use our team to experiment. Hey, let's build an API that connects to this robot just so I can have an interface into it. Let's try it. And we can do that for them. So, but our two biggest businesses are hiring, where we hire permanent employees for you and your team, or two are kind of our flex, which is will go into your team, we'll [00:24:00] embed our engineers and data scientists and data engineers and data analysts and whatever into your company in addition to your whole team.

And then when you're done, we're done. Really flexible model.

Jeffrey Feldberg: Really interesting approach and you formed it in your vision, which is intriguing. At Deep Wealth, when we're speaking with business owners, one of the first questions that we ask Does your business run without you? And there's a lot of hemming and hawing and it's a yes, but, or let me tell you, and back and forth they go.

And the short answer is really, it doesn't. And even though you're focusing in the tech area, high tech companies, it's really one of the same for all companies when it comes to talent. So you've been around the block a few times with this. Where as entrepreneurs, whether we're a SaaS company, a high tech company, a manufacturing company, low tech company, best practices are best practices.

When it comes to world class talent, I mean, at Deep Wealth we say, show us your team and we'll [00:25:00] tell you your future. We'll tell you your culture. We'll tell you where you're going to be going based on the team. That's how important it is. Let's talk about the glass half empty because we're always glass half full.

Whereas visionaries, entrepreneurs, founders, where are we getting it wrong? When we're looking for talent, we're looking to expand the team and I'll preface it just to give you a little bit of some information or material here. One of the common excuses I hear, well, Jeffrey, yeah, I was going to hire somebody, it's always the butt comes along, but they don't do it as well as I do.

I am the best. No one can really do it as I'm doing it. And I'm afraid if I brought someone in the. Customers will go away or the culture would suffer or profits would suffer. So where are we getting it wrong that we're not able to take ourselves out of the business and replace ourselves with people who are actually better and smarter than us, who should be in the business?

Avetis Antapylan: Great question. Very deep one. Ooh, there's a saying, A's hire A's and B's hire C's. So a lot of times [00:26:00] as entrepreneurs, we hire helpers. We hire people that are just gonna do what we tell them to do or that are really smart, but kind of are okay just doing the status quo. What I've learned is that's not the right way, right?

The right way is hiring people that are better than you in areas that is not core to you. There's certain things that are core to you, you should stick to. For example, we were doing an executive search for a chief product officer. And after two months of struggling, I told the founder, I said, you should be the chief product officer.

He said, that's funny you said that. The board was just talking about that. Why do you say that? I said, dude, it's just, nobody's good enough for you. And I don't blame you, man. This is your baby. product guy. So there's times you shouldn't. I'll float too quickly. You should be the guy. My client relationships are incredibly important, so I do stay engaged with my clients.

But you have to remove yourself from day to day stuff to work on the [00:27:00] business versus being stuck in the weeds. But it's easier said than done, because you have to hire great people. If you hire average people, you will always be in every seat, every single seat, right? And all you'll do is you'll get some help, but it's all bullshit.

It's honestly, it's temporary and it's going to be more stressful because you're going to have to keep recycling, getting new talent. my advice is don't. Think too small. Don't think in a box. Don't think job descriptions and experience and, oh, I can only pay this and, find the right individual that's got the right mentality and hire them, period.

That's what it's all about. Like one of the directors that works for me, who's amazing She had done an MBA project for us. Her MBA team did an MBA project for us. And I was like, I have to hire her. She's amazing. She had no experience for what we do. She had zero recruiting, zero talent acquisition, zero tech, zero.

She [00:28:00] came from a supply chain background. It was her mindset that I was like, this is the kind of mindset we need. And The person that trained her once, I hired her was amazing in the business, but he wasn't as disciplined and as focused and as good of a manager. He's just a badass people architect.

He was just great at the job, right? And so hiring someone like that. is very different than let's put out a job post. Let's find someone that's got six years of managing recruiting teams and business development teams. It doesn't work. I've hired those people. So you got to find the right mentality, the right caliber of human being who's in the right place of their lives, so they can truly jump in and learn the business and go all in.

It took me years to do this, by the way. In fact, my Vistage group used to tease me because they would say whoa, you're processing people problems? Aren't you one of the best, recruiting firms in the country? In fact, I was hiring great people for some of them. And they're like, I don't get it, dude.

You built our teams. I said, [00:29:00] it's different. I don't do the things I do for myself that I would do for you. What do you mean? Well, I don't headhunt. I post jobs and wait for people to apply. That's the first thing I tell my clients. You're never going to get anyone great doing that. You might get lucky one or two times, and I have too, but it's rare, right?

It's very rare. I would put them through six steps, and I would do this, and I would do that, and I would go. Oh, you don't do that for yourself? No, I don't have time to do that for myself. So right there you see the problem, right? So hire the right great people, let go of the vine slowly, steadily, and then let them own stuff.

At this point, I'm like 40 percent owner and everything, meaning they run it. It's their decisions. I'm just kind of an advisor to them. And I'm the visionary that pushes out the vision and lets them figure things out along the way. Still get a lot of guidance, still get a lot of management, but they're running things.

The right person though, you have to be very careful. You have to find the right person to do these. If you find people that have the wrong mentality, [00:30:00] the right experience. It's going to drive you crazy. And your culture is going to go in the wrong direction. Because we're taught to let go. We're taught to, all these things I'm saying, it's, you can learn these things from books and podcasts and things like that.

The problem is it's in the execution of finding the right person. If you find the wrong person, they're going to drive your culture to the ground. 

I don't know if I answered the question, but that was my attempt at it.

Jeffrey Feldberg: a couple of observations. It's interesting. I think all of us are in this situation. You're really like the shoemaker. You're so busy making shoes for everyone else that you're walking around shoeless. When it comes time for you and your family, and that really is the case for everyone.

So let me circle back because we can all agree the quality of the team that we hire is everything. And if we make a mistake, there is a very costly mistake. That mistake will eventually show up in the P& L, but it takes time to do that.

And oftentimes it's hidden. So let me ask you this for the listeners saying, wow, this is a different way of approaching things. And Avidis, let's make a. Assumption [00:31:00] that they can't work with you. They're just in a different industry. It's not your specialty.

Avetis Antapylan: Yes.

Jeffrey Feldberg: I would imagine, and I'm going to lean on Pareto's principle, as I often do in my interviews with world class experts like yourself.

And I asked the question, Pritil's principle, the 80 20, is there 20 percent of the same problems, the same root causes that go across different companies that create 80 percent of the problems. So for that listener who can't work with you, different industry. Different focus. And they know, okay, I'm not going to do this on my own.

I am going to bring in a recruiter. I'm going to venture to say, it doesn't matter the logo of the recruiter or how much they're charging. If certain things aren't being followed, it's just not going to go well. So where are we again, glass half empty? Where are we getting it wrong as entrepreneurs, as business owners, when we look for a recruiter and then glass half full, how do we get it right?

Avetis Antapylan: I actually think 80 percent of our problems are duplicatable and the same. Some of my think tank groups [00:32:00] have nothing to do with technology. One of the groups I have is plumbing company, a a hospital company they transfer patients law firms. So. 80 percent of the problems are similar, they're always about people not doing their job, people not being motivated, people leaving, people staying too long, people not staying long, it's the same problems if you really think about it.

So it all comes down to alignment. Again, I don't believe in job descriptions, I don't believe in, blindly looking for, saving money, what's the cheapest person I can get, I don't like that approach. For me, everything comes back to understanding yourself as a company. Understanding your limitations, understanding your culture and owning your culture.

Be who you are, meaning if you're an on site office, you are a truly, hey, we are five days a week in an office, own that. It's going to create lots of limitations, but own that and know [00:33:00] that there's certain kind of people you will not be able to hire. Don't hire them to change their minds. There are companies that are lifestyle businesses.

Own the fact that you're a lifestyle business. And hire the right people for that. There are people that are, twelve hours a day, kill yourself, do whatever it takes. Make sure you hire those kind of people willing and able to do that. So for me, it's alignment. Understand yourself first.

Understand that individual, that person you're considering hiring, their goals, their vision for themselves, and see if those things align. If they align, do it. If they don't align, run. I don't care how smart they are, I don't care that they've got a degree from Harvard, I don't care that they helped another company scale, I don't care if they were referred to you by the smartest person you know.

If there's no alignment, run. And if there's alignment, I don't care about the other things on the reverse side. I don't care if they don't have every bullet and every years of experience and they might need a little bit of flexibility on this and, oh shit, I got to pay 20 [00:34:00] percent more to get this person is out.

Who cares? You found the right person, go after it. We use internally kind of like a WHO method. I don't know if you know the book, I forget what it was called, but I think it's called the WHO method. And the whole concept is spend a lot of time understanding that person, put a lot of steps to make sure there's alignment, and at the end, do whatever it takes to get that individual.

Jeffrey Feldberg: And so as you're going through that, As it should, that comes ultimately to us, the entrepreneurs or the business owner, the founder, in terms of finding that recruiter who's going to be helping us. And again, in this thought experiment, can't be you, different industry, what are some red flags for recruiters?

What would be some green flags for looking for? Again, putting logos and reputations aside, because they're only as good as a person that you're working with. So what am I looking for or not looking for?

Avetis Antapylan: You're definitely not looking for the cheapest. so we're in a recession. So when my team gets in these emails where, oh, hey, we're not able to talk to you, communicate with, this is what other firms are working at. Let [00:35:00] us know if you can do it. I say run.

I don't even care that we're willing to work at that fee, that the fee is reasonable. It's a mentality. So for example, one client was looking for a chief technology officer and they were looking for someone that had scaled the business from a hundred million to five hundred million.

And the fee they wanted was whatever, it was like a 5 percent difference. And I laughed and I told this this account executive, I said, let me ask you a question. Our cloud is five times smaller than this company. Do you think I would, for 15 to 20k in a fee difference, I would pick someone amazing over someone average?

We're a small company, she said, never. Think about the mentality difference. So it's not a price thing, it's a value thing. This person doesn't necessarily value a better firm its network and its process and the brilliant person that they can hire. It's, we don't want to pay a fee. We want to save some money.

And if we do pay a fee, we want to pay the least. That's a [00:36:00] client that you don't necessarily want to work with. Even if you're okay with the fee being a little bit less, look, I understand, right? We're in a recession. We've got to be flexible. You've got to be creative. It's a mentality thing. So the lesson is don't go for the cheapest.

Usually they're not the best. we've been three recessions, I've never lowered my price. Ever. Ever. I don't believe in that. That doesn't mean I haven't taken small, short term, cuts to, to scale. That's not what it is I don't shrink, because that's a route to zero, right?

So don't go for the cheapest recruiter. They're not gonna be the best. Two, don't expect the best people to be applying to your jobs. Yeah, everybody's, being laid off, so it's become a normal thing, but Rarely, and I say rarely, because is definitely circumstances where great people get laid off.

Rarely do great people get laid off, rarely. Usually company is getting rid of people that not quite as valuable as they should be. thought they would be, or it's a mistake they made. I'd say 20 percent of those people are good. The rest of them are average, decent, okay. They look good on paper, they're [00:37:00] not great.

So, be careful when you're posting resumes. But we're talking about picking the right recruiter. Don't go for the recruiter that's willing to deal with the least amount of effort. Meaning, you send them a job description, you're like, hey, we're busy, we can't really meet, here's some information, go. Okay, they're not going to do a good job for you.

Either they're going to go and passively work on more interesting projects, or two, you're going to get their average. Or crappy candidates, right? That's not what you're after. You're after someone with integrity. It's just like dating, right? If someone's willing to do whatever you want, do they really care?

Or do they have integrity? Do they really value themselves? So for us, it's partner with companies that value themselves. They say, no, I need an hour meeting. I need to meet you person. I want to see your office. I'm going to be pulling people out of jobs, good jobs, to come work for you. I'm not going to do that in good faith if I don't know your culture.

What if you suck and this poor guy leaves a great [00:38:00] job at Rivian or Google or Facebook or whatever and he's going to come work for your company and it's not as advertised? I need a glimpse into your company. Those are the people you want to partner with, just like anything else in life. Real estate agent.

You don't go for the guys, no problem, I'll show you homes. No, dude. Let's create a budget. Let's see where we're looking. Let me look at your financials. Let's make sure you're serious. Those are the people you should take serious, I think.

Jeffrey Feldberg: It's really methodology. It's the values. We're on the art side of business, which is often where success comes from and really like how you're framing that. And I want to ask you something because what you're doing at HigherCloud, but also your podcast, the Tech Leaders Playbook. You're interviewing fascinating people, all different kinds of backgrounds.

It also ties into earlier, you mentioned you're an investor and deep tech, and that also plays through as a nice theme in the tech leaders playbook. So what's going on with the podcast? Because there is a method to your madness and I'm putting the pieces [00:39:00] together here and I'm seeing how they actually really work nicely together.

So with the podcast, come on, you're busy. You could be doing all kinds of other things. Yet you're carving out time very deliberately, the tech leader's playbook, making the time, the effort. You're doing this deep tech, all this investing. They're all kind of intertwining into the one. So what's the method with the madness from the podcast?

And by the way, for our listeners, go to the show notes. There's a link. You can listen to the podcast, subscribe, do them the favor of subscribing to it and listen to the episodes. They're fascinating. But what's going on behind the scenes? I mean, just with what, why are you doing what you're doing with that?

Avetis Antapylan: Well, first of all, thank you for the compliments from already being on your show for 30 minutes, I can tell how good your podcast is, so that's a big compliment. Same weird Aveda stuff, right? I'm on a podcast and the guy goes, man, you're really, his name's Nicholas, he has a great podcast himself, and he says, you're really good at this, you should have your own show.

And I was like, what? What do you mean? He's dude, you're so such a natural, man. You didn't even prepare. Did you even read my questions? I was like, no, I don't read questions. I just show up. He goes, [00:40:00] you should have your own show. I said, would you run it? He goes, what do you mean? I have my own podcast.

He's would you like build it and do all the nonsense? I don't want to deal with that stuff. I don't even know where to begin. He starts giving me advice. No, but here's what you should get. It just stresses me out more. And I'm like, call me when you're ready to build my show. And he goes, okay. Six months later, he calls me and says, I'm going to take you up on that offer.

So now he did the show for me, because it's a lot of work, Jeffrey, especially on the video front booking the guests, calendars, showing up, the equipment the studio, the editing, don't have time to do that stuff or the interest or, it's just not something I'm good at and want to do.

So the show is. Tech Leader's Playbook, because I'm in tech, and my network is massive in tech. So I thought I could always have really interesting people. So that's one. Two, I did it because I wanted to learn from great people, and like entertaining and telling stories, but I want to hear other people's stories.

So it's like an MBA. It's a PhD. It's a freaking PhD I'm getting, learning from people that are coming on to my show and [00:41:00] vice versa. And for me, it became really eclectic when I went way out of my realm of tech leaders. The idea was to have CTOs and CIOs and stuff like that. But then I met an NBA coach at an event.

I was like, I want you on my show. He's okay, because we hit it off. And then I have the first woman to ever coach in the NFL. What I started learning, it's not about tech. It's about leadership. My show is really about mindset and leadership and people helping others scale their lives. So that's why the show is random.

I'm going to have a meta world piece on my show hopefully soon. I'm just trying to book that, but again, what the does meta know about tech? Well, first of all, he's a tech investor. Two, I'm a huge Laker fan. And three, the guy's brilliant, I'm sure we can learn things from a guy that has won multiple championships.

Brilliant guy, he played for Phil Jackson and played with Kobe Bryant. So what can I learn from him and what can my people learn from him? That's the thesis of the show. And honestly, you said something great in the beginning, [00:42:00] fun. I enjoy doing it. I have fun doing it. So I don't care about anything else.

Jeffrey Feldberg: What's interesting with that is you wanted to be growing up in sports, NBA and playing and everything. Well, here's your chance in a roundabout way. Now you're right in there with the NBA and people who are there and you're doing that. But what I also like is you're doing it on your terms.

So yeah, you could have gone headfirst and, well, I don't really know what I'm doing, but I'll figure it out. Well, hey. You've got your show, you know what you're doing, when you're ready, I'll just show up, you do the rest and you just waited and perhaps it wouldn't have been him, it would have been someone else, but you waited for the right circumstances with the right people to do it.

I really admire with you doing that.

Avetis Antapylan: Always with the right people.

Jeffrey Feldberg: you walk the talk, which is really nice. There's so many different rabbit holes that we could go down. We're starting to bump up again sometime before we go into the wrap up mode. Sadly, before we go into wrap up mode.

Avetis Antapylan: I could do this all day.

Jeffrey Feldberg: Exactly, I'm wondering. Is there a question that I didn't ask or a topic that we haven't [00:43:00] covered, or even a message that you want to get out to the community that we haven't covered off?

Avetis Antapylan: Oh, man. I mean, your questions are so deep. We went so long on each one. It's tough to cover. But one thing I can think of is, don't be a go getter. It's a common compliment you hear, oh, he's a go getter, she's a go getter, be a go giver. 50 percent of the things I do I do it just to do it and people don't get it.

They literally scratch their heads, they're like, why did you do that? Why do you do that? What's in it for you? I'm like, nothing. No, but what is, literally nothing. I'm trying to help people and I'm trying to learn and I want to meet great people. But typically, it all starts with me just doing things to do things.

Like, Someone was referred to me, and I looked at his LinkedIn profile, and I was like he's not the right guy. But out of respect for the person that referred me to him, I'm gonna talk to him. Ended up hiring him, he worked for me for seven years, became a director for our company, great guy, and now he's spinning off a company for us called, one of our companies.

Called Phionix. [00:44:00] So, again, I did it just to, out of respect for the person I referred to him. I did a CSUN, I did a talk at CSUN, and the guy, the dean came in to thank me. and then he brought his NBA groups to kind of help, and I did this, the same guy that, said, you do this?

This is a lot of time and effort, like, why do you have, I said, because I want to help the community, I want to give back, and maybe we can win from this. I ended up hiring someone great from that. So this is just kind of how I roll. I just do things, I give first, with no expectations to get, and somehow, someway, I always win.

Get 10 times more value out of it.

Jeffrey Feldberg: And Avita says, you're talking about that. It really embodies going above and beyond, going the extra mile, as they say, it's where you're doing it for the sake of doing it, not expecting anything else in return.

Avetis Antapylan: Yes.

Jeffrey Feldberg: Although oftentimes when we, through our actions, through our time, we're investing in that, we often get more than what we're giving just from who we're meeting, what we're learning.

And that's a whole other. And I know I said, we're going to go into wrap up mode, but before we do [00:45:00] that, one last question, I promise very quickly, and we're over time here, but what the heck, run with it. With you being an investor, with you in deep tech, and this could be a whole episode onto itself is really not a fair question.

I'll throw it out there anyways, where we are today, which could change tomorrow and certainly by the time this episode airs when we look at artificial intelligence. What do you want to tell us about AI, perhaps with a higher clout or your industry or society in general, I'll leave that up to you, but you're in the thick of things and where you are in your community, I mean, you're right in the heartbeat of everything.

So what should we know?

Avetis Antapylan: I mean, we know it's legit. We know it's real. This is not a fad, right? It is not a fad. It is absolutely disrupting a lot of concepts. It's not there yet. In many places it's not there yet. Companies think they have it figured out, and it's incredible. And it, it's full pilot mode and it's really not.

It's a great tool for simplifying easy tasks and doing things that are not high [00:46:00] risk. Like for example, there's nothing I can easily inject AI into my business for it to do some very basic outreach for me. No big deal. No one's going to get hurt, right? Maybe a dorky message goes out and it's a little embarrassing.

No big deal. But let's say you have AI in hypnosis or something, That could change your life. That could, it could give you great advice 99 percent of the time, and that one time it gives you the wrong advice could kill you. So, we're, we gotta be careful where we apply it, I think.

But it's here and it's here to stay. And if you're still fighting against it, you're going to be a dinosaur in five years, you're going to look back and go, man, what was I thinking? I've truly been replaced. Don't let it replace you, you know, utilize it, learn it but don't rely on it and don't think it's a replacement for your people we're a people first organization and I don't look at it as replacing my people.

I look at it as making my people more efficient, faster and happier or more productive.

Jeffrey Feldberg: Great insights. And [00:47:00] we share the same here at Deep Wealth of AI. It's a huge inflection point. That's step one in our nine step roadmap. It's a huge inflection point. It's like 1992 all over again, where this thing called the World Wide Web back in the day was just coming out. Oh, it's a fad. I'm not going to worry about it. 

Second time around doesn't happen in a lifetime, but here it is happening. So to your advice for our listeners, learn it, work with it, integrate it where you can, free up your people so they can do higher level things and just take the right approach with that. And it's a great segue to really go into the rap emotive and very generous with your wisdom, with your insights.

It's a ritual here on the Deep Wealth Podcast. I have the privilege, the honor of asking the same question to every guest, and it's a fun one. Let me set this up for you. So Avetis, it's tomorrow morning, and you're looking outside your window, and it's the magical DeLorean car from the movie Back to the Future.

Remember that one? And when you look outside your window, not only is the DeLorean car curbside, the door is open, it's waiting for you to hop on in, which you do. And you're now going to go back to [00:48:00] any point in your life. It's, Avidas says, a young child, a teenager, whatever point in time it would be, what are you telling your younger self in terms of life lessons or life wisdom?

Or, hey, Avidas, do this, but don't do that. What does it sound like? 

Avetis Antapylan: Ooh. It's tough because I, did do this, but enjoy. Your life, slow down and enjoy every moment. Lucky for me, I knew my senior of high school that these are the best years ever. And every year was the best year ever. When I had my two kids, my daughter Sofia and my son Andrenik, I was like, man, these are the cutest years ever.

And I lived it up. I'd say even slow it down even more. And don't chase money. Money will eventually chase you if you do the right things. Just be around your family. friends, your brothers, your sisters. Parents just enjoy. Don't rush. I tell this to my daughter all the time, who's a super kick ass gotta do this, pops, I gotta do this, gotta get into the best school, I gotta do this, I gotta, I'm [00:49:00] like, slow down, sweetheart, slow down, I gotta do a, I gotta do this internship and that internship, I'm like, slow down enjoy,

Jeffrey Feldberg: advice. It's really that age old saying, it's all about the journey. Enjoy the journey. So true. As you're talking about that, I'm thinking back to different highlights of my life and sometimes I enjoy the journey. Other times I miss the boat altogether, but I certainly appreciate that now and do the best I can as life unfolds, as it always does.

So terrific advice. Well, it's official. Congratulations. It's a wrap and this is all going to be in the show notes for our listeners. But your podcast and HireCloud, but if someone has a question that they want to ask better yet, they want to bring you on board to help take their company to the next level, have their business run without them, help them grow, help them scale.

There is the best place that they can reach you online.

Avetis Antapylan: LinkedIn is easy. the only Avetis on TopLink in the world on LinkedIn. My nephew is named the same, but he's not on LinkedIn. And Avetis at highercloud. com. Drop me a note and I'm happy to assist in whatever way I can add value, I'm here.

Jeffrey Feldberg: It [00:50:00] doesn't get any better. Avidas gave us his email. Take him up. Here is a gentleman who's Got the experience. He's got the wisdom and the insights. Speak with them and see what you can do. And that's what I love where we have world class experts like you, Avidus. You bring so much to the table and you're paying it forward and you're making a difference.

Well, listen, as we wrap it up, as we love to say here at Deep Wealth, may you continue to thrive and prosper while you remain healthy and safe. Thank you so much.

Avetis Antapylan: Thank you, Jeffrey. It's been an absolute pleasure. Appreciate you. 

Jeffrey Feldberg: So there you have it, Deep Wealth Nation. What did you think? So with all that said and as we wrap it up, I have another question for you.

Actually, it's more of a personal favor. Did you find this episode helpful? Have you found other episodes of the Deep Wealth Podcast empowering and a game changer for your journey? And if you said yes, and I really hope you did, I have a small but really meaningful way that you can actually help us out and keep these episodes coming to you.

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