Voice Over: Congratulations.
You are in the right place, at the right time.
Voice Over: Today, now, the man behind the microphone, Matt Levy.
Matthew: Hello, Summon Courage, Change Everything community.
My name is Matthey Levy.
I'm the host of the Summon Courage, Change Everything podcast.
If you like what you hear, please help me spread the word by sharing with your networks
and giving a five-star review wherever you're listening or watching this podcast.
I'm really excited to have Raymond Lee joining us for this episode.
Raymond Lee is founder and CEO of Careerminds, which he launched in 2008, as a virtual outplacement
company.
He brings over 18 years of human resources leadership, career consulting, and outplacement
experience to Careerminds.
The concept of a virtual outplacement was developed by Raymond after experiencing years
of traditional outplacement in a variety of HR roles.
When he started the company in 2008, he had one goal in mind.
To create an outplacement program that was forward-thinking to reduce the stress employees
face during a career transition.
Raymond holds a master's degree in IO psychology from Louisiana Tech University and a bachelor's
degree in psychology.
Welcome, Raymond, to the show.
I've been really looking forward to our conversation.
Raymond Lee: Thanks, Matt, I'm glad to be here.
Matthew: We're going to have some fun, Raymond, talking about how to summon the courage to
achieve big goals in work and life.
What I'd like to do is start out by asking you a little bit about your upbringing and
how that ultimately influenced your career direction.
Raymond: Matt, I'm really happy to be here.
When I think about my upbringing, my parents actually were both entrepreneurs.
They were business owners themselves.
My parents separated at a young age.
My mom actually raised me.
She was a school teacher when I was a young kid.
After raising two young boys, realized that she wasn't going to be able to do it on a
teaching salary.
She went out on her own and was a court reporter.
After about 10 years of working as a court reporter, she went out and started her own
company.
She hired other court reporters and started her own firm and became really successful
with that.
As I grew up, I got a chance to see my parents and their entrepreneurial spirit and their
passion for what they believed in.
I would say that that certainly had an influence on myself when I was growing up as a little
kid.
Matthew: Interesting.
This was in Louisiana, was it?
Raymond: Yes.
I currently live outside of Philadelphia.
I did, I grew up right outside of New Orleans.
I lived there for about 20 years before moving to the Northeast and getting married and starting
a family.
Matthew: Yes, it's always about the spouse, right?
Raymond: Sometimes, absolutely.
I'll tell you, she's been fantastic, especially starting Careerminds 10 years ago.
She's been a great supporter.
We're now 16 years married with two great kids.
One 14, my daughter, and I have a son that's 7.
They both have birthdays in April coming up.
Matthew: That's great.
We will talk a bit later about the importance of that type of support system, for sure.
How did you wind your way, career-wise, to HR?
I definitely want to hear the story about Careerminds, of course.
That's a central part of the story, I know.
Raymond: Yes, absolutely.
When I was in high school, I had a guidance counselor tell me early on that she thought
I'd be a great psychologist.
I was always helping my friends with relationships and personal problems, and all that kind of
stuff.
This guidance counselor told me, "You'd be great at being a psychologist."
That stuck with me because I went up to college and got my undergraduate degree in psychology.
I did an internship in my senior year at a hospital.
After a couple of weeks, I quickly realized that being in medicine and healthcare wasn't
the field for me.
I got into industrial-organizational psychology, which, as you know, is the study of behavior
in the workplace.
That's where I was introduced to assessments and testing, which is really synonymous to
human behavior, organizational behavior.
I graduated with master's in IO psychology from Louisiana Tech.
I started my career in HR from that standpoint about 15 years in a variety of different roles,
different industries.
That's how I got into it.
Definitely, had an early change in what I thought I wanted to do in my career.
Matthew: You mentioned your master's.
Did you go straight from undergrad into graduate school?
Raymond: I did, yes.
Went right into it.
Matthew: Is that something that you recommend for others when you're having mentoring conversations
and so forth?
Raymond: I would tell you that if I were coaching someone, it really depends on what you want
to do long-term.
For me, I had a fork in the road, but I had two decisions to make.
One is what did I want to do from a career perspective, and how would psychology, as
an undergrad, help me to get to where I wanted to get to.
I recognized that I wouldn't be able to get into business, which is what I really wanted
to get into, as an industry, versus working in the medical field.
I knew psychology alone wouldn't do it.
I looked for a degree that would broaden my-- Not leaving the profession of psychology,
which I really enjoy, but this idea of studying work behavior in the workplace, human behavior
in the workplace, was very appealing.
I knew I could leverage that master's degree.
I will tell you that it definitely helped with looking for companies and competing against
others that were looking for HR positions.
I would say absolutely a master's degree, it definitely gives you an advantage.
If you're going to want to start your own company, which is what I did, years down the
road, having a business degree or having an MBA certainly would have helped my situation
at that time.
I think everyone needs to figure that out.
Yes, absolutely, a graduate degree, definitely, I would say, would be advantageous.
Matthew: What was your first job then, after getting the master's?
Raymond: Actually, I worked at a hotel at a front desk.
This is a funny story, Matt.
I started applying to jobs.
I had one internship that I did for a wellness center.
I was a safety coordinator for a hospital.
Three-month internship, that was great.
I ended that.
Couldn't get a full-time job so I started applying.
I didn't have any experience, so then I started applying to-- It was New Orleans, so hotel
hospitality was really, the preferred industry.
I started applying to hotels.
I found myself getting the, "You're overqualified.
You have a master's degree, you're not going to be here more than a couple of weeks."
I started not getting jobs as a result of having a master's.
I ended up taking up the master's degree off my application and just had the bachelor's.
I applied, I got a job as a front desk clerk for a hotel in New Orleans.
I got hired and I worked there for, probably, about a year maybe.
I ended up networking with a family member.
I got a recruiting position for construction company in New Orleans.
That was, I would say, my first HR job.
It was interesting.
I had a graduate degree and it took me a year to land into something that was really what
I was looking for.
Matthew: There are some interesting lessons there, Raymond, for sure.
One of them is to just get started and not hold back for some sort of dream job.
Once you got the job in the hotel, then you started building a resume and building some
experience and being able to use the experiences that you had to land the next job.
I feel like I did something similar starting my career in a retail executive development
program.
It was not so glamorous working in a department store, but I quickly found that I was able
to have 10 or 12 direct reports as a 22-year-old.
That gave me the experience and I leveraged that to get also into the corporate world.
Raymond: Absolutely.
Matthew: Yes, help us with the rest of the story as far as how your HR career unfolded.
I'm really excited to hear about the defining moment when you decided to start your own
company.
Raymond: Absolutely.
I was in New Orleans.
I worked for this construction company for about five years or so.
I started in recruiting.
I was tasked with hiring field plumbers and pipefitters.
They had a real challenge of getting skilled labor at a time where there was a boom in
construction in the southeast.
I did that for five years and over the course of my five years, I got involved in other
HR initiatives like training and development, help them create-- It was a smaller construction
company, so I put in place a policy handbook.
Did a lot of employee relations kinds of issues in training and led recruiting.
I got to the point after about five years, there was really nowhere else for me to go.
This was around the 2000 timeframe.
This is when the monster.coms and the career builders and the internet was really taking
off for job search.
I put my resume online and was recruited by Corning out of Corning, New York.
Literally, one of the reasons I took that job is because I knew that if I wanted to
grow to the next level, I would need to leave New Orleans.
It's a small town with not a lot of industry and working in HR, I felt like I needed to
really move somewhere to get with a much larger company.
Corning was perfect because they've been touted as one of a company's most strategic HR practices.
It allowed me to get a good foundation at the next level working for a Fortune 100 company.
I literally moved to Northeast Pennsylvania to a startup plant and was in charge of hiring
several hundred hourly employees, lots of engineers.
Actually, that's where I met my wife who was hired at that same facility.
It was great.
It was stressful for me because I moved to Scranton, Pennsylvania where the plant was
located.
I didn't know anyone there.
It was a little bit of, you mentioned courage earlier.
I was definitely stepping outside of my comfort zone to stretch myself into a position that
was new but very challenging.
[music] Matthew: To that end Raymond, there's a lot
of listeners out there that have probably lived in the same town their whole lives.
Maybe because it is comfortable, and they know everyone.
Just walk us through the mindset that you had to be willing to pull yourself out of
that environment in the south.
These are polar extremes.
Scranton, Pennsylvania and New Orleans.
Raymond: I moved there in July of 2000.
It was the summer, the weather was beautiful.
The mountains, the Poconos, all of the scenery during that time was just absolutely amazing.
I remember when that fall came around, the leaves were changing, I've had family members
come visit and it was fantastic.
Well, then the winter came.
If you've lived through a winter in Northeast Pennsylvania, it's pretty brutal.
The valley of Scranton, there's not much sunlight that peeks out.
It's just like a layer of clouds over the valley.
It's always very cloudy, very dark, very grey.
When the snow comes in December, January, the snow sticks around forever.
By the time February rolls around, the term seasonal depression, it's definitely a real
thing.
I was used to in New Orleans.
There's two seasons, it's basically winter and summer.
There's no spring and fall.
When I got to March and April and there's still snow in the ground, my body is telling
me I need to be outdoors and I'm still stuck inside.
I'll tell you, it definitely takes a toll.
Well, at the same time, this was around the dot-com burst in 2000, 2001.
Telecom companies were having massive layoffs.
The uncertainty of my job in the company was looming.
There was all kinds of dynamics that were happening at the same time.
I'm dealing with the seasonal change.
It definitely, I'll tell you, it had an impact for me.
I got through that I felt like, "Jeez."
In fact, after another six months, that facility shut down, and I was relocated to another
fiber optic plant in Wilmington, North Carolina which was great because I went further south,
but it was a job transfer.
Actually, Abie, my wife ended up moving to Wilmington as well.
The end result was super positive, but there was definitely a lot of stress.
The seasonal changes, it didn't help for sure.
Matthew: Were there moments in that Scranton era that you thought about pulling the plug
and saying, "Screw it, I'm heading back to New Orleans?"
Raymond: I wasn't there just yet.
I will tell you.
I felt like-- I was going to see it through and see how things worked out with Corning.
I'm sure the thought did cross my mind if things didn't work out.
I knew that I could always move back home and find a job.
I persevered and just rolled with the punches if you will, and things worked out.
That's the philosophy that I've had over my career is that if you just do the right thing,
and you keep moving forward, there's always a little bit of luck and things seem to work
out.
You have to just keep positive.
I do believe in a higher power and what's meant to be is meant to be.
It worked out for me.
I'm very fortunate of that.
Matthew: There's definitely something about what you're saying, moving forward, taking
a step forward.
The metaphor that comes to mind, when you just tip over a domino, you can set forth
a chain reaction of events.
It doesn't take much and I think by your willingness to step out of New Orleans and take this risk,
it was like that domino that continued to push you forward.
In fact, it'd be great to hear because ultimately, Corning fell on some additional hard times
like moving forward in the 2000's.
Tell us about that experience.
Raymond: At the time, Corning had gone through pretty significant change.
They sold off their consumer products division.
The old Corning ware, the dishes that you would have in your kitchen, well, when I joined
the company, that business had been sold.
They were putting a ton of capital into optical fiber.
The big telecom companies like Lucent, Nortel, Cisco were laying fiber optic cable around
the country, across the Atlantic, so that when you send an email or when you're on the
phone, et cetera, that information would travel over fiber optic lines versus cable lines.
I was there during the time when telecommunications was going through pretty massive transformation.
That also led with an overabundance of fiber.
If you remember the dot-com, everyone was on the internet.
The dot-com boom just happened and the internet, I remembered Corning stock when I got there,
was $300 a share.
Over the course of a year, when the dot-com boom ended, companies either went bankrupt
or their stock value was less than $10.
I'm sharing that just to give you-- just bringing you back to a time where we were very prosperous
in technology, but it quickly evaporated overnight which meant Corning had to go through massive
layoffs.
They had, I would say, probably 20% of their workforce in the manufacturing sector.
We were laying off almost a third of production and salaried employees.
Because of that massive transformation, I was tapped to be on an internal outplacement
team called Talent to Talent.
It's something that we branded internally.
Corning was very forward thinking again with their HR practices at the time.
They decided that they would not outsource their outplacement to a traditional outplacement
company.
We essentially took HR consultants.
At the time, they were called consultants, my business partners, recruiters.
We essentially created outplacement centers at all the locations where Corning had hubs
of employees.
This branded approach Talent to Talent was essentially a career transition center where
employees would come in.
We would utilize all of our HR expertise, recruiting expertise to help people transition
into their next job.
It was interesting.
About seven years later is when I started Careerminds, but it was at that point in my
career, I got an insight more internal within a company.
The inner workings of how an outplacement process worked, how outplacement support worked.
I conducted workshops, I did interviews, essentially all the aspects of career transition someone
would need.
I had that experience.
It was really fantastic.
I ended up after just round and rounds the layoffs, you can imagine.
I know you've been through it on probably both sides of the desk.
It's pretty stressful when you're going through those rounds of layoffs.
I knew at the time that I wasn't going to spend the rest of my career at least in Wilmington,
North Carolina.
My wife and I decided to take a package and they were very generous.
Again, another courageous thing.
We took severance packages without having a job to go to and signed up and said, 'We're
going to start our new job search in the Philadelphia area."
I ended up landing a job with a chemical company called FARO, right outside of Philadelphia,
and was an HR manager for a couple of chemical plants.
I did that for about five years.
Left Corning, took an opportunity to make a move.
It was a little bit of trying to get back closer to my wife's family, and completely
needed a change.
Matthew: What year did you exit from Corning?
Just so our listeners can have the chronology.
Raymond: It was about two years.
I will tell you, the first year was in Scranton, the second year was in Wilmington.
When I was in Wilmington, I was hired to-- primarily, we went through three rounds of
layoffs.
The business was thinking that things would turnaround in the dot-com, and it never did.
We went through three rounds of layoffs.
That was about a year, 2001.
That's right when 9/11 happened.
I was with FARO for about five years and left FARO to start Careerminds around 2007.
Matthew: Tell us about that transition then.
Raymond: Kind of similar, I found myself working in companies.
I feel, like, I've always gotten to a point where I feel I've done everything I could
have done.
With FARO, I was working out in the business, supporting especially chemicals.
I was overseeing a couple of manufacturing plants.
A lot of union labor relations work, employee relations.
I was fortunate though, to do a lot of work out of their corporate office in Cleveland
around some corporate initiatives.
One was, we went on SAP HR globally and I represented the U.S. I had a couple of really
cool projects that I was part of and leading.
After about five years, it was time for me to consider an opportunity at corporate.
After moving all those times, and my wife had just started working in a new job as well,
been there for about five years when we moved back to Philadelphia.
There wasn't any way I was getting Abbie and the family to move to Cleveland.
There's nothing against Cleveland, but it was just not in the cards.
That's when my wife said, "I think it's time for you to go after that dream of starting
your business."
Which is something that I've always wanted to do.
As I mentioned, my parents were entrepreneurs.
I knew that at some point, I'd get enough courage and enough experience to make the
leap of faith.
I went to my boss at that time who was in Cleveland and basically said, "Look, I want
to put in my notice.
I've gotten a lot of credibility from corporate HR."
I knew that saying that I wanted to leave and wanted to start my own company, I knew
that they weren't just going to throw me out.
They couldn't just show me that the door.
They needed a good succession plan and they didn't have one in place.
I was really fortunate that when I mentioned that I wanted to start my own company, they
allowed me the opportunity to backfill my replacement.
I went out and hired my replacement, got her up to speed, and even had a six-month contract
transition.
I was working part-time, supporting my replacement and just finishing up some special projects.
It was a really nice-- They were very supportive of my willingness to want to go out on my
own and allowed me a transition that got me to start developing some of the branding,
the concepts, and things and started to try to find one or two clients.
It was really positive.
[music] Matthew: There's a few things to unpack here.
First, you mentioned this entrepreneurial spirit that you'd picked up when you were
a kid.
When did those seeds start to germinate that you would really want to do this.
You mentioned that your wife said, "Hey, now's the time to do it."
But help us with your thinking over those years, like the incubation process if there
was one.
Raymond: Sure, yes.
There was definitely an incubation period.
I mentioned the counseling and psychology.
When I was in college, I always found myself-- when I knew I wanted to get into HR, I always
found myself helping people with career advice in terms of writing resume and just helping
them think about what they want to do with their career.
When the internet boom came in 1997, I'll never forget, I was sitting at that construction
company probably.
About three years into the job, maybe two years into the job and everyone was scooping
up websites.
I called the 1-800 number, I said, "I need a website.
I don't know what I'm going to use it for."
I called the-- there was no GoDaddy at the time.
I called this 1-800 number, it was like $100 and I bought a domain.
Carreer.com was already taken, believe it or not.
But then I started thinking, "Okay, I have a psychology background."
I want to do something related to helping people find a job.
I said, "Okay, I'm on the phone with this customer service rep or the sales rep on getting
a domain."
I said, "Do you have caareer.com?"
"No."
"Do you have a career start?"
All these things related to career start.
Then I said, "Well, hold on.
Just give me one second."
I said, "All right.
I have a psychology background."
Looking for a career is all about having the right frame of mind.
It's not a job.
It's really being thoughtful about how you're going to spend the rest of your career.
I said to myself, "What about Careerminds?"
She said, "It's available."
I said, "Okay.
That's what I'm going with."
I went with careerminds.com in 1997.
It literally sat on the shelf.
I paid my $100 every year.
'97 to 2007, 10 years went by and I always had this idea in my mind that I'm going to
use Careerminds one day.
I have no idea it's going to be related to helping someone find a job.
It was interesting that because when I started the company in 2007, the economy was going
great.
In fact, FARO was my first client.
I started the business as a recruiting company which is not something that a lot of people
know.
In 2007, when I went on my own, I hired a couple of recruiters, I hired a salesperson
to do recruiting.
FARO, which is a global company, 10,000 employees, they took me on as a client.
I had a bunch of searches that I was working on with them.
Life was good for the first 12 months.
I picked up some work with other companies in Philadelphia.
The fourth quarter of 2007 hit and I'll never forget.
I got an email from the head of HR at FARO that was forwarded from their CEO.
The email said, "Effective immediately, our company's on a hiring freeze.
We send all offers and literally, we're not hiring for the indefinite future."
I had probably a half a dozen offers on the table.
I had recruiters working on-- actually, two recruiters I had working on assignments.
Everything literally evaporated overnight.
One company that I had who reached out to me, it was a small startup company where we
were helping them recruit salespeople.
They said, "Hey, we have some bad news."
This is after I got the FARO message.
I said, "Okay, it can't be anything worse than what I got earlier in the week."
And they say, "Well, all the sales positions that you're working on are now going away
because we're filing for Chapter 11."
I was like, "Jeez, okay."
They said, "Do you have any experience doing any kind of career transition work or outplacement?"
I said to myself, "That's my pivot."
It was January 2008 where the recruiters walked out the door and the salesperson walked out
the door and I said, "Careerminds after one year, is now an outplacement company."
We started a new virtual model.
I said to myself with the small company of people in Delaware, I said, "How am I going
to-- I don't have the office space to house these people.
How am I going to deliver the service?"
I knew about the traditional players out there.
They have offices all over the world.
I said, "Am I going to ramp up?"
This is beginning to be the biggest recession that we were facing.
I said, "Wow, okay, I'm not going to be able to open up offices quickly enough.
I don't have the capital to do that."
My neighbor just so happened to be a software developer who I was sharing some office space
with.
One of the employees from that company had a Ph.D. in educational technology.
I started coaching them over the phone and just working on their resume.
When I saw this one person's resume, I saw his background.
He had a lot of experience in developing educational technology software.
I had this guy in my office who worked for Microsoft and super smart, was a software
developer.
He said, "Well, why don't we develop-- Why don't you develop a virtual model, build your
own software platform and do the coaching over the phone and through Skype?
Why in the world would you even think about opening offices?
That's going to be dead in 5 years, maybe 10 years."
I was like, "Wow, that sounds interesting."
I hired that one employee who started with me-- I don't know, you may know Justin Schakelman.
He started with me day one.
I contracted this software developer to help.
We basically cobbled together our first generation platform in 2008.
It was the beginning of the recession, there was lots of companies out there that were
looking for inexpensive ways to help their employees transition.
That one client that went bankrupt, I essentially charged them $1 per person, per employee,
just so we can say we actually built a client.
The president of the company wrote a testimonial for us.
That became our first client in 2008.
Matthew: Wow, it really is an incredible story.
I didn't know some of the nuanced details.
I really appreciate you sharing them.
Let me ask a couple of follow-on questions to that story.
The first one is, back to the idea of actually quitting FARO.
You had these traditional W2 jobs, regular paychecks.
Now all of a sudden, you were going to give that up and then have to, what we call hunt
and kill to make a salary.
How did you wrap your head around that huge transition?
Raymond: I would tell you, this is where the silent partner comes into play because my
wife, very fortunate, has a great job.
She's a electrical engineer and carries the benefits which for someone who's-- I had at
the time, my daughter was four years old.
We had a young kid, we had our new house that we just built.
If I were in a situation where I was the breadwinner.
Let's say, I had a stay-at-home mom and we had a daughter, I may not have had the opportunity
to take that leap of faith.
If I were 20 years old and single and maybe a couple of years experience, I think entrepreneurship
would have been maybe a little bit better timing.
Very fortunate to have a co-working partner who was the breadwinner for the first three
years, had a great job, very stable.
I'll tell you, we definitely bootstrapped in the family.
We didn't take a lot of vacations, I paid myself very little.
When I say very little, probably a couple hundred bucks a week, just to pay out utility
bills.
I ate ramen noodles.
My friends would always joke, "I'd keep a case of ramen noodles in the office."
Never went out to eat.
Yes, you have to grind away in the first couple of years to get to a point where you can start
taking a salary.
I would say, it was probably three years.
It was actually three years.
We started in 2008 and we kept working at the technology piece.
Around 2009 to 2010, once we knew we were on to something, we started reaching out to
some local investors in Delaware.
It was interesting that, because you're a family guy.
You have kids and stability is really important.
When I approached Abbie and asked her about putting up the house as a mortgage or getting
a home equity loan to fund Careerminds as a startup, that was a very short conversation.
Getting a loan and putting that kind of risk on the family, in hindsight, was a very smart
decision.
Starting a new company, it's not easy and it takes a lot of investment capital.
I had decided to see if there was investors out there that liked the idea of disrupting
a very traditional outplacements function, been around for 30 years with something that
is faster, more relevant to today's modern day job seeker, lower cost, scalable.
Around 2011, we raised our first round of venture capital from a handful of investors.
That was an inflection point for us because I could actually take a salary, and start
making some money, and not feeling so pressured to have to perform or have to get to that
point.
The tradeoff is, you do give up ownership.
If you watch Shark Tank, it's exactly that.
You go in, you pitch something to investors, they determine what the value is of your business?
Based on that value, they're going to give you some pool of money, some capital for some
percentage of your business.
That was my first life lesson is that I hated to give up 100% ownership, but someone very
wise told me that having 10% of something very big, is a lot better than 100% of nothing.
That 2011 is when we raised some capital.
It really allowed us to go out and hire salespeople and scale the business to the next level.
Matthew: Yes.
My company is really big on what we call the DREAM framework.
It's this formula where you've got D for devotion, R for resolve, E for energy, A for attitude
and M for mastery.
What I'd love to do, Raymond, is walk through a bit of that framework and see how these
concepts may or may not apply to how you've taken your career and how you run the business.
The D is around devotion, and the concept is that, if we can just figure out what our
purpose is in life, it gives us an opportunity to overcome adversity and really double down
against rejection to achieve big things in life.
Do you see this concept of purpose playing out in how your career has unfolded?
Raymond: I think so.
I look at the business, Careerminds, as we started when I was doing recruiting.
I have to tell you, it was really interesting.
I got into recruiting, and I look back and I said, "Why in the world did I do that?"
I didn't really find fulfillment out of recruiting.
In fact, it was a little for me-- I know it's an industry that people find a lot of purpose
and meaning.
The one thing that drove me crazy is working with a candidate all the way through to the
11th hour and they have a change of heart or something in their personal situation that
you couldn't control, changes.
That loss of a participant landing-- although it could probably be the best decision they
were making at the time, Raymond: I didn't like that aspect, though,
of the recruiting function.
The fact though with outplacement, you're taking someone who has lost their job and
they were hit with a life event at the most stressful point in their life.
When I think back of the interest in psychology, I did a lot of the coaching early on and work
with a lot of the participants even from that first contract where I was working with people
who were just notified, they had to go home, tell their spouse, tell their kids they weren't
going to have a job and then start thinking about their next opportunity.
For me, I loved the idea of that being a challenge and helping people from a place of a lot of
stress, and anxiety, and even some cases of depression to get them to a place where they
look back and say, "Wow, I'm better off today than I was three months ago or six months
ago."
The idea of starting and wrapping a company around that kind of mission and purpose for
me is much more fulfilling than being an expert recruiter.
Matthew: Yes.
I can see that, Raymond.
I mean after all, people put job loss up there with the death of a loved one.
It's that impactful for people and you're right.
You've been through it and I've been through it from both sides of the desk.
There must be a lot of a purpose in helping people through that.
Raymond: Yes, absolutely.
We get testimonials from our participant to land and in many cases, they're thanking us
for our expertise.
Sometimes, they just really reach into their personal side of what they went through and
they share that journey.
It's great to read those when they come in and really hear about the success they had
in knowing that we were a part of that.
It's definitely very fulfilling.
Matthew: Excellent.
We'll skip around a little bit in the interest of time.
From an energy standpoint, you've already given us some insights into your family.
Careerminds has grown significantly.
I guess maybe you should tell us first about where the company is in terms of size and
scale, and your responsibilities with the company today.
Because the follow-on to that is, how do you balance being the CEO of this prosperous company,
being a husband, being a wonderful father?
Also, you and I have worked together in our association and you have a leadership role
there as well.
Raymond: Absolutely.
I'll tell you one of the things that we've done with the company is we work virtually
and we practice what we preach.
What's interesting and I'm smiling because when I left the corporate world, the first
thing I did when we raised the investment capital and we hired a handful of employees
is I said, "Oh, we have to run out and get an office."
We got a really nice office in Newark, Delaware and signed a three-year lease within a nice
complex.
I realized why in the world-- we're a virtual company and so I thought to myself, "If we're
going to scale the best company with the brightest people, we need to practice what we preach."
We eventually sunset the office.
I personally primarily work from home although, we do have a satellite office in Wilmington
that we use for meeting and get-togethers at Wilmington, Delaware.
We now have about 20 full-time employees across the country.
We have 75 or so full-time career consultants and retirement coaches that are 1099 consultants
and they work across US, Canada, and the UK.
From a employees contractor standpoint, we've really grown nicely over the years and positions
ourselves to really take the company to the next level.
I find that working virtually gives me the optimum amount of time to spend at work.
I get an opportunity to go to the kids' games after school.
I do a lot of things around the house although, I do travel quite a bit, as you know there's
a lot of HR conferences that go on.
I attend those, I get to speak at some of the conferences.
I do travel quite a bit, but it's definitely balanced with not having a long commute during
the day and getting home at night late and leaving early.
The opportunity to work primarily from home is great for work-life balance.
It allows me to get the maximum amount of work done in a short period of time because
I'm not having to leave an office so that's very convenient.
I'm pretty disciplined.
My dad, actually I didn't share with you, was in the military.
He's a retired vet.
The discipline piece of working from home and being a business owner serves his purpose
for sure because there can be a lot of distractions when you're working from home in that kind
of environment.
Matthew: How does discipline show up then for you?
Is that a calendaring thing where you block off time or religiously than many people do?
Can you give us a window into that?
Raymond: Yes, it's a combination of breaks and I literally when I get in my office in
the morning, I have my coffee and I'll just stay focused unless I have to take a bio break
or something but I'll literally just stay focused.
Then, yes, I do segment my calendar to really focus on the key things that I'm responsible
for.
I have a board of directors since we have investors, I meet with our board every six
weeks.
I focus a lot on messaging, and working with our board, and making sure that the company
continues to move forward.
We have a sales and marketing function that I meet with weekly to really look at our numbers
for the month and making sure that we're hitting our sales and revenue targets.
We have an operations team with our coaches, and I meet with them pretty regularly to look
at how the operations are running.
Is our participants pleased with the service they're getting?
Then we have a technology team that develops our software, we're on our eighth version
of our software platform.
We have a whole development roadmap with our software product.
The discipline is really just really giving each of those functions, the attention it
needs, in minimizing the distractions that you would have throughout the day.
I save a certain amount of time for email and making sure I'm getting back to people.
Yes, the non-profit piece that I'm a part of is just something that I have to manage
in as well, and be disciplined that I'm not spending too much time on things that aren't
contributing to the success of the business or even in impacting my family.
Matthew: One of the themes of our discussion today has been keep moving forward and I've
seen you live that all the time.
A couple of examples, I wanted to bring forward is one, being you have newer products that
you've rolled out at Careerminds of speaking of evergreen as one example.
I'd like to hear a little bit more about that.
Also, you bring on talent routinely.
I've seen as you've grown the company and I'm speaking specifically, of a mutual friend,
Tracy that I know that you've started to partner with.
Can you tell us a little bit more about these products?
Also, your philosophy of continuing to grow and innovate the business.
Raymond: Yes, absolutely.
For the first eight years, we were primarily focused on outplacement and growing the virtual
outplacement function, being that disrupter to traditional outplacement.
It was around 2016 timeframe, around the summer of 2016, we were working on a pretty large
project with an insurance company.
It's actually, the company Tracy had come from.
A large number of employees were over the age of 55 and we'd recognized through conversation
with them as we were getting them started, that they were looking for something different
in their program.
They weren't looking to leave or jump into a corporate job.
Some cases, they've been with the company for 20 years.
We felt in order to really appropriately serve them, we needed to custom tailor a program
that would meet their needs.
In some cases, employees were in a position where they could tap into their pension.
They didn't have to work full-time.
They were a place in life where the kids were off to college or after college, and they
could do something that they really wanted to do maybe differently.
We created this retirement product that addresses more of the social-emotional aspects of retirement
where we recognize individuals are living longer.
They don't necessarily want to retire to a golf course or to a beach, and spend the rest
of their years traveling.
They want to stay in the game.
They want to continue to contribute and have purpose in life meaning.
What we found is that people wanted to do something with their life and a lot of the
times, it was related to a job.
It could be working for a non-profit, it could be doing something on a volunteer basis just
to keep them active.
There was this other component though, that we found out just doing some research is that
one of the biggest things that employees miss most when they leave their company is the
social connections.
Whether you're leaving through a reduction in force or leaving through a retirement,
a lot of cases, you're spending eight hours a day and that's your second family, and the
thought of retiring and not having those social connections creates a lot of anxiety.
Helping people think about how will you fill the time and how will you fill that void was
something that people were really interested in.
We built this evergreen program that addressed all of those dynamics to help people think
about that.
When we ran a pilot, we had just such great success with it.
We decided to start going to all of our existing accounts and pitched evergreen as an option
for participants to utilize when they're going through a retirement or a career transition.
It was adopted by all of our accounts, all of our clients.
Let's see, that was summer of 2016, so it was around 2017ish, Tracy and I had stayed
in contact.
She's a former HR executive, worked in pharmaceuticals, insurance, healthcare.
I was looking for someone who could lead this new business and take it to the market and
so felt finding someone who had the HR experience because this is very different than outplacement.
Evergreen and this retirement coaching solution is really designed to help employees even
way before retirement.
You can offer it as a standard benefit to your employees voluntarily to just help them
think about that next journey in life.
One of the things that we've learned is that half of the people who actually retire on
time, the driver of that is a reduction enforce or health issues is what causes people to
retire.
That's only half.
The other half of Americans today, and there's over 10,000 people eligible to retire every
day.
The baby boomer generation.
They're not retiring for some reason.
The research suggests it's all of the social-emotional pieces.
It's not always finances that are keeping people from retiring.
Having somebody like Tracy who can engage in a conversation to talk about their talent
strategy and what's creating issues for them with succession planning and et cetera, having
somebody that has that consultative sales approach was really important.
We are super excited because this is something that we feel like is really timely to the
market.
We have someone who is super passionate about this particular project.
She went through a little bit of a transformation and reinvention herself and so that's pretty
exciting.
We are now into the second year of this and are very bullish about the outcome.
Excited about that.
Matthew: Excellent.
Well, there's a perfect example of innovation and capitalizing on key talent for sure.
As we wind down, Raymond, let me hit you up with a couple of rapid-fire questions.
In the dream frame where we talk about M mastery, it's the concept of continuous learning.
One of the ways that we can all continuously learn is through reading.
What are one or two books that are your go-to that you recommend to others?
Raymond: The one book that I'm actually reading now, it's all about timeliness.
When I fast started Careerminds, I was reading THE ART OF THE START by Guy Kawasaki and for
those entrepreneurs that could be listening, it's a great read if you're thinking about
starting your own business.
But where we are today with Tracy now on the leadership team and we've recently promoted
someone into a VP of Operations on our team is putting together our three-year strategic
plan.
I've been reading The Four Disciplines of Execution and the focus piece is one that
really resonates with me because as a continued business that's evolving.
You can get a lot of destructions about trying this, doing this.
I get ideas pitched to me almost every day about things that we can try.
Putting a strategic plan in place and sticking to that plan, I feel is really important.
That book, I think really helps the team stay focus around that.
I would say that that's the one that comes to mind just immediately.
Matthew: I'm a big fan of motivational quotes, inspirational quotes because they can consolidate
wisdom into a rather short phrase or sentence.
With that as a backdrop, if you could put a saying on a billboard that a lot of people
would see, what would it be?
Raymond: There's one that I've seen recently.
Invest in your dreams, grind now, shine later.
I think that speaks volumes for an entrepreneur.
Bootstrap, grind away, and then the rewards and shine will come later.
Matthew: Yes, dream.
You can't beat that.
That's something that I'm quite passionate about.
I love it.
You talked about your parents a few times.
What was the best piece of advice that either one of them ever passed along to you?
Raymond: Well, I would say humility is probably the one that-- In fact, Matt, I remember when
you and I are out, you're always pushing me to talk more about the company which I do,
but I should probably do more of it.
Humility is definitely one.
I think that self-awareness is something that I often hear from colleagues and my board
of directors that I'm very self-aware.
I would say that those are two attributes.
Matthew: Yes, I would add that I find you to be a wonderful listener.
In the meetings that we've heard, you may not be the first one to jump into the conversation
and I think that's because you're actively listening.
Then my experience is when you do speak up, I'm all ears because I know that what's coming
has been thoughtful.
Raymond: Yes, I appreciate that.
Matthew: What advice would you give to your 21-year-old self?
Raymond: I'm going to have to stick with the follow your dreams.
I would say, "Do in life what's going to make you happy."
I think that sometimes, parents can be very influential on what you should do, but I think
that at that age, do what's going to make you happy, follow your dreams, have passion,
have energy in what you want to do in life and just go after it.
Matthew: That is great advice.
Life is so precious and if you just wind up in something that you don't really enjoy,
I feel we're wasting a real gift.
The great news, Raymond, is as you've demonstrated in your career, and in your life, and I hope
I have as well.
That it's never too late to make a change.
Raymond: Absolutely.
Amen to that.
Matthew: Is there any last little bit of advice, a pearl of wisdom?
Is there anything that we haven't talked about, yet that you'd like to pass along to our viewers
and our listeners?
Raymond: I would just say and I say this whether I'm doing interviews or just talking with
people in general is, if you're wanting to reach out and connect, I'm definitely someone
who's very approachable and always willing to help individuals, whether you're in job
search or thinking about starting a business.
Find me on LinkedIn, Raymond Lee, with Careerminds.
I'm happy to connect.
Just want to put that out there and offer any help.
I'm a firm believer in paying it forward.
I've had the fortune of meeting very generous people who've been very generous with their
time.
People that are successful or even some not so successful people sharing stories of their
trials and tribulations.
I'm a big believer in paying it forward, always looking for that opportunity.
Matthew: I've noticed that firsthand.
You've been very helpful as I've been down my entrepreneurial path.
I thank you for that.
You mentioned LinkedIn, is there any other way that people can follow your writing or
anything social media-wise?
Raymond: My Twitter handle, which I'm not a big Twitter user, but I do tweet from time
to time, is @HRentrepreneur is the handle.
I am on LinkedIn.
We have a Facebook page for Careerminds.
We have an Instagram page for Careerminds.
We have a great marketing department who handles all of our social media.
I'm pretty fortunate of that.
Yes, I would say through those channels, you can follow us and always visit our website
at careerminds.com.
Matthew: Perfect, Raymond.
We'll put some of the links in the description.
I really appreciate you joining us.
I've learned a lot and I know our viewers and listeners did as well.
Thanks, again.
Raymond: I appreciate it.
I really enjoyed it, Matt.
Thanks for having me.
Matthew: Thank you so much, Raymond.
What terrific insights.
To our listeners, again, please subscribe, rate, and share this podcast with your network.
This is Matthew Levy.
Until our next episode, remember that when you summon courage, everything changes.
I'd like to thank Levi Dillon for his excellent podcast engineering and Texas Radio Fish for
the music.
[music] [01:02:40] [END OF AUDIO]
For more infomation >> Amazon Fire TV Stick Streaming Media Player and Mohu T... - Duration: 16:10. 
For more infomation >> Minolta 20MP 35X Optical Zoom SLRStyle Camera Bundle - Duration: 15:52. 
For more infomation >> DIVINE 5 TOP 100 LION/VENGE BLUE SPAN DOTA 2 04/30/2018 DAILY STREAM 6AM PST - Duration: 10:50:22. 
For more infomation >> The Little Prince: The Planet of the Rose - Movie - Duration: 1:08:39. 
For more infomation >> Pre-Crime - Movie - Duration: 1:27:35. 
For more infomation >> Tucker Carlson Tonight 05/01/18 12AM | May 01, 2018 Breaking News - Duration: 33:54. 
For more infomation >> The Ballerina - Movie - Duration: 1:46:11. 
For more infomation >> ❤️Поздравляю с 1 Мая❤️Красивая открытка с ПЕРВОМАЕМ❤️ - Duration: 0:48. 
For more infomation >> Xuất hiện giọng hát khiến nhiều nghệ sĩ phải thất nghiệp Em trai nghèo hát quá trời hay - Duration: 3:01:50. 
For more infomation >> Alien Invasion - Duration: 23:44. 
No comments:
Post a Comment