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Jonathan Barnes
Work Heartily
Going From A Small Business To An Enterprise
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Work Heartily provides fractional leadership for growing and changing businesses. Not a consultant, not full-time, but not part-time either. We frame it as a focused, on-demand experienced executive team that fits the budget and the need no matter the size or stage of the company.


Our team works with business leaders by focusing on Sales, Strategy, Technology, and Operations.


Jonathan has been leading since 2000. After graduating from Vanderbilt University, he joined Maxim Healthcare Services, a high growth medical staffing company, as a healthcare recruiter. He recruited hundreds of medical professionals for a variety of positions ranging from nursing assistants to Advanced Nurse Practitioners and placed them in multiple environments, including home care, ambulatory clinics, surgery centers, immunization clinics, corporate wellness, long term care, and acute care settings.


He then led several branch offices for Maxim, opening new service lines in Knoxville, Cookeville, Clarksville, and Nashville. Jonathan conducted research for Maxim’s first Certificate of Need in the Nashville area and the company was awarded 9 counties for pediatric home care services. As a home health administrator, he went through the JCAHO and ACHC accreditation process multiple times, and received company awards for his leadership and professional acumen.


After 12 successful years with Maxim, Jonathan led the sales efforts for Care Technology Systems, a healthcare IT company delivering data/analytics for post-acute providers. He and the Care Tech team were awarded 2 patents (9,875,450 and 9,257,029) for their unique approach to presenting insights for caregivers.


In 2014 Jonathan launched a healthcare IT staffing and recruiting company, Staffing as a Mission. In his role as founder and CEO, Jonathan led strategy, sales, recruiting, HR, client relationships, operations, and finances. Over the course of 5 years, the SaaM team worked with health systems in over 40 states and 2 Canadian provinces, employing over 300 people and delivering staff augmentation services for a variety of projects.


SaaM volunteers time and donates a portion of profits to ministries and charities that align with the mission of helping others in career transition. They were honored to impact make the Inc. 5000 list in 2019 and achieve the spot of the 2nd fastest growing company in Nashville.


Jonathan is an enthusiastic leader with an attitude that maximizes team potential. His extensive experience has exposed him to a wide variety of company cultures. He brings all of that experience to bear in leading Work Heartily's fractional executive practice.

In this episode

Jonathan Barnes of Work Heartily highlights the big challenge of needed an experienced executive team before you are able to afford one in order to go from Stage 1 of a business (start-up/mom & pop) to Stage 3 (enterprise). 20 years ago you tried to make this transition on a hope and prayer and most didn’t make it. Today, Jonathan points out how companies can embed fractional executives as part of your management team. Fractional executives work for you part time while also working with several other clients giving them some unique perspectives on the challenges your business is likely facing.


Fractional executives should be at half of the cost of a full-time employee but because of their expertise and efficiency they will move your team along, act as a liaison between the tech team and leadership, analyze policies and procedures and perform the functions that you would expect a seasoned executive to do. Jonathan provides 3 steps for how to strengthen your team to go from being dependent on the founder to having an experienced executive team to get your business to the next level. Listen to the end for a special gift for our listeners.

Going From A Small Business To An EnterpriseJonathan Barnes
00:00 / 34:37

A glimpse of what you'll hear

04:51 Transitioning between Stage 1 to Stage 3 is like navigating white water rapids.

08:02 When you have no more time and you’re getting burned out.

09:44 How you get your executive team from founder dominated to enterprise caliber.

11:32 Having fractional leadership is very different from outsourcing a business function.

14:17 Effectively utilizing fractional executives.

17:52 The benefits from using fractional executives.

23:37 3 steps to follow to bring a fractional executive onto your team

26:27 Learn about Jonathan. Email Jonathan at jb@workheartily.com.

Episode Transcript
(Note: this was transcribed using transcription software and may not reflect the exact words used in the podcast.)

00:00:04:13 - 00:00:22:18

Centricity

Welcome to the Best Kept Secret videocast and podcast from Centricity. If you are a B2B service professional, use our five step process to go from the grind of chasing every sale to keeping your pipeline full with prospects knocking on your door to buy from you. We give you the freedom of time and a life outside of your business.


00:00:23:06 - 00:00:42:05

Centricity

Each episode features an executive from our B2B services company sharing their provocative perspective on an opportunity that many of their clients are missing out on. It's how we teach our clients to get executive decision makers to buy without being salesy or spammy. Here's our host, the co-founder and CEO of Centricity, jokingly.


00:00:43:00 - 00:01:13:01

Jay Kingley

I'm Jay Kingley, Co-Founder and CEO of Centricity. Welcome to our show where our guests share their provocative perspective on what their target market is missing out on. I am happy to welcome to the show Jonathan Barnes of Work Heartily. Jonathan, his team provide fractional leadership for growing and changing businesses in the areas of sales strategy, technology and operations. Jonathan is based in Nashville, Tennessee.


Welcome to the show, Jonathan.


00:01:14:21 - 00:01:16:16

Jonathan Barnes

Thanks for having me, Jay. This is great to be here.


00:01:17:02 - 00:01:46:09

Jay Kingley

One of the fun things, Jonathan, I have been able to participate in my career is starting businesses literally from the ground up and then being involved in their growth all the way through established professional companies and even in one case, getting one all the way to the public markets. And I can tell you that that journey was never what I thought it was going to be before I started down the path.


And one of the things that was a real hard to me is when I would start to build my team and, you know, let's say my first 20, 25 plus or minus people, you know, I went out and I recruited people. They were great. They were passionate. They loved what I was doing. They loved the business. And then we would keep on growing and we would get to that next level where all of a sudden we needed people with a little bit more experience, people with who were more professional in their in their leadership, who brought in certain functional skills that we needed for the business.


And to my surprise, most of the early team resigned and left. And the reason they consistently gave me was this isn't the company that I joined. You've changed, and that's not why I came here. And of course, yes, I did change because we were growing. And what we needed when we were 20 people is not what we needed when we were, say, 60 people.


And then, of course, you would get through that stage as quickly as you could and then became a professional team where you could bring on full time executives, had a lot of experience who could professionalize and scale the entire business. But here was the interesting part. It was that middle stage, that transitionary stage between, let me call it a mom and pop, where you had that family environment and atmosphere.


Everything was pretty loose in terms of how you ran things. And then what did you do to transition from that all the way to a full, professional, scalable business and back? You know, I'm going to date myself a little bit. You know, this is in the nineties, in the aughts, primarily. We used to call that you had to get through no man's land and everyone was firing at you and you just tried to keep your head down, go as fast as you could to try to get to the other side and really hope you didn't get killed.


But so many companies failed during that transitionary stage because while, you know, I can speak from my experience, while I needed a more senior executive team, I couldn't afford to bring them on because our starting point was a mom and pop not, you know, that I had all this capital to bring the people on to get me to the next level.


Now you and your team at Work Heartily. You really cover the gamut of professional management across all the critical areas of a business. I'd like to get your take on companies that needing to get out of mom and pop land and get to be well established, significant, clear, mid-market, if not larger enterprises. What's the view today on this no man's land and how do you get through it?


00:05:05:15 - 00:05:28:12

Jonathan Barnes

That's a great question, Jay. You know, there's a there's a good book out there called Predictable Success from Lester Cowan. He talks about this. You said No Man's Land. He calls it Whitewater, but it's essentially the same concept. You go a simplified version of courses, stage one through stage three. Call it stage one. As your mom and pop you mentioned stage three is enterprise level and everything.


Now you can imagine like a board meeting and you've got the chief legal officer, chief marketing officer, you've got sales operations, finance, technology, they're all at the board table. But when you're in that mom and pop kind of transition into that enterprise, what's what's happening in stage two is walking through that Whitewater, a lot of churn. And a lot of people say this isn't for me.


I want to go back or like you mentioned earlier, some some folks just want to don't want to stay because they really enjoy the fun stage, quote unquote, the early stage. So I think a lot of people have a you know, it's kind of that sheer grit that they try to get through and founders at least usually feel like they've got some wherewithal in all the different executive functions, but they might not have the bandwidth to take care of all of those, or they might recognize that they don't have the talent with the CFO or the Chief Information Officer type function or the chief revenue officer.


And so they outsource some of that. I think what's missing sometimes is direct leadership of those functions like it is in the, you know, the stage three, so to speak.


00:06:45:22 - 00:07:11:01

Jay Kingley

You know, I always think about people process systems and infrastructure that you need to do business in any point in time. And when you're in that mom and pop phase, the level of sophistication you need is is pretty small. And you're doing it out of force of personality. You're doing it because you're a little bit, say, jack of all trades, but the master of none.


But you don't need any masters yet. You can operate at a very personal level. But we know at the enterprise level that is doomed to fail. You know, you couldn't there's no example of any successful enterprise that runs like that. And you have that in and I think you said it. I just want to you maybe ask you to elaborate a little bit more.


You have that, you know, to challenge it, which is one the level of expertize that you need because that easy you know, we don't need a lot of sophistication begins to break down as you start to get bigger both from a process and systems and infrastructure point of view. And then the second thing is that I run out of time as the founder.


You know, when I'm small, I can keep my fingers in all the pies, but I only got ten fingers and all of a sudden I've got a lot more than ten pies. And and now what am I going to do? Like everything begins to fall apart if I don't change. So tell them a little more of some of the experiences that you've seen about the struggles that companies have when they try to make that leap from mom and pop to enterprise.


00:08:25:01 - 00:08:45:03

Jonathan Barnes

Yeah, you know, sometimes, you know, I've talked to a few people in my career that say I don't really want to grow. I just really want I'm comfortable in this way and comfortable with more of a lifestyle business. And they don't necessarily need to have specific executive functions. But there are some entrepreneurs and founders out there that have this desire to get there but don't know how to get there.


And so you're right, they get burned out. Honestly, it's a it's a I said bandwidth earlier, but I think it's more of the time. You might actually have a lot of talent in several different executive functions. You wouldn't be here as a founder without that. But you're you don't have enough time in the day to get the appropriate amount of attention to lead.


It's not doing as much as leading departments within your company to get to that next level. And so a lot of people will say, you know, I can't afford it in terms of time or I can't afford in terms of money. And so how do they get there? It's a it's a function of finding the time and having the right budget to kind of move throughout that, to have the appropriate level of executive focus.


00:09:35:11 - 00:10:07:23

Jay Kingley

So, Jonathan, let's imagine I am that founder that has a missions I want to grow. I want to scale. Ultimately, what that means is I want to create a business that is not solely and entirely dependent upon myself. I there's a lot of examples once I'm at that enterprise level, how to do it. But how should you manage that transition of going from a founder dominated, let's call it a mom and pop to an enterprise level?


What do you do? How do you think about it?


00:10:09:21 - 00:10:33:11

Jonathan Barnes

Yeah, you know, a great example is somebody I was actually talking to you this week. He's in the process of raising money. You can't afford the executive level functions, but you know, he needs it because he's run out of time already. It's a technology company growing. And so he has started to outsource pretty much every single part of his the doing, you know.


And so where I think that's where you would start, that's what I would do. I'd start to outsource this. What I did in my previous company is to outsource all the functions that I knew needed some attention. But I could still manage, you know, I could still understand and and give some feedback. And so as it grows, then you start thinking through who's going to lead that function.


And so I think that's his next stage, is to kind of move through that and say, who's going to lead that function for, you know, call it, you know, operations or sales or, you know, maybe the customer service operations side of things, technology as well. So there's I think those are there's many stages you can take and that I see that as work.


That's how I would navigate.


00:11:20:08 - 00:11:50:22

Jay Kingley

So let me just come in for a minute on the outsource part. And I think where that works and then where I could see it breaking down. So the range of outsourcing is assuming, by the way, that you know who to pick, which which you don't always. Right. And you get burnt, but assuming that you do, what you're really buying is expertize and that that process into systems, infrastructure that somebody else is managing.


But it is in a silo because that's what they do. And before long, you realize you have to problems. One is who's managing the outsourcer because they're not your business.


00:12:04:20 - 00:12:11:18

Jonathan Barnes

Right. Yeah, I think. Yeah, exactly. I you just talked about the doers, you know, the various stage one issues. You just multiplied your doers.


00:12:11:23 - 00:12:46:00

Jay Kingley

Doers who know something about the subject, but they're not being managed in the second issue I have is successful businesses don't operate in silos. You need to bring these things together and that doesn't happen by magic. And it's certainly not going to happen when I've got, you know, someone who's managing my i.t infrastructure, someone who's managing my customer service, someone who's doing my marketing campaigns, someone who's doing, you know, inbound sales.


How do you bring those together if you've outsourced them all?


00:12:49:19 - 00:13:16:23

Jonathan Barnes

That's a great point. I think that's a huge challenge. As you multiply the doers and multiply the outsourcing, it's kind of a you know, how do you how do you create a liaison between or manage those specific executive functions or those departments? That's when the founder runs out of time. And then there's there's different departments or silos, you know, stuff all over each other or they don't communicate well.


And so it looks bad to your end users or your customers or clients when you're not coordinating conversations internally. So it is a huge challenge and you know, people walk through it in different ways. But I think it's it's more common than not to have this challenges.


00:13:36:15 - 00:13:59:03

Jay Kingley

Absolutely. And if again, and I think if you study businesses that have successfully scaled and grown, there's life cycles of these things. You know, I'm going to outsource. And by the way, not all outsourcers are the same. Some are good in handling certain sized businesses, others different sized business. And and you go through cycles sometimes of saying, I've got someone else to handle the function for me too.


Now I may need to bring it back in-house because of how I have to integrate my my teams might delivery my service software and what have you. And then you might get to another point where you say, okay, now I can offload this again, but you need to have that executive team that has been through the wars, that has that experience.


The the last thing you want if you're trying to go from a startup moment, pop through to enterprise is have your you and your executive team this being to use that expression their first rodeo you're never going to make it if everybody collectively is doing this for the first time. So just talk a little bit about how before I can afford to bring on that permanent enterprise level team.


How do I do? I cover getting the right talent where I don't necessarily have the cash to hire full time.


00:14:56:08 - 00:15:21:02

Jonathan Barnes

Yeah. You know, I've seen some, you know, founders say I'm just going to outsource it and they they can communicate with my team kind of kind of cross their fingers and hope that happens. But nine times out of ten, if you don't have somebody coordinating within, you're going to lose out on several critical conversations that happen on a weekly, monthly basis.


So I have seen some people go ahead and hire, you know, or try to hire the right person to lead. Sometimes it is a gamble because the person you need is expensive. And to focus their time fully on that executive function, it is expensive and you're and you're you're worried that you're going to be able to gather, you know, get more clients to pay for this person's salary off.


So the cost it's it's a it keeps people up at night. That is a an opportunity to have a leader potentially that that's not full time to help coordinate to be a liaison between the doers in the field or the doers on the team and those executive functions. And then also manage, you know, goal setting are communicating that back to the strategic vision that the founder has and maybe even assisting with the vision that maybe that the founders really excited about technology but don't know specifically know all the different ins and outs of technology.


You have a liaison in the information, kind of the chief information officer world that can say this is the strategy that you have and this is how we're going to implement it technology wise. But doing so on a part time interim basis.


00:16:43:17 - 00:17:08:16

Jay Kingley

And I think, Jonathan, that the term too sure is a factual C or X is the area that you're bringing the person. And I'm just going to observe to the benefits of of that that should not, in my view, be overlooked. You know, one is that it's much lower risk. You have not brought them on as a senior member of the team or not.


Only do you have all that w two issues, but if you want to get real serious talent, you're going to be giving probably some ownership, direct or indirectly in your business. And yet you don't know if these are the right people. And the second thing is, have you ever hired someone at that level before? Because you're now trying to get ahead of the curve in bringing that full time executive in ahead of time.


And so you need to be sure, not only are they going to be good when you're at the enterprise level, when you can really justify them full time, but they're also able to operate at the pre stage where you're in this transition. They can get you some some folks are great at the enterprise level, but they would not be successful in getting you to the enterprise level.


And if I can bring in people that really focus on the issues of that late stage to the white water stages, I call it the the no man's land stage. They can then help you recruit their replacement because they're coming in with the I am not here forever. I am just here to get you successfully through stage two and into stage three where I bow out and the full time replacement comes in.


That, I think is a great segue into the next thing I want to ask you is that what have you seen in terms of how these companies benefit by adopting this fractional approach to get them through stage two? So they can hit that period of stability in stage three?


00:18:45:08 - 00:19:15:10

Jonathan Barnes

Sure. I think a great distinct distinction between a fractional executive and a consultant is is important here, because a consultant is therefore mostly a project. You know, usually it's an hourly rate they're really working on. They might be working and helping with a specific division, but, you know, they're one and done. They're out or they're not necessarily engaged with a day to day or weekly cadence meetings with with the executive.


I think the where I've seen it is very successful is compared to a consultant. A fractional executive is essentially embedded on the team. And so they're involved with all the executive level functions with with the team and, you know, the weekly cadence with the actual team plus the executive, the executive team and the founder. But you know, because of the stage of the company, because of their experience, they're extremely efficient and they don't have to spend as much, quote unquote.


You know, they don't have an hour or hours or time. You know, it's not an hourly type arrangement. It's more of a you're going to get me on demand. You'll have me you'll I'll be embedded on all these different emails and team, team weekly meetings, and I'm going to get my stuff done for you and fulfill the strategic vision within my department.


But I'm also engaged and excited about helping you out throughout this stage. No matter if it's a four month engagement or it's a couple of years where you need to move forward through a larger transition, I think that's where I've seen a huge difference to be able to have, you know, kind of budgetary, fiscally responsible type issues with your with your budget, but also embedded on the team.


00:20:40:12 - 00:21:14:15

Jay Kingley

Absolutely. And I think what I have seen is if I have, say, a fractional CFO where I am interacting with external constituents or even people internally, this is my CFO for the fact that they're not full time is irrelevant to any other stakeholder. Right. They manage everybody in the finance department. They engage as part of the management team and they engage and manage all the external constituents that you would expect a CFO to do, as opposed to a consultant who's coming in.


And you don't say, Oh, this is the consultant who's my CFO. You say, Here's a guy that's helping me out to get our finance function done. But it it's a very project focused and everyone understands they're not part of the team. They're just coming in as an outsider, do what they do and get out. And there is a world of difference.


In my experience, you're one or the other. You don't sit there and say, Well, I'm both a fractional executive and a consultant. Let's take the perspective of if you were the founder. And we I think we've alluded to the journey through the stages, but I want to hit a little bit on the emotional side. And what's that like when a founder, in effect, tries to go it alone and is saying, either have to do this with myself or my stage one team, or I've got to somehow figure out how I can afford to bring on my stage three team earlier versus saying you have got a a purposefully designed team to get you through that stage two. So talk about the emotional impact of the founder doing it, what I would call the old school way, because when I was doing it, there were no fractional executives. We hadn't been created yet. You know, versus what they're capable of today. What's that feel like?


00:22:38:05 - 00:22:59:06

Jonathan Barnes

Well, as a founder myself, I can tell you how it has helped me. But also just in other conversations I've had. But it is the I mentioned this earlier, what keeps you up at night, right. Are most people are really worried about the growth and can they make payroll? That's right. I think that's the biggest can we make payroll this month?


You know, some of those money pressures that you have and I think if you have a large a large overhead with massive salaries, like to your point about can I hire them earlier with before the revenue comes it creates a huge emotional turmoil. Now, some people are very, you know, have high risk profiles and they're fine. But I think at the core of every every founder is what if this doesn't work?


And, you know, what if I can't cover that? So I think emotionally being able to have what I've seen with fractional executives is they know things are getting taken care of there. It's not as expensive as hiring an FTE full time employee or equivalent, but they have expertize that's way beyond potentially way beyond what the founder knows about that specific function.


So you're hiring somebody with decades of experience in revenue generation or with marketing or with, you know, like you mentioned, a CFO or CEO, a CIO, CTO, all those others, the EXOS. And you are you have peace of mind and it's it's budgetary. So it's really three things. It's peace of mind helps on the budget. And you also have somebody you can talk to that's accessible.


That's not just a consultant that's going to bill you hourly, but or work on this project is going to be giving you advice and talking to you about your strategic vision for the company.


00:24:28:01 - 00:24:50:17

Jay Kingley

So now I'm sitting here saying, okay, I'd like to move forward with bringing in the the expertize I need fractionally because I'm in, if you will, stage two and to help me get to stage three. So tactically, tell me what is it that I need to do from a process point of view to go down this path and make this happen?


00:24:51:00 - 00:25:13:06

Jonathan Barnes

Yeah, I mean, it's not for everybody, like we said, but if you are in that stage, I think you need to assess really where you are in all of your functions and, you know, a good practice is to think about where do where do I want to be in three years from now? And then do some, you know, backwards thinking and think like, okay, kind of, you know, begin with the end in mind.


Let's think about where I want to be in three years. And then is that a year or three or two or year, one type of initiative and then think through where, how can I get that specific department to where it needs to be at the end of year one or two and year three to to fit within my grand vision.


And I would say most founders are those futurist kind of visionaries. So they're probably good. It's probably too easy for them to see like where they want to be in three years. But it takes a little bit of time to think through, okay, well, in that specific department and that specific team, where do I want to be? So a SWOT analysis, some assessments to think through all those things is really helpful before you say, Well, I definitely need somebody in the ops role or I definitely need somebody to take over this.


The information technology strategy.


00:26:05:21 - 00:26:33:19

Jay Kingley

I just want to share with your listeners. I did it a number of times the hard way. It was probably the most unpleasant part of my journey, which was trying to get through and manage stage two. I think Jonathan has given us a very compelling way to rethink that traditional approach and just get much better outcomes, both objectively and emotionally as we go through it.


So we're going to take a quick break. And when we come back, we're going to learn a bit more about Jonathan.


00:26:40:05 - 00:27:02:22

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So email time@centricityB2B.com to schedule an 18 minute call to learn more.


00:27:38:21 - 00:27:55:05

Jay Kingley

Welcome back. We're talking to Jonathan Barnes of work heartily. Let's find out a bit more about Jonathan. I want to start by understanding you and your team. What are the pain points that you solve for your clients and why do they need you to get rid of the pain?


00:27:55:08 - 00:28:26:07

Jonathan Barnes

You know, we really are focused in on sales and business development. So as chief revenue officer. Work as well as chief information officer. Chief Technology Officer. Work more. The Information Technology strategy as well as being liaison for the technology teams. So we work a lot with, you know, people that are out in the field as well as in the corporate world, kind of trying to think through like what vendors should we work with, what software should we purchase, that kind of that can help us.


Where should we consolidate or should we expand? So those are strategic directions as well as tactical decisions, operations, policies, procedures and it's it's a lot of fun. I think the pain points is much to what we alluded to earlier, is just how do I grow and how can I give peace of mind to the founder but also propel that business forward?


I mean, I'm passionate, our team, we're passionate about growing and helping businesses change, especially. They recognize that and they know they want to and they haven't seen the best path to get there yet. And we're excited to think through that and get them through that pain point and the, you know, the most cost effective and efficient way possible.


00:29:17:09 - 00:29:47:06

Jay Kingley

Jonathan There's a great saying that I find I find is almost universally true, which is you are the company that you keep. If I work with someone who's average or mediocre, that's a reflection on me and my standards and my capabilities. So as a result, any savvy, successful founder only want to work with the best. So I'm going to ask you, what makes you and your team great at what they do?


00:29:47:16 - 00:30:17:22

Jonathan Barnes

Sure. I mean, I can speak from experience as a founder. I started a staffing company in the health care I.T. space from scratch, from nothing. It's just me and a phone and an email address. And I carried that to I think 5000 actually was a 500 fastest growing private companies in America. 2019. Multiple awards and accolades. But the accolades don't really matter as much as growing a company from Zero to significance.


And so I've been there in terms of my career. I've also been in, you know, the startup world and big corporate and then sort of an intra preneur. So to speak, as they as they were iterating different branch offices and trying to find new opportunities. So my experience is that and I love to work with people that have that drive to grow and grow in the right way.


Work with me, yes, but also with my team. Decades of experience working with large enterprise organizations so they understand the enterprise field as well as small startups. On the sales, technology and operations side. So we are really excited to bring that expertize to bear. These are people that I work with, professionals that have been in the C-suite have had C before their name, you know, their title and have 15, 20, 30 years of experience doing the things day to day and what they're excited about is bringing that to multiple clients within their domain.


00:31:21:12 - 00:31:45:07

Jay Kingley

I would encourage our listeners to go to LinkedIn, connect with Jonathan, look at his profile, get a sense of the work experience. He talks about education or background and all the things that LinkedIn gives you. But Jonathan, I have a slightly different question for you. I'd like to know what's happened in your life that would most explain why you do what you do today.


00:31:45:13 - 00:32:10:06

Jonathan Barnes

I mentioned the company I started back in 2014, a leather company, and right at the very beginning of the pandemic, we needed to save cash. We didn't know what was going on. It was March 2020. So I stepped away from the company as CEO. I'm still the founder, stepped away from the company day to day. And I just thought through like, what?


You know, I started work hardly the same months that I left and thought, okay, well, if I could offer my expertize to others that are struggling or trying to grow in the midst of pandemic, of course, but also even now, people are need us help. That to me was a turning point for me in my career. It was I'm passionate about growth.


I'm passionate about helping companies find the right talent. Previously been in staffing before, so I understand that process and why it's so important to have the right team. I did that with my previous company, found the right team, and so it's excited to be able to do that. But to me it was it was a it was very painful to leave something that I started from.


You know, it's sort of like losing a child. I know it's not the equivalent, but it feel it felt very much of a loss. And I was mourning that. And so I wanted to be able to regain some of the the excitement about growth and help other other people grow their companies as well.


00:33:17:08 - 00:33:30:12

Jay Kingley

Jonathan, you got a lot of very interesting things to say to our listeners today. I'm going to assume that many of them will want to reach out to continue the conversation. What's the best way for them to get in contact with you?


00:33:30:20 - 00:33:51:05

Jonathan Barnes

Well, I'm on LinkedIn and very active, only ten. So Jonathan Barnes, you can also email me at jb@workheartily.com or just go to my website or workheartily.com very easy to find me. I love to do the strategy sessions so you can find me and I've got a calendar link right there on the front page.


00:33:51:11 - 00:34:22:10

Jay Kingley

While I think that people will absolutely benefit from reaching out and keeping the conversation, I will put all your contact information into the show notes and it an insert into the video and make it easy for folks to reach out. Then, Jonathan, you know, what an amazing conversation. I think you have really highlighted a critical issue that any founder who starting out and has been doing this and wants to get to enterprise level is going to have to deal with.


And it's so refreshing to hear that there is a better way than the traditional way of doing this. And look, I'm be honest with you, this was great. I know that my colleagues who who have their own shows right now, they'd be doing the happy dance. They'd be saying, Woo, right. I nailed this one. What a great guest.


My listeners are going to love me. And they would say, Well, I'm going to quit while I'm ahead. But, you know, I got to tell you, I'm a little yeah, I'm a little stubborn. Jonathan, I don't know when to stop when it comes to advocating for my listeners. So as good as you are and trust me when I say that to you, I'm sitting here and I'm thinking in my mind, but he can up the ante.


I think he can do a little bit more. And I know that you have given a lot of value to our listeners, but how about sweetening the pot? Why don't you offer a little gift in return for them sticking with you? What can you do?


00:35:26:02 - 00:35:48:18

Jonathan Barnes

Sure. That's awesome. You know, I usually do a 45 minute kind of strategy session. I'd love to extend that. Expand that. Let's just do a full hour. It's free Strategy Session. Book it on my website and make sure you mention that you've heard me or us through the show. That way I can go to that. It might say 45 minutes.


I could expand that and make sure I go over and create enough buffer. But yeah, that would be I would love to do that for you, for you and your listeners.


00:35:56:05 - 00:36:17:06

Jay Kingley

Hey, it's an extra third of this gentleman's time, which is incredibly valuable. So let's take let's take Jonathan up on that. Jonathan, again, thank you. Thank you for being such a great guest to my audience. Let's continue to crush it out there until next time. Okay.



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