"Balancing expenses and revenue is the foundation of financial resilience."
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Welcome to ValiantCEO Magazine’s exclusive interview with Bradley Rice, the visionary founder of Talent Stacker. This conversation unveils the remarkable journey of a business strategist who challenges conventional norms in both the corporate landscape and our perception of work and life.
Bradley Rice’s story began on a cattle farm, an unlikely starting point for someone destined to make a significant impact on the tech industry. However, an unexpected role in Salesforce Consulting after college set the stage for his exceptional journey. Under remarkable mentorship, Bradley excelled in the booming tech sector.
Driven by a passion to bridge the gap between the tech industry’s growth and job seekers’ struggles, he founded Talent Stacker. The company simplifies the path to remote tech careers, helping individuals with diverse backgrounds secure roles with starting salaries exceeding $70,000 and the potential to reach $100,000 within 24 months. Bradley’s mission is to prove that greatness in the tech world is attainable for all.
Join us to explore Bradley’s insights into employee contentment, Talent Stacker’s achievements, and his perspective on navigating the evolving business landscape.
In this interview, discover the secrets behind Talent Stacker’s success and gain wisdom from a visionary leader reshaping the future of work and careers.
Check out more interviews with entrepreneurs here.
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Table of Contents
We are thrilled to have you join us today, welcome to ValiantCEO Magazine’s exclusive interview! Let’s start off with a little introduction. Tell our readers a bit about yourself and your company.
Bradley Rice: I’m a business strategy nerd who truly enjoys challenging the norms of how businesses operate as well as how we view work and life. I grew up cattle farming, tripped and fell into a Salesforce Consulting role out of college.
I had great mentorship and ended up making far more money than I ever dreamed, seeing the growth in the tech market and the confusion of job seekers I felt compelled to help others break into these jobs.
I founded a company named Talent Stacker to streamline the process of taking anyone ready for a new career path from where they are today to starting a role in a remote tech career with no college degree and no tech background.
We’ve helped teachers, healthcare workers, blue-collar workers, stay at home parents and more break into these roles with starting salaries at $70k+ and reaching $100k within 24 months! With over 1000 members having landed jobs we have a strong confidence in being able to help anyone and everyone!
In the past year, what is the greatest business achievement you’d like to celebrate with your team? Please share the details of that success.
Bradley Rice: This would have to be breaking the milestone of 1000 jobs landed by our members. This is remarkable because our program has done more for job seekers in the Salesforce ecosystem in the past 2 years than all other programs combined in our industry.
Growing the business is great, but the success of the members we serve is by far the most important aspect of what we do. We actually already have a celebration planned with our staff and many of our alumni.
We have a 3 day outdoor Summer Camp scheduled where we will spend time together, fishing, canoeing, and gathering around campfires with the purpose of using these new careers to design a life that brings you peace and purpose.
Quiet quitting, The Great Resignation, are an ongoing trend causing many businesses to struggle to keep talent engaged and motivated. Most are leaving because of their boss or their company culture. 82% of people feel unheard, undervalued, and misunderstood in the workplace. In your experience, what keeps employees happy? And how are you adapting to the current shift we see?
Bradley Rice: I’ll try and keep this concise. A little from me, a little from the community. When asking our program alumni what is the MOST important thing that keeps them with an employer long term. 623 responded and these were the results overall.
- 48% Growth/Challenge Opportunity
- 29% Consistent Conversation around Pay
- 15% Feeling Like More Than a Number
- 7% Stable Company Pipeline
Now that’s all fine and reasonably expected in my opinion. So the next layer becomes how can an employer show you this is an attribute of their company and your role? This wasn’t as easy to bring into bullets but here are some key findings translated through me.
1.Positive & Gratifying Communication – We live in a world of excitement, drama, searching, wanting more. When individuals are involved in online and in person communities they feel better connected, more supported, more capable. They also feel more FOMO, they might hear one person lost their job, then hear someone else got a 20k raise.
One person will go home scared they’ll lose their job, another will go home thinking about how to get the $20k raise the fastest. Fear mindset vs. Growth mindset.
On your team you want people with Growth mindset but… you don’t want them to act on instant gratification psychology. So how do we bridge this? First off I would say don’t try to understand what motivates them, this can change tomorrow and often the person will say one thing motivates them but their actions will tell you what truly motivates them. So what then… we have to hit all of the 4 listed bullets to make sure we touch their perceived and unrealized motivations.
We communicate both around negating fear and embracing growth.The days of annual salary conversation are over, a year is forever for individuals involved in social communities.
Everyone is involved in social communities and probably should be so as the employers we have to navigate our role. An example of how to handle this would be a bi-monthly or quarterly individual meeting with a clear agenda… Employee performance and current ability to meet expectations. Be sure to highlight strengths and areas for growth to take them to the next level. Notice I didn’t say weaknesses.
The conversation is around taking them to the next level, not highlighting their faults. Same topic, different frame. Use this opportunity to talk about the growth opportunities for them, where you see them if they keep this pace, that next title you can give them, which by the way costs you 0 and makes them feel on top of the world.
2. Annual Bonus with a spin. Give a sizable annual bonus, example 1 of the golden handcuff. This carrot looks so tasty that I won’t look in any other direction, rather I will focus my energy on the carrot. Well it turns out the annual bonus is great but it’s paid out in thirds. 1/3 in Month 1, 1/3 in Month 2 and 1/3 in Month 3. What’s the spin, they got the bonus right?
Sure but now they are only 9 months away from the next bonus instead of 1 year. Mentally that’s a big difference. In every one of these scheduled meetings mention the bonus, mention how close it is to being time for that bonus. In addition to that annual bonus let’s talk about…
3. Your Next Raise. Discuss what impacts their raise. Make sure this aligns with your goals as a business. People love getting new certifications, but that serves them as an individual talent and it feels satisfying to them. Find a way to give them goals at your company specifically that benefit your company, give them a tangible win and a clear path to a raise all at the same time.
This might be having their first 150 hour billable month, completing their first project as the lead on time and on budget etc… Give raises early and often, ever year… boo, every 6 months… awesome, every 4 months… WOW!
4. Project Variety. This one is short and simple. Focus them on what you need them on but give them some unique goals every few months. Have them shadow a project that has nothing to do with what they’re good at. They will feel they are getting varieties of exposure which can be good for you and makes them less fearful their experience is siloed. This also overlaps with the growth opportunity bullet.
5. Company Transparency. Talk to them about the company initiatives. Where you all are seeing opportunity, where your focus is. Are you doing some PR to highlight something, are you doing a brand deal to get top influencers in the SF space to talk about your company and offerings. (Quick self plug.
This is real, Salesforce For Everyone offers brand campaigns to boost business exposure). Are you seeing healthy pipeline, if so how are you reacting to keep it growing. If not, how are you reacting to make me feel comfortable it’s all okay and I shouldn’t be concerned.
Invite me to contribute any ideas I have, to suggest changes, to bring up positives and negatives. Tell me how much you appreciate my insights. Now I feel good about the company, I feel like a meaningful part of the company and I’m not a number.
Outcome… as an employee I’m going home to eat dinner with my family CONSTANTLY talking about my raise that’s coming up and how I’m going to get there, my bonus that is also coming up sooner than I realize. I literally talk to my manager every 2 months and we just discuss all the money I’ll be making.
Not only that they see me getting a new title soon and getting on some new projects because my skills are so versatile and growing. Oh and they talked to me about the goals of the company and how they need my insights, I guess I’m sort of like an insider now, I’m a big deal to them.
I’m feeling exceptionally positive about how they see me, how they reward me and how they need ME. I like it here, I can’t imagine working for some other basic employer who just wants me to bill hours and keep my head down.
Online business keeps on surging higher than ever, B2B, B2C, online shopping, virtual meetings, remote work, Zoom medical consultations, what are your expectations for the year to come and how are you capitalizing on the tidal wave?
Bradley Rice: Artificial Intelligence is clearly a focus in the current market. Companies are going to live and die by their decisions to adopt or ignore this technology in the next 1-3 years.
My focus is on adopting AI technology into our business tool stack and training. We are now training our members in how to use AI tools in breaking into tech jobs while also implementing AI chat bots, AI support assistants and more! As the technology continues to emerge we will continue to embrace and grow with it.
Christopher Hitchens, an American journalist, is quoted as saying that “everyone has a book in them” Have you written a book? If so, please share with us details about it. If you haven’t, what book would you like to write and how would you like it to benefit the readers?
Bradley Rice: I would agree that everyone likely has a wonderful story and something to share. For me I could write a few books and enjoy doing it. However, the format I’ve chosen to educate, share and express myself by is not through books. I enjoy creating content that can convey a message in minutes not hours, in sentences not pages.
For that reason I focus on resources like PDF guides, course materials and comprehensive programs. I believe in the time it takes a person to read a book, I can have take them successes they never imagined in a much more engaging and tangible way.
You’ll notice content like my Free Salesforce 5 Day Challenge at talentstacker.com/now, I’m able to cover in roughly 3 hours of content what many would say would make a great book.
With this type of on-demand content I also have the ability to make immediate updates for everyone using the content instead of needing to write a new version and re-release it. To me online learning has tremendous benefits over a static text based resource.
2020, 2021, and 2022 threw a lot of curve balls into businesses on a global scale. Based on the experience gleaned in the past years, how can businesses thrive in 2023? What lessons have you learned and what advice would you share?
Bradley Rice: You have to be prepared financially to weather storms. If you’re a person living paycheck to paycheck your one bad month away from everything spiraling downward, the same goes for operating a business.
If you allow your expenses to stay at pace with your revenue you’re one bad month/quarter away from having to lay someone off, borrow money, or impact your own personal finance situation as the owner.
I would say my advice is to be consistently thoughtful about the way you spend money as a business owner, be financially prepared to spend money to grow your company, while having healthy savings to protect it.
I’ve seen companies perform mass layoffs due to lower revenues for just one quarter, this to me is the sign of a company one bad year away from collapse and you aren’t going to sleep well running a business that way.
What does “success” in 2023 mean to you? It could be on a personal or business level, please share your vision.
Bradley Rice: Success to me is ensuring our customers are wildly successful even when the business is not. The growth and success of our customers is far more important than the success of our bottom line. On the other hand I firmly believe that a focus on the customer will inevitably result in the long term success of our business.
From a personal level I feel immense gratitude for the privilege of having control over my own business, my own growth and the success of those we serve. Our number one goal is to do everything we can to grow our infrastructure in these years of economic contraction so that when we move into expansion we are ready to expand with it!
Jed Morley, VIP Contributor to ValiantCEO and the host of this interview would like to thank Bradley Rice for taking the time to do this interview and share his knowledge and experience with our readers.
If you would like to get in touch with Bradley Rice or his company, you can do it through his – Linkedin Page
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