Establish Your Executive Leadership Team For Faster Growth with Jason Hennessey at Hennessey Digital
Your executive leadership team can make your company or break it. Hiring the executive leadership team is the process of finding people with the right experience, values, and fit for your company stage. You want to hire your executive leadership team slowly and develop them with strong leadership. My guest today is Jason Hennessey, Founder of Hennessey Digital. His company was ranked #290 in the 2019 Inc 5000 list. Jason’s company has grown fast because of a strong executive leadership team. When he realized that he needed to put his trust in others, he knew it would take an understanding of his leadership. Tune in to our conversation as we talk about aligning the executive leadership team to the company goals.
Don't miss an episode. Subscribe to Growth Think Tank.
Jason Hennessey: The Transcript
Target Audience: Jason Hennessey is an internationally-known search engine optimization (SEO) expert, speaker and search marketing correspondent for The Washington Post, Fox Small Business, CNBC, Inc., and CBS News. For over 14 years, Jason has been a vigorous student/practitioner of search marketing – dissecting, testing, debunking, and reverse- engineering the major search algorithms.
Share the LOVE and TWEET about this episode.
Disclaimer: This transcript was created using YouTube’s translator tool and that may mean that some of the words, grammar, and typos come from a misinterpretation of the video.
– Jason Hennessey
As an entrepreneur you learn your lesson you learn from your mistakes over the years and I’ve always bootstrapped every business that I’ve started. And in hindsight I wish I had more intelligent people that I could bounce ideas around that you know can do just what they’re good at.
– Intro
Welcome to growth think tank. This is the one and only place where you will get insight from the founders and the CEOs. The fastest growing privately held companies. I am the host. My name is Gene Hammett. I hope leaders and their teams navigate the defining moments of their growth. Are you ready to grow?
– Gene Hammett
Do you think about building out your executive team creating a team of people that really are aligned with the mission of the business. They’re really helping you and supporting you grow the business and you really want them to accelerate beyond what you can do by yourself. Well I talked to a lot of founders that are growing fast growth companies and they haven’t taken the time to truly create an executive team that serves them in a way that makes the company grow even faster than yesterday. But it is possible. We have Jason Hennessey with Hennessey Digital he is the founder of this company.
– Gene Hammett
They’ve grown at an astronomical pace. They were to 90 on the INC list. They grew at over 15 hundred percent in the last three years. They’ve continued that growth because they created an executive leadership team. He’s fairly early in this journey so I think it’s a perfect person to learn from. One of the things I love about this as he walked through the process at which he actually did. And it’s very similar to what I would coach my clients through so you get to learn from Jason but you also get to know that that is a very solid process because I’ve helped companies do this myself. Well now here is the interview with Jason Hennessey.
– Gene Hammett
Hi Jason how are you?
– Jason Hennessey
Gene, thank you for having me on the show.
– Gene Hammett
Well excited to have you here at growth think tank. I’ve already let our audience know a little about you Jason. But tell us about your company Hennessey Digital?
– Jason Hennessey
So Hennessey Digital has been around for about four years now how we got introduced was recently made the Inc 500. We applied for the INC 5000 with fingers crossed that we would make that and we were pleasantly surprised from the award that we got that we actually made the Inc 500. And we came in number #290 on the list and we brought our executive team which we’re going to be talking about on this show to the gala in Phoenix. And it was it was an amazing experience. So we’ve been seeing really explosive growth. Our core competency is organic search engine optimization where a full service digital marketing agency.
– Gene Hammett
Awesome. Well you you talked about the executive team. Tell us who’s on the team.
– Jason Hennessey
Sure. So we have we’ve got about 10 people that are on our executive team and we’ve been growing pretty rapidly and I’d say probably five of them. Just added over the past year. We went from happening roughly about. Three people when we first started. Now we’re approaching maybe 60 full time people we’re 100 percent virtual company right now. However we’re building a studio in Hollywood California. But my executive team to answer your question consistent. We’ve got a president CEO. We have a Chief Strategy Officer. We have a CFO. We have a director of account services director of analytics marketing director business development direct door and a creative director. And I might be missing some people but yes.
– Gene Hammett
I know some companies that are you know three times your size from a revenue standpoint and they still haven’t got a complete team like you do. Why was that so important for you in the business.
– Jason Hennessey
You know I guess as you do as an entrepreneur you learn your list. You learn from your mistakes over the years and I’ve always bootstrapped every business that I’ve started. And in hindsight I wish I had you know more intelligent people that I could bounce ideas around that you know can do just what they’re good at instead of me trying to be you know a jack of all trades. And so you know the biggest thing that I learned was because we’ve been seeing so much explosive growth you know over the first two and a half years. I was everything right. I was managing accounting. I was managing payroll.
– Jason Hennessey
I was an account manager I was sales I was business development right. And you know working 20 hours a year you know 20 hours a day. So case it was you know sacrificing good quality family life. And so at that point at the end of the year I know because you made a revenue profit I still had a big check to the government to and Mike and I worked so hard and I’ve got to give you all this. And so it just made sense that I was an eye opener to me and I’m like I’d rather just have smart people doing smart things and we can grow even faster. And so that was kind of the big aha moment I guess if you.
– Gene Hammett
And has it worked out that way. I mean I know you’re growing fast but as it is it’s sped up what you were doing before.
– Jason Hennessey
It has. Because what happens is it freed up my time to do what I’m best that which is more of kind of being the face of the company and doing more of the business development and the relationship building and the sales and the speaking right. And so you know I don’t have to worry that people are gonna get paid when they’re supposed to get paid anymore and that’s just done right. I don’t have to worry about managing the operation. They don’t have to come up with the strategy I don’t have to be on the calls with the clients. So it allowed me to really focus my time on just basically bringing in new business. And so that even this year we’re probably up 60-70 percent or ready with the executive team. And so it’s just it’s amazing. So it’s really you know it’s it’s where I’m Where should I be spending most of my time. And I seem to have found that.
– Gene Hammett
Are you able to spend most your time in the areas of strengths that that kind of give you energy or just that you’re able to focus on the areas that needed attention that you couldn’t get to before.
– Jason Hennessey
So definitely the strengths. You know I love it. I’m passionate about what we do. You know I’ve been a student of search marketing for most of my adult life. I got started in 2001. And when I get on calls with prospects you know I just basically am able to share most of our case studies are successful case studies and that basically sells us really and it’s just the way that I deliver it and package it up. And so now we’re at the point it’s funny because you know for the past four years we’ve had like a one page website like you know that accomplish kids without any shoes right.
– Jason Hennessey
Classic example of that. And I was always scared of growing too fast because you know we have a pretty good reputation in the marketplace and you do want to bring us so much business that you can’t fulfill it. And so there’s kind of like a delicate balance there. But now that we have a full service team like I’m comfortable I could bring in new business and and know that we know that we can fulfill it and keep our maintain our reputation.
– Gene Hammett
What steps did you take to begin to think about the team and know as you went through the process of selecting people like you know from internal versus external. Walk us through some of the big decisions you made in this journey.
– Jason Hennessey
Yeah so. So for the most part I was just trying where I was just discovering myself and seeing where my spending most of my time. And initially it was really kind of both sales like business development and sales but then also leading the strategy and and be acting as the account manager right. With each of the things that I sold that counts and I sold. And so from there I just started to take a balance a check and balance of where my spending my time. And from there I basically started to recruit team members. So first thing I did was hired a direct Chief Strategy Officer and the chief strategy officer just took over the strategy. So I didn’t have to dictate the strategy to the team anymore. There was somebody that was fully responsible for that. And that’s that’s the core of what we do is delivering the results to the clients.
– Jason Hennessey
Then I was spending a lot of time managing like I said the accounts and hopping on calls and my most of my day were calls like this on Zoom where I’m just kind of going over like the results and the performance of the campaigns. And so that time took me away from not being able to do more prospecting and stuff and speaking at conferences and all the other stuff that I think I’m good at. And so you know we hired a director of account services and then that took that time off and so and then we recently brought on that recently.
– Jason Hennessey
But let’s say within the past six months we brought on a president and he was a hired gun. He recently was working at another company for about 10 years. Started out as a chief marketing officer there. Then he grew to be the president has a very stellar background and reputation. That is undergraduate at M.I.T. then he went on to get an MBA at Kellogg. Right. So really grooming like some really seasoned bets now to kind of fully take over the operations of the company and so he was brought on and then from there. He had an introduction to the old CFO from the company that got acquired where they both left. And so we brought her on and so she took over all the finances. And it’s just been kind of like a a domino effect right. And so now we’re in the process of looking for an H.R. director H.R..
– Gene Hammett
Well I appreciate you walking through that. You know probably one of the big ones was hiring a president that you were probably acting and doing all of that work before you hired that that person that fair.
– Jason Hennessey
Absolutely yeah. Not very well. Not good at the whole operations and you know. But yeah I was doing it and probably not well.
– Gene Hammett
And so stress levels now much less?
– Jason Hennessey
Much last.Yeah. So it’s the most beautiful thing when you know I could take a vacation for seven days and go on a cruise with my family and not have to stress that you know we’re gonna lose six clients because something’s gonna get missed.
– Gene Hammett
Do you feel like that if you left right now and went on that vacation that the business would be just better off even that you.
– Jason Hennessey
Better off. Yeah. The only thing that might not happen is is sales. Like right now I’m still like I bring in every single dollar of business we brought on a director of business development and he’s going out and doing you know the setup of the different sales calls and stuff but I come in and I’m typically the closer I guess if you will. So during that period of seven days we might not have new sales yet you know that might be a whole nother situation if you talk to me in another year from now and things will just kind and sales will be growing too. But yeah absolutely. It’s way better off that you know even some cases without me there. Yeah.
– Gene Hammett
Well Jason I want to kind of switch gears a little bit here. You know once you have your team in place what kind of rituals do you go through to ensure that your you keep alignment wrong alone everyone there.
– Jason Hennessey
So you know as I mentioned you know we we are a virtual company right now. And I did that strategically. I’ve learned lessons. I know that you’re in Atlanta. You know I was in Atlanta for about eight years I had another agency there that I sold and our office was in the king and queen building right there in Sandy Springs. But the challenge of that is that we had to recruit from a five mile radius of the king and queen building. Right. And so I always said if I’m going to do this again I’m going to make it kind of more virtual because of the business that we do.
– Jason Hennessey
And so now it doesn’t hurt me if my chief strategy officer is in Dallas and our chief you know our CFO is in St. Louis. Right. It’s just hiring the best people that we can find to do the work. And so you know but unlike other traditional companies that you know have an office and have a conference room you know we basically use meetings like this zoom. We have a quick huddle every morning. It’s usually about 20 minutes where we talk about you know just challenges blockers. It’s an executive team. And then from there we just go on our day. And so you know that’s just kind of the standard thing. It’s just like having like a stand up huddle.
– Commercial
Hold on for a second. Jason just talked about having your virtual company. You probably have a virtual company or maybe you’re afraid of it but one thing I know from working with a lot of fast growth companies that it is possible to create growth with virtual employees and even hired the best. But it’s also something that you must be very intentional about. You must be create a culture and be intentional about your leadership. You can’t just expect that things will naturally formed together. You’ve got to be very intentional about the procedures and the rituals you have recognition. There’s a lot of details behind this. I’ve done other interviews about it so I just want to point that out for you. Now back to Jason.
– Gene Hammett
Do you have like quarterly retreats or yearly retreats where you’re all getting together face to face or?
– Jason Hennessey
We do in fact that we just got back. From Carmel Monterrey California. We were there about two weeks ago we brought the whole executive team out there. Flew them out and it was amazing we spent three days together in some cases. That meeting was the first time that a lot of us have ever met in person. And you know we had a lot of bonding time. We did it at a place called The Lodge which is like a full private kind of a resort. And so we rented out a room and we had a videographer come in and we videotaped interviews that we’re gonna be using for our Web site. But most importantly as we looked at you know the goals of two thousand and twenty and how we’re going to be able to kind of meet those goals. And so it was definitely a good retreat.
– Gene Hammett
Fantastic. I’d love for you to look back at some of the mistakes you made in this journey and again I don’t want you to share the things that are you know still in progress the things that maybe you learned from that that we all could learn from. Is there a mistake or two that comes to mind.
– Jason Hennessey
Yeah, So for me. Well first of all the biggest mistake was thinking that you can kind of do everything yourself. Right. Because yeah you can you can grow and you can have full control but sometimes you know the downside of having full control is you’re really hindering your growth by thinking you can kind of do everything yourselves. And I know you know people are a little bit fearful of making investment into you know executive team members because in most cases they’re not very cheap. But you know if you bring on the right team to do the right things you know in most cases they can probably do their task and job at a hundred percent when you’re only doing each of those at like 20 or 30 percent.
– Commercial
Now hold on for a second. I know that as a leader you know that you can’t do everything yourself but yet you probably talk about it all the time about how stressed you are and you wear that on your sleeve about how busy you are. But I want to tell you that you can step beyond that. You can create leadership inside your company that create that is allowed to grow beyond you. And in fact if you want to continue this level of growth you’re going to have to create people who are growing beyond you. It takes a special brand of leadership and culture to do that. This is what I excel at with my work as an executive coach to fast growth companies just like you give me questions makes me reach out to me. Now back to Jason.
– Gene Hammett
That’s a good way to put it. When you think about you know your job now you’re focused on basically bringing in the money. Do you also get involved with with culture and do you have an intentional kind of approach to culture inside the company.
– Jason Hennessey
Yeah. So we have a that was actually one of the things because we are going so fast that having a virtual company does have limitations with culture right. There’s not that watercooler conversation that takes place. You know what did you do last weekend right. So we actually are forming a culture committee that is going to be run by some of our subordinates. Right. And so you know there’ll be one person that’s on our executive team. She’s our chief marketing officer. She’ll be kind of overseeing that but it’s really going to come from the bottom down from the bottom up on what our culture should look like and what we should be doing. And you know we just did a Halloween costume event where everybody got dressed up on Halloween morning and we gave away some some gifts to the best and most creative costumes and you know and it was fun. But again having a virtual company does have some limitations there with with the culture. But we’re looking to improve that.
– Gene Hammett
What’s next with the executive team to make sure that you guys stay in alignment?
– Jason Hennessey
So you know I think communication is probably a key here. Because you know we’re not interacting face to face. You know we we it’s so important that we stay in in contact with each other. And so that’s that’s one of the reasons why we have our huddle every morning and there’s follow up and there’s action items and you know we’ve got accountability partners. And so as long as we are able to keep up the communication. I think that’s going to solve a lot of a lot of our problems.
– Gene Hammett
Well Jason I really appreciate you being here on growth think tank and sharing some of the wisdom of creating an executive team and and you know taking us back to the time when you were doing it all yourself or trying and stressing out and now having a solid team in place is you know accelerating your growth. That’s what we want to hear. So that’s reason we had you on the show to share share this wisdom.
– Jason Hennessey
Well thank you so much Gene. And I really appreciate it. And and again thank you so much for having me.
– Gene Hammett
Fantastic and I really love the fact that we went to to the depth of know how he actually did it though. Hopefully you took notes there that you know you don’t have to do it all yourself. You can find someone that’s better than you at so many areas your business. So that leaves you time to focus on your strengths if you want to continue the acceleration of your company. You’ve got to continue to focus on your strengths.
– Gene Hammett
Let other people do their work. You have to build a team that is aligned together. Today’s episode was all about that. Hopefully you’re enjoying these interviews. I appreciate you being here. Hopefully you’re sharing it with someone and make sure you give us a rating review on iTunes or wherever you listen to this. You really have been getting something out of these interviews I appreciate you being here at Growth Think Tank as always lead with courage. We’ll see you next time.
Disclaimer: This transcript was created using YouTube’s translator tool and that may mean that some of the words, grammar, and typos come from a misinterpretation of the video.
Resources
A QUICK FAVOR
And lastly, please leave a rating and review for the Growth Think Tank on iTunes (or Stitcher) – it will help us in many ways, but it also inspires us to keep doing what we are doing here. Thank you in advance!
If you want more from us check out more interviews:
Transformational Leadership
Productivity Tips
Best Selling Author Interviews
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | https://www.youtube.com/user/leadersinthetrenches
