Molly Ruland:

Very, very Hollywood. Alright. Here we go. Exactly. Alright, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome back to Camp Content, the podcast that everyone is watching and listening to because they wanna learn about content marketing and revenue drivers in 2024. I don’t know if everybody’s listening, but you should be because this is gonna be a great episode. I am excited to welcome Travis Jenko who’s 25 years you know what? I just realized.

Molly Ruland:

Is it Jenko or Yanko?

Travis Janko:

You got it. Jenko. Right off the

Molly Ruland:

bat. Okay. You know, I always forget to double check and then I’m usually right, but you never know. Okay. I’m gonna start again. Alright. Today’s guest is Travis Jenko who has 25 years of experience and background in sales leadership and now operates a SaaS sales recruiting agency. He’s also a hunter of purple squirrels and unicorns, an expert at herding cats, a speaker and an author, and that’s straight from his LinkedIn bio, which I love, by the way.

Molly Ruland:

Travis has participated in a 50,000,000 series c funding round, an IPO, and acquisitions worth 317,000,000 and 3,500,000,000. He has hired over 500 sales professionals. And if you’re a business owner, hiring people is a daunting task, never mind sales people. And he now runs a firm specializing in placing sales talent in SaaS startups. I love how specific that is. In addition to his recruiting work, Travis is a published author and operates GSD Coach and recruiting with his wife, Angie. They focus on recruiting the top 5, 5% of sales talent and also run Dunn, a company that provides project management coaching and training. In this episode, we’re gonna jump into Travis’s transition from sales leadership to recruiting, his approach to business, and his strategies from his latest book.

Molly Ruland:

So, without further ado, let’s get on into it. Travis, thanks for coming on the show today.

Travis Janko:

Absolutely. Thanks for having me, Molly.

Molly Ruland:

Yeah. I’m, I’m, I’m excited to talk to you because I love sales and a lot of people don’t love sales. And I have had really good luck, dumb luck with hiring, I think I have a great team, but I know a lot of people really struggle with it. So I think you’re gonna provide a lot of good information today that the listeners will actually find helpful. So, can you give me a little background, like, not background, but like a snapshot of the company? Like, how many employees do you have? How many clients do you have? Where are they located? Kinda like a little Shark Tank summary, if you will.

Travis Janko:

Yeah. Super short version. We’re running our business differently than most people would expect. Our employees are my wife and I. That’s it. So we’re running a 7 figure a year recruiting firm with 2 people. Amazing. Plus well, actually, we’re running 2 businesses.

Travis Janko:

We also have done it. So we just do this same process. Employees all over the US and Canada, We’ve you know, when we started this, I realized I wanted to do 2 things. I wanted to stick with what I know in my wheelhouse and what I like. And I led sales people for years in the SaaS space, in the startup space. So that’s what we do. We recruit for people in the SaaS start up space. I also am very comfortable with the US and Canada.

Travis Janko:

That’s where I’ve been working for years. So that’s where all my clients are. How many clients do we have? Typically juggling anywhere from 8 to 12 at any given time. Once I was 22, that’s too much. 2 people cannot successfully place candidates with 22 companies at once, but we’ve tried it.

Molly Ruland:

Check that off the list. Yeah.

Travis Janko:

Check it off. Yes.

Molly Ruland:

That’s amazing. I’m sorry. Were you about to say something else? No. Okay. So, right on. I love so there’s just the 2 of you. That’s pretty impressive to be doing that much business with just the 2 of you. So you must really have a good handle on your efficiencies and automations and I mean, you’ve been doing this a long time.

Molly Ruland:

So, how have you seen how you have seen that industry change? You know, I love that you’re very specific with staffing SaaS companies. So is that something you’ve always been interested in? I would imagine there’s probably a high a high need for that because there’s a lot of turnover and a lot of new products all the time. Right? Yeah. Never

Travis Janko:

ending. There really is. And, you know, the thing about it, I’ve been, you know, I’ve had this firm for 8 years. And up until COVID, it was pretty much the same thing. Like, I knew what companies wanted, companies kind of knew what they wanted, and, you know, the idea was we’re doing well, let’s hire more people so we get a bigger evaluation because we’re bringing on new clients. Then things changed when COVID hit. Everybody stopped hiring in the entire world, and that stopped for probably 6 months, and then what happened is the companies who were affected positively versus negatively, in other words, the companies like Zoom is a great example. Companies where they were growing without even maybe changing the way they had done their business, they had to hire and they had to hire a lot.

Travis Janko:

So what happened was these companies that were growing started doubling, tripling, quadrupling down and hiring way too many people. Right. Because they were in the right place at the right time. And we know what happens when you do that. Then it started evening out where the playing field was more open again. And, you know, now people are remote, and you can hire from anywhere. You live in Costa Rica, you can hire somebody from Costa Rica. It doesn’t really matter.

Travis Janko:

You know, as long as they have a US address for your insurance and all that kind of stuff. But what happened was the companies that spent so much time hiring, now the playing field was even, and now they start laying people off.

Molly Ruland:

Right.

Travis Janko:

You do that roller coaster and it’s never ending. And what has happened now is that it’s the hardest job market for candidates that it’s almost ever been. It’s really hard. It used to take somebody who wanted to find a job a few weeks, maybe a month. I’m talking to a plus candidate who has been out of work for 9 months and can’t find a good job. Right. Part of the reason is they jumped at just the money a couple of times during the last few years, and they jumped into companies that weren’t the right fit, and so now they’re being a lot more selective. It’s also much harder for companies who are hiring now because You would think because there’s more inventory, you would actually have a better shot, but it’s the opposite.

Travis Janko:

Because there’s so much noise and so much inventory, you run an ad today and instead of getting like 15 applicants, you get, like, 1500 applicants, and none of them are qualified.

Molly Ruland:

Right.

Travis Janko:

And now you don’t know what to do with it. I I shouldn’t say none. Very, very few. Few. Alright. It’s just an auto -applied type of thing. So you Right. Now as somebody hiring sales talent, you need to figure out where to go find them.

Travis Janko:

You also need to be unique and different because they’re only gonna go work for the best companies now because they’ve already been through this layoff over and over.

Molly Ruland:

Right. Exactly. And that’s pretty interesting. I’ve experienced that even just in my little world of hiring and the resources that I’ve used and how, how many more applicants there are on that platform now. And same thing, like, I used to be able to put a job listing up and get, like, decent resumes and decent information back, and then now it’s just, like, you know, every Tom, Dick and Harry is applying for jobs. I’m like, this has nothing, like, you didn’t even follow the basic instructions and that’s on a very, like, simple simple hire for basic stuff. So I can only imagine and then I know the hidden job market is a real concern too. Right? Because a lot of jobs are just like word-of-mouth and your friend or a friend or a connection and so, those really good jobs are hard to place.

Molly Ruland:

Are you seeing it, it seems like a lot of people don’t wanna go back to the office too. Are you seeing any issues with that? Is that a thing?

Travis Janko:

It is a thing. So we went from most of the world being in the office to none of the world being in the office to now some people are going back hybrid or full time. And so you have some candidates who have been dying to go into the office. They really wanna work with people. But most don’t want the commute. Most Right. Realize they’re more effective and more efficient not being in an office. And they’ve moved to another state.

Travis Janko:

But now you have your company saying, hey, you gotta come back to the office. And so, Molly, sorry. For me, I love that. Because what I basically do is I go find those companies through research that are saying now you have to come back in.

Molly Ruland:

Right.

Travis Janko:

Now we’re making these changes, and I go find those top candidates, and I

Molly Ruland:

They want it. Right.

Travis Janko:

They’re willing to talk to me, because they’re number 1 in their company. They love it, but they don’t wanna go back in. Right. And it’s also much harder if you’re looking if you’re in DC and you say I want the best candidate in the United States, that’s this big of a field. If you’re in DC and you say I want the best candidate just in DC, you’re very limited in the number of people that you can go after. So I’m also seeing companies make better hires than they’ve ever made because they have a bigger field to choose from, if that makes sense.

Molly Ruland:

For sure. I mean, it’s like our business too. It really increased quite a bit because, you know, when we went fully remote, we could work with people from all over the world. And so our client base is international at this point, just from referrals and word-of-mouth and everything else. But you know, we don’t turn that down. Why would we? We’d be crazy too. Exactly. Amazing.

Molly Ruland:

So what are some of the questions here, but they’re not always that great. So what motivated motivation between going from, you know, sales leadership to starting your own recruiting agency? What was that spark?

Travis Janko:

Boy, that’s, that’s a long one. I’ll give you, like, the condensed version. So I got into recruiting, because there was a problem that I had. One of the companies that I was at, they were getting me tons of candidates to interview. Like, literally 4 or 5 interviews every single day. Okay. And I’m doing that instead of working with my team.

Molly Ruland:

Right.

Travis Janko:

And I was interviewing people that I didn’t want to hire. So they were great culture fits. I might go have a drink with them, but they weren’t great sales people, and

Molly Ruland:

Right.

Travis Janko:

I had big, huge goals to hit. I didn’t have time to hire not good sales people, but I had to because I had a quota. So I would go to the recruiting department, I would tell them what was up, they would say, cool, we got it, and then they keep getting me these same people. Right. So I just decided I’m I. I have 2 choices. I can just complain about it, or I can fix it. So I went out and taught myself how to be a sourcing recruiter. I basically studied, I watched videos, I read books, I talked to experts, and I figured it out.

Travis Janko:

And I started getting up at 4 AM every morning, 7 days a week. You know, we’re business owners, you understand this. This was when I was working for someone though. 4 AM, 7 days a week, sourcing candidates. And I got really really good at it. So much so that my first startup, there were 35 of us when we started. We had huge growth goals to grow to about 300 in 3 years. We actually grew to 600 in 3 years, and I personally found about 250 of those people.

Molly Ruland:

Wow.

Travis Janko:

And then I just realized how good I was at this. And so when I went to my next startup, I was the first hire and I was building Ikea desks in the dark with a flashlight closing deals on my cell phone, sourcing candidates. We hired 3 outside firms, and after a week I fired all of them because they were just sending me a bunch of bad resumes.

Molly Ruland:

Right.

Travis Janko:

Not feeling the word. Yeah. I went and did the same thing myself. We grew to 150 people in a year and a half. Both of those companies were acquired. So when it was time to start my own business, it was kind of a no brainer. I would either say it was gonna be something in sales coaching or in recruiting. So I started out while I’m doing both.

Travis Janko:

And I realized you only have so much bandwidth. So I stuck with what people need the most, where they struggle the most, and that isn’t It isn’t how we train and coach our sales people, it’s how we actually find a plus person. Like where do we go to find them? Where are they hiding? Those unicorns and purple squirrels we talked about. Mhmm. And so that’s what I started doing 8 years ago and, you know, it’s been getting better and better since, and we’re helping more people along the way.

Molly Ruland:

That’s amazing. I think I think the work that you’re doing with sales professionals in particular is really important because people are not really good at sales. Right? And that’s probably the first thing that most companies wanna do. A smaller company is gonna be really motivated to hire salespeople anyway. They wanna get that off their plate as soon as possible, but you know and I know that that just doesn’t work because if you haven’t actually figured out how to sell your product and the nuances and the kit you know, feedback that you’re getting, there’s no way you can train anybody or give them even the resources or guide them in any kind of way. So, you know, you must deal with that a lot, right, with, like, trying to find the right fit and then vetting your clients, right, is probably a huge part of your business. Are they even ready for what it is that they’re asking for?

Travis Janko:

That’s one of the first questions that I ask. So when I’m talking to a potential client, and I’m vetting them to make sure that we’re gonna be a good fit and good partners, one thing is walk me through what your onboarding process looks like. Walk me through what your process and playbooks look like, your training. If you have a current team, walk me through how they’ve been doing. If you don’t and your founder led, how have you been doing? And walk me through what your interview process looks like. And then finally, tell me who your perfect candidate is. What does that profile look like? And most of the time, those questions aren’t all able to be answered because they hadn’t been thought about yet. Right? It’s we know we need to hire because I don’t wanna sell anymore, or we know we need to hire because our product’s doing great and we need to add on, or or the investors told us we have to

Molly Ruland:

hire, whatever that

Travis Janko:

looks like. But I find myself often telling a potential client that they’re not ready yet, and that they should fix a, b, c, and d first, because otherwise, we’re gonna hire somebody for them. They’re not gonna have the process for them. They’re gonna realize, oh, my gosh, what did I get myself into? And they’re gonna go somewhere else. Right. So, yeah. Usually, it’s when we’re ready and I always tell people to know when you’re ready and know who you need to hire before you start getting that hire. Once you figured that out, I I can help them find those plus people.

Travis Janko:

But again, keep in mind, Molly, that plus talent as we mentioned earlier, they’ve been through this thing. They only wanna work for the best leaders Right. Best companies with the best products. And I know everybody feels they’re the best leader with the best product and all but if that was true, everybody would be the best and that’s not different. You have to be unique and you have to stand out. You have to have people finish that first interview with you and go, wow. Wow, they have it down. But oftentimes I get a candidate that calls me and says I’m out.

Travis Janko:

Like, have you talked to these people? And so sometimes we need to fix things again. It’s all about the process. You know, I think everything in business is about process. And my advice to somebody who’s recruiting is you should prepare for recruiting and hiring just like you prepare to present to the board. Like, literally, it’s that important. Because otherwise, you’re gonna spend a $100,000 hiring somebody or whatever that number is, plus probably 2 to 3 times that in all the resources you put in and all the money they didn’t make because they didn’t hit their numbers in your time that you had to put with them, and then you start over. So do it right the first time. This is the simple version. Have we lost your volume?

Molly Ruland:

I was yelling at my dog, so I muted myself. I heard. Yeah. Like, girls, you know, there’s a lot of, like, it’s very empowering to tell a client no or say no thank you sometimes, especially as a business owner because you you learn over time, like, all money is not good money and some clients will, like, take all the air in the room and occupy every team meeting and, you know, just really make your life suck, you know. And so, but at the same time, having to tell a large percentage of your discovery calls, sorry, you’re not ready, must make it more challenging for you in order to fill your pipeline at times. Right? Because you’re probably saying you’re not ready more often than not.

Travis Janko:

I Yeah. I would say yes and no. You know, I learned a long time ago. I taught myself I’m only bringing on clients that make sense that, you know, I have the red flags, green flags, yellow flags. I’m bringing on a client that makes the most sense to work with, but also I don’t want to work with a client that’s not ready because we’re trying to accomplish something that’s not gonna be accomplished. It’s kinda like running that race around the track except there’s barricades halfway through. What’s the point of starting the race? And so Right. Yes, I tell people no, that they’re not ready often.

Travis Janko:

But the nice part about that, Molly, is by the time they are ready, we can move fast and efficiently. And I’ve already worked with them, and it’s kind of like that, we had a horrible hailstorm here in Denver, and we’re getting our roof repaired, coming up. But it’s kind of like, 3 doors down, one person went up on our neighbor’s roof and said, hey, you guys actually don’t need a roof. It doesn’t need repair. Everybody else around you does, but it doesn’t. That’s who we’re working with, because he actually was honest and said, it’s not time. You’re not ready. And that’s the way I look at it, is if you if you tell people the truth, most of them will appreciate that and most of them will come back later when they are ready because, unfortunately, in business, some people are so desperate that they’re trying to close business that they shouldn’t be closing for right now.

Molly Ruland:

I mean, especially in this market, it’s a harder time than it was before, so it’s hard to turn down clients. But, yeah, if you’re not really clear on what your product is and what your sales cycle is and your onboarding, which I would imagine most people don’t. Now, are you working with a larger company size of the people that you typically work with?

Travis Janko:

Typically, for the most part, founder led SaaS organizations, that are usually between, like, 1,010,000,000 in annual recurring revenue, so pretty small. They’re usually at that point. They’ve made mistakes along the way. They’ve kind of figured it out. They’ve probably made a couple of bad hires. Most likely, they don’t have a sales team or it’s super, super small. Mhmm. And now they’re looking for that first hire.

Travis Janko:

And then that’s where we need to figure out why are you hiring? What are you trying to accomplish? Because sometimes we’re trying to accomplish the wrong thing. Sometimes we’re saying, I just don’t, I don’t want to get out of sales.

Molly Ruland:

Right.

Travis Janko:

But that’s not necessarily a reason to hire. So we need to figure out what the goals are, what are you looking for. That’s who I typically work with. And I would say more times than not, I’m helping them hire their very first salesperson, and that’s very niche.

Molly Ruland:

Yeah.

Travis Janko:

Because that a great example is, if this is a 10 person company, and the founders have done all of the selling, and they wanna hire their 1st salesperson, we have to make sure we hire somebody who’s already been a founding member, and not somebody from a 5,000 person company like a sales force.

Molly Ruland:

Right.

Travis Janko:

Because it’s in those large companies, there’s a person that does the thing. In the small companies, you are the person that does the thing. Yeah. And that’s hard to translate. So, again, you have to know who you need to hire, I guess, it is the easy way to say that.

Molly Ruland:

Amazing. I love it. So okay. Let’s talk about the GSD coach and recruiting. Like, is that kind of the way you refer people to that arm of things when they’re not ready? Or or how does that play into the main business?

Travis Janko:

Yeah. I mean, that my main business is recruiting. The coach just stuck with me years ago. Got it. 1 of my, one of my leaders said, you know, I was asking a couple of your team members to describe you in forward Gillette, and they said he gets shit done.

Molly Ruland:

Yeah. I love it. And Oh, GSD, I love

Travis Janko:

1. GSD? Yeah. And so he said you should name your team GSD and people have since called me the GSD coach. So I just added recruiting onto it when I opened up my business. Molly, it’s amazing that I left that in there because out of, like, the 20 spam emails I get every day, about half of them are helping me to sell my coaching services that I don’t even have. If they’ve literally looked at my profile, it says, I’m not doing coaching, I’m recruiting. But anyway, that’s where it is. So, yeah, my main business is recruiting.

Travis Janko:

The thing is our other business, run project management that my wife mostly runs, she was leading project management teams for years. And so a lot of times I may When I’m working with larger clients, they may or may not be ready to hire, but they may have an internal system issue that needs to be fixed. And she can come in there and help them do that. So I refer business to her company. She refers business to my company, and we both help each company become a bit more efficient.

Molly Ruland:

That’s a modern day romance right there. I love it. I

Travis Janko:

I think

Molly Ruland:

That’s fantastic right there. That’s how it is, you know? Come on, man. It doesn’t get any better than that. Alright. So let’s go into our speed round portion of the podcast. So Yeah. It’s always a good time. So what is the number one trait that you look for in a potential sales candidate?

Travis Janko:

Boy, the number 1? It’s hard to narrow it down to 1. There’s about 10, but I would say probably, number 1 is coachability. Mhmm.

Molly Ruland:

You

Travis Janko:

know? The thing is if they’ve already figured it out and they already know it all, they’re never gonna learn anything. And when you go into a new company, you’re gonna learn new things and find out new things, and you need to be coachable and adaptable. But I think it’s hard to narrow it down to just one. But I think that we’ll use that for the speed around.

Molly Ruland:

I mean, I think that’s good in life. You need to be coachable. Right? Like, the second you think you know everything, watch out because here comes the universe. Exactly. Tell you otherwise. Yeah. Okay. IPO or acquisition, what do you find more exhilarating?

Travis Janko:

Acquisition. How come? I would say well, I’ve been through it all. The first one, the IPO, was exciting. You know? We got all kinds of money that came in. All kinds of things happened, and then all kinds of big changes happened, of course, when that happened. The acquisition I find more exciting purely because of the payouts, I would say. You know, 1, to me, but 2, both of those companies, their goals from the time I started, I knew their goals were to be acquired. And so to be able to see them succeed and to be able to have those things happen.

Travis Janko:

The second company I worked for was acquired two and a half years ago, the owners are still on board. So they’ve got their money and they’re still on board helping that dream go along. So it’s beautiful.

Molly Ruland:

That’s cool. That’s super.

Travis Janko:

I like both though. I’ll tell you that.

Molly Ruland:

Right on. I mean, it’s a very exciting world, especially when it’s going well. You know? Yes. Okay. Kauai or the Colorado mountains, which is your preferred getaway?

Travis Janko:

Oh, Kauai. I mean, we live in Colorado. We love Colorado. We love going up in the mountains and hiking. My wife and I are beach bums. Literally, every year we spend a couple of weeks in Kauai, on the beach, you know, and I think if we lived there, it would be very difficult because I would be here on a podcast, and I would be seeing the ocean right out the window, kinda like what

Molly Ruland:

you

Travis Janko:

have behind you there.

Molly Ruland:

Right.

Travis Janko:

But, yeah, quote for sure. Nothing wrong with Denver except for it’s, you know, gonna be about 100 degrees today.

Molly Ruland:

Yeah. Exactly. People are losing their minds, I would imagine. I love that too. I love being near the ocean as well and being in nature. It really, like, I like to work hard and I don’t mind spending a lot of time at my desk and, obviously, you too waking up at 4 AM. Like, I I I like to get shit done as well. I definitely love checking things off of the list.

Molly Ruland:

I got, like, multiple to-do lists everywhere every day, you know, but I also really like that reset in nature. It’s a really good balance for my overactive brain is to just, like, be barefoot in the same

Travis Janko:

Nature’s important wherever you are. I mean, you know, I talk to too many people who are just burned out and stressed because they’re just on the hamster wheel.

Molly Ruland:

Mhmm. Just

Travis Janko:

continuously going. And a lot of people still think, even in today’s world, that if I just work more, I’ll get further. And it’s not really about that. It’s Mhmm. It’s about being efficient, but you also have to stop and recharge your mind and your soul and your body. I mean, we take a walk 1 to 2 times a day.

Molly Ruland:

Nice.

Travis Janko:

Out in nature. And where whatever nature is to do to me is different than it might be for you or other people, but you’re right. You need to find a place to recharge and, you know, you shouldn’t wait until it’s vacation time. You should try to do that every day if possible.

Molly Ruland:

I agree. You know, when I was in DC, I rode a bike for, like, 7 years until it got too cold, you know, in the wintertime. And it really helped a lot because DC, when you’re in a car, is an infuriating town. I mean, there’s always some sort of motorcade or NATO’s in town. I mean, you’re just like, who’s messing up my entire life today? But on a bike, you know, you just zip around and DC is a beautiful city. It’s actually filled with a lot of green space and parks and beautiful you know what I mean? It’s a great place to be and so I was able to find a unique balance there of, like, getting some air and sunshine every day while also living in a city. So, you know, you gotta find a way one way or another. Right? You gotta get that sunshine in.

Molly Ruland:

It’s really important.

Travis Janko:

Agree.

Molly Ruland:

Okay. I have a wild card question for you. If you could go back in time and be the founding member of any company, what company would it be and why?

Travis Janko:

Oh, that’s a good one. That’s a good one. That threw me for a loop. Yes. I I think, wow. You know, I actually, I think I’m gonna go back to the first company that I worked with that was acquired. That was Trulia. So Trulia, Zillow acquired them.

Molly Ruland:

Okay. Yeah.

Travis Janko:

I was wondering if you were gonna buy, sell, or rent a home, you would go to Trulia or Zillow.

Molly Ruland:

Yeah.

Travis Janko:

I I think that I would go back knowing what I know now and be a founding member, and they would have gotten where they wanted to go much faster and much more efficiently. When I started, it was totally the wild west. It was literally like what you would expect a startup to be with kegs and basketball hoops and ping pong tables and people running around in bare feet and dogs running all over.

Molly Ruland:

Right.

Travis Janko:

That’s all fine. But there was no real process. It was just kind of everybody doing everything, no specialization. And, you know, we worked through that and we got to where we needed to go. But if I could wind the clock back on day 1 and I could say guys, if we did this thing, imagine how quick we’d get to where we wanna go. And also, we wouldn’t have hired so many people that we would have had to fire them because we hired the wrong people before we figured it out. You know? Yeah. Again, there’s there’s a lot of changes.

Travis Janko:

I think that would have been fun. My second answer would be my business. It took us 3, 3 and a half years to figure it out. I was on the hamster wheel, stressed, all of the things, thinking I had to work 15 hours a day, and we had that moment, and it was a great moment, but it took us three and a half years to get to that moment. And, boy, if I could’ve done that from day 1, I just imagine, you know, how things they’d be like they are today, but they would have been this way back then.

Molly Ruland:

Well, I heard that. But as you know, not to be cliche, but everything happens for a reason. Right? So, you know, I guess if you knew what well, if you knew what you knew now 3 years ago, you’d really be ahead of the curve in the pandemic. That’s for sure. But

Travis Janko:

Oh, yeah.

Molly Ruland:

And the whole world certainly has changed quite a bit. Alright. So I have, this is everybody’s favorite round. It’s called real or fake. So I’m gonna name some podcasts and then you guess if they’re real or fake.

Travis Janko:

Let’s do it.

Molly Ruland:

It’s a crowd favorite. What can I say? Okay. The hilarious world of depression.

Travis Janko:

Jesus. Sounds like it should be a real one. Let’s go with that just for fun.

Molly Ruland:

It is real. I’m always just as surprised by these as you are. No, I won’t. Let’s see. Masters of the Hustle.

Travis Janko:

Masters of the Hustle? That sounds like a real podcast to me as well.

Molly Ruland:

It’s fake.

Travis Janko:

Wow. Well, it should be.

Molly Ruland:

It should be. You know, I had a guest on my podcast who actually is starting a podcast based on one of the fake podcast names. It was Marketing Over Bourbon and she’s launching it together. So you never know, anything is possible. Good things happen on this. Okay. And then the last one is, Startup Stories Unplugged.

Travis Janko:

That should be a podcast if it’s not.

Molly Ruland:

It’s fake, but it should be real too. Okay. And then I got 3 well, 2 more questions for you. What is your favorite , the most influential book that you have read? It could be this year or of all time, whatever. But what book is the one that, like, really really gets you going? And it’s okay if you got 3. I’m cool with that.

Travis Janko:

Buy Back Your Time by Dan Martell.

Molly Ruland:

Okay. That’s a good one.

Travis Janko:

It is an absolute game changer for anybody who owns a business. You won’t wanna put it down. I’m impartial. I’m friends with Dan also, but even if I weren’t, I would buy that book in a heartbeat. Nice. Second one is this one. So

Molly Ruland:

feel free

Travis Janko:

to check this one out.

Molly Ruland:

Yeah. Pretty proud

Travis Janko:

of that one. My wife and I are actually working on one that’s much better than the first one. You learn as you go.

Molly Ruland:

Nice. Yeah. Right on. I love that. I will check both I’ve read Buy Back Your Time, but, I I went on this mission and I read, like, a 130 5 books over a course of 3 years because I was I just wanted to educate myself in business development from people doing it currently, and I kinda got to the point where I was running out of books, and so I started to reread the books that I found really important to me and, like, study them a little more and because I’m not I’m not trying to prove how many books I could read, I just wanted to fill this gap of knowledge that I had, and so I I I did that with all these books. But I always love a good book recommendation. And what is your favorite tool right now? Like, it could be a tech tool or it could be anything really.

Travis Janko:

So I suffer from this thing called multi tabitis. And what that means is I typically, at any given time, have, like, 300 tabs open on my computers. True. And that is a problem. Yeah. I know I know that I have this problem. And so I use this tool called Workona, w o r k o n a, and it basically is like a life game changer.

Molly Ruland:

Okay.

Travis Janko:

Now now I might have 15 different categories where tabs are, but at any given time, I only have a few tabs open

Molly Ruland:

Yeah.

Travis Janko:

Based on what I’m using. It’s a total game changer. Again, I still shouldn’t have as many tabs open as I do, and my computer doesn’t like me for it.

Molly Ruland:

But Yeah. I was using I will. Your computer is blah blah blah. Like, here he goes again. Let me get us more tabs. I can relate to that. And I read, Cal Newport’s Deep Work, you know, like, years ago, and I started not not implementing all of his tips, but just closing the unnecessary tabs and focusing on one thing at a time because, you know, you just it’s like we have the attention span of a water flea now, all of us, and so I go to LinkedIn to send a message, and then I start scrolling, and then, you know, I I’ve completely missed the point of what I was trying to do, but I will check that out because I also am, like, my brain is going in a million different directions at all times, and so I will check that out and and look into it.

Travis Janko:

Good deal. Yeah. I would say another great tool is just my top five list. It’s not technology, but literally every morning, I start out with the 5 things I have to get done today. Instead of having 50 or 60 things, these are the 5 that are gonna happen. And if they don’t happen, then they have to be first priority tomorrow. And if 3 days later, they don’t happen, they’re not important, and we can get rid of them.

Molly Ruland:

I like that. I kinda have a similar method like I will write out my to do list and then what I do is I prioritize the ones that will get me closer to a paid invoice. Right? So, like, one of the greatest takeaways from reading all those books was to take the straightest path to money. And so I do the revenue generating activities first and then I’ll do the other stuff because sometimes, you know, sending the follow-up on that proposal, that should be the first thing you do, not the thing you do at the end of the day. Right? So

Travis Janko:

Yep.

Molly Ruland:

That’s how I prioritize. I don’t know if it’s working or not, but that’s how I do it.

Travis Janko:

One thing I recommend is try early in the day to knock out that b hag, that frog, that really real that’s that one that you’re looking at and you’re like, I know it needs to get done, but these ones are easier, so I’ll do these ones first.

Molly Ruland:

These are shiny.

Travis Janko:

It’s just that sense of you feeling satisfied when you knock that big frog out.

Molly Ruland:

Yeah. I try to work out every day on my treadmill, and that’s a big one too because it’s like, okay. You know? Like, get it done. And I’ll put my workout clothes on every day because then I’m just a jerk sitting around in my workout clothes all day if I don’t do it and so it helps. I’m, like, okay, you’re still in spandex. It’s 4 o’clock, like, go get on the treadmill. Yeah. But it’s always a better day when I do it early, you know, before everything gets going.

Molly Ruland:

You really do feel really good about yourself. It’s a good exercise. It’s a good muscle to exercise. You know?

Travis Janko:

It is. We, you know, everything to us is a process that we follow. And so, again, working out is one of the morning things that we do. It just it happens every day, and we can’t have the excuse that we’re on our computers, work calls, because we don’t even turn on our electronic devices until we’ve done the things that are important to us in the morning, which is, you know, having breakfast, working out, taking a walk, reading, having an actual conversation.

Molly Ruland:

Right.

Travis Janko:

And then we dive into work. Because work’s gonna be there. Right?

Molly Ruland:

It’s gonna be there.

Travis Janko:

As soon as you turn it on. And there’s gonna be a fire you have to put out. There always is. And Right. The fire will be okay.

Molly Ruland:

It’ll keep burning without you until you put it out.

Travis Janko:

Yep.

Molly Ruland:

Yeah. I really like that. I might have to start doing a little bit more of that myself because yeah, it’s easy. I get up really early here in Costa Rica because I don’t close my blinds and I live right on the lake and there’s a volcano and the sun rises, but I mean, it’s like why would I miss that every day you know? And so I’m up ridiculously early, but not for a hustle culture reason. I just like to get up and I spend a little time in my garden, and I hang out with my dogs, and I love that I have a couple hours before Yeah. Everybody else wakes up. But I think this idea of keeping your electronics turned off until those things are done is really smart. I might have to implement that because it’s gonna be there. Like you said, it’s gonna

Travis Janko:

it is. And on the other end of that, you know, if you’re really trying to protect your time and you’re trying to live the right life that you wanna live, when you cut a boundary and this is when my day ends, you should do the same thing. So, literally, when we end our day and it’s done, then we go check on whatever personal things might be happening.

Molly Ruland:

Right. And

Travis Janko:

then we shut our devices off again. So

Molly Ruland:

good for you, man.

Travis Janko:

They’re off from the time we stop until the time we start. There’s unless we’re waiting for somebody to call us that’s a family member, or whatever, there’s really no reason. Like, there’s

Molly Ruland:

just many things to do. Right. We’re not open heart surgeons. You know, nobody’s gonna die if I don’t answer my phone for a few hours. Yeah. I’m with you on that. I really like that. That’s really resonating with me.

Molly Ruland:

I think I’m gonna do that because, especially living in Costa Rica and if I don’t have anything else to do, I work too much. Like on the weekends, I started making French pastries just to keep myself off the computer, you know, because otherwise I’ll wander back over here and sit down and next thing I know I’ve done it again. Right? So, I definitely respect that hard boundary of creating a life you wanna live.

Travis Janko:

Well, and it all comes from, blocking your time. So the way we started doing this was we found some major inefficiencies in our business. We were going from, like you said earlier, you have the LinkedIn message and the Slack message, and you have an email, and you have this project. Now I’m talking to a potential candidate, and immediately after that, I’m talking with a partner, and immediately after that, I’m talking with a client. And those are 3 different conversations. So what we did is we short version is we blocked out every day of the week during work and we blocked it in sections. So for instance, when I’m gonna do my LinkedIn content, it’s not on the fly. I have 3 hours blocked out and that’s what I’m gonna do at that time, and that’s all I’m gonna do.

Travis Janko:

And Right. Unless something that’s a priority comes up that trumps that. But we have our entire work week set like that, and we thought, what if we did the same thing with our personal lives to make sure that the 2 aren’t bleeding into each other? And so it’s literally everything’s sectioned out, and if it works it might sound a little bit too process driven. Again, I’m married to someone who is a project manager for over 20 years. So

Molly Ruland:

Right.

Travis Janko:

Everything is a process.

Molly Ruland:

I mean, hey. Listen. Life moves fast, and it’ll get ahead of you before you know it, and you look back and you go, what have I been doing? So I think it’s great. I think the intention is great. You’re rocking your Hawaiian shirts. You’re clearly, you know, making time for the things that are important to you, helping other people to make more money. I don’t know. I think you got it all figured out, Travis.

Molly Ruland:

So

Travis Janko:

Well, Molly, I’d love to say I had it all figured out, but I think we’re on the right path.

Molly Ruland:

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, aiming in the right direction. Like my dad would say, you gotta stay in the moving forward program. So Yes. You just stay on track and you’ll be alright. So, well, listen, Travis, I have taken too much of your time today, so we will jump off now, but thank you so much. All your links and stuff will be in the show notes, But what’s the best way for people to connect with you if they have resonated with this, with this content?

Travis Janko:

Yeah. I think they can, you know, they can just jump on my website. All my contact information is there. It’s travis@gsdashcoach.com. You know, connect with me on LinkedIn or, you know, or Twitter or Insta or whatever. I prefer people email me. Every page in my website has my email. That I’m gonna answer, you know, right now since we’ve been talking is you and I both probably already have, like, 20 to 50 messages in our social media, and sometimes those fall and get lost.

Travis Janko:

But Right. Love to talk to anybody. This has been awesome, Ollie.

Molly Ruland:

Yeah. Thank you so much, Travis. I appreciate your time. I’m sure we’ll talk again real soon. Thank you for coming on the show, and, and, yeah, if you’re looking to hire some people for your SaaS company, Travis is the guy to go to. That’s a very specific thing, a very specific need, and if you have a SaaS product, you have investors and deadlines and goals, and he is the right guy to call to staff your company up. So on this note, the dogs are letting me know. Catch you on the next one.

Molly Ruland:

Thank you for tuning in to Camp Content.

Travis Janko:

Thank you. Bye.